Saturday 19th October 2019, 10.00am - 7.30pm
https://spaghetticonjunction.wordpress.com/
I like this little game meet, taking place in Birmingham, just a short hop on the train from Derby.
Got there in plenty of time and was offering two games on the day. The venue is only a short walk from the train station.
It was a few quick helloes to start the day, paid my entry fee and buying a ticket for the raffle, then it was game sign up.
Game sign up is by raffle ticket, based on the last digit in random order, to give everyone a fair chance to get into the game of their choice. There were plenty of games on offer, I had my new scenario for Fria Ligan Tales from the Loop on offer as an attendee had requested it. I had two sign ups for it at first but another GM joined my game and two late comers joined latter too. I had a nice mix of players too, from an ten year old, a few a generation younger than me with lots of RPG experience, to a player with my age and experiences. Yet the eighties vibe still worked with the group.
I started the game with character generation but a slight difference to normal as the Kids were attending a summer camp. Not a nice American summer camp you see in the movies, but a UK one where the attendees were ‘troubled teens’ requiring extra attention during the school holidays. The players had to come up with ‘crimes’ they had committed as their Problem, as that was the reason they had been sent to the camp.
We had Topaz the Rocker with her guitar playing ‘Highway to Hell’ by AC/DC who was sentenced because she broke a bully’s nose at school.
The Troublemaker was Jimmy with his pen knife who loves ‘On the Waterfront’ by Simple Minds. He had talked back to the teachers so that was why he had been sent to the Camp.
Iris the Bookworm, with all her encyclopaedias, had been found guilty of being a public nuisance. Her favourite song was David Bowie’s ‘Ashes to Ashes’, the very essence of the eighties summed up.
Jason is our Young Farmer with his mini tool kit. He was sentenced due to him attacking the culprits that had poisoned his farm animals. Only Marillion’s ‘Grendel’ was a comfort.
Last to arrive was Arkady the Weirdo with her Cut Throat Razor. She claims she was sent here because she was political subversive, but the others suspected that it was for a minor infraction.
The summer camp was one based from one I know in Derby, set on a island in the River Derwent that was surrounded by river channels. The only way off is via the bridge that crosses the island.
The Kids were fellow hut mates of Hut D, that hut was their Hideout so they were able to personalise it.
The camp ‘commandant’ called all the children to an assembly to break the news that some of them would attend the launch party of a new Gauss Freighter, Cloud Nine, if they succeeded at their chores. Their chore was to clear a section of the river of all the rubbish that had collected there as it was between two weirs.
Now the chore was boring work, but playing in a shaded river during a heatwave, wasn’t too bad. The Kids did quite well getting rubbish out until they discovered some weird metal discs that had strange properties. The Kids discovered that they were Magnetrine discs that had broken off a crashed vessel.
Photo of group by Matthew Pook
What follows was an adventure with a crashed Magnetrine Ship, a rogue robot, a smelly tramp, a newspaper from tomorrow, a larger freighter swarming with little automations, and the threat of the total annihilation of the current dimension.
Of course the Kids saved the day!
There was a break for lunch between the gaming slots where I was able to catch up with people socially.
Before the afternoon slot started there was a quick raffle, as in quick as it was all over in a few minutes even though there were loads of prizes donated. I even won a prize, a Metamorphosis Alpha book.
Then it was game signup for the afternoon session and my Fria Ligan Alien game filled up straight away with seven players.
I had a larger table this time so I placed my laptop at one end against the sunshine coming in through the windows so it was easier to see, and I sat at the other end, remotely controlling the Keynote presentation via my iPhone. The players then sat around me, getting a good view of me and my laptop.
I was running my Alien
scenario ‘Three’s Company’ that I had ran at Furnace the week before. I was pleased how that scenario had worked but I had tweaked the character agendas to give more interaction between the player characters.
Photo of group by Matthew Pook
I had made new foldable character agenda sheets, based on a paper Jacob’s Ladder, they fold out revealing the new agendas for Act II and Act III of the scenario in play. Each PC has their own so they are able to keep their agendas hidden from the other players. It’s a clever gimmick but it does work well.
The agendas are a key aspect of their Alien game as they do provide the drives to each player character as well as developing relationships and possibly setting the PC’s against each other as they may have opposing agendas and contrasting aims or objectives. That is what makes the later parts of the scenario a lot of fun to play as the players are often at odds against each other.
The player characters are:
Dr Monygham - Trauma and Cryogentic Specialist
Senor Hirsch - Weyland-Yutani Operative
Captain Martin Decoud - Squad Leader
Lieutenant Antonia Avellanos - Squad member
Corporal Carlos Gould - Squad member
L/Cpl Juan Hernandez - Smartgun Operator
L/Cpl Conrad Kurze- Electronic Counter Measures
The squad has two “civilians”, actual non-combatants, with them that will help with the mission. The military ’wing’ of the squad is lead by the Captain with the Lieutenant assisting with the leadership. The Corporal and the two Lance Corporals are each specialists in different areas. They have many resources available to them including Pulse Rifles, Smart Guns, Plasma Rifles (in the 40W range), Motion Trackers, An APC, a drop ship and even a Conestoga-class Light Assault Starship.
The premise of the scenario is that a Mining Facility on remote planet LV-510 was reduced to a skeleton crew as the planet was going through a dangerous phase of terraforming. Dissidents in the workforce revolted and took over the Facility and took hostages from the Mine Management Team. They also took four executives, who were still in their cryogenic chambers, captive too.
The PCs are a corporate hit-squad, brought in to provide a ‘Final Solution’ to the problem. Their orders are to eliminate all hostiles with extreme prejudice, capture the leaders of the resistance for ‘questioning’, and to rescue the hostages especially the corporate executives in cryo-sleep chambers.
The players were very keen, getting into the military mindset straight away and organising themselves before the mission. They were happy with the mission and were confident. They were so confident that they were planning how they would take the prisoner, and hoped that they didn’t kill him accidentally so they asked for a photo of him.
The start of the mission went very well, they were dealing with the miners and other threats with ease. The lower ranks were doing the ‘work’, Hernandez was even keeping a tally of all the people he killed! They were diligently checking the bodies for the resistance leader as they went along.
Trouble started when they ignored one movement tracked going past them, instead they went for the easy kills. Having an enemy behind you is never a good situation to have.
They also didn’t work on their extraction plan so they managed to get themselves trapped in the Facility for a while, debating whether going for the crawl through the air ducts or going for the single umbilical corridor.
After that it all started going wrong, the traps that the miners left started to take their toll and the Stress Mechanic also started coming into its own.
Once the PC’s took the Control Room, that signalled the end of the first act.
Act II is where they learnt there was more to this mission. Things weren’t as they appeared to be and the secret agendas started to come in to play.
Things got heated at times for the PCs and when the Alien arrived it all fit very messy for some of the PCs whilst others could only watch on helpless in another area.
The Alien makes an appearance.
Surprisingly a few of the PCs survived! Though I wouldn’t rate their chances of survival in a dodgy escape shuttle in cryogenic chambers.
All the players enjoyed the game and were particularly excited when the Alien showed up.
With that I packed up all my stuff, made my goodbyes, and headed off to the Railway Station to catch the train home.
I like to thank the organisers and all the players in my games that all were so good and brought the awesome!
I would also like to thank the staff at Geek Retreat for their great hospitality and service.
It was a great day and I look forward to Spaghetti ConJunction IV in February 2020!
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