Chaosium Con UK
Thursday 21st May - Sunday 24th May 2026
1. Why I Went
It is designed specifically for the promotion and playing of games they publish. Chief amongst these is the incredibly successful Call of Cthulhu.
I do not choose to play Chaosium games but they are well written and I do enjoy them when they are run by a good Referee. The event was also being held at an extremely good convention centre - with good, cost-effective on-site accommodation - near Milton Keynes. I was familiar with it from other TTRPG events. And with it being run by Chaosium themselves, I knew it would be well organised.
The only drawback would be that I couldn’t Referee games - which I like to do. I don’t Referee Chaosium games by preference and it would be rude to offer to Referee anything else at such an event.
However, I am familiar enough with their products that I thought I might be able to Referee some of them. I’ve certainly run Call of Cthulhu in the past.
Booking was straightforward. I was initially a bit confused and had to email the organisers for an explanation. You buy and pay for a “badge” for the event. You then “buy” - at no cost - “tickets” for the various different events at the convention. Playing TTRPGs made up the bulk of the events but there were talks from Chaosium luminaries, live games of Call of Cthulhu in front of an audience, LARPs etc.
By the time I’d decided to come, I found out that the events were virtually sold out. Of the 8 available slots, I managed to book into games in five of them. For another two - both evening slots - I booked to watch live performances of Call of Cthulhu scenarios. These are where a group of people play a game in front of a live audience.
For the 8th slot, however, there was absolutely nothing available for me to do. So I opted to offer to Referee a game. Following advice from an on-line friend on a forum, I bought the company’s light narrative rules - Questworlds - and offered to use them to Referee a narrative scenario I was extremely familiar with from my own games - the one with the missing dinosaur. Fortunately, in an earlier slot I’d booked I was due to play in a game of Questworlds so I’d have some experience of it as a player before Refereeing it.
2. The Shape of the Convention
Chaosium Con UK is a 5-day event. It runs from Thursday to Sunday at a Business Centre in Cranfield - a short distance from Milton Keynes. The business centre has on-site hotel-style accommodation but other options are available nearby. It just makes sense to stay on-site and it isn’t too expensive. Not quite as cheap as budget hotel ranges but certainly not premium rates.There are no major events on the Thursday. Thursday afternoon and evening are all about settling in, socialising and meeting designers and other luminaries from the company.
I chose not to attend for that day, instead travelling down Friday morning for when the games and other events started.
As mentioned above, before the event attendees bought tickets on-line for the various events they wished to attend - in my case TTRPG game sessions. There were normally three four-hour slots per day, with two on Sunday.
9am to 1pm. 2pm to 6pm. 7pm to 11pm.
It was possible to offer to run a shorter game and, in my experience, most of the games actually clocked in at around the three-hour mark. Everyone seemed to find this very agreeable.
As you’d expect from this being a professional event, the booking system was clear and extremely robust. At first I found myself a bit lost between all the company’s web-sites and the event’s booking site. But once I’d found and saved the main site, everything was straightforward.
What was NOT straightforward was the fact that the person offering to Referee a Questworlds game on Saturday - the one I’d booked into - withdrew the game. I was unable to find anything else to do in that slot.
Reasoning that my fellow players would be in the same position, I stepped up and offered to run another session of the game I’d offered for Sunday. This meant, of course, that I’d be Refereeing a game for the first time that I’d never played.
The major difference between Chaosium Con and other events is that it is one day longer - probably to give better value for attendees flying in from other countries.
3. Games Played and Games Run
As usual, I caught a VERY early train from Birmingham to Milton Keynes. I intended to use a bus to travel up to the Business Centre for the first time but my unfamiliarity with the infrequent local buses and a mix-up at the bus station meant I ended up taking a taxi, as I usually do.This is a significant cost. (£20+)
I was unable to check in upon arrival which meant I had to carry my luggage with me through my first two games. Since this was only a backpack it wasn’t too much hassle.
The reception desk for the actual event was efficient and I soon had my lanyard. I was offered a plethora of free goodies - this being Chaosium’s 50th anniversary year - but refused them all. If I kept souvenirs from every event I go to I wouldn’t have any space left to move at home.
There was an excellent map displayed in the main atrium. All the events had their locations listed in the booking system on-line.
There are several TTRPG events at this location across the year. (I’m attending three.) I’d expect their organisers to steal this map and use it.
The main atrium contains several coffee machines and the whole site has water dispensers. All included in the cost of the event.
It was easy to find and settle into your games.
Slot 1 - Friday 09:00 - 13:00
This was a Call of Cthulhu scenario. The British Empire was trying to get a railway bridge built in Africa but their workers were being set upon in the night by two powerful, ghostly lions. Based on real events - you may have seen a film about it.I was playing a female Doctor. She was unemployable. Not because of her gender. Not because of her competence.
Because of her personality!
That was all the hint I needed to start chewing the scenery.
Competent Referee. Good pregens. The initial - sometimes boring - investigative stage typical of Call of Cthulhu scenarios was enlivened by side quests - my character had to end an outbreak of malaria amongst the workers.
The final conflict with the lions worked well but - as so often happens - this turned out to be a “false peak” which revealed the much weirder stuff happening behind the scenes. As usual in Call of Cthulhu games, this was too weird for my tastes.
But the players were all great fun and played their characters to the hilt. This took place in a conference breakout room with one table, chairs, flip chart and whiteboard. Perfect for playing a TTRPG. This was an enjoyable first session.
Normally at this venue I’d buy some sandwiches at the bar for lunch. Today, however, I determined to set out to find the nearby Co-op. It was nearer than expected and I was able to stock up with everything I needed.
Slot 2 - Friday 14:00 - 18:00
A (very good) games designer I know quite well was running a Basic Role-Playing game. This is Chaosium’s stripped-down version of the game engine they use to power their main TTRPG, Call of Cthulhu and RuneQuest. It’s basically just rolling percentage dice to succeed and would have been the system I would have selected to offer my games if I hadn’t been pointed at Questworlds. Basic Role-Playing is a generic system which is intended to be able to run most genres of game.This Referee was using the system to run a classic Science Fiction scenario originally published in White Dwarf magazine - which I used to write for back in the day - way back in the 1980s. He had a copy of the issue with him and took great delight in showing me an old advert for my most famous game.
As a designer and Referee he likes to experiment. For this game he aimed to strip back the BRP system as far as possible and make it look like Traveller. In fact he got the pregenerated character sheets to a size where he could fit them into convention badge-holders. He duly presented us with them to clip on our convention lanyards.
This was completely impractical, of course, so he also gave us separate copies to keep on the table.
The pregens were based on characters from a TV animated spy series so it was easy to get into character.
The scenario involved our Jupiter-Government-sponsored crew investigating a floating gas mining station, deep in the atmosphere of the gas giant, to find out why it had stopped
transmitting and to stop any incursion from Earth-Gov.
Of course things turned out to be far worse than that. Though written over four decades ago, this felt like an episode from modern series such as The Expanse or For All Mankind. Mind you, those writers grew up playing the Traveller TTRPG so maybe that’s not surprising.
This game took place in a larger room with a screen and AV equipment at the front. Four tables were set up and it could have accommodated four games but fortunately our game was the only one in there.
A highly competent designer and referee having fun mashing together disparate elements to revisit an adventure from his youth. He was really good but, again, this wonderful session was really made by the brilliant, experienced and enthusiastic players.
During a comfort break I went to reception. All the keys and details for attendees were laid out on a table and I was able to check into my room and drop my heavy backpack in about five minutes. Great organisation.
Slot 3 - Friday 19:00 - 23:00
I had pre-booked the standard evening meal offer by the venue. On pleasant days, this is a barbecue. I piled my plate high with all sorts of meat and appropriate salad and made sure I really got my money’s worth out of it.You’ll recall I’d been unable to get a game in this slot. I later found out that people drop out of games and I should have waited and scanned the booking system to see if any openings had appeared. Instead I’d booked in to watch an “Actual Play”.
This was in a lecture hall with four players and a Referee at the front. It was being live-streamed on YouTube as a major Chaosium event.
I don’t know about you but I find a four-hour movie needs to be well written, directed and acted to hold my attention. Most plays aren’t four hours long and they’re performed by professional actors.
Add to that the fact that I find Call of Cthulhu scenarios tend to drag, especially in the first sections, and players are in on the joke that things are going to go very badly for the characters - which I don’t like - and I didn’t have high hopes for my enjoyment of this event.
But these were apparently people who were good at doing it, so I decided to give it a go.
I lasted an hour before I slipped out. They were pleasant enough but clearly not professional actors - especially one lady who I could barely hear and who kept addressing the other players rather than the audience. Other people seemed to enjoy it, though, so it’s probably just my personal taste.
It wasn’t a complete loss because I was able to go back to my room and double-check the rules and my notes for the Questworlds game I was running on Saturday.
Slot 4 - Saturday 09:00 - 12:00
Though most games were listed as four hours, they seemed to be clocking in at around the three-hour mark. This one had actually been advertised as running for three hours.This was a “Rivers of London” game. Basically there’s a popular, recent series of books about paranormal events on the streets of London and the scrappy teams thrown together by the authorities to tackle them. Chaosium had acquired the rights to produce a TTRPG for the books and have naturally used Call of Cthulhu as the template.
I’ve played a couple of games before and enjoyed them. Referees seem to revel in tying their scenario into actual places and events in and around London. This game was no different. It was set on a specific date in 2016. Ordnance Survey maps of London were available on the table. One player was doing real-time research on the sites of the paranormal occurrences on his mobile phone. The history was well researched and deep.
But what struck me was the attitude of the Referee. He was calm and relaxed. It was like he was just another player having a quiet conversation with us. Walking in on any game you’d normally be able to tell who was refereeing. Not so much here. Immense competence.
There’s always a disgruntled copper who’s seen too much and been pulled onto the team against his will. I always play him.
I’m really beginning to enjoy Rivers of London games.
This game took place in one of those conference breakout rooms I mentioned earlier which are just so perfect for playing TTRPGs.
Slot 5 - Saturday 14:00 - 18:00
The long lunchtime allowed me to review my notes for my first ever Questworlds game - again.I’ll admit I was nervous. Far more nervous than I’d ever show.
Questworlds is an odd beast. A very simple resolution system for narrative-first games. Intended to sideline the role-playing to allow people to get on with the adventure. The rulebook should be short and simple but it advises and explains so much and gives so many examples that it is actually a really thick book. You read it and reread it thinking “There must be something I’m missing”.
There isn’t.
To make things as straightforward as possible, I chose to adapt the dinosaur steampunk scenario I’ve run using my own system dozens of times. Just like I do for some sessions of my own games, I prepared a pack for each player which contained the background of the world, a character sheet and an advice sheet on how to make characters. I also prepared some example characters for reference.
I was concerned that the rules were so simple the scenario might run short - be finished quickly. As it happened I had to cut a whole scene in order to get it completed in under four hours.
The players were wonderful. Steampunk always seems to bring out the best in people. The system, such as it is, revolves around situations but the inventiveness as to how they are resolved has to come entirely from the players or referee. The rules neither help nor hinder the story. They just tell you how it turns out.
And I’d been given one of those wonderful conference breakout rooms to play in.
In my nervousness I found myself making silly errors but I learnt a lot. I needed to advise players to minimise their characters a bit more and decided I didn’t like the optional rules for extended combats.
But everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and this scenario delivered a great story as it always does.
Slot 6 - Saturday 19:00 - 23:00
I was signed up to watch another Actual Play but wasn’t looking forward to it. Following advice I’d been trawling to see if there were any dropouts from other games. There were none.I’d checked the “pick-up” game board but there were only two games advertised. One was full. The other was a board game.
So I wrote out a sign-up sheet offering to Referee a Questworlds game. I got a kind lady at the Chaosium desk to write it out neatly for me. (No one ever signs up for games on sheets with my handwriting.)
I’d done this earlier in the day.
After tea - in the restaurant, not as good value as the barbecue - I found I’d gotten one player but he didn’t sign up. I waited a few minutes. Then on the off chance I did another check of the bookings. There was a Pendragon game with a slot available!
So I rushed to that room. (One of those great breakout rooms I mentioned.) They were waiting for the sixth player to turn up, not aware he’d dropped out. So I squeezed in.
Pendragon is a very traditional role-playing game with lots of numbers on the character sheet. I rapidly discovered that I seem to have morphed into a more narrative or Indie player over the years and bounced off things a bit.
But - again - all the other players were brilliant. The story behind the scenario was good but went from court intrigue to epic quest, with the denouement being far too overpowered for our inexperienced knights.
In the final fight with the giant, I couldn’t hurt it at all through its magic protection and it had to roll high to hit me when I went on full defensive. Meanwhile a colleague who knew the rules and was pulling out all the stops “For the honour of King Arthur!” could harm it one round in four. There must have been dozens of combat rounds before the giant finally squelched me in a single blow just before my shield-mate finished it.
Epic but old fashioned. I enjoyed it but I wouldn’t want to play it every day.
Still it was FAR better than watching people play Call of Cthulhu.
Slot 7 - Sunday 09:00 - 13:00
This was where I’d originally offered to run One of our Dinosaurs is Missing using the Questworlds system.As it turned out, this was now my second go at it. In one of the breakout rooms which are so perfect for TTRPGs. I advised the players how to create their characters to maximise their impact in play. I decided not to use the extended resolution system at any point - including the climax scene.
I found that with this game I was able to zoom out and tackle action in a broader way than I do with my own rules. Whereas, for example, in my games all the characters generally board the Prussian airship to tackle its crew, in this game just one got aboard to fight bravely alone whilst the others called in the flying Navy and pursued in a ship of their own.
One of the players was Irish. I checked with him about my alternative history where Darwin’s prehistoric tubers resisted the potato blight. He usefully corrected me on several points but didn’t disagree with the idea. He then went on to make an Irish partisan with connections with the IRA - or IRB at that time, apparently.
Instead of the player characters personally fighting the climactic battle, the rules allowed the players to call in and control their related forces. The Irish player’s IRB arrived first, hoping to secure the evil scientist’s inventions for themselves only to be slaughtered by his evil minions before the police force called in by the Police Inspector character arrived to mop up.
This was much better than the previous day’s game - and THAT hadn’t been bad.
Slot 8 - Sunday 14:00 - 18:00
As is probably only fitting, my Chaosium Convention finished as it started with a Call of Cthulhu scenario.This was a masterwork.
The setting was the 1990s in a rural village surrounded by larger houses owned by the posh people. Usually members of the golf club.
I played one of two brothers who, after long respectable careers, were retired. They’d decided to supplement their pensions with a variety of money-making schemes.
His daughter, my niece, was a local Police Officer who was lumbered with covering up the consequences of our schemes. There were two other coppers in the local sub-station - each with their own issues. The receptionist owned a nice camera so she doubled as the Scene-of-Crime officer. Then there was a disgruntled DI sent down from The Met to find out why there were gaps in the paperwork.
And that was just the pregenerated characters. A cross-over of The Detectorists, Hot Fuzz and Only Fools and Horses. We could have happily just played that for four hours.
But, no, there were also layers of ghostly folklore-based plot. Based on meticulous research. Pages of actual newspaper headlines and reports were handed out. At one point the referee passed me his iPad to show me the 154 pages of research he’d done to support links between crimes and local folklore in that one particular area he’d discovered going back decades.
Enough research to write a book!
There were layers of bad guys and factions which I won’t reveal here in case you’re ever lucky enough to play this game. The plot is worthy of a movie or streaming series.
A top-notch end to a top-notch event.
I caught the bus back to the station. Longer, slower but a lot cheaper.
4. Play Reflections
Not one of the Call of Cthulhu games I played at this convention was a standard predictable one of the sort I usually encounter. Only one even came close. Good referees can coax some good games out of the old system.I confirmed I don’t like Actual Play performances and I don’t enjoy old-fashioned traditional games with lots of numbers on a character sheet and extended combat.
Rivers of London is a really neat smooth update of Call of Cthulhu for the modern age but I doubt I’d be able to run it. It needs a familiarity with the capital I don’t possess.
In the hands of a skilled referee, Basic Role-Playing provides all you need for a good game.
I don’t think I managed every nuance of Questworlds. However, I still delivered two extremely acceptable game sessions.
5. What I Took Away
Though I do not play games designed by Chaosium by choice, the quality of players and referees at this professional and well-managed event produces some excellent game sessions.I would be happy to use the Questworlds rules again if necessary. I will actively seek out referees who offer it at future conventions. I want to experience the game as a player.
I will be back at Chaosium Con next year and can highly recommend this event.
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