Saturday 12th - Sunday 13th October 2019
http://furnace.org.uk
Sorry about the delay, wasn’t sure whether to post this report up or not.
I love attending this convention and the venue, the Garrison Hotel, is one of the big draw factors too.
I missed last year’s Furnace as I broke my leg a week before at work, incapacitated I couldn’t attend. Due to that I was given full blessing by my wife to attend this year, even though it fell on her birthday. She is a great wife!
I headed up nice and early on the train from Derby to Sheffield, I was intending to catch the tram to Hillsborough from the railway station but they were running so irregularly I had to catch a taxi in instead. That meant I was the first to arrive, so I was roped in into moving and setting up the tables and chairs in the upper gaolhouse area.
It wasn’t long before all the attendees were turning up for the first Saturday slot. I spent that time showing off my folding character sheets I had developed for my Alien game, many were amazed, others were miffed (in jest) that I had pushed the bar on novelty character sheets further.
Then it was the welcome speech from Graham, celebrating the fourteenth Furnace at the Garrison. He also mentioned about Tony, the owner-manager of the Garrison Hotel, Who was retiring and there was a collection and card for him. Also that the Furnace convention was supporting the use of the X-Card and that there would be an X-Card on each gaming table. I have been using an X-Card in all my Tales from the Loop games as I think it is an important safety feature to have during games.
I had pre-booked for Slot 1 in a Wordplay 2 game by Graham Spearing called ‘Into the Haunted Ruins of Dura’.
The game was set in 3rd Century Palmyra after the fall of Rome. We were heroes of Queen Zenobia and we were called on a quest to the ruined city of Dura on the River Euphrates. I was playing Varo Maximus, an ex-roman Legionary who saw himself as a leader of sorts. We also had Sorcerer called Nabonidus who was an ambitious scribe of the court; Jason, a scout of some renown who wants to be a true hero; Ishtar Belessa an archer who uses mathematics to work out her shots; Elamassi and ‘treasure hunter’ with wit and charm; and finally Cadmus, an ex-gladiator, who has worked his way up.
The Wordplay 2 system works nicely. Attribute number plus Trait number plus any modifiers from Equipment or Scene Traits. That number is the number of dice you roll in your dice pool. Any dice with results 1, 2, or 3 are discarded. Dice with 4 or 5 count as a point each and dice with 6 count as two points each. You total up your score and hope to beat the target number or beat the opposition (ether another player or the GM).
We had to gather more information after being given our mission by the Queen’s representative, so we headed down into the Scribe Quarter of Palmyra to follow up a lead there. Ifarlea, a scribe of some renown, had discovered a clue in some ancient texts so we were heading to her home to question her. In the Ramshackle Streets (2) with Shrouds and Laundry (2) and packed with Milling Crowds (2) we made our way but we detected the Dark Cloaked Assassins making their way there too along the roof tops.
What followed was a chase and then combat as we all charged ahead to deal with these dastardly assassins.
The dice system worked a charm and with a couple of hiccups along the way, my character was wounded, we caught one assassin and killed or driven off the others.
Yet this captive assassin didn’t reveal much information and choose to kill himself than to speak to us. Yet his body and tattoos told us much. He was a Persian Assassin of the Order of the Spider. There were other players in the game to get the Treasure of Dura.
With that we headed off on our desert adventure and our destination of the Ruins of Dura.
It was a lot of fun and a great start to the day of gaming. I really liked the Wordplay 2 system. It gives nice flexibility and allows creative solutions to the situations in play. The player characters are very easy to grasp and I imagine char-gen is a breeze with just coming up with descriptors for the character in question. The dice pools were very manageable too, as the largest was around ten dice and most average around six or seven dice.
The Sand and Sandals setting was cool too. Lots of maps!
Is this the real life? Is this just Fantasy? Is it alt-history or real history? But the setting was a lot of fun to play in and I would love to return to it again. Perhaps a sequel is in order, Graham?
After that game it’s was a nice lunch at Morrison’s Café before heading back to the Garrison for Slot 2. I had a full game of seven players, all keen to play Tales from the Loop.
I was running my new Tales from the Loop scenario ‘On Cloud Nine and Golden Sunshine’ for the first time. I have been developing this from a summer camp I visited in my childhood, mixing my memories with research I have done on a real world location in Derby. Of course the fantastical elements I have added as part of the alternate history of the setting, snatched from my childhood imagination. I had been struggling with one element but I have had some inspiration recently about it.
The scenario, and char-gen, starts off a little bit differently to my usual Tales games, as the Kids are stuck at a Summer Camp. Not a nice American style Summer Camp we see in the movies, but a British Juvenile Detention Camp.
As part of the char-gen they had to come up with the ‘crime’ they committed to get sentenced to this camp, the reason that they are all in the same hut on this awful holiday experience. The hut that they were berthed in was all their Hideout too!
We had the Jock Rodger who had a Cricket Bat for play, loved ‘Lilly the Pink’ by The Scaffold, and was sentenced due to being ‘too angry in class’.
Josh
was the Young Farmer with his mini tool kit and his favourite song ‘What?’ By Captain Sensible. He had been sent to the camp because he had broken his brother’s leg. Our Troublemaker is Lenny who swings his bike chain for kicks and finds Bon Joni’s ‘Welcome to the Jungle’ a calming influence. He was guilty of hitting his teachers at school.
Karen was the Computer Geek with her Commodore 64 and ‘Ablaze’ by School of Seven Bells was her favourite song. Her ‘crime’ was to have been found altering records on the school computer.
Edgar the Bookworm with his magnifying glass was found guilty of stealing books from the local library. He loved Simple Minds ‘Don’t You forget About Me’.
The Weirdo Kimmy with a compass and the tune of ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ by Lou Reed playing whenever they entered a room, fully admitted to posting dead rats through letterboxes of the families of fellow school kids.
Vern the Rocker with his ever-present guitar playing ‘Rock You Like a Hurricane” by Scorpions had broke the school’s grand piano in a rage.
They were all stuck in Hut D, they renamed it Jabba’s Palace, away from the more criminal and remedial children attending the camp; some of them were very scary. Set during the heatwave of August 1984, they were all called out into the heat and sunshine by the ‘Camp Commandant’ Mrs Jones.
There was an invitation to the launch party of a newly constructed Gauss Freighter, called ‘Cloud Nine’ in Derby on the Sunday evening. Only the children from the best hut could go so Mrs Jones had some easy tasks for them to do to see who goes. Whilst the other huts were tasked with litter pick-up in the burning sunshine at a festival ground, or posting leaflets in Derby, or cutting the grass in a near-by field, Hut D were tasked with dredging litter and junk out of the section of the River Derwent that encircled the island the camp was based on. Not a bad task as the Kids could play in the shaded section of the river between two weirs and cool down in the cold water. The water levels were low too due to the drought at the time.
They got stuck in but then started finding strange metal discs in the river water, metal discs that seem to float!
After that the adventure continues with the discovery of a crashed Gauss Freighter, a wild tramp hiding in the woods, a damaged robot, flying about in machine, stealing diesel fuel, time travel portals, and the revelation that the end of the world was due!
A great adventure ending with the Kids arming themselves up for smashing Automations with wild abandon. A great game and I was very happy with how it unfolded. Everyone got their moment to shine and push the crazy antics forward.
With that is was down to the main bar downstairs for a hot meal and a couple of pints!
So another game system by Fria Ligan was my Slot 3 game, Alien.
I have ran the Cinematic Pre-release scenario ‘Chariot of the Gods’ a couple of times before, once for my Derby home group and once for strangers at Nottingham’s Ludorati Café. This was the first time out for my own scenario, ‘Three’s Company’. I was really excited about running this game, I just love the Stress Dice mechanic and how it can spiral out of control for the player characters very quickly.
I also put together an interesting way of revealing the player character hidden agendas during the game; a Jacob’s Ladder folding sheet. Coupled with a re-designed character sheet this works really well. There is no handing out of little bits of paper to the players during the game, especially when some of the pieces are larger than others.
So when the game starts the Act I agenda is shown along side weapons, spacesuit, and gear they are carrying. When it comes to the start of Act II in the game, all the players fold open their sheets together to reveal their previously hidden Act II agendas on their own sheets. The players read their own agendas without worrying about the size nor number of pieces of paper given to the other players. Some character agendas could be simple and straightforward with not much written whilst other characters can have in-depth agendas with multiple points too.
The premise of my scenario is that the group of PCs are a Weyland Yutani hit squad doing the ‘wet work’ on behalf of the Corporation. They have been sent to a mining facility on the planetoid LV-510 to deal (with extreme prejudice) some dissidents in the workforce that have taken hostages including some corporate executives still in cryogenic sleep.
A straightforward mission with full military equipment including the USS Ribiera Conestoga-class Light Assault Starship, transit to the planetary surface via UD-4L Cheyenne Dropship, a M577 APC with pulse rifles, Smart Guns and even a Plasma rifle in the 40W range. Nice!
I had six players for this game, the seventh player didn’t turn up.
They chose their characters, it was the blood thirsty Corporal that wasn’t picked.
The miners will just have ship-shot shotguns (designed not to breach the hull), and whatever booby traps and barricades they can rig up.
Easy work if you can get it though some of the team have differing agendas and will be investigating reports of strange incidents from a cavern discovered in the mine.
The game went so well, the Stress Dice were building up nicely and the unraveling situation was deteriorating splendidly. I was able to crank up the tension nicely throughout the session.
The players were pushing their agendas well, the scenes with the prisoners they had taken for ‘questioning’ were fun to play. The panic in the players, never mind the PCs, was great to discover.
The players at one point were discussing the chain of command and how it works and who can take command of a situation. Ultimately it went unresolved as the PCs were taking their own actions at that point.
When I had my first player versus player moment near the end of the scenario it was shockingly delightful. Both players managed to take the other PC out.
The whole situation was resolved between all the PCs and even when the titular Alien turned up it really had very little affect as the PCs were too busy dealing with their own issues.
Of course the whole game ended with a Total Party Kill, my first ever one!
The only bad thing about the game was that one player (who was a vocal opponent to the principle of the X-Card) decided to play an X-Card totally inappropriately during the game just to prove a point that the X-Cards could derail a game. Because there wasn’t an emotional issue to by-pass or side-step it did halt the game for over five minutes and left all the other players hanging with nothing to do during that time. I had to step out with the player because he wasn’t happy that one of his agenda items had been negated due to another player’s actions due to his agenda. NOT the reason for an X-Card to be played.
Fortunately I was able to get the game back on track, though it did leave a bad taste in my mouth.
With that I was able to catch a taxi from the hotel to the Railway Station to catch the last train home.
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