7 Hills - Convention Reflection

In the first weekend in April (1st and 2nd April) 2023, I was at my second convention of the year, 7 Hills at the Garrison Hotel in Sheffield. I'm lucky enough to live within walking distance of this venue, so I rarely miss a convention there.

7 Hills is a general convention with the only "restriction" on games being that they should match the theme, which is chosen on an annual basis by the committee with some input from previous attendees. The theme is usually fairly broad which makes it simple to find a scenario that in some way matches it. The last time this con was due to run in person (this was the first to fall victim to the Covid lockdown) the theme was "Punk". This was selected to cover all the different genres with a Punk suffix. After many conversations I still don't understand what makes a game Punk, so this led me into my first ever foray into writing my own scenario after a suggestion from my good friend Symatt, thanks bro 😀

This years theme was Change. I ran two games this year, Bones Deep and Mausritter. The Bones Deep game definitely fits the theme as you're playing newly hatched skeletons, Mausritter was a bit further off field, but it was a change for me at least as I offered the game to cajole myself into actually reading the book.

Like most of the Garrison Cons 7 Hills runs with 5 slots over 2 days, 3 on Saturday and 2 on Sunday.

When I arrived on Saturday morning, replete after a cheeky McDonald's breakfast, I was greeted by several familiar faces and some lovely new ones who had never been to 7 Hills before. Then the committee handed out the new swish name badges they created this year which had the timetables printed on the  back with your personal schedule marked in yellow highlighter, what a stroke of genius! They also had symbols on the front to show if you were a Game Host, New to 7 Hills and even New to Gaming. 

7 Hills is a bit larger that Revelation which meant that the Dungeon was in use for games. Though its not really a dungeon (the cells upstairs in the main room really are old cells), it is down the stairs and along a dark corridor where only the staff can find the light switches. I was in the Dungeon for slot one, so after a quick shout of "follow me" I led my players and some newbies from the other table there down into the darkness (OK the staff had switched the lights on by then, spoilsports).

My first game was one I was GMing, this time Mausritter. I'd picked the Tower of Soot, one of the adventures in the Estate box set. In this scenario your band of mice have to rescue a mouse who has been captured by a human and put in a cage as a common pet! The only way out of the house after you've got the captive out of the cage is up the chimney (or as I kept saying at the table "chimeley"). I'd prepared 18 pre-gens as the scenario has a couple of points where you're instructed to "kill all mice" if they haven't reached a certain height up the chimney. In the first playtest, I killed 3 mice, and I think 1 in the second playtest. I ended up only killing off 2 mice at the convention table plus a hireling (though he died running off after failing a morale check). It's a bit strange as I don't normally like to kill off PCs, but there's something about Mausritter, or at least Tower of Soot, that made me slightly disappointed in the low PC death rate. I'm blaming the rules reference that quotes "Fight Dirty, Run, Die, Roll a new mouse" as one of the Best Practices for the game. Low PC death rate aside, I had a blast running this game, the players seemed to be enjoying it too. 

Then it was off to Morrisons to pick up some lunch, heading upstairs to catch up with folks before the 2nd slot.

My second game was The Shifting Sands using the Dead of Night rules. I had no idea what to expect from this game as it wasn't my first pick and I wasn't familiar with the system. But the ruleset was beautifully simple, with the character sheet fitting on one side of A5 including some rules references and character concept traits. The simple descriptions were enough to let me truly inhabit my character, quirks and all, I even did a character voice and I don't often do that. Our characters were a band of tomb raiders coming back to the town of Azur after a long time away to refresh our supplies and sell on some of the treasures we'd collected on our last "dig". I played Amir Naahn (all the PCs had Indian bread related surnames) a merchant who made his fortune selling exotic goods in the markets of Azur, so the first thing he did after waking up in the town (after we only just made it through the gates before curfew the evening before - there was no curfew in place last time we were here) was head out to the markets to catch up with old friends and find out what was going on. Amir's fact finding was a bit lacking, but he did manage to barter an illustrated stone table for some fresh chickens which he took back to the innkeeper so he could make the best spiced chicken dinner for miles around. The food was so good Amir got stranded outside when an alarm went off and the innkeeper quickly ran indoors and started battening down the hatches against the threatened sand storm, thus splitting the party (sorry Jag). He then ran off to follow the townsfolk trying to get into the temple for protection, being surprised when he realised the guards were actually trying to keep the townsfolk out of the temple rather than herding them in. Strange things were definitely happening in Azur. This was an unexpectedly brilliant game and I have a great fondness for Amir and his overexuberance.

Then it was time for my usual Hunters Chicken and some more chat before heading back down to the dungeon for the last slot of the day.

I was GMing again in the 3rd slot, this time the more familiar (to me at least) Bones Deep. Having run this scenario several times before, I hadn't done a lot of prep having concentrated on Mausritter, but luckily it all came flooding back to me as I started handing out the stretchy skeletons, rules references and spells lists etc. I'd bought a couple of new props for the game which I was quite excited to use. This gave me a boost of energy which was great as I'd been a bit worried that I might be fading by the end of the day especially as I'd never run two games on the same day before. I'd printed off a second set of character sheets, just in case as there are only 6 skeleton types in the game and I originally had 6 players booked into the game (but some last minute attendee drop outs meant I only had 5). It was a good job too as I ended up with 2 PC deaths in the game, in all the times I've run this before I've only ever had one PC death before due to an exceptionally high damage roll from one of my beasties. Maybe the Mausritter influence hadn't worn off from the morning? But at least the players got a chance to play a different skeleton type so they can experience more that the game has to offer. For the first time ever this scenario ran short, thanks to a genius plan from the players to deal with the big nasty in the final encounter. But that meant I was home before midnight for the first time ever after a slot 3 Garricon game and the players staying at the hotel had time to head up to the bar before last orders. So it was a win-win all round. 

All in all a great first day.

I wasn't running any games on Sunday so I had planned to catch the bus or walk if I was up early enough, but the pull of a second McDonald's breakfast was too strong (I only eat McDonalds when I go to conventions, honest) so I grabbed an Uber instead. 

My slot four game was Pellenicky Glade one of the Free RPG day quickstart adventures for Root. I'd picked up the quickstart at UK Games Expo 22 when I did some last minute demos for Magpie Games in the trade hall, but had not got round to reading it. I had played Root before at an online convention and found it charming and a lot of fun. The pre-gens supplied in the quickstart had some very cleverly engineered backgrounds that supported the story. I played Quinn the Ranger a rugged, terse and ex-military wolf. Looking back over the character sheet I've just realised that I missed half of Quinn's background that tied into the developing events in the clearing, but at least I picked up on the part that I hated the Eerie, one of the factions in the game. Our characters arrived in the clearing to much hustle and bustle and building of amphitheatre style seating. On enquiring about this we discover that this is in preparation for the Clearing's first ever democratic election following the death of the Mayor. The Mayoral position was normally passed down through the ruling Goshawk family after they were given the glade decades upon decades ago in recognition of the valour of one of the ancestors in the great civil war.  We offered our services to the Goshawk who seemed to be in charge, thinking we might help with the preparations, but instead she engaged us to look into the death of the Mayor after revealing to us that although they had told the residents of the clearing he died of natural causes, he was in fact murdered. Exploring the different factions and political players in the clearing uncovered all kinds of secrets and led to us engineering a coalition between the youngest Goshawk and the Mouse activists as well as foiling an ambush attempt by one of the larger factions. Although the murderer was not who I at first thought, the game was as entertaining and charming as expected.

Slot 5 was Pendragon, which I've played once before but I'd forgotten that it was d20 not d100, so it was a good job I'd packed a full set of dice. I played Sir Drake a bachelor Knight with a reputation as a ladies man backed up by a Lustful personality trait score of 16 and a Flirting Skill of 18 and a note that he tended to pursue married women. Now I may have leaned into this a touch too far, but when we entered the last safe outpost on our mission to discover why a coastal Lord had not reported in after the spring thaw and the GM stated that the Lord here was wrathfully jealous of his beautiful new bride, there was only once course of action I could take wasn't there? Until that point I'd planned some shenanigans with a comely member of the household staff, but I've always been a sucker for an obvious plot point. So after Sir Drake had successfully flirted with the lord's wife and had the gauntlet thrown down and soundly won the resultant duel, he did take the bride on a moonlit walk in the night air. Now in my defence I was expecting my PC to be attacked in his sleep rather than what happened, I also had no idea that healing was brutally nigh-on non-existent in the game (no really, last time I played it was in the "before times" at a convention in 2019). So when we ended up heading off the beaten path deeper into the woods to avoid the war party sent out from the Lord's household following Sir Drake's moonlit activities and blundered into an ambush by a different set of adversaries and one of the party was nearly mortally wounded, I was somewhat chagrined. Luckily one of the PCs had some magic salve and the whole party survived to work out the evil afoot in the coastal Lord's keep. We took down the big wibbly with barely a scrape, but were bested in the final encounter by the household Knights who had fallen under the spell of the Lord's new bride. It wasn't strictly a TPK, but with 2 PCs dead, and the other 3 poisoned and thus fallen to the same spell as the rest of the household it was as near as damn it. As this was a convention game, this result was highly enjoyable for me, had it been other than a one-shot I would have been deeply mortified. So, apologies to my fellow players in this one, I'll try and be a bit more temperate next time, but I can't make any promises.

7 Hills was as brilliant as ever, Garricons are always so friendly with a high standard of games offered. If you'd like to come join us for the next one, the discord channel for 7 Hills  is the best place to get announcements relating to the convention.

Final thought:

Both my games were upstairs on Sunday, so no hiking up and down the stairs, good for my knees but it meant I clocked up about 4k steps less than Saturday, so maybe I should have had breakfast at home after all.