While in previous years I've commuted in to The Owlbear and Wizard's Staff, thanks to Leamington Spa only being an hour away, in 2025 I decided to treat myself to a hotel room and join in for the Friday night as well. And I had a great time, so decided to do the same in 2026, particularly since this time I was bringing my husband, a.k.a. Mr Sue.
This time there were extra gaming slots on offer, starting on Friday afternoon. With a limited number of tables available, I initially didn't have a game - but then a GM had to drop out, and since I'd volunteered as a reserve GM...
Game 1: CY_BORG
The cancelled game was Ronin, so when deciding what to run in its place, I thought I'd better pick a Borg system, and I happened to have a few one-page CY_BORG adventures I hadn't run yet meaning that my husband could play too. I went with Johnny Bubonic, and fired up Punkmaker to print out a bunch of pre-gens.
The room was crowded and loud, and this was a more challenging game running environment than I'm used to. Fortunately CY_BORG is not a complicated system and JKW's one page heists are pretty simple to run. The team made it into Club Mint, picked up on the hints I was dropping, and successfully abducted the lead singer without anyone getting killed - although if I hadn't given some of the pre-gens a small hit point bonus, that might not have been the case.
It was also nice to run CY_BORG for, for want of a better word, normal people. I've previously only run it for my home group, who as I've mentioned before, can be a bit wacky. And for this specific game, this meant actually having to deploy our group's equivalent of the X-card: a firm no. But my Owlbear group were a lovely bunch, and despite the noise, I had a great time.
With a limited amount of time between games for those of us gaming in both Friday slots, food looked likely to be a challenge, but Matthew solved that by deploying an additional round of this convention's secret weapon: samosas.
Game 2: Lovecraftesque
I backed the Kickstarter for Lovecraftesque, but haven't managed to actually get it to the table yet. So I was excited to get the chance to try it out. We picked out a scenario about an old house being turned into a hotel, and soon Emma was setting out to investigate the strange goings on.
I enjoyed the structure of the rotating protagonist and GM roles. It's a bit of a challenge to get your head round at first, but we all picked it up after a couple of scenes. The only thing that didn't quite work for me is the 'jumping to conclusions' part resulting in us to some extent trying to push the story in different directions, so that's something I'll probably de-emphasise when I finally get it to the table.
With Matthew not at the venue in the evening, I was assigned to be co-responsible person, charged with turning off the lights and letting the staff know we were going. But we finished quite a bit early, so I passed my responsibilities onto another group (who then passed it on to yet another group when they finished) and went back to the hotel.
Game 3: Call of Cthulhu
I've seen the scenario Deadfellas recommended a few times, so signed up immediately. This scenario takes place mostly in a car, so the GM took advantage of the venue's somewhat flexible layout and used two chairs and the bench seating to construct our car. Off we drove to dispose of the body of a dead drug supplier, which did not go at all as planned.
This scenario is just as good as I'd been told, super atmospheric and full of drama as our various secrets started to emerge. The GM did plan to supply us with some toy guns, but with the venue not keen on the idea, that didn't happen. I did offer my collection of phasers instead, but I don't think it would have given quite the right tone.
We finished fairly early, this not being a very long scenario, so it was time for more samosas. Lovely.
Game 4: Call of Cthulhu
I was back GMing for the afternoon with another outing for Kane's Tone. My group very efficiently got to grips with what had happened, figured out who they were, and set out to save the world.
Since I was in a large room with multiple other games rather than the small room I had at ChaosiumCon, I decided not to do the sound effects this time, and instead bought a nightlight with multiple colour settings and a remote control. Of course the players were so focussed that the first time I activated the light it took them a while to notice, but overall I think it went well. And I was amused to later read the author's blog post about writing it which included a mention of having recently acquired a similar light.
And that was it for Saturday's games, so off we went to the pub for a meal.
Game 5: Star Wars
I love FFG Star Wars, and was very happy that my husband got into this one too. We were playing a starter adventure, so slightly simplified rules and characters, which is definitely the right choice for a game when some players have never encountered the Star Wars funky dice before. I picked up Oskara, a Twi'lek bounty hunter who I'd actually played once before in a one-shot with the home group. Off we went to steal a ship before the Hutt caught up with us. Technically we did not actually steal the ship in the end, although by the end we did inherit it after the owner was dismembered by Wookies.
Still my favourite Star Wars game system, so long as nobody tries to make me play a Jedi.
Game 6: Darkness of the Demimonde
And now it was time for the final 'taster' slot with games running up to two hours. After a particularly efficient outing at North Star, I felt confident I could bring my own scenario, Crisis at Crystal Palace, in within the required time. Then I ran it for my regular DotD group, who managed to take two sessions...
I offered the usual set of pre-gens and the group selected Mirike Visser the Dutch werewolf, Hank Webb the American explorer, Archibald Baird the Scottish detective, and Ezekiel, who is just Ezekiel. Off they went to investigate a missing dog and a case of food poisoning, which unsurprisingly turned out to have related causes. And I did bring it in at just under 2 hours, largely by omitting the extensive conversation with Arthur Conan Doyle that the regular group had.
And that was it. Time to put the tables away and put the Owlbear to bed for another year. A lovely convention that I always look forward to.