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.

Revelation 2025

I set off at a reasonable time on Friday afternoon. It should take about two hours to drive to Sheffield, but I know from past experience to allow at least three. So I got to the Garrison at 6pm, within minutes of my room sharer, and then headed to the bar, ready for another weekend of Revelation.

Some of the Garricon regulars have started going for meals out on the Friday nights. With dietary requirements significantly cutting down the options this time, we headed out to Church - Temple of Fun, an all vegan bar and restaurant run by the front man of the band Bring Me The Horizon. This was a little surreal. We were, after all, a group of nerds going into an extremely hip venue. But on the plus side, one of our party was someone the rest of us were meeting for the first time, and I hope it made it a lot easier for him to identify the group of nerds while we were surrounded by really cool people.

The whole place was like this

I managed to obtain a drink free of alcohol, kombucha or CBD (a bigger challenge than it sounds), admired the black cutlery, ordered a seitan and facon burger and fries followed by cheeseless cheesecake, and enjoyed the absolutely bizarre decor. It was certainly the right atmosphere for preparing to run Kult.

black cutlery

Vegan chicken and bacon burger and fries

Vegan black forest cheesecake with chocolate ice cream

Game 1: Monster of the Week

I kicked things off with Valentine's Day, a scenario I originally wrote for a campaign, updated to work as a one-shot. I kept the campaign's group concept of the characters all being retirees and acting as the neighbourhood watch group in their suburb of Milton Keynes. I stuck with the standard set of playbooks, and the players picked the Spellslinger, Expert, Initiate and Monstrous. After establishing histories, they set out to find out why Lizzie the part time barista was getting so many unwanted valentine's gifts. By the end, an appropriate amount of love was in the air, nobody died and nothing was on fire that shouldn't be. So a great success!

I modified this slightly from the original scenario, adding in some extra monsters to add theming, excitement and things for me to do on a failed roll, and I'm pretty happy with the result. I expect I'll give this a few more outings over the year.

I put all my game materials for each game into separate themed bags this time. My new Matrons of Mystery bag seemed appropriate for retirees investigating mysteries, even if it wasn't quite the same game.

Matrons tote bag

Game 2: Monster of the Week

Proving just how versatile MOTW can be, my second game saw me playing an agent of a United Nations agency devoted to tracking down dangerous uses of fringe science. I picked the Professional, and along with an ex-military Wronged, an ex-police Gumshoe and an ex-alive person Monstrous, we investigated strange goings on in a gated community in Oxfordshire.

I love how this game rewards creativity. Lily the ghost proved to be an extremely valuable team member due to her ability to get inside places without having to open doors (and then telekinetically open them when necessary). It was also tonally very different to the game I ran. Rather than my cosy group of retirees, this was action and body horror.

Game 3: Kult: Divinity Lost

I'd done one practice run of Not For A Million Dollars, confirming it would fit into a four hour slot, and resulting in a few tweaks to the characters. While there's still room for improvement, the tweaks were good choices, giving every character an opportunity to use at least one of their advantages. But I think in future this one needs a longer slot. I put it in the Saturday night slot to get the maximum amount of time, but I think six hours would be a more comfortable timeframe. Definitely one to run at a longer con like Contingency.

Based on the test run, I picked up a few props and prepared some handouts. Based on this run, I could do with a few more props and handouts, which I will have ready for the next time I run this.

Of course it's the players who make a game like this, and I had an absolutely lovely group, all embracing the messed up reality show contestant PCs, bringing both pathos and humour. The grumpy scientist, determined investigator, dramatic influencer and himbo model were all a delight, and I don't think I'm going to forget the phrase 'Luigi board' for a while.

Game 4: Escape from Dino Island

While PBTA is thought of as low prep, both my previous games involved quite a lot of prep. But all I had to do for Dino Island was print out playbooks. We ran through the standard questionnaire, skipping the first question about why they were on the island, because in the process of writing a blurb, I'd already done that: guests at a destination wedding on a dinosaur themed resort. They were expecting animatronics. What they got was the terrifying, electrically active, genetically branded, Tesladactyl.

In addition to the box of tiny dinosaurs, my kit now includes a set of dinosaur dice for when I need to roll on the random tables.

This is one game I'd love to see more people running. While I consider myself a generally competent PBTA GM, I know there are plenty of people who do this kind of low prep, high improv GMing better than I do. Plus, I really want to play it some time.

Dinosaurs!

Game 5: Threadbare

There were two more MOTW games I could have signed up for - but instead I went for Boogie Shoes, in which a group of toys had to overcome a series of obstacles in order to participate in a dance contest in a post-apocalyptic world populated entirely by toys. I played Millicent Mouse, a well constructed cuddly toy mouse manufactured by Steiff, meaning she was able to get served in high class hat shops, unlike her friend Rollup, a cuddly six-limbed alien who had been a carnival prize.

Millicent and Rollup were joined by Coco the gorilla and her barrel of monkeys, and Martha the Christmas sock. We arranged for dance lessons for Coco (to get her monkeys working in sync) and Rollup (to help him figure out which of his limbs were arms and which were legs). We got a sparkly hat and cane for Millicent, and some Christmas lights and music for Martha. And we put on a musical spectacular, the like of which had never been seen before.

This was a very different setting to the last toy based game I played. It's got great potential for creativity as the players come up with toy ideas. We didn't get to see much of the part of the game where bits of you get damaged and can be replaced with other items, largely thanks to the dice who had decided to be cooperative for once, so we didn't get much of the stitchpunk aspect. But it was Sunday afternoon, and this was an ideal time for a cute and cuddly game in which all conflicts were resolved via dance-offs.

Millicent Mouse's character sheet

Reflections

Well that was great. Exhausting - I probably shouldn't have offered three games (although I had a great time running them all) so next time I'll try to remember to not be quite as enthusiastic. Or at least, try to make sure I'm GMing something energising in slot 5 as that's the one where I start to flag. Oh, and try to make better choices at breakfast so I don't have a horrendous mid-morning sugar crash.

It's impressive how much variety there is in a convention where all the games are PBTA and adjacent systems. Even across just Monster of the Week there was a lot of variety. And it's great to see older games like MOTW and Apocalypse World itself still getting plenty of love alongside much newer arrivals.

Revelation was my first in-person Garricon, back in 2022, and it might just still be my favourite.

Revelation 2024

Normally I drive up to Garricons on a Friday afternoon and then have dinner when I get there. This time the traffic was so bad that I decided I didn't want to wait, and stopped off at a services to have dinner while I waited for the traffic to clear a bit. By some chance I'd managed to find a Burger King where there'd been some kind of catastrophic drinks failure, meaning the only drinks they had available were black coffee and Capri-Sun. One of those journeys.

I did still make it to the Garrison at a reasonable time, and was able to have a bit of a rest before heading to the bar when other people started arriving, but then it was time for bed at a sensible time ready for the games ahead.

Game 1: Matrons of Mystery

Another exciting opportunity to play my own game! I decide to take a break from Rosemary and Pierre this time and come up with a new matron. Brenda Kerr is an outdoorsy type who enjoys birdwatching. Her husband Derrick was a dentist, who left her for a younger woman. She's very proud of their two children though, Molly the footballer and Peter the doctor.

Brenda and her friends had a lovely meal in a stately home (Brenda wore her dress fleece) and a good night's sleep, but were awoken in the morning by the shocking news that the solicitor who was about to read the will in the morning had been murdered, and the famous painting, Stable Boy With Huge Stallion had been stolen! And so began a comedy of errors as the four of us annoyed everyone in sight, tampered with evidence and got covered in tea. For a while it seemed like we were never going to solve this murder! But finally we managed to uncover a few clues, with the help of Dr Peter doing a bit of extra medical examination, and finally the culprit was revealed.

But the killer had escaped! And so began an epic chase scene involving a bicycle, a moped, a horse, a Reliant Robin, and after matron Peggy had called her TV producer child, a news helicopter which we used to finally take down the killer.

An absolute delight.

Game 2: City of Mist

Despite my best efforts I've played very little City of Mist, but for once luck was on my side and I got into a game. A selection of pre-gens were on offer, including Detective Enkidu who I played the other time I played City of Mist. This time though I picked up Post-Mortem, a lab-created member of the walking dead and skilled assassin. And the three of us began looking into some strange disappearances at a hotel in the tourist district, resulting in some very creative use of a super soaker.

City of Mist is a bit of a weird system, combining regular PBTA moves with Fate tags, but it works pretty smoothly. Some of the move names I find a little unhelpful, as my interpretation of them doesn't entirely match up with what they actually do, so I have to keep reading the descriptions to remind myself. That's something that will come with practice though. So I just need to get more practice. Noir superheroes is a genre I enjoy, and I'd really like to play more of this.

Game 3: Kult

I went for my improvised Kult game, The Heist, for the evening slot, and off we went to steal an occult book from a billionaire's yacht, in what was probably the most gonzo outing this particular scenario has ever had. Although given who was playing, I'm not entirely surprised.

This one can be hard work to run, with the constant referring to the tarot cards, but it's pretty damn rewarding when it does all come together. I'm considering publishing this one. While most of my Kult scenarios involved enough work that I don't want to give them away for free (the only option as for IP reasons there's no Kult community content license), this one is a single page plus character sheets, and I think that might be worth sharing.

Game 4: Monster of the Week

Two years after my first Monster of the Week game at Revelation 2022, I brought along my own scenario, Who Ate All The Pies? and had two of the same players in the game. The team soon learned that trouble was afoot in Piesville, Louisiana, and they were going to have to sort it out fast if they were going to be able to enjoy the town fair and its annual pie eating contest to its full extent.

Thanks to transport delays we were a bit late getting started, and with character creation taking longer than usual, I was a bit worried about timing for this one. But it worked out in the end - we spent a little less time on inter-character banter and investigating the full motivations at play, but the key plot points were all played out.

Once again I've realised that the scenario I've written down isn't exactly the scenario I run, so while I'd like to publish this one (possibly along with a few other MOTW scenarios) I need to first update it to match the actually scenario.

Game 5: Trophy Dark

My second game of Trophy Dark. We set off into the forest in search of a book, in the hope that retrieving it would get our souls back from a demon. That didn't happen. What did happen was a surprise conga line of murder, one character turned into a tree, and much to my surprise, my own character actually getting out alive. I'm still not sure how that happened, although I doubt life got any better for her after that.

A good game to end the convention on. Relatively short, not too much thinking with the randomly generated characters, and no expectation of survival resulting in proper drive-it-like-you-stole-it playing. 

Reflections

As I noted during a break in the final session, the one down side with increased gender diversity at conventions is having to share the toilets. It really is nice to find myself at a table where not only am I not the only woman, but women actually outnumber men. As a hobby, we're getting there.

Revelation remains a gem of a convention. Even with all the games being PBTA or FITD (or at least adjacent) you never know what you're going to get. I had five radically different games and I enjoyed them all.

Revelation 2023

It was a bit nerve wracking going back to the Garrison, as the last time I was there, five of us caught covid. Somehow this manifested in an unusually high level of organisation, and I managed to leave early enough on Friday to beat the rush hour and was in the bar shortly after 5pm. Unfortunately, nobody else was. It wasn't until 9.30pm that a few more people arrived and the socialising began.

Normality resumed on Saturday morning though, as even with a few illness-related drop-outs we had a good crowd in the jailhouse ready to play.

Game 1: Kult

Having made these cool handouts for my scenario, A Walk In The Park, I had to run it a few times. I had three players booked, and had modified the scenario to run with three players instead of four, but with the last minute drop-outs I figured I should be ready in case there was someone in need of a game, and printed the fourth character as well. And there was indeed someone in need of a game, so things ran with the normal four players.

This game gets a bit of a tweak each time I run it, which in this case meant I'd added back in some of the characters' disadvantages. This makes a bit more work for me, but things tend to run faster offline than online, so it's doable, and I think it adds a little more depth to the characters. I still might tweak them further, but I'm really happy with how things went.

I also did a bunch of laminating this time. Laminated character sheets worked out well for this, as marking stability and conditions with dry wipe pens made it a lot easier to erase things as they changed. I might need a slightly finer pen for writing in wounds, but otherwise this is working really well and should save me a lot of printing for scenarios I run multiple times.

Game 2: Apocalypse World

I loved the TV show Blood Drive and it's a great fit for Apocalypse World, so I was pretty damn excited about this one.

I've played with the same GM before, and played a Brainer both times, but since we were going for a different setting this time, I decided it was time to branch out a bit. Inspired a little by the character of Grace in the TV show, I picked up the Battlebabe. One of the playbook moves for the Battlebabe is having such great reflexes that you're considered to have 2 armour providing you're naked or nearly naked, so I decided she was dressed in wedding lingerie with a tiara and veil. Continuing that theme, I picked two custom weapons, a massive handgun and a bladed chain, and named them the Best Man and the Maid of Honour.

Then we had to decide if any of us were teaming up in the race and sharing a car. One player, who'd picked up the Brainer, had described his character wearing a leather tuxedo, and that just felt like fate. So Sunset and Scratch in their luxurious Rolls Royce with added spikes, were racing against Mustang the Driver and Barbarossa the Gunlugger in their armoured coupe.

The race route was unveiled, and the GM asked us what was so bad about the town we were going to have to drive through. Cannibals, one of the players said, and thus we created Hungry Bowel Town, where every building looked like a pizza hut, where trenches filled with dips and dressings bordered the roads, and a moat of burning barbecue charcoal surrounded the outside edge.

As expected, we were forced to stop off in Hungry Bowel Town when our engines stopped working. Scratch and Sunset went into a basement, as Scratch was sure the problem was coming from beneath us, while Mustang and Barbarossa went into the town centre where they found a statue of a giant chicken. And suddenly everything started making a horrible sense. This place had been built by a fast food company, and had been called Hungry Fowl Town, until the weirdness from the Scar had made everything go wrong.

Anyway, the statue was actually a mask for a giant chicken man, and once Scratch had killed him with mind powers we were able to leave. The other car had drawn ahead, and tried to stop us. There was a bit of an incident with a grenade launcher, resulting in both Barbarossa and Scratch exploding. Mustang got into the Rolls and entirely failed to convince me to drive away, so I put the Best Man to his head and told him to get out, then drove away and won the race.

Fortunately both Scratch and Barbarossa had recovered from exploding, so I was able to spend my prize money on a wedding dress so we could finally have a proper wedding.

Game 3: Kult

Unfortunately the GM for the Saturday evening game of Kult had to pull out, so I offered a second run of A Walk In The Park. Again I picked up another player from another cancelled game, which was lucky as one of the original players also had to drop, so I ended up with three players for this round.

Another entertaining run, with a different ending to the morning game. There are two general directions the end can take on this one, and it was good to get both of them in one day.

Game 4: Thirsty Sword Lesbians

This was me GMing again. Only my second time running this game (with the first being the practice run for this scenario), but I was pretty excited to see how it was going to go. It feels strange going into a session without much in the way of pre-written material, but it really works for this one.

My pitch was Robyn Hood and her Merry Maids, and I'd picked six suitable playbooks for feminised versions of the most popular characters from various versions of Robin Hood. With four players, this meant plenty of choice even for whoever picked last, plus two characters who could be NPCs for the game.

By way of plot I had six situations for the players to choose from, and they ultimately combined two. Robyn Hood and Alanna Dale had been captured and were imprisoned in Nottingham Castle, where there was also a high society wedding happening. They went in to do a rescue mission, but decided that they had to do something about the wedding as well.

By the end of the session, the Merry Maids had got away with both the brides from the wedding, two guardswomen, a lot of jewellery and a dog. Highlights included Briar Tuck managing to marry two people simultaneously, then swing on a chandelier through a stained glass window and landing on a horse outside, Jill Scarlet sliding down a curtain using a knife to slow her fall and using the remains to make a new dress for Lady Marian, Dutch the Miller's Daughter taking out half the castle by smashing a lantern to set the dungeon on fire and sending flaming rats in all directions, and Little Joan managing to so thoroughly humiliate the Sherriff of Nottingham that he was forced to let them all escape.

I could use a little more practice running this system, as I'm still getting used to the GM moves, but overall this was exactly the kind of swashbuckling romance I was hoping for. I hope to offer this one again at future conventions.

Game 5: Apocalypse World

This was supposed to be A|State, but we'd lost enough players by then that it wasn't really viable. Fortunately the GM for an Apocalypse World game based on Metro 2033 had brought enough playbooks to take on an extra player so I joined that instead.

I picked up the Gunlugger this time, as I was getting a bit tired and figured that would be reasonably uncomplicated. That turned out to be a good choice. I inadventently caused early chaos by shooting someone I really shouldn't have, but later managed to punch another character back to life after an encounter with a supernatural smoke cloud.

The playbooks we were using for this were the ones from 1st edition, which had significantly more complicated rules for determining Hx with the other PCs. After some confusion, particularly for people like me who've only ever seen the 2nd edition playbooks before, we abandoned that and used the 2nd edition version to sort out the numbers. While a lot for my tired brain to deal with at the time, it was very interesting to see how the game had evolved between versions.

Reflections

Covid has done a number on my stamina. Normally five games in two days would be no trouble at all and I'd still be full of keen by the end of game 5. This time not so much. I had enough energy left for the two hour drive home, thankfully, but after that I was completely wiped out. Fortunately I find running games to be energising, so I should do OK at Seven Hills where my games are currently scheduled for the final slot of each day, and Concrete Cow where I'm planning to GM in the evening slot. But the prospect of having to pace myself at conventions is not an encouraging one. I have to hope this is only temporary.

Revelation 2022

North Star 2020 was supposed to be my first ever Garrison convention.

Two years later, fully vaxxed and boosted and with a negative test logged on my phone, I finally made it to Sheffield for my first Garrison convention.  Revelation: an entire weekend of PBTA and FITD games.

Things were fairly quiet on Friday night, but fortunately the small group gathered in the bar recognised me as one of them.  Taking a look at the other clientele it became obvious why.  Everyone else was there for the 70s/80s/90s dance party night.

I'd lucked out by finding a room sharer who knew her way around the Garrison and was able to help me navigate its eldritch halls.  I'm still not entirely sure how the geometry of the place works, but well before the 10am start she'd got me into the guardhouse ready for our first game.

Game 1&2: Masks

Things kicked off with a game of Masks - or rather two parallel games of Masks with two GMs working together on a scenario that saw different worlds colliding.  On our table we had a happy, friendly group of junior heroes, slightly frustrated at being sent to make an appearance at a movie premier rather than proper hero stuff but otherwise upbeat and optimistic.  At the end of the first session, half our team found themselves snatched away into another, much darker universe, while two of their heroes landed in our world.  Nevertheless, optimism prevailed, and after some initial distrust we learned to work together with the two strangers until the villains were defeated and our own team were restored to us.

This was the first time I'd experienced a multi-table game, and the two GMs did a spectacular job with this, keeping things running in parallel, signaling to each other when significant events happened, and consulting each other during breaks to keep things on the same page.  The table swapping part worked brilliantly, with the shock of losing two teammates that the game had had us establish some close relationships with giving us some great roleplay hooks to work with.

The most challenging part for me was really beforehand, when we had to make characters, as the junior superhero genre is not one I know particularly well, and PBTA playbooks tend to be all about leaning into character archetypes.  Fortunately my husband is a big Teen Titans fan, and immediately understood the Doomed playbook I'd chosen, and was able to help me put my character together.  From there I could use the playbook to guide me in the actual roleplay.

Overall I really liked Masks.  While my taste in superhero media runs more to the MCU than Teen Titans, this is definitely something I can see me playing again.

Game 3: Bite Marks

I didn't originally sign up for Bite Marks, but since I wasn't assigned an evening game, when I was offered a space I decided I'd give it a go.  I didn't know much about the game beyond that it involved werewolves, but I was willing to find out.  After a quick glance through the playbooks, I went with the Cub, a new young werewolf still figuring out their place in the pack, which seemed like a good fit for the somewhat naive and confused portrayal I was likely to be giving.

Rather to my surprise, the scenario we were playing turned out to be set in 1930s Chicago and we were a gang of moonshiners.  We each randomly selected a secret, established relationships between characters, defined the pack's internal slang, and off we went.  I decided that my character had been a gangster's moll, who on encountering the pack's incredibly handsome fixer had decided she'd rather join these far more interesting gangsters.  The game proceeded in a blend of action, drama and Ealing comedy until we finally dealt with the many threats to the pack and a new Alpha took over.

This was a bit of an odd one.  While I absolutely enjoyed the game, I think it had more to do with the fun scenario, entertaining GM and enthusiastic other players than the game itself.  Bite Marks describes itself as a game of werewolf pack dynamics, and while we certainly had some of that in the game, the bits where we were doing werewolf gangster things were a lot more my kind of fun.  It has some great design features, particularly the bit where you define the pack slang, but ultimately I don't think this one's for me.

Game 4: Matrons of Mystery

I couldn't very well go to a PBTA convention and not run my own PBTA game, could I?  Four ladies of the Ramsbottom village library club temporarily put aside their books and card playing to go and solve a murder at the local convention hotel where the guest of honour at a roleplaying convention had been murdered.

The best part of running this game continues to be the delightful old lady characters the players come up with every time.  This time the game ended with not only the killer's arrest, but one of the old ladies now committed to being the group's DM as the library club took a slight change of direction.

Knowing that other people were bringing books to sell, I packed my small stock of printed copies of Matrons of Mystery and sold half of them over the course of the weekend.  It's great to know people are enjoying this game.

Game 5: Monster of the Week

I've been looking forward to trying out Monster of the Week for quite a while.  This time I was on solid ground, genre-wise, having watched a lot of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Going through the playbooks I was soon able to identify most of the main cast.  The ones that weren't so immediately familiar I assume were more inspired by Supernatural, a show I've never seen, although thinking back later on I can see some Dresden Files influence in there as well.

By chance, the three players and GM of this game were the four junior heroes from the earlier Masks game, and sitting down together again almost felt like getting the band back together.  For my character I took inspiration for my tendency to accidentally set myself on fire in video games, and played a spellslinger specialising in fire magic with absolutely no cool.

I really liked how the playbooks not only embodied strong archetypes but absolutely give you the freedom to play them your own way.  My character's fire powers were pretty much in line with what Harry Dresden can do, but my character was entirely my own thing.  I also liked how the relationship questions served to set up a really strong friendship dynamic between the three characters - even more so than in Masks.

In short, this game was an absolute delight, and if I had to pick any game of the weekend to play another session of, it would be this one.

Reflections

With just over 20 people attending, this was a pretty tiny convention.  For my first experience of a Garrison convention, that was a good thing.  I got the chance to talk to most of the people there, not just the ones I was in games with.  It means that I'll already know a few people at future larger conventions.  It also meant I only had to get to grips with a limited part of the gaming space at the Garrison: the jailhouse and cells.  I'm told there's also a dungeon, and after walking around the place for a weekend, I can only assuming it exists in some kind of extra-dimensional space.

It was really nice to finally meet in person some of the people I've been getting to know over the last two years.  Here's hoping face to face gaming continues to be a viable option.  It was a wonderfully welcoming environment, and I'm really hoping to be able to get to North Star in person this year.