The Asylum Steampunk convention - 23rd-26th 2019 - Lincoln
TLDR: 4-7 games per day, during the day and at night, for an eclectic range of players - mostly Steampunk. Exhausting but fun.
Normally I post some information about the games I run - and play in - as part of the main convention report. I’m not sure how helpful this is, but it gives some kind of idea about what I do an conventions. So I keep doing it.
However, I found my report on The Asylum over-running so I’be decide to split out my games reports into a separate document this time. Unless stated otherwise, the games are all “The Code of Steam and Steel” Steampunk games.
My first game - early Friday afternoon - was The Great Airship Robbery. This was with an older couple - who’d never plated TTRPGs never played before - with a D&D player joining in at the end. Somehow the scenario played very fast, with both Airships being recovered intact.
The second game was a full table - 5 players - for “Queen Victoria must die”. This group contained people familiar with TTRPGs and they asked to make original characters! This didn’t take long - 5-10 mins - and we still completed the game in about an hour. I’ll admit this was the first time I’d run this scenario and - at the start - it was just a title and my usual page of bad guy statistics. But it soon developed into a full story.
The third game was for a family of three. The mother was reluctant to play but I did my usual “just sit down with a character sheet in front of you, you don’t have to do anything if you don’t want to” trick. We were joined by a passerby. I don’t have a not of exactly what game we played. However, at the end, the Mum said it “wasn’t too bad”.
The Friday daytime session finished off with a fourth game. “Drill to the Heart of the World”. It started with some interest from a father and his daughter. I called over a wheelchair user - who turned out to be deaf - and his carer. They shared a character - Sir Michael Poole. I felt that the Carer got a bit too caught up in the game and answered for the character sometimes without consulting his ward, so I made of point of consulting him directly whenever I could. I kept his ward involved.
This was my third time running this scenario. The previous weekend - at Fantasticon - both times the “Poole” character - once male and once female - ended up copping off with the Queen of the Hollow Earth. This happened again. The smile of the face of the disabled player when he told us he was hoping to stay and rule with his beautiful conquest was priceless. The scenario is developing a life of its own.
By the end of the day, I’d run four 1hr games in a session running from 11am to 5pm. I consider that a success.
For Friday night we’d been promised the room upstairs at the Student Union. (Last year I’d had to find a table in the bar downstairs.) It turned out to be massive - at least 8 large tables - and big enough to host its own convention. It was the first time I realised how hot the day had been as it lacked the air conditioning of the room I’d been in all day.
Somehow with my promoting on Facebook and throughout the day, I’d managed to attract four players. My friend and fellow Referee, Dave Winterbottom, arrived so we had 5 player game. Because we had a couple of players returning from the Queen Victoria game during the day - they already had characters. The new characters had to be made according to the same rules. The group had voted, during the day, to allow paranormal abilities. One of the characters was a witch. Dave chose to drive the game by creating a “glass cannon” character - one which is extremely good in one area but weak in others - with the paranormal ability to drain energy sources.
For personal comfort, the scenario I chose to run was the one from the rulebook “The Steel of the Gods”. Being hyper-self-critical I felt that this older adventure began to its age and creak a bit and the paranormal abilities tended to take events slightly gonzo. But there was much laughter with the group of characters only getting away by the skin of their teeth. They did, ultimately, fail in their mission though.
On Saturday, I ran six games during the day - though I only have records of 5. I ran “Murder on the Occidental Express”. This was the first time I’d run this and most - if not all - of the players were new to TTRPGs. Again the scenario developed during the hour of play.
I ran “The Great Airship Robbery” twice.
I also ran a couple of D&D type games using The Black Hack. These groups didn’t have much time and I’d wanted to see if I could deliver “The Delian Tomb” with a full and complete story in under an hour. I succeeded. One game took 20mins, the other in 30. In both times I delivered the full story but I’m unsure if the players got a fair grasp of the whole experience as I tended to rush the explanation of the rules. I’m sure a 30min demo is achievable but I think I need to design a different scenario.
Whilst I was doing all this Dave ran two great games of “Microscope”. Both of these were longer than my games but engaged a larger number of players.
The first game he ran seemed to be an absolute blast. It had the group laughing so hard and so long that they seemed to be physically in pain. The second game was more serious and there were some interesting ethical debates.
We’d been promoting the evening games at the Student Union. I’d even primed a couple of people to act as fill-in Referees if we were over-run with players. As it turned out, we had enough people for two tables. Some people were specifically looking for 5th Ed D&D. So Dave offered a game of that. It was one of the reasons I’d invited him to come along and referee some games with me.
I ran a Steampunk game again. Two of players were ones who’d played in my evening game last year. They’d sent me photos of their Steampunk characters before the event and I’d produced bespoke character sheets for them. So they arrived in full costume - the Martial Archeologist with her Sonic Device (a steampunk combination of violin and trumpet) and an Aerial Engineer wearing his Jetpack. Because of the archeologist character, I chose to run “The Antiquaries of Mars” by Martin Pickett. I had to do some quick thinking because two of the players were bringing back their characters from the previous night. My alt-Victorian setting and Martin’s “Victorian Colony of Mars” settings are set 40 years apart. But we managed.
The 5th player had only ever played 5th Ed D&D.
It turned out that Dave is an enthusiastic and LOUD referee and I had to take my players out onto the balcony to play - which turned out to be a really lovely setting on a warm summer’s evening. Both games went well.
My notes tell me I ran four steampunk games on Sunday for an for eclectic range of groups. However, I was getting as bit overwhelmed by this time and didn’t keep details. I know I ran another game of The Occidental Express.
Dave facilitated another game of Microscope and one of Lovecrafteque when he was able to walk away from the table several times and leave the group of players - all beginners - to carry on with it themselves. Excellent facilitation.
The evening event was dominated by the “Burlesque” show. There are loads of ticketed evening events at The Asylum. (Which, to be honest, was why it surprised me that we were allowed to offer a free one.) These usually last the whole evening. But, for some reason, the Burlesque show was offered twice - 7pm-9pm and 9:30pm to10:30pm. We had loads of people expressing interest in our evening games but only if they’d round out the rest of their evening before/after the Burlesque.
As it turned out, we had 3 players plus Dave and myself. So we each pitched a game. I pitched my standard Dr Who scenario (the one I’ve run dozens of times over 5 years). Dave then pulled to rug form under me by pitching a Code of Steam and Steel game. He won and proceeded to weave a world where the French Revolution never happened. France went on to develop submarine technology. Britannia ruled the waves, France ruled the depths. We had an actual marine biologist playing an intelligent Octopus marine scientist. Though Dave claimed to be making things up, his knowledge of underwater fauna - especially giant squid - impressed her. (I think he’d read a textbook once and had been looking for the opportunity to use his knowledge.)
A middle aged couple came in (most of the table were 20’s until then) and asked if they could join in until 9:00pm (Burlesque). Complete newbies to TTRPGs. Another couple came in half an hour later and asked to be allowed to watch. When the first couple left at 9pm, the second couple tagged in - taking over the first couple characters. I felt sorry for the lady concerned because her predecessor had created on character who was one of Napolean’s psychic interrogators - basically the Political Officer on our sub. Not easy to pick up and play.
Playing a character in my own game for once, I started with a spectacularly critical failure and finished by cheating to win the final battle. (Well, people’s lifts home were starting to arrive.)
Again I’ve no notes of how many games I refereed on Monday. I suspect about three. I know I ran a game of The Black Hack for two young 5th Ed experts. As they were familiar with the work of Matt Colville, I ran the scenario I’d designed for Fantasticon the previous weekend - The Tomb of the Twisted Mage. We were joined by two older ladies who were unfamiliar with TTRPGs. I realised, with pleasure, that I was running a game for an all female table.
The day was, however, dominated by my “Live Role Play” in the afternoon. This was advertised in the programme and was to take place in a seminar room in the building. I went up early to find the previous event (“How to do your own pyrotechnics”?) cleaning up.
By the time my presentation was due to start I had an audience of THREE! So I sat them at the table at the front and just started running “One of our Dinosaurs is Missing” for them. Two more people drifted in, so co-opted them to roll the dice for the bad guys. And we had a fun game with the usual wacky endings this scenario produces.
I’ll put my thoughts about TTRPGs at the Asylum in my other report. But overall I refereed or played in almost 30 hours of TTRPGs over 4 days at The Asylum. For people ranging from complete newbies to expert 5th Ed dungeon masters. Male and female across and age range of - I’d guess - 60 years. I’d call that a success.
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