Wicker Valley, episode 10: All Greek

We all needed some rest, especially Michael, and I needed to be up early for work in the morning. I didn't think the vicar was going to be able to cause much more havoc overnight. When I got my phone out the next morning to text Michael and see how he was doing, I found out I was wrong about that.

We hadn't added Alabaster to the Whatsapp group yet, but I texted him to tell him to join us at the Wicker Stop. Adam had the most details via his contacts. The vicar had been found early in the morning by a dog walker, seriously injured and wrapped around a tree on the church grounds. He'd been taken to hospital in Lancaster. And now nobody could get into the church.

Michael and me had to work our shifts, but the others went to get kitted up. Adam had the stone bird remains back at the junkyard to experiment on, and after a while him and Robin came back with sprayers and glass bottles filled with battery acid, which he was confident would prove particularly effective against the stone birds. Meanwhile Alabaster totally failed to notice the Whisper Sisters had dropped by the cafe and it took some quick thought on Michael's part to convince them that the knife and rifle he had with him were costume props.

Adam had a chat with the police when we got there, who were particularly unhappy because some other people in a black sedan who we'd probably call feds if we had feds here had also shown up. Fortunately it turned out Adam knew one of them as well and we were able to get to the church. Or rather, we were able to get several feet away from the church. The ward had expanded a lot. Adam was now also unable to get in. I never expected to be able to anyway, but touched it anyway, and now it felt like a solid wall. I wasn't going to be able to get through this time, whether by force or by magic. Alabaster seemed quite upset by it, but insisted nothing was wrong.

Michael walked in like it wasn't there.

I did a lap of the church, during which all I could determine was that the ward was now a smooth solid wall and that there were maybe more stone faces on the church than last time I'd looked. Meanwhile Michael went investigating in the church. He found where the vicar had been making changes to papers - presumably the ward tweaks he'd been talking about. Most of what he found was in Greek, as we could see when he started a video call. I suggested he use Google Lens, which got him part of a translation. He took some pictures and collected the rest to bring back.

By the time I got to the front of the church again, Michael was going to investigate the crypt. That's when things got weird. He seemed happy and content down there. Unnaturally so. To the point where I thought he was actually going to lie down and fall asleep down there. And then something would happen to him and none of us would be able to help because none of us could get into the church. I had to get him out of there. So I used the voice.

It was one thing using the voice to calm a frightened girl or an angry vicar. It was something else entirely using it on Michael. I felt sick, and the fact Alabaster had obviously noticed I was doing something didn't help. It worked though, and I hugged Michael out of sheer relief when he got back to us.

So now what? Reading and experiments. With some help from Alabaster's Greek/English dictionary, we got the stuff translated and learned about how this entity was summoned to keep out the non-sacred. With sacred here having a rather specific description unrelated to righteousness or good works. So Adam went with Michael to pick up his brother and see if he was able to get through the ward. They sent word that he was, although not without some difficulty.

So it seemed that the vicar's efforts to 'fix' the wards had instead managed to redefine 'sacred' to basically mean Michael. Imagine if people didn't go meddling with ancient relics and powerful magic they didn't fully understand?

Anyway, what we needed was a way of putting this guardian spirit and its ward back in a box, which sounded like something its previous users had been able to do. Specifically, by melting down the coin used to summon it, and then recasting it next time it was needed. So all we needed to do was find the coin and melt it down.

Of course we had absolutely no idea where the coin was. And the whole time I'd been at Adam's place, stone birds had been hurling themselves at the ward and exploding. I was pretty sure it was me they were after.

First Time Playing: Darkness of the Demimonde

I love the Victorian era as a setting and particularly love Victorian horror. Victoriana was the first game I ran in that setting, but ultimately the system didn't work for me and neither did the Shadowrun inspired take on the setting. Vaesen does what it does very well, but what it does is the clash of the industrial revolution against rural folklore, which I love, but isn't exactly the same thing as the classic works of Poe and Stoker. And The Between got pretty close, but between the weird design decisions and very limited character options, it really wasn't giving me anything other than the TV show on which it's based.

And then up popped a Kickstarter for Darkness of the Demimonde, pitching itself as 'Victorian Pulp Horror'. Zine sized and priced accordingly, I decided it was worth a shot. To avoid excessive postage costs I went for the PDF + POD option. The POD is printed through DTRPG and is the usual quality I expect from there.

The book is A5 size and 39 pages long. Rules are simple and reminiscent of Liminal. Character creation is deceptively simple. Players choose between playing Enlightened (human with an occupation) or Afflicted (supernatural powers with an associated drawback), assign 10 points between 7 skills, and choose knacks and items. With a few pages of options, there's enough there to cover pretty much any concept from the realm of gothic horror. Which meant that even with all the players having largely figured out their concepts beforehand, there was still a fairly long period of finishing off characters at the start of the session.

Setting information is minimal, and consists of a two page introduction. That is all the game really needs though, as the assumption is that you're going in with a pretty solid idea of what Victorian pulp horror is. The character creation section and monster list lays out all the tropes that are in play.

There's no specific rules about group concepts, but as an investigation based game, it tends towards some variation on occult detectives. The players decided that the Detective character was the owned of the business, and given that they had gone for the Wealthy knack I suggested placing it in Mayfair. (This did lead to some fun moments as we had to explain the pronounciation of such locations as Berkeley Square and Grosvenor Square.) The other two characters were a Psychic and his Created servant.

The book comes with three adventures. I picked Horror in Houndsditch to run, as it was very much my kind of thing. It's a pretty light scenario, intended to allow for a lot of improv, and gives several suggested options for involving the player characters. I went for the one that I felt best fit the occult detective agency concept: a young woman asking for help finding her missing brother.

My only issue with this adventure is the map. The one provided is very useful for the GM, but with several key locations marked on it, it's not ideal to give to the players. The geography of Houndsditch is very much not what it was in the 1890s so my usual go-to of Google Maps was less helpful as I had to locate streets that no longer exist under the Gerkin and similiar buildings. I did manage to dig up a period map via a Jack the Ripper website, but vintage maps are a struggle to read. There may be some photoshopping of the adventure map to try to hide the location markers before I run this again.

Despite the book's length, it finds time for a reminded to GMs that key clues shouldn't be hidden behind a dice roll, so if the characters went looking in a suitable place they always found something. In these cases when I asked for action rolls it was to determine if they found something extra, if they got the job done fast and efficiently, etc. Despite being only half a page, the GM advice is a solid bit of writing that's worth reading and absorbing.

(Note: the game indulges in my pet peeve of making up a new name for the GM - the somewhat cheesy sounding Gravemaster. However, since it does still have the initials GM, I'm willing to let this one go.)

The action rolls themselves are 2d6 + skill (here called Archetypes for some reason) + bonuses. There are only seven and they're fairly broad, so figuring out which one to use was sometimes a bit tricky. In particular there's quite a bit of overlap between Priest and Occultist when it comes to knowledge of the supernatural. The GM also had to determine  the Difficulty Score (DS) for each roll. There's a set of guidelines, which suggests DS8 for easy and DS10 for moderate, but I think this is a bit off. Starting characters have Archetypes from 0 to 3, and with an average roll on 2d6 being 7, a character is going to fail DS10 rolls most of the time. For starting characters I would stick with DS8 as the default, increasing it if there are additional complications as suggested.

Two features of the rules I found particularly interesting. First is stress. Stress rolls are made when encountering horrific things, and a failure gives you a stress point. Each stress point gives you a penalty to all your action rolls. The maximum is 6, and while there's no specific consequence to hitting 6 stress, it's pretty debilitating. The only way to get rid of them is rest and sleep. There's a tendency for players to want to get the whole adventure done in one day. This game encourages not doing that - once the stress points start racking up you really need to get some rest, especially since you only recover 1d6 stress each time. Something worth mentioning to new players to manage expectations.

The other interesting feature is combat. Monsters all have their own DS, and you need to exceed it to actually do any damage. But their DS is also their hit points, so once you start damaging them they get gradually easier to hit and damage. Some interesting possibilities for tactical play - particularly as failed melee rolls mean the attacker gets hurt instead.

Overall there are some small niggles with this game, but nothing that can't be overcome. Particularly as the GM I'd advise going in with a reasonable knowledge of Victorian Britain and the classic horror fiction of the time, but there's a lot packed into these 39 pages. The system is light enough that most of the time it was a breeze to run, while still having enough going on to keep things interesting. The authors know what Victorian horror looks like and deliver on that. I had a great time as the GM and fully expect to have a great time in our next session when one of the players takes over as GM and I get to make my own character.

Darkness of the Demimonde will be coming to DTRPG for general purchase soon, presumably once all the kickstarter fulfillment is sorted out. Edit: Available now!

Wicker Valley, episode 9: Going To Church

We met up at the Wicker Stop again, and Adam was about to start outlining a plan to get into the church when we were interrupted by Carmen. She had someone with her. About my age, at a guess, immaculately dressed, cross necklace. Yikes. His name was Alabaster, he'd had the same problem getting into the church as Gillian, and Carmen thought we were the best people to help him out. And she was probably right. After the things she's seen I understand why she didn't want to stick around.

Alabaster wasn't sold on the 'break into the church' concept at first, but once we managed to convince him the vicar was doing bad things, he agreed to help out. Just this once. Hah, like that's going to happen. He was pretty useful though. He knows the vicar and was able to persuade him to stay at home that evening, and also had a key to get into the church, thus taking out of the 'breaking' part of breaking in. He went over there early, then called back to say he'd had no trouble getting in there and he was going to meet us there.

So, he was trapped there, we all concluded.

We headed out to join him not long after dark. Mike and Adam went in to join Alabaster while Robin and me checked out the ward from the outside. I was hoping that just once we could get through a case without Robin or Adam peeing on anything, but clearly not. Once Robin emerged from the bushes we did a circuit of the church and found the ward seemed to be bulging slightly and was an inch further out from the church boundaries than when we'd checked it yesterday. We wondered what shape it was higher up, so once we'd checked that neither the vicar nor Alabaster was watching, I flew up to investigate. The ward was dome shaped, and went a lot higher up above the church spire than I expected.

On the way down I noticed something odd. One of the carved stone faces on the outside of the church (not a gargoyle, gargoyles are ornamental drainpipe spouts, not stone monsters, whatever Disney might say) turned to look at me.

We couldn't hang around outside forever, and now I understood more about the ward it was less of an effort to force my way through it. Robin was struggling a bit, and looked very odd as he passed through - as if something had replaced his nose with something else's nose. But I'm hardly in a position to be making negative comments about people's temporary bodily features. My shoulders were itching where my wings sprout from.

The others had made good progress in the church. Well, Michael had. Alabaster seemed to be spending his time praying, and I don't know what Adam was up to. But Michael had found an embroidered pocket in the vicar's robes with a distinctive sigil on it. It wasn't my family crest this time, thankfully, but it was clearly something religious given how much I disliked it. Adam was able to identify it as being associated with a lost relic used to create wards.

It was looking like we were going to have to confront the vicar, but first we had to deal with the sound of moving stone. I ran outside with Robin, and found the stone faces had now become stone birds, and definitely not gargoyles which as previously stated are ornamental drainpipe spouts, not murderous little stone birds screaming the word 'purge' straight into my head while hurling themselves through the air at me.

Robin took one out with his rifle and shot another with his handgun, but didn't manage to completely take out either of them. Michael got the one off Robin's back, but the other climbed back up the steeple (and wasn't the belfry looking darker than usual) and got away. I thought about going after it, but at that point the vicar showed up. Whatever Alabaster had told him, it clearly wasn't enough to make him ignore a gunshot.

The vicar was going on an understandable tirade, but then suddenly calmed down. I felt for his emotions, and there was definitely something going on. I suspect there's something Alabaster isn't telling us, particularly given his ward problems, but right now I needed to talk to the vicar. I gave Robin and Adam the 'piss off' look, met the vicar's eyes, and talked. I'm really getting the hang of this voice now.

A cup of tea in the vicarage along with Alabaster and we'd got most of the story. As suspected, he was trying to protect his people from demons and had used a relic to do it. I again insisted the things that had been taking people in the woods were goblins, but not even my voice could sway him there. So I took a different tack, pointing out that it was going wrong, and wasn't discriminating the way he intended. After all, it had kept out Alabaster who was clearly a devout and god fearing person, but had let Adam in. And now people were getting hurt, particularly Michael who hadn't fared particularly well against the stone birds.

Unfortunately his takeaway was that he needed to tweak the wards, not remove them, and he wasn't willing to let us help, but at least it was a start. We would have to watch him carefully.

First Time Playing: FIST

I buy a lot of the charity bundles on itch.io. They're generally around $5-$10 a time, and while I'm largely indifferent to most of the content, there's usually a few gems making it well worth the price. FIST has appeared in bundles for abortion funds and for trans rights in Florida and I definitely got my money's worth buying those two.

I hadn't actually looked at FIST properly though until a friend offered a game at a time I was free and I dived in. The pitch was pretty compelling. It's inspired by Metal Gear Solid and The A-Team, so you play as soldiers of fortune in the late 20th century, with a twist in the shape of everyone having supernatural abilities.

We began with character creation, which is very simple. Roll two traits and a role on random tables (or choose, if you prefer) and that defines your stats and abilities. The first trait I rolled would have left me unable to speak, which I decided would not actually be fun, so rolled twice more and got  hybrid and ninja. The hybrid could be any animal, but one of the suggestions was shark, so I went with that - King Shark but also a ninja. My role was Mercenary, so I was absolutely in it for the money.

This part was a ton of fun, as we figured out what our random traits meant and what we could do with them. We came up with our own codenames. I was Mako, and was joined by Shadow, Mr Pink, Toes and Blood, the latter being a telekinetic vampire. Then we just had to choose between extra hitpoints, a piece of equipment, and war dice (single use bonus dice you could add to a roll). Most people went for war dice but I picked the extra hitpoints, having seen how our current points compared to the weapons we already had.

And so into the game, where we were dropped in the middle of a jungle and charged with intercepting trucks, preventing their contents getting to their destination, and figuring out what was going on at the nearby hydroelectric plant. We formed a basic plan and went at it, guns blazing. And it was a wild ride, as we figured out how to make use of our special abilities and threw ourselves into the action. It's fast paced and easy to play.

FIST is mechanically pretty much a PBTA game, with the usual 2d6 and three levels of success. It's also very OSR-like in that combat is brutal and characters are disposable, easily created and easily killed. This is in my opinion, its biggest weakness.

The whole setup is for a narrative game, with supernatural protagonists with extraordinary abilities. Then there's the PBTA mechanics, where every roll drives the story forward. You're all set up for some nice genre emulation, fitting with the PBTA 'be a fan of the characters' philosophy.

Except that doesn't mesh well with the concept of disposable characters. The A-Team aren't disposable. They don't get constantly killed and replaced. Metal Gear Solid...well, the way I play video games, the protagonist dies a lot, but they don't stay dead, and Solid Snake is still the person you're playing at the end of the game. When I play Mork Borg I know my scvm is going to be dead soon enough and that all feels right and proper. In this game it doesn't.

Mako did make it to the end of the mission, entirely thanks to those extra hitpoints I bought at the start.

If you bought one of those bundles, I would definitely recommend giving FIST a try, but with the caveat that the two clashing game philosophies aren't going to work for everyone. It succeeds at fast paced action and fun characters, but ignore the trappings of PBTA because that's not the experience you're going to get. I honestly think this would be better using the Mork Borg mechanics as that would fit a lot better with how the game works generally. And with four stats and similar numeric values, it should be an easy conversion.

So that's my verdict: a game that's well worth checking out but which accidentally used the wrong system. Try it with Mork Borg, or if you want the PBTA experience rather than the OSR one, replace hit points with the harm system from Apocalypse World, which coincidentally also includes the possibility that your character will be entirely obliterated, and then suddenly come back very much like they were before. Just like in a video game. Now that's genre emulation.

Wicker Valley, episode 8: Wards

We gathered supplies and discussed where to perform the summoning ritual. Robin was all for an old barrow or fairy mound, which to me sounded like asking for trouble. Mike and me were all for a very normal woodland clearing, but I think it was Adam who eventually got us set up in a car park. I set up a circle of salt with Gillian's help, and the mirrors were positioned inside it. Robin wandered off into the bushes to relieve himself - I swear, him and Adam seem to think there's no problem you can't solve with urine - and Mike tied up Adam so he couldn't do any damage in the event that things went badly.

I don't know what it was that Robin found in his pocket. Best not to ask about these things sometimes. But it was enough to mess up Adam enough to bring the creature to him. Mike spotted it first. I caught glimpses of eyes and teeth in the mirrors, but I had to concentrate on chanting, and making sure Gillian was holding it together enough to keep going.

The plan was for the three of them inside the circle to deal with the thing, but when it started tearing chunks out of Mike and Adam, I knew I had to intervene. I reassured Gillian that she had this, and was safe outside the circle, and went in with claws out. Robin held it off Mike, I shredded it from behind, and that was enough for Mike to grab a piece of broken mirror and take the thing down.

We looked at each other, covered in blood and black ichor. Mike untied Adam. Gillian was unharmed, but there was a limit to what even my voice could do about the things she'd just witnessed. Then I noticed the look on Robin's face, the way Mike suddenly stiffened, and the breath of an angel on the back of my neck.

I didn't turn round. That way lay terror, and it obviously got to Robin as he was off running. I saw Mike grab a mirror and realised what he was doing. I did the same, looked at the thing's reflection to get a grasp on where it was, then spun round and drove my claws into it, tearing it to pieces. Father would have been proud, of my actions, if not of my motives.

By the time we'd taken out the rest of the creatures, Mike and Adam were both in a bad way. I helped Robin patch them up, then saw to Gillian while Adam got a petrol can and set fire to the remains. The fire attracted the police's attention, but I told them it was a traditional Samhain bonfire, and the others passed off our appearance as particularly detailed Halloween costumes, and we got off with just being told not to light fires in other people's car parks. Which seemed fair.

We took Gillian home. Mike asked if he could sleep at my place so he didn't have to explain his appearance to his housemates. Which meant the next morning was super awkward. Nothing happened - just showers and sleep and coffee. Still. Oh 🔥.

I texted Adam to let him know we were on our way, and he sent me back a shopping list. One trip to the hardware store later we arrived at the junkyard. Mike walked right in. I found the ward was still keeping me out. I texted Adam again to let him know. I wasn't going to be pushing my way in this time, not after what happened last night.

We all agreed we needed to take a look at the church to see if the apparent new ward on that was doing the same thing. It was. Mike and Adam walked straight in. Robin had to force his way in. I decided not to try. The place already makes me itch. Robin and me walked the perimeter, working out exactly where the boundaries were, while the others headed inside. Unfortunately they didn't manage to intercept the vicar quick enough to avoid him spotting me out there. Not great, looking all suspicious around someone who already has a thing about demons.

While Mike and Adam got roped into tea with Reverend Matthews, Robin and me decided it was worth checking if this was happening with every church or just that one. We already suspected the vicar was up to something and this would be a useful confirmation. We went to the Catholic church, a rather newer building made of bricks instead of stone, and while I got the familiar prickling sensation, neither of us had any trouble getting near the place. That settled it for me. The vicar was up to something.

We still had one thing we needed to do, which was to check on Gillian after last night's activities. It seemed she'd slept for the entire morning. Probably for the best. Hopefully we won't have to ask for her help again any time soon. All we wanted this time was to make sure she was OK, and ask if she'd raised any wards.

She had - just a small one to keep the moss hag out while she was working. So another one to check out. This one didn't keep me out - just zap me a bit on the way through. Which checked out with what we knew so far, as this was just a minor ward compared to the rather beefier thing I'd helped Adam set up for his place.

It looks more and more like I was right to suspect the vicar. So I suggested we do the thing I really didn't want to do. Break into the church.

Wicker Valley, episode 7: Halloween

After the moss demon incident we all needed a bit of a break. I didn't see much of the others for a couple of weeks, as I spent every free moment going hiking. I'm not sure if it was to get fresh air and exercise like I keep telling myself, or to reassure myself that the countryside was behaving itself and staying in its proper place. Either way, it helped.

When I wasn't out hiking it was basket weaving in the Wicker Stop. We had a couple of tourist groups in wanting to do the workshop, plus with Halloween approaching I had to help out Mike and make some decorations for the cafe. I think I did a great job. The wicker cobwebs were particularly charming.

I didn't plan much for Halloween itself. I was in the cafe all day, serving pumpkin shaped biscuits along with the coffees. Only one thing stood out - some guy who clearly wanted to be wearing a black suit despite actually showing up in jeans, with the kind of haircut that screams ex-military. Some old friend of Adam's, it turned out. I got them some eyeball biscuits and left them to it.

Once I'd finished closing I got out the TV. I'd invited the whole gang over for a movie night. Adam suggested some old movie called Beetlejuice which he reckoned was a classic, and it had Winona Ryder who was great in Stranger Things so I thought we could give it a go. Mike couldn't make it. The church was doing one of those house of light type things to try to bribe people into not doing Halloween, and he'd been roped in to do the face painting.

We weren't very far into the movie when we got a message from Mike. Something had happened at the church. Carmen and Gillian had showed up, but Gillian couldn't make herself walk through the gates of the churchyard.

This was bad. Gillian had been through a traumatic experience and had barely left the house since. Now she'd gone out for a night of harmless, if rather cringy, fun, and it had backfired horribly. Mike had told them to come to the cafe instead. I got them tea and biscuits and tried to reassure Gillian that whatever it was would pass. And it seems I've finally got the hang of the voice of temptation. I can only imagine my mother's horror if she knew I was using it to comfort a frightened girl.

I hoped we could have a nice peaceful evening after that, but no. Adam was convinced there was something watching him. I lit some sage, but he didn't seem to think it was helping, and when the movie finished he insisted we all go back to his junkyard. He wanted Gillian and Carmen to join us for some reason, but they weren't convinced, and I certainly wasn't bringing out the voice of temptation for that. They went home, and I went to the junkyard with Adam and Robin.

I don't know what happened when we got there. I know Adam has wards on the place because I helped him set them up and I'm specifically excluded from being affected by them. Adam and Robin walked in as usual, but when I tried, I found I couldn't. And it just wasn't that uncomfortable feeling I get from churches. I physically couldn't make myself take one more step. I stepped back, and then got the feeling that something was behind me.

Normal kids have monsters under the bed. I did too, except the monster was the archangel Gabriel. That's what I saw when I turned around, standing there in all his shining glory, flaming sword in hand ready to smite me. I recoiled, and he was gone.

The others saw nothing - although they did insist on dragging me through the wards. And I wasn't the only one experiencing strange things. Adam had had a moment back at the cafe when he remembered something terrible from his past, and Robin was hearing the sounds of wolves howling. We got Mike on the phone and learned that strange things were afoot at the church too - five or so more people besides Gillian had found themselves unable to enter the churchyard.

Then there was Robin's police scanner, which was telling us that an old man called George had collapsed dead on the street.

Getting me out of Adam's wards proved just as difficult as getting me into them. Mike was already there when we joined the scene, looking after another collapsed woman that the police scanner had warned us about. We were starting to understand now. The problem was fear, which rapidly became evident when one of the police officers became convinced that he'd seen a creepy clown. I reassured him that he'd just seen someone in a Halloween costume, while Mike backed me up.

Time for a team discussion. We were going to have to set a trap to capture this fear creature before it could do any more damage. The fact it liked to stay behind people wasn't helping us with identifying it. Adam was pretty sure that he was the one it was after though. What we needed was a circle surrounded by mirrors and magical fetishes, and enough people with experience in this kind of summoning magic to perform the ritual.

Which meant we needed backup, and the only person around with the necessary skills was Gillian. Well, at least it's getting her out of the house, even if Carmen definitely doesn't approve.

North Star 2023

This North Star was an unusual convention for me, as I managed to convince my husband to join me. Despite having been roleplaying for almost as long as I've been alive, and being by far the more social and outgoing of the two of us, he's always been reluctant to join me at conventions. This time was different. The prospect of a full weekend of Star Wars and Star Trek might have done the job.

Game 1: Starforged

I've been playing a solo Starforged game in the Firefly setting to help me learn how it works, and loved it, so I had to take the opportunity to play someone else's Starforged Firefly game. The premise was we were a group of bounty hunters who were chasing the Serenity crew to win a bounty placed by Niska.

We randomly rolled for character types, and got a scoundrel, a fugitive hunter, a medic and an occultist. With Firefly not being a particularly occult setting, I decided my character's ability to veil herself in shadows was something she'd learned at the same institute as River Tam.

Things went as unsmooth as things in Starforged are inclined to do, and there were some injuries when our captain got into a fight with Zoe, but we were able to take her and Wash captive and track down Malcolm Reynolds and co. Things were further complicated when we discovered that there were quite a few more members of the Reynolds gang than we were anticipated, including River, who my character remembered from her time in the institute.

Apparently previous groups have decided to join forces with Reynolds at this point. However, given how many of us River managed to stab before we could react, this didn't happen. By the time we were done, River and Wash were both dead, and the latter's corpse used to take out a minefield. We got our bounty, stayed on the right side of Niska, and the 'verse presumbly went very differently from then onwards. Perhaps it was our crew who eventually discovered the secrets of Miranda?

Starforged is my new favourite system for Firefly and this was a blast. One of those games where the only negative is that we won't get to spend any more time with those characters.

Game 2: Things From The Flood

My own scenario, Witchlight, is set in 1996 and features the somewhat reluctant members of the school film club discovering the secrets of the Vac. Being a 90s teen myself, this setting resonates for me and it was fun to take the group twenty-seven years into the past (even though a part of me is convinced it can't be more than ten years ago.) I set it in the Norfolk loop, as it's the setting that I'm most comfortable with. I've never been to Sweden or Nevada, but a significant amount of my family are Norfolk farmers.

I could still use some practice with this game, this being the second ever time I've run it, but I'm pretty happy with the adventure. One to keep in the convention rotation for a while. Things From The Flood doesn't get as much love as Tales From The Loop, but I really like what it does with the setting.

One tweak I might make for future in-person runs is to have handouts for people's iconic items - not least because one of them is a mobile phone and absolutely nobody can remember exactly what a 1996 mobile phone looks like without googling it. Some period appropriate images should help with the atmosphere as well. And for online runs, having everyone's favourite song queued up in WatchTogether should be fun.

Given how popular this was in sign-ups I'm going to bring this one to Furnace to give a few more of the Garrison crowd a shot at playing it.

Game 3: Star Trek Adventures

I'm not a big enough Star Trek nerd to be completely at ease with Star Trek Adventures character creation, but I do know it well enough to play a pre-gen character. And with the prospect of two linked games, one in TOS and one in TNG, I was keen to give it a go. My husband also got into the TNG game with me, and he's a massive Star Trek nerd, so I was confident this would be fun.

And it certainly was, with all kinds of wibbly wobbly timey wimey things happening, characters swapping tables as they got displaced in spacetime, and finally the GMs pulling out a pair of walkie talkies when we managed to establish communication between the two times. The best moment was when we insisted on the two Romulan captains in different times talking to each other and the GMs had to roleplay between themselves.

This game was supposed to happen in 2022 but got pulled when covid meant one GM had to drop out, so I'm very happy to have got in this time. Linked games have to be difficult to pull off and this one was a delight.

Game 4: Monster Of The Week

While MOTW isn't typically a sci-fi game, the preview documents for the latest kickstarter arrived not long before the convention, and included new team playbooks. One of them, Agents In Black, was clearly modelled after Men In Black. And Men In Black is all about aliens, which is definitely sci-fi so...

I'd been intending to write a scenario involving the notorious concrete cows for a long time. I thought it was going to be Liminal, but when I started thinking about what alien threats the Agents In Black could take on, the cows came to mind once more.

From the fairly large pile of playbook options, I picked five that seemed to fit the concept. With three players in the game, that gave them a variety of options without being overwhelming. Choosing names was simplified by using the naming convention from the movies where everyone has a single letter codename. So the highly experienced Agent Q, newly recruited rookie Agent X, and small but deadly alien Agent B set out to solve the mystery of the concrete cows and save Milton Keynes.

As with Witchlight, this was only my second time running not only the scenario but the game itself. Again, I think I need more practice, but overall I'm happy with how things went down. This particular scenario could use more handouts. I had a few photos ready on my tablet, and Google Maps ready to go, but a couple of printouts would have sped things along.

I'm planning to run this again at Concrete Cow, because how could I not? And given that it's a PBTA game I'll probably bring it out for Revelation as well.

Game 5: Tales From The Loop

And back to the Loop, this time in Sweden with one of the adventures from the core book. With the title 'Creatures from the Cretaceous' I was expecting dinosaurs, and we certainly got dinosaurs in this terrifying adventure. While I knew we were playing Tales From The Loop and kids can't die in this game, my character didn't know that and Elin's fear was very real.

Sunday afternoon is normally the point where I start flagging, and as usual it took quite a lot of coffee to keep me going through the early stages. Fortunately, when the dinosaurs showed up, adrenaline started to take over.

Reflections

I love having a specialist convention. The sci-fi theme really pushes me to be creative in my convention games, and provides opportunities that might not come up as often at general conventions.

This North Star felt a little calmer on the scheduling side of things with only the normal challenges of numbers, slots, etc. to deal with rather than the multiple covid related drop-outs that have been plaguing Garrison conventions for the last couple of years. The complication seems to have been at the event itself, where a combination of multiple games with only three players and a last-minute drop-out seems to have caused some headaches. I can only express my admiration for the organisers who do an amazing job dealing with all this and making sure games happen.

It was a little smaller than last year's North Star, and another ten or so people would have been nice. Perhaps Eurovision was a factor - it sounds like it made hotel bookings more difficult - and rail strikes probably didn't help either. We did seem to be missing a few 'regulars' though so perhaps this was a one-off.

My husband had a good time. We only had one game together (he couldn't play mine because I'd spent so much time bouncing ideas off him while writing them) but that just made for good conversation in the car on the way home as we told each other what we'd been doing. He enjoyed meeting the other players and it sounds like he'll be joining me again next year. I couldn't ask for a better outcome.