Logistics
I have wanted to go to Tabletop Scotland for some years. I have friends to come down to the English cons I go to, and it seemed like great idea to return the trip. Recently we have been exploring and holidaying in Scotland and I have become more familiar with the geography and logistics. So I intended to drive up, stay a bit further away in a less expensive hotel or AirBnB or cottage and commute in daily to the venue.
Real life interceded when I was asked to sit on a PhD jury in Antwerp, and instead I ended up doing a triangular trip from home to Belgium by air/train, and then the same sort of train/air to Scotland. So I have tested the ‘arrive at Edinburgh airport, stay in Edinburgh, use public transport options. They are not great. The venue is great but poorly signed, poorly served by public transport, reached by intimidating roads and late at night one has to use a taxi. So that’s that test done, and I know that my original plan was the right one, stay in Fife over the Forth, or up country near Falkirk and pop in and out by car, the one site parking was available, cheap and close to the front doors.
The Venue and the Trade Hall
The Venue is a classic exhibition hall. Half full of traders of all variety and wonderful games and bric a brac. A very large area for boardgames, a boardgame library and a bring and buy far off in the corner (but not too far). The RPGs were very well placed on a mezzanine floor above the main foyer, so the noise levels from the main hall were muted and the cries from the later night D&D players had room to carry. The food choices were not that great if you wanted something wholegrain or made of vegetables, but if you were ok with standard festival fair fare, it was ok.
Gallow Corner: A Peasant’s Revolt RPG
It was great to catch up with Chaosium, All Rolled Up, Patriot Games, and Pelgrane Press; it was great to make new contacts (one day maybe friends) with Three Sails Studios, and Caesar Ink. I resisted some purchases and did not resist others, and I am not sure on reflection if I should have gone into the Trade Hall when I was tired from a journey Belgium, but hey, what’s life for if not living?
Pendragon
I am a demonstrator for Chaosium as part of the Cult of Chaos. I have so far run the Pendragon roleplaying game for them and I did so again. My five signups turned out to be three in the end, but we cursed the non attendees to always roll low on a d7, a very mild hex, and we started.
My usual scenario is the Adventure of the Sword Tournament, which is in the Quick start for the game and is the opening scenario in the Swords Campaign in the (excellent) Starter Set. I was quite happy to do the same, and I setup my table with the excellent and fancy looking A3 folded character sheets from the Starter Set.
Ready to run
The game went well, I now embellish it with encounters and descriptions from both my own campaigns, the Solo quest in the Starter Set, and a quick listen to the opening of Mark Morrison’s Actual Play. Players both new and old to the game quickly grasped the mechanics, chuckled at the cod history from Geoffrey of Monmouth, explored Londinium, met interesting people, and bumped into the dirty ragamuffin – Wart.
I can now comfortably run the Pendragon Battles, and indeed with three players I could have added in a Feast the night before the Tournament, but I hadn’t brought the Feast cards (printed from the Gamesmaster’s Handbook). In future I shall for smaller than expected groups.
Tunnels and Trolls: A New Age
I have become a demonstrator for Rebellion UK for their new Tunnels and Trolls: A New Age roleplaying game and I ran it on the Saturday night. I was quite nervous. I have never run T&T of any flavour at a table with a group, and the only time I played it with the old rules I wasn’t overly happy with it. So I felt I really needed to do this right and properly test the new rules apart from with solos, which has worked well for me.
The scenario sent me by Rebellion is excellent. It builds on the rules in the beta on DriveThruRPG. It adds a new set of rules for recovery, a few more tags, and has some monster stat blocks that start to show how a bestiary for the new edition will look like. It is essentially a continuation of the quick adventure in the QuickStart (QS); no-one will be surprised to discover there is a large cave complex under the Rusty Bucket Tavern!
It’s a New Age
What did not go to plan?
Simply – the timings. The scenario pack suggest for short demo, say 2 hours, run character gen and then the short adventure from the beta QS. For a medium slot of 3 hours run the character gen and the new longer cavern adventure; for a long slot of 4 hours then do everything. Ha! I know too well not to do character gen at cons, so I was going to skip that and in my 3.5 hour slot do the short and long adventure. We just did the short one. Why? Well I had a table of four great roleplayers, and the Rusty Bucket is packed with roleplaying opportunities, great tables to ‘knock ups random NPCs, and plenty of rumours and potential interactions. With a group of people just having fun playing a toadkin, or an arrogant elfkin, or a green fingered beserking halfkin, we could and did roleplay all night. It’s fine, I’ll simply run it twice at the next con, once in the tavern and then next down into the caverns.
What went well?
All of it. The pre generated characters were understood quickly, and as time went by the players started to work out how thet could play off each other procedurally and in character. I did use the character connections section of the character gen so they all co-created a history of their small band of unemployed homeless farmers, herbalists and sailors. They understood the dice mechanic in seconds, that a saving roll (SR) on DEX was your attribute in d6s, and you look for 4,5,6. They grasped the role of Luck, Mana and Stamina. As a demo game I was asking for more SRs than usual, and they grasped the multiple dice roll again rule – albeit one player grasped it better than I did – and the potential peril of a dramati setback if you keep rolling dice too long.
Combat, and we only had one, went along clippity quick. The players grasped the options and also the way that Stunts both allowed tactical advantage at a risk and also laughs and groans when they failed. I had brought Haribo sweets to the be the monstersI then discovered that on table of middle aged men of nearly or over 60 – no-one really wanted to risk the blood sugar spike of candied mice! One player became Wounded, and at the end we went through the recovery rules from the demo pack, and started to get an idea of the potential deadliness of the game. [Deadly enough but still manageable.]
What did I learn?
I gained a better idea of just how long these adventures are with good roleplayers. I suddenly noticed that monsters can’t reroll multiples. I can see how monsters are really quite interesting in a fight. I gota good idea of how quickly and fully (or not) characters recover.
Playing
An excellent short game of Swords of the Serpentine, my first GUMSHOE fantasy game – I liked the Venetian Vancian feel and the system works just dandy. An excellent longer form of Matrons of Mystery which convinced me that this is an excellent game, and it’s one to look out for an sign up for.
Will I go again?
Probably yes, especially with AireCon ending. I think a car, a cottage, and a short drive each day. If I can share that with friends, some of whom can come in on trains, the I think this could be a fun long weekend at an event that is big enough to deliver and still small enough to be manageable.
Thank you organisers! @A2ndChapter
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