Furnace 14 - 12th and 13th October 2019
TLDR: The “old hands” of the UK TTRPG convention scene deliver another peerless event. Unreservedly recommended.
I’ve probably written about Furnace half a dozen times by now. It never changes and is all the better for that.
One USP is that it takes place at The Garrison Hotel in Sheffield which is converted from the armoury and gaol of an historic Napoleonic era barracks. You can actually play in the gaol cells, which are basically old school D&D rooms. Very evocative.
The event has taken place so many years now that the organising committee have “trained” the venue into the needs of gamers and there is now synergy between the event and the hotel. This is excellent and I’ve only seen it at a couple of other long-running events.*
The other USP is that games are submitted a long time in advance. Months. Every attendee who books in advance is recognised and offered a free pre-convention signup to a game of their choice. The event is blessed/cursed with many, many excellent referees. You get another pre-signup for each game you offer to run. So with there being 5 game slots, if you offer to referee 2 games, you get a total of 3 pre-signups which cover all the other games across the weekend. (A pretty BIG hint from the organising committee that they want refereeing addicts like me to offer exactly two games over the weekend.)
Several other events have sprung up at The Garrison which follow the Furnace template. These are all good. But Furnace is the first, the biggest and the best.
I submitted two games in advance - my “Manifold” East-end gangsters game and a re-run of my historically-based “The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes” game which had run so well at Seven Hills earlier in the year. To play, I chose a couple of Cthulhu games (one 7th Ed and one Pulp) and a Marvel Superheroes 1980’s Mash-up.
There is a meet-up and drink in the bar on the Friday night but no official gaming. It’s a really pleasant event and I’d recommend it if your budget stretches to it. This year I decided to travel up to Sheffield early Saturday morning. It saves a night’s hotel cost. The venue is good value but when you go to as many events as I do, any savings help.
So I popped onto a train early Saturday morning and got the hotel in time to meet old friends and set up my table. After the usual welcoming speech, people queued to sign up for slots in games for the first session.
I was lucky enough to get a table of 5 players who created a crime family operating out of a greasy spoon cafe in the East End. The interactions were great. For example one character was “Alberto” who’d been raised in Italy. “Ma’s” first husband (“a real bugger”) had taken him away when they split up. Returning under shady circumstances - everyone just called him “Bertie”.
In this game every player creates two security features of the bank they’re tasked to rob. And I tack on two secret ones of my own. The intelligent and learned player of “Ma” put down “Security Guard” - singular. Because “that’s how many they’d had a the Hatton Garden robbery.” (One of my secret features was that all the other employees - cleaners etc. - were ex-Israeli military - a feature I’d stolen from an earlier run-out of the game.)
The players had put in so many electronic security devices that one character decided they needed an “EMP” device. (I think he’d watched “Captain America: Civil War”.) Somehow with the swingy nature of my rules, they found an ugly old high-tech fence who could get one but only in return for hooking him up with the woman of his dreams, which they somehow did. They even managed to marry him off in double quick time.
So they got their EMP bomb, de-activated all the devices and the hit went well until the ex-special forces guards revealed themselves. Then it was a real bloody massacre. “Ma” and the son who’d taken the role as a bank customer managed to get out with a decent slice of loot. But all the other sons were slaughtered.
The whole game finished with the line (wait for it..........)
“So that’ll be four funerals and a wedding, Ma?”
Doesn’t get any better than that!
There’s free, endless, coffee on hand throughout the morning. There’s also a form to sign to pre-book your evening meals. For lunch you have basically three choices. Just over the road there’s a big supermarket for meal deals and cafe. Just down the road there’s a fast food burger place. Or you can stay in the hotel bar and enjoy superior bar food with friends. I took the latter option. Soup of the day and a wrap. Comfort food.
My afternoon was Call of Cthulhu. My first experience of 7th Ed. I found it functional and a slight improvement on earlier editions. The referee was fairly new to convention Refereeing but took us through an engaging little scenario smoothly and well. His pregens were gender-locked but, apart from that, it was a typical enjoyable CoC romp going through the research phase to the investigation phase, where the wheels REALLY came off and we found we were in too deep before realising it.
For my evening meal I’d booked pie and chips. In the bar with friends and drink.
The daytime sessions are 3.5 hours long with 1.5 hour breaks in between. The night-time games at Furnace are nominally 4 hours long but often run into the wee small hours and can be legendary. I prefer to be in bed before midnight.
I’d signed up for “Pulp” Cthulhu. In my limited experience I prefer this to “classic” as the characters have about double the skill success levels, meaning they usually succeed rather than usually fail. However, tonight I found that pulp and 7th Ed. Cthulhu seem to be basically the same game.
Again another Referee fairly new to convention Refereeing. Pregens had non-gender specific names. This game was a romp through prohibition era America, starting off as the Untouchables and ending up as The Great Gatsby - with ghouls. Many, many referees pride themselves on doing a superb job at Furnace and post on line before the event about how much preparation they’re doing. THIS Referee obviously felt he had to rise to the challenge. When we found a clue in the warehouse, we got given the actual piece of paper. When we found the stack of wax-sealed envelopes, we were given the stack - individually wax sealed - containing bespoke invitations to a masquerade ball. When the raid on the warehouse went belly up, we got to read about it in the actual morning paper. And when we got to the ball we were all given individual masquerade masks to wear! Bling of the highest order.
The game itself was also highly engaging. Knowing my problems as a Referee-turned player I was on my best behaviour and sat back to let the other players’ characters shine. I did such a good job of this that the referee actually forgot about me and I had to gently remind him that he hadn’t asked me for my actions for a while and received an unneeded apology. I then got to perform some completely outrageous stunts. The game finished before midnight and I went to bed happy.
Breakfast is included with the room and is a good quality hotel breakfast.
My morning game only got two sign ups and I dragooned someone who is rapidly becoming a good “convention friend” into making up the numbers. It turned out he’d already played this scenario at Seven Hills earlier in the year but didn’t spot that until the (real, historical) mystery was revealed. This is a good scenario but a bit more cerebral from what I usually run. I may shelve it for a while and keep it to dust off at an appropriate event down the line.
The hotel does a pretty standard Sunday Lunch with a stupidly large Yorkshire pudding hiding the rest of the food. But I chose to opt for steamed fish, sauce and mash. Nice.
Then there was the final speech. A long-serving member of the hotel staff was leaving and the event had had a whip round for him. Nice touch. Then the Raffle. (Urgh!) But it had good prizes and didn’t take too long. No raffle tickets were sold. You get free entry and your raffle number is on your name badge.
Then the afternoon game. I’d picked the Marvel Team-Up game for several reasons. Firstly, the excellent referee who tends to run a gonzo game Sunday afternoon. Secondly, I’ve never actually played the “Marvel Superheroes” system - which had been the major rival to our own SHRPG back in 1984. Finally it was set in the era of Marvel comics which I’d read and knew all about.
He had the character sheets and figures for just about every Hero of the time. I elected to play “Wonder Man”. I was teamed up with Polaris, Wolverine, Colossus and the Scarlet Witch. We were pitched into a series of contests by the Collector and the Gamesmaster fighting such varying villains as Magneto, Kang the Conqueror, the Grim Reaper etc. Not the cleverest of scenarios and it did expose the weakness of the system. Whatever attack you make - punch, magnetic blast, probability manipulation - they all use the same mechanic and the player and referee have to fill in the individual effects from their own imagination. (I use basically the same technique in one of my own games, so I can’t complain.)
But it was the romp I expected with fun players.
Furnace is a successful and well-organised convention. It has built up a clear fan base and style over the years but it isn’t in any way cliquey. If you can get yourself signed up I highly recommend it. Numbers seemed to be fractionally down on last year - I suspect as more and more people set up their own conventions. But as far as I can see, that just opens up some slots for more new people to come along and experience one of the best two day TTRPG conventions on the UK. Peerless.
* venues agreeing to host TTRPG events - but then insisting and using their usual catering offerings and costs - is an issue within the hobby. The best events recognise this and work hard to ameliorate its effects.
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