Consequences 2025

It’s a cold snap in November, so I must be in a thin-walled caravan in West Sussex. Ah, yes, I’m starting this post at 2025’s “Radical” Consequences, the UK’s main freeform larp convention. (It feels very British to have our premier freeform larp convention held in a cold, rainy holiday park!)

I’ve written about Consequences before, so let’s get on with the larps. I played four, ran two and facilitated two games of Fiasco. Phew!

Thursday

Consequences started at 7 pm, so after a happily uneventful drive, I arrived ready to play my first game.

4

4 is an eight-player game set in 2013(ish) written by Graham Charles, Natalie Curd, Nick Curd and Tony Mitton.

I played Charlie, who had been committed to St Agnes’ mental health facility for his obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The game itself was structured into three acts.

• The first is a short exercise set in St Agnes’ to reinforce our names and why we are at St Agnes’. (“I am Charlie. I am here because…. This is Bobbi; they are here because…”) It was surprisingly effective.
• The second act is set a few weeks after a tragedy, with us exploring our feelings about what had happened.
• The bulk of the game is contained in the third act, which is a reunion on the site of the tragedy – where things happen, secrets are revealed, and dilemmas must be grappled with.

It’s a lovely game, and I enjoyed it a lot. (My favourite bit was arranging the wine glasses neatly and turning around to see everyone looking at me, and then someone saying “Oh, he’s just being Charlie.”)

It’s probably not for everyone as it includes mental health issues (OCD, paranoia, hallucinations and more). But if you’re up for that, I definitely recommend it.

And with 4 over, I went to bed.

Friday

Friday was cold, but dry. A lovely day with clear blue skies.

The Omega Delivery

The Omega Delivery is a 14-player science fiction game by Tony Mitton and AJ Smith. It’s part of their series of SF games inspired by Firefly, where their design premise was to write a series of episodic games with a cast of core characters (the crew of the Kestrel, in this case) and guest stars.

Last year, I played one of the core characters (Alex Orban, captain of the Kestrel); this year, I played Wye Oliver, a prisoner aboard the secure facility Omega Station, which is suffering from a huge radiation leak. Into this situation came the crew of the Kestrel…

It was nice to play a guest star this time. Last time, as Captain Orban, I was thrown into a situation without really knowing what was going on. This time, as one of the guest stars, I had a much better idea of what was going on, and that was a really nice change of pace.

Again, recommended. Particularly if you can arrange to play all of them – there are six in the series, and this was episode #3, the season 1 cliffhanger.

To Reign in Hentzau

Photo by TsiJon

To Reign in Hentzau is a 25-player game written by David Townsend and John Golden and set in Hentzau, a tiny Eastern European country in the mid-1930s. Hentzau’s Lord Protector has just been assassinated, throwing the country into disarray…

I played Prince Reinhart, heir to the assassinated Lord Protector, so of course I was never going to rule… Amid numerous scheming ministers, corrupt generals, foreign agitators, and my overbearing mother, I never stood a chance…

It was lovely to play a sprawling, complicated political freeform larp, even if I really was a puppet. I had no real leverage – what I wanted was whatever was “best for Hentzau.” But I’m not sure I ever really knew what that was…

Anyway, I had a lovely time.

I had nothing planned for Friday evening, so I had an early night.

So that’s three games so far, and my character has died in two of them. I’m not saying which, but I am keeping count.

Saturday

Saturday was very wet, and it rained and rained. Walking around the site in the dark became particularly tricky without wellies. (Something to consider if the forecast isn’t good.)

All Flesh is Grass and Aurora Horizon

All Flesh is Grass photo by TsiJon

On Saturday, I ran All Flesh is Grass and Aurora Horizon in quick succession. These are both parts of my long-running saga of first-contact science fiction games. All Flesh is Grass is episode 2, and Aurora Horizon is episode 6.

All Flesh is Grass is set in 1965 and involves a mysterious barrier that appears around a small Wisconsin village. Aurora Horizon is set in 2010 and involves a space mission to explore an abandoned spaceship on Callisto. Both are for 13 players.

Aurora Horizon photo by TsiJon

Both went really well. Aurora Horizon is the more ambitious of the two, and fortunately, Abi K was helping me GM – I really needed it. (Kevin J helped me GM All Flesh is Grass, but that’s easier to run, and we spent much of the game chatting.)

My favourite quotes:

• “Do you WANT to destroy the insurance industry?” (All Flesh is Grass, on the promise of tailored plant-based medicine.)
• “I am not going to change the laws of physics for you!” (Aurora Horizon – Commander Archer arguing with one of the Tau.)

I’ve got a few edits to make for both games. Luckily, they aren’t too significant. I’ll do them now while they are fresh in my mind and while I am still enthusiastic. That way, I can put the games away, knowing I can pick them up and run them later.

Next year, I plan to run Children of the Stars (episode #3) and episode #7 (currently unwritten).

Fiasco: The Ice

On Saturday evening, I facilitated a game of Fiasco with Graham, Alli, Kris Alice, and Clare. It was glorious, and I don’t think I laughed as much all weekend. 

I hadn’t planned to facilitate Fiasco twice. I originally pitched it for Sunday morning, but after a couple of people had signed up, Kris Alice asked if I could run it on Saturday evening, as we were both free.

As is usual with Fiasco, we spent the first few scenes figuring out how the game was going to go, but once we had an idea, it was pedal to the metal. 

I find Fiasco is a great way to hone my improvisational skills. Graham completely shafted my character in his second scene, and with that one call, I became a murderer. I killed my character in my epilogue, which seemed to be the right thing to do.

Sunday

Sunday was cloudy, but at least the rain held off, and the puddles started to dry out.

Fiasco: Dragon Slayers

So this was my original slot for Fiasco. I didn’t pitch Fiasco until after I’d worked out which freeforms I wanted to play. As I had a gap on Sunday morning (and I am an early bird, so mornings don’t frighten me as much as the all-night parties), I pitched Fiasco. 

Joining me were Sarah, Julie, Sophie and Kath, and they chose Dragon Slayers, the fantasy-themed set.

I was slightly anxious, as I had only known Kath for any length of time, but I needn’t have worried. Everyone embraced Fiasco’s darkness, and we had a tale of a necromancer and her apprentice, twin sisters, a bounty hunter and his henchmen. Things didn’t go well for me (again), but at least I didn’t die this time.

LDRBRD

And finally, Ldrbrd, a 12-player game set in a video arcade where we played video game characters. I played Sword Guy from a fantasy video game. 

While I enjoyed Ldrbrd (although I completely failed to save Princess – and arguably was responsible for her doom), I found the three mini-games dragged on a bit. They were a nice idea, but given the keenly competitive gamers in the group, I felt they dragged on a bit.

Ldrbrd had the best-formatted A5 booklet of the con with text large enough that my 60-year-old eyes could read it even in the dim arcade lighting. 

The after-con socials

Consequences is known for its after-game parties. They normally start late (after the evening games, which don’t finish until midnight), which isn’t great for me as I’m an early bird (as already mentioned).

Sunday, though, doesn’t have an evening game, which gave me a chance to socialise before it got too late.

Monday

And on Monday, I had an uneventful drive home.

Consequences 2024

Last time, I was looking forward; now it’s time to look back. So how was Consequences 2024?

(And I should say that, strictly, this was “Quintessential Consequences,” but I prefer to remember them by the year, and as this is my blog, that’s what I’ll do.)

TL;DR: Consequences 2024 was awesome and I’m looking forward to next year. 

Logistics and accommodation

Consequences had a new venue for 2024, Lakeside Holiday Park near Chichester. It’s a five-hour drive from Yorkshire, so I set off early. (I’m not organised enough to take the train, and taking a car meant I could overpack.)

Our 6-berth static caravan. Not recommended for 6 adults.

The accommodation is either in a lodge or a static caravan. I shared a 6-berth static caravan with James, Kath and Matt. That was extremely cheap (it worked out at about £25 per room per night) but there were compromises – the bedrooms were tiny. I wasn’t sharing my twin room, and I wouldn’t have wanted to as the gap between the narrow beds was about six inches. Kath and Matt shared the double room but had no space for their luggage, which they left in the general social area. We did have two bathrooms, although one was so small if you’re any bigger than I am you would struggle.

The static caravans feel like they’re designed for a family (the twin rooms would be fine for kids).

The lodges, on the other hand, are much more luxurious and have much more space. However, there were only a limited number of them available, and we didn’t really need the extra space.

Consequences doesn’t provide meals, but the lodges/caravans have cooking facilities, and meals are available at the bar. I brought things for breakfast and lunch, and had bar meals in the evening.

For owls, not larks

It’s worth noting that Consequences caters more for the owls than it does for us larks. (And for Americans who haven’t adjusted their body clocks yet.) 

As an example, breakfast butties were only available from 9:30 – that’s practically mid-morning for me! And parties start late and carry on into the early hours.

That’s not a gripe, just an observation. If you are a lark, you just need to be wary of who you lodge with. And bring your own breakfast.

Spellbound

Written by Maria & Jeppe Bergmann Hamming and run by Mo Holkar, Mike Snowden and Quinn D.

Spellbound was the game I was most concerned about before Consequences. It seemed to be the most Nordic of the larps, and that’s not something I’ve done before. I don’t really know how Nordic it was, but there were lots of workshops and the game was conducted silently while moving to music. (Eerie non-English folk/rock/indie music. No idea of the genre. Some vocals sounded like Bjork might have sung them, but I honestly don’t know. I didn’t recognise any of it – and it was suitably weird.)

As there were no words, the workshops covered (with varying degrees of success) how to move and how to interact. Broadly we were split into two camps – humans and the immortal undergrounders (in their glorious masks). The broad arc of the story was about how the undergrounders bound humans to their will, toyed with them, and then whether the humans returned to the human world or stayed.

And did I enjoy it? I think I did, eventually. I was way outside of my comfort zone to begin with, but after 20 minutes or so, I was getting the hang of it. It could have been 30 minutes shorter – we could have had fewer scenes, and each scene could easily have been at least one song shorter. 

Talking to one of the human players afterwards (I was an undergrounder), apparently, in one of the early breaks, they quickly agreed on a story and connection between themselves, which helped their game immensely. I might have enjoyed it more if the undergrounder also had more to them.

I’m glad I did it but I doubt I’d rush back to do a game like it again.

Incidentally, the original larp materials are here. And these are the Spotify playlists: Conflict, Party, Seduction, and Sentimental.

Friday

I had a terrible night’s sleep – which is usual for my first night at a games convention. At Consequences, this was compounded by the bitterly cold weather, and the caravan got very cold.

The Stars our Destination

This was my game, and the fifth in my series of first contact games. I don’t have much to say about it other than the players seemed to enjoy it. It went well from my perspective – I have a few tweaks to make here and there, but nothing major seemed to be broken.

Players conferring in groups: how a typical freeform looks

Next year I plan to bring episode 6. Assuming I can figure out how to make it work.

All You Need Is Love

Written and run by Laura Wood and Ruth Trenery-Leach.

2024 has been my hear of song/band larping (and it arguably started in 2023 with That Difficult Second Album at Peaky 2023). So there’s been West End Lullaby, Backstage Business, Success2Soon, All You Need Is Love, and (later on), Do You Hear The People Sing.

Anyway, in All you Need Is Love we were a newly-formed band that went through a defined arc that included singing Beatles songs to each other.

As the arcs were predefined, it felt more like theatrical improv rather than a “game”. So one scene included something like, “F is angry that their more experimental work is not being released by the band.” So we improvised and acted that out. So, on one hand, we weren’t given any agency in choosing the direction, but we did have agency in how we played that out.

Critically, though, this also avoided the dreaded freeform compromise. F argued that he only wanted one song on the next album, just one. And it would have been so easy to compromise and say yes, we’ll give you one song. But the directions didn’t let us do that, and so we couldn’t compromise – which was a very pleasant change.

Another oddity about the game was that we had 12 players, split into two groups of six. Each group had exactly the same instructions, with the same character packs, arcs and songs. But we fleshed out the details. It sounds like it shouldn’t work – but it did. There was no crossover between the groups, and while it’s tempting to suggest that might be something to try, I think it’s fine that there was no crossover.

As for me, I played “C”, who I named Charlie, who struggled with fame and unrequited love. I had a great time playing them with my fellow band members (played by Mo, Nickey, Karim, Dave and Ben).

And of course, it’s a lot of fun singing Beatles songs together.

The Koenig Dead

Written by Tony Mitton and run by Tony and AJ Smith.

I played Captain Alix Orban and wish I’d spent longer absorbing my 20-page character pack. As I mentioned last time, I found the character sheet a bit confusing, and during play, I struggled to look anything up in the heat of the moment. But unfortunately, I got distracted and didn’t do as much homework as maybe I should have.

Anyway, the game was fine. As the captain, I was always being called upon, but of course, I didn’t know that much – even if I’d memorised my character sheet, much of the detail was known by others. I had a lovely time interacting with my crew and Steve Bassett’s sinister Armari Thrace who gave me a hard time about the last time our character’s paths had crossed.

Other than the flow of the character sheet, my minor criticisms are:

• The game space was slightly too small for our 14 players. That was a surprise as The Stars our Destination also had 14 players, but didn’t feel cramped in the same way. (Maybe the extra GM made all the difference.)
• The game has content warnings, but there are a couple of occasions where even I thought, “ew” and wondered if they were necessary. (If the game were actually about those issues, then that would be different, but I didn’t expect it in a game based loosely on Firefly.)
• For new players to the crew of the Kestrel, I think twenty minutes at the start of the game for the crew and passengers to get to know each other and understand what happened last episode would be time well spent. I’m sure the game is much smoother when those playing the continuing characters have played them previously.

Saturday

I had a slightly better night’s sleep (helped by the warmer weather), but it was still not brilliant, and I woke as usual at around 6 am.

Do You Hear The People Sing?

Written and run by Alex Helm, and subtitled “How the GM got their friends to perform Les Miserables for them”.

Photo by Tsijon

I played Franky Jackson who plays Thenardier (and a few other minor roles) in Les Mis. And it was a hoot. It was chaos, with singing and wild accusations, songs tanked, and I even brought the plate of sardines on stage for Master of the House. The actors playing Cosette and Eponine switched roles halfway through, but luckily the audience didn’t notice.

Definitely the highlight of Consequences for me. If you get the chance, play it.

I’d happily play it again, and I’m also hoping it creates a new genre of farce-musical crossovers that I can play. Mamma Mia, anyone?

Batukh Hungers!

Written and run by Alex Helm.

As I suspected before the game, Batukh Hungers! is a balloon debate: someone has to sacrifice themselves to the dark god, but nobody wants it to be them.

And to my surprise, it ended up being me!

I had a lovely game, particularly the angst and philosophical discussions on the nature of love with my wife (played by Elina), but it wasn’t until the last thirty minutes that I suddenly realised that I didn’t want my wife to be destroyed by the dark god. That led to a great finale – I could see other cult members persuading Elina to sacrifice herself, so I stepped forward and offered myself, and she tried to stop me. But failed.

A lovely ending to the game – nice and dramatic.

Sunday

I had a much better night’s sleep. I got back to the caravan at about 11:30 pm and had a decent wind down before going to bed. That seemed to work.

Hillfolk

On Sunday morning, I ran Hillfolk. I gave the players (JD, Martin, Clare, Heidi and Graham) a choice of the setting, and they chose Hazelwood Abbey (Downstairs) – which is the servants' playset I created for Hazelwood Abbey. This suited me as it’s the playset I hadn't run.

Nobody had played Hillfolk before, but they soon got the hang of it, and we had a dramatic story that featured a broken mirror and the blandest of bland pies. Nobody had chosen the butler or housekeeper roles, so I told everyone the old butler had left, but that the family were looking to replace him. I later told the housemaid that they would be happy to consider her for the position of housekeeper instead of a butler, creating a bit of competition.

We ended up with three procedural scenes – trying to fix a new mirror into the old frame (fail!), making a sauce (success!), and the housemaid and valet competing for the position of housekeeper or butler.

We talked about dramatic poles at the end, but everyone found the actual mechanic for determining who gets the bennies to be far too cumbersome. So we ignored that. I think in future, I will end by asking each player what we see their character doing in five years’ time. 

Interestingly, the more I run Hillfolk one-shots, the harder it is to imagine it as a longer-form game. Maybe that should be a goal for 2025.

The Roswell Incident

And finally, I ran The Roswell Incident. This is the first game in my multi-game first-contact series of freeforms, and the start of what I am calling Timeline 3. (The Stars our Destination was episode five of Timeline 2. Timeline 1 is online.)

For me, this was probably my least favourite game of Consequences. I made a couple of poor GM calls, and while I think most of the players had a good time, not all of them did. I’ve got a pile of notes to reflect on.

I think one of the problems is that I’ve published The Roswell Incident through Freeform Games, and more of the secrets come out during that (as it’s a one-shot) than is probably ideal for the start of a series of games. But maybe that doesn’t matter – I guess I find out next year when I run part 2, All Flesh is Grass.

Getting back

I think I may have figured out my problem with sleep.

At gaming cons, I think I get over-stimulated with the games and people and conversations and ideas, and I need peace and quiet before I try and sleep. I probably need more than I think – so maybe at least 30 minutes on my own. And I think I need to read a book, something unrelated to the event; reading calms my mind and tells my brain that it’s time to go to sleep. Which is what I did on Sunday night, by making sure I was back in the caravan shortly after 10 pm and having time to wind down. I will try and remember this for Shogun in 2025.

And so on Monday, after the best night’s sleep so far, I drove back, listening to the splendid Aldritch Kemp and the Rose of Pamir on BBC Sounds.

Looking forward to Consequences

Next week, I’m off to Consequences, the freeform larp convention. I went last year, and you can read about that here.

I’ll do a post-con report after Consequences, but I thought I’d start things off with a pre-con preview covering some of my thoughts, hopes and fears. Hopefully, there won’t be spoilers.

Consequences this year in the Lakeside Holiday Park in Chichester. So there’s a bunch of logistics in getting there that I’m not covering here. I’m just talking about the games.

So the games, in order.

Thursday

Spellbound (Bjergtaget)

Written by Maria & Jeppe Bergmann Hamming and run by Mo Holkar, Mike Snowden and Quinn D.

According to the organisers, “Spellbound (Bjergtaget) is a non-verbal black box larp for 10-30 participants. The participants play either humans or creatures of the Underground. Through symbolic gestures and movement to music, a night in the world of the Undergrounders is played out. The humans are lured by and bonded to an Undergrounder, and in a series of scenes, the relation between the human and the Undergrounder is explored. Through workshops the participants learn the symbolic gestures and how to move to the music, before we all enter a world of magic and myth.”

I really have no idea what to expect. It’s a long way outside my comfort zone I have no sense of whether I will love it or hate it. (Tune in next time to find out!)

Happily, there are no costuming requirements, other than comfortable clothing with pockets. They suggest wearing contact lenses rather than spectacles, but given that if I wear contacts, then I need reading glasses to read anything, I suspect I’ll just stick with glasses. Or maybe I won’t – I haven’t decided yet.

Friday

Three games today. There’s a risk that’s too many, but I’m running the first one (and I find running games less tiring than playing them), and the middle game doesn’t need any prep.

The Stars our Destination

Written and run by me!

This is part 5 of my first contact saga (is currently called The Dark Forest). I’ve got everything printed out and ready to go, I just need to remind myself of what’s going on before I get started. (I’ll do that a couple of days beforehand.)

This is its second run – the first was online, back in June. As it’s the second run, that means it’s Timeline 2 (as I think of it), which means some of the things that were true in the first run are not true in this run. (For example, this timeline has vat-grown host bodies for one of the aliens!)

I haven’t really talked about The Stars our Destination here yet. I’m not sure why. I suspect I’ll have more to say after this run.

All You Need is Love

Written and run by Laura Wood and Ruth Trenery-Leach.

I had originally planned to have a break in this session, but this game was struggling to fill, and it didn’t look like it needed a lot of homework (or costuming), so I thought I’d give it a try.

“The larp will explore themes of music, fame, and relationships of all kinds. The setting is an alternative 1960s without sexism or queerphobia. If you have any 60s-inspired accessories, feel free to wear them, but they’re not required.  On the day, you’ll be able to choose from skeleton characters, which we will workshop together before we begin.”

So it’s another larp that’s outside my usual comfort zone (skeleton characters and workshops), but it does involve singing Beatles songs, so that’s a plus.

The Koenig Dead

Written and run by AJ Smith and Tony Mitton.

Phew – a “regular” freeform with 20 pages of detailed background and character stuff and 13 other characters with their own agendas.

This is part of a series of games set aboard a spaceship in a universe that seems suspiciously similar to Joss Whedon’s Firefly. I’m playing Alix Orban, the captain of the freighter Kestrel. I fought on the losing side in the war, which makes me Mal from Firefly. Except I’m not, there’s more to it than that.

In The Koenig Dead, we’re taking the Kestrel to the Koenig base where, hopefully, I can get my uncle the medical attention he desperately needs. What could go wrong?

Interestingly, I haven’t been given character objectives/goals – instead, I have a list of suggestions to roleplay my character, help others have fun, have fun myself (and then two game-specific suggestions – one a GM note and the other a reminder that I need to get my uncle the medical attention he needs). Was that a spoiler? I don’t think so, as my uncle’s condition is not a game secret.

The Koenig Dead follows The Linfarn Run, which is the first in the series featuring the Kestrel and many of the same characters. I’ve not played The Linfarn Run, and the character pack (character background, recent events, basic history) felt a little disjointed as it referred to events in that game before explaining them properly. I’m sure if I had played in the previous game, it would make more sense.

I notice this sort of thing because I’m taking a similar approach with my first contact series (such as The Stars our Destination, above). Hopefully, my character sheets flow – but I’m not the best person to judge. (Nobody has mentioned it as an issue, but that doesn’t mean I’ve got it right.)

There are some nice ideas in the background – I particularly like the idea of warp sinks, which affect FTL and make it harder to travel away from some stars. I have no idea if it’s inspired by anything, but I like it. (I’m pretty sure it’s not in Firefly, although it has been many years since I’ve watched that.)

I haven’t worked out costuming yet. I think I just need to look different, and captain-y.

Saturday

Two games today – I can have a lie in! (As if; I bet I’m awake at 6 am as usual.)

Do You Hear The People Sing?

Written and run by Alex Helm.

Remarkably, I think this will be the first time I’ve played in one of Alex’s games – and I’m playing in two of them this year. Alex often writes games set in the Warhammer 40K universe, and while I gather they are splendid games, I don’t know anything about 40K, and it doesn’t really appeal.

Do You Hear The People Sing is not a 40K game. Far from it – it’s a mashup of Noises Off and Les Miserables (and inspired, I gather, by this year’s West End Lullaby, where Alex played Javert.) It sounds fabulous.

I’m playing Frankie Jackson, who plays Monsieur Thenardier in Les Miserables. So I get to perform some great songs as Thenardier – but I’m also playing several minor characters and get to perform other songs as well.

The game takes place both backstage (where the character stuff happens) and on stage (where the performances happen – miming or karaoke or whatever). I’m not sure how the balance is maintained between the two (if, indeed, balance is the right word), but I’m looking forward to finding out.

Do You Hear The People Sing has the best advice on gender, race and age I’ve seen. In short, none of the actor characters are gendered – everyone chooses their gender. And the in-game amateur dramatic society’s casting policy means that anybody can play any role regardless of gender, race or age. So that means we will have a crazy range of people just playing the parts – and that will be great.

Batukh Hungers!

Written and run by Alex Helm. 

Two Alex Helm larps in one day! In Batukh Hungers, devoted followers of Batukh the Hungering God gather to conduct the holy rites and ensure their deity is appeased for another year. But times are hard for this dark cult – membership is falling, willing sacrifices are ever harder to come by, and internal plotting and divisions could spell the end. And if Batukh is not satisfied, the current age of humanity will end in blood and flame.

I’m playing “Coyote” (we all have code names), and from what I can see, it’s going to be interesting choosing a sacrifice.

Sunday

And two games to finish off. The closing ceremony happens shortly before my second game – and Sunday evening is spent unwinding.

Hillfolk

I’m running a game of DramaSystem – it could be Hillfolk, it could be Hazelwood Abbey or even Success2Soon. I’ll let the players decide.

Hopefully I’ll remember my revelation about dramatic poles!

The Roswell Incident

And finally, I’m running The Roswell Incident. This will be its third outing and will be the start of Timeline 3. (So if all goes well, next year I will run All Flesh is Grass, and the year after that, Children of the Stars, and so on. So that’s me committed to Consequences for the foreseeable future!)

Interestingly, a couple of players who have signed up for Roswell have played in later games (in Timeline 2 last year). I suspect there has been enough of a gap for it not to matter, but I am looking forward to finding out how that worked for them.

Monday

And on Monday I drive home.

My first Consequences

So last weekend I attended Passionate Consequences, the freeform larp convention (with some boardgames) held every year in a holiday camp near Poole.

Loads of people found it hard to believe that this was my first Consequences. Many of my larp friends attend – and many games played were ones written at Peaky. Consequences started in 2007, but as it’s on the south coast (near Poole), attending it always meant taking five days (including travel). And while I had a day job and a young family, that was more leave than I was comfortable taking.

Now I don’t have a day job, it’s easier to take leave, and so in 2023, I went to my first Consequences.

Consequences

Consequences is held at Naish holiday village, so the accommodation is mostly holiday chalets. My accommodation (a two-bed apartment, not actually a chalet) was fine – it was clean and (once we’d figured out the heating) warm. As ever in this sort of accommodation, there were never enough towel rails.

Typical accomodation / gaming lodge

The accommodation is all self-catered, and I ate a mixture of ready meals and bar meals. Unfortunately, the apartment’s oven was a little shonky. I’d bought a non-microwavable shepherd's pie but couldn’t get the oven up to temperature. So tipped the pie out of its foil tray onto a plate and used the microwave, and all was fine.

Thursday

I set off from Yorkshire at about 9, having walked the dog, and after a long but easy drive, arrived at about 3 pm. I checked in and chatted with old friends.

Horrospital

My first game was the tricky-to-pronounce Horrospital, a horror-comedy game by Tony Mitton for 25 players. Horror in freeforms is never very horrific. It is inevitably played for laughs and involves comedy vampires, werewolves, demons and the like. It’s always over the top and never very scary. Which sums up Horrospital nicely.

I played Orderly Peeler, an undercover cop. I was investigating a series of murders, and I got much of the way through solving it, but couldn’t quite get the final piece. This is partly because I was tired, but mainly because I didn’t sit down and discuss the murders properly with the character who could have filled in some gaps.

(I was tired not because of the long drive, but because the game started at 8 pm and I’m often tucked up in bed at 10 pm. I remember starting to flag at about 9:45 pm and thinking, blimey, we’ve got a way to go yet.) 

Anyway, Horrospital was very enjoyable, my favourite bit was explaining to everyone that the reason I was investigating the murders was because I was studying for an NVQ. I’m sure everyone saw through my nonsense.

Friday

I woke at 6 am (as usual) after a not-very-long night. Although I returned to the chalet early(ish), I didn’t go straight to bed as I wanted to relax and unwind first. I also needed to review my character for the morning’s game. I was originally signed up to play Sam, but a last-minute dropout meant I changed to Stevie. Who I hadn’t read. So I needed to read, absorb and take notes. Perhaps unwisely, I did that before going to bed and, as a result, got only three or four hours of sleep.

Antarctic Base 13

This was a ten-player tense SF game set at an isolated research station in the Antarctic – with strong The Thing vibes. Written by Rich Perry and Alli Mawhinney, I’ve wanted to play it for a while. I’m glad I did, as it was great.

I played Stevie, the comms operator. Which meant I had access to lots of information – and I didn’t like going outside. My favourite parts were searching the base when everyone else had gone outside and doing something in plain sight in front of other players who were so caught up in their own thing that they didn’t notice me doing it.

It’s not perfect – the character sheets need a bit of work, and a couple of bits feel creaky, but the core concept is great. 

After that, I had a short nap to wake up and lost badly at Dune Imperium, which I’d not played before. (I can see why it’s popular, but it’s a bit long for my liking.)

Children of the Stars

This was the first of the two games I was running, and I was looking forward to seeing how it would work. I had 13 players – and it went really well. I had a few pre-flight nerves because the first run (online) didn’t go well for various reasons. But this time, it went off without a hitch.

Discussions about weighty matters...

The players bought into the ongoing story. A couple had played in earlier episodes, and I had four playing in both this and Sunday’s Messages from Callisto. And I could see the decisions I’d given everyone were causing them to think.

As ever, I made copious notes and have a few changes to make – mostly clarifications rather than anything game-breaking.

Saturday

I woke with a headache on Saturday and decided to eat in the restaurant rather than battle the kitchen appliances. My headache had cleared by the time it was to play my first game.

Old Nick’s Game

Old Nick’s Game is written by Charlie Paull, Alan Paull, Roger Gammans, and Nick Hollingsworth. It’s for ten players and is set in Hell and is based (loosely) on Old Harry’s Game, a Radio 4 comedy which I know of but haven’t listened to.

I will admit to being slightly apprehensive about this game as I wasn’t sure about my character. I was playing Antonia, the mother-in-law of another character. Gender didn’t seem very important in the game, so I wasn’t worried about that, but my character didn’t believe that they were in Hell – instead, this was all a rag week stunt. But the character sheet felt muddled as a result.

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried as the game was great. It played really nicely, and I had a whale of a time pretending we weren’t in Hell. I particularly enjoyed threatening to report Satan to HR if he continued his bullying. My favourite bit was discussing my favourite fiction (which I decided was Mills & Boon romances) with Satan, and he summoned Jane Austen from the pits of Hell – and she turned out to be extremely foul-mouthed. She must have had a very good editor!

Between games

The most important thing I needed to do on Saturday was prepare the character packs for Sunday’s Messages from Callisto. So once I’d had a bite to eat, I popped back to the apartment to sort that out.

Messages from Callisto is set ten years after Children of the Stars, and decisions the players make in Children affects the background to Messages. I’d thought about this in advance and come up with options – so I had extra background and briefing sheets for each character. And now I knew what had happened in Messages, I could prepare Children.

(Would I do this again? It was a lot of work, but it was also very satisfying. So the answer is probably yes.)

Once I’d done that, I went back to the main area and got into a game of Villagers. While I was playing, I was asked if I’d fill a spare place in Better Than Life, as a player had dropped. So that was my evening sorted.

A Better Than Life Sandwich

A BTL Sandwich is a series of three short minigames featuring five characters. The scenes are all unrelated. It was written by Martin Jones for the Across the Universe weekend game, but he’s run these separately many times since.

The three minigames are all wonderful – tense, angsty and funny. The character sheets were all short, so it didn’t take much for me to catch up. It’s a great pick-up game.

The three minigames were:

• The Judgement of Solomon: The fate of a child hangs in the balance… I played the judge – and I might have played this before. There’s no good decision here – wonderfully angsty.
• The Gig at the End of the Universe: Inspired by The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy – and at about 30 minutes, probably the right length for a Hitchhiker’s game. The light relief to the other two more angsty games. I was Zaphod Beeblebrox, man! Delightful nonsense.
• Waiting: A dramatic game about waiting for aliens to attack. How long do you have, and what must you say before the end? Fabulously bleak.

Looking back, Better Than Life was one of my favourite games of the weekend. And it finished relatively early, which meant I was in bed by 11 am and got a good night’s sleep.

Sunday

A good night’s sleep left me refreshed for Sunday. I heard stories of people not getting to bed until 4 or 6 am. I don’t think I can do that.

Devil to Pay

Devil to Pay is a 26-player pirate freeform written by Brian Richburg and Alison Joy Schafer. It was an old-style freeform larp with long character sheets, rules, contingency envelopes, items, abilities and more. I found the long character sheet hard to read at first, but it soon made sense during play.

I played Laurens de Graaf, a Dutch privateer. To my surprise, my character survived. I was expecting to die horribly – but I won a duel and ended up with just enough loot to survive the game. It was great playing with Nickey, who was my wife and rescued our daughters before they could be killed in a pirate raid.

Messages from Callisto

Messages from Callisto follows Children of the Stars. It’s for 13 players, and I had four players who played in both games. Three played the same character. The fourth was a last-minute addition – I would have cast them as the same character had I known.

Thanks to a few typos (and some mistakes when stuffing envelopes), Messages from Callisto had a slightly creakier start than Children. But once it was going, it went well, and everyone seemed fully engaged and having deep discussions.

I have come away with a page of notes and improvements – but players told me later that they had a good time (and want to play other episodes), so that was all wonderful to hear. (I’ll probably reflect on that in a later post.)

Next year?

Next year, Consequences will move to a new venue. I suspect it will still be a long drive from Yorkshire, but I’m planning to go again.