I played two great games at Peaky 2026: Triremes in Space and Grease Point Blank. (These are working titles and may change.)
Triremes in Space
Triremes in Space is a 12-player game of Ancient Greeks in space, written by Helen Jones, Megan Jones, Michael Jones, and Ewan Munro.
Hang on, Ancient Greeks in space? Yes - and this isn't even an original idea! As Megan explained to me afterwards, she was inspired by the second-century travelogue/novella A True Story by Lucian of Samosata, in which Lucian and his crew are blown into space and have a series of adventures. I've never heard of it before, and it's arguably the first ever SF story.
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| Spider battle from A True History by William Strang, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
Anyway, I was playing Selene of Luna, leader of the Moon people. And I was meeting humans from Terrus for the first time - Spartans, Corinthians and Athenians. All hated each other, and yet I somehow needed to get them to help me with my problem with the sacred cows on the Morning Star...
Structurally, Triremes in Space starts with four factions, with three characters (broadly a leader, a ship's pilot and a warrior - although some factions may have had a different mix). The factions may be enemies or allies – or in the case of the Moon people, unknown.
The Moon people were delightfully alien, and as I was meeting humans for the first time, I enjoyed misunderstanding them and (hopefully) being unclear.
Amazingly, I achieved all my important goals - although it turned out that one of my advisors was deeply dodgy, and I had no idea!
It was also helpful having one of the authors (Ewan) as my other advisor. Inevitably, we hit bits of lore that hadn't been fully explored, and he provided the explanation while also filing the question and answer away for later.
Grease Point Blank
Grease Point Blank is a 12-player 1969 high-school reunion game inspired partly by the movies Grease and Grosse Point Blank. It was written by Nickey Barnard, Philippa Dall, Heidi Kaye, Tony Mitton and Christi S.
I couldn't believe my luck when I opened my character sheet: I was playing the John Cusack character! Okay, I'm trying not to spoil this, so I'm not going to say who I was playing or what happened. But it was so much fun, there was angst, drama, unexpected attention and maybe even murder.
I think my favourite moment was a completely unexpected conversation with Graham, but the game was filled with lovely moments.
Other games
Two other games were also written at Peaky 2026. I didn’t play them, but it sounded like they went well.
For The Greater Good by Adam Hayes, Kirstine Heald, Kevin Jacklin, Peter Jones, and Julie Winnard. Strange goings on in an English village for 8 players.
Lord Gount's Expedition by Clare Gardner, Martin Jones, Alli Mawhinney and Rich Perry. Sailpunk, for 8 doomed players. (I may have got the title for this one wrong.)
And you'll notice I didn't write a game this time. That's because I started, but it didn't work out. That happens sometimes. I ended up talking about Cafe Casablanca and helped proofread For the Greater Good.
Sunday game scheduling
And I have to say, Sunday was lovely. Only four games were running, and that meant that instead of trying to cram three sessions and lunch into about seven hours, everything was much more leisurely.
So our schedule was:
- 8:30-9:30 Breakfast
- 9:30-12:30 First game slot (Triremes in Space and For the Greater Good)
- 12:30-13:30 Lunch
- 13:30-16:30 Second game slot (Grease Point Blank and Lord Gount's Expedition)
So that was a very leisurely three hours for each game. Nothing felt rushed, and we had loads of time for feedback and relaxing between games.
(Sometimes we have six games running at Peaky. So that means an additional slot, and all the slots are only two hours long with very little space in between. And lunch is either very early or very late. And no, we can't push into the evening because some people have to leave, and others want to just chill after a busy weekend.)
I'd like to suggest we do that every Peaky, but that means having more games that aren't ready to be run. Is that a bad thing? Maybe not.
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