North Star 2025

North Star is a science fiction ttrpg convention held yearly in The Garrison Hotel in Sheffield. It is one of several ttrpg conventions held in The Garrison, but this was my first visit to North Star.

I don’t normally attend this one, because it’s a little close to Peaky. But as Mrs H was away, I decided to attend the Sunday of North Star. (So that was, for me, an unprecedented three weekends being away playing games!)

Anyway, I had a lovely time catching up with old friends and making new ones, and I played two games: Triangle Agency and Space: 1999.

Triangle Agency

Guy ran Triangle Agency, an investigative game. According to the blurb, “Player characters work at the Triangle Agency, an international corporation with influence in every industry. As Field Agents, players investigate and capture supernatural Anomalies that threaten the lives and comfort of normal citizens.”

So it’s pretty much like all the other investigative games out there, from Delta Green, the Laundry Files, Esoterrorists and even my own Other London. Triangle Agency does all this with a good dose of Dilbertesque office bureaucracy nonsense.

I played Jim, the intern, and Guy ran us through an investigation involving a noise-hating anomaly. It was very enjoyable and we wrapped it all up in good time.

Things I liked

Easy to roleplay: Triangle Agency characters are easy to roleplay. The character types are obvious tropes that were easy to work with.

NPC connections: To my delight, each character has three connections – people who are important to you. Even better, each connection is played by another player (rather than the GM). So one of the Intern’s connections is a “long-term situationship,” which I asked John to play, which was delightful. (I am a big fan of characters having connections, and I’m always surprised that so few games do this.)

Fail by default! In Triangle Agency, it is always assumed that you will fail at a task unless you can come up with a bizarre series of coincidences that mean that you succeed. (So to stop part of the anomaly getting away, we invented it getting tangled up in a dustpan and brush.) The agency will then warp reality to make those coincidences happen. And then you roll the dice.

While the result is much the same as just rolling the dice to succeed, narratively it’s very different – and contributes to the craziness and Dilbertesque vibe.

Things that made me scratch my head

Two huge hardback books! While the production quality is undoubtedly fabulous, it also seems rather over-produced. Guy’s boxed set included a sturdy box (with sections for the dice) and two hardback books. Given that I can’t imagine playing Triangle Agency more than a few sessions, it felt a little overdone to me. Yes, it’s gorgeous, and the game is good, but I doubt I would ever get my money’s worth.

Chaos: As we rolled the dice, Guy built up a stock of something called “chaos” that let him do things. The more chaos Guy had, the worse things were for us. It would have been nice to have seen a more visual representation of that, but my main issue with this (and I’ve now seen it in a couple of games) is I’m not quite sure what purpose it serves, as a mechanic. Isn’t it the GM’s job to put obstacles in our way? Do we need a mechanic to manage that? It feels a bit board-gamey, and although I like board games, I’m not that keen on them in my ttrpgs.

Anyway, I haven’t worked out how I feel about that kind of mechanic yet. (Slugblaster has bite, and that’s on my to-run list, so maybe I’ll figure it out then.)

Space 1999

Andy ran Space: 1999, the new Modipheus game using their 2d20 system, using the draft rulebook from the Kickstarter. He ran Project Arrow, an adventure from the rulebook, and this was his first time running Space: 1999.

Project Arrow is set three days after the event that rips the moon from Earth’s orbit. In that time it has accelerated 200 gees (!) and has now left the solar system (!!). It took us a while to figure this out, but I found it in the wonderful Moonbase Alpha Technical Operations Manual that Andy had brought.

Anyway, I played Team Commander Carlos Rodriguez, one of the pregens. The game was okay – the group was great, but the adventure was a little railroady, and we struggled with the mechanics at times. 

Things I liked

A friendly table: I think most of the players were new to me, and as ever, everyone was welcoming and we had a good time.

Space: 1999: I didn’t watch Space: 1999 back in the day. I guess I must have seen an episode or two, and I know the basic premise, but I enjoyed playing in the ludicrous setting. Part of me wishes the game leant more into the trauma of leaving Earth behind, but that would be a very different game.

Things that made me scratch my head

2d20: Andy wasn’t that familiar with 2d20, and some of the players were very familiar with other 2d20 variants, so we weren’t always sure we were following the rules correctly. As I haven’t played a 2d20 system in seven or eight years, I couldn’t really comment.

A railroad: As I said, the scenario was very railroady, and some dice rolls didn’t seem to matter. We failed many of the early rolls, but that seemed not to affect the actual adventure. It also seemed to consist of more dice rolling than roleplaying.

Character stats: The choice of character stats and skills seemed a bit strange. From what I could see, characters don’t have a skill to roll when trying to do something physical (like get into cover from a meteorite shower). Maybe I’m missing something, but the skills are Command, Flight, Medical, Science, Security and Technical. It’s not immediately clear what we should use. (We didn’t consult the rules. Perhaps we should have.)

North Star themes

So while North Star has an SF theme, it had a couple of other themes for me as well.

Not my dice: In neither game did I get my dice out – because I didn’t have the right dice! Triangle Agency just uses d4s (madness, I know). I don’t own any d4s, so I used Guy and Declan’s official Triangle Agency dice instead. (The system is fine – you roll six d4s and look for threes. The official dice have red points to indicate success, so you’re really just counting the red points.)

And I only own one d20, so I didn’t bother getting that out but just rolled Andy’s d20s.

Running for the first time: For both games, Andy and Guy were running the system for the first time using a prewritten scenario. That’s something I’ve never done – I always feel like I’m on show when I’m running a con game, and so I usually run something that I’m familiar with.

But as far as I know, nobody cared that this was Guy and Andy’s first run at the game, so perhaps I should be more relaxed about running games I don’t know so well.

And next time?

I hope so. I enjoyed my brief visit to North Star, and hope to return again next year.