Furnace 2026

It’s a mid-October weekend; therefore it’s my annual pilgrimage to Furnace, Sheffield's ttrpg convention.

Here’s what I played.

Saturday

Fiasco (Folly and Fortune)

I started my weekend by bringing Fiasco (second edition). I let the players choose the playset, and they chose the Jane Austen-y Folly and Fortune deck. (Hmm, last year I ran Good Society at Furnace. Am I being typecast?)

I pitched Fiasco because, when it was time to decide what to offer at Furnace, I felt burned out and couldn’t face preparing anything. Fiasco requires no preparation – it can be played straight from the box. And of course, I really like Fiasco – and I get to play as well.

I was slightly worried, as one of the few times Fiasco hasn’t worked was when I played the Fame and Fortune playset at another convention. But I needn’t have worried…

I played Lydia Pembroke, who started the game engaged to Sir Edward Henry St John-Hill (played by Daniel), who painted poodles. Sir Edward was secretly engaged to Elizabeth (played by Fergus) and, during the game, proposed to Samuel (Camille) and Harriet (Becky) as well. 

It was a crazy, hilarious game. I ended up married to Samuel (a double wedding with Elizabeth, who married my father), and Samuel ended up trying to murder Sir Henry using an exotic man-eating flytrap.

Mothership (The B Team)

After lunch, I joined a game of Mothership run by James. I played Lt Rook, the old hand, and the rest of the squad was Lt Sutter (Tony), PFC Bridge (Laurence), and PFC Voss (Ric). 

The scenario was a simple rescue mission: rescue a scientist (who we accidentally blew up with a grenade; I’m not putting that in my report), deactivate the comms (because bad things were going on), and set the reactor to safe mode (which we failed to do).

(On Sunday, James ran another team through the situation as we had left it – I don’t know what they did, but hopefully they sorted the reactor out.)

Although Mothership is supposed to be deadly, we didn’t have any PC deaths – although it was extremely close at the end. I survived without a scratch by being in charge and sending the others in first.

As for Mothership as a system, I thought it was fine. I’ve run a lot of ALIEN, so I found myself comparing the two games. My preference is for ALIEN with its D6s and agendas, but I’d happily play Mothership again. (The only thing I really struggled with was the slightly vague setting – it felt ALIEN-esque, but did that mean that motion detectors and smartguns? What about shields or lifeform scanners? And how human are androids? A setting sheet would have gone a long way to help.)

Sunday

Offworlders (Routine Maintenance)

Sunday started with Offworlders, run by Steve. I knew nothing about Offworlders, but it turned out to be a sort of PbtA does Traveller/Firefly. I played a smuggler, Kiva, while around the table were Thwart (a thief played by Simon), Garvin (a fighter played by Andy), Lara (a psychic played by Oliver) and Athena (a hacker played by Tom). Yes, effectively four character classes – fighters, rogues, and two types of wizards (hackers or psychics).

Something about the system didn’t quite work for me, though I’m struggling to explain exactly what I mean. It’s a feeling rather than anything specific, but if I knew it better, I would either get used to it or pinpoint what doesn’t work for me.

Anyway, our ship needed expensive repairs, and we needed lots of money, quickly. So after exploring a couple of options, we found a local crime lord and ran some errands for him. Thanks to a combination of good ideas and good rolls, we succeeded without too many problems. Sometimes a plan really does come together…

Monster of the Week (Red Mask)

Furnace finished with a Korean investigation for Monster of the Week, run by Sue. I played The Divine, and my co-hunters were The Spooky (played by Steve), The Chosen (Elaine), The Expert (Tim) and The Exile (Nox). Our monster-hunting gang were Korean rich kids, with hangers-on. I was one of the hangers-on.

Our mystery involved a creepy Korean urban legend about a red-masked woman terrorising schoolgirls. Our investigation involved meeting and placating toilet goddesses (apparently a real Korean thing), social media and a sad suicide. We put the trouble ghost to rest using Big Money, rather than Big Magic or a Big Fight, which felt appropriate if a little anticlimactic.

Despite the monsters, the scariest part of the investigation was the Korean school system…

As for Monster of the Week, I’ve run it a few times, but I find it’s almost too trad for PbtA. I was interested to see how another GM would run it, but it still seemed more trad than the idea of PbtA I have in my head (which has more inter-player conflict – but that may just be me).

Furnace 2026

And that was Furnace 2026. Good games and of course a chance to catch up with lots of old friends, and make some new ones.

I’m looking forward to 2027, although I have a horrible feeling it will clash with another weekend…

Scenes in RPGs

I started roleplaying in the 1980s, went into a deep freeze in the late 1990s and didn’t come out until about a decade ago. “Scenes” were one of the new things indie games brought to TTRPGs, and I still find them tricky.

It doesn’t help that many RPGs don’t explain scenes properly. It seems like “scene” has become a specific piece of TTRPG terminology that is subtly different from its usual meaning. And everyone assumes that everyone knows what is meant when they talk about “scenes”.

As a result, it can be a bit of a muddle. This is my attempt to unravel that puzzle.

Dictionary definition

According to Google, there are two meanings to scene:

• The place where an incident in real life or fiction occurs or occurred.
• A sequence of continuous action in a play, film, opera, or book.

The first definition is straightforward, but when you start thinking about the play/film/opera/book definition, it gets a bit trickier.

Back when I helped out with the local pantomime, everyone knew what scenes were. Scene one was the big opening scene. Scene two took place in front of the “greys”, the grey curtains pulled across the stage that hid the backstage crew changing the scenery. When scene two ended, the greys opened to reveal scene three. And so on. A two-hour pantomime might have no more than nine or ten scenes.

In movies, scenes are often shorter. So rescuing Princess Leia in Star Wars becomes many scenes: the room where Luke persuades Han to rescue her, the turbolift, the detention centre, Princess Leia’s cell, and so on. Again, these are all location-based as they are different sets.

But in a roleplaying game?

Well, they vary. Some use scenes, some don’t. Some use scenes in a specific way, some use the term but don’t really define them.

Trad and other games

Broadly, in RPGs, trad games don’t use scenes. They might mention them, but they’re using them in the sense of the first dictionary definition: they’re a place or location.

So in Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Liminal, D&D, Runequest, ALIEN, and the like, scene doesn’t have a particular meaning.

Scene-based games

Some games build scenes into their mechanics. Many of these are GM-less, and the term ‘scene’ is used when a player controls what’s happening.

(I’m sure many other games use scenes. These are the ones I am familiar with.)

GMless games

Games without a GM often use scenes as a way for each player’s character to have spotlight time. Other PCs may be in those scenes, but everyone at the table knows who the spotlight is on during the scene.

Fiasco: Each character gets four scenes where they are in the spotlight. Fiasco confuses things because players can decide whether to “establish” their scene (set it up – who is there, what’s going on) or “resolve” the scene (decide on its outcome – the other players establish the scene). Much as I enjoy Fiasco, I find this fairly counterintuitive in play – particularly when a player chooses to resolve.

Follow and Kingdom: Ben Robbins uses scenes in his games to “… shine a spotlight on your character to see what they think and do…” In both games, the player decides who is in the scene, where it takes place, and what’s going on. Then, you play to find out what happens.

Unfortunately, these games don’t clearly state the one piece of advice that I find makes a scene really sing: to know what your character wants from the scene. (They may not get it, of course.)

GM-ed games

Hillfolk and Good Society both use scenes.

Hillfolk has a strict player turn order. When it’s your turn, you create a scene involving your character. You establish it as with other games (where, when, who and so on) – and if it’s a dramatic scene, you decide on the emotional reward you want from another character.

(Hillfolk also has other types of scenes, but dramatic scenes are the main ones.)

Good Society uses scenes for roleplaying, but fails to explain clearly what they are or how to manage them. As a result, scenes felt directionless and saggy and dragged on too long.  I talked about this when I played Good Society.

Most Trusted Advisors uses “scene” liberally throughout the text, but it doesn’t explain what they are. However, from my experience of running Most Trusted Advisors, I think it would benefit from more rigorous scene discipline.

Tips for scenes

So for these types of games, these are the questions that whoever is establishing the scene needs to consider:

• Where is it?
• When is it?
• Who is present?
• What is going on?
• What do I want?

And for me, the last point is the most important in helping to keep scenes punchy. If you know what you want going into a scene, it’s much clearer when the scene is over. (And I find it helps to tell the other players what you have in mind, so they can react accordingly.)

Games that get muddled

Some games use scenes liberally in their text (e.g. Blades in the Dark and Monster of the Week), but they don’t have much of a mechanical effect, so the fact that they’ve not defined what a scene is doesn’t matter too much.

Unfortunately, the same isn’t true for other games.

Fate Core defines a scene as “A scene is a unit of game time lasting anywhere from a few minutes to a half hour or more, during which the players try to achieve a goal or otherwise accomplish something significant in a scenario.”

Scenes are important in Fate mainly because a character’s stress boxes clear after each scene. But what is a scene? That’s left to the GM, and isn’t always clear, despite the advice above. I don’t know if rescuing Princess Leia from the Death Star is one or many scenes in Fate. Is rescuing the princess enough of a goal? Or can you break it down into smaller scenes? (Such as blagging our way into the detention centre, escaping from the detention centre, and getting back to the Falcon) As far as recovering stress goes, this difference could be critical. (I might do it either way, depending on the tone of the game.)

Lady Blackbird allows characters to refresh their dice pools by having a “refreshment scene” with another character. Lady Blackbird doesn’t explicitly say what these are but suggests that they’re quiet moments with other PCs. (I really like these as a way to encourage roleplaying between characters – it’s such a lovely design.)

Going back to Star Wars, Leia’s moment with Luke aboard the Millennium Falcon just after Ben Kenobi’s death is the sort of thing I imagine when I think of a refreshment scene. (And Luke has clearly refreshed his dice pool as he mans the Falcon’s gun turret and blasts away at the incoming TIE fighters.)

And it’s not just me

And it’s not just me! This recent post on substack and this thread on RPGnet suggests others are thinking about this as well. I had already earmarked this as something I wanted to reflect on after playing and running Good Society and Most Trusted Advisors earlier in the year. These posts have, however, prompted me to finish this post.