Concrete Cow 25

I arrived in Wolverton at more or less the time I intended, paid my entry, and headed straight for the bring and buy, followed by Leisure Games. I'd been thinking of picking up some of the supplements for Masks: A New Generation and there was one of them in paperback so of course that had to come home with me. I somehow managed to resist the impressive amount of bargains on the bring and buy.

By the time I took this photo, very little remained

Game 1: The Wildsea

I used my GM golden ticket to get into my top pick of morning game. I'd seen The Wildsea around and knew how pretty it was but not a great deal else. I was also very happy to find myself at a table with five familiar faces - while it's great meeting new people at cons, it's also great to catch up with old friends.

I was immediately smitten by the pre-gen characters the GM had provided. I resisted my natural urge to play the weird bug person, and passed the swarm of spiders in a skin suit to another player. I decided on Sagrave the Ektus - a towering cactus person with a talent for smashing things up. The rules themselves were fairly straightforward. A variation on Forged in the Dark, and one that seemed a little less hostile to the idea of players passing their rolls. Or perhaps that was partly the fact that the dice appeared to have taken a liking to us?

 What wasn't so friendly was the setting, when it came to figure out what to actually do with it. 'Bunch of weirdos on a ship' is always a solid premise for a game, but while games based on familiar franchises like Star Trek or Pirates of the Caribbean provide a familiar setting, this one is so weird it's hard to know where to take your ship.

The GM dealt with this by giving the characters some interesting motivations and relations, specifically having two characters married, and a third their child. We tried not to think too much about how exactly a human and a bag of spiders had a kid. Fortunately, Sagrave and his friend Hobel the mushroom person didn't know too much about animal biology anyway. Off we sailed, in search of the Amber Irons, where the human wife was going to find an ingredient to make a tea for treating amber blight.

The Wildsea crew

The end result was a game that really put me more in mind of Pasion de los Pasiones, as the human's ex wife showed up, causing trouble in her relationship with her spiders husband, which was a stressful situation for their son. Sagrave, who'd already failed at flirting with the harbor master, concluded that he needed some surrogate parental figures, and that in the absence of any actual suitable candidates, Sagrave and Hobel would have to do.

I suspect The Wildsea is one of those games that works better in a campaign where you've got time to actually learn to setting. All the same, we did have a good game thanks to an imaginative GM and a group of players absolutely willing to lean into the bizarre relationship drama. I fondly remember Hobel and Sagrave rather confusedly asking the spider bag husband if he wasn't already technically in a poly relationship given that there were quite a lot of him.

I picked up some lunch at Tesco, then brought out my sign-up sheet for the afternoon. There were quite a lot.

Ten games on offer!

Game 2: Monster of the Week

I took Valentine's Day for another outing, and another team of elderly monster hunters assembled: a Professional, an Expert, a Mundane and a Divine. So three regular humans and the angel Jeremiel headed for Asani's Greek restaurant to find out why her new barista was being inundated with romantic gifts.

This was great fun. The changes I made for the Revelation run continued to work well, and the group efficiently got to the bottom of things, a few passionate declarations of love notwithstanding.

Then it was time for takeaways and the raffle. This time the raffle prizes consisted almost entirely of things I already owned and things that I previously owned but had since sold. Obviously that means some people won some very cool stuff.

Game 3: Darkness of the Demimonde

 Having written a brand new DotD scenario for my campaign group a few weeks ago, I decided to give it another outing. Brides of Brixton is another investigative pulp horror scenario set in London, and I needed to make some tweaks to run it for a group of beginner characters rather than the slightly more experienced campaign group. Primarily reducing the DR of the primary antagonists.

This time the party consisted of a Detective, Gentry, Feyblood, Magician and Psychic, meaning that most things were solved by either solid investigation techniques of searching and interrogation or creative use of mystic powers. I managed to make good use of my random historical knowledge. Good times. 

Sunday

We've got a bit of a tradition now of a few of us meeting up on the Sunday for lunch and an activity. This time, with some people coming who'd never seen the notorious Concrete Cows before, there was really only one option.

The Concrete Cows

Even if you've seen photos, nothing truly prepares you for the sheer physical presence of these things.

The short walk there and back meant passing a field with some ponies in it. It was good to see that with five of them plus a suitably horse-sized d20, they were all set up for a nice game of D&D.

This one was probably the GM

This was followed by lunch at Yo Sushi and then dropping everyone back at the station.

Reflections

This is probably the best turn-out we've had at Concrete Cow since before Covid. We had loads of games on offer, and most of them filled up. Next time we'll have the main hall set up so we can deploy the divider and split it into two rooms when the games start, and can start looking at hiring additional space.

I love running games here.