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.
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