BaCon Games

[lathany]

The Con itself has had a detailed write-up already from a fair number of people (including quisalan, bateleur and chrisvenus Secret Diary style). Therefore I'm going to concentrate on the games I played in, all of which I enjoyed.

Sunday was Convocation of Bones from Josh. It was a large (fourteen person?) freeform set in Josh and Chris' new campaign world of First Born. The PCs were all First Born; namely elitist, pompous, magic-wielding, genocide-seeking nutters descended from a dragon. The genocide bit comes from their wish to wipe out the Second Born (descended from another dragon, the enemy of the First Born one). Anyone thinking that the background sounds vaguely Dragon-blooded Exalted would be right; although I think the similarity stopped with the above.

I played Elea and my description was "nice for a First Born". I did fairly well out of the game, pleasing both my parents (the creepy combination of chrestomancy and TheHattedOne) by agreeing to an engagement to the Don Juan of the First Born (inskauldrak) and generally not stealing things, arguing with people or upsetting anyone. Sadly, my father and I managed to muff our "solve staff theft" clues through a miscommunication. This was not helped by the fact that the real culprit, my brother (chrisvenus), was a magpie in First Born form and we had a bit of trouble trying to work out which of his stolen items we were talking about.

Overall Convocation of Bones was a great success (even without an actual Convocation of Bones!). It included much inspired casting (Jez as the Emperor's representative, quisalan and bateleur as the warring siblings and the courteous flirting of inskauldrak all come to mind) and, to my personal delight, plenty to do and plot about. If it had a downside I would say that a few more details in character sheets wouldn't go amiss (cries of "I had kids by who? Why isn't it in my character sheet?!" and "Who is this Oak anyway?" "Your uncle." "Oh." were common). Oh, and sunburn was a definite downer as well.



Monday was Welcome to Angel, MN from chrestomancy. Now chrestomancy is a great GM and one-off horror games are his trademark. I had high hopes of Welcome to Angel and it didn't disappoint.

Note : chrestomancy was hoping to run this game again sometime. So anyone hoping at some point to talk him into doing so (and letting them play) should skip the rest of my Welcome to Angel write-up as it contains spoilers.

Us characters (inskauldrak the policeman, smiorgan the teacher with two personalities - or perhaps I should say two characters - who taught nine year olds, ealuscerwen the hippy with magical ability, David the cowardly priest/FBI agent and myself - fugitive mother of one) arrived in Angel one evening, went to sleep in a hotel and awoke to find ourselves in a slightly different dimension which also surrounded the town. Just to add a sense of urgency to the scenario, I discovered that my nine year old son was missing.

We wandered about, got attacked by some not-human-enough things, hunted for clues and generally flapped. The town was exceptionally creepy and chrestomancy's music was well-chosen to add to the atmosphere. We discovered a second, worse dimension under the first which caused smiorgan to change into a totally different person and for even nastier humanoid-bear things to roam the streets. I used my 20 point "rewind and restart one minute of game time" advantage (it's GURPS and this was effectively a transferable fate point) to save inskauldrak from being eaten and then we finally found the house of the man who might know how to escape and discovered a video which answered some of our questions.

We tracked the man, met his nine year old sidekick, discovered that my son was safe (Hurrah!) and finally headed deep into a silver mine (holding many trapped souls) for the showdown with the big bad (dodging the nasty evil-angel flying beasties on the way). The party arrived in the middle of a complicated ritual not knowing whether it was better to wait for it to finish or interrupt. Eventually ealuscerwen decided to begin her own ritual and smiorgan broke the circle of protection around the original one. Sadly this meant that smiorgan became the big bad and we had to fight him. We won (Hurrah!), but lost (both, or should I say all three?) smiorgans (Boo!).

All-in-all an excellent game.



Tuesday was Brace of Royalty run by frax. I hadn't seen frax's GMing before, so was looking forward to it.

The five characters began the game in a small cellar with little equipment and no memories. Between us we opened the locked door, then began to explore the house above. It was a stately home belonging to the Carrington family and it was in a world that only bateleur's character seemed familiar with. Night was falling, we didn't get on the last tour bus leaving the house and, suddenly, dogs were loose outside. However these were not ordinary hounds and as they barked and howled, our memories came back.

We were all connected to the Unseelie Court. cardinalsin was the youngest of Titania's children, nevecat was his bodyguard (and spy for the Seelie Court), bateleur was a human who had been a prisoner (he attacked his faerie lover because he wanted to go home), ealurscerwen was half-human half-dragon and also a prisoner (she'd attacked one of the Wild Hunt to take their place, but failed to win the fight) and I was a maimed mage ambassador from the Seelie Court (I'd been thrown into prison on a pretext after I'd seen something I shouldn't have done).

It was soon clear that we were on Earth, staying in the house of someone with connections to the Unseelie Court. It was also soon clear that the Wild Hunt were after us. One of us anyway. The hunt had been sent by Titania's consort to collect bateleur and bring him back (or kill him). This was because he had information that could have the consort removed from the court. Fortunately we used that same information (along with my character's descriptions of what she shouldn't have seen) to bargain with the Leader of the Hunt. We succeeded in gaining freedom for bateleur, healing for me and a place at the Seelie Court for cardinalsin (who didn't like his current home). So all ended happily.

frax turned out to be a GM-with-music advocate and she made a good choice of tracks. Her particular take on the fairie world came from a book (or set of books - I don't remember) and it worked well.



The last game of the week (run on Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon) was Stain and Sable from secretrebel and triskellian. It was based on the Garth Nix trilogy which begins with Sabriel (I've only read the first book, so no spoilers please!). Great things were expected of the GMing duo after the storming success of the Chrestomancy Castle game (yep - based on the Diana Wynne Jones books) from last year. Again, they did not disappoint.

The preludes were all duets and mine was with smiorgan. He played a Charter Mage Soldier (Peregrine) sent to the army camp by the King. I played a Clayr (Aquila) bringing a message that one of the Greater Dead was trying to return to life. Prelude-wise we made a good team and arrived in time to save the army camp from destruction. Although, sadly, we didn't stop the Greater Dead from rising.

The game proper brought in the other four characters. The two foreigners (Jez and TheHattedOne) arrived from south of the Kingdom to claim their inheritance (the Manor) and the two villagers (nevecat and Amanda) who had been tramping around the manor and had taken a set of necromancer pipes and The Book of the Dead. Plus we had a powerful ally. Looking like a dog, Griffin was actually a powerful being bound into dog shape by a previous Abhorsen and left to watch the manor house. Just as well, because we needed his help!

Part one (Wednesday night) was spent meeting each other, exchanging stories, realising we all had the same mark on our arms (a mark made of free magic) and trying to set up diamonds of protection to secure the village from the dead. Our magics were not as successful as we hoped and we ended the first session standing in the First Precinct of Death.

Part two (Thursday) began with us trying to find our way out of Death. However, instead we walked further and further in due to a combination of readings from The Book of the Dead and Griffin. We reached the Fifth Precinct, met the necromancer who once owned the manor (it was his Book and his pipes) and discovered that he had marked us hoping to use our power to return to Life and defeat the Greater Dead. However, after a long and rather acrimonious conversation, he agreed to help us out of Death if we returned his bells to his body.

He helped us, we escaped. After several worried conversations we concluded that we needed his assistance to defeat the Greater Dead, even though we really didn't want to bring him back. However, our course of action was clear. We travelled up to the manor and began to hunt for his bells. Whilst we were in the upper part of the house we found a confession from his murderer. Peregrine's (smiorgan's) quick thinking lead us to take this down to morgue and read it to the necromancer, before his attack upon the Greater Dead. The necromancer killed the Greater Dead then, because of the confession, decided to return to Death to ensure it did not come back and to leave the manor to his descendants.

We won! A good ending to a great week.