UK Games Expo 2022 Con Report
UK Games Expo 2022, NEC, North Ave, Marston Green, Birmingham B40 1NT & Hilton, Pendigo Way, Marston Green, Birmingham B40 1PP
Friday 3rd - Sunday 5th June 2022
TL:DR I put 37 players through six games of either Alien or Tales from the Loop at the biggest convention in the UK and had a great time.
This is the big one of the UK RPG Convention scene.
Gaming over three days at the NEC and Hilton hotel, it attracts a lot of gamers.
I was offering six Fria Ligan games over three days; two of Tales from the Loop and four Alien Games.
Four of my games were brand new scenarios. They were all sold out in advance.
I set off from home on the train to Birmingham International on the Friday morning will all my gaming stuff packed in just two bags.
Arriving at the NEC for check in I already noticed how much more busier it was as compared to last year’s event. There was a long queue for the volunteers to check in which took forty minutes to get to the desk to get my pass and vouchers.
I rushed over from the NEC to the Hilton to set up just in time for my first game. I always like the route across to the Hilton as it passes the lake and there’s a nice part of the walk that goes through part of a wood, nice on a bright morning.
My arrival at UK Games Expo 2022!
I found my way to the Wellington Suite located on the ground floor of the hotel, just down a corridor from the main bar and opposite the breakfast rooms. It is a fairly large room set with eight large 6’ round tables in two rows of four. Each table was set with eight conference chairs and the tables were clothed in white table cloths. It was a bright room with some limited air circulation so it was a tad warm.
I chose the end table at the rear of the room as it was near some power sockets and it had a little bit more space to pull the table over away from the other tables.
I set my table out ready with character sheets, name places, pencils, made up my dice trays, I laid out the eight Character Archetype sheets in the centre of the table, and had my table stand set to the Principles of the Loop.
I was wearing my 80’s appropriate t-shirt, Ghostbusters, to help set the mood.
I was running Fria Ligan’s Tales from the Loop “Teleportations and Transgressions” game, a scenario based on the finale of my home campaigns.
I had a sell out game and all seven of my players turned up on time keen to play.
The players of my Tales from the Loop game at the start. Friday Morning.
We got straight into character generation as the players chose their Character Archetypes.
What was interesting was that several of the players had opted to have very young Kids, and the rest had gone for older teens for their Kids. Most of the time from my experience players usually go for the mid-age range of 13 years old or so.
So we had Robyn the Popular Kid who was aged 10, Nicolas the Bookworm who was also 10 years old, and Sean the Computer Geek who again was 10 years old. So fortunately for me they were all on one side of the gaming table.
On the other side of the table we had the Young Farmer Ben aged 15, Topper the Jock who was 14, Dennis the Troublemaker who was 14, and finally we had Neon (Gilly) the Rocker who was 15.
One of the key relationships was that Gilly was the older sibling to Sean so the two age groups were joined.
I introduced the scenario, stating it was Sunday evening, the 10th of February 1985. Valentines Day was very soon and there was a school trip to a local county park on Monday morning. We were in Derby, located in the centre of the UK and the area was known as the site of the Loop, an underground particle accelerator where scientific experiments are conducted. The UK version of the Loop is actually two smaller rings joined together to form a figure of eight or an Infinity symbol instead of the ‘crasser giant single ring’ of the Swedish or American Loops.
The players got straight into the scenes from home as they prepared for the school trip. Robyn was being pushed by her mother to get more involved in social groups and make more friends. Gilly and Sean were in the usual argument with their mother about Gilly having to look after Sean, who was really cramping her style with his nerdiness, and Gilly was refusing to be a babysitter. Nicolas was having an intellectual discussion with his father over his future in the science world. Dennis was fending for himself in an abandoned home. Topper was having an Enid Blyton life inside his head, though the reality is far darker as he tries to overcome his grief over losing his mother. Ben was having to do all the chores on the farm as his father crawls into a bottle to cope with his loss of his wife, Ben’s mother. So a nice mix of tragedy, comedy, and ridiculousness in the stories.
The Kids all met up for the bus at school to go on the trip to Elvaston Castle. There they were introduced to the teachers and the caretaker taking them on the trip. They we all paired with other children to do their science projects in the grounds of the castle.
They departed into the thick fog to grab insects as part of the project. Of course some of the Kids got into trouble, skived off to the pub, or got stuck into their projects. Sean went off exploring the castle itself with his partner, Georgina, and discovered the cellars and an interesting military-looking metal door. He managed to re-programme the door for it to open and instead of revealing deep cellars to explore he just discovered a large empty space. It looked like the whole complex was scooped away leaving the concrete walls cut in half. Where had the cellars gone?
Sean ran and got the rest of the Kids and as they investigated they ended up exploring a pocket dimension called *The Inbetween* (not the Upside Down), avoiding Nazi Robots from 1940, Futuristic Soviet Kids, and British Tommys fending for their lives - the Kids were in the middle of a Weird World War!
Of course the day was saved by reversing the polarity of the neutron flow as the Kids all worked together to activate the old particle accelerator to return the Kids (and the entire SOE secret complex) back to the future past. Marvellous!
The players at the conclusion of the game! Friday Morning.
The game concluded very well, the players were all happy with the outcomes though their characters might not have been, especially the Valentine’s Day events!
After a quick photo of the players I tidied my table and re-set it ready for my afternoon’s game. Then I nipped out for lunch to Chow Street.
Chow Street, a selection of different food trucks set up in the car park space in front of the hotel’s main doors. There was a wide selection of food types, from toasties, waffles, burgers, pizzas, kebabs, burritos, hot dogs, curries, and noodles.
I went with the Greek Souvlaki kebabs with Greek-style chips and used the main bar to eat in as I also treated myself to swift pint.
I also checked into the hotel and headed up to my room. Fortunately it was on that side of the hotel so getting to and from the room to the areas I needed was fairly simple and straight forward.
I freshened up and changed into a Weyland-Yutani t-shirt with matching cap as well as my Nostromo patch shirt. I was dressed for the part!
Then I got back to the Wellington Suite to run my afternoon game of Fria Ligan’s Alien running my own new scenario ”Fortune Hinders the Bold”
It was the first time running this face-to-face but I had play-tested the game online via Roll20 with new players.
I had another sell-gfout game but I had one no-show so I had only six players for my game.
I had the following player characters to chose from, I had images in A6 Perspex stands for instant display.
The table set with the A6 perspex stands with the character images.
We had Sean Connery as Federal Marshal William O’Niel from the 1981 film “Outland”, Frances Sternhagen as Doctor Lazarus who was also in Outland.
Dr Haywood Floyd as played by Roy Schneider in the film “2010”, and Charlton Heston playing Pilot George Taylor as from the film “Planet of the Apes” (1968). We also had Kurt Russell from the sci-if film “Soldier” (1998) as Sergeant Todd "3465" and two characters from the 1997 film “Starship Troopers”, Lieutenant Jean Rasczak as played by Michael Ironside and Captain Dede Deladier as portrayed by Brenda Strong.
I had stated them up using the Alien RPG and given them some hidden agendas which followed from their characters, nothing conflicting apart from the different disciplines, i.e. medical versus science, the mission versus the safety of the ship, the law versus morality, etc.
Of course all the characters are Alpha Type - they all would dominate any scene they are in, giving the players the opportunity the chew up scenery and ham it up whilst playing the characters.
Once the players selected their characters, the good Captain Deladier wasn’t selected, I began straight away with going through the character sheets and the game rules.
I handed out the character sheets, cover sheets, and agenda folding sheets. The sheets were laminated so I also handed out note paper so that the players can jot down any additional items or notes. With the character sheets being laminated I used different coloured casino chips to represent different consumables or points. Blue casino chips represented air, green casino chips were the Stress points characters could earn, red were for damage, white were for ammo, and the Million Dollar chips were for Story Points. I like using casino chips as not only does it give something tactile for the players to hold but the back and forth of points is far easier managed. I can give the players their Stress points very easily but if they are able to reduce their Stress by using their Signature Item they can hand them back to me as well, for example.
When the PCs are fighting NPCs, I can represent each of the NPCs by a stack of casino chips, each stack getting knocked down chip by chip as the PCs shoot or hurt them.
I took them through their different sheets so they had an idea of what is what. The cover sheet has their name and career, their role, their rank, biographical details on, a picture of the character, their talents with game details, and a picture and details of their vessel, FSAS Fortune.
My version of the Alien Character Sheet.
My character sheet design has two columns; the first has again name, career, role, relationships with a buddy and rival space left blank, a signature item for reliving Stress, space to list tiny items, a space to write critical injuries, space to list their gear, space for their weapons details, their four conditions, and finally their four consumables. The second column is head with tick boxes for Stress, Health, and radiation. Below that are the four Attributes listed with their three associated skills. Attributes (with Skills) are Strength (Heavy Machinery, Close Combat, Stamina), Agility (Mobility, Ranged Combat, Piloting), Wits (Comtech, Survival, Observation) and Empathy (Command, Manipulation, Medical Aid).
Attributes have fourteen points spread between them and Skills will have a total of ten points spread between them. Dice rolls are made by making a pool of d6 dice, the number of the Skill + Attribute is the number of dice plus additional dice for any modifiers for situation and gear. All that is needed to succeed are rolled ‘6’s, one is only usually needed but extra ‘6’s give extra stunts or damage. If the PCs have Stress they will also gain extra dice for their dice pools using another coloured dice (the official Stress dice are yellow). If they roll ‘6’s on those all is good but if they roll ‘1’s on the Stress dice then that signals that the PC has gone into Panic.
Panic Rolls will throw the PCs off and will no doubt occur often at the wrong moment. The player rolls a single d6 and adds their total number of Stress Points to the result. That number is then checked against the Panic Table to see what action (or inaction) the PC takes.
I then reassured the players we would go through the actions and the dice rolling when it comes to the first dice roll again so that they could see it in play.
Last but not least I showed them how to open their folding agenda sheets, but I would do so proper at the end of Act I and of Act II too. The current configuration of the sheet just shows their Act I agenda along side and image of their character and will as little sections showing images and details of their prime weapons, spacesuits, and gear. The details of Acts II and III are hidden until the players fold them open.
With all that down I started the scenario with their mission briefing.
They are based on the vessel FSAS Fortune, a small warship of the Federal Security Agency. They are to hunt down six Nexus-6 Replicants who have escaped from a penal colony. They had hijacked a shuttle and have docked at a space station. It is unknown where they are headed and their identities are also unknown due to the number of disintegrations during the riot that covered the escape. A full scale investigation needs to be carried out to track the Replicants down and “retire” them with extreme prejudice.
The players got straight in to the space station, locking down the docks and the ships in their berths. They also got onto the automated shuttle to investigate where the Replicants hid out on their journey, looking for clues.
Of course the group split up to cover more ground, covering the recreational areas, chasing down criminal leads, and using the resources on the station and on their vessel. And of course the more investigator types went into where there was action and the more fighter types ended up conducting investigations on their own.
This caused a few tensions in the team as they all tried to work towards identifying the Replicants. Finally by the end of Act I the reveal of the identities of the Replicants was made - to the great delight of the players!
The scenario takes a drastic turn in Act II and the chase is on for the Replicants. This also covers some hair rising starship combat and locating the hidden Weyland-Yutani Research Station.
It was a great ending to the scenario, the PCs managed to not only get themselves killed but took out their own ship as well!
A Total Party Kill. Nice!
The players of my Alien game Fortune Hinders the Bold. Friday Afternoon.
So after that I cleared the table, packed away all my gear, character sheets, dice trays, dice boxes, character stands, casino chips, etc. and bagged them up and took them to my hotel room.
I wasn’t running anymore games but would be heading back home later that night so I can check up on my dogs.
However I was meeting friends and taking part in the Starship Simulator at 21:00 so I quickly showered and changed into a gold command Star Trek t-shirt. Nice!
I met my friends in the bar for a drink and to get some food from Chow Street. I opted for a cheese and ham toastie freshly toasted at the food truck as I just needed something light.
We arrived at the room where the Starship Simulator is located and met the three other players we would be making a full crew up with. They were much younger than us but were just as keen, if not more excited. We were waiting for the previous crew to finish their game so I quickly nipped to the loo before the game. While I was away the rest of the players elected me as Captain. That suited me as that’s the role I prefer.
This Starship Simulator is run by different people that ran the Starship Simulator at AireCon earlier this year that I also played. Though using the same Artemis software they had a slightly different set up. They had actual tactile buttons to press at each station as well as the touchscreen for finer controls. Each station had it’s own touchscreen as well as access to the main view screen. The room was laid out around the main view screen with the stations positioned around a table. The room had coloured lights that lit the room in the style of the 1960’s TV show. It created a nice atmosphere that certainly helped make the experience more immersive.
The crew stations are Helm for steering the vessel, Engineering for repair and power allocation, Comms for external communications and identification, Science for scanning and sensors, and finally Weapons for shields and weapons control. The other players took the stations they were most comfortable with so everyone was happy with their roles in the crew.
The mission started with me as Captain going through a set script whilst the trainers took each of the players through their station’s controls and what they can do. This was a great way of giving the players their tutorial as it was done in real time as part of the mission. The mission itself seemed simple but grew more complicated as we went along. We fought battles, taunted our enemies, scanned for life forms, gave more power to shields, zipped across the sector, and narrowly avoided asteroids. All the while trying to see if we could reduce the Gravitrons in the sector, we failed but only because we ran out of time. What was surprising was that an hour had passed whilst we were playing, it went so fast.
The Helm station in Starship Simulator. Notice the real buttons. Friday Night.
What was nice as we travelled near or through nebulas and gas clouds the lighting changed. Same when the shields went up. Also when I shouted “Red Alert!”, the rest of the crew loved that, the lighting changed again with flashing red lights - nice!
I gave all my crew a promotion as we finished the game and the players seemed to enjoy the game, everyone had their own roles in the game as part of the crew and all had plenty to do.
With that finished I said my goodbyes as I had to head off to the Railway Station to catch my train home. It was a bit weird not travelling with my bags as I had left them in my hotel room overnight. I got home later in the evening as the trains were running to time, I was a little bit worried that the Jubilee celebrations would have disrupted the trains, some were announced as cancelled but fortunately mine had not. I walked my dogs before retiring to a deep sleep. Part Two to follow!
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