Yesterday I went to the York Board Games Convention, a lovely little con held at St Peter's Junior School, not far from the centre of York. This is its second year, and I hope it has many more.
Although it’s a three-day con, I went only on Friday. (I only found out a few weeks earlier, and life admin stuff meant I couldn’t go all three days.)
The convention starts at 9 am – which is the same time as the first ttrpg slot that I was booked into. Since I had no idea how busy it would be, I arrived around 8:45 and found three or four gamers waiting to go in. One of the organisers said we could go in as the café was ready to serve, so I had a cup of tea and a bacon butty while I waited. Perfect.
DIE RPG
As it was, one of our players ran late, and we didn’t start until after 9:30 a.m…
I wasn’t disappointed by the delay; it gave us time to get to know Tom, the GM, and the other players. I didn’t know Tom, but it turns out that he had also been at Furnace.
Anyway, DIE RPG is the game of the comic of the same name – which I haven’t read. But the conceit is that a group of ttrpgers become the heroes of their own nightmarish ttrpg. (It’s wonderfully meta.)
And TL;DR – this was probably the best ttrpg session I played in all year.
The GM played James, the DM who TPK’d our group all those years ago. But James had been provoked, his crush had turned him down, and his other friends had stolen from him. And me? I played his bullied younger brother – and I smashed his prize Warhammer model.
So we spent about half an hour building our “players”- fleshing them out and figuring out their dysfunctional relationships with James and their screwed-up lives.
The game starts with James inviting us back for “one last game”, and before we know it we are magically transported into a nightmarish fantasy world where we must fight for survival. But first we turn into our characters – I was the Rage Knight, a warrior with anger management issues (focused on James, of course).
Then we had a short but extremely satisfying, emotionally draining dungeon that ended with us finally defeating James and deciding to return home rather than stay to live in the fantasy.
It was so good (and draining) that I struggle to imagine how you’d play DIE for much longer.
The Window
After finishing DIE, I perused the rest of the con and saw a “looking for players” beacon at a table where they were playtesting The Window. So I settled down for a game.
The Window is a dramatic football transfers board game for 2-4 players.
You are the manager of a club fighting to survive in the top division, and the transfer window is only open for another week. Scout players, outbid your rivals, hijack deals at the worst possible moment, and get your signings over the line before the window slams shut.
Anyway, it’s an auction game where you build your squad by bidding on players. The theme didn’t inspire me (I’m not a football fan), but I enjoyed the game. Obviously, I didn’t stand a chance – I was playing against the designers. I came fourth, unable to keep my team from relegation.
The game itself is fairly easy to understand – but the strategies aren’t so clear.
After that, I did look around to see if there were other games I could join. I could have taken something out of the library and tried to find players, but I was tired (and still drained from DIE), so I headed home.
Some thoughts about the convention generally
The location is lovely. The café is nice, and having individual rooms for the ttrpgs is lovely. I was there on a Friday, when it was quiet. I imagine the weekend is much busier. (I wonder what they will do when they need to expand.)
As mentioned above, they might want to review the scheduling for the ttrpgs.
Communications isn’t great. I think there must be a mailing list or something somewhere, but I can’t find a link to it on the website. When I first learned about the con, there didn’t appear to be a way to sign up to the ttrpgs. It turns out you do that through the app – which appeared randomly on the site one day. I’m sure there was an announcement somewhere...
(Now I've bought a ticket, I may well be on the mailing list...)
They have a Facebook group, and while it has some useful announcements, it’s not a place for the community to post reviews or photos. (So I couldn’t work out if anyone was arranging games, for example.)
I hope it’s a success, and maybe next year I will run something.
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