Dice in a Dead City 2026

Dice in a Dead City is part of the Darn Sarf collection of gaming days, which take place throughout the year in London. I'd never been to one before, but with this one falling on a convenient date and with nothing else on my calendar for November, I thought I'd give it a go.

We were supposed to be playing in a Brewdog pub in Tower Hill, but with Brewdog closing or selling a lot of their pubs, we suddenly found ourselves without a venue only a month before the event. Thanks to a heroic event from the organiser though, we were able to relocate to Penderel's Oak, a Wetherspoons in Holborn.

This was an interesting experience. I used to regularly go to Wetherspoons pubs in the past owing to them being both good value for money, and non-smoking well before that became universal across British pubs, but thanks to the founder's dickery over both Brexit and COVID, I've been avoiding them for several years. So it was really quite annoying to find that the place was excellent value despite being in central London. Breakfast, lunch and drinks set me back under £14.

I arrived 40 minutes before we were due to start, thanks to availability of trains, but several people were already there, and despite not having met them before I could take a reasonable guess at who the gamers were. Fortunately they also recognised me, and I settled in for breakfast.

We were supposed to be playing in the cellar bar, but that didn't open until 12:30, while the games were due to start at 11:30. So we squeezed ourselves into the booths and got going.

Game 1: Darkness of the Demimonde

I decided to offer a game, and picked Darkness of the Demimonde. Partly because all my scenarios are set in London, which seemed appropriate, and partly because it's an A5 book with A5 character sheets, which would all fit neatly in my handbag. I normally drive to conventions, but for London the train was a far more sensible option, and I wanted to travel as light as possible for getting through the underground.

The players picked out their characters from the usual set of pregens and off they set to unravel the twin mysteries of Mrs Winfield's missing dog and Mr Cooper's sick family. Having the highly scientifically minded Makoud Benziri and Dr Harold Cushing in the party gave it a slightly different flavour to the previous run, which always makes things more fun for me.

At 12:30 we relocated to the cellar bar and found a slightly less cramped table that accommodated six of us in reasonable comfort, although I remained thankful for the A5 character sheets. A D&D event was also taking place in the cellar bar, and since we had the area nearest the door, there were a few minutes spent redirecting lost people who had correctly identified us as gamers - just not the right gamers.

The game continued, with Makoud making creative use of a summoned chicken, Hank Webb doing an excellent accent in addition to some valuable animal handling, Ezekiel doing some good looming and door opening, Harold actually getting out of bed in time to show off his psychic powers, and Mirike getting everyone home safely. 

Which all reminds me that I need to get on and write my fifth scenario so I can publish my collection.

Game 2: Cthulhu By Gaslight

After lunch we reconvened, on the same table since three of us were in the same game. Things were getting louder, and we had to do a bit of seating rearrangement to ensure everyone could hear everyone else, before we dived in.

We were playing The Horse of the Invisible, a scenario almost as old as me from an old edition of White Dwarf. It's based on the short story of the same name by William Hope Hodgson, and given that this was the 2024 Christmas Reading for the Good Friends of Jackson Elias podcast, I was pretty familiar with it. Part 1, Part 2.

One player took on the role of Carnacki the Ghost Finder from the original story, while I played Elizabeth Anderson, an occultist, and the other two were a French occultist and a French photographer, who immediately started arguing over whether chocolate filled pastries were called pain au chocolat or chocolatines.

The scenario follows the events of the original scenario fairly closely, with a few changes related to there being four protagonists instead of one, as well as it now being a Call of Cthulhu scenario meaning that we ended up doing a few extra magical things on top of Carnacki's original investigation.

One interesting feature is that we were playing in 4th edition. While I've previously played 5th, 6th and 7th, 4th was a new experience. There's a lot of chatter on the various discords at the moment over the new Keeper's Companion, which provides some optional rules, including trimming down social skills so that rather than Charm, Fast Talk, Intimidate and Persuade, it now just has Persuade, plus Reassure brought in from some of the other Cthulhu version. Meanwhile, the social skills on the 4th edition Gaslight sheet were Bargain, Debate, Fast Talk and Oratory. It seems periodically rejigging the skill list is pretty normal, although I'm really not sure how often Pilot Balloon is likely to come up.

Anyway, Carnacki and friends were able to successfully save Miss Hisgins and emerged with sanity largely intact.

And that was it. I had planned to have dinner in the pub, but when it came to it I wasn't particularly hungry, and decided to head home instead.

Reflections

This was one of the more expensive conventions for me to get to, given that I had to pay for station parking, the train and the tube, and I would have hesitated more if I hadn't already bought a railcard this year. It was also quite a long journey - over 2 hours door to door, although obviously spending an hour of that sitting in the train was a lot more relaxing than driving. But on the plus side, no accommodation needed, and this venue at least was very low cost.

So while I won't be showing up every two months, which appears to be the regular schedule for Darn Sarf, if an event falls on a convenient weekend I'll certainly consider going again. It's well organised and a nice group of people, with a few familiar faces and a lot more who I hope will eventually become familiar. If London is a convenient location for you, I'd definitely recommend this event.