Continuum 2025:  Fri 25th July - Mon 28th July

Friday 25th July

Continuum has been running for (I think) more than four decades. It’s a private and slightly insular convention. Friendly and massively welcoming but one of those “if you know about it you know about it (and keep coming back)” jobs.

It started out as a convention devoted to Runequest - more specifically, I think, Glorantha, the world of Runequest - then branched out into wider Chaosium games - specifically Call of Cthulhu. Then into a more esoteric range of games. There is not a big D&D presence here. Thee are several obscure games or games being play tested or demonstrated.

Alongside the TTRPGs there have always been other activities. LARPing seems very popular here and there are seminars and social events (none of which I can tell you about because I always ignore them.)

For decades the event ran on alternate years at Leicester University but last year it moved to Conference Centre in between Bedford and Milton Keynes. (If there’s a Bedford University, it’s on that campus.)

There’s a large committee that’s been organising this convention years - and it shows. There is an informative web-site (which has barely changed in decades). You have to register, preferably booking accomodation on-site. Very affordable. 

As of writing 160 spaces were available 155 of which we booked. You can just turn up on the day a get a day pass but this isn’t the norm. 

You’re encouraged to submit games in advance, though you don’t have to. These are then posted on the web-site. Signing up for games happens at the convention but if you submit a game you can prebook a slot. (When I went to do this, I couldn’t choose which games I wanted to prebook. There were too many good ones. I decide to leave it to fate.)

The convention has 8 slots starting at 2pm on Friday and ending on 12 midnight Sunday. This is a unique thing about Continuum. It’s a weekend convention with 8 slots. You’re encouraged to stay Sunday night and leave Monday morning. There’s no incentive - other than your job - to leave on Sunday.

Having submitted my games and booked my room - both incredibly easy processes - there was very little else I had to do.  This convention is so well organised.

I caught a train the Milton Keynes. Ate a quick lunch at the station. There is a bus up to the venue. This allegedly takes just over half an hour and costs in the region of £5 or you can get a taxi for £15. I took the latter.

I arrived at the convention at 1pm. Like Stabcon (cv) it’s mainly aging types (like me) who’ve been doing this since time immemorial. (There are people here who wrote for White Dwarf magazine in the 1980’s or earlier.) But - also like Stabcon - the registration desk was staffed by young people. There was a free commemorative d6, personally printed name tag and choice of coloured lanyards - depending on whether you were willing to be photographed or not.

Then I went to the noticeboard to find a game to play for the afternoon from  2pm.

ALL the games were full! 

I bumped into the guy in charge of the games and offered to run an extra session of one of my games. I offered him a signup sheet (I had a spare ready) but the convention prints standard ones for all the games. He quickly printed one and showed me to my room.

I quickly clocked the flip chart, whiteboard and pens on the table.

I set up and waited. Despite the last minute, I got 3 excellent players - who’d also found nothing to play or been reserves in other games.

I ran my “wake up amnesiac in a wrecked spaceship” game I’d first run at StabCon. It had started well but fizzled out a bit. This one started well and ended up with a PCs fomenting mutiny on an alien spaceship. It was much better. It runs out  a whiteboard is a great way to describe how spaceships are manoeuvring in relation to each other. Fun.

The slot was due to end at 6pm but we finished a bit early. I went o check into my room. Check in was an easy as picking up a preprepared envelope and going to my room. Great organisation.

Room was very well appointed. 

At 6:30pm the two noticeboards get turned around to reveal the signup sheets for the Friday evening slot and the Saturday morning slot. Apart from pre-signups given to Referees offering to run games, there is no prebooking. A large group of polite middle-aged men hover around and descend up the boards determined to sign into the games they want. They don’t seem to sign up to games unless some other people have signed up first. (Or if they have to crouch down.)

So if you don’t join the first (polite but awkward) crush by the time you get there most of the games are fully signed up and the other sheets (usually the ones at the bottom of the board) are completely blank. By the time I got there, few spaces were left in the popular games. I saw a slot in a game I vaguely remembered looking at on the website and signed up.

Moving to the Saturday games it was the same situation but I saw a Savage Worlds game (a system I’ve played) so I signed up for that without checking any of the other details.

I can’t help but wonder how female delegates feel about the signup process. I didn’t see any in the crush.

We can debate sign-up systems endlessly but I feel Continuum might benefit from adopting the system used at most Garrison conventions such as Furnace. It’d be a lot of work but be fairer on everyone.

Though the final slot of the day starts at 8pm, dinner doesn’t start until 7pm. It was a barbecue outside. Very pleasant apart from the wasps but it didn’t start on time. Then there was a one queue to get served followed by a long queue to collect out cups of ice-cream for pudding. So getting to start games at 8pm was not a trivial procedure.

For the evening game I played in a Savage Worlds game about American preteenagers scouting in a forest and coming across supernatural stuff. Great referee, great players, great props. Fun. Luckily finished a bit before midnight. 

It was Friday night and I’d already Refereed one game and played in one. Continuum was off to a good start.