Summer StabCon - 5th - 7th July 2019

Summer StabCon 5th-7th July 2019

TLDR: Anyone who has read my blog - or my earlier printed diaries - already knows all about StabCon. Held twice per year in the same hotel in Stockport, organised by the same couple (absolute Heroes, both!) for years, it's always the same and always delivers. It's the comfort food of conventions. Like coming home to an extended family. Like putting on your old comfy dressing gown and slippers.

You book up in advance (usually at the previous StabCon) and the organisers prebook a room - including breakfast - for you. There is no requirement for any pre-organisation. You just turn up from 2pm on the Friday and see how things go.

Some of the more modern con-goers have set up a Facebook page for the event. This is nothing to do with the organisers but they often check in. I used the page to pre-advertise the games I was intending to run. But there is no requirement for referees to do this.

As usual I travelled up straight after work on Friday. I arrived at the event in time to check in - both at the hotel reception to get my room and at the convention front desk to collect my personalised name badge. I got talking to a player in the queue who was enquiring about my games and I asked him to post my sign up sheets on the board whilst I waited.

I'm never sure at StabCon where to pitch my sheets. The provided sheets are simple A5 forms. Some people bring their own, A5 or A4, B&W or colour. This time I'd gone all out producing A4 full colour jobs only to find almost everyone else using the B&W A5 ones provided by the convention. I looked like I was trying too hard. But my Saturday morning game (Star Trek the original series) booked out in under a minute! Surely a record of some kind. There seemed to be a few more TTRPG games on offer than usual - StabCon is primarily a board game event - and most of them were already full of players. The TTRPG side of the convention seems to be healthy and growing.

I bought myself a pint and ordered my usual StabCon Friday night food (a 12" "American Hot" pizza) and chatted to a couple of people. Loads of people said "hello" to me. I'm sorry. I did a count once. I run games for literally hundreds of people every year. Possibly pushing a thousand. And I've never been good at asking or remembering names. I'm more likely to remember your character. Everyone knows me but I know hardly anyone.

Anyway I made my way over to my usual Friday night group.

A long long time ago I found out that by the time I arrive at StabCon, it's too late to find players for an evening game. But I've been lucky enough so sign up for a Savage World campaign run by the same Referee with the same players every Friday night. This is my first bookend of the weekend. I know what I'm doing and who with before I arrive.

Actually this is the third campaign we've been in with this referee. It all started off with a one-off "play yourself in a fantasy game" adventure which spilled off over two conventions. (The one famous for its "Lancashire Goblins".) The players all begged for more so the referee ran a massively detailed mini-campaign based on a series of books by David Gemmell. For the last two years he's been running a pre-WW2 game. Sort of Indiana Jones territory but we're all minor Super-types. (I'm a cyborg, sort of "the £6,000 man".) This referee is a larger than life character and the games are designed with lovely tongue in cheek humour. Previously we'd stopped the Nazis from weaponising Tea and Opera. This time we were tasked with extracting a German doctor who could confirm the rumours about that status of Hitler's genitalia - and that of other Reichsmarshalls.

The table had suffered some "campaign bloat". When you run a regular group there are times when a player is away and you let another one join in. Then, when the original player comes back, your group has grown. Today we were up to seven players. A couple too many IMHO and any other time I might have felt a bit disgruntled. And Savage Worlds, whilst clever, has a couple of features which aren't to my taste. But THIS referee coped easily and, Friday night, after a long week at work, all I want is few beers with friends and I'm not really bothered about fighting for spotlight time. I found the endless analysis paralysis and discussion about which character exactly was sitting in which seat in which car amusing rather than irritating.

After an incident a few years ago (detailed in my printed diaries) I am usually careful about how much I drink at a convention. But Friday night at StabCon I relax a bit. A total of four of us bought rounds for the table. I was sensible enough to switch to Diet Coke after about four pints

As usual we didn't finish the adventure the referee had planned for the session and we voted to finish early - before midnight - rather than push on into the early hours. (I don't think he's realised yet that we do it to keep him offering the game at the next event. He has to carry on to finish it off.)

It's a lovely setting he's created for the game and when finally gets around to publishing it as a sourcebook, I'll let you all know about it.

Some people at the table carried on playing "beer and pretzels" games. Some of us turned in. What with all the beer and being tired from work, I slept like a log. It had been a great start to the weekend.

I got up early, sorted the resources for the day's games and went to breakfast. As usual I got there as soon as it opened. (I'm not a fan of the peak time breakfast crush at hotels.) The breakfast - included in the booking - is a typical hotel buffet breakfast. Not the best, by far, but perfectly adequate and we've all eaten worse.

After breakfast I checked my sign up sheets. Out of three games for five players each only one space wasn't filled. (More about this, later.)

I'd booked myself a table in one of the side rooms used for RPGs, so I took my place and set up for my first game.

This was Star Trek - the Original Series - using my own The Code of the Spacelanes rules. This is something I'd been putting off for years. I've used the game to replay the classic ST-TOS episode "The Doomsday Machine" many times but placed in a more generic setting. But I'd never gotten around to statting  up the classic characters. Sometimes things are just TOO obvious, you know? But for some reason I thought it was about time.

The five players elected to play Spock, McCoy, Uhura, Sulu and Chekhov. No Kirk or Scotty. Interesting.

I ran an adventure rooted in the first ever Star Trek original novel "Spock Must Die" by James Blish.  One of the things about StabCon is that there is minimal official organisation. The organisers provide a noticeboard, sign up sheets and rooms. That's it. There are no official TTRPG "slots". You have to set your own times. Eg. One I saw for Saturday morning said "10am start, no more than 6 hours."

When you try to do this you realise it's impossible. No-one wants to start before 10am  but you want to finish in time for lunch. You can't fit in a four hour slot easily. So I'd posted this as a three hour game.

And it worked perfectly. The players, most of whom have played with me before, were  all wonderful. I learnt a lot about real science vs. Star Trek science from the player controlling Spock - and had make several rulings in favour of canon. All characters were played with joy and to type. And the setting and rules were a perfect match. Like Fish and Chips. I'll be running this game again. And again. And I'll add the characters into my "Choose your Adventure" set up.

For lunch I went to the bar and bought a couple of baps. The synergy between the hotel and the convention is great. The food offered is just what gamers want. Sandwiches, baps, pork pies, doughnuts, chocolate pies(!) for lunch and Pizzas, Burgers, Curry and Fish'n'chips at night. (Though everything is available all day.)

In the afternoon I ran my "Year of the Rabbit" game. This was a bit of a punt. It's based on a new TV series that not everyone has seen. A gritty, sweaty, Victorian, Police comedy. Somehow I managed to binge it on line before the series had finished on telly. I loved it!

In order to run it I hacked my own Code games. Arguably - spoilers - given the final episode the series could be described as "Steampunk". However, it's only lightly Steampunk and my Code of Steam and Steel rules wouldn't have worked. So I knocked up "The Code of the Rabbit".

This is the game for which I had only four out of five sign ups. The "big three" from the series - Inspector Rabbit himself, his partner, Strauss and London's first WPC, the gloriously foul mouthed Mabel - plus the Flora the contract killer (and Rabbit's lover). No-one wanted to play Joseph Merrick "the Elephant Man" - who is a big part of the series.

Again this was made glorious by players who just came to play and have fun. In particular I was overjoyed to have one of my regular players take the role of Mabel. I've never heard her swear before but soon we were all f-ing and blinding all over the place. The room was filled with other gamers and we distracted a couple sometimes, but it was more for the wacky shennanigans than the swearing.

I'd stated that this slot would run for 2pm to "6ish" giving us four hours, knowing most of my games run for less than this. But what with it being a new scenario - my second of the weekend - and a couple of other factors, the players ate the plot up and were looking to complete it in less than three. During one of the "comfort breaks" I came up with an extra layer of the onion for the mystery which, as it turned out, I didn't need. The final scene was riotous hoot of people repeatedly pushing buttons which they knew they shouldn't - trying to undo the hilarious effects of the previous one. THAT's what distracted the other tables. (When board gamers overhear Roleplayers, they can be a bit bemused.) I'll be running this adventure again at a convention in a few weeks and know what tweets to make.

I was running short of cash, so I ordered my evening food - Fish and Chips - from the bar in the convention room. It is cash only. So I went out to the main hotel bar to buy my drink. The barman there asked about the sort of games we were playing and I launched into my evangelism for TTRPGs. He commented on how much beer gamers put away every time they turned up.

But the hotel NEVER runs out of beer. Another example of the synergy between the hotel and the convention which other venues could learn from. My fish and chips, delivered to my numbered stand at my table, arrived in less than half an hour. The kitchen was constantly banging out hot meal after hot meal. The hotel must make a pretty penny on the catering and the bar even though the gamer food prices are so reasonable. This hotel as been well trained and learnt its lessons.

Another StabCon tradition that's developed is me offering a horror game Saturday night. I don't run many horror games and I've exhausted all the scenarios I'm comfortable with. However, I'd recently played in a game run by its author at another convention. It had gone on to win two awards at UK Games Expo. The scenario was intriguing, clever and devious. (It explores the consequences of transporting a classic bit of Lovecraftian Lore to the near future.) So I'd bought that to run.

Alas, though I'd played it and read it through several times, when it came to play there proved to be just one too many moving parts for me to handle. Like when you've got a cryptic crossword to solve and you just can't crack it.

But the players were having a great time playing their characters and were very tolerant of my occasional page flipping in search of a particular reference I remembered. And we managed to engineer a very satisfying ending. You know those cryptic warning messages you get and think "why is this so garbled? Couldn't they have been clearer?" Well now we know why.

One of the signs, I think, of good referees is that we are very self critical. So I knew I hadn't delivered. It happens from time to time. But the players honestly thanked me for a good session and I did overhear some of them talking to friends about it very positively afterwards.

Before turning in I posted two things on the TTRPG sign up board. One was a note to tell my regular Sunday morning group of players where we were playing. The second was a sign up sheet for a potential game Sunday afternoon.

A week ago on Twitter someone had posted an idea for a game when every time someone used a resource, they tore a piece of paper from a toilet roll on the rebels. So the roll would act as limit on the group's resources. The idea had intrigued me and so I offered to run a toilet roll based game Sunday afternoon - and I wrote the sign up sheet on toilet roll. StabCon is the only convention where I'd feel confident doing that.

I'd drunk rather more beer than I usually do when refereeing and again had a good night's sleep. Breakfast was fine again - the hash browns being particularly well done as I like them.

Sunday morning was my second bookend to StabCon. Just like Friday night's game, I'd once run a one-off game (a refight of "The Force Awakens" with new characters) and the players had asked for a sequel. This had turned into a Star Wars campaign and - when I'd run out of story ideas - changed into a Superhero campaign. Both campaigns using my unpublished Manifold rules.

I was a bit worried about this game because it was six months between episodes and - even though I checked back in this blog to see what had happened - I tend to forget things. But I needn't have worried. The corrupted robot character was rescued - well given the tools to save himself really. And the characters took off into space to defeat the alien invasion despite me throwing literally overwhelming odds against them three times. Somehow all the characters and all the players just gelled this morning. It was an absolute delight. This could have been a natural break point - well they had just saved the world - so I asked if they wanted a change of genre (I wasn't going to offer to step down and let them free to play other games!) but they all want to carry on with their superheroes. One player asked me if I had more ideas for future adventures. "A few". I said.

No-one signed up for my toilet roll game so I left early. I'm always ambivalent about staying for that extra game StabCon afternoon. Before leaving I paid the £15 sign up for Winter StabCon 2020 and made a crack about how it never goes up. "Actually we're thinking of lowering the price" I was told.

When someone mentioned the convention seemed quiet, I overhead that it had had 282 attendees out of a possible 300 places. It had an absolute top limit of 300 places.  So they don't bother advertising. I'm breaking "the first rule of StabCon" with this post! I think it seemed quiet because a lot of the board gamers moved out of the noisy main room to rub shoulders with the TTRPGers in the side rooms. They seemed a lot busier to me, but my games weren't disturbed.

StabCon remains the comfort food of conventions. I think some of its attendees just don't realise how special it is. The organisation is seamless. The synergy between the hotel and the convention is great. It's not a five star hotel but it's cheap. And the attendees are just lovely people. They're just the usual wonderful people this hobby has to offer without the "edge" some gamers sometimes have. I think it's just become my favourite convention. If you have the chance to get your feet under the table here, snap it up.