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Grogmeet 2023 – a right load of heroes, villains and demons……………

 Grogmeet 2023 has finished and already I am looking forward to 2024. This year was my third year attending (second full weekender) and it didn’t disappoint. For those who don’t know, Grogmeet is (not) a gaming (convention) weekend and is organised by Dirk the Dice and Blythy from the Grognard Filespodcas t. This year they had really pushed the limits of their organisational skill set and we had three venues to navigate between for games – Fanboy3 , The NorthernMonk and the Whitworth Locke and a pilgrimage to the hallowed place where Dirk and Blythy sometimes record the podcast – otherwise known as The Lass O Gowrie . This is all in Manchester btw. I stayed in the same hotel I was in last year….or so I thought…..it is a very complicated story not worthy of space here, but suffice to say Dirk was right and I was wrong about the location we stayed in last year. There, I said it and am publicly shamed. Anyway quickly moving on…………. On the train up from darkest Milton Keynes on the Fri
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How often does Innsmouth turn up on your doorstep?

 Ah yes, Innsmouth, kind of like Skegness but with even more buggy eyed people (don’t shoot the messenger :>), or maybe Blackpool but without the stags and hens, more fish and squid. Either way something fishy is going on when we consider Innsmouth. Luckily for me I didn’t have to travel to remote parts of Massachusetts to experience it as The Innsmouth LiteraryFestival was being held up the road from where I live in deepest darkest Bedfordshire. It was remarkable really, you go years without a sniff and everything being in ‘that there London’, and all of sudden this festival pops up. I got in touch with the organisers ( Innsmouth Gold ) a few months ago and said if they needed any help I’d be happy to lend my time (not sanity of course). Turns out one of the duo that is Innsmouth Gold plays RPGs and so I invited him to the gaming club I attend (Bedford Gladiators) on a Monday night, and before you know it his character was confronting the mythos before you could say ‘cthulhu fht
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Games Expo 2023 - fun was had by all...except when the Hilton bar ran out of ale!

 It’s been a crazy few weeks – three weeks ago the household was laid up with a ‘virus of unknown origin (yeah right…)’, two weeks ago I watched Luton Town Football Club achieve the impossible by gaining entry into the Premier league via the Play Off finals at Wembley, then the weekend after I attended UK Games Expo at the Birmingham NEC.  I had no idea what to expect as I had only visited Expo once before for a day trip quite a few years ago with the family. This time I was in for the entire weekend.  My Expo buddy was Jon who I play Delta Green with so at least I wouldn’t be Billy no mates. The Expo gods were watching out for me so despite rail strikes and a slight panic about the hotel I walked into the Expo halls and wandered around on the Friday afternoon, my wallet fearing what may be coming its way as a number of items caught the eye.  I had meant to be playing in a Cthulhu game on the Friday afternoon, but it had got cancelled earlier in the week, which was a shame. During my w
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All we need is (Grog)love….

The Beatles were truly extraordinary – I don’t know much about their history but their influences continue to pulsate like tentacles through the decades.  Everyone will know a Beatles song, or at least part of one, everyone (and I mean everyone) will be able to name at least one of The Beatles and most people will be able to name all four of them (was there a fifth one early on??).  So, it is with trepidation that I disagree with them about ‘All you need is love’ – obviously this is not true – you need food and drink (preferably tea and beer) for a start.  Then there are the vagaries of having your heart broken, getting physically hurt and other issues that occur to all of us at some point to varying degrees – you may think these are not all you need, but they are part of what a human needs generally if we are to grow and become better humans during our lifetimes.  Risk and risk taking, being offended, arguing and seeing issues from other individuals stand points while being able to r
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WAR huh! – what is it good for………….

Threads and nightmares......... It is pretty sure that if you meet someone of around my age that grew up in the 80s and they watched Threads , they will have been terrorised by the threat of nuclear Armageddon and had nightmares at least through their teens.   Think of all the crazy government fear mongering of recent times and multiply it by about 1000 to get a taste of what the apocalyptic doom that we were all subjected to felt like.   Threads is truly horrific – so for Christmas 2022 I finally plucked up courage and bought a copy of it for my wife.   She was equally traumatised by it.   We watched it again and I can say it is still terrifying. ..what has this to do with a blog about RPGs?   Well obviously it’s my spurious lead into talking about my recent introduction to Free Leagues Twilight2000 that was updated and published a few years ago.   I actually had the original box set back in the 80s – part of my doomsday obsession with nuclear warfare involved reading books about h
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Practice makes a kind of ok session (lol)………….Hotel Hell by Sandy Peterson (Spoilers in here - you have been warned!)

Resolutions or just get stuff done..... New Year resolutions are a pretty awful concept.  I mean why wait till the 1 st January to do something you should have done at some point during the year?  Feel fat?  Stop eating so much and get some exercise – now. Wanna stop smoking?  Do it – now. Want to solve climate change? Go to school get a degree in something related and find the solution – now.  Stop moaning and throwing paint at pictures and just get on with finding a solution. As for dry January – get outta here! Whose idea was that! Crazy…………. Anyway I digress…..it is with some smugness that in the summer of 2022 I thought – the last few years playing online has been great – I have lots of people I can play with and the community on discord is fantastic, but the wholesomeness of actually playing with other people across a table and interacting just can’t be beat – so I need to get back to that.  A quick interweb search and I found a club about 30mins drive away that meets each Monda
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Grogmeet 2022 – part 2 - the hunt for a quiet place

Imagine waking up in a hotel in Manchester after a few too many drinks, breakfast only available via a walk into the city centre and wondering why you volunteered to run a game that afternoon.  Well that was me on Saturday 12 th November (and I suspect a few other Grognards). After finding a place for breakfast that was more ‘I saw you coming’ rather than ‘Greasy spoon’ (I had POSH beans on toast I’ll have you know!) and took serving its customers as an optional extra, it was time to head to fanboy 3 and play an RPG blast from the past – Star Frontiers, reffed by Dirk.   The title of the scenario was ‘Bugs in the system’, which kind of gives away some of the scenario to be honest, it’s like a Cthulhu scenario I recently ran called ‘The Dragon of Wantley’, a decent adventure but the front cover gives away a rather massive clue as to what is going on and what will be encountered during the scenario… My choice to play Start Frontiers on the Saturday morning was actually difficult as it
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