Furnace XX

Off to Furnace again, along with my husband who remembered to register this time. This was set to be the biggest Furnace yet, and excitingly for me, a few friends were coming for the first time, including one guy I'd never seen in person before, allowing me to confirm that he does in fact have legs.

Last year's outing to the Italian restaurant was seven people. This year, probably due to the increased numbers as well as greater awareness, there were seventeen of us. Which meant it was a bit of a long meal as they had so many people to serve (it's a small restaurant and we took up about half of it) but did make for good conversation. If we get numbers like this again next time though, it might be worth splitting the Friday meal across more than one venue.

Saturday kicked off earlier than usual, as breakfast was ending earlier so they could kick everyone out of the breakfast room and reset it as an additional gaming space. This room provided an additional eight tables, allowing for the biggest Furnace yet. It also meant a bigger area for All Rolled Up and Patriot Games to set up their stalls, and for the Bring and Buy table, all of which were very welcome.

The traditional opening speech was followed up by collecting the bag I'd pre-ordered, and also a commemorative dice tray. I decided not to use the bag during the weekend (foreseeing chaos with everyone having the same bag) but did use the extremely nice dice tray which is now a permanent resident in my gaming bag.

Game 1: Pendragon

The luck of the draw meant I hadn't got into any of my game picks in the morning session. Fortunately there was a space left in a Pendragon game, and since people had previously told me that they thought I'd like Pendragon, I decided to give it a go.

Well I do like Pendragon. The skill lists were a reasonable length, with a clear split between combat and everything else, much like Dragonbane. The traits meant I had a solid idea of how Dame Tamura was going to behave, and gave the option of making rolls to see if she was going to make poor choices as a result. Whether I'd actually want to play an entire Great Pendragon Campaign, I don't know, as I'm not sure how much doing knight things would appear long term, but I'd be willing to give it a try.

By the end of the session, Tamura had got lost in London, had mild religious disagreements, watched fellow knights vie for a lady's favour, and performed an emergency knighthood. Good times all round.

Game 2: Pinebox Middle School

So long term blog readers have probably noticed that I like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Pinebox Middle School is a slightly younger age range than Buffy but still firmly in that general area, so this was obviously a must-play.

I picked out the Athlete character, noticed a degree of resemblance to the Williams sisters, and accordingly named her Juno. Juno and friends set out on a camping trip with the local not-actually-scouts group, where things naturally went very wrong. Juno's athletic skills served her well in most situations, but things did get a little hairy towards the end when she was forced to play the flute, an upsetting experience for everyone involved.

Overall this had pretty similar vibes to Tales from the Loop, with the additional benefit of being Savage Worlds, where the dice just aren't as dickish as they tend to be in Year Zero Engine. Overall I have a slight preferences for the older teens in East Texas University (also based in Pinebox) but this is a great game nonetheless.

Game 3: Dragonbane

Time to take up the GM mantle and run a game. Having claimed one of the Jailhouse tables rather than a cell, I felt I should offer something where I could manage five players, and decided to try writing a Dragonbane adventure. Knowing I'd need miniatures, and somewhat inspired by an all duck game I played at a previous con, I decided on an all cat person game.

Prepping for this game, I discovered that while writing monsters for Dragonbane is pretty fun, I don't like making characters at all - at least, not the assigning skills part. And I'd signed up to provide five of them. But eventually I got them done, and Coco, Felix, Smoky, Marmalade and Stripes were ready to discover what catastrophe had befallen their home village of Meowington.

Running Dragonbane, particularly stuff I wrote myself, is still a weird experience for me because it's quite a long way away from the kind of thing I normally do. It's hard for me to judge how things actually went. Still, nobody looked bored or acted disengaged, so it clearly wasn't terrible. The biggest hiccup was when I couldn't remember the villain's motivation, which was really rather important to the story. Fortunately I remembered in time, but I should probably write that one down a little more clearly in future.

Nerves and insecurity aside, it was a lot of fun getting to bring out some of my collection of cat adventurer miniatures and make use of the Tom Cartos battle map books.

Game 4: SLA Industries

SLA is usually good for a laugh at a convention, and this was no exception. Offered the usual set of pregens, I decided to try something new and picked out the Neophron, a bird person with good social skills, making me the de facto party leader, although leader is a strong word for a party of SLA characters especially when there's a Stormer and a Frother in the group.

Our mission was simple: get a kebab. For which we needed money. For which we needed a job. For which we needed to replace the paper in the job printer so that it would print properly and we could read what the job was. And so began a sequence of bizarre events as we set out to clear a paper jam and ultimately get something to eat.

The GM was playing a little fast and loose with the system, which I appreciated as it gave me a chance to get more to grips with the basics of how it works, without having to worry about oddities like the reverse declaration initiative system. Also a welcome opportunity to pull out my bag of d10s. He also had the feats printed out on cards, which was a more convenient way to read them than all being printed on one sheet.

This was probably the highlight of the convention for me. Funny, gory, well GMed and with an enthusiastic group of players.

Before the final slot we had the raffle. Thanks to Chaosium sponsoring basically every convention I've been to this year, most of the prizes were Chaosium books and I walked away with a brand new copy of BRP.

Game 5: Monster of the Week

A second outing for my K-Pop Demon Hunters inspired game. With only three players this time, it was the Celebrity, Changeling and Forged who set out to protect Busan from demons. Based on what happened last time, I provided bulldog clips to attach the photos to the name cards, although I'm wondering if separate standees for the cards might also be a good idea. It may come down to how much lamination I can face doing.

With only one player being familiar with the movie, I had to work a little harder to bring the setting details, not helped by my tendency to forget that we were in Busan, not Seoul, and I don't think overall that it was as good as the game at Concrete Cow. But it still works as an adventure and it's going in my regular convention rotation for a while. As I learn more about Korean mythology, it may even get a sequel.

And that was that. Furnace remains an absolute delight. I got to catch up with old friends and meet some lovely new people across all the games. I really hope our first timers will join the rest of us again next year.