Con-Tingency
1. Why I went
There used to be a great annual TTRPG convention called Conception held down in the Dorset area in an out of season holiday camp. It was amazing and people loved it. I could only attend at weekends as I was working.
After 17 years it had to close its doors. I believe the owners of the camp were changing their business plan from seasonal bookings to selling off the accommodation to individual owners. The organisers were unable to find an alternative venue and were forced to wind the event down. Conception had donated a six figure sum to charity by that time, however, and created a devoted audience of attendees.
Some of those attendees refused to let their annual meet-up disappear and organised a temporary convention under the name of Con-Tingency. It was never meant to be permanent.
But they turned out to be GOOD at organising conventions and, rather than being a stop-gap, the event has grown to be even bigger and better than its progenitor. After trying a couple of other venues, they’ve discovered a location that works perfectly.
These are the Wyrd Sisters. Three wonderful women. As far as I’m aware this is the only such event organised by women in the UK and - I’m sorry if this seems old-fashioned - I think this all-female perspective really benefits the convention.
(I’m sure they’d want me to point out that their supporting team contains people of all genders.)
As with Conception, I’d never been able to attend the entirety of Con-Tingency. Whilst I was still in employment, I used to have to run up from work on a Friday night and leave early Sunday, missing most of the slots. I’m addicted to Refereeing at TTRPG conventions and was extremely jealous of the bloke who was able to run FOURTEEN games in a row. I wanted to see if I could do that.
Now that I’d retired, I was able to attend for the full convention. I’d been looking forward to that for years.
2. The Shape of the Convention
Con-Tingency takes place in an out-of-season Holiday camp in Hunstanton. It consists of a couple of hundred “lodges”. 75% of these are privately owned but the remainder are still available for seasonal bookings.
These Lodges do not have wheels but they are very similar to high grade static caravans - a staple of the British seaside. Inside they have a stunning, spacious, living area with an included kitchen. If you’ve ever watched a TV show where people buy old flats to do up, these living areas look like the finished product. Comfy furniture, flat screen TV, something that looks like a real fire, kitchen appliances of the highest grade.
They’re a perfect place to host a TTRPG game.
Off one end of the living area are the bedrooms and bathroom. These are small, to say the least, with non-standard bed sizes and a shower that a larger man has to work hard to manoeuvre in (as I can testify). But they are perfectly functional and I stayed in one happily for seven days.
I shared one with two other people. I travelled alone but the organisers paired me up with other solo travellers who were both a delight. The whole week cost me less than two nights in a standard hotel.
(Some things standard in hotels aren’t provided - sheets, towels - but there are easy work-arounds.)
There is a central building containing a large hall, a bar, restaurant etc. Some facilities - such as the swimming pool - were available to use. Others - such as the on-site shop - were not. However, there is a huge Supermarket just next door where you can buy all the supplies you need.
The venue staff are incredibly friendly, professional and supportive. I think they like having the convention there as it gives them a “soft” opening to their year. And TTRPG gamers are generally nice people.
Because the half-board deal was such good value, and I was sharing a lodge with two strangers, I chose to sign up for that. I’ll put the cost at the end. However, if you are sharing a lodge with friends, self-catering is clearly the way to go. The supermarket is right next door and you could do the whole week extremely cheaply - especially if you have the right loyalty card.
Half board topped up with Supermarket meal deals at lunchtime did the job for me.
Con-Tingency runs from Wednesday to Sunday. But bookings are weekly, so the organisers books the Lodges from Monday to Monday. This means you can come down for the entire week for no extra cost.
Of course I did that!
From Thursday to Saturday there are 3 four hour game slots per day, starting at 9am and finishing at 11:30pm, with two on Wednesday and Sunday. If you go on Monday and Tuesday you sort things out yourself.
Games can be posted before the event on Warhorn. Sign up sheets for those games are printed out - even ones which book out fully in advance - and posted at regular intervals on the walls of the entrance foyer to the main building along with games offered only at the event. Fifteen minutes before each slot everyone gathers in the foyer and the games and names are called to and everyone goes to their games. These can be in the Main Hall, the bar or in individual lodges. This meet-up is called “Muster” and is a fun, bonding, event.
Because there are fourteen “official” slots you have a flexibility not available at other events. You can have longer multiple-slot events. You can even run a whole campaign. You can agree to play with the same group in a given slot each day etc.
Con-Tingency has about 700 people attending and - at one point - I think there were 60 simultaneous games in a given slot. (That the organisers knew about. There were probably also informal games happening in some of the lodges.)
There were also a few (just enough) traders and some board games.
You pay for entrance for the convention, your Accommodation and buy game tickets. You hand these to the game Referee who swaps them for a Referee ticket for each game. These tickets buy a scoop of ice-cream, give money off at the bar, money off at the traders or you can trade in two to get a special Con-Tingency T-shirt (I came home with two). The organisation is meticulous and works extremely well.
The venue is nearly perfect for running TTRPGs but - especially at the weekend - could get a bit noisy even with screens placed between tables in the main hall. Nothing unusual for a TTRPG convention, though.
9am to 11:30pm is a long day, especially when you factor in Muster in between slots. Clearly being an “Iron GM” and running games in fourteen slots isn’t a task to be taken lightly.
3. Games Played and Games Run
In the past I haven’t been a fan of Warhorn, the on-line game booking system, but seeing other people posting their games on there and seeing people sign up, I got a bit of FOMO. I submitted about half a dozen games of my own - across all 5 days of the event - and signed up to play in enough to round out my first two “proper” days, Wednesday and Thursday. I’d decided not to try to do the 14-slot “Iron GM” thing in 2026.
I had no idea what I was going to do on Monday or Tuesday but I figured at the very least I could bring my iPad and get on with some game writing.
As it turned out, one of the organisers saw me posting on Facebook and invited me to participate in a game in her lodge Monday night and another attendee was looking for people to play-test his game, so I had two games sorted before I even arrived.
Monday evening: I was invited to the Lodge of one of the organisers. This is where I saw what Contingency really could be. I’d already stuffed myself on my half board Burger and Chips so had to refuse the choice of curries I was offered. Also home-made cakes, Jerky, Fruit-Jerky, posh biscuits etc. Amongst the family and friends was the family dog, who was a delight.
We were playing Rivers of London which is basically Call of Cthulhu with a contemporary spin. The Referee based it around a location in London which I thought was a very clever invention until she revealed that it actually existed. I don’t want to give it away but if you ever find out about it I’m sure you’ll be as amazed as we all were.
The scenario turned out to be a complete tear-jerker - again based on a true story. A powerful session. This scenario deserves publication.
Tuesday Morning:
We didn’t use the rules, however. We had character sheets - which seemed extremely detailed, even having a hit location system - but no dice were rolled. We just spent a couple of hours debating philosophical and moral questions. And it was a blooming lovely way to spend a morning.
Tuesday night: After blundering about in the dark for ages - it turns out there are THREE lodges with the same number and I was actually in the private part of the park - I eventually found the correct lodge for the playtest.
This was a fun game. The designer has clearly reached a stage where he’s been play-testing and tried to accommodate all the feedback. The system is just getting a little too over-complicated and needs trimming back. But the depth he’s put into character details and the setting is amazing.
It was a fun adventure in a setting where temporal incursions have created twisted alternate realities. We would all have liked to play for longer. The Referee was concerned that the scenario was too straightforward and over-simple. He couldn’t have been more wrong. He has created that perfect introductory scenario for his game. I’m just sorry we only got to see the first couple of chapters.
And he had the most darling Chihuahua - not my last dog of the convention.
Wednesday morning:
I’ve played with this Referee before at conventions and he’s become friend. He got me again. He’s so quietly spoken and methodical and quintessentially English that you can never quite spot the moment where everything hits the fan and it all descends into a frenzied climax. Great fun!
Wednesday afternoon:
Convention slots are usually 4 hours long but my convention games usually run well under, coming in at just under three and a half hours. This time I tried a new form of prologue scene. I run this short, short adventure using pregenerated characters before the players make their own bespoke adventurers. This gives them familiarity with the rules and avoids them making key mistakes. I also gave them Character Generation Sheets explaining the character creation process. As experienced TTRPG players they were able to use these to make their characters with little input from me.
All of this took the session almost exactly 4 hours in length. And the players were excellent.
Wednesday night:
Unexpectedly I had a player who was blind. I did my best to make reasonable accommodations and everything seemed to work find. One of the accommodations was to have him sitting next to me, which meant that his guide dog - who was delightful and seemed to take shine to me - spent the whole game slobbering over my trousers.
Again, the game filled the full 4 hour slot. This is so unusual for me.
And, again, the players were excellent. Friendly, intelligent, inventive, engaged. A pattern was beginning to emerge.
Thursday morning:
Good game. good Referee. Exceptional players.
Thursday Afternoon: I ran my Starfleet Academy game using my The Code of the Spacelanes rules. I have a habit of offering games based on whatever’s “hot” on TV at the time. This is to try to entice more people to sign up. Before Christmas I ran games based on the Alien: Earth streaming show, for example. But I suspect if I offered that now, few people would be interested.
The “big thing” in early 2026 was Starfleet Academy so I created a scenario based on that. I just transposed it back from the 32nd century of the TV series to The Original Series era. I’ve run this a few times now and it always goes down a storm. The stand-outs in this session were the Command Track cadet trying to seduce the Pirate Queen - and spending the rest of the scenario in a diaphanous outfit worth of William Riker. And a trainee Pilot with multiple artificial organs - a real disadvantage - being killed by being trapped in a shuttle bay when its door were opened to space only to discover that his artificial organs actually kept him alive.
I love my game. I love this scenario.
And I was beginnning to realise that the Con-Tingency secret sauce was the players. Every game I’d played so far that players were top notch.
Thursday night: I’d signed up for a game of Mutants and Masterminds but with the later night on Wednesday I felt exhausted and withdrew from the game. I spent the whole session in my room catching up on sleep and game organisation. I looks like I wouldn’t have the stamina to referee 14 slots in a row!
Friday morning: My first ever game of Tales from the Loop. I was impressed by the simplicity of the rules. The game was in the bar and noise was an issue. We had a quiet Referee and the adjacent table had a legendarily loud and enthusiastic one. Luckily he was an old convention mate and didn’t take it amiss when I signalled him to tone it down a bit. Our own Referee, however, didn’t take my suggestion to project his voice a bit more - which I did privately during a break - so we ask struggled to hear him. Which is a shame because it was a fun scenario.
Friday afternoon: I refereed my fantasy game - The Code of Warriors and Wizardry. Adventurers get drawn into an epic tale do Dragons being hunted by flying ships and winged warriors. I’d run this before, successfully, but it had always gone a bit gonzo for my tastes. I wanted to run it by being strict with the non-human species players could create. No more Squirrel wizards!
I also had a new prologue adventure of the type I’d used for games in other genres. Everything worked perfectly.
Somehow I had my first ever Total Party Kill using this system but it was EPIC and testimony to the excellent players Con-Tingency was delivering to my table.
Friday night: The convention was getting quite crowded now and I began to see and greet a lot of people I knew from other events. The people who could only make it for the weekend were beginning to arrive.
This session I was Refereeing The Code of Cthulhu again but not using a scenario of my design. I was experimenting with adapting a scenario written for the classic Cthulhu game. I’d run this once before at StabCon and wanted to try it again with an added action scene. The game seems to generate more TV-style Supernatural adventures than 18-rated horror films.
Again the players were excellent. This game and this scenario seem to throw up some really great “shades of grey” female player-characters. The additional added scene was perfect.
Saturday morning: A fellow game designer I liaise with on-line had arrived for the weekend. He had played in my Friday night horror game and I signed up to play in a game he was developing. It uses playing cards to take players through various types of an apocalypse. We were playtesting the Robot Apocalypse. I am not usually a fan of using cards as a resolution mechanic in TTRPGs. I prefer the completely random nature of dice. But this system was incredibly well constructed and the card-based rules worked extremely well.
He’d somehow managed to cram an immense amount of detail into a tiny little rulebook. I was impressed. They system wasn’t to my taste - I prefer my games more open-ended and random - but I can see that it’s going to be a very good game.
Saturday afternoon: I’d posted a scenario for my superhero game - The Comics Code - on Warhorn about Superheroes in a future underwater city. Somehow its title had been missed off the posting and sign-up sheet being merely called “The Comics Code” but the full description of the adventure was still there.
It didn’t get a single sign-up, either on WarHorn or at the event itself. Before Muster, I took down the sheet and signed up for another game - almost at random. I didn’t know the system or the Referee, just that it was “Saturday Morning Anime Action”.
I was incredibly lucky. The system was an interesting one. The Referee was superb. I noticed her using all the tricks I use when running my games - tight timings, loudly, celebrating the players and their characters etc. The players were all young women in their twenties with a deep knowledge of anime. I was forty years their senior - at a guess - with only a surface knowledge. But none of that mattered. We were all excellent players with a skilled Referee using an interesting game system. All of that came together to create a perfect anime game.
Sometimes you strike it lucky!
Saturday night: Again another random sign-up. This turned out to be a simple d20-based fantasy session. Tongue-in-cheek with players that were all in on the joke. We had a Gnome bounty hunter adventuring alongside a gentle Giant. I played an “Avant” Gardener etc. You get the picture?
Excellent players- again! A Referee who knew EXACTLY what was doing using straightforward rules of his own design. A nice easy way to spend a Saturday night.
Sunday morning: Prior to my two lucky sign-ups of Saturday, I’d been finding I wasn’t enjoying PLAYING games as much as I was enjoying REFEREEING them. My fault. I just prefer being involved in a high-paced game. So, in place of playing in a game Sunday morning, I chose to offer to run my Starfleet Academy game for a second time.
I’d prepared packs for each of my games prior to event and have included extra characters sheets in each pack to allow me to do this. What I didn’t have was a sign up sheet. So I’d made one on my i-Pad and emailed it to the admin desk where it was printed out and stuck up.
I’d meant to do one for the Saturday night slot but just couldn’t find the time. (Lucky for me!)
This game got two players signed up. I’d long ago learnt not to stick slavishly to my 3-5 preference for player numbers in a game. I will run games for 2 people or 6 people as well. Both the players agreed to play with just 2 players. They were friends.
The trick here was to ask each player to create and run two characters each. The Code of the Spacelanes has systems for random character creation and character design. I asked each player to randomly roll a character. They could then see the specialisms of the first two characters and design their other ones. They rolled a Command Cadet and a Doctor. So they designed an Engineer and a Science Officer cadet.
With four characters the scenario played out as it always does, though with this group it was more of a cat and mouse game. Only the Command Track Cadet got out of the shuttle bay to try and cut a deal with the Pirate Queen. The Engineer rigged the shuttle’s engines to explode and set up a dead man’s switch.
Everything went about as well as you’d expect with every character being reduced to exactly zero hit points, just as a Starship turned up to rescue them. Fun!
Sunday afternoon: There is a very good Sunday carvery in the restaurant which you can claim as part of your half board. I did and stuffed myself - the Turkey breast melting in my mouth.
The afternoon slot starts an hour later, at 3pm instead of 2pm. This is to allow an hour to do the Con-Tingency raffle. I am to a fan of raffles at conventions in general but I actively avoid this one. It is MASSIVE with some excellent prizes. But it goes on forever.
Instead I opted to go to te supermarket to grab a couple of meal deals. One for the evening and one for my journey home.
I’ve had a copy of the Discworld Starter Set for a few months. I’ve been wanting to try it out.
As I suspected, I found the game system to be a bit TOO simple and reliant on the Referee to create interesting descriptions and consequences off-the-cuff. I tried my best to give the players a good time but I’m not sure it was my best work. Also I found the scenario’s layout to be confusing to use in play. It’s a good scenario that worked well, but if I were ever to run it again, (I won’t) I think I’d prepare a summary sheet.
What I WILL do is to try to get in a game with someone running a scenario of their own design to see how they do it.
Monday morning: At the bus-stop I ran into the “Iron GM”.
“How many games did you run?”
“Fourteen!”
“Right! I’m going t do that next year!”
“Don’t. It…..hurts.”
I KNOW he’s going to do it again next year. In my heart of hearts, I know I won’t.
4. Reflections
In case I haven’t been clear enough, I LOVE Con-Tingency. Wall-to-wall Table-Top Role-Playing for SEVEN days. It’s not just a convention it’s a holiday.
The players are sublime. I’ve thought about it and I think one factor may be because they’re so relaxed. No worries about the journey home. If things get a bit overwhelming you can take session off to relax without missing much.
The organisers are magnificent. Organisation before, during and after the event is clear. Things you’d never think of, they do. I said not everything is supplied in a lodges so they keep a stock at the admin desk to buy or rent. The gents toilet contains a basket of free-to-use grooming products. (I never saw anybody using one. Men, eh?)
If anything it’s a little too intense. Four hour slots plus Muster is a lot.
Next year I’m going make it clear that any evening games I offer will be three hours long and will finish at 10:30pm. That way I should be able to get to sleep before midnight.
The half-board option is a really good deal but clearly the most cost effective choice is to self-cater in your lodge. So if you can come in a small group, do. If you run games in your lodge you can also save money on drinks. Beverages in the main building are, understandably, at standard prices.
It’s at an awkward time of year to get away from your job but that’s why it’s such good value.
I can NOT recommend this convention more highly. You MUST come!
5. Cost, Time, and Value
This section looks at what the convention cost me, as a participant, and what that worked out as per hour of actual gaming. It is intended as an illustrative case study rather than a universal guide.
I include only costs that are directly caused by attending the convention.
I do not normally include routine food costs, as I would incur these whether or not I attended. However, I’ll give some details here as I think it’s relevant.
I do report on the cost of a pint of lager as this is an important metric or some of my readers.
My travel costs reflect my own circumstances (travelling from Birmingham and making use of available rail discounts), so readers should treat the numbers as indicative rather than directly transferable.
Headline figures
Convention cost (ticket and accommodation): £175
Travel cost: £33.69
Total convention-specific cost: £208.69
Total hours of gaming (played and run including Monday and Tuesday): 61
Approximate cost per hour of gaming: £3.42
Cost of pint of Lager: £5.65
Half Board (all you can eat Breakfast and all you can eat evening meal): £22 per day
6. What I Took Away
Con-Tingency is a simply incredible event. A whole week playing Table-Top Role-Playing Games. If you have the stamina and the interest, you really should go.
It’s particularly suited to families or friends who can travel in small groups so that you can make best use of the self-catering opportunities. However, I was travelling completely solo and still managed very well.
I will be back next year and would recommend everybody tries it at least once in their life.
For clarity, Conception ran for 17 years not 10 😀
ReplyDeleteWe also raised well over a six figure sum, hitting 5 figure sums annually.
Was good to see you even if we didn't cross games this year.
Thanks for the information. The post has been updated. I’d say it was good to see you too but you’re “anonymous”. (I can probably guess.)
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