I had a good time at Continuum last year, so decided to book the entire weekend this time. No costume parties this time, just games. I booked a half day off work. My plan was to finish work at 12:30pm and get in the shower before driving over, which should give me enough time to sign up for an afternoon game and eat lunch before things started at 2pm. And my husband was free for the weekend so I was going to bring him along with me.
At 12:20pm my husband called out that he was having a quick shower. That was fine; he'd be out in about 10 minutes and I could still have my shower. Then there came a housewide thump as the electricity tripped.
By the time I'd managed to shut down my work laptop (still running off its battery, unlike the monitors and other peripherals), washed those parts I considered essential for going amongst other humans in cold water and filled my hair with dry shampoo, it was rather later than I planned. I left my husband at home to call the electrician and made it to Cranfield just in time to buy a sandwich and sign up for a game.
Game 1: Dragonbane
With only a short time to peruse the available games, I spotted a game of Dragonbane with space for one more and went for it. This turned out to be The Magistrate’s Gambit, the Free RPG Day scenario from Free League, a 2 hour tournament game with a timer. I enjoyed the last one of these I played, The Sinking Tower, but this one I liked even more, with more puzzles (and fairer puzzles) and less combat focus.
Technically we did complete all our objectives except the one about being discrete. The person who we were supposed to be keeping our activities hidden from was, shall we say, extremely aware of our presence by the end. I'm not sure how many points that would be worth - but at least we did finish on time.
With the game finishing early I had plenty of time to buy a meal ticket for that night's barbecue. The sausages weren't quite as good as the ones at ChaosiumCon but still a decent meal. I made some new friends over dinner, but unfortunately since they were standard convention gamers, I absolutely could not recognise them again.
Game 2: Call of Cthulhu
There's Call of Cthulhu...and then there's Call of Cthulhu with CJ Romer. Moonwashed College Halls is a scenario I've been looking forward to getting to play in, as it features students in the 1980s, and his last 1980s students scenario, Shared House, was an absolute hoot.
I played Laura, a pretty student whose four male best friends all had a crush on her, so while we did investigate the mystery of the haunted dorm room (and rather unexpectedly dealt with everything rather effectively) the most important thing was of course, who managed to pull at the Halloween disco.
This was one player's first ever game of Call of Cthulhu. Was this a typical experience? Well, it was a typical CJ experience!
I decided to skip Saturday morning games. The previous night's game had gone on fairly late, and I decided I'd rather have the sleep. So I woke up at 10am, dry shampooed my hair again, left my husband at home to deal with the boiler engineer (for it was the boiler which had tripped the electrics) and headed back to Cranfield.
Game 3: Matrons of Mystery
It was tough deciding what to pitch, particularly since I don't know this con well enough yet to really know what goes down well, but since Simon Burley periodically reminds me I'm supposed to promote my own stuff, I decided to run Matrons of Mystery, specifically my holiday park themed scenario Chalet Grave, originally written to run at ConTingency.
This scenario requires determining why the Matrons are all at a holiday park together. On this occasion, after Gladys, Violet, Doris and Nettie had introduced themselves, it was clear what had happened. Their various children and other relatives had teamed up to send Mum/Aunty away to the seaside for a few days in the hope that getting them out of their village would stop them getting mixed up in murders. Which of course it did not.
Game 4: Call of Cthulhu
There were quite a few appealing games on Saturday night, but on arriving at the sign-up board I decided on There is no ‘I’ in Cthulhu, a modern day scenario about a group of people going on a management retreat. It turned out to be GMed by one of the people I met at the Friday barbecue, so as long as he's wearing a name badge the next time I see him, there's a chance I might remember him.
I picked up the extremely stressed Mara Kline, there to learn about work/life balance after multiple attempts to get out of going. While initially sceptical, she started warming to at least some of her fellow delegates as the retreat went on - and sure, she might have been dead at the end (we ended on a cliffhanger) - but overall I think it was a positive experience for her.
The highlight of this was absolutely the other players for completely leaning in on the corporate horror of training and team building events. Great stuff.
The next morning dawned. More dry shampoo. By this time my hair was probably more powder than hair. My husband stayed at home in case the boiler engineer was able to get the necessary part that day. Once again I was skipping morning games but this time I had other plans.
Seminar: War Helms and Weapon Dancers
I'm something of an archaeology enthusiast (part of my first degree is archaeology) so I was excited to see a seminar on the imagery of the Sutton Hoo helmet. This was fascinating stuff, educational and funny, and accompanied by some of the coolest props I've ever seen at a convention: museum grade replicas of the Sutton Hoo helmet and a variety of other artefacts.
During my degree I gave a seminar on Saxon garnet jewellery for the archaeomaterials course, and some of these replicas were of the artefacts I discussed in that seminar. I can only imagine the amount of work that went into reproducing these works of art.
Game 5: Call of Cthulhu
Once again there were quite a few options for the afternoon games, but spotting two of my friends signed up for a game of classic era Cthulhu I decided to give that one a go. We were the members of the Miskatonic University Astronomy Society, off on a field trip to a remote area with the opportunity to use a proper reflecting telescope in an observatory. Naturally it turned out that our host had observed a bit more than anticipated. A classic scenario in both era and ending, since by the end we had all either gone mad or exploded.
Game 6: Call of Cthulhu: Campfire Tales
I wasn't sure if I was going to stick around for the final session. If the boiler had been fixed by then, I might not have. But it hadn't, and there was another CJ Romer game with space: Jennings and the Ghost.
It's been a while since I'd read a Jennings book (I think I might have borrowed one from my dad) but I figured I knew the British boarding school story genre overall well enough to get by without the specifics. Jennings and Darbishire themselves were played by two players who actually did remember them well, while I picked up Venables. Along with Atkinson, Temple and Bromwich Major, we investigated strange noises, attempted murders and ghastly visions in the playing fields, although naturally the most horrific part was when we had to talk to a girl. Credit must go to Atkinson for his decision to create an overpowered cattle prod for self defence purposes, which came in remarkably useful in the denouement.
All in all, everything I could have hoped for and a fantastic conclusion to the convention.
So once again I had a good time, and will book again next year, and possibly run more than one game as well - but obviously if you've got this far, what you really want to know is that the boiler got fixed on Monday and I finally got to wash my hair.
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