ConDensed 2025

ConDensed is a great little convention that could use more love. Unfortunately, being located on the south coast means it's a bit of a trek for most people to get to, including me. This time my husband and me decided to make an actual holiday of it if we were going to have to travel that far, and spent a few days in Portsmouth looking at ships before driving over to Worthing for the convention itself.

Game 1: Golden Heroes

Despite having known Simon Burley for many years now and played a bunch of his other games, I'd still never had a chance to try Golden Heroes, so when he asked if there was interest in a game at ConDensed I was suitably enthusiastic.

You can tell this is a game from the 80s. Unnecessary crunch, outdated language, tables that don't need to exist, dice rolls that should have been flat numbers... But I can see why people love it. We did character creation at the table, the slighly longer slots at ConDensed meaning we could spend a bit of time on it without worrying about whether we were going to have time for the actual scenario.

I decided to skip having an Advantageous Background, as per Thor or Tony Stark and go for the street level Spiderman type origin. My first two rolls were Martial Arts and Tough Skin, which seemed logical enough, but at the same time not all that exciting on their own. I decided to take one more random roll and got Magic. Perfect. I used the remaining slots to upgrade Martial Arts to level 2 and Magic to level 3. End result, Kira Kim, a.k.a. White Witch, who became a superhero when she was recruited by an ancient order of magicians while at a Taekwondo class.

With our team assembled, we met up on the mean streets of Dudley where some kind of power armour was causing havoc, before getting mixed up in some interplanetary politics. It soon became clear that there are some really interesting aspects to the game, such as the ratings after each mission which then give you your stats for things like detective work and public opinion in the next mission, while encouraging you to act in a superhero-like way.

All in all, while it's a bit clunky in places, I didn't mind that because the character creation was really fun, the ratings are great, and the rules get the job done. I will definitely be checking out Simon's follow-up game, Squadron UK.

Game 2: Space 1889

Another trip to the 1980s with Space 1889, a game based on Victorian sci-fi, which would have been called steampunk if the word steampunk had been invented in 1988.

Lady Constance, adventuress, set off on a race through Egypt and Sudan, alongside her dear friend Emily from Cheltenham Ladies' College, her fiance Archie, and Emily's mechanic Stebbins. We lasted about 45 seconds into the game before starting to plan how to sabotage the other contestants, with Stebbins and Emily taking a stealthy and mechanical approach while Constance and Archie set about socialising with their fellow elites, spreading rumours and 'accidentally' causing minor injuries.

The end result is how I imagine the Wacky Races would have looked if written by Jules Verne.

The system has some issues, the primary one being that there are multiple different ways of doing skill resolution, so if I were to run this myself I'd be looking for the Savage Worlds version from 2010, but it's still playable and the setting is really good fun. Definitely one to look out for if you enjoy being terribly British and doing silly posh accents.

Game 3: Escape from Dino Island / This House Is F***ing Haunted

I originally pitched Kult in this slot, as I thought it would be a good fit for my haunted house scenario which could use a slightly longer slot. But Kult is not everyone's jam, and at a convention this small, there just weren't enough fans of its specific type of horror to fill a game. So I scrapped that and offered Escape from Dino Island instead, a game where you know exactly what you're going to get.

I once again went with the destination wedding concept as the reason for everyone being on the island, and we soon established that we had a professor here to represent the university that the bride donated to, the bride's ex husband, the bride's ex boyfriend, and the groom's son. 

We played Dino Island! @savagespiel.bsky.social brought little dinosaurs.

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— Graham Walmsley (@grahamwalmsley.bsky.social) November 15, 2025 at 5:51 PM

They dealt with a variety of dinosaur-based obstacles, descended into the secret underground base, uncovered the devious plot to create supersoldiers by combining human DNA with dinosaurs, and finally went through a time portal to back before the wedding and got everyone out. A successful escape.

Then, because it turned out to have been rather a fast escape, I pulled out This House Is F***ing Haunted as a follow-up. Two players left for dinner, but the remaining two dived in, becoming two contractors refitting a Canadian ski lodge that turned out to just have an absolute ton of ghosts in it, none of which were as terrifying as the taxidermy.

Game 4: Age of Vikings

This game used the same pre-gens as the game I played at Concrete Cow, so I quickly chose Hrund the Uninspired again, determined to get her a new nickname by the end of the session.

This was excellent. There was a brief history talk at the start to get us all on the same Icelandic page, and then off we went to investigate strange events that went down at a funeral. We got to see a lot more of the mechanics of rune magic this time, plus a better understanding of how devotions work. The scenario itself made good use of Viking mythology and history without being confusing to someone without a comprehensive knowledge of the subject, which is what you want in an RPG.

Also, by the end, after a couple of particularly good rolls in combat, Hrund had become Hrund Shin Splitter and was a lot happier about things.

And that was it for another ConDensed, except for the drive home. No accidents on the M25 this time. No, this time the accident was on the M1, and it once again took 5 hours to get home. Fortunately we had a new Strange Times audiobook to keep us company.