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lathanyWe got back yesterday from the (annual) Con which was held down in Devon. I owe this journal one or more posts about the last couple of months, but because the Con is fresh in my mind (and was extremely awesome), here's a long post about how it went.
(Includes three photos behind the cut)
The short version:
The Con
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quisalan's EasterCon was a huge number of one-off games in four cottages in Devon. There were twenty of us in total and it ran from Good Friday for a week. I GMed a one-off (on the last day) and played in five other games.
The venue
This was one of my favourite Con venues. The cottages were right next to each other (made out of a converted barn) so it was easy to see people as they arrived (and move between the houses later in the week). The cottages were comfortable, attractive and came with towels and electricity provided. There were enough rooms that no-one was asked to share and many rooms were en-suite. Ours was a rather fine en-suite.
Our lounge was probably the best for gaming of both the roleplaying and the console types. It had an L-shaped sofa on which you could sit six players.
There were not many downsides, although the fridges could all have been a lot bigger (not least because most houses were nowhere near their full capacity of people) and some of the kitchens were better equipped than others.
Day by day
Friday
As always with a Con, the first day was the long drive down. Most people hit traffic jams sooner or later on the M4, M5 and A303 (aka the Stonehenge road). However, our car decided this was the moment to top everyone else's travel experience by breaking down half-way. The repair man eventually arrived and explained we had a dead battery. This is kind of like a flat battery, but it meant that after he jump-started us, we could not afford to stall or switch the engine off again before we reached the Con. It made the second half of the journey stressful. I rangquisalan and chrisvenus and they agreed to stop and buy shopping for the evening (which we were supposed to do).
The car did get us there eventually, but we were very relieved to see the venue and unpack in the House of Khris (Owl's Retreat). The first evening wasquisalan's roast dinner and much chat about the week ahead. There were also glow sticks which we took outside and swirled.
Saturday
The morning started with Soul Caliber and breakfast. There may also have been some Little Big Planet.chrisvenus and I went shopping at the nearby Co-Op and then saw quite a lot of the scenery on the way home (in an unplanned kind of way).
This wasao_lai's Warhammer 40k game where Imperial troops were sent to take back a command when a Governor overstayed his rule on a strange planet. We were Lieutenant Julian (bateleur), Engine-seer Alberuth (zandev), Commissar Augustus (ar_boblad) and Inez - a member of the Inquistor Vagrith's staff (me). We had a separate mission - to go check out a small base. Which turned out to be full of plot and an AI (and a former place of the Old Ones). Not to mention that four chaos engines turned up. We did save the day (although our own Chaos-touched fates were left undetermined) but the engine-seer secretly copied the AI's blueprint. So we also kind-of doomed the universe (again).
Post-game I cooked spaghetti bolognaise which we followed up with (bought) Key Lime Pie. I think that was also the evening of two games of Betrayal.
Sunday
The morning started withzandev's birthday brunch at The House of Plenty (Falcon's Perch), chocolate eggs from chrestomancy and cream eggs from davefish.
This was the day ofbateleur's horror game called A Seaside Retirement (or Alt'thulu) with character sheets which were drowning in Cthulhu style stats. We played pensioners who had started to think back to a time thirty years before when a boat (the Queen of Spain) crashes off the coast of East Anglia near a village called Peppishead. The six of us - Cecil the retired policeman (two_nukes), Felicia the retired medic (lanfykins), Henry the retired diver and motorcycle enthusiast (ar_boblad), Jude the retired coastguard (leathellin), Sasha the retired journalist (huggyrei) and myself (Ninette the peach Jaguar convertible owner) - wondered why the incident appeared to be erased from official history and decided to head off to the old seaside town to take a look for ourselves. The resulting game involved an average age (about 65ish) far higher than for any game (involving human characters) I've been involved in before and was one of the most action-heavy games. Our acts included diving underwater to see a gigantic, psychic enemy plant, setting fire to the town hall and a high speed car chase.
The evening was a meal of tomato and bacon risotto and chocolate mousse cooked byquisalan. We then headed over to The House of Plenty for the birthday gathering with mead, cheese and champagne. And more cheese.
Monday
More Soul Caliber. And more Little Big Planet. This timeao_lai and bateleur went shopping.
The game of the day wasquisalan's Carnival. This starred Fred (leathellin), Jim (ao_lai), Kaspian (chrestomancy), Leo (two_nukes) and Lorraine (me). I'm not going to give a description because there will be a re-run, but it was very atmospheric with an awesome soundtrack.
Monday evening was chicken and sausage in tomatoes with oven potatoes (frombateleur). There may have been dessert - but if so, I can't remember what it was. I think this was also the evening of Fight Club that I attended and we tested Exalted (lots of White Wolf dice) and Lace and Steel (cards and strategy).
Tuesday
I think Tuesday morning was mostly lazing around until Folded Edge started (and the new car battery arrived). However, I think there was also a bit of Little Big Planet.
lanfykins's game involved a group of characters who were thrown together and matched excellent team work with constant bickering. It was also Firefly (our ship was called All That Glitters rather than Serenity) and I got to play the captain (Reagan Kann) with drunk gambler pilot Hex (leathellin), law-abiding recent graduate Navigator Maravian (chrestomancy), young "Supercargo" enthusiastic crime-family trader Treasure (quisalan) and recently-acquired Mercenary Sen (davefish). Also we picked up a white cat (TC) during the gameplay. We had a simple mission - retrieve someone - which quickly became very complicated. It included a Justice, a spaceship our mercenary mangled from the inside with a critical fail on navigation and also the most wanted person in the galaxy who we eventually handed over for a fair trial. I had a huge amount of fun playing Mal and will hold lanfykins to her offer of more.
Tuesday evening is, I think, when the Twisted Metal: World Tour (still the best TM game) came out at whichao_lai, bateleur and I all proved to be extremely rusty. Foodwise bateleur cooked curries and then we had and apple crumble with custard and/or cream (made by me).
Wednesday
This wasar_boblad's The Black Squig Tribe Warhammer (not 40K) game. The characters were Squig herder Squink the One-Eared (ar_gemlad), Wolf Rider Snotgrot the Wise-ish (davefish), Bossfurk the Bold (bateleur), Glisp the High Priestess (lanfykins) and I played Grassgan, the favoured daughter (well, at the moment) of the chief. We were part of a Whaaaaaaarg, but didn't want to be anymore because we had become the front line and the Orcs wanted to put our sacred black Squigs into battle. Much mayhem and plotting followed, which included painting the orange squigs with boot polish and TNT, scouting on wolf-back, challenging another goblin leader to a drinking match and taking out a group of elves who should have been hard, but couldn't roll dice. We eventually concluded we needed to kill the Orc leader to escape the Whaaaaaaarg and used TNT. Twice. The first time we collapsed an inn on his head and the second time we blew up a wolf next to his tent (RIP Splain). We had to fight him as well to finally kill him, but we were successful in the end.
Pre-dinner,ao_lai and I won a co-op TM game. Dinner was bateleur's sausage casserole. This was followed chrisvenus's Black Velvet for dessert which is made of double cream, Greek yogurt and topped with dark muscovado sugar. It tasted wonderful, but also proved to be an effective tranquiliser and comatosed us all for most of the rest of the night. However, I did finally stagger out with chrisvenus for some stargazing. Having spent many years in London, it was great to be somewhere from which I could finally see the night sky. Also, chrisvenus has a wonderful app on his phone which tells you what all the constellations are if you point the phone at the sky. We spotted the obvious ones, then switched to the phone to find the zodiac and the planets.
Thursday
The last full day, I GMed. I'm not going to say much about it now because I am planning a re-run. However my party - Grant (smiorgan), Jane (leathellin), David (chrisvenus, Effie (quisalan), Alexis (huggyrei) and Joshua (zandev) - were awesome and coped with my obsession with ghosts and the Museum rather well.
The evening was the mop-up meal of spaghetti carbonara and featured another game of Betrayal when we found out evil twins again (I've played the game less than a dozen times and I've seen this mission three times).
Friday
Friday we packed, put out the rubbish, put out the recycling, photographed the group and then hugged everyone goodbye.
All in all, a fantastic week.
And Reeve was pleased to see us on our return.
(Includes three photos behind the cut)
The short version:
- A dead car battery
- War on the AI planet
- The pensioners vs the psychic giant beetroot
- Gemstones and circus tents (the rest is secret due to replayability)
FireflyAll That Glitters- Goblins, boot-polish and TNT
- Ghost hunting in the British Museum
- Star gazing
- Twisted Metal
- Betrayal at the House on the Hill
The Con
quisalan's EasterCon was a huge number of one-off games in four cottages in Devon. There were twenty of us in total and it ran from Good Friday for a week. I GMed a one-off (on the last day) and played in five other games.The venue
This was one of my favourite Con venues. The cottages were right next to each other (made out of a converted barn) so it was easy to see people as they arrived (and move between the houses later in the week). The cottages were comfortable, attractive and came with towels and electricity provided. There were enough rooms that no-one was asked to share and many rooms were en-suite. Ours was a rather fine en-suite.
Our lounge was probably the best for gaming of both the roleplaying and the console types. It had an L-shaped sofa on which you could sit six players.
There were not many downsides, although the fridges could all have been a lot bigger (not least because most houses were nowhere near their full capacity of people) and some of the kitchens were better equipped than others.
Day by day
Friday
As always with a Con, the first day was the long drive down. Most people hit traffic jams sooner or later on the M4, M5 and A303 (aka the Stonehenge road). However, our car decided this was the moment to top everyone else's travel experience by breaking down half-way. The repair man eventually arrived and explained we had a dead battery. This is kind of like a flat battery, but it meant that after he jump-started us, we could not afford to stall or switch the engine off again before we reached the Con. It made the second half of the journey stressful. I rang
quisalan and chrisvenus and they agreed to stop and buy shopping for the evening (which we were supposed to do).The car did get us there eventually, but we were very relieved to see the venue and unpack in the House of Khris (Owl's Retreat). The first evening was
quisalan's roast dinner and much chat about the week ahead. There were also glow sticks which we took outside and swirled.Saturday
The morning started with Soul Caliber and breakfast. There may also have been some Little Big Planet.
chrisvenus and I went shopping at the nearby Co-Op and then saw quite a lot of the scenery on the way home (in an unplanned kind of way).This was
ao_lai's Warhammer 40k game where Imperial troops were sent to take back a command when a Governor overstayed his rule on a strange planet. We were Lieutenant Julian (bateleur), Engine-seer Alberuth (zandev), Commissar Augustus (ar_boblad) and Inez - a member of the Inquistor Vagrith's staff (me). We had a separate mission - to go check out a small base. Which turned out to be full of plot and an AI (and a former place of the Old Ones). Not to mention that four chaos engines turned up. We did save the day (although our own Chaos-touched fates were left undetermined) but the engine-seer secretly copied the AI's blueprint. So we also kind-of doomed the universe (again).Post-game I cooked spaghetti bolognaise which we followed up with (bought) Key Lime Pie. I think that was also the evening of two games of Betrayal.
Sunday
The morning started with
zandev's birthday brunch at The House of Plenty (Falcon's Perch), chocolate eggs from chrestomancy and cream eggs from davefish. This was the day of
bateleur's horror game called A Seaside Retirement (or Alt'thulu) with character sheets which were drowning in Cthulhu style stats. We played pensioners who had started to think back to a time thirty years before when a boat (the Queen of Spain) crashes off the coast of East Anglia near a village called Peppishead. The six of us - Cecil the retired policeman (two_nukes), Felicia the retired medic (lanfykins), Henry the retired diver and motorcycle enthusiast (ar_boblad), Jude the retired coastguard (leathellin), Sasha the retired journalist (huggyrei) and myself (Ninette the peach Jaguar convertible owner) - wondered why the incident appeared to be erased from official history and decided to head off to the old seaside town to take a look for ourselves. The resulting game involved an average age (about 65ish) far higher than for any game (involving human characters) I've been involved in before and was one of the most action-heavy games. Our acts included diving underwater to see a gigantic, psychic enemy plant, setting fire to the town hall and a high speed car chase.The evening was a meal of tomato and bacon risotto and chocolate mousse cooked by
quisalan. We then headed over to The House of Plenty for the birthday gathering with mead, cheese and champagne. And more cheese.Monday
More Soul Caliber. And more Little Big Planet. This time
ao_lai and bateleur went shopping.The game of the day was
quisalan's Carnival. This starred Fred (leathellin), Jim (ao_lai), Kaspian (chrestomancy), Leo (two_nukes) and Lorraine (me). I'm not going to give a description because there will be a re-run, but it was very atmospheric with an awesome soundtrack.Monday evening was chicken and sausage in tomatoes with oven potatoes (from
bateleur). There may have been dessert - but if so, I can't remember what it was. I think this was also the evening of Fight Club that I attended and we tested Exalted (lots of White Wolf dice) and Lace and Steel (cards and strategy).Tuesday
I think Tuesday morning was mostly lazing around until Folded Edge started (and the new car battery arrived). However, I think there was also a bit of Little Big Planet.
lanfykins's game involved a group of characters who were thrown together and matched excellent team work with constant bickering. It was also Firefly (our ship was called All That Glitters rather than Serenity) and I got to play the captain (Reagan Kann) with drunk gambler pilot Hex (leathellin), law-abiding recent graduate Navigator Maravian (chrestomancy), young "Supercargo" enthusiastic crime-family trader Treasure (quisalan) and recently-acquired Mercenary Sen (davefish). Also we picked up a white cat (TC) during the gameplay. We had a simple mission - retrieve someone - which quickly became very complicated. It included a Justice, a spaceship our mercenary mangled from the inside with a critical fail on navigation and also the most wanted person in the galaxy who we eventually handed over for a fair trial. I had a huge amount of fun playing Mal and will hold lanfykins to her offer of more.Tuesday evening is, I think, when the Twisted Metal: World Tour (still the best TM game) came out at which
ao_lai, bateleur and I all proved to be extremely rusty. Foodwise bateleur cooked curries and then we had and apple crumble with custard and/or cream (made by me). Wednesday
This was
ar_boblad's The Black Squig Tribe Warhammer (not 40K) game. The characters were Squig herder Squink the One-Eared (ar_gemlad), Wolf Rider Snotgrot the Wise-ish (davefish), Bossfurk the Bold (bateleur), Glisp the High Priestess (lanfykins) and I played Grassgan, the favoured daughter (well, at the moment) of the chief. We were part of a Whaaaaaaarg, but didn't want to be anymore because we had become the front line and the Orcs wanted to put our sacred black Squigs into battle. Much mayhem and plotting followed, which included painting the orange squigs with boot polish and TNT, scouting on wolf-back, challenging another goblin leader to a drinking match and taking out a group of elves who should have been hard, but couldn't roll dice. We eventually concluded we needed to kill the Orc leader to escape the Whaaaaaaarg and used TNT. Twice. The first time we collapsed an inn on his head and the second time we blew up a wolf next to his tent (RIP Splain). We had to fight him as well to finally kill him, but we were successful in the end.Pre-dinner,
ao_lai and I won a co-op TM game. Dinner was bateleur's sausage casserole. This was followed chrisvenus's Black Velvet for dessert which is made of double cream, Greek yogurt and topped with dark muscovado sugar. It tasted wonderful, but also proved to be an effective tranquiliser and comatosed us all for most of the rest of the night. However, I did finally stagger out with chrisvenus for some stargazing. Having spent many years in London, it was great to be somewhere from which I could finally see the night sky. Also, chrisvenus has a wonderful app on his phone which tells you what all the constellations are if you point the phone at the sky. We spotted the obvious ones, then switched to the phone to find the zodiac and the planets.Thursday
The last full day, I GMed. I'm not going to say much about it now because I am planning a re-run. However my party - Grant (
smiorgan), Jane (leathellin), David (chrisvenus, Effie (quisalan), Alexis (huggyrei) and Joshua (zandev) - were awesome and coped with my obsession with ghosts and the Museum rather well.The evening was the mop-up meal of spaghetti carbonara and featured another game of Betrayal when we found out evil twins again (I've played the game less than a dozen times and I've seen this mission three times).
Friday
Friday we packed, put out the rubbish, put out the recycling, photographed the group and then hugged everyone goodbye.
All in all, a fantastic week.
And Reeve was pleased to see us on our return.
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no subject
Date: 2012-04-14 04:16 pm (UTC)May I be the first to volunteer?
no subject
Date: 2012-04-16 08:45 pm (UTC)For what it's worth, if I have a drop out - or if I'm insane enough to run a third time - I'll come back to you.
Sorry about that. I'd have loved to have you.
no subject
Date: 2012-04-16 09:01 pm (UTC)