Furnace - Sheffield 11th and 12th October 2025. (3)

 Sunday Morning

Being the cheapest kind of chain hotel, there were literally no facilities in my room beyond a bed and a shower. I couldn’t even make myself a cup of coffee. Get up, get dressed, get out.

I’d looked up the nearest MacDonalds on my iPhone map (I’m easily pleased) but in real life it was even nearer than it had looked on the screen. I’d previously browsed the Internet to find a connecting bus service from my hotel to the Garrison. Double checking, I discovered that the service ran intermittently on a Sunday morning with the only viable one leaving its stop in under ten minutes! So bolted my porridge, grabbed my Macmuffin and rushed to the stop.

Again, this was much nearer than it had looked on the map. Turns out I hadn’t needed to rush.

I know I’m old but I’m still stunned that the maps on the iPhone show a little blue dot to represent my position and every single bus stop on the journey. Getting of at the correct stop was easy and, again, everything turned out to be a lot closer than I expected. I was dropped off on the other side of the Morrison car park from the Garrison.

I was slightly miffed to pass a Pub advertising Rooms. Why had this not shown up on any Internet searches when I was looking for somewhere to stay before the event? It would have been so convenient. 

I got to the Garrison early and sat in the bar, updating my social media on my phone, waiting for the hotel breakfast to end and the restaurant area to be made ready for the morning games. As I sat there people walked past, I said hello but they didn’t bother me. One old convention friend, though, made a point of sitting down for a chat. Luckily, he didn’t push things. A fun five minute chat comparing conventions and things and he left. I really appreciated that. If you see me sitting alone in the breaks in a convention, I really don’t want get involved in wider socialising but I like it when someone cares enough to sit down and just have a brief little natter. Thanks mate!

Session 4: 10:00-13:00 - “Team Force vs Monsters” Kaiju Fighting RPG

That isn’t the name of the game. The Referee was very hush hush about the real name. Apparently there’s going to a big announcement in the near future. We were playtesting a soon to be published professional game.

In a world bedevilled by giant monsters, we were team sent in to find out why the team sent to decommission a recently attacked outlying base had suddenly gone silent. The characters were perfect Anime stereotypes. We had the ubiquitous well organised and experienced Referee and excellent set of players.

This new game has a diceless, card-drawing mechanic which doesn’t suit my tastes but as we were just there to deal with Kaiju it didn’t derail things for me.

This game took place in the main restaurant area which, as you’d expect, is a nice bright open place to play.

Lunchtime 13:00-14:30 - Lunchtime

I took advantage of the longer lunchtime to explore past Morrisons to see if there were any other eating places. What I found was a beautiful set of historical buildings and a small shopping centre that would not look out of place in Disneyland. Unfortunately, the shops themselves were very run down. There was nowhere to eat so I had a Morrison meal deal on my own in the upstairs room again. I should have gone to Macdonalds or KFC.

An organiser made a point of finding me to make sure I didn’t mis44445asa6daas the raffle. I told exactly what I think of raffles at TTRPG conventions. He took it in good spirits.

I made sure I went down to Hotel Reception - surprisingly well hidden unless you know where to look - to make sure had a room booked for Furnace 2026.

Session 5: 14:30 to 18:30 - “Hollow World” Shiver

I double checked my train home and found I’d been a bit over confident in booking it. It was due to depart before 7pm so I was concerned I’d have a rush to get the station from the hotel. So I asked the incredibly helpful bar staff to book me a taxi for 6:30 and informed my Referee that I’d need to dash off as soon as the session was over.

I’m not sure what the overall genre for this game is supposed to be - blockbuster films or horror? But this was the Starter Set which was basically a scene for scene rip-off of Jurassic Park. It’s like the authors were asking to be sued.

Which was great, of course. 

The game aspired to high production values with full colour folding character information leaflets/playbooks, custom dice etc. Unfortunately it had had insufficient quality control and here were simply too many production errors evident.

The game system was simple and elegant. 6 sided dice. 6 characteristics. 6 symbols on the dice, each one matching a characteristic. For example, if you were asked to make a Grit (Strength) check, you rolled dice to see how many times Grit came up. A character with high Grit would roll more dice.

I felt I’d been playing rather cautious taciturn characters all weekend so decided to go all out for my last game. I chose to play the character who archetype was “The Fool”. I was an empty-headed social media influencer and activist. They thought they were a successful investigative reporter but they succeeded, more often than not, by sheer dumb luck.

I had great fun right up to the point where the monorail crashed. As all the other characters escaped mine decided she had enough time to film everyone else’s  escape before making her own. When rolling 5 dice didn’t come up with a single Luck face, she fell to her doom. (She deserved it to be honest.)

The survivors then ran across one of the park’s surviving scientists (my new character) and the attempt escape the rampaging dinosaurs and erupting volcano continued. Great fun ending in a total party kill..

Journey Home: 18:30 onwards

The game finished early so I arranged for the taxi to come before the booked time and arrived at Sheffield station well before my train. There  were no delays on the train and I was home in time for my wife to ask me to pick up somethings from the supermarket in my way home.