Peaky 2025

The last weekend of April saw me at the annual Peaky Games writing weekend, where 30 or so crazy fools gather to write and play freeforms. It’s my favourite gaming weekend of the year – friends, food, creativity, stress – and not enough sleep.

This year five games were written, Enemies of the Federation, On a Hot Summer’s Night, Miss Maypole: A Study in Saffron, Nodding Donkeys, and Ldrbrd.

Spoilers ahoy! (Perhaps just think of this as something to whet your appetite.)

Enemies of the Federation

Enemies of the Federation is for nine players. Criminals’ personalities have been extracted from their cryosleeping bodies to operate repair mechs to save their stricken prison ship. But things aren’t exactly what they seem.

I co-wrote Enemies of the Federation with Kath Banks, Megan Jones and Peter Jones. The core idea was Peter’s – the game is partly a balloon debate as the players discover that although there are nine personalities, they only have three bodies to return to. (Each personality has been extracted three times.)

Although the personalities weren’t identical (we made slight personality differences to each - althought this didn't really come out in play), it meant that there were three core characters. As the others were happy to write the characters (and to be honest, I suspect my terse writing style would not have been to everyone’s taste), I stepped back from that job and wrote the background document.

I was rather pleased with my background document. Instead of writing a normal background, I wrote it in the form of three year 5 lesson plans: the history, the geography, and one covering unhappy people. This let me write the background in bullet points, while hinting at the dystopian future the players would find themselves in. (The Federation is more Blake’s 7 than Star Trek, and each lesson plan finishes with an instruction to sing the Federation anthem.)

So that didn’t take me much time, so I had enough time to reformat an old game, An Ecumenical Matter, into a more polished format. That’s something I’ve been meaning to do for years, so it was nice to get that finally done.

The game seemed to go well, and the players said they enjoyed it. It ran for about 90 minutes, which seemed about right. I’m not sure what I would do to make it a longer game – we’d need more events and stringing a few discoveries out.

Then it was time for Nodding Donkeys.

Nodding Donkeys

Nodding Donkeys was written by Dave Collis, Adam Hayes, Kevin Jacklin, Michael Jones, Ezzy Pearson and Julie Winnard. Inspired by Slow Horses, it featured washed-up spies on a training course. For 8 players.

I played agent Possum, one of the Nodding Donkeys, spies who have been put out to Croydon House, where they can do no harm. Possum was an old-school spook, a little like Slow Horses’ Jackson Lamb, but without being as scarily competent (or gross) as Lamb is. So I embraced my inner Gary Oldman and enjoyed being old-fashioned and pretty obnoxious.

One thing I really liked was that each character had “superpowers” (abilities) and flaws, but to use a superpower, you had to display (somehow) one of your flaws. That seemed to work really well.

It was a lovely game, with a few rough patches here and there (but that’s always true of Peaky), and was my favourite game of Peaky 2025.

With the spies put to bed, it was time to go all Agatha Christie.

Miss Maypole: A Study in Saffron

Miss Maypole: A Study in Saffron was written by Graham Arnold, Nickey Barnard, Clare Gardner, Heidi Kaye, Sue Lee, Christi S and Mike Snowden. It is the third (and apparently the last) of a series of murder mystery freeforms written at Peaky, and is for 14 players. 

Anyway, I played the village verger, campanologist and budding archaeologist. While I had a few goals, none of them (I think) related to the murder, but that was okay – this was a game with a lot of convoluted plots, which I always enjoy.

Unfortunately, the verger felt a little underwritten. The stuff I was interested in was fine, but it felt tangential to the main plot (the murder and the film crew). I had a lovely time, but noticed that during the last third of the game, I was waiting for something to happen. I imagine that’s just a reflection of Peaky – a balanced 14-player game is hard to write in so little time at Peaky. Once polished and tightened up, I’m sure the verger will have enough to carry them through the game. (I don’t know if abilities are planned for the game, but a few might help.)

Interestingly, I wrote about the previous game back in 2016, and noted that I ran out of plot during that one as well. 

And with that, Peaky was over for another year.

On a Hot Summer’s Night and Ldrbrd

I didn’t play either of these games, but I heard good things about both.

On a Hot Summer's Night was written by Natalie Curd, Nick Curd, Phil Dall and Tym Norris. It’s a 1920s Buffy the Vampire Slayer game with vampires and a hellmouth, for 10 players, but I know little more about it than that.

Ldrbrd written by Jenny Donne, Kirstine Heald, Tony Mitton, Ewan Munro and Malk Williams. Ldrbrd features arcade game characters who are competing to avoid deletion, and is for 12 players.