Northstar - Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th May 2026
1. Why I Went
Northstar is a “Garricon”, one of a number of annual conventions based at the Garrison Hotel in Sheffield.
The first, and still most successful, of these is Furnace. This has been running for 20 years now and is extremely popular and extremely well organised.
Because of this, it has spawned several smaller events based in the same place using the same organisational template. Each of these, however, is devoted to a specific theme.
You can find out about all of them here:
https://garrison.omnihedron.co.uk
They all have my highest recommendation. I’m trying to go to all of them this year.
Northstar is a convention devoted entirely to science fiction TTRPGs. I decided to go because I have thoroughly enjoyed every Garricon I’ve attended, and I do have my own science fiction game, The Code of Steam and Steel, which I thoroughly enjoy running whenever people are willing to play it.
I know how Garricons are organised, so booking to go to this one is a low-stress activity for me. There is very little to worry about.
Also, five months into my year of attending a convention every weekend, I’m beginning to find my finances a bit challenged, so I wanted to see if I could shave a few costs from my usual bill.
2. The Shape of the Convention
As noted above, the convention takes place in the wonderful historic Garrison Hotel in Sheffield.
It officially takes place on Saturday and Sunday. There are three game slots on Saturday and two on Sunday. Over the years, they have developed variable lengths, from three hours up to over four hours. This has been thoroughly tested and gives time to run enjoyable scenarios while still allowing for good lunch and dinner breaks and socialising.
If there is an ideal way to do things, it is to book into the Garrison itself, arrive on Friday evening, spend Friday night socialising in the bar, and eat at the hotel all weekend. Though this is not the cheapest way to attend the convention, the costs still compare favourably with other holidays, especially as the hotel offers discounted rates for people attending these conventions.
Because Sheffield is only a short train ride from Birmingham, I long ago got into the habit of catching a train up early on Saturday morning and only booking into the hotel for Saturday night.
Communication before the event is exemplary, through a well-managed website and excellent engagement on various social media platforms. You pay a small registration fee and arrange your own accommodation. The organisers state what sorts of games they want offered and when they want them to be submitted. Deadlines are clearly communicated and adhered to.
As with most Garricons, even the most experienced (and, in my case, addicted) referees are encouraged to offer no more than two games.
As the event approached, the organisers discovered that they didn’t have quite enough game offerings to cover all attendees in all slots. So I was allowed to offer a third game. I was slightly surprised by this. My games are slightly niche. I would have expected the organisers to be more proactive and approach one of the more popular referees and ask them to run one of their sure-to-be-oversubscribed sessions a second time. But I’m not going to say no to running an extra game!
Submitting and booking into games is an incredibly open and mature process. The organisers set up a large open spreadsheet, and you just type in your details when asked.
“Submit your games” - you type the details directly into the spreadsheet.
“Referees get to preselect some games to play in” - you type in your requests for the games you want to play in. You give several preferences, in order.
“Other attendees get to choose the games they want to play in” - again, you give several choices for the games you’d like to play in in each slot.
Then the organisers look at the completed spreadsheet and allocate attendees to games using a fair, open, and pre-published system.
This system is clearly open to abuse and error. Someone who REALLY wanted to get into a game could, in theory, see how many people had it down as their first choice and amend other people’s selections. Clearly the organisers don’t believe anybody would actually do that, and neither do I. The fact that we all expect attendees at Northstar to be good, honourable people is really nice.
Error, though, is something else. Several times in the submission process, people entering their own game details accidentally deleted the details of other games. Fortunately, the organisers know what they are doing, restored the missing games from backups, and kept everyone informed (via amusingly, increasingly frustrated) social media posts.
You can also see every game submitted by every referee, obviously. You need to choose the games you want to play in. The breadth of scenarios on offer was simply breathtaking. If Hollywood made even the tiniest fraction of these games into films, they’d have their most successful summer ever.
Except for one game with a single-sentence description about the player characters being sent to investigate an abandoned space station. Of course, I chose that as one of my two choices.
I submitted my games and the games I wanted to play in. Well in advance, I knew what games I was playing in, that my three games had enough players to run, and who those players were.
I could see, at this point, that my Sunday morning game was going to be a challenge...
In order to try and save costs, I chose not to book into the Garrison Hotel itself this time, but into a budget hotel chain in the city centre. In addition, rather than get my usual taxi from the station to the hotel, I decided to investigate the Sheffield tram system. Finally, rather than eat in the hotel itself, I elected to buy a “meal deal” for my lunch each day from the Morrisons supermarket and buy breakfast and dinner from the McDonald’s, each conveniently next door to the hotel.
So I travelled up early on Saturday morning by train. I found the tram line was actually adjacent to the station, easier to locate than the taxi rank. Of course, it accepted my senior citizen’s travel pass. It took me straight to the Garrison, passing my chosen hotel on the way.
I arrived early enough to get breakfast at McDonald’s before arriving at the convention earlier than anyone else. I now know that, in future, I can set out an hour later from Birmingham and still get to Garricons early.
The event started with the usual professional introduction to the event, and we were all able to start playing.
3. Games Played and Games Run
Slot 1 - Saturday 10:00 - 13:00
I was playing in a game in this session. It was a Star Wars game using the “Outgunned” game system, a game designed to simulate John Wick-style films.
It was in one of the famous Garrison cells. Seven-foot by ten-foot rooms with an arch at one end where the prison door used to be and a high window at the other end. These look exactly like classic “dungeon” rooms. With a table and padded benches on either side, they’re almost perfect for playing a TTRPG session.
They’re a bit difficult to manoeuvre in and out of, get too hot in summer, get too dark at night-time, and can be a bit intimate for people with claustrophobia.
Apart from that, they’re lovely.
The game was exactly what you’d expect. It was just like a John Wick film, a non-stop shoot-’em-up chase across an Imperial dockyard to get to our ship with the stolen codes.
The game system basically involves adding items from your character sheet to build a pool of six-sided dice. These are then rolled to find matching pairs, triples, and so on. With rerolls of unsuccessful dice, it’s basically Yahtzee, the role-playing game.
I played a Mandalorian who rarely missed a shot and had a great time.
Throughout the game we were able to take breaks to drink coffee, tea, and so on. The organisers pay the hotel to keep urns of hot and cold water available, along with a pile of disposable cups and an apparently infinite supply of coffee sachets and tea bags. For those of a more refined palate, coffee bags containing nicer ground coffee are provided by the organisers out of the convention funds.
At lunchtime, I slipped over to Morrisons to buy a meal deal for my lunch and some biscuits to go with my cups of coffee later in the day.
Slot 2 - Saturday 14:30 - 18:00
My afternoon game was at a table in the middle of the main function room. Three gaming tables were set up, each made up of two smaller square tables. The organisers separate the tables with screens. These don’t muffle much of the noise, but they do stop visual distractions. They are great psychologically and a really good addition to the event.
This was the one-sentence game I’d chosen.
As I’d expected, there was far more to it than that.
I played a soldier again. Shoot first, easy to play. But I soon got sucked into the complex story of exactly what happened to the previous expedition to this space station and the AI running the place.
This was a game called Stars Without Number. The characters had the classic Dungeons and Dragons statistics, but task resolution used two six-sided dice, like the classic science fiction TTRPG Traveller. It was like two of the oldest TTRPG systems had had a baby. I was extremely comfortable with it.
The mystery driving the adventure was a compelling one, requiring my grunt of a soldier to take the ultimate risk to resolve things.
I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
I went to McDonald’s for my evening meal. I had a load of vouchers with me and ate for free.
Slot 3 - Saturday 19:30 - 00:00
This slot can potentially last for four and a half hours. It’s there for the Call of Cthulhu types who like a long evening game.
In my game description, I’d made it clear that my game would be finished before 11 pm, as I had to get back into Sheffield to reach my budget hotel.
This was my scenario in which the characters wake up on a wrecked spaceship with no memories of who they are. So it was a challenging pitch using a niche game system and wasn’t based on an existing science fiction property.
I had three players signed up for it. I didn’t ask, but I suspect none of them had chosen it as their first choice.
This game was in the middle of the function room. I made the decision to split the two tables. The four of us sat around a small square table and were able to converse comfortably without shouting.
This was a fun game, but with only three players it didn’t become as frenetic as this scenario often does. They played extremely sensibly and did things that are built into the adventure but which other groups often miss. They steadfastly refused to press The Big Red Button, which most other groups do. They did make a critical mistake at the end, which resulted in them being blown up. Never trust an insectoid alien to keep their word. Luckily, one of the characters had a secret subplot he was able to deploy to stop them from actually dying. However, the character ended up with even less than they started with.
The game only lasted three hours. This was mainly because of the number of players. There seems to be a direct link in my games between the number of players and the length of the game. However, as one of them noted, we seemed to have crammed a lot into those three hours.
And all three of them seemed to have had a good time.
It was an easy walk up to the tram stop, and it dropped me right outside my hotel in the centre of town.
Slot 4 - Sunday 10:00 - 13:00
In the morning I caught the tram up. I missed my stop, but that just meant getting off after Morrisons and walking back. I rediscovered that hidden shopping centre, which was a strange blend of Disneyland, the setting for a romcom, and urban decline. I’ve mentioned it before. Maybe one day I’ll take photos and give a more detailed description.
Breakfast at McDonald’s and then...
I was running my Starfleet Academy game. This usually goes very well. I’ve spoken about it often on here and online using my social media.
I had five players. Four of them I know very well. Every one of the four is an experienced TTRPG convention referee. They all have blogs where they record their experiences and offer advice. Two of them run a prominent actual play YouTube channel.
I was running a game for the very best, the crème de la crème. And they’d all seen me posting online about how good the adventure was.
I could write a whole book about how the game actually went. So could each of them.
Let’s just say I learnt a lot and received some useful feedback.
Slot 5 - Sunday 14:30 - 18:30
I bought a meal deal from Morrisons to eat on my train ride home and went to McDonald’s for a light lunch.
My afternoon game was the extra one I’d added. I’d pulled out an old scenario I used to run. It was based on the conceit of crossing over the old Blake’s 7 TV series with the plot of the 1990s Total Recall film.
We were playing in a cell. When I arrived, I thought someone had left their phone charger in it. But it turns out the organisers have bought rechargeable lanterns which referees can use to illuminate the cells at night. This is a really good move.
Most referees I know have the players in the cells and sit at the head of the table by the entrance. I chose to sit at the end of the table away from the entrance. This gives the players more freedom of movement.
I had five players. Three were old grognards like me who remembered the series. Two were young men who hadn’t even been born when it aired.
I have a flaw. When I dig out something I wrote ages ago and reread it or run it again, I always think it is really brilliant. This was no exception. I think it is a really good scenario.
It went well, but I am not sure the younger players got as much out of it as the older ones. I will ponder this and try to be more proactive if I encounter such situations in future.
The game finished in good time. The tram took me straight to the station, where I arrived over an hour early for my train home.
4. Play Reflections
Northstar, like all of the Garricons, is seamlessly organised. Next time, even if they ask for more games, I will hold back and only offer to referee two games. I will only offer a third if the organisers seem to really need one.
Both the games I played in were good, and all the players in all of my games were great.
Refereeing for a star chamber of people you consider elite referees and players within the hobby brings its own challenges, most of them internal. If this ever happens again, I will remember Northstar 2026 and prepare appropriately.
Coincidentally, I am offering all of the games I offered here at the upcoming UK Games Expo and see no reason to make any changes.
5. Cost, Time, and Value
This section looks at what the convention cost me as a participant. It is intended as an illustrative case study rather than a universal guide.
I said in my previous post (Portmeirion Steampunk) that I wasn’t going to do a detailed analysis going forward. However, as I was specifically trying to make savings on this trip, I’ve decided to include some figures.
First of all, a pint of lager: £5.80
Unfortunately, the bar was understaffed, which made buying the pint difficult.
I do not include routine food costs, as I would incur these whether or not I attended. But buying meal deals and McDonald’s clearly saved money. The hotel food has traditionally been good, but it would cost more.
Convention ticket: £30
Train tickets: £15.49 (2 x advance singles)
Hotel: £88.20
This is very high for a budget hotel and is due to surge pricing on the Saturday night. It probably isn’t much of a saving over the Garrison costs, especially with the convention discount, and I may look carefully before booking this option again.
6. What I Took Away
All Garricons are supremely well organised and get incrementally better over time. I am not sure the hotel itself is keeping up with these improvements, but its special price for convention attendees may make trying to stay at a cheaper hotel nearby a false economy.
Going to any Garricon is an easy option. As long as you keep yourself informed and interact with the organisers in the run-up to the event, attending is childishly simple. You can be sure you’ll have a good time no matter which games you end up playing.
Northstar is no exception. Northstar 2026 was a superior experience.
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