Fantasticon 2019
TLDR: Fun, slightly ramshackle, SciFi convention crammed with things to DO - including ME running games live on stage - with variable success. The best craft ales around. Friendly, welcoming and enjoyable.
4 years ago I wrote to a Science Fiction convention called “Fantasticon” to ask if I could offer to run some demonstration TTRPG games. I’ve been attending ever since. Even though there are other TTRPGs on offer, I’m listed on their web-site as “Mr RPG.” (Even though I’ve been going for 4 years, I’m still not listed as a “guest”.)
The first two years I went, the convention was in Hull in council offices. I got myself promoted from a side room in the first year, to prime position in the middle of the trade hall in the second.
Then the convention moved to Cleethorpes and took over the local leisure centre. Last year the tabletop gaming, which included me, was put in a Squash court off the main hall. It was a sizeable and convenient room with good passing trade due to the glass wall out to that hall. Unfortunately, without prior warning, we were told that ordinary shoes weren’t allowed on the floor - which led to some interesting comments and potential players walking by. However, the organiser allowed me to run two TTRPGs live on stage in front of the, small but friendly and supportive, convention audience. That was fun and I learnt a lot.
For 2019, the organiser moved the date into the summer holidays. This meant it conflicted with a TTRPG convention I love going to - Grand Tribunal in Cheltenham. But, torn between a small friendly convention of my peers, with loads of great gaming, and being “Mr RPG” and running games on stage, I went with my Ego, not my Heart, and chose Fantasticon.
Cleethorpes is a classic Northern seaside town and so, with shopping around, it’s possible to find some cheap B&B’s to stay in. It is also only a few hours travel from Birmingham and so it’s possible to get up a stupid o’clock and travel to the convention Saturday morning to arrive just as the doors open. And since there is only one train that’ll make that journey it’s possible to save money using Split Ticketing and Advance single tickets. The accomodation and train travel costs were, therefore, extremely reasonable for a two day event.
Set against that were taxi fares to get around Cleethorpes (and to fill in for failure of early buses in Birmingham to fulfil their timetable. Grrrr!)
The journey went well but somewhere along the line I lost my pull up banner - the one which makes my set-up look so professional.
I arrived at the Convention just as it was opening. I found that this year we were in the children’s gym - with all the equipment moved out - and there were no issues with shoes. Alas I also found I only had one table. It was extra long, but I prefer to have two - one to display the available games and characters - and one to play at. That and the lack of my banner made me feel a bit out of sorts.
Also in the room was table heaving with a board game library, a table set up to demonstrate the Elite Dangerous TTRPG*, a table playing Magic the Gathering and TWO tables put together (grrr) for a very impressive 5th Ed Dungeons and Dragons set-up being offered by a well-organised young lady.
* I only encounter the Elite Dangerous TTRPG - which is based on a computer game - at Fantasticon. Usually the totally different Elite Dangerous ENCOUNTERS TTRPG is being demonstrated as well. However, I didn’t see THEM this year.
The room had no direct viewing access from the main part of the convention and so things were a bit slow to get going.
Before I go through my experiences, I’ll describe the rest of the event. I LIKE Fantasticon as an event because there is lots for people to do. There is a main hall which contains a small stage - with good PA technician. Chairs are arranged in front of that and there are regular interviews or presentations. Fantasticon is organised by Fantastic Books, a small scale SciFi publisher, and their authors are always ready to discuss their work or process.
The main hall and side rooms are crammed with stalls selling cookies, fudge, craft ale, artwork, SciFi books and ephemera - some 3D printed to demand - a NERF arena, classic computer console games etc. This year they had an escape room but I didn’t see the usual Dr Who guest actors. The whole event is very vibrant and active but - it must be said - looks a bit ramshackle.
The venue is a rare one in that it doesn’t insist on the convention using its in-house catering. This is a blessing and an issue. The catering organised by thre convention is a booth selling canned drinks, crisps, chocolate and “hot dogs” - boiled tinned frankfurters in dry white buns (and these ran out by Sunday). However they also laid on bottomless squash and biscuits. AND “The Golden Grail” craft ale Tavern were there again selling mead and grog and craft ciders and craft ales in big bottles at reasonable prices. It’s the only alcohol outlet that I really rave about and I just wish more conventions could book them.
Anyway - my day. After a slow start, two quiet teenage boys asked for a game. They were stuck in analysis paralysis picking the genre, so I guided them towards Steampunk. “One of our Dinosaurs is Missing”. They seemed completely stunned when I asked them what their characters were doing. Fortunately I snagged an older guy passing by and pretty soon the table was working. Good news, they recovered the missing Dinosaur. Bad news, they destroyed the Mad Scientist’s device which meant they were unable to return it to its original condition.
For once I’d had the foresight to pack some food and I was munching on a sandwich when the organiser found me to tell me my first on-stage Role-play was due in half an hour - a bit earlier than we’d anticipated.
For this, the convention had funded me in producing 50 copies of my D6 HACK - a game I’d written for the Role-Play Relief books we’d sold for charity earlier in the year. These were to be given to the audience and contained the full game as well as the pregens to be played on stage AND the special dungeon I’d designed.
The previous year I’d run Matt Colville’s “The Delian Tomb”, my standard introductory scenario. I realised that I couldn’t run that one again this year, so I’d written and playtested a replacement. The idea was that the audience could follow the dungeon in the book as we played through it.
The set was adequate but a little crude. Four chairs on the stage, each with a microphone. In front of them two chairs to act as makeshift tables with dice, pregens, pencils etc. on them. I had a wireless microphone and strode up and down in front of the stage, sometimes talking to the audience and sometimes (a bit too much) directly to the players on stage.
I selected volunteers from the audience. Two teenage girls, one early teens one later, in Cosplay. An older guy (forties?) in a brown shirt and very fine “Jayne” hat. I also press ganged an woman in her thirties (?) who seemed a bit reluctant.
The audience was slightly sparser than last year and I received less feedback than I remembered in terms of laughter, calling out etc. The older guy on stage tended to dominate a bit but he also tended to miss some of the cues. If he’d listened more to the bright ideas of the younger players they’d’ve done a lot better. Also he seemed able to talk loudly into his microphone whereas the younger girls sometimes forgot to and we lost their suggestions.
The adventure was resolved within the alloted hour. Having failed to find the magic item they needed to defeat the Evil Wizard’s Revenant, as the party fled in terror the Priest (played by the previously reluctant woman) made an impossible roll to banish it, so everything turned out well in the end.
I’d been really looking forward to this and was hyper self-critical. The players had had a good time but I didn’t know how well it had gone down with the audience. I think I’d over-prepared it and the idea of the audience following the dungeon in a book hadn’t seemed to work.
5/10 room for improvement.
Upon return to my proper table, a couple wanted to play “Firefly”. We grabbed some passersby and soon had a full table. To rescue Mal, Zoe and Simon from the Alliance before a shuttle could arrive to whisk them away, they engineered a fake fire alarm at the Star Port. As the Alliance agents hustled the hostages into a hover wagon and headed across the landing pan, our heroes commandeered a fire truck and pursued - Jayne having immense fun with the water cannon. It all ended with Wash crashing the truck into the shuttle as it landed, cutting it in two (and nearly finishing Jayne in the process). Fun!
A lady turned up and asked for her table back. So had to clear my stuff away. Elite Dangerous gave me their table to use. So I was able to run one last Firefly game for two players - they chose to play Wash and Kayleigh. Not the most powerful pairing. Same scenario but their final showdown with the Alliance agents was in the VIP lounge with Kayleigh using a makeshift Taser to drop the leading Alliance Agent whilst Wash was dismantled by his bodyguard. She then threatened to kill the bodyguard’s boss unless the - not mentally gifted - bodyguard co-operated. Challenging but satisfying.
In the evening, most activities at Fantasticon wind down. There are a series of - usually musical - shows on stage. (This year started with a long sword demonstration.)
However, the BIG thing is that the organiser usually covers the cost at the craft ale bar for the evening. Superb alcoholic drinks. Nectar. Free all night. I don’t stay. It’s just too dangerous for a lightweight like me.
Just before I left, a group came into the gaming room, pulled the tables together and set up a zombie board game with about a dozen players.
Overnight at my Guest House, I pondered the day’s Live Role Play. I decided to design a story based adventure with several obvious locations rather than a dungeon. It was roughly based upon a scenario I’d downloaded online a couple of years ago which had recently been updated by a friend in his online blog. Only roughly though, as I had to hack it back so it could be completed in just an hour. I wrote it out by hand on two pages of an exercise book before breakfast.
I got up early. Arrived at the Leisure Centre before anyone else and grabbed TWO tables, one for my display and one to play at. I felt happier already. It was then that I noticed that my table was the only one in the room with table covers. Maybe it’s all the uncovered tables that make the convention look so ramshackle.
Other people began to arrive and I heard stories of people with hangovers from the free bar. Also the Zombie game had apparently run until 11:00pm. (Hmmm, I may investigate running a longer game in the evening next year.) The impressive young lady running 5th Ed wasn’t back. I heard she was, apparently, a “professional” GM who is sometimes paid to run games and had been refereeing at a convention in a castle the previous weekend. Good luck to her I say.
Once the convention had warmed up I got a table of players for a Steampunk game and had my first chance to try out one of the new scenarios I’ve prepared for The Asylum steampunk convention next weekend. “Drill to the Heart of the World”.
(Who am I kidding? I’ve got one basic scenario which I just “reskin” for different adventures.)
It was massive fun with Lady Melissa Poole becoming Queen of the Hollow Earth.
After that I had three players for a Cthulhu Hack game. As usual they thought they could shoot/blag their way through it. Cue one character fleeing in terror as the other two were torn apart by the “Bag Bad”. (It’s hard to run a Horror game in an hour without it degenerating into pulp.)
Just before the day’s live role play, I quickly squeezed in another Steampunk game. A young boy and his father and a passerby. The boy really wanted to play. His dad tried to opt out but I put a character sheet in front of him and told him he didn’t have to say anything. He was soon involved.
The Great Airship Robbery. This stood out for two reasons. The boy used my “bidding” initiative system to grab easy opponents to fight, usually dropping his dad in trouble so he could come running to the rescue. Also, when trying to cross from one airship to another, trying to jump over isn’t the best course of action. Putting a plank between isn’t much better!
Then to the Live-Role Play. The audience was even smaller than Saturday. But this went 100% better. Firstly the players who volunteered were GREAT. Two mid/late teen girls from the same Cosplay group. One had played in Saturday’s game. I didn’t know because she’d changed costumes. She knew the game and helped her friend - especially with talking into the microphone. An older (but still very young - 20’s/30’s) woman. And a white haired grandad (you know the cool guys in their late 60’s early 70’s).
The older guy chose to play the thief. He was a hoot. Clearly channeling “Vila” from Blakes Seven, he poo-poohed every heroic act the other characters suggested, refused to scout (until he was bribed) and was never around when a fight started (but always emerged behind the baddies once things kicked off.) A classic thief and he was clearly driving all of the other players up the wall.
Then, as you’ll have gathered, the other players clearly wanted to get stuck in.
I’d also learnt from Saturday and took time to explain things to the audience and brief the players about microphone use etc.
And finally, the mapless, story-based adventure worked much better. Things were resolved by the characters setting off a revolution between the two factions of goblins and rushing in the kill the goblin king. (Sling bullet from behind by surprise doing most of the damage, of course.)
(Oh yes, the huge, pint-sized bottle of craft cider - £2! - I was swigging from to stay lubricated - helped as well.)
It was great. There wasn’t much feedback from the audience - or maybe I just didn’t notice them laughing at the Thief through my own chuckles. But the players clearly had a hoot.
And at the end a big bearded guy from the audience - who’d looked bored throughout - stormed up to me and said “That’s not fair! What was in the cave?”
(The goblins had been forced their human slaves to pile rocks in front of a cave near their village - nearly blocking it. Sensibly, the players had avoided it.)
So I broke my own rule and let him see behind the curtain. He seemed satisfied.
The session was filmed and I hope it captured half of my fun. If it did, expect to see it on YouTube soon.
I returned to my table and had time to fit in another session of “Drill into the Heart of the World” - where, coincidentally, Sir MICHAEL Poole turned down the chance to become King of the Hollow Earth - before travelling home.
I don’t get to many SciFi conventions but FantastiCon seems to be unique. The vision of one man who just wants everyone to have FUN it may seem (I’ll say it again) rather ramshackle but it is just rammed to the rafters with things to DO. Friendly, welcoming and with the best bar and best beer in the world. If you want to GAME there’s plenty to do. If you want to play TTRPGs, you’d find it a bit more limited. It’s just FUN.
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