Furnace XVI (2021) - a return to face-to-face conventions

Back to the Garrison Hotel for face-to-face gaming

The weekend just gone brought a welcome return to face-to-face tabletop roleplaying after a gap of over 18-months. The last convention I attended was at the very end of February 2020, right in the face of the pandemic lockdown. We pivoted North Star 2020 to online at short notice, and continued, running a series of virtual conventions to keep the gaming community engaged. We may have not been running physical conventions, but each-and-every one that would would have run made the jump to cyberspace.

Furnace is our flagship convention, the original event held at the Garrison. I joined the committee after some of the original founders decided it was time to step away, and now we have a triumvirate of a committee; Graham (Chair), Elaine (Games Tsarina) and myself (other stuff). We had a long discussion over WhatsApp on whether we should go ahead, but in the end decided that we would, provide that restrictions didn't make it unviable. We set our base requirement to attend that you needed to be double vaccinated and have a clear lateral flow test from the last 24 hours. Obviously, you also needed to be symptom-free. I had a crash course in discovering how each of the four home nations gave routes to provide evidence (far too-balkanised for my liking) and everyone ended up being remarkably accommodating. We removed two gaming tables to create more space, and capped the smallest gaming spaces to four players and a GM (making a de facto position official).

We ended up just short of 40 people signing up, which is about half our usual size, but slightly larger than the two smaller conventions we usually run (Revelation and North Star). We'd expected a drop off so weren't too worried. We had enough people to be viable. Patriot Games agreed to attend as usual, and in the absence of All Rolled Up,  Emmanuel's Collective attended with some lovely dice, artwork and more.

I offered two games for the convention; 'Through Sunken Lands' and 'Delta Green'. I signed up for a double slot game of 'The Last Fleet', a powered-by-the-apocalypse riff on Battlestar Galactica. I ended up with a free slot on Sunday morning, as I was holding as a reserve GM originally but once we had enough GMs I just decided to take it easy. Sadly, I didn't bring Mausritter with me, or I could have ended up running an extra game as we had someone unable to attend during that slot due to unforeseen circumstances.

I rolled in on Friday evening to find the bar full of gamers. I enjoyed myself catching up with old friends and then ended up with rather a late night as a couple of us ended up working through part of my bottle of Jura because the bar shut early. They initially shut without calling last orders at 22:30, but Elina had a word and we got another round out of them. This led to Graham carrying out a quick negotiation with the hotel to make sure the bar was open to midnight as usual the next evening. I think that the Garrison had moved some much to being somewhere that people have a meal that they had forgotten that people may want to sit around and have some drinks.

The Last Fleet - PbtA Battlestar Galactica Humanity in a desperate bid for survival

Saturday dawned far too early for my liking after a restless night. I'm blaming the radiator that was on full blast rather than the scotch, but breakfast was a delight and the staff were really excited to see us. I guess that gamers have become a fixture in their calendar, with four events (at least) each year, and this felt like a return to normality.

The COVID checks went smoothly; two people had to do Lateral Flow Tests (all fine) but we had some on site. No-one complained and there was a general buzz of excitement around the room. 

Sketch of an Arrowhead, the fleet's defenders.

I spent the day playing 'The Last Fleet', where my character was a grizzled but charismatic Unity politician and engineer. Think socialist/communist agitator with a tinge of Gerry Adams, riffing on Zarek in the BSG series. It was great fun but I managed to fail every charisma and politics move I made (must have been close to double figures) as I kept on rolling 2, 3 or 4 on 2d6. Thanks to the rash actions of our hotshot pilot 'Falcon', the seal popped on my suit in an area of Cylon Corax contamination. All the tests said I was clear but - in the end - when the secret Cylon Corax cards were handed out I was it. I started off in Boomer mode and then was assimilated into the collective hive mind as the Fleet started to tear itself apart. 

The Endgame...

It was a fun game, and I'd definitely play again. I have to confess that the dice rolls left me feeling flat, but it was great fun playing with folks I respect as gamers and like as friends. By the end, I was definitely behaving as a fungi.

The bling for Through Sunken Lands - we marked these up

The evening brought my game of Through Sunken Lands, which I foolishly didn't take a picture of. This is the OSR game built on the systems used for 'Beyond the Wall' but with a swords and sorcery feel. You co-create characters from playbooks and use the contacts and locations that you generate to populate the map, in our case the Great City of Jundarr. It's a very swords and sorcery vibe. There are shades of Conan, Lankhmar and Moorcock's Young Kingdoms, and we added a healthy dose of the Discworld's Ankh-Morpork to the mix. The naming of our spell-thief's magical mentor as the Sorceress Zelda escalated to create the gods Nin'tendo, Ga Me'Boy and the dread rites of Wii. One of the characters carried a gauntlet made from the hand of the dead god Snes. We had high notes throughout, lots of laughs and there was also a hint of darkness. I did get a bit worried when one of my players ended up having to take her inhaler because she was laughing so much. And the less said about the incident with the handheld fan, the better. Thank you to my group for the brilliant return to face to face GMing for me; I kind of wish we'd been able to carry on with the adventures of the party, despite Kithra's betrayal of the party when she absconded with the Tome of Dead God's Names.

Bar afterwards, then we finished the scotch. Much better sleep because I turned the heating down. See, it wasn't the whisky after all!

Quiet slot for Sunday morning; caught up with Graham, chilled and prepared for the afternoon. Lovely hot beef sandwich for lunch at the Garrison (beat the Morrison's lunch and KFC tea the day before).

Delta Green comes to Hawkins, Indiana.

Operation Horatio was fun. I suspect it really needs a double slot but we got to a nice conclusion. The scenario is a "What-if?"; what if Delta Green sent agents into the town of Hawkins as the first series of Stranger Things took place with a mission to investigate what Dr Martin Brenner is up to and why the activities of the lab are secret. The game is a sandbox with a timeline, and we ended up with the Demogorgon slain, Will Byers still missing in the upside down, and Eleven and the kids starting to meet up. One character was badly injured and another pretty mauled, so the team disengaged to report back. There was clearly unnatural activity going on with enough circumstantial evidence to link it to Hawkins National Laboratory. Had there been longer, a scorched earth operations would have probably followed. I felt for Steve Ellis in this - having GMed for me in the Last Fleet, he had the same level of luck that I did on his dice rolls. Hopefully it caught the vibe.

And then it was time to go home. I'm so looking forward to Revelation next February. Thanks to all the players, the GMs, the traders and my fellow committee members for a great time. 

11 October 2021