And so it is over…..my second Grogmeet ends and I amble around Manchester Piccadilly for an hour or two until my train arrives to whisk me away to deepest darkest Milton Keynes. My initial thoughts after returning home and reflecting on the weekend are...
- What a great community of people.
- I know nothing about RPGs compared to most of those who are in the Grogsquad
- Trying to find a pub in the northern quarter of Manchester on the first Xmas market weekend requires a luck roll or two…
- The Grogsquad appear to be of an age when pubs with loud music (which is just about all of them in the northern quarter) are not the preferred option….
- The Northern Monk pub serves great beer.
Sunday 6th to Thursday 10th November
I decided last year to ref a game at Grogmeet in 2022 – so I
had registered Delta Greens ‘PX Poker Night’ to run on the afternoon of 12th
November at Grogmeet 2022. I have run
this twice before and have written about it in a previous post. When I ran it previously the flow of the game
wasn’t optimal from me as ‘The Handler’ (the players were great I just wanted
to give them more). This time I wanted
to ensure that the actual poker play occurred and that was the prime trigger
for all the crazy stuff that occurred later in the game. So, I revised the gameplan for the scenario
and then had a practice run on the 6th via the Good Friends of
Jackson Con. It went well and feedback
was pretty good – despite being slightly unnerved by one of the players being American
and very familiar with the USAF (which is the setting for Poker Night). The player graciously accepted that me being a
limey I would have very little working knowledge of the USAF and that I was
just going from the info that Detweiller and Glancy included in the scenario
i.e. I blame them for the inaccuracies.
The game with AWWGF was online so all my prep was done via
Roll20. After getting decent feedback about
the game from the AWWGF players I then started to plan for my first face to
face (F2F) game at a con and the first one since lockdown began and we all
entered the brave new VTT world (which it appears most of my mates can’t escape
from). Did I mention that this would be
my first ever time reffing a game at a Con?
Anyway, luckily the office printer and laminator came in
very handy to ensure I had the correct props, maps and markers for the
game. It did take a bit of thinking
through – I have got so used to just putting handouts and other items on Roll20
that you forget that the interaction F2F requires a slightly different approach
and more planning (and actually more satisfying).
One thing I knew I had to do was come up with a way of ensuring
we could all see each others PC names.
Online this is relatively easy but F2F needs a bit more thought. I could have gone with a simple card for each
player but wanted something a bit more immersive, so I chose to use the USAF
ranking insignia with a pic of the PC and their name on a print out, laminate
it and attach string so the players could hang it around their necks during the
game. Hopefully when we started it gave
the players something to focus on and help with the social interactions that
were going to follow. This is really
important for this scenario as the roleplaying aspects of Poker Night are what
make it such a fun scenario – without that player interaction and tension it
falls flat. One of the key areas was to have a catalogue of hallucinations that i could use with the players as the day and the insanity progressed.
I really felt the need to have the comfort blanket of a GM screen, which in Deltas Greens case is the ‘The Handlers Screen’. I have looked for months for one of these but they are rarer than Cthulhus teeth so couldn’t get one (note to Arc Dream – sort out reprinting the Handlers Screen!). Luckily for me another keen DG player and fellow Grognard (Kinnygraham) has a screen and graciously allowed me to borrow it for the game on the Saturday.
On a slight tangent – I was meeting up with two other
Grognards for the first time - Graham and Jonathan – I have been playing a DG
campaign with Graham as the handler and Jonathan a fellow player for a while
now and Graham and I had purchased the DG jackets from Arc Dream at considerable
postage costs that are enough to bring you out in a old sweat. Graham got a Large and I got a Medium official
DG jacket. Imagine our horror when we
got them to find they didn’t quite fit! As
it turns out my medium jacket fits Jonathan, Grahams large fits me so we had a
swapsy and Graham will get the larger jacket and then we can all settle up with
each other. Its how a Cell works
together to get the job done that is critical!
So I had my maps, handouts, player name cards, pregens and notes. I was good to go. The train tickets were booked, the hotel was booked and the players had signed up for the game.
I was off to Manchester………………..
Friday 11th November
On the train an impeccably observed two minutes for the
fallen. We will not forget them.
Thanks to machinations on the Grognards discord server I knew
there were some Grognards on my train – managed to meet up with some of them
and have a quick chat. The general
excitement around this meeting was palpable via the server and then on the
train. I was busy making notes about
possible hallucinations for the players in my DG game and basically having nervous
energy thinking about my first F2F reffing at a convention – have I mentioned
it would be my first time yet?
First up was Grogmania!
Based on block wars in 200AD. I
had signed up to block 6 aka The Brian Blessed Block and our gang name was The
Six Maniacs. How apt. The key part of being The Brian Blessed Block
was to ensure that at every opportunity we shouted in our best BB voice ‘DIVE!’.
The set up was hilarious and chaotic for all involved, just
what Block warfare should be like! There were 6 blocks (I think) and six refs
who rotated round each block with a unique scenario for the block residents to resolve. My understanding from the shouting of the
refs between / at each other was that the refs should rotate clockwise around
tables after 30 mins of play. Unfortunately
one of the refs decided to go anticlockwise early on resulting in more chaos
(they shall remain nameless) as refs didn’t know which games they were meant to
be going to. There was a very strict
30minutes playing rule for each scenario for each block that also was sometimes
a little less than strict – but that’s block wars for you.
The games devised by the refs were excellent and varied wildly. The rules, such as they were, were based on
Cthulhu hack (or it may have been Mothership! my memory isn't what it was!) – so simple D100 stuff that involved using a suitable stat with a
skill – you could be very inventive with the shoehorning of skills to gain
those bonuses on your roles which made for amusing play and ideas. The game would be won by the gang who collected
the most points gathered during each of the games. There was a maximum of 10 available in each
game. Points could be gained but also
subtracted – for example if you got arrested by a Judge you got minus points or
any other number of mistakes or misdemeanours.
At the end of all the challenges the points you had were the % chance
you had of winning Grogmania – decided in a ‘roll off’ with the other gangs.
The challenges were:
Grogmania 1 - Fatty challenge
We had to choose a fatty and
then bet on them to win big on speed eating and volume eating challenges. Various
tasks involved eating a gymnasium and all the kit and having sausages fired out
of a repeating gun into our fattys mouth to train them ready for speed eating.
After much debate we had decided on The Green Gobbler as our
fatty hero – after the rolls (dice not food) and bets we came out on top with
800 credits and decent enough 7 points.
Grogmania 2 – Speed 200AD style
A truck going at 250mph
has some crates on it that we need to steal.
The more crates the more points. We could get onto the speeding truck
via our truck that had a crane or jumping from one truck to another. My perp
managed to get into the cab of the truck when Judges turned up and started firing
at us – pesky Judges – you’ll never take me alive! And they didn’t as I tried
to jump onto the Judges Lawmaster only to miss and smear across the tarmac at
250mph….oh well. We still managed to get 6 pts though!
Grogmania 3 – sugar and spice and all things nice
We had
to rob an illegal sugar making factory and get the sugar to our gang boss. The factory was concealed in a basement and
had various droids working down there – pesky droids tried to fight with us but
we held them off. But of course it wasn’t
long before the Judges arrived and we had to take off with what we could. An illegal worker in the factory was Dave who
we effectively kidnapped. When we hightailed
out of there we decided to slow down the Judges by strapping a grenade to Dave
and then throwing him out the back of the van at the Judge on his Lawmaster. It
was what any self respecting perp would do.
Unfortunately for us the plan didn’t work and Dave failed his final task
of delaying the Judge by not blowing up close enough to the Judge… Panic ensued, but a masterful driving roll
saw us hit the brakes and wreck the Judges Lawmaster meaning we could
escape! We were free, we were The Six
Maniacs and we had another 6 points.
Grogmania 4 – Surfing MC1
Our gang were powerboarding over
MC1 when we got chased by Judges but at the same time were being assaulted by
other powerboarders – how inconsiderate!
This was the hardest game with points at a premium. You could easily drop points by being caught
by Judges, not getting away, dying, and other misfortunes. As fate would have it I had miserable run of
rolls and didn’t escape – DROCK! The
rest of the gang faired little better and we came away with 1 point. However in the context of the points other
gangs got, that actually wasn’t that bad.
We could go back to MC1 with our heads held kind of high.
Grogmania 5 – Limbs ahoy
A mob boss has ordered our gang
to get him some replacement limbs for his grandparents from a RESYK. He needs a new eye, heart and a leg for his
nan and grandad. Truly a caring gang
boss. We get into the RESYK and go onto
the conveyor belt covered in limbs that is slowly moving towards a masher or
similar hideous conclusion. So we are in
a race against time. To prevent us
getting the limbs are a number of flying robots that shoot us and generally get
in the way of us being able to get the limbs and get out. Then just as we think we have got the limbs
the Judges turn up and try to stop us escaping with the limbs. Unfortunately, the Judges bring down the law
on my head via a Hi Ex round from his Lawgiver that blows me to pieces. One of
the gang gets out with some limbs, one gets arrested – we tally up and get a
disappointing 0 points. STOMM!
Grogmania 6 – Boing, boing
MC1 blocks are 2000 stories
high – we had some BOING and were going to use it to get to various parts of
the block and rob it and complete missions for our boss. This challenges were particularly bonkers (as
you’d expect from Dirk) and required us to roll a D100 to see how far up the
block (or back down it) we BOINGED.
Depending on where we landed dictated the mission we had. At some point we were trying to make our boss
a lovely dinner – which didn’t go to well.
After much confusion and hilarity we finish with another 5 points.
At the end The Six Maniacs from The Brian Blessed Block came
out with a respectable 25 points.
In the dice off with the other gangs we fell at the first
hurdle – my dice let me down and we didn’t make it through to a dice off. Some other less talented gang managed to come
up trumps this time, but the memory of The Six Maniacs lives on and I am sure a
great prog of 200AD could be written about our exploits!
This was a real delight to play in and I can’t give enough
credit to the refs and organisers for this session – it was a great way to
start the weekend.
Grogemeet – Friday evening 11th November
Game – Under Hill, By Water.
So onto the best game of the weekend (of course I didn’t
play all the games but this was special).
When choosing the game to play on the Friday night it seemed obvious to
me that anything based around Hobbits would be the best option. The setting explained to us by the ref was
that Frodo and Co had left the shire a few weeks before and we were the hobbits
left behind – what do we get up to? Of course we do what Hobbits do - the scenario
required the players to ‘win the biggest vegetable and the best pie competition’. Not a Ringwraith was in sight!
The game I have never come across before but Under Hill, By
Water is a rules-light, Beyond the Wall-style system for hobbits who don't want
any adventures. So we started by
creating our Hobbits – simple D6 rolls for each stat with a 1 or a 6 either
indicating some hindrance (on a 1) or advantage 9on a 6). I rolled a 1 for Con and a 1 for Wisdom
resulting in me being allergic to everything and being a mouth breather…..the 6
was in Dexterity which meant I was swift (even for a mouthbreather!). My Hobbits name was Podgy Bill Bolging and I rolled
a carpenter whose main ambition was to write a book on my families genealogy. We then had to roll up our village – creating
it at the table as a group – of course there was a pub or two!
The game then required us to do two things – figure out how
to get Primrose the massive pumpkin from a local farmer, Bungo Chub, and how to
get Ruby the local cook to give up her best pie so we could win the village
competition.
The story unfolded and progressed as we built the narrative with
the ref. We as a group were not happy with
the obvious ploy of stealing the pumpkin and pie – we are hobbits after all and
doing that sort of thing is just not very hobbity. So we found out that the farmer Bungo had
secretly been in love with Ruby for years.
Our plan was thus:
- Get the mushrooms from Farmer Maggots fields so Ruby could finish off her pie (much to the chagrin of our fellow hobbit who was a truffle hunter and expert on fungi).
- Give Bungo the mushrooms so he could take them to Ruby and start wooing Ruby.
- We ask them both to come to our party and host them as we are sure they will be the winners.
- They win and we get the Kudos for having the best party and having the two winners at our party.
- Chub and Ruby fall in love and live happily ever after.
We managed to get the mushrooms from Maggot (after a fight
with some nasty crows) and Bungo managed to give them to Ruby who invited him
in to talk and talk about the competition.
Soon enough we could hear laughter and chatting between them and cupids
arrow had struck.
We managed to get the party located n the best village site,
we even got some fireworks from Bilbo. Bungo and Ruby won their competitions
and fell in love…………
The end was rounded off by a song from Jem who sang ‘Thereis an Inn, a merry old inn’ after which all the players burst into a round of
applause.
This was the most excellent role playing experience I have
had in a long time. It was so fresh and
different. The best way to describe it
was as a pallet cleanser after the madness of Grogmania and the normal fighting,
horror and violence of the upcoming games.
All the players agreed it was a great experience. The ref managed the game expertly and even
when we started to go in a direction that was unexpected, Rik took a quick
break and then came back refreshed, focused and ready to go. I did tell Rik it was the best game of the
weekend, I’ll be buying this game when I next get paid and hope to play it
again. If you get the chance I recommend
you do to.
After the games it was a quick check in to the hotel
followed by more Hobbit like behaviour in the The Northern Monk Pub near FanBoyThree. Plenty of ale was quaffed and as
Dirk and Blythy were staying in my hotel we had a quick night cap when we got
back before bed like the good Hobbits we are……………..
End of part 1 – part 2 will include my experience of Star
Frontiers for the first time in about 30 years and my thoughts on running Poker
Night at the Con.
Comments
Post a Comment