Saturday 11th October - Travel and arrival
I’d taken a leisurely approach to getting to the Concrete Cow convention in Milton Keynes the previous weekend and missed grabbing a breakfast on my way in. So I got up early - 6am -dressed and grabbed my pre packed Furnace #10 bag and set out.
Macdonalds breakfast on the way (other options are available but I’m easily pleased). Caught my train c.8am and was at Sheffield station well before 9:30am with the convention due to start at 10am.
Traditionally I’ve always caught a taxi from the station to the venue but now I’ve got my free old person bus pass I’d looked into the possibility of catching public transport. I could have done this but with only half an hour to play with, I wanted to be sure. So Taxi it was.
Though it’s been five years since I’ve visited the Garrison hotel, the years fell away. I confidently went in through the front door, through the empty bar and up the stairs to the room, where I knew everyone would be, to collect my badge and wait for the opening speech.
The room was there, set up for games but it was empty. Clearly the opening ceremony had been moved. I’d just assumed nothing would have changed. I went back downstairs to search for everybody just to find them all trekking into the bar area which had been deserted just a few minutes earlier.
(Long story short: there are usually other events on at the Hotel alongside Furnace. This year there weren’t so the convention has expanded to use the restaurant area as its main base. The organisers had set up there to do sign-ins and introductions but the Staff needed a few minutes to redress it after Breakfast. So everyone rapidly decamped into the bar.)
I swapped a few bot mots with people. Some I haven’t seen for five years, some I’d only seen last weekend.
The welcome was short, humorous and professional. Almost as if the speaker had done this many, many times before. This was the 20th Furnace and much fun was had in the speech from saying everyone was 20th level and (eg) able to cast “Wish” spells.
Then a queue formed for people to collect their free giveaway (another dice tray) and any (REALLY nice) gaming bags they’d ordered. I waited for the queue to die down not realising that I could have gone somewhere else to collect my badge in the meantime. Collecting your (personalised, naturally) badge seems to be all you need to do to sign in.
Given the trouble I’d had getting a slot in the convention, I was disappointed to see some unclaimed badges. I hope all those people were able to inform the organisers in time to allow some people on the reserve list to attend at the last minute.
With all of this I was late getting to my first session.
Session 1: 10:00-13:00 - “Calli’s Heroes” Mongoose Traveller
Over 20 years Furnace had evolved. It not longer tries to slavishly run 3 four hour sessions in a day - which used to be the standard convention model. These days, this first session is timed at 3 hours. However, with the introduction and everything it did start a bit late. One of our players was actually one of the convention organisers who was further delayed by at least one other game failing to run and having to reallocate those players.
(Another disappointment. I hope the Referee concerned had a really good reason for this. I noted they didn’t me to run in a fill-in game…)
So the session was basically two and half hours long. But we had a classic game system, an experienced and well-prepared Referee who’d run the adventure before and an experienced group of great players who made the session an absolute blast.
It was a riff on the film “Kelly’s Heroes” with us as a rag tag group of detached infantry trying to pull off a heist under the noses of both sides in an interstellar war. Because of the quality of, for example, the maps we assumed this was a published scenario rather than one the Referee had designed himself. We urged him publish it. He returned the compliment by noting how we’d made it easier for him to fit it into the reduced time by the way we expertly finessed encounters rather than simply trying to blast our way through everything as previous groups had done.
This game was in the upstairs room. This feels like a set of Nottingham Castle from a classic Robin Hood movie. We were playing on a raised area overlooking the four gaol cells. Each cell had a game in. The raised area had three game tables with screens in between. At the end was a bar (not in use) with an urn of hot water and infinite free coffee supplies. (I’d grabbed a packet of digestives from M&S at Sheffield station for exactly this reason). Also access to toilets and an outdoor balcony/patio area. VERY nice.
Lunchtime: 13:00-14:30
Like many conventions, Furnace seems to have changed things to give longer breaks between meals for eating and socialising. (The shortest break I’ve experienced was 15 minutes. Rush out, grab some fish and chips, run back in.)
Again this is well organised. You can order hotel food from a preset menu prior to the event. This stops 100 “covers” suddenly hitting the kitchen all at once. You finish the game, you come down to he bar area. Your food is all ready, or nearly ready, you collect it and sit down to eat. Good food, lovely surroundings. It’s the sensible way to do it if it suits your budget. The same for Dinner and the Sunday Lunch.
If you’re cost conscious then you nip to Morrisons next door. (McDonalds and KFC are also an easy walk away.)
I had lunch at the Morrisons Cafe. A mistake. (Microwaved) and bought a couple of meal deals. One for my dinner and one in case I needed something in the budget hotel room later.
I spent the rest of my lunchtime quietly at a table in the, now deserted, upstairs room updating my social media.
Session 2: 14:30-18:00 - “The Marque of a Man” Roll out the Guns
Upstairs room again. This time on the next table along.
I hadn’t heard of this game but it was Referred by someone I knew and trusted. I just assumed it was another game he was developing. I expected three and a half hours of pirate fun.
I was wrong. This was actually a legendary older product which he’d managed to acquire on the Internet. He’d decided to give it a try out to see if it was bad as its legend portrayed. Most of the other players were there to find out as well.
He’d also acquired a children’s Pirate Game with a pop up Pirate ship and fluffy cannonballs which he included to sweeten the mix. If we hit the ship with a cannonball, we got a bonus on our die rolls.
The game was a bad as expected. For example, my character started with “an extra rudder”. The referee assured me he’d checked and that was the only reference to rudders in the whole thing. (He gave me an extra fluffy cannonball to compensate.)
Not at all what I was expecting, this was a ”it’s so bad it’s good” experience with an expert Referee making the best of a bad thing and expert players chewing the scenery, no matter how bad it tasted.
Dinner: 18:00-19:30
I was beginning to miss having a room to go to and drop my bag. Lugging everything around with me was becoming a bit of a bind. I ate my Morrisons meal deal quietly on my own in the upstairs room informing everyone online how good the Furnace convention was. Most people were probably down in the bar enjoying a pint, a conversation and their pre-ordered meal.
Session 3: 19:30-Midnight - “Wight Wedding” Daggerheart
I’ve always looked askance at Session 3 of Furnace. Some Referees - usually running Call of Cthulhu - seemed to take it as an opportunity to run a marathon game running into the wee small hours of the morning, which made them and their players tired for the following day. The organisers seem to have tried to accommodate this by making it a massive four and a half hour slot.
This is the game I’d been personally invited into. It was a game set in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld. There have been two official Discworld TTRPGs. The first was too complex and mechanical. The more recent one is barely a game at all. More a framework to allow improvisational theatre. In my opinion, of course, but also the opinion of my friend who was running the game. He’d decided to mate the setting with the fashionable new TTRPG called Daggerheart. It was good match.
I assumed he wouldn’t want to run until Midnight but he did. However a player who was driving into Sheffield after the game offered to give me a lift into the City Centre. Result!
The setup for the game was pure Pratchett. A serious contemporary issue looked at through the lens of fantasy. In this case a riff on Beauty and the Beast but Beauty had been killed by her father before she could bring dishonour on the family by marrying the Beast. We were the group of characters hired by the Beast to bring his bride back to him so that they could still marry and lift his curse.
I was the Undergraduate Necromancer from Unseen University. As an example I was provided with a character sheet, the Daggerheart “side car”, all the myriad cards my character needed, standees for my character and the pet hamster he kept resurrecting, a wizard’s hat to wear and a 2ft tall rat skeleton to sit on the table next to me to represent my pet - “Buttons”. Because the Referee been forced to use a rat skeleton and the standee also showed a rat, I said that Buttons was clearly a “Siberian Hamster” - a joke that flew over the heads of the younger players.
Every player was given similar props. My friend was over-prepared.
The game was great. We collected all the items needed for the ritual and raised the bride as asked. Mostly.
But that wasn’t the end. She had a list of requirements she wanted before she could get married. She was a real Bridezilla. One of her requests was wedding guests. This required us being given yet another list of people we had to find and invite - including warring families and family members. If was like a Russian Doll scenario. The more lists we completed, the more lists appeared.
Throw in monster hunters sent to kill the Beast (and some of our party who - technically - counts as monsters) and it was great fun. The fastest for and half hours I’ve ever played.
As I said I had a lift to my hotel and slept soundly.
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