So this weekend was Concrete Cow 14 - a small one day RPG convention on the outskirts of Milton Keynes. I'd booked the time off work as part of my birthday treat and basing ourselves in Aylesbury with H's mum we headed over to Wolverton first thing on Saturday morning.
This year they were trying something new with the sign-ups - collecting them all in and putting them out at 0930. Personally I liked this, however I was running first slot, so didn't need to join the rush for that game, therefore I was able to sign H and myself up to James' Blood and Water game in the afternoon slot. The evening was looking very bare at this time, so we left it and hoped things would improve.
Slot 1:
Ben - I ran The One Ring, taking my 'Strangers in the Night' scenario out for it's 5th convention outing (I think). This is actually less a scenario and more of an adventure hook - I've got the opening set-up prepped and a couple of encounters ready - other than that I go along with the players and react to what they do. This suits my more Indie playstyle of recent days, and works well for me. I use the characters from my ongoing G+ campaign and am lucky enough that one of my players has done character art for all four characters - as seen below.
The session seemed to go well, with some interesting tactics thought up for dealing with the Cave troll the Fellowship faced, involving shifting the canopy somewhat to let the sunlight through.
It was mentioned by one of the players afterwards that TOR would make a good 3-4 slot mini-campaign for a convention - so I'm starting to look at doing this for Conception next year.
H was still playing when this had finished so I went to the stores to spend my birthday money - I got everything I could have wanted, and spent less than I'd allowed myself - so double win. From Leisure Games I picked up The Primeval Companion, Perfect Unrevised, Forsooth and Beat to Quarters. From all rolled up I got myself and Helen one of their dice/roll up things each.
Helen - I played in Mik Reed's game of The Tavern. I'd wanted to play this for a while so was really pleased to get in on a game, particularly with Mik, always fun! It was pretty cool, dealing with the small events in the tavern/restaurant/diner/bar we really got an idea of who the characters were, even when they only appeared for 1 scene, and the cards, food and characters all reflecting each other was neat, made it easy to picture the characters. Lovely gentle game for the morning.
Slot 2: - We both played in James Mullen's Blood and Water game - thoughts below. Blood and Water is kind of Being Human the RPG, with a disparate bunch of supernatural housemates trying to make their way in the mortal world. Our set of 4 housemates was a Skinwalker, A fallen Lucifer, an 8 year old child turned into a (Chucky-esque) Garden Gnome and my Australian Were-Kangaroo.
Ben - I thoroughly enjoyed this session, but made the mistake of creating a character who was going to be a layabout a lot of the time. This meant it took me longer to get into the action - however once I did all was good, and I felt we made a fun, sinister and fairly silly at times story out of our mixed housemates.
Helen - a game with Ben, Mik and Steve run by James? Predictably super-fun. I got to explore my diseased imagination and discovered an awesome creepy giggle to freak Ben out with.
Slot 3: - We checked out the games for the evening slot, and being as there were very few up discussed heading back to Aylesbury early, however Toad stepped up and offered a game of Dead of Night, so we joined this and got a third game each.
Ben - I played a high school quarterback, turned mechanic with the flaws of 'Leap before he looks' and 'Never Backs Down'. This inevitability led to my character dying, but I was throwing around my survival points like there was no tomorrow and got to go out in a blaze of glory - literally, I set myself on fire and charged the evil tree that was casting a shadow over our small American town. I had great fun with this game, so many thanks to Toad for stepping up and running it.
Helen - I enjoyed this too, good game, great GM and awesome players. I liked my character, standard vain blonde horror film fodder, but I painted myself into a corner a bit so couldn't do much to progress the story. I did enjoy providing a bit of colour obsessing over the leather-clad, motorcycling loner though...
Once more I had a great day, the only thing was the lack of games in the late slot - this did get sorted in the end. Normally I'd have offered something myself, however I'd promised myself only one game ran and two played this year - and, unusually for me, I had nothing in my bag or the car to offer. Next Cow I'll probably run two slots again - one of these as the evening slot.
Keep gaming
Ben & Helen
