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 Unnecessary crunch, outdated language, tables that don't need to exist, dice rolls that should have been flat numbers...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. 

ConDensed 2024

I don't know if it was luck, or just getting the vaccine done early enough, but by the time this year's ConDensed rolled around, I still hadn't had covid. What I also didn't have was my husband, who had to drop out for childcare reasons.

This was a much smaller ConDensed than the previous year, with quite a lot of people who I'd normally expect to see unable to attend. This meant a much smaller choice of games, but not so small that I couldn't find something interesting in each slot.

Game 1: Rivers of London

I wanted to play all the games on offer for Friday, but when some space opened up in Rivers of London, I jumped in. The scenario was The Font of All Evil by Paul Baldowski. Last time I played Rivers of London I played Morgan Omans, non-binary police wizard, and with the same characters on offer for this game, I decided to play them again. We were investigating the death of Edgar Marsh, also a they, which was quite emotional for Morgan (explaining why they failed every roll at the morgue.)

Rivers of London is by far my favourite version of the BRP system, with a much shorter skill list to deal with than Call of Cthulhu, and it's a fun setting to play in. Paul did a great job with this scenario, pulling in some fun details about London and its history. (We also enjoyed the notes to Americans in the book, where the more UK specific terms are explained, which the GM shared for our entertainment.) While Liminal remains my go-to system for urban fantasy in general, I'll still sign up for this, given the chance.

Game 2: SLA Industries

I've been interested in SLA for a while, but never actually got the chance to play before. Turns out the setting is everything I hoped it would be - a dystopian alien-filled televised fever dream.

We picked characters, and I went for Hassen the Wraithen scout. A purple vaguely feline alien with a big sniper rifle and a fondness for food that's still moving. Once she'd been joined by a frother, stormer and ebonite, we were ready for violence! And immediately got sent on a PR job to promote some consumer-grade weaponry. Despite having absolutely no social skills, as the only person with a charisma above average, Hassen was elected group leader.

Nevertheless, Hassen threw herself into things with gusto, doing combat demonstrations with the crappy guns, where her skill helped balance out the inferior weapons. This didn't prevent her feeling very relieved when an actual combat job came along.

Despite SLA Industries 2nd edition being kickstarted in 2019, it has an initiative system that feels like it comes from the late 90s/early 2000s when initiative systems got a bit weird. This particular one has you act in order of initiative, but first everyone has to declare intentions in reverse order. I get the point - fast characters can react to what the slower ones are doing - and it's certainly not the worst example of the concept I've come across. All the same, it feels like a lot of bookkeeping. The dice rolls are fine, and gave me a rare opportunity to use my collection of d10s, but I do wonder if the initiative system would survive contact with my home group.

That said, it's a great setting, and I would definitely play it again.

Game 3: Kult: Divinity Lost

With the game slots at ConDensed being a lot longer than usual (6 hours with a break for meals) and with a specific request from a fellow attendee for a Kult game, I broke out Gated. Normally a two session game, I was confident I could fit it in this slot, particularly since I wasn't likely to get the full 4 player group I normally run this for. I got 3 in the end, which I've done before so I knew which character to miss out and what changes to make to allow for their absence.

And so another group arrived in Rutherford Heights to discover the many and varied horrors in store. To avoid spoilers I'll just say that they managed to conclude things with creative use of lawn flamingos.

Game 4: Shadowdark

Another game I'd heard of but not had the chance to play before. Shadowdark is a classic dungeon crawling game that's very reminiscent of the old D&D box set I have on my shelf while also incorporating a lot of modern game development knowledge into something that runs very smoothly. The gimmick is that no PCs have darkvision while all monsters do, making torches and lanterns extremely important, leading to inevitable comparisons with the video game Darkest Dungeon.

The GM put a bunch of pregens on the table. I glanced over them and remembered my standard approach: when in doubt, play a ranger. So I picked up Kixime the human ranger, and we prepared for our journey to the dungeon. Except the halfling witch managed to start a bar fight, which delayed things slightly, and there was a further hold-up in the woods on the way, but we did get there eventually and with some information as to what we might find there, including some spiders with highly flammable webs.

Shadowdark. "The bad news is that the ranger's on fire. The good news is it illuminates more of the area." I'm playing the ranger.

— Savage Spiel (@savagespiel.bsky.social) November 17, 2024 at 1:58 PM

We did roll rather a lot of 1s.

I think it's a good system and I can see why it's popular, but unfortunately it did nothing for me. The game is a reaction to D&D, but what it's reacting to isn't the part of D&D I have a problem with. The game was fun, but it was fun because I was with a good GM and a really fun group of players. My pick for dungeon crawling adventures like this remains Dragonbane.

And that was that, except for a three hour journey home, which became a five hour journey thanks to a road closure on the M25. Fortunately I had a good audiobook to keep me company. It's further than I'd normally go for a weekend convention, and I was sorry not to see a lot of the people who were there last year, but I'm glad I went. I got to try out new games, play with people I don't always get to play with because their games fill up so fast, and run one of my longer games that doesn't normally see convention play. I hope next year it'll be back to full strength.

ConDensed 2023

Once again covid has played havoc with my convention schedule, but having caught it a couple of weeks earlier this year, and with ConDensed being a week later, I was in a much better state for this year's convention. Lucky, since this time it was not a convenient drive from my house, but nearly three hours away. Fortunately, this time I had my husband with me.

This wasn't the original plan for ConDensed 2023. I'd hoped we'd be back at Billing Aquadrome. But there were already issues with the venue, and with the additional uncertainly of the place going into administration (not actually that unusual for the Aquadrome), I can see why we moved. The first attempt was another holiday park on the south coast, but not enough people booked to make it work. And so we moved to the Sea Cadets in Worthing, where we definitely did have enough people to make it work.

We arrived at the venue just in time for the opening brief, and then I introduced my husband to some friends, and then established nicknames due to all of them having the same first name. For the duration of the convention, my husband would be known as Mr Sue, a name he wears with pride.

Game 1: Eat the Reich

I'd seen the Kickstarter for Eat the Reich, and liked the aesthetic, but wasn't sure it was something I wanted to devote shelf space to. I was definitely up for giving it a try though, and soon five very different vampires crashed through the ceiling of a Parisian hotel and began our rampage across Paris in search of Hitler.

I liked the system. D6 dice pools, where 4-5 are success and 6 is critical success. The GM is also rolling, and you can use successes to counter the opponent's success. But you can also elect to take the hit and use your successes on something else, be that advancing your objectives, activating special abilities or drinking Nazi blood to increase your blood pool. Blood can be used to power other special abilities. There's an element of resource management involved, both with blood and with equipment. The latter gives you bonus dice on rolls, with the amount depending on circumstances, but have limited uses that have to be marked off. Fortunately there's no chance of running out of guns - at least there isn't if you're consistently killing Nazis.

And ultimately that's what the game's about. Killing Nazis until you've killed enough Nazis to get to Hitler, and then kill Hitler. Along the way we took on powerful opponents with scary technology and even worse magic. We visited iconic locations in 1940s Paris. We made creative use of our various vampire abilities. And we killed Hitler.

Everything that makes me not want to play vampires isn't here. The game has a clear aim and mechanics that support it. There's no angst, no politics, just a team of Nazi hunters doing their job and having some fun with it.

I don't know how well this would work for campaign play. It definitely feels like a game built for one-shots. But it's one hell of a one-shot.

Game 2: Cyberpunk Red

This was with the same GM as for Eat the Reich, and also the same GM as the Cyberpunk Red games I'd played at ConDucked. I picked up Selene the netrunner again and off we went to the Afterlife. Soon we were embroiled in another thrilling adventure featuring dubious corporate practices, gun fights and car chases. Once again, not having a medtech resulted in some interesting moments, although we did manage not to explode anyone.

Once again I am left thinking that I really need to run some more cyberpunk myself.

Game 3: Kult: Divinity Lost

Game slots at this ConDensed were rather different to what I'm used to. Instead of three 3-4 hours slots each day, there were two 6 hour slots (although effectively shorter as they overlapped meals, so there were long breaks while we all went out to the local takeaways.)

I took this as a good opportunity to run one of my longer Kult scenarios, The Farm. This typically takes me two sessions to run online, so I don't bring it out for conventions, but it's got some flexibility timewise and I reckoned I could fit it in.

Fortunately I had three players who all seemed to know what they were doing with Kult, as this scenario does require character creation at the start of the game. I gave them the brief - homeless people in modern day London - and they gave me a Criminal with a drug addiction and a shady past, a Doll who people just wouldn't leave alone, and a Broken dealing with mental health issues. A great bunch, and another new ending for this scenario.

Game 4: WEG Star Wars

I wasn't sure what I wanted to play on Sunday, given that the Rivers of London game had already filled up, but I had a look at the sheets when we arrived and figured I couldn't go too far wrong with Star Wars. I'd not played the West End Games version, beyond a single session back in 2003 or so about which I remember almost nothing, but it turned out to be simple enough to pick up.

We were humans, sent to support Boba Fett in an 'enemy of my enemy' kind of way, but got a bit sidetracked rescuing the survivors of a Tuskan raider attack and making friends with an astromech droid. This meant that by the time we made it to the final confrontation, most of the actual murdering was already done, but I did get to drive a scout walker for a bit, which was just as good.

I remain unchallenged in my opinion that Star Wars games are better when nobody's playing a Jedi.

Reflections

It was a small convention, but that suits me fine. Two slots a day instead of three made everything feel very relaxed, and also gave the option of some slightly longer games than usual. The venue was good - multiple rooms so we could spread out well. All in all, a very nice weekend, and I'd do it again.

ConDensed 2022

I had a packed convention schedule planned for autumn 2022.  The Owlbear and Wizard's Staff in September, then a three-weekend run in October starting with Furnace...

Two days after Furnace I tested positive for covid.

I had to cancel my attendance at the following two events, and significantly scale back my participation in the online A Weekend With Good Friends.  By the time ConDensed rolled around again though, I was...well, still fairly ill, but well enough to run the two games I'd pitched and do a bit of setting up stuff, even if I was significantly less useful than I was last year.  If the venue wasn't conveniently less than ten minutes' drive from my house I'd probably have cancelled, but being able to go home and have a rest whenever I felt like it made everything easier.

Game 1: Abyss

If there's one thing I can be sure of at a convention it's that a game with James Mullen is worth a look.  In this case it was a game of supernatural action horror in which we would be a team of unique individuals with diverse powers fighting to protect the world from the supernatural.  Which sounded right up my street.

I picked up Paige Turner, a monster hunting librarian, who was joined by an immortal, an amazon, and an ogre.  We were dispatched to investigate a series of disappearances in a library, which turned out to have a lot more occult wossnames going on than it initially appeared.  We eventually located the culprit and defeated it, taking a brief detour via a dimension of things which didn't exist, but got home by realising that a portal back to our own world was firmly in the category of things that didn't exist so we just had to find it and step through.

It was an absolute blast, and definitely something I'd play again.  The book looked great too, with very distinctive red and black artwork.  One to look out for in future.

Game 2: Dungeon Crawl Classics

I hadn't signed up for anything on Saturday morning, but I figured I had time for a good long rest between then and the evening so I showed up to see what was on offer.  DCC at conventions tends to be funnels, which I've tried and don't particularly like, but this time someone was running a levelled game and that I was definitely up for.

I was the last to arrive at the table, being a last minute addition, and nobody had picked a thief character yet so I took that one.  As usual the challenge of thinking of a name presented itself, and the GM didn't think my choice of Alice was particularly fantasy themed - but if you're going to give me a character with an occupation of 'Cooper'...

So the four of us set off to participate in the biannual kobold cull, by whatever method we chose.  Alice initially demonstrated absolute incompetance, but fortunately Harold the cleric was rather more effective and we all survived the first encounter.  Things picked up after that though, and by the time we got to the kobold caves Alice actually managed to be useful.  Then a small child, who the entire party was already convinced was some kind of ancient wizard in disguise, disrupted our attempt at diplomacy with a magic missile.  At which point Alice pushed her off a cliff.  The magic ring and book of incantations we looted from her corpse in no way conflicted with our disguised wizard theory.

I'd like to see more levelled DCC at conventions.  It's a great game and there's so much more to it than funnels.

Game 3: Kult

After an afternoon spent resting, I was ready to run A Walk In The Park, my newest Kult scenario.  With so much depending on inter-character relationships, I was worried about numbers, but I had the four players that I wanted and I was ready to provide a suitably horrible time.

I'd prepared some handouts for this adventure.  The premise is that the characters are on a challenge hike, and have to find geocaches along the way with logbooks to record their arrival time and other items.  Being able to hand the prepared sandwich boxes to the players each time they reached a set point added an extra dimension which I thoroughly enjoyed and it looked like the players were having fun with them as well.

There's always an element of unpredictability in this scenario, largely because each character's backstory has a question for the player to answer themselves.  Sometimes those are just details for the player to know, but frequently they get worked into the scenario in new and exciting ways.  It's things like that that make Kult such a joy to run.

Game 4: Liminal

There was no way I could attend a convention at Billing Aquadrome and not run Sins of the Father, my Liminal scenario that begins with a body being found in the river at Billing Aquadrome.

I had the most efficient team of characters ever this time, bringing the adventure in at half an hour quicker than the previous offline group.  Part of that was the player who picked up the face character really knowing how to face.  That gave me an extra challenge in the form of spotlight management.  Not my best skill as a GM, as I tend more towards a 'throw the PCs into the scenario and let them sort it out' kind of approach, so I was having to put a lot of effort into making sure everyone got involved.  I don't think I entirely succeeded, and can certainly see things I could have done better.  At the same time, I did do a better job of it than I have on previous occasions, and under more difficult circumstances too.  There's room for improvement but I am improving.

Post-game

And that was that.  Finishing early wasn't entirely a bad thing, as for some reason the venue had decided we all had to be out by 6pm, despite the fact that there was still one more game slot in the evening and many people were staying on site until Monday.  Fortunately the nearby pub/carvery had been so impressed by the behaviour of those of us who'd had breakfast there that they offered us space to play the final game slot.

After eating a carvery meal though, I decided the best thing for me was to go home and rest some more.

Reflections

Venue issues aside, it was great.  I got to see old friends, meet new people, and generally have a fantastic time, despite my current health issues.  And anything that's been done twice is now a tradition, so that means we have to keep doing it every year.  Right?

ConDensed 2021

I wasn't really sure until a few days before that ConDensed was actually going to happen.  Turns out I'm not the only one.  This event was originally planned for November 2020 and booked well in advance, and the venue, Billing Aquadrome, has changed hands since then.  At least four times.  Most recently, six weeks ago.  It's only thanks to one of the organisers doing a site visit between then and the event that we actually had the use of the indoor venue and didn't have to share with a children's disco.

But by the time I arrived on Friday morning, we had a venue, and if the staff were a little surprised to see us, at least they were there to sell us coffee.  Since my house is about 10 minutes from site, I decided to volunteer to help with the set up, and soon found myself setting up the board game library and sanitising the gaming tables.  Then I spent some time on the reception desk checking people in and selling them game tickets, which was also a useful way of hearing a lot of people's names.  Some of which I even remembered.

The problem with RPG conventions, of course, particularly for someone with mild face blindness, is that there's an awful lot of middle aged balding white men with beards and glasses and it's really hard for me to tell them all apart.

Game 1 - Matrons of Mystery

I decided to kick things off with a game of Matrons of Mystery.  Four people signed up to be old ladies solving murders, and soon the death of a bellringer was escalating into utter chaos, ultimately resulting in the crime being pinned on one of two co-conspirators while the other got away due to the machinations of one of the Matrons.  Certainly an ending I didn't expect.

This was the first opportunity I'd had to run the game in person, without the aid of a virtual whiteboard.  I used wipe-clean cards from All Rolled Up and dry wipe pens in a variety of colours to display suspects, clues and secrets, and while it does mean you need a reasonable amount of table space, it works well.  The different colour pens really helped, making it easy to quickly count up how many of each type of thing were on the table.

Game 2 - Matrons of Mystery

I have a scenario that's set early in the morning at a roleplay convention, so of course I had to run it in the 9am slot on Saturday.  I had four players signed up again, but one person wasn't well so we played with three.  Since he'd been a player in the previous night's game, at least I knew he wasn't missing out completely.

Mystery solving went rather quicker this time, and I suspect the number of players is a factor here.  Three player games do seem to wrap up faster than four player games, possibly due to needing less time to give everyone the spotlight, and possibly because there are fewer people coming up with solutions at the end.  None of which is bad, of course, but it is interesting to note.

It seems like people had a lot of fun with the two sessions, so hopefully there'll be some interest once I get it onto DriveThruRPG.

Game 3 - Black Code

I had originally planned to play Casting the Runes with CJ Romer on Saturday afternoon, but since nobody else had signed up and there was no sign of CJ either, I jumped into a game of Black Code since there was still a space.  Probably a good thing I did, since one of the signed up players seemed to be missing too.

Black Code is a game I'd been wanting to try out for quite a long time.  A cyberpunk game that's focused more on the transhumanism side of cyberpunk than the hacking side.  I was dubious of the system, which seemed complicated from what I'd read, but in practice turned out to be very easy to get my head around.  The archetypes were appropriate to the genre and the setting was imaginative, with some variations on the standard cyberpunk city that I wasn't expecting.

All in all I was thoroughly impressed, and will most likely pick this up at the next convention I go to.  The biggest trap most cyberpunk games fall into is taking too much influence from Cyberpunk 2020 and Shadowrun, and this one's pitched it just right.  Whether I can persuade my home group to play it, I don't know, but it's worth a try.

Game 4 - Call of Cthulhu

When I saw there was a space left in Matt Sanderson's game, The Blue, on Saturday night, I jumped in.  People have been talking about how great it is online, and I've played with Matt enough times to be sure of a good time.  Even if this was the first time in person.

The venue was pretty full on Saturday night, and with a group of six players plus GM, we were spread out enough that it was difficult to hear each other.  So we decamped to the static caravan that two of the group were staying in, and played there.  I'd never been in one of the static caravans before, so didn't really know what to expect, but there was a roomy lounge with plenty of space for the seven of us to sit comfortably.  Cups of tea and coffee were provided, and the game resumed.

We were a team of divers, surveying a newly appeared blue hole to find out if it was suitable to be marketed as a tourist attraction.  It won't be a surprise to any Call of Cthulhu fans that the answer was an emphatic no, but I certainly wasn't expecting the reason why.  As always, a great game, and worth staying up significantly past the official end time for.

Game 5 - Starfinder

After the late night on Saturday, and given that there was nothing on Sunday morning that I felt desperate to join, I decided to have a bit of extra sleep and arrived just in time to observe the silence for Remembrance Sunday.  It took me a long time to decide on a game for the afternoon, but I finally settled on Starfinder.

I don't have much of an interest in organised play, so ignored most of the Pathfinder Society and D&D Adventurer's League games on offer, but this particular game not only offered pre-gens, but also had one of my favourite PC party concepts: a band.

The other two players had already sat down at the table, knowing where they were going, and had picked the lead singer and drummer for their characters.  I had a choice between an Ysoki technomancer keyboard player and a human engineer bass player.  I took the engineer, because it's that long since I last played Starfinder that I have no memory of how magic works, but figured I could probably manage the engineer.

We were on our way to a concert, where we were going to perform and finally make it big, when our ship broke down and we had to land at the space motorway services and figure out a new way to get to the show.  With a guiding principle of 'what is the most metal thing we can do here?' we somehow made our way to the stage and into fame and fortune.

While there was another game slot in the evening, I had my own online campaign to run on Sunday night, so headed home to get ready.

Reflections

This is a convention I really wanted to succeed.  While this was the first event, it was run by the same team as ConTingency, so they've had a lot of practice in this kind of thing.  Numbers were apparantly around 150, which is excellent for a first event, especially given that we're still in a global pandemic and a lot of people still aren't doing face to face conventions.  The last I heard before I left was that we'd raised £1000 for charity as well.

Diversity looked pretty good, at least by the standards of RPG conventions.  With the convention organisers all being women, I could be confident that I wouldn't be the only one there, which is always reassuring.  Despite the usual dominance of middle aged balding white men with beards and glasses, three of my five games had other women in, and in Matt's game we actually outnumbered the men.  There's still a long way to go but things are getting better.

Despite some issues with the other people using the site hanging around in the venue, it was pretty well suited to gaming with plentiful tables of a suitable size to sit a group around and use a battlemap where required.  Free wifi and a bar available at all times were an additional bonus.  The staff were very friendly, and I got the impression they enjoyed having us there.  While the static vans apparently weren't quite up to the standards of the park used for ConTingency, they seemed pretty nice to me.  While a little more choice of food would have been nice (I ate far too many chips) it was very convenient not having to go anywhere, and there were other options for people who didn't mind leaving the building.

Going back to a face to face convention was exhausting.  I wasn't sure I was going to make it to the Saturday night game, and I'm glad I cut down a bit on Sunday.  With ConTingency being significantly longer than ConDensed, I'm going to have to be careful to pace myself and not overdo it.

But ultimately, I had a wonderful time, got to play some amazing games, talked to old friends and new, and really hope we'll be doing it all again next year.