Revelation 2026

I set out through the sleet to Revelation once again. Despite the sleet, it was a slightly quicker drive than usual, and I had time for a sit down before meeting up for the now traditional restaurant outing.

This time we were making a return visit to the local Italian restaurant, Mama Mia Pepe, whose owner is rapidly getting to know us. I was worried we might have to find somewhere a little less romantic this close to Valentine's Day, but he found us space. The other customers looked a little surprised when a party of eleven walked in.

Game 1: Monster of the Week

I decided to kick things off with more K-pop Demon Hunters, since I've had so much fun running it at previous conventions.

Sadly one of the signed up players was ill and couldn't make it, so this band ended up as a three-piece. The Misfits were a girl band, and followed the current popular trend of naming their band using English words that can't be directly written in Hangul. My pronunciation of 미스피츠 resulted in their band merch including a tie-in miso pizza as well as their own ramyeon.

The girls gave a solid performance at the finals of Busan's Got Talent but a disastrous fan meet made for a tricky time dealing with the demon incursion. Nevertheless they got it together, managed not to burn down any buildings, and with the aid of some free tickets to their park show, saved the Honmoon.

Great players, a great game that keeps on bringing out fun new expansions, and a great start to the weekend.

Game 2: Pasión de las Pasiones

My knowledge of telenovelas is limited to watching several episodes of Telenovelas Are Hell. So I wasn't sure if I really had it in me to play it. But this wasn't just any telenovela. This was The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon!

By the end of this game, I was seriously questioning Murderbot's taste in media. Actually I was questioning it by the time we'd had the dramatic reading of the theme music at the start. But I digress.

This is the in-universe show from the Murderbot Diaries books, and the TV adaptation went a step further and actually showed us clips from the show. Thus providing a cast of characters that the GM mapped onto the playbooks. I picked up Nav Bot, a pure hearted navigation unit initially in love with the Captain, which lasted until shortly after he declared his love for Terraforming Surveyor Frost, and she ended up falling for Jan-Bot, a lowly cleaning robot, until Jan-Bot's untimely destruction at the hands of a sec unit, after which she finally found love with the colony solicitor.

Nav Bot 337 Alt 66

Which in no way expresses the absolute absurdity of this game as we discovered secret brothers, secret body doubles, secret constructs and secret clones. I heard later the GM was as confused about what was going on as we were, but nevertheless guided us through every new revelation until the season finale when the captain died in Frost's arms.

This was a double slot game, which was a great choice, giving us the opportunity to properly set up the opening scenario while providing plenty of time to get into things. The GM did a phenomenal job prepping for this, with standees with the character introductions and fully customised character sheets. If this was offered at LongCon I would absolutely sign up for a full weekend.

Game 3: Kult: Divinity Lost

I don't often run Gated at conventions, because it's too long even for a four hour slot, but with plenty of space in the schedule on Sunday, I decided to pitch it as a two-parter.

This one features four people, all moving into a condo in a gated community. I generally include a question on my Kult character sheets to allow a bit of personalisation. One character in this one is asked what job they're got in their new home, and the player picked Home Owner's Association entertainment coordinator. Which was lovely, because as the gated community concept might suggest, the HOA plays quite a significant role in the scenario.

I was particularly impressed by the players, as in all the times I've run this, no other group has hit on the idea of using their cars during the first encounter. Which meant I had to improvise a bit more than usual but apparently I wrote the scenario well enough that going this far off script was not an issue.

Not for the first time, Christmas lights and lawn flamingos were deployed in the final confrontation.

Thanks to the challenges of scheduling different length games, I had one player who only played the first part, having to go and run his own game in the afternoon. So I gave him the one character in this who is often very low on stability by the end of part 1, and the character spent most of the second half either sedated or doing origami.

Kult is 100% a horror game, but exactly what type of horror game it is does somewhat depend on the players as well as the scenario. This is one that can go proper dark, but can also be a lot more investigative, and with the players I had, I wasn't surprised that it ended up being an overall more optimistic run. Of course, the 'good' ending in Kult is the one where you all get shoved neatly back into your prison, never to see reality again.

Reflections 

I gave myself some suggestions last time so let's see if I actually followed them...

• I probably shouldn't run three games? Well, technically I only ran two, but given that one of them was double length, I'm not sure that actually counts as being less enthusiastic.
• I did manage to be GMing something energising in slot 5 so I didn't start flagging too early, so points to me there.
• Better breakfast choices were made, partly due to the Garrison's new menu. With the banana pancakes responsible for past sugar crashes now gone, I went for eggs florentine, a nice vegetarian meal with actual vegetables, which set me up much better for the day.

So 2/3 overall, not too bad. I was still absolutely exhausted when I got home. Totally worth it.

ConTingency 2026

Another trip with my husband to Sunny Snowy Rainy Hunny! We had plans to once again share a lodge with the friends we shared with in 2024, but thanks to an emergency they had to cancel, so with some very much appreciated assistance from the organisers we once again joined up with the friends from 2025.

Tuesday

The convention proper doesn't begin until Wednesday, but we'd arrived on Monday, meaning there was the option to fit in an extra game on Tuesday evening. So when my friend Esther requested a game, I was happy to oblige.

Slot 0: Kult: Divinity Lost

We gathered at Matt Sanderson's Eldritch Lodge, host to the largest array of teas I've seen outside of a London tea shop, and I began another session of Not for a Million Dollars. All the players were wonderful, although I feel the need for a shout-out to Steve for coming up with the name Chase Nightsoul for his online influencer character. This also lead to my favourite wound description yet, 'attack of the YouTube plaque'.

Wednesday

Slot 1: Matrons of Mystery

After some mild admonishment from last year's Matrons GM, I thought I'd better step up and run my own game this year. My scenario Chalet Grave, featuring a murder at Pearles Holiday Park, seemed like the obvious choice.

It rapidly became obvious that none of the resulting Matrons actually got on well together, so the first mystery to solve was why were they going on holiday together? We soon got to the bottom of it as the members of the Upper Apple Slaughter parish council realised the vicar might have been up to something when telling each of them individually that they'd won a holiday.

Fortunately their arguing was interrupted by the murder of a fellow holidaymaker, and in between aquaerobics and hot yoga classes they managed to track down the murderer, allowing the local police officer to get back to his bird watching. They mended their differences over some unusual baked goods, and prepared to gang up on the vicar when they got home.

 

The Matrons put it all together over a nice cup of tea. Caution: Spoilers!

Slot 2: Outgunned Superheroes

Being pretty keen on Outgunned as a system, I was keen to see it applied to superheroes. I picked up World Hopper, a femme fatale with teleportation powers.

One thing I immediately liked was that short range teleportation could be done at will. My small supply of power points only came into use when I was teleporting beyond line of sight, or taking someone else with me. This is one of those things that bugs me particularly in superhero games, when the rules stop the characters from actually doing superhero stuff because they can't waste limited power on using their powers most of the time. No problems with that here. There were some contrived circumstances in the adventure where we temporarily lost our powers, but that's fine - that kind of thing happens in superhero media all the time. We soon got them back.

These were beta rules, and are a little convoluted in places, but I fully expect it to be tidied up a little before the final product comes out. Should I find myself with a hankering to run a superhero adventure, I'll definitely check this one out.

I decided in the interests of not burning out too quick to take a break on Wednesday evening and hang out with my husband for a bit.

Thursday

Slot 4: Monster of the Week

Another outing for my K-Pop Demon Hunters inspired game. This time the group decided to be a boy band, and so the four members of CMYK went into battle with weapons and signed photocards to solve the mystery of what happened at Busan's Got Talent while still getting to their fan meet on time.

Once again I had players signed up who hadn't seen the movie, so I'm getting pretty adept at my high speed introduction to the setting where I explain why showing up to the fan meet is just as important as fighting the monsters. And they absolutely embraced it, creatively dealing with the various obstacles with a variety of magical and occasional fungal solutions.

Slot 5: Coriolis: The Third Horizon

A bit of a surprise to see this on offer, given that there's a new version of Coriolis (The Great Dark) out now, but I still like this version better so was delighted to get into a game.

I picked up Dr Wana, an archaeologist who'd really pushed the boundaries between archaeology and grave robbing, hence why she was now the captain of a mercenary crew. We were hired to investigate the murder of the designer of a military AI. We immediately suspected the AI, but had to do a thorough investigation to fully get to grips with what had happened.

Absolutely excellent game. The adventure was great, the GM was a familiar face from Concrete Cow who I already knew would do a great job, and the rest of the players were a really fun group. A highlight of the week.

Slot 6: Liminal

One of my favourite games, but not one I actually get to play in very often, so I immediately signed up when I saw this one on offer. This was the first in a series of Liminal Lincolnshire adventures, a concept I love since I'm writing my own Liminal Northamptonshire series. The GM was also one of the players from the Liminal game I ran last year, so hopefully that means I made a good impression.

I played Jordan, a journalist determined to get to the truth, alongside her two rather more supernatural companions. We began with three dead bodies that had all washed up on the bank of the Humber on three consecutive nights, and had to figure out what they'd been up to, who was likely to be next, and what this all had to do with a 16th century priest.

Great stuff, and I look forward to seeing the rest of the adventures. Liminal is at its best written by people who know and love the area they're writing about, and are ready to dive into the history and geography.

Friday

Slot 7: Vaesen

Another trip to the Eldritch Lodge to game with Matt Sanderson while sampling more of his incredible tea selection. I picked up the Academic character, figuring a Vaesen party can always use someone with a book, and off we went to Oulu to learn more about the massacre than destroyed the previous incarnation of the Society.

We discovered quite a lot of the past events by the simple, if moderately scary method of having our occultist perform a seance to summon the ghost of one of the dead society members. Then there was a long walk in the rain to recruit a useful ally before we dealt with the issue at the well, wells proving just as troublesome in Finnish mythology as they are in Britain and Japan.

As usual though, the true horror ended up being the inability to roll even a single six on ten or more dice.

I took another break on Friday afternoon and spent an hour or so at the pool. About time I actually used some muscles.

Slot 9: Kult: Divinity Lost

I'd initially planned to run this game in the lodge, but on discovering that my lodgemate was also planning to run a game in the lodge on Friday night, I contacted the players in advance and one of them kindly offered his own lodge.

There is one character in this scenario who is a model. The players have some freedom with exactly how to interpret the characters, and this one tends to go one of two ways: goth or himbo. Tuesday's model was goth. Friday's was himbo. Both were a delight.

The strange thing about this scenario is that while it's got one of the scarier lists of content warnings, it's probably one of my less horrific scenarios. My favourite part, without giving away any spoilers, is the moment when the PCs have learned enough about what's going on in the house to realise something from right at the start of the game has way more significance than it might initially appear.

Not having access to the Sanderson tea bar for this game, I took my own, and then rather embarrasingly forgot to take it with me at the end. Thankfully our host tracked me down the next morning to give back the box.

Saturday

Slot 10: Fear Itself

I'm not much of a Gumshoe fan but I'll put up with it now and then for a game with CJ Romer. The content warnings did say that this was a very dark adult game which should not be played by anyone at all, but four of us decided to give it a shot all the same.

So four of Melissa's closest friends gathered to attempt to help her out with a mental health crisis, and in the process get rid of the psychic energy counsellor (or 'wizard' as my character described him) who Melissa's mum inexplicably thought would be helpful. Once we'd crushed him under a drinks cabinet and had him taken away by paramedics, we soon began diving into the horrifying world of creepypastas.

Overall I liked this scenario, and the pre-gen characters were a bunch of fun. While there was some genuinely dark stuff going on, it was lightened by the player interactions. Overall though, I find the constant gambling with metacurrencies aspect of this iteration of Gumshoe really pulls me out of the atmosphere. I'd consider a Quickshock version of the game but really for this style of horror I'm a lot happier with Kult.

Slot 11: Cosmic Dark

While I played one of Graham Walmsley's early test games of Cosmic Dark, this was the first time I was getting to play the completed game. The original scenario Stracsy's Adrenaline Station saw my medical officer Dr Mara Black join her old friends from the planet Revelation on a misson to a theme park where all we knew was that there had been an 'incident'.

I'm glad to say all four team members had a horrible time, although I think the guy from Legal probably had it the worst as he gradually realised just how non-compliant this park had become.

I was planning to run Cosmic Dark myself after getting home, but post-con illness got in the way. Nevertheless this game has made me even more keen to run it when I do get the chance. I also drew my own fan art of Stracsy.

Sunday

Slot 13: Matrons of Mystery

This time I was back as a player to investigate the mystery of the Six Sherlocks. Patience and her friends at the Thursday Murder Club (who meet on Wednesdays) in Walberswick had to investigate a murder at the Abbey Grange when Mr Rathbone was found dead in his room. Suspects included Mr Downey, Mr Brett and Mr Cumberbumberband, but we eventually settled on a convoluted solution involving blackmail, fraud and cover-ups, ending with a final confrontation at the not-actually-Reichenbach Falls.

This had a bunch of fun easter eggs for a Sherlock Holmes nerd like me, starting with the title itself. Brilliantly done.

And then I headed for the carvery, and after that all I was up for was a nice long sit down.

Reflections

Really the only problem with ConTingency is that it's just not possible to catch up with everyone you want to see. Maybe next year I need to try to arrange things a little better so I'm not dependent on random encounters (I had a lovely chat on Friday at the fish and chip shop). This time I didn't even make it to All Rolled Up (although I'm guaranteed to see them at plenty of other cons this year). But I did get my volunteer t-shirt in exchange for some reward tickets!