Furnace XVI - Convention Report

 

With the game bookings for Furnace XVII (October 22) now open, I chanced upon the half-written con report for last year (2021). Now that I'm finally feeling better (montelukast for the win), I thought I'd finish it up and post it as my game this evening has been postponed due to a couple of players being absent with their characters in the most peril (we all know I can't be trusted to keep another player's character alive, so good decision from the GM). **** OK, that went well, I clearly got distracted again as I've only just found this now 🤦 ****

So after a stern word with myself early in the morning, I arrived at the Garrison Hotel for my first face to face convention since "the before times", safe in the knowledge that all attendees were double-jabbed and negative LFT before being admitted.

It was smaller than usual, but that meant we could spread out a bit more and not be overwhelmed with "people-ing" too quickly.

I was running my first face to face convention game ever, I had thrown my hat into the ring at 2 online cons before, but online and in person are very different beasts and it's much easier to sneakily look at your notes on VTT, so I was pretty nervous. The scenario was one of my own making, "Never Mind the Blood Drops" designed for Liminal, based in my home town back in the 70s. It has a slightly different slant to most Liminal games as the party are not already established Liminals and stumble into the adventure rather than being asked to investigate it. 

I set myself up in my cosy jail cell, (okay the bars are gone from the doors, but it really used to be a jail cell for the barracks) and waited for my players to arrive. 

Keary (who I'd played with before), Jamie (who I'd spoken to before), Michael and Richard (both new to me) soon arrived and we settled in to an easy pre-game conversation and my nerves started to dissipate quickly. 

The game flowed nicely and my players seemed to be enjoying themselves as much as I was, really inhabiting their characters and bringing out their quirks in play, throwing me the occasional curve ball, but it all added to the fun.

We overran by 15 minutes, but luckily there are long gaps between games, so no-one missed out on lunch and all agreed the extra pre-game conversation was worth it after such a long time locked away online.

My slot 2 game was Agon. It was my first game of Agon, but I'd heard good things and was really looking forward to trying it. 

Characters were easy to generate and created at the table with a few simple stats, a name and an Epitat, I played Xanthe, the Swift-Footed along with Tycon the Bloody-Minded, Thanos the Silver-Tongued and Xanthos the Well-Learned. Knowing this was a John Harper game, I was expecting it to be similar to the Forged in the Dark engine games I'd played at Garricons before. I was somewhat surprised then when we were invited to "take on this challenge" each player taking a completely different approach or lending support to another PC who had already accepted the challenge, boosting that PC's dice pool by doing so. It took me a few turns to get the hang of it, but once I had, it was a lot of fun generating actions from the simple statements that defined your character. We soon saved the local heroine, won the race and banished the treacherous leader from the land.

Then it was a quick trip across to Morrisons and back, just in time for a very delicious meal of Hunter's Chicken to be delivered from the kitchen to our gaming tables.

My slot 3 game was Through Sunken Lands - this was a first for me as well. Another game where the characters are generated at the table, but this time, some parts of the character generation feeds into creating the city that the game is played in with players using their backstory to define buildings and events that are used in the game. The table bling for this game included some A3 character gen guides which were a genius addition and made the process very easy as each "class" creates their character in a slightly different way. Each character gains a different agenda as part of the creation process. The game was a good romp through a heist with puzzles and traps and social etiquette to navigate. I was playing a guild thief and my agenda was to bring the McGuffin to the guild boss, and I took great delight (possibly a little too much) from betraying the party and making off with the McGuffin at the very end of the game, mwahahaha.

Then home for some much needed sleep.

My slot 4 game was Fate: Cats vs Cultists. We hit a slight bump in the road with this as the GM started feeling unwell overnight and sensibly stayed home keeping their germs to themselves rather than risking passing them on. Luckily one of the players stepped up and ran the game from the summary on the timetable. And what a great job he did too. The game was an absolute riot of gonzo silliness, iguanas escaping from their homes and climbing into the dying embers of next door's BBQ (then almost freezing solid as it cooled down again), sheep and squirrels as well as dogs, cats and cultists. What a blast and what a clever (and way braver than me) GM to deliver that with about 10 minutes notice.

My slot 5 game was Duty and Honour, an RPG that uses no dice! I was a little put off when I realised (my dice could be heard crying from the depths of my bag), but it was actually a clever mechanic. Each player draws a number of cards depending on their skills and can try to blag the GM into allowing them some extra cards from other skills. The cards are then played in secret in opposition to the GM, with the highest card winning the action once they are revealed (though I may be misremembering that, it's a while ago now after all). 

Once again another brilliant Garrison convention, I'm so lucky to live within walking distance of such a great venue filled with so many wonderful gamers.