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| Leaving the Garrison again |
Last weekend saw the eighteenth Furnace roleplaying convention held at the Garrison Hotel in Sheffield. We had a healthy recovery in numbers (with 65 people attended), but still not quite at the levels we saw pre-pandemic. The pre-planning came together mostly smoothly, as this isn’t Graham, Elaine or my first rodeo. There were a few misfires (from my side, mainly because we took the launch decision when I was on holiday so couldn’t access the comms templates or build the registration) but nothing that was critical. Graham had to deal with a new team at the hotel who had very little idea of the history of the relationship, so we couldn’t assume.
I’d planned to keep the afternoon before the convention free, taking some time back that I was owed from work, but I ended up with meetings scheduled until five on Friday, plus trips to sites during the week that ate into my preparation time. That said, I was weirdly much more prepared than previous years, with my games mainly ready to run in September. That didn’t stop me leaving the characters for one of the games on the printer (fortunately, the hotel reception helped me out here) or leaving the lovely Roll 4 Initiative dice I’d bought to use at the convention on the desk adjacent to them.
The family headed off to a fencing competition for the weekend, at RAF Cosford, so I was left in the house alone. I had considered bringing a big pile of stuff for the bring and buy, but in the end abandoned that idea to get to the convention earlier and maintain my sanity. I arrived to find the bar full of gamers, and had a pint of Moonshine while quickly catching up with old friends. However, I didn’t stay up late, sloping off for an earlier night and the chance to read through “A Town Called Malice” to remind myself of how it worked. That was the point I realised that I’d left the characters behind.
Graham had asked me to move the trestle tables up to the room with him before breakfast so they were ready for Patriot Games and All Rolled Up when they arrived. So the day started with a little light exercise, before digging into one of the Garrison’s lovely cooked breakfasts.
Slot 1 saw me finally get to play Sue Savage’s Witchlight, a scenario for Things from the Flood. I’d wanted to play this at North Star, failed to get into it using my GM booking, but managing to get in with my Player pre-book, until I had to step out when we had a GM pull out and leave us in the lurch and I needed to create spaces for players. I’d planned to run Things from the Flood myself a few years ago, but the unfortunate events at UK Games Expo meant that the game wrongly got a bad reputation. Sue’s adventure was set in the Norfolk Broads (bizarrely not that far from one of the sites I’m responsible for at work), and our bunch of 16-year olds set out to shoot a documentary for a BBC competition. We had fun riffing off each other and generally behaving as teenagers. Having a sixteen-year old at home helped me imagine how to do this. I ended up with the hacker, and we set off into the Fens at night to try and find the source of the witchlight, carrying Chinese lanterns and a smoke machine in case we had to fake something for the film. Much shenanigans happened as a result.
The afternoon saw me running ‘A Town Called Malice” down in the Dungeon area. I’d run this previously back in the pre-pandemic before times, and it had gone well. This time, I chose another play set, and we started to explore what was going wrong in Malice, Oregon. All the players were new to the game, which is a structured story-game. It’s kind of like Fiasco in idea, but has more moving parts. The theme is Nordic Noir; the town (by default ‘Malice’) is beset with a problem that needs to be addressed with an event, and there is a creeping darkness that will emerge that also needs to be defeated. It all starts when a body is found. It’s very much ‘play-to-find-out’ and relies heavily on the input from the players. Unsurprising as it’s designed to be run without a GM. I’d managed to forget my light coloured d6 block so ended up picking a lovely slightly pearlescent set to use in the game. The players were great, and leaned into creating a dark tale of death and horror. The biggest challenge we had was the game playing near us; the players were loud enough to make it difficult to hear. It’s not something I’ve experienced in that area of the Garrison before. I do wonder if the privacy screens we put up make it easier to forget the games around because you don’t see them. There was a big change in atmosphere once the room fell silent, which it did as we over ran. I think that this could have been a brilliant game if the atmosphere was right; next time I may book a Cell, but that tends to limit the number of players who are happy to scrunch up. We were a little rushed at the end and had to skip half of the final act; this actually made it a little easier for the players in the final confrontation, but it’s always nice to end on a high when the heroes (or in this case, the flawed folk of Malice) prevail.
Dinner was the traditional trip to KFC with Keary, but sadly missing John Ossoway who couldn’t attend this year. We had a good natter about gaming and books, and then I sloped back to my room to quickly re-read ‘The Zone’ for the next session.
The Zone riffs on themes from stories such an Annihilation (the Southern Reach Trilogy) and Roadside Stalker. Something alien has appeared on Earth, creating an area which the government has sealed off. You play the 13th expedition into the zone, a group of volunteers with little in common beyond their hope that they will find the answer to their deepest wish if they can discover the secret at the heart of the Zone. The game is play-to-lose; all but one of the characters will die. However, it is set up so that the players remain involved throughout, and those that have died influence the final outcome for the character that reaches the heart of the mysterious area. There is a free-to-play full version of the game available online, and the physical copy was kickstarted, but ended up a little delayed as is the way of these things. I made my own set from the print-and-play digital copy.
The game is card driven; characters are archetypes driven by phobias and obsessions. The game has a set number of locations, determined randomly from a deck, and there are pre-defined points where a character will meet their fate and exit the story (it doesn’t have to be a death). On reaching a location, the player who is directing (has initial narrative control) chooses one of three descriptions of the place to set the scene. They then pose a challenge with a scene card, and all the players reach. There’s a formal move to drive description and narrative which can be triggered by anyone (‘take stock’) which helps to move the story on. There’s a move to bring out that there’s something wrong in the area, which automatically triggers an escalation (‘and it’s even worse than that’). When a character takes a challenging action, someone at the table can call out ‘that’s no sot easy’, which triggers a ‘not so easy’ card that can mutate, twist or expose the character acting with a threat from the zone. You can stay in a location as long as you want; we deliberately lingered in the swamp for three turns, because it built the tension which worked really well.
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| The Zone RPG complete with Glowsticks |
The game was my highlight for the convention; I ended up playing as well as facilitating as one of our players never arrived. Hat tip to Keary, Elaine and Elina for a wonderful experience. Part way through, we ended up joking that the game was all about Elina’s character, Belladonna, an actress, and serendipity in the randomness of the fate cards meant it truly was. My adventurer exited the story by deciding not to press on once they were crippled in the way that their former best friend was when they abandoned them on a mountain years before. Elaine’s criminal, who was transforming into something bear like, ended up dying to protect the others when some kind of bear creature attacked in a long grass field in the former zoo, and Keary’s world-weary detective faded away when they realised that their partner in work and life had never really loved them. Elina’s actress reached the centre and chose to reset her life to age sixteen, and take the path not followed to be with her true love. However, she knew it would cost her the relationship with her driving mother, and that it may not work out. She rejected the fame and emptiness she had experienced. Fantastic game, fantastic players, and I’ll definitely do it again.
I considered the bar for a few moments, but instead just had a quick natter with Elina and others as they had a cigarette, and I headed to bed. Sadly, I woke up the next morning with a splitting head like I had a hangover (a pressure headache in my sinuses) so I had breakfast and bailed on the game of Ironsworn I was due to play. Fortunately, Guy had a substitute player. I guess I’ll have to try that game some other time.
I was back up in the gaming room for the raffle, when Lynn was so close to another Golden Ticket for the next con, but not quite. We gave vouchers for the Patriot Games store this time, which seemed to go down well.
After a two hour nap, I checked out and went to the bar. I had a coffee in the sunshine, and read the scenario I was running that afternoon, a Swords of the Serpentine adventure called ‘Murder Most Foul’. I was cheeky and asked Pelgrane Press if I could have a demo scenario as I was running at a con. They gave me a choice, and a murder at a masked ball sounded great. I’ve played a lot of GUMSHOE, but never run it, so I had some nerves. I had a fantastic bunch of players, and one of them enjoyed it enough that they wanted to buy their own copy of the game. The game felt much more action orientated than other GUMSHOE games, particularly with the amped up refresh pools and the ability to burn investigative abilities for cool effects. Suffice it to say, they solved the case! I definitely want to run this again.
And then it was over. I’m hoping to see some after con reports from others to get a feel how this went for attendees.
I enjoyed the convention a lot; it was the first time that it really started to feel a bit like the pre-COVID conventions. Generally, everyone had a good time and I’m looking forward to doing it all again! Next time I hope to return to remembering everything I need to bring with me, and booking the Friday off work to get me some calm to prepare!
Furnace XIX is coming.
13 October 2023
