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 fhtagn’. In
between games we discussed running some Call of Cthulhu games at the Festival,
which we agreed could be fun so I agreed to help organise that bit of the
festival (a small part but a part none the less for the CV).
Next step was finding Keepers, I figured four games running
at the same time would be plenty (20 players out of an attendance of about
100), and luckily for me Matt S and Paul F from The Good Friend of JacksonElias, had agreed to attend and were willing to run a game each. All I needed
was one more Keeper.
My online gaming took off at the start of the ‘virus that
didn’t come from a lab (honest)’ incident of a few years ago, and that was when
I started to play a lot of Cthulhu on RPG Nook (a fine place to play horror
games btw). Graeme runs the server with the help of his underlings (you may
know him from his work with Ain’t Slayed Nobody and various publications and
horror stories), and after a little persuasion and the promise of actual
electricity in the civilised south he decided to leave Sunderland and stay with
me for the weekend and run a game.
Keepers Assemble!
So, Keepers all done and games decided (Saturnine Chalice,
Absent Friends, Four Hours to Reno and Dead Light), now to recruit the players.
This was all done via Warhorn, which I had interacted with as a player but not
as a organiser. Luckily, I called in a favour from Dirk the Dice from the
Grognard Files and he helped me to set up Warhorn so that the players could
sign up to the game they wanted to play. Instructions were sent out to those
attending and then finally we get to sign up day - quicker than you can say
‘Shoggoth’ the games were filled.
On the Friday 29th September before the festival Graeme makes the long journey and after a few near misses in my car we go for a curry and a few beers. My wife had said to me ‘if he plays those funny games he could be a serial killer’, so I guess as I’m writing this a few weeks after I can safely say that is not the case, although it’s a pretty good scenario seed……
Innsmouth opens its doors to Bedford.
The festival was held in a conference centre type building
which the Esoteric Order of Dagon would have been proud of, it certainly felt
like there was hypergeometry at play when you were trying to find your way
around inside, but eventually we managed to locate the traders areas, the
gaming room and the improvised lecture theatre. The catering wasn’t hard to
find, you just had to look for the long queue that was stuck in some sort of
otherworldly dimension where time and space slowed to a fraction of what it
would be in the normal universe.
After a look round the traders hall (great stuff in there)
and a few pics, a chat with some peeps (none had the Innsmouth look luckily) we
attended the morning seminar about Weird fiction and what it is. The panel were
great and it was interesting hearing from the authors their thoughts on the
topic. If you want to know more you’ll have to join Innsmouth Gold patreon to
access the recordings of both panels. I missed the one with Ramsey Campbell as
guest of honour as I was in the catering queue that went via Pluto (not that
I’m bitter or anything). Then before you knew it, it was 1pm and time for the
games to begin.
Cthulhu rises
The gaming room was big enough for our four large tables
plus some demo games from the Bedford Gladiator club. The noise in the room was
not a problem unlike some other cons and even better players turned up in spite
of the train strike. Each game had five players (except Absent Friends where
someone couldn’t make it). I was running Dead Light, a nice contained scenario
that has a good rhythm – creepy start, excellent NPCs to carry the PCs through
the middle section and then a grand standing finale as the players try and
survive and figure out how to deal with the Dead Light. This is the fourth time
I have ran a game at a con and the stars must be right as each time I have had
a great table with engaged players and lots of enthusiasm to push their SAN
boundaries. Bizarrely I am pretty sure at least two pf the players I recognised
from UK Games Expo in the summer, after a quick chat we figured they must have
been playing a game in the same room as I was reffing….small world huh?
By all accounts the other games went great too, although we
had all finished, packed up and were leaving, I looked back and there was Matt
S still torturing his players…I hope they all made it out of Bedford safely…..Seriously thanks to Paul, Matt and Graeme for coming and running the games.
"Hey-Ho, Mi-Go!"
Innsmouth Gold not only put on the day event but also
organised an after event event in a local pub. There were improvised horror
story readings, urban horror fairy tales and Arkham Witch – the band.
To be fair I was feeling tired and had a lull about 7 – 8pm but then music
started and the cosmic horror rock picked me up (or was it the 5th
pint??) and all of a sudden I had more energy than a Deep One hearing the call
and running to the sea. One of the great things about going out and meeting new
people, is you create serendipity leading to all sorts of good things. On
this occasion I ended up bumping into some old friends I hadn’t seen in
probably 20 years who just happened to be in the same pub. After a lot of
drunken hugs and ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe you are still alive’, etc, we had
more drinks and the jager shots started coming our way…..Graeme and I left the pub
with my old colleagues and went to another pub when Arkham Witch had finished –
another live band were on, at first I was very dubious but then joy of joys
they started playing plenty of 90s grunge music so my night was complete. Then
it was 2am and time to go home….Graeme and I managed to get a taxi and escaped from
the clutches of the Bedford Innsmouth Festival – the tentacles are still there I
am sure waiting to pull us back next year………….Remember Parrying is 4 Wimps....hope to see you soon...........
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