This weekend saw me visiting Airecon to run two roleplaying game sessions. My friend Graham, who organises the roleplaying games at the event, gave me a gentle reminder that I was leaving it pretty late to offer to GM so I reached for two scenarios that I'd run previously at other conventions with a game system I can run without reference to the rulebook, my forever game Traveller. Although Airecon is predominantly a board game convention, the scale of the roleplaying is not to be sniffed at, with twenty-one tables mostly fully in use until the last slot which was a bit more sparse a people were starting to go home. The convention runs for three days, Friday through Sunday, but I only did part of the weekend because of family commitments.
I arrived late morning on Saturday, mainly as I had things to do (like making sure my sons got out of bed and went and got their mum a Mother's Day present). This gave me time to mooch around the main trade hall, which was a bit of a disappointment for a role-player. I found that the selection wasn't that big. There was a good selection on indie games on one stand, Arion Games' Fighting Fantasy and Maelstrom selection, and a couple of other stands with a small but decent variety. I'd gone looking for the recent Pendragon releases and possibly the recent D&D 5e Eberron release (I wanted to look before I purchased), but none of these were to be found. Paul from ARU explained that they'd brought a smaller roleplaying game selection because the RPGs were no longer located in the same hall, having been relocated to The Majestic Hotel (a Hilton) next door with the main food van selection between. He said they'd figured that there wasn't much of a reason for a roleplayer to want to go to the main halls with everything they needed close by at the Hilton.
I eventually found myself a copy of the Pendragon books at the Chaosium stand were David Scott was doing a fantastic job at manning a stand and doing demos of games on demand. It made me wish that Mongoose did something similar (the kind of thing that BITS used to do); you could easily offer 3 or 4 different styles of Traveller demo (Exploration, Free Traders, Space shenanigans and more) and try and bring new blood into the hobby. He explained to me that they were looking at bringing new people in, so boardgames conventions are a better place to start than roleplaying ones.
I note that I couldn't find any Traveller on the trader's shelves, but my FLGS has mention they've ended up ordering books I've wanted from overseas distributors as they're hard to get hold of in the UK.
Lunch was a simple sandwich from one of the venues' food stands.
My first game was "The Hunt for Sabre IV", a mystery that involves a stolen multi-million credit ore-carrier, at least one murder and a struggle against an oppressive mining company. It's part of the Mysteries on Arcturus Station anthology, the prequel to the classic Murder on Arcturus Station. I thought I had three players, but ended up with five. One was a friend and Garricon regular, Jon, and the others were three people who hadn't played Traveller since the Classic edition, and a gentleman who'd only played D&D for the last forty years.
They were part of a corporate troublshooting audit team and between them ran a very slick investigation, rapidly finding the culprits but taking a bit more time to find the reasons. They successfully recovered the stolen vessel, outsmarted the corporate's small print in the contract and seemed to have a good time. I certainly enjoyed running for them.
I'd initially intended to play a game on Saturday evening, but that was before my eldest asked me for a lift for a field trip on his University course. I needed to drop him off at 7.30am, so I decided that the best thing for me to do was to go home and get a reasonably early night.
Sunday saw me and the offspring getting up around 6am, and being quiet so his mum could have a lie-in. I dropped him off and then returned home for some breakfast and then a read through of the next scenario, Deepnight Legacy. This is the opener for the Deepnight Revelation campaign, a body horror tale which tends to leave players drawing on references to Alien and other films. Once I'd read it through, no-one else was up, so I headed into the convention.
I went to the trade-hall for another mooch (ever hopeful), and bumped into my friend Tom. We had a bit of a browse, a good natter, and then a brew, before heading over to the Chaosium stand for a chat. Tom was also talking about his forty plus year passion for Tunnels and Trolls and how he saw the new kickstarter as a good step forward to making it a better game to use at the table. He's played it a lot, so I respect his views. He's been trying it by using the old solo-game books and converting on the fly. We followed that with lunch, this time from the food vans. I went Greek with a Gyros with lamb and halloumi. Graham popped down, and we had a good catch up over lunch.
I soon got the table set up, but was a little nervous because I'd only sold one ticket, and that was to Jon (again). I ended up having to improvise a sixth player (using a sheet from the earlier game), as one of the other games wasn't running so I got a more than full-house. The player mix was very much similar, several people who have never played Traveller, and others that last played it quite some time ago.
Initially, they were a bit more gung-ho in the scenario than the other groups that played it, but soon caution started to show itself. They realised that something serious was up and that it was better to be quiet and careful. They managed to rescue the survivors of the base and escape without any injuries except the ones that were self-inflicted from climbing upon a building in a vacuum suit and slipping! Overall, they did really well and seemed to enjoy the game.
We were the second to last game to finish (around 5.30pm) and I soon was heading home to cook dinner!
I like Airecon; my relationship with it is as a punter, and there are very few conventions that are like that for me. Although some five minutes away from the main hall, the roleplaying facilities were really good this year (although like all conventions, a little noisy when they were full). The trade hall and offerings for convention are great, even if I found it a bit sparse from the roleplaying sense. The folks were friendly (well, it's in the North!) and everyone seemed to be there for a good time. There were plenty of families and people of all ages enjoying themselves.
Recommended as a convention. Thanks to Graham and the various players in my games.
16 March 2026
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