Sunday - Winter StabCon 2017

Winter StabCon 2017 - Sunday

I woke up early Sunday morning and again partook of the hotel breakfast. I ate a bit more reasonably this time. I shared a table with Bruce who'd played in two of my games on Saturday and was due to be in my Star Wars game. StabCon is a really friendly convention and there's always someone to chat to.

I got all my stuff together for the Star Wars game and went to the room.

This game is an ongoing campaign which just "happened". Winter StabCon 2016 took place just after the release of "The Force Awakens" and I'd offered a game where we replayed the film with original characters. It was a hoot.

All the players asked me to run a follow up at Summer StabCon 2016, which I did. This one ended up with one of the characters captured by Bounty Hunters so we had to run a rescue mission this time. I've got an ongoing campaign which I never intended.

When I'd arrived on Friday, I'd put up a signup sheet. It was fully presigned but it let the players know when and where the game was taking place and to tick to show me they were there. It also had a slot for reserves. This had worked very well at the summer event when one of the players had been unable to return and we'd taken on an extra person to fill their slot.

BOTH of them were present this time though, so today we had six players. You know how I feel about this - I prefer 5 - but it's a risk you take with cross-convention campaigns. The number of players can slowly creep up.

Even so, the table in the room was still too large so I left a couple of players rearranging things to make it smaller whilst I went to the notice board to see if the Trumpton game had appeared. It had - and I snagged the last slot.

So back to my game - the campaign has:

Bail "Chips" Antilles - cocky pilot, son of Wedge. Played by Allan my Savage Worlds Referee from the Friday campaign. An interesting regular reversal of roles.

Vern - a Mandelorian mercenary (Boba Fett type) played by Bruce. Vern was the character who'd been captured in the last adventure. (I'd pulled a "bait and switch" with Bruce playing an infiltrator wearing Vern's armour for half the game.)

Merric - a strange hooded figure with unusual abilities (NOT a nascent Jedi, no way) - played by Alex W.

Wolo - an albino Wookie ('nuff said) - created by Alex P.

Ilsa - an ex-slave, ex-entertainer, ex-scavenger, force sensitive twi'lek (tentacle headed)  engineer - run by Ian.

Hannah Tandeen - an up and coming pilot - played by Jane, who'd stepped in for Allan in the previous game. Ian had made laminated, illustrated,  standups for all of the characters for the previous session and didn't disappoint this time - presenting Jane with a choice of images for Hannah.

Not wanting Bruce to be on the sidelines for too long, the game started with the group being lured into a blatant trap by their enemies, using Vern as bait. There was some competition between Hannah and Chips as to who would be the best pilot for the Millenium Falcon which resulted in some remarkable ship piloting. This also freed Chips up to man the ship's guns. Imagine Han Solo in the pilots seat and at the guns at the same time. Throw in Vern's escape plan and Merric's force abilities detecting the "not a Sith" character leading the opposing forces, and the first scene was a slight anti-climax. The characters blew up the bad guys and escaped the planet-swallowing living asteroid in short order.

There then came a subplot I wasn't expecting with the dying "not a Sith"'s Force Ghost being prevented from merging with the Force due to Merric and Ilsa's untrained interference. Somehow it became linked  Ilsa. She decided the only person to cure her was Luke Skywalker and set off on a solo quest to find him, with her worried companions in hot pursuit. I hadn't planned to be playing Luke in the game. I suspect Mark Hamill will do a better job in this year's film.

With Ilsa cured - and suitably chided for but not trusting her team mates - we turned to the main plot I'd prepared. This was about an AI fed up with all the Wars caused by organic life that wanted to bring peace to the galaxy. In retrospect a complete rip-off of the film "I, Robot" - though I didn't realise it when I designing or running it. This proved a bit cerebral with me rather over-egging the AI's resources and making rather too good a job of arguing its case. In the end the team came up with a clever co-ordinated takedown rather than the pitched battle against droids I'd expected, with Bruce pointing out that he hadn't rolled a single combat die for Vern throughout the game.

Like any good referee, I know when I get things right (Saturday night's game, for instance) and I beat myself up when a game doesn't come up to expectations. This was one of those. It simply wasn't good enough. 6/10, could do better.

These guys have committed to return to this campaign time and again, putting their trust in me and ready to roleplay their characters to the hilt. They deserve consistent excellence.

For summer StabCon, I've taken all of their email addresses. I'll message them about how they see their characters developing. Then rather than use my usual hand-written notes I'll actually sit down to type up the adventure in advance, as if I was preparing it for publication, ensuring I build in regular action beats and spotlight opportunities for every character.

I'll then Referee it standing up.

Lunch was the convention sandwiches and pork pies. I made a point of signing up for the next StabCon. As I said £15. It's always best to do it before leaving.

Normally I'd leave to catch the train at this point but for the first time ever I had an afternoon game. Trumpton!

The rules for this are a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of a set of typewritten rules from 1986. If you're familiar with the "Trumptonshire" trilogy of children's series - Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Chigley - you might be a bit thrown finding fighting skills and "espionage" as options on the character sheets. But, apparently, the Baker has suffered a series of assassination attempts from the Gingerbread Hitman.

As you'll guess, this was a gonzo game in the vein of Toon. I played the local clockmaker in a scenario called "The 3:10 to Chigley". Some low down varmint teddy bear cowboys had stolen all the honey and it was our job to retrieve it and get it to the biscuit factory.

It all ran exactly as you'd expect. Broad humour and terrible puns. Much laughter and a great way to end the convention.

I've always thought I could squeeze in a game on the Sunday afternoon at StabCon and this proved me right.

StabCon remains the busy, good value, friendly event it always has been. This year's seemed slightly superior to me in subtle little ways. I love StabCon and - more importantly - StabCon loves me back. Everyone should have a StabCon in their life.

Choose Your Adventure - Geek Retreat Sunday 29th January

I'll be at Geek Retreat as soon as the doors open on Sunday 29th January ready to run tabletop Roleplaying Games for all comers, from complete beginners up to any level of experience. We'll start the game as soon as we get two or more players with people dropping in and out throughout the day whenever they want. If you play for more than two hours, we'll "level up" your characters every two hours or so. Steampunk, Fantasy, SciFi, Superheroes or Horror - the first players to the table get to choose the genre for the day.

Spaghetti ConJunction

T Minus one month and counting to Spaghetti Conjunction to be held on Saturday, February 11th, 2017 and we have plenty of news to tell you.

Game Announcements
We have the first eight games announced for the day. If you want to run a game on the day, please let us know so that we can post the details.

Here is what we have so far:

The Great Martian Tripod Race (The Code of Steam and Steel) (Simon Burley)
Kong Island Rangers (The Code of Shōjo and Shōnen) (Simon Burley)
28 Trains Later (I Love the Corps) (Chris Dean)
Pandora's Box (I Love the Corps) (Chris Dean)
The Wounded Wisp (Pathfinder) (Morning and Afternoon - Michael Cheung)
Perfect World (Dead of Night) (James Mullen)
The Score (The 'Hood (PbtA) (James Mullen)

Charity Support
Both the profits and the raffle money raised from Spaghetti Conjunction will go to its designated charity, Birmingham Children's Hospital Charity (https://www.bch.org.uk/). We already have a handful of raffle prizes that will be available on the day, but we are looking for more. If you can offer a raffle prize, please let us know.

News to come
We are working on the website and will have that running shortly. We will also have more information about the menu available at Geek Retreet on the day.

Winter StabCon 2017 - Saturday

I woke early and went to breakfast at about 7:30. As I'd hoped, it was fine - a good, standard hotel buffet breakfast. Needless to say I filled my boots. Once a student always a student. After breakfast I nipped over the road to the nearby convenience store to use the cash machine, before going to my booked room to set up for my first game. The room was set up with two large arrangements made of smaller tables,  but I pulled a couple out separately to play on. I prefer a more intimate set up these days and don't use figures or maps.

My first game was a THE BLACK HACK run through of the classic scenario Spiderbite from an old issue of White Dwarf. Basically old school D&D on speed. It gives you the nostalgia, the feelings you used to have, without all the unnecessary crunch. All five player slots were filled with a mixture of old friends and new - young and those who remember the old days. Sarah made Ekaterina - one of those high Dex thieves that do so well a first level in TBH but who get caught up quickly as levels advance. Peter's Len Cohen and Lisa's Grimthorpe were the party's fighters. Phil made Faden, the Cleric and Karl was Conrad the Conjurer. From the moment the two fighters pursued a fleeing native through the forest and got stuck in quicksand we were off. This was DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS like we used to play. Massive fun. Faden had a bit of a torrid time, running out of cures early on. But he redeemed himself with some clever tactical play later. Grimthorpe was even unluckier and couldn't hit anything. In fact the only roll she made successfully was to stand her ground when spirits scared off the rest of the party. She then decided to proceed on her own.........

A snap decision at the end by Ekaterina nearly resulted in a TPK. (She thought showing the golden mask would cow the natives. They thought it showed the party had decapitated their King.) However, these players proved more adept at tactical retreat than combat and everyone except Grimthorpe made it out. I'll say it again, massive fun.

During the game I was visited by a fellow referee. He offers to run the "Trumpton" RPG at every StabCon. Last time out I'd commented how much fun it looked and he'd remembered. He took the time to seek me out and ask what time it was convenient to play. What a nice guy!

Lunch was Convention sandwiches (£1.50) and pork pies (2 for £1. Do you see a pattern here?)

In the afternoon I ran a scenario called "Kong Island". This was a new run out for my Anime rules. I've basically had these more or less written for 2 years but they were put on a back burner whilst I developed MANIFOLD. With that game finished and gestating in a drawer, I now wanted to revisit the anime game. I need to decide whether to go Kickstarter with it or not. As I've run the in-book scenario a few times and I know I get returning players at StabCon, I needed a new adventure. So King Kong with Mecha, basically.

Ollie was a bit late so I allowed a reserve player to join the game. When Ollie arrived, I took the decision to run the game for 6 players. So we tacked on another table. I normally prefer to play with 3-5 players but have learnt to relax these limits recently. Strangely I've found that a game you usually run for 5 players can be done successfully with 6 as long as you referee it standing up. I don't know why it works like this, but it does.

Jane made a rock musician/bard with strange abilities who'd heard rumours of the island and was wondering if it could help her with her quest to come to terms with those abilities. Consequently she underwrote a scientific expedition, led by a famous botanist - played by John. She also took along her bodyguard - Mike's character - and her Male Model boyfriend - run by Ollie. The team was rounded out by Karl's ships' engineer and Bruce's intrepid journalist. There was also a crew, of course, but how long to you think they survived?

As you may know, part of my lightweight "code" games is players writing subplots for each other. Thinking King Kong type anime Bruce thought "Mechagodzilla" and came up with a very in-trope plot. It turned out that Ollie's male model was actually a secret agent working for alien space-monkies, tasked with preparing the world for invasion.

This was weird enough, but Mike soon managed to top it. Within minutes of the start of the game - during the natives' attack on the ship (you've seen the film, right?) -Mike rolled a double on his 2d6. In my games this allows players to choose from a range of interesting options. One of these is the option to introduce a new plot element. Mike obviously had a clear idea about the scenario he wanted to play in. He then entertained us with with a vivid description of a massive meteor cum battered alien ship, barrelling down from the sky and crashing into the sea by the island, creating a huge tidal wave driving the ship onto shore. He then went on to describe the gargantuan tentacled alien creature rising out of the sea on towering cybernetic tripod legs and storming into onto shore in search of..........

This apparition was quickly dubbed "Trithulhu". Mike then went on to roll double after double. And the game got wacky.

Throw in Ollie deciding that the giant creatures on the island resembled giant "Jigglypuffs" ("Bigglypuffs") and the huge robot vs monster battles took on a distinctly cartoon edge.

Poor Karl had his engineer captured and used as a sacrifice by the natives pretty early on. Though he escaped and had plenty to do, he spent most of the game just missing the rest of the group and only caught up with the main group towards the end.

The basic rules worked fine but I was trialling a new iteration for the "top end" of the anime fights - where the characters mechs merge into a single, giant figure - and the arithmetic got a bit crunchy. I need to refine this a bit more, so I now know what I'm going to be offering for one of my games at Concrete Cow.

Overall, great inventive players who really chewed up the scenery. Could my day get any better?

For tea I ordered the Fish and Chips. Under a fiver, perfectly adequate and arriving in double quick time. The peas didn't resemble any type of pea I'd ever eaten, however, clumping together in strange clusters which defied the laws of physics. (I suspect a microwave may have been involved.) But they seemed edible.

I set up for my third game, a horror game called "Flight into Oblivion". I'd designed this scenario for Seven Hills, using my MANIFOLD system, but it had garnered no players. The same thing happened at Concrete Cow. I'd considered resigning it unrun but had converted it to THE CTHULHU HACK rules and offered it at the Continuum convention (where anything with Cthulhu in its title gets players) with massive success. I wanted to practice running TCH as I'm using it as part of my "Choose your adventure" initiative to introduce new players to horror RPGs. So I decided to give it another run out.

When I posted the details of my games on Facebook, however, players who'd played in a horror game I'd run at Winter StabCon 2016 commented. They were very complimentary about that previous game and asked if this one was being run under the same rules. ("2d6 shenanigans" was the phrase used.) So I switched back to the MANIFOLD system.

As it turned out, four out of the five players who turned up to play had been in that other adventure 12 months ago. I've never thought of myself as a horror referee but this kind of vote of confidence really gives your confidence a boost.

The adventure starts in the first class compartment of a jumbo jet on the overnight flight from New York to Birmingham as the characters awake from a truncated night of sleep and rapidly turns weird. Martin's famous cricketer and Gus's feted Basketball player shared cabin space with Bruce's lauded Doctor and Ollie's disgruntled 17 year old - bring shuttled between rich but separated parents. The group was rounded out by Matt's perfume detective. You heard me right - perfume detective, a character whose olfactory abilities were so acute he'd been co-opted to Interpol. THAT'S why I prefer players to make their own characters rather than giving them pregens. I would never come up with such an inventive idea myself. And, yes, that's the same Bruce and Ollie who'd played in the Anime game. More support for my refereeing and much appreciated. I hope they weren't too confused by the similarity and subtle differences between my "code" rules and MANIFOLD.

One of the reasons that I didn't garner casual sign ups to this game is that it's a very very weird psychological horror mystery with a really cool - I think - idea behind it. There's several moving parts for the referee to keep track of and it slowly gets weirder and weirder as the characters feel they're descending into madness. If I tell you anything about the plot I could never run it again. So I can't give anything but the vaguest details on a sign up sheet. It's sort of my "6th sense". It takes elements from films like Ninth Gate, Dogma, Constantine, Source Code and the Langoliers. I decided that I'd drink for this scenario, and worked my way through four pints as we played, getting merry enough to play the final scenes with the frenzy they deserved whilst still keeping track of all the underlying individual character subplots. I was actually really quite proud of my refereeing here.

I'm actually thinking I might write up this scenario as a system-agnostic adventure. It's the themes that are important here and it'd be easy to convert it to pretty much any horror RPG.

Frenetic and Fun as it was, even including character creation the scenario only ran for a little over three hours. I'm finding that's the length many of my convention scenarios are coming in at these days. It meant that we finished well before midnight which everyone seemed happy with. Especially Martyn, who'd shared the marathon Savage Worlds session with me the night before.

Winter StabCon 2017 - Friday

If you've read my "Conventional Thinking" books, you'll know all about StabCon. It's a residential board game convention that's been running for donkey's years in Stockport. Running twice per year and attended mainly by people who have been returning for years - often decades - it's only ever been advertised by word of mouth.  Until someone set up a Facebook page last year and the secret got out. It's now running at capacity - which is about 300 people. Most of these come to play boardgames - usually into the wee small hours and often involving alcohol of some kind. However, there's a strong RPG track. Though there's little formal organisation time wise, the RPG referees seem to stick to fairly typical slots and getting into games is via signup sheets.

I've been attending for a couple of years now, and my weekend is bookended by two ongoing campaigns - Friday evening and Sunday morning. In between I offer to run three games on the Saturday.

In the run up there was some activity on Facebook but far less than you'd get for most similar events. People were saying what board games they were bringing and asking what games people wanted to play. People were offering lifts in cars. Casual viewers were asking about the event - what it was, what it cost, how they signed up etc. These last enquiries didn't tend to get much in the way of response. One of the organisers does come onto the Facebook page now, but this mainly to remind people to book up and tell people that the Saturday of the event is fully booked.

I used the Facebook page to blatantly promote the games I was intending to run and received some very positive responses, mainly from people who'd played in some of my previous games at StabCon. (Words like "awesome" were used. I respond very well to flattery.)

StabCon officially starts at 2:00pm on Friday but I'm at work. So take all my gear into work, wear slightly more casual than normal clothes, and set off straight after work. There were people at the hotel playing games in the morning, and posting pictures on Facebook. That's how keen people are.

I bought an advance off peak open return to Stockport. C.£36.  This gave a me a choice of trains and, getting out of work on the dot, I was able to catch an earlier train than expected. Though my phone app said it was standing room only, and the train was very busy, I easily found an unreserved seat. The journey was very straightforward and I got into Stockport early evening. I caught a taxi to the hotel - £5  - and checked in.

Once you're signed up for StabCon - which I do at the end of the previous one before I leave (£15 for two days) - the organisers sort everything and book rooms for everyone. So it's just a case of turning up to reception and giving your name. I paid a bit more this time. It used to be less than £80 for the two nights. This time it was just over £100. Part of this is due to the fact that I was braving the hotel breakfast for the first time. The rest was probably due to a slight increase following the hotel's recent improvements (cf. Conventional Thinking Volume 2.) These improvements are why I felt safe risking the hotel breakfast. The hotel is basic but clean, cheap and well run. StabCon remains the cheapest residential convention in the country, for me.

My room was at the back of the hotel and accessed by a lift. There were stairs but the lift was nearer. Wow! What a lift! If you'd told me it was made in the 1930's I wouldn't be surprised. Manual doors, one of them that inner grate thing you see in old films. I can't believe it's still in use. It's a real experience.

I dropped my stuff off in my room and went down to sign in to the convention itself. This is in a large event room at the back of the hotel. When I arrived every table was filled with hoards of smiling board gamers. Signing in is easy. You say your name and get given a pin badge with your name and the word "StabCon" on. They manually make over 300 individualised name badges for each convention. That's real commitment.

The aged but still not too battered StabCon noticeboard was there. It was easier to use this year because a separate noticeboard has been set up for general announcements and almost everyone was using the A5 StabCon sign up sheet format rather than their own flashy A4 ones. There are no rules. There's a section of the board for Friday, one for Saturday and one for Sunday. But there are no official slots, you decide what times you want your games to run. Friday night seemed to be a bit thin on the ground.

I'd always had an issue with Friday night because by the time I arrived everyone else had stuck up their signup sheets and snaffled all the available players. However, there were often no games left for me to sign up to. A couple of years I lucked into a Savage Worlds game run by a guy called Allan and this has morphed into an ongoing campaign set in the world of Gemmel's Drennai novels. And this has sorted my problem. I just turn up and I've got a game to play in ready to go.

I stuck up three sign up sheets for Saturday and one for Sunday. This last was for my ongoing Star Wars campaign and was already fully signed up but I use it to allow the players to tick to show they're there and to allow reserves in case of no shows. A couple of my other games had presigns from interest shown on Facebook. Naughty I know but I respond well to flattery. Then I went to the desk to book which room I was playing in and wrote them on the sheets.

I went to the bar. The bar in the room is small and has one or - at most - two staff. There is a bar in the main hotel but the one in the event room serves the special convention food menu so we all use that. I ordered a pizza, £7ish, upgraded to 12" for £2 more and a lint of lager, well under £3. I took a table number stand and my pint and sat at one of the few spare places in the room to wait for Allan to be free and my food to arrive. When it did, it was tasty and extremely substantial.

I'd had a tiring week so rather than drink throughout the evening, I used the free coffee facilities provided to keep me topped up. I also bought s couple of muffins (2 for £1), one for pudding and one to eat back in my room. I noticed that the amount of alcohol bring consumed was a lot less than previous StabCons. There was lots of water and soft drinks around.

The Savage Worlds game was great. Allan is a good, well prepared and extremely personable referee. This group plays together every Friday night at StabCon and we know each other and our characters very well. We had great fun taking a castle pursuing a high priest and his "joinings" across the country to catch him before he could make a political assassination. Because us overthinking a couple of things, doing loads of Roleplaying and Savage Worlds big battles can go on a bit (you roll to hit and then have to roll to beat toughness, so you can hit but do no damage.....) the game overran and it was 1 am before we all got to bed. What with the excitement of the night's game and my thoughts being full of the games I was going to run on Saturday - which were all already fully booked out before I went to bed - I had difficulty getting to sleep.