Grand Tribunal - Friday 14th to Sunday 16th August 2026 - Cheltenham

Editorial note:

Due to unexpected real-life events, I had to cancel all of the my convention visits in August 2026. So I was unable to maintain this blog.

Out of the blue, I received the following convention report from a friends of mine - Shankar. He’d attended Grand Tribunal - the annual convention in Cheltenham celebrating the Ars Magic Game and its related community. He’d noticed I wasn’t there and did a write up I could use on my blog.

I’ve added a couple of headings but not tried to force the report into my usual format.

Thanks, mate!

If anyone else is at a UK TTRPG convention and I’m not there, feel free to drop me a quick report and I’ll include it here.

Introduction

After having had a good experience with the Grand Tribunal at Cheltenham last year, I decided to attend once again, driving down from Birmingham on the Saturday morning and staying overnight to take part in the Sunday sessions as well. There is plenty of on-road parking nearby. I parked my car near the Grand Tribunal, walked to and from The Holiday Inn in Cheltenham where I was staying, and Lidl next door for food (about 8 minutes' walk).

As I have said previously, the organisers are extremely kind, looking after the participants, including bringing coffee, tea, milk and doughnuts for the morning. I did drink a fair bit of coffee as I was tired from the drive, but avoided the doughnuts. The Norwegians did bring some chocolate-covered marshmallow bears which were extremely moreish.

Schedule

1) I attended 5 sessions in total and, going back to my roots for my first session, joined a 5th edition D&D (Andrew Oakley GMing) one-shot where we were attending a commemoration for a battle that had occurred 100 years ago. As a long-lived dwarf cleric, I was actually at the Battle and came to pay respects to my comrades who had fallen.

We stayed at an inn named Crossbones which had lots of crossed bones on shields as the décor. We were approached by a local cleric for help. We were asked to investigate the mysterious appearance of animated bony remains which were appearing.

We went to the graveyard where we found several animated corpses that we consigned back to the ground. We also found that animals were picking up the bones and were scattering them over a larger area, and that the innkeeper had collected some of these bones without realizing they were human remains and had used them in the decoration of his shields.

We headed back to the inn to pick up the bones in order to consign them back to the Earth, as it was very disrespectful to use them as decoration. On returning, we fought off a wolf that was trying to steal bones.

We discovered that there was a purple fungus that seemed to be responsible for the real animations. We defeated this and concluded the adventure.

I am trying to be healthy, so brought some soup for lunch.

2) The afternoon session was run by Kyrie, based on the Kwaiden system homebrew. We had to investigate mysterious attacks on a border town in northern Meiji-era Japan. There were a lot of mysterious appearances, but with a spooky feel because we didn't really get good views of what was doing the attacks. But gradually, piecing together the clues, we discovered a huge bear spirit that was responsible for the attacks.

We set out a trap to eliminate the bear, which we did successfully, though it did involve the Portuguese explorer player calling down a cannon barrage on the bear and the group. Needless to say, that was a lot of collateral damage. We did all survive.

3) The evening session was an Ars Magica session (Ewan GMing). We were tasked by The Tribunal to find and bring to justice a senior murderous rogue magus. He had disappeared into the Scottish Highlands.

We tracked him down to his original abode, where we explored the true nature of his laboratory setup. I played the part of a flame-based Magus (pregen) who was extremely powerful. However, I'm not really familiar with Ars Magica, so to a large extent was kindly guided by some of the other more experienced players who seemed to be able to do the higher-level maths needed to play the system well.

We went into his laboratory, discovered various traps and tricks that we eventually managed to disarm, and then continued to further track him into the Highlands, where we found him trying to set up a smaller version of what he had left behind.

We did manage to defeat him, but discovered he had lost his marbles and was undertaking this venture and trying to recreate what he had lost. Because of his various powers, the best way to kill him was to smother him in his sleep, which was an ignominious ending for just such a powerful magus.

The Holiday Inn Cheltenham was comfortable and, after Guinness, had a good night's sleep.

4) The morning session was something I hadn't really experienced. It was an Ars Magica freeform adventure. Some people dressed up for the occasion. It was a form of LARP, but not what I did 45 years ago with foam swords.

This was a social interaction and talking game of politics, intrigue and love. I did make some inroads into my mission objective by talking to other characters, trying to discover things, but mostly was confused till, at the end, my "wife" declared her love for another man. I didn't see that coming!!

My daughter, a psychologist, tells me I'm on the spectrum. Outside of work I'm not the greatest communicator and struggle with social interactions. However, I did enjoy the session. I found it intriguing and, as it’s such a small convention, I had got used to my fellow attendees.

5) For my final game, I once again retreated to D&D 5th edition one-shot with Andrew Oakley GMing. As part of the local religious order, we were asked by a very influential and rich widow to investigate the fiery goings-on in the family crypt after her husband was buried there.

We met and defeated a number of fiery creatures and found a fiery doorway which we managed to put out with buckets of water and an ice spell. We entered the crypt and discovered a number of small elementals leaking through into our world through portals.

We discovered that the nobleman had been buried with a family ring that opened these portals, and by recovering the ring we were able to seal off the portals and resolve the problem.

Summary

All in all, that was an excellent convention. The beauty of The Grand Tribunal is its small size and friendly organisers and participants (who loyally attend from far and wide, including a significant Scandinavian contingent).

£30 for Convetnion ticket

£170 for overnight stay

£15 for food

£20 for petrol for drive?

I played 5 games, each lasting approximately 2 1/2 to 3 hours, so total time played approximately 13 hours. 

Cost per hour would be around £18.