Grand Tribunal 16th-17th August

I was unable to attend Grand Tribunal this year - choosing to attend AireCon NorthWest instead. However, my friend Shankar did go and has sent me this fascinating report. Thanks!

Saturday 

Looking forward to a week-end of TTRPGs I got to the Grand Tribunal, loosely based around the Ars Magica game system, in Cheltenham at 9 AM on Saturday morning. It took less than 55 mins (and 50 miles) drive from Birmingham. 

There was roadside car parking space. I met one of the organisers just opening up the hall. People wandered in over the next half an hour, so really things got started about 9:30-ish. 
There was plenty of tea and coffee and sweet treats from the organisers who seemed determined we would all be happy and well looked after. The Web page is really informative with lots of local knowledge as to travel option, where to stay and points of interest. Andrew had even taken Monday off to show people from further afield the historical monuments of Gloucestershire. Above and beyond has to be the summary.

There does not appear to be a formal signup process for games. With a relatively small numbers participants and a amenable group of GMs each session is sorted out at the start.
The GMs have usually prepared in advance and line up and do a pitch of what the adventure will be about and what system and how many players. Then in surname alphabetical order (reversed at next game) people can chose the GM. There are 3 rooms. One small and 2 larger - hall size. Plenty of tables and seating. Because numbers are small there are no issues with hearing but it could be noisier if there were significantly more participants. There is an attached kitchen with tea, coffee, and biscuits etc.

As it was my first time, I decided to forgo the Freeform Ars Magica LARP game, though, as an old LARPer, I was intrigued Maybe next year. I thought I’d stick something a little bit more conventional.
The first game was a Brancalonia (spaghetti low-fantasy DnDesque RPG) adventure by Kyrie: "A Heist Most Holy". Ran from around 10 AM - 1PM

We met our knaves’ guild leader in a tavern. He had got into multiple debts through gambling and wanted us to raise some money fast by finding some relics which he could sell. He had a secret map. Set upon by a band of rival thugs who tried to take the map. A bar-room brawl ensued from which we emerged victorious with the map. 

However, the map showed a relic to be found many weeks away through perilous terrain. We decided we would avoid the peril by robbing the relics from the Vatican crypts & then try to sell it back to them. We had to find access to the crypts, which we did by conning a somewhat innocent pastor of a very small, out of the way church. 

Thus having gained access to the crypts; we came across two guards and a bloody fight ensured. It was a struggle till with a critical roll led to the instant death of one of the guards and the overpowering of the other one. We took their guards' uniforms and marched forward. Unfortunately, we seemed to be finding multiple instances of the missing holy bits of the relic whilst the rest of the body was still there. This went on for a little while till we eventually detected a very high concentration of holy magic, which we assumed to be the robbers with their collection of relics. We went forth to relieve them of their booty. . . . . . . . 
We broke for lunch. I'm trying to be healthy at least on Saturday and decided to bring along my chicken soup for lunch.

For the afternoon session I joined a game with Chris. This was an Ars Magica based adventure, "The Last King” a quest for the crown of the emperor. This was to restore balance to the world after portals opened and admitted evil to the realm.

We started out by introducing new personality traits for each other’s characters. There were quite a few fun ones; including CJ’s bard with pride in his enormous instrument, which led to a lot of double-entendres during the adventure and many musical references, and the mage who had a conflicted good versus evil personality. The adventure started a tavern where the more musical of the group regaled the patrons to slow applause.

The adventure rolled through an abandoned keep with an Orc infestation where we found use for the bard's huge trombone which he revealed mounted on the back of an ass. Then we went on to a border town which was heavily fortified against the demons from the portal. Onwards to the portal where we found the crown to be suspended between two ice towers holding the portal open. We ascended the tower and onto the perilous ice arch joining the towers. Our thief used rope to walk perilously out on the archway and retrieve the crown by shooting an arrow on a string through the crown. 

Once we had recovered the crown the towers began to spontaneously disassemble. In the chaos the magic user decided that he would take it for himself to bend reality to his will. But while he was doing so, the cleric struck him down from below the knees, and the crown bounced down the steps, temporarily landing on a donkey's head and reality shifted back to that of the donkey, which was not that much different from the current reality. The cleric caught up with the crown, took it off the donkey, put it on his head, restored the integrity of the tower which was crumbling, and then banished the crown to 100 yards underground somewhere on the earth, so that it could not be abused by any human beings. It was a great adventure, lots of laughter and lots of fun.

There was an evening tea and raffles and there were many prizes and the raffle raised over £220 towards the upkeep of the hall where we were playing. There were many prizes to be had and this was followed by fish and chips at the local takeaway some of which was pre-ordered. I had a mixed kabab (£7.70) which was OK. Large and half finished.

Then onwards to the evening session, which ran from 7:00 to 11:00. This was another Ars Magica adventure set in Florence. This time with three junior wizards left in charge by the senior wizards, having to investigate the unusual crumbling of all the stone structures within the city. There were a few stone structures that were left intact, and we suddenly discovered that this was due to Pisa magically attacking Florence and that a small army of mercenaries and peasant levies were coming our way with a siege tower. One of the flame mages went out towards the army and managed to disable the tower using magical means. Unfortunately, when the tower was disabled, they attempted to repair it, which led to the unnecessary death of four of the repair people. 

The rest of the army continued to march towards the city of Florence. The local townspeople had prepared the city's bridges to be burned so as to avoid the whole of the city being invaded. As the army approached the city, one of the other wizards transformed into the form of a lion to attack. The tower retreated backwards to Pisa for repairs, whilst one of our wizards and the guild master of the city of Florence negotiated with the army to get them to withdraw for a large sum of money, which they eventually did, so as to avoid bloodshed on both sides. Thus, we resolved the crisis. It was quite a late evening and by the time I got to bed it was nearly 12 o'clock.

Sunday

Next morning, there was a good breakfast at the Holiday Inn where I was staying. Cost was £152 for the night.

The first session of Sunday morning was Time Watch, running for about three hours. It was run by CJ and we were agents of Time-watch who went around correcting temporal anomalies caused by other people looking to disrupt the timelines.

We initially had been told that we had to save Paul McCartney from dying in a car crash on the newly opened M1 to save the Beatles and avert the onset of Britpop in the 70ties. We transported to the M1 and after setting out some traffic cones to calm the traffic then took a highly skilled shot which took out one of the tyres, bringing the car to a safe halt. We then talked to Paul McCartney, but found that a 16-year-old Yoko Ono, who should still have been in Japan, was already in the car. We knew that somebody else was messing with the timeline. After making sure that Paul McCartney was safely on his way though he did recruiting Buddy Holly one of our members, which would lead to a problem with the timeline. 

On return to base, we were then ordered by Amelia Earhart that somebody had interfered with the JFK shooting timeline leading to JFK surviving. Therefore, she ordered “JFK must die.” We then arrived in Dealey plaza. We discovered that the time criminal AJ Weberman, who had been misinterpreting Dylan's writings by searching through his garbage bins was the one interfering with the timeline. Butch Cassidy used a camouflage mechanism to dress as Lee Harvey Oswald, set up for the shot in a toilet just above where Lee Harvey Oswald took the shot. The rest of the team set up the water ground works which redirected traffic to pass the book depository. Lee Harvey Oswald took the shot, but the first shot missed. Butch Cassidy then took the second shot which actually killed Kennedy. One of the team discovered that Babushka Lady was Marilyn Monroe, who on the side of the road with a cine camera, was actually having a disguised gun to shoot Jackie Onassis because she was still in love with JFK and wanted Onassis out of the way.

There were also some complications with the Rolling Stones as the three tramps arrested at the underpass. We also detained AJ Weberman who was interfering with the timeline. We will return to 2025 for the debrief by Amelia Earhart. We also recruited Marilyn Munro to the Time-watch.

We stopped after lunch. There was an afternoon session, but I was feeling quite tabletop RPG overloaded by then and left for home.

Costs

Total cost was for the convention ticket £20, 

Raffle tickets £10, 

petrol approximately 100 miles (£14), 

£152 for the overnight hotel stay and about £15 for food, giving a total spend of around £210. 

I did four sessions of role-playing games, each lasting about 2.5-3 hours, and that's averages at 11 hours of play. The cost per hour of play was £19/hour.

Could have just done Saturday which would be 3 session = 8 hours. Cost of petrol £14 and Convention fee = £20 and raffle tickets £10 could reduce cost of play to £44 or £5.50/ hour.

Shankar