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| A tense moment at Revelation, as the Chief of Berlin Station discusses the fate of the Mole with the CIA Operator in Magpie Games' official hack of their Cartel game to Cold War Berlin. |
The weekend of 17th/18th February brought the eighth run for Revelation at the Garrison Hotel in Sheffield. This is a weekend of gaming dedicated to games which use the 'Powered by the Apocalypse' (PbtA) engine, a group that includes 'Forged in the Dark' engined games. We often also have a guest game (usually because someone has blagged it past one of the con team) but these are like guest-ales, welcome and a refreshing change.
This year, we responded to feedback in the various forums and tried to make the Garricons more approachable to those who haven't attended before. Graham delivered a refocussed opening speech (which is on YouTube) and we innovated with QR codes for the timetable on badges and around the venue. Both seemed to get a good response but we're open to more feedback. As an organiser, the big change for me was that no-one asked me for the timetable throughout the con (which is normally a regular thing).
We'd thought we were going to be at the lower end of players, but had around 40-people, which is the best that this has been since the pandemic. We had enough games running so everyone could be involved. The trend to later sign-ups by players and later offerings of games continued. Because we thought we'd be low in numbers, we hadn't asked Patriot Games to attend but instead opened up a bring-and-buy. I brought two large boxes and was pleased that quite a few things went. All Rolled Up did a delivery service at the convention, with Paul Baldowski bringing pre-ordered items.
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| Candela Obscura - Slot 1 |
After the convention opened, my first game was run by Declan. I'd signed up for this as Candela Obscura is a game that has intrigued me. I'd looked at it in Travelling Man in Leeds but didn't buy it as I couldn't see what it offered that Vaesen didn't. I was still interested in finding out more, as it would have been a potential purchase if Patriot Games were present. It was a delightful game, with a lovely winter-festival theme, and a hint of the ghostly. It was challenging to run in such a short slot (the first slots of the day are three-and-a-half hours), as the scenario probably needed 5-6 hours to be run with space to breathe. That said, the whole table became focussed to push the game to a conclusion, and we concluded bang-on-time. Declan did a fantastic job of explaining the system and running an evocative game and the other players were fantastic and engaging. I'm still in the camp that I'm not going to buy Candela Obscura, but I will definitely play this again if the opportunity presents.
Slot 2 brought the first of three games which I was running. This was actually the third game that I'd pitched when we were light on GMs, one of two outings for City of Mist. As one of the players didn't arrive, I had three players for the session. The scenario was taken from the forthcoming "Local Legends" book and was called 'The Maestro of Chalk'. A street artist in the Tourist Trap district of boardwalks, beaches and entertainments suddenly develops the ability to create extremely realistic chalk images that can come to life, and their mythos is compelling them to recreate the 12-Labours of Hercules. Other factions want to exploit the new Rift's powers and are hunting for him. Meanwhile, people are disappearing and the crew get drawn in to investigate.
Lunch from Morrisons.
Overall, the scenario went well; I offered all the pre-made folios for characters and let the player choose who they'd like to be. This does mean that I need to get them to capture their mysteries, identities and weaknesses at the start so I can reference in the game. My one regret was that one of the players selected 'Post-Mortem', which is effectively an undead killer assassin and very much focussed on combat. That did leave me concerned during the game as the spotlight opportunities for that player were quite reduced as they were limited with the power tags they had. That said, when it came to combat, they were very effective. However, I felt like I'd let them down by failing to to warn them about the limitations of the character build. I hope that they enjoyed the game. This was very much a more traditional neon-noir investigation that the game is sold on. Sunday's game was to be far more epic in scale. Foolishly, I forgot to take any pictures.
Dinner was the traditional KFC with Keary where we caught up on books, games and putting the world to right.
I had five excellent players who all got the aim of the game and understood that this was 'character-vs-character' not 'player-vs-player'. I had an open table; all the players knew each other's secrets, but their characters didn't. I must give shout out to Will, who has run Cartel much more than me (I've played it once before this session), and gave sound advice on how the game works throughout to the players and myself. We eased ourselves slowly into using moves against each other, but it got increasingly messy. The ending saw the Mole shot and killed by the Operator, after they'd tried to kill the CIA agent in a car crash. The Chief managed to retire with honours, leaving with a former lover who was an agent. The Spycatcher leveraged the situation into becoming the Chief of Station. The Prize (KGB agent) did everything they were asked to but realised the Americans weren't going to fulfil their promises of exfiliation any time soon. Both the Prize (Will) and the Mole (Jag) played an excellent game. The nature of those roles means they can feel isolated, and they were great sports and pushing the narrative. This is a great game, and I'm half tempted to bring it back at Furnace later this year.
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| The Berlin'87 players - thanks for a great game |
I spent a bit of time in the bar chatting to Jag, but headed to bed reasonably early.
The morning saw the usual lovely Garrison breakfast, and a chance to say 'hi' to some of the staff that have been there the last 19 years!
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| Impulse Drive with Table bling |
The morning saw me play my second game. This was Graham's run of Impulse Drive, a game I've both played and run in the past. I took the role of the Scoundrel, Drake Valentine. She was from a 'scum' backgrounds and had her childhood friend (a bounty hunter, Gaen Frith) onboard, along with a renegade mystic Knight (Dromon) and a youngster who had been experimented on and had anger-management problems. We had a tangled web of bonds and then jumped into a system on 'a milk run' and things obviously got very complicated. Graham was drawing on a book he's published for the Cepheus Engine, and we had a fun time! My dice were absolute traitors throughout the scenario; I rapidly accrued enough XP to gain another move! A fun game.
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| Jamie's cake! |
Before the final session started, we had a cake to celebrate Jamie's 68th birthday. We were delighted she could attend, as she has been suffering from an inoperable cancer prognosis. The fantastic news we got was that a surgical pathway has opened up, which will hopefully remove this threat.
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| The second game of City of Mist |
The last session for me was my second City of Mist game. This drew upon a City of Mist Garage book which has a scenario in called 'The Nightmare Underground'. The crew got drawn into the mystery of a missing subway train. Very soon they realised that bad things had happened and the World-Serpent, Jörmungandr, had been released and that Ragnarok threatened. Working with the Rift of Freyr, the party were caught up in a desperate race to trap the Serpent back into the realm of dream. They prevailed spectacularly (well, there was at least one loose end) and the threat of the end of the world was put off. This was City of Mist in its epic mode, rather a tight noir-procedural. I enjoyed the game a lot; I had been worried that the plot was possibly too linear, and that it may not work, but in practice it was great fun, and everyone got involved.
And then the eighth Revelation was over and we all headed home. We will be back next year. We are considering broadening the Guest Ale selection in the future to encompass more story games (and no Graham, D&D 4e doesn't make that cut) but more on that to follow.
Thank you to all the players, GMs, the Garrison Hotel and my fellow organisers Graham and Elaine. Also a hat tip to both Jag and Faye who I seemed to be on the same track with for the games we played!
A fun convention.
25 February 2024
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