Continuum 2018

TLDR: excellent long running, well organised, quirky (in a good way) residential convention. Superb organising committee, lovely, amiable fellow attendees. Only ran 3 out of 8 game sessions to small groups. My games don't match the demographic. But all three games were great. Played 4 in  fun games. A win! Should be put on every year.

Continuum is a long running, well organised and successful residential convention in Leicester. It runs from Friday afternoon until Monday morning (Monday is checkout only). As well as TTRPGs it also offers "FreeForms" (sort of LARPS, I think) a small trade hall and a range of seminars. And drinking. It runs once every two years - in the years which are even numbered. It is based in student accommodation at Leicester university.

Because of its long history, the convention has a unique character and a number of traditions, both explicit and covert. It has a large number of Runequest/Gloranthan/Cthulhu games on offer. However, the choice is widening and becoming more eclectic. You still don't see much standard fare in the vein of D&D 5th etc. though.

Booking is done in advance via the website. You pay for the convention and accommodation up front. Spaces are limited - 160 - and it does sell out.

You can offer to run TTRPGs when you arrive at the event itself but the organisers prefer that you submit games in advance so they can promote them on the website, check they've got enough etc. In order to encourage this, you get a free advance sign up in a game you want to play for each game you submit. This is well managed by the convention TTRPG games Tsar, the excellent and personable Keary. There are 8 game slots - 2 on Friday and 3 each on Saturday and Sunday.

Despite the broadening tastes and offerings at Continuum, I'm aware that my games don't match the demographic and expect to struggle to get sign ups. If you're desperate to referee, offering a game set in Glorantha, or a Runequest variant or a Cthulhu game should garner interest, provided it's something new. (This crowd have played all the classic stuff.)

Shortly before the event I discovered that I wasn't at work Monday morning and so was able to change my booking from 2 nights (Friday/Saturday) to three. Basically I paid a £30 supplement to play one extra game.

I was still at work on the Friday. So I missed the first game slot and arrived well in time for the second session. I bought some supplies for my room from the Tesco express next to the station. There's an Asda 10-15  mins walk from the event but it's best to come supplied.

However, like an idiot I'd missed the instructions for the printing and bringing my own signup sheets. Though I'd submitted games for Friday Evening and Saturday morning, the sheets for those slots were already up when I arrived. There were no sign up sheets up for my games. I borrowed a pen and quickly wrote up a handwritten sheet for my Saturday morning game. But it looked rubbish next to some of the other sheets. And people had already signed for games in that slot so I didn't hold out much hope of getting players. A friend advised/forced me not to put up a last minute hand written sheet for my Friday game so I signed up for a game of Lady Blackbird.

I checked into my room and attended the opening ceremony. For tea I ate sandwiches etc I'd brought from Tesco. The accomodation is student rooms. They don't have TV sets and are basic. But they're clean with free wifi and there are shared kitchens. There are no pots and pans, crockery or cutlery but there is a Microwave. If Continuum were every year, I might have remembered this and bought some microwaveable meals from Tesco. I also dropped off some games in the Bring and Buy.

My evening game  turned out to be a good choice. I've heard people raving about Lady Blackbird at convention after convention. I've downloaded it and tried to read it but have never understood it. It was expertly run by Rae - the Wyntercon games Tsar. There was a full table of excellent, fun, players. I played the Amazonian bodyguard. This version of the game tended towards the Steampunk but when one player forgot this and referred to security cameras - suddenly we had a demon-based security system. There were a couple of things that didn't suit my personal tastes. Some people had played the game before and were replaying it. Though it's supposed to be repayable and different every time, I don't think there's enough variation to enable this to happen successfully IMHO. I also found the mismatch between players with experience and those without a bit jarring. The second was the habit that some players (Lloyd, the excellent Expo Games on DemandTsar) seem to have developed of deliberately introducing complications into a game to make it more fun. I'm old school and think complications should come from poor choices, the dice or the Referee. Oh, and there was only one member of staff on the bar.

But these are minor moans. Fun players, excellent referee, good game. (I still think it deserves expansion and publishing in a more detailed, printed, commercial version). An excellent session and I now know that I could run this game if I was asked to by a convention Games Tsar.

The bar is stocked with some real ales especially for the convention, is open until 2am and full of gaming luminaries. So it's tempting to stay up but I chose to try to get to sleep before midnight.

Overnight I had a brainwave. I used my iPad to download my game descriptions from the convention website, and quickly produced some typed signup sheets with added convention logo and appropriate other images. I emailed these to the accommodation front desk and they printed them for me. Free. Wow! My concerns about not getting sign ups because of grotty handwritten sheets were allayed. My shower wasn't working but I got some great technical advice from the front desk ("give it some welly!") that did the job. Good work all round.

Breakfast is included and does the job but is basic.

My morning game didn't get any sign ups so I grabbed the last place in Phil Masters' steampunk GURPS game. Then something unfortunate happened. Just about every other player who'd signed up for the game crossed their name off at the last minute. I don't think it was seeing my name on the sheet! I think what had happened is that someone had stuck up another game they fancied and they all decamped en masse with minutes to go. Not very good manners if you ask me. We scraped together three players and Phil ran the game. Great setting, good GM, well prepared. As usual the GURPS character sheets were rammed with information which must have been a nightmare to produce but made playing the game easy. I played the Amazonian second in command (a trend?) Despite all of this, however, I think this has finally cemented my view that GURPS is not the game for me.

Phil, however, delivered a good game. Upon being given my character sheet my eyes fell upon the words "Bomb Gun". Of course I got to unleash this to destroy an airship in the game's climax - so I call that a win.

Lunch was more Tesco sandwiches (I'd stocked up).

For the afternoon I had three players sign up for my "Orville" rip off. Using my Manifold rules but that's irrelevant really. One of the players was Marcus Rowland. This was like a classic White Dwarf contributor meet up! This was fun as always. I just run a straight Star Trek scenario - blatantly ripping off two classic episodes - and watch the TTRPG players dismantle it.

We had the ship's Captain (a sentient cloud of Flies), a prototype Android weapons officer and Kevin - from Tech. support. They were initially extremely successful. They went in and out quick and completed the first mission perfectly, short cutting the scenario. Then things went belly up on the follow up mission. They lost the ship, 277 out of 300 crewmen and the prototype android.  Technically they completed the mission but the inquiries will drag on for years....... Great fun with great players.

In the evening, I sampled the food from the on-site kitchen. The Continuum "main Hall" is basically the students' hall of residence cafeteria. The kitchen is set up to provide students with cheap meals. As such, in past conventions there have been some complaints about the quality of the food and some effort has been made upgrade it. Not that successfully I'm afraid. My (£6.95) meal was a limited portion of beef chilli on a plate full of rice, new potatoes and boiled broccoli. Not enough sauce/chilli to cover the otherwise dry ingredients. Warm, filling, not overly expensive. Some people got pizzas or went out for other meals. I don't blame them. There's a two hour gap between afternoon and evening games so there's load of time to do this.

For the evening game I had three players sign up. I ran Paul Baldowski's scenario from his award winning "Trail of the Wendigo" book, but using my Manifold rules rather than his Cthulhu Hack. When asked for a reason why their characters were driving In the Canadian wilds, the players decided that they were two Mounties bringing in a fugitive. A classic trope! It was made even more perfect by the meta overlap. The two Mounties were two guys who were friends and had come to the convention together. The female grifter was a charming young lady who'd been providing table after table with homemade cake through the day. They weren't exactly playing themselves but it was close.

Despite only having three players again, I loved this session. It is a slow build horror story with a really really sick theme. Because they were Mounties, rather than say a family group, this turned into more "The Wicker Man meets Assault on District 19"  than "Hostel" with a brutal final scene which flirted with a TPK.

During the game Keary checked in with me. I love the way he goes around and checks in with and talks to every Referee. Every. Single. One. And because I'd run two games, he gave me drinks tokens for two free drinks. This convention pays you in beer. Unfortunately, the bar was starting to run out of some beers.

I went to bed before midnight again.

I got up and checked my signup sheet for the morning game. No players. I had breakfast - functional again - and went to my room to collect my gaming stuff expecting to come down and have to find a game to play in. In the short gap, I'd garnered three players!

This was a playtest of my d6 Hack rules being developed as part of Role Play Relief. I offered the players a choice between the old White Dwarf investigative scenario "Plague from the Past" and Dyson Logos' "Goblin Gully". It being early morning after the night before, they chose to twat goblins rather than use their brains.

The game went well, good classic low level D&D with no obvious difference through just using d6's. Lots of great tactical interplay between the goblins and the party. Many goblins slaughtered but the chief and a couple of other survivors escaped with their treasure

 Amazingly I still had some food left from my shopping burst on Friday so lunch was more cold stuff from Tescos. (I could have kept it fresher in the fridge in the kitchen.)

In the afternoon I'd pre-booked into the latest instalment of Martin Pickett's "Victorian Colony of Mars" series. I first met Martin when he wrote and ran "The Great Martian Tripod Race" for my The Code of Steam and Steel game. He's now converted the scenarios set in that world to Manifold. This was the first time I've PLAYED my game. And Martin has adapted the rules for Steampunk as you would do to produce a sourcebook. Both of these things made this session special for me.

Martin had chosen to run the game in a seminar room in one of the houses up the road from the main convention hall. It's quiet and a good place to play but - for me - too far away from the hustle and bustle of the convention (and the bar). We also had players trying to deliberately introduce complications again (see above). And we DID resolve things through auditing the bad guys' accounts rather than high adventure.

But we went from "Carry On Airship Police" at the a start, to being a really effective team, efficiently stopping the wrong doing and individually rounding up two key figures from each faction almost automatically. And all the players were awesome - especially Simon Beaver*. As author of "Stiff Upper Lip" - a FATE game set in the era of British Adventuring (get it printed Simon!) - his immense historical knowledge leant massive verisimilitude to our Law Officer'd actions.

* there were at least THREE "Simon B's" at the convention!

I attended the closing ceremony. Apparently there's going to be a questionnaire coming out. I hope EVERYONE votes to make it an annual event.

For tea I ate the canteen food again. It's easy to get. This was basically a roast turkey dinner and was much more acceptable than the previous night's efforts.

By this time the convention was winding down and most people had gone. The bar was out of most draft beers so I was on cider but had two staff on - now it was quiet - rather than the single harassed guy when it was busy Friday night. Go figure.

My game - based on Fireball XL5 - garnered no players, again. I think I need to retire it, unplayed. It's just too niche. By this time there was one space left in one game - the Great Gloranthan Duck Race game. An RPG based on Wargames rules played on a kind of snakes and ladder board set on the Runequest world of Glorantha and played for laughs as various crews - mostly non human - vied to win a boat race by any means necessary , unnecessary and just downright funny. Not exactly in MY wheelhouse but a pleasant way to end the convention. There was a traditional end of convention sing song somewhere else but we were too busy playing to go.

Was it worth the extra £30 for that game? That's debatable. But it WAS worth it through making the Sunday much more relaxed. I could concentrate on enjoying the event, get a good nights sleep and pack at my leisure rather than worrying about checking out, carrying all my worldly goods around with me for the afternoon and rushing to catch the last train home, as I do at so many events. If you can stay until Monday I thoroughly recommend it

Continuum is a superior residential convention. It has no drawbacks and some truly excellent features. We don't have enough residential TTRPG conventions in this country. We NEED to have Continuum every year.