AireCon 2026

Last weekend was AireCon, the three-day board game and ttrpg convention in Harrogate.

I couldn’t make it on Saturday this year, so instead I just attended on Friday and Sunday, running three TTRPGs.

Friday

Although my game didn’t start until 2pm, I arrived just after 11 and dropped off some games at the bring-and-buy. (My memory last year was that there was an early rush for the bring and buy, but leaving it until later was much more relaxed.)

I then wandered the trade hall, chatted to friends, and had a bit to eat from the food trucks (in their new position outside the convention centre in the grounds of the Hilton Hotel (which was used for ttrpgs and other events – a lovely new venue for this year).

ALIEN: Perfect Organism

I ran Perfect Organism, my five-player cinematic ALIEN scenario that focuses on a USCMC investigation into the loss of the Sulaco after Aliens. The investigation team have arrived at LV-426 and the W-Y station there. Things don’t go well...

I had five great players, and a higher survival rate than many of the games. (Although we burned through the NPCs at quite a rate.)

I had updated the scenario to the current ALIEN rules (Evolved edition) and was interested in seeing how it had changed. While there are lots of small changes (a full list here), the main changes as far as I was concerned were the new stress rules. However, having now experienced the new stress rules, I didn’t like them. Maybe they work in longer games (or where you are making lots and lots of dice rolls), but in a short game like Perfect Organism, stress was never a danger. I may go back to the first edition rules when I run it again.

Saturday

I didn’t make Saturday this year, which was a shame. If I had, I would have spent the day playing board games.

Sunday

Good Society

Good Society is Storybrewers’ Jane Austen game. After my experience at last year’s Furnace, I decided to bring my Wealth and Fortune playset to AireCon. The changes I’ve made are around character generation – I’ve created the base characters and links between them beforehand (just like a pregen), but letting the players create the minor characters.

After my experiences of Hillfolk not filling last year, I was a little reluctant to pitch Good Society, but I needn’t have worried – it filled up pretty quickly. 

I had a full table of five players, and after a slightly slow start, they soon got into the swing of the story and got up to all sorts of shenanigans (including a risqué scene in a lake). We reached a fine conclusion, which included a marriage proposal, so it was all as it should be.

(The slow start isn’t unusual with this kind of game. It can take a little while for the players to warm up properly.)

So I was very happy with how my playset worked. I’ve made a few tweaks and if you’re interested, you can download them here.

Thoughts on Good Society

With a second edition imminent, I had some thoughts on my experience.

Resource tokens: For a one-shot, we had an awful lot of resource tokens on the table. With two per main character and one each for the minor characters, that was 20 resource tokens on the table before we added any for the rumours. (And had I been playing strictly according to the rules, there would have been another 10 on the table – I allowed the minor characters only one resolve token each.) 

And as it happened, we didn’t use resolve tokens all that often. Maybe five or six times? So I think in future, just giving each player two resolve tokens to begin with will probably be enough for a one-shot. (And let them share the tokens between the main and minor characters.)

Reputation: While we used the reputation rules to assign new criteria, it didn’t have much impact on the game. I would be tempted to remove reputation completely from a one-shot, except that the players did adjust their reputation tags as they took actions they felt affected their reputation. 

(Technically, reputation tags can be traded for resolve tokens. As noted, we had masses of resolve tokens, so this was never an issue. Also, doing this removes the tag, which makes sense as a game mechanic but not in terms of character.)

Minor characters: With each player having two, we had ten minor characters involved. Not all of them became part of the story (many appeared only briefly). While I’m tempted to suggest just one minor character each, I think having lots of minor characters gives players more opportunities to find exactly the character they need.

Lunch

AireCon doesn’t leave a huge gap between the first and second sessions – just 45 minutes. I was slightly worried about getting back to the bring-and-buy to collect my earnings and unsold games, but it wasn’t crowded, and I had plenty of time to do that and grab something to eat.

Traveller: Calli’s Heroes

My last game was John Ossoway’s adventure for Traveller: Calli’s Heroes. The PCs are Imperial soldiers operating in a warzone during the Fifth Frontier War, and have the opportunity to loot an Ancient vault full of unimaginable riches.

I’d played Calli’s Heroes last year at Furnace, and so I knew it would be a solid con game. John was kind enough to let me have the files, and so at AireCon I took it out for a spin.

Calli’s Heroes was great. I had five good players, all happy to lean into the squad dynamics. They did appropriately soldierly things and ambushed Vargr mercenaries and Zhodani troops. They ended up with a handful of fabulously valuable Ancient artefacts – assuming they can figure out how to fence them. But that’s another adventure…

Next year

I’m already looking forward to next year. Hopefully I will be able to attend all three days…

Airecon 2025

Ow. Ow. Ow ow ow.

So let’s get the bad out of the way first. Two days before Airecon 2025, I put my back out. Ouch! And to nobody’s surprise, spending three days at Airecon didn’t do it any favours. (I’m resting it now…)

But despite that, I had a great time. This is what I did.

Friday

Friday was my day for running tabletop roleplaying games.

Last year I left it a bit late and arrived at my table only a few minutes before we were due to start playing. I don’t like running late, so this year I set off from home in plenty of time (and this time remembering that driving into Harrogate during rush hour can be grim).

Anyway, I arrived at the convention centre at about 9:15 am. There was (unsurprisingly) a queue to get in, but that was okay. The doors opened at 9:30, and as most people ahead of me in the queue had checked in last night, it was only a couple of minutes before I was picking up my tickets and heading into the first of several cavernous halls.

I had plenty of time, so I got myself settled in and found the food hall, where I got a cup of tea.

10:15 to 13:15 The Aurors (Fate Accelerated)

At about 10:15, my players turned up, and we started playing The Aurors, my Wizarding World-themed Fate Accelerated investigation. (You can download it here for free.)

The players threw me an interesting curveball – during the minimal character generation, one of my Aurors developed a backstory involving Lidl and dark wizards. At our first location (the lovely town of Warkworth in Northumberland), he spent a fate token to add a story detail – Warkworth now has a Lidl in its centre. And so the players decided to check it out.

While one created a firework-based distraction in the front of the shop, the others went in around the back. So I mentally threw away the prepared start of the adventure and moved the first location to the Lidl storeroom, which the PCs investigated (while fire out front rapidly caught hold, drawing the fire brigade).

Anyway, the rest of the adventure played out (more-or-less) as expected, and our heroes defeated the villain.

I had a good time running The Aurors. The players were engaged and seemed to enjoy themselves. I don’t think any had played Fate before, but they certainly got into the swing of it.

I kept the pace up, as at only three hours, the first RPG session at Airecon is the shortest. Something to be aware of when deciding which game to run.

Lunchbreak

One thing to note if you’re running (and I guess playing) all day is that you only have a 45-minute break between session 1 and session 2. Given the food queues at previous Airecons, that might have been a problem, but luckily, it was fine this year.

Anyway, in my 45 minutes, I dropped some games into the bring-and-buy (which was extremely easy – it’s a very easy system to use – and by leaving it this late, I didn’t have to queue), and then picked up some sandwiches, which I ate back at the table.

14:00 to 18:00 Hillfolk

My second game was Hillfolk, and sadly, only two people had signed up. I really need at least three for Hillfolk (ideally four or five), so one of the other GMs (whose game wasn’t running) joined my table.

We had the Chief, the Curate, and the Captain, and this time, the game went in a very different direction. The tribe quickly became very weak (a raid on a neighbouring tribe went badly) and ended up merging with one of their rivals.

With only three PCs, I ended up running several NPCs. My favourite was Delight, the chief’s ex-girlfriend who deliberately undermined him whenever she was in a scene.

Two of my players had never played Hillfolk before – but the third had played in my game last year and come back for more!

Tea

We finished slightly early (which was always likely to happen with only three players), and so I had a leisurely hour for tea (a nice steak and ale pie with mushy peas) and chatted with old friends.

(And new friends. Someone smiled at me when I was walking gingerly through the halls, and although I smiled back, but didn’t recognise them. Our paths crossed again shortly after and they explained that they enjoyed my Cthulhu Dark adventure last year.)

19:00 to 23:00 Perfect Organism (ALIEN)

My final game was Perfect Organism, my ALIEN cinematic one-shot set a few months after Aliens and concerning the USCMC’s investigation into the loss of the Sulaco. (Download it here for free.)  

This went brilliantly. I created the characters to be deliberately antagonistic towards each other (lots of conflicting agendas), and for the first 45 minutes or so,, I did almost nothing but watch them roleplay. The players really leaned into their characters and it quickly got very intense. At one point I asked if everyone was okay, but they said they knew each other and were having a great time (but appreciated my concern for their wellbeing).

As ever with an ALIEN game, there were character deaths. We ended up with two dead and the other two in cryosleep tubes on LV-426 with no obvious means of rescue…

And with that over, I packed up and drove home.

Saturday

After a not-great night (bad back), this time I took the bus to Harrogate, getting there at about 9:45. I went straight up to the RPG area where I had signed up for a game of Slugblaster.

Slugblaster

I’ve reviewed Slugblaster before but this would be my first chance to see it in action. I signed up when Guy noted over on the Gaming Tavern forum that he was running Slugblaster at Airecon…

Unfortunately, Guy wasn’t well, and the session would have been cancelled – except the Airecon gods smiled on us. As luck would have it, we had a replacement GM, Iain, who not only knew Slugblaster but also had a one-shot session with him and wasn’t doing anything else at that moment. (As it turns out, Iain runs a game very much like Guy does.)

I took The Heart playbook. My character was Solstice, and I rode a Hardlight BMX (whatever that is).

One of the things I really like about Slugblaster is the character beats – mini dramatic arcs. Iain had already started a couple of beats on each pregen, and on mine, the Heart Arc had started: Solstice had started a relationship (with a girl I named Luna) with a member of another gang.

Iain structured the game so that we started play at the the end of a run, then we got to play some downtime, then we played through a full run, and finished with a bit of downtime.

It was all great, and I worked through two more beats in the Heart arc – the rest of the gang learned about my feelings for Luna, and it almost tore us apart.

It was brilliant, and now I want to play Slugblaster even more… (At the very least, I need to re-read the rules!)

Saturday afternoon

I chatted with Dom over lunch (I think we should start some face-to-face gaming in Wetherby), and then parted – him to run his game and me to socialise.

I bumped into Paul of Cthulhu (who runs the Yog-Sothoth.com Cthulhu website), who I haven’t seen in years. He runs a podcast and took the opportunity to interview me about the origins of Tales of Terror, the little ideas booklet I produced in 1990. I have no idea if it was any good or not or if it will actually appear. (And as I was unprepared, I forgot to mention my co-editor, Garrie Hall, who was so influential. Oops.)

I also took my proceeds from the Bring & Buy – through some aggressive pricing, I had sold all of my games.

I had arranged to meet another friend, Philippa, but she was playing Blood on the Clocktower, so I enjoyed a quiet beer while I waited. When I caught up with Philippa, she needed something to eat, and after that, we tried a demo of Rallyman GT (which was fine but not special).

Phillippa had a game of Root booked at 6 pm, and my back was giving me gyp, so I headed home.

Sunday

If I hadn’t promised to take my daughter to Airecon, I probably would have stayed at home and looked after my back. As it was, I came into Harrogate for my third painful day.

Sunday was a day of board games and demos. We played several: Finspan, Spokes, Word Colony, Living Forest Duel, Flow, Wizards Cup, and War of the Worlds: One More Day.

My favourite was probably Finspan or Living Forest Duel. Megan liked Spokes (and really didn’t like Word Colony, as trivia isn’t her strong point).

It was a nice break from revising for A-Levels, and we headed home shortly after 3 pm.

Airecon mementos

Next year

So what about next year?

As usual, I will aim to run three TTRPG sessions. It’s much too early to decide which games, but I like running Hillfolk, but it struggles to attract players. I wonder if I should create a more geek-friendly playset – maybe something set in the ALIEN universe. (I dunno, the leaders of the colony on LV426? That might be fun. I’ll have a think.)

And this year, Airecon had a couple of rooms set aside for “social games” – things like Werewolf and Blood on the Clock Tower. They’d be ideal for a small freeform larp, so I may investigate that. (I will try and persuade Graham to find out more – I’m happy to be involved!)

This year, I also learned how the game finder worked (thanks, Philippa!) – if you want to run a game of something, you can add it to the system and say when and where you’ll be. And then people can sign up. (Or you can just trust the lightsabres – which indicate a game looking for players.) As I so rarely play Cosmic Encounter these days (it’s best with 4-5 and doesn’t appeal to Mrs H, so it rarely sees the light of day), next year’s Airecon may be an opportunity.

But that suggests I’m going to be extremely busy…

And hopefully, my back will behave itself!

2024 in games

And suddenly, it’s the end of 2024. Last time, I thought about 2024 in terms of song, this time I’m looking at it in terms of games.

Freeform Games

Freeform Games had a good year. In some ways it was not quite as good as 2023, but in other ways, better. I’ll write more about it on the Freeform Games blog, when the final numbers are in (so sometime in January).

Conventions and games weekends

I love going to conventions – I think my gaming high points have all been conventions. I enjoy them as much for meeting old friends as playing the games – and doing both is best.

In 2024 I attended:

West End Lullaby (February, Retford): The annual weekend-long freeform is back in its usual home, Retford. I played Aaron Burr and had a whale of a time in this crazy freeform based on West End musicals.

Airecon (March, Harrogate): A lovely local convention in Harrogate. I ran three tabletop RPGs and played lots of board games. As far as board games go, it’s my favourite convention.

LarpCon (March, Coalville): A convention all about larp. Mostly full of people selling stuff. It was okay, but reminded me that the freeform community is terrible at selling ourselves. I am not sure I want to go again.

Peaky (April, not far from Tamworth): I’ve been to every Peaky since it started in the early 2000s. It’s my favourite gaming weekend of the year: intense, creative and fabulous. I wrote one game and played two.

UK Games Expo (June, NEC Birmingham): UKGE is at the back end of the summer half term holiday, and because we’re normally away that week, I rarely go. This time I knew I was free, so I drove down for a day. UKGE is tiring, busy and crowded. It was okay, but I don’t feel the need to go back anytime soon.

Continuum (July, Leicester): Continuum was exciting for me for two reasons. First, Continuum moved to the Cranfield Management Centre – perhaps the best space for a convention that I’ve been to. Second, I took Megan with me. Luckily, she had a great time and wants to go to Continuum next year.

Furnace (October, Sheffield): Always a delight, Furnace is tabletop roleplaying only, and local enough that I don’t need to stay overnight. I ran one game and played in three.

Consequences (November, Chichester): Longest time away (four nights), I ran two freeforms and played in five and ran a game of Hillfolk. Too much gaming? Maybe.

Plans for 2025: Mostly the same, although I won’t go to UKGE, and I’m unlikely to go to LarpCon.

I also feel there ought to be something in Leeds. I wonder who I have to talk to about starting something up?

Freeforms

I played in or ran sixteen freeforms in 2024, which feels like a good year but is nowhere near the record of 20 in 2023. This year I ran six freeforms and played ten.

Best photo of me this year - taken for Home of the Bold at Continuum

In terms of writing, I finished and ran The Stars our Destination twice, once online and once at Consequences. I also got Backstage Business published for Freeform Games (and ran it at Continuum). I have also put together a short freeform, The Show Must Go On!, for Freeform Games that I have just sent out for playtesting. And I published All Flesh is Grass and Children of the Stars.

Favourite to run: The Stars our Destination at Consequences, which went really smoothly. I also ran Murder on the Istanbul Express for Megan’s 18th birthday in our garden, which went really well.

Favourite to play: Do You Hear The People Sing by Alex Helm was just so much fun that it was my favourte freeform of 2024 by a mile.

Plans for 2024: 

• Write and run the game that follows The Stars our Destination – set on Callisto. (It doesn’t have a title, yet.)
• Then start work on getting Messages from Callisto ready for publication.
• Publish The Show Must Go On! via Freeform Games.

Tabletop RPGs

2023 was a little hit and miss in terms of TTRPGs. My regular group had to cancel rather often due to health issues – something I suspect will only increase as we all get older. 

In terms of numbers, I played more Fate Accelerated than anything else in 2024. Good Society came second, with Most Trusted Advisors and DramaSystem (Hillfolk and others) tied for third place. 

I playtested and published The Dead Undead, an investigation for Other London: Desk 17.

Favourite to run: I loved running The Dead Undead – it was very satisfying, although it took a lot longer than I expected.

Favourite to play: Good Society, which we started in 2023, was so much fun, and I had some of my single favourite sessions this year.

Plans for 2024:

• Playtest the two scenarios I have written for the Department of Irregular Services (for Liminal) and then publish them.
• Write an investigation for The Dee Sanction.
• Continue working on The Orphan Room for https://fourlettersatrandom.blogspot.com/2022/11/liminal-department-for-irregular.html. It would be nice to get it to a point where I’ve tested it. But I’m aware I’ve got a lot of other projects going on.

Boardgames

In 2023, I played more games of My City than any other game. (That’s the same as 2024!) This year I played a legacy campaign on Boardgamearena, which I enjoyed. (The full campaign is 24 episodes, and it took the four of us about six months to play it.)

An honourable mention goes to Ticket to Ride: Legacy of the West, a legacy game. We’ve got two more games to play, but I’m really enjoying it. (Yes, the criticisms are valid – the early games are very short and the later games are very long. But I’m still enjoying it.)

New games to my collection:

Kavango: Collect animals for your reserve in this drafting game with similarities to 7 Wonders. I backed this on Kickstarter, and have enjoyed the handful of games I’ve played with the family. It’s got a nice theme and design – but takes up quite a bit of space on the table.

The Crew: The Quest for Planet 9. A Father’s Day gift, and one I took on holiday over the summer. It’s a cooperative trick-taking game which we enjoyed, but curiously haven’t played since we came back. (Kavango took over.)

The Mind: A deceptively simple game about emptying your hand without communicating. Really good filler with the right group.

6 Nimmt: Excellent game that plays with up to 10 players (!) – simultaneously. I’ve played this with friends but not with the family yet.

D-Day Dice expansions: D-Day Dice was the first game I ever Kickstarted, and I backed the second edition as well. D-Day Dice is a dice-rolling push-your-luck game of storming the beaches on D-Day.  It plays really well solo, and I enjoy it a lot. This year, several expansions turned up for it – I now have enough D-Day Dice goodness to last me for years. (But there’s more planned…)

Plans for 2024: Play more games! Always! No doubt my games collection will swell – at least until I get rid of some of it. Already on order is Innovation Deluxe (card-based craziness from Carl Chudyk), due early next year. And D-Day Dice: Pacific Kickstarts in January. I expect I’ll back that.

Video games

And I played more World of Tanks Blitz than is probably healthy. It’s probably time I uninstalled it again.

And overall?

2024 was great for games. I feel very lucky I’m able to play so many games.

Continuum 2024

Unlike much of the weather in 2024, the last weekend in July was delightfully warm and sunny. So obviously I spent it inside, playing games. I was at Continuum 2024.

Megan and I in our Home of the Bold costumes. Photo by TsiJon.

Continuum had two big differences this year. First, it relocated to the Cranfield Management Development Centre. Second, I had my 17-year-old daughter, Megan, with me.

Being a parent/guardian at a residential con was a new experience for me. Megan comes to Airecon, but this was the first time she’d been away overnight with me, so I was a little nervous. Fortunately, she loved it.

The venue

The new venue is excellent. I found it slightly tricky to find, and we got lost in the hotel at one point, but once we found our bearings, it was great. The atrium was a lovely social space to meet and play games, and there were lots of rooms of various sizes to suit tabletop rpgs and freeforms alike. And it was all in the one place – no trekking from place to place like in Leicester.

The atrium

Oh – and the best convention breakfasts I’ve ever had. (The bar meals were a bit meh, and I didn’t try the buffet.)

So, my fingers are crossed that we are going back.

Friday

We arrived early Friday afternoon after a longer-than-expected journey. I think it was the first Friday of the school holidays, which I wasn’t expecting because Megan had broken up over a week earlier.

We checked in, dumped our stuff in our room, and headed to the main space to see what was going on. There, we found idle gamers, so we tried a game of Flamecraft, followed by a couple of games of Transamerica. (I didn’t win any of them.)

We had an okay bar meal, and then it was time for our first game proper.

Backstage Business

Backstage Business. Photo by TsiJon.

Backstage Business is Freeform Games' new murder-mystery freeform. It’s written by Dutch author Jasper Haenen, and I’ve been working on it with him since the start of the year. We’ve given it to several of our customers to playtest, and it was time for me to run it. 

Backstage Business is set after the final concert of 1980s hair-metal band Eruption’s first tour. However, tensions in the band are causing friction.

Overall, it went well. I was fairly busy as a GM, and the players gave me plenty of feedback to improve the game.

And Megan? She played Paula Gibb, the guitar technician. This was her first “proper” freeform (she played in on I ran for the family during lockdown). After a shaky start when she wasn’t sure what to do, she seemed to have a great time once the game got going.

An early-ish night

One advantage of sharing a room with Megan is that I wasn’t tempted to stay up too late. I stayed for a short while in the bar to chat, but I was back in the room by 11:30 pm. However, the room was too hot and wasn’t a great first night.

Saturday

While I was a bit bleary in the morning, it didn’t stop me from enjoying a lovely cooked breakfast. (Did I say it was the best convention breakfast ever? I might have mentioned that.) Anyway, Megan and I chatted over breakfast with Jon from TsiJon Photography, who was here to take photos. (He took the lovely one of Megan and me at the top of this post.)

After breakfast, Megan and I went to the atrium to do our Home of the Bold homework – as we both needed to remind ourselves of our character sheets. Megan then returned to the room for a nap while I fortified myself with yet more tea and played Tony at Terraforming Mars Dice Game. (Which I prefer to full Terraforming Mars, largely because it’s shorter and easier to grok.)

I also spent some money on the Pelgrane Press stand – I picked up Paula Dempsey’s The Book of the Smoke and The Book of The New Jerusalem. Not because I’m planning to play (or run) Fearful Symmetries or Bookhounds of London, but because I do like a good occult guide – and I think they’ll be useful for Liminal and Other London.

Con swag

Then, lunch. For lunch, we walked to the Co-op (five minutes away) and bought a sandwich and some chocolate. We ate these on some nearby benches in the sun before returning to the convention centre for the highlight of the con: Home of the Bold.

Home of the Bold

Home of the Bold is a 51-player Gloranthan freeform written by David Hall and Kevin Jacklin that lasts for about six hours (with a break in the middle). It’s very densely plotted, with lots of backstory. And while you don’t need any Gloranthan knowledge (I have very rudimentary knowledge, and I know many players had none), it helps – particularly with all the letter-salad names.

Deep in discussion, but I can't remember about what. Another photo by TsiJon.

This was my third time through Home of the Bold. It was my first ever freeform (Convulsion 92), where I played Captain Morak Moran. Then, I played Count Stolwitz (in 1996?), and this time I was intrepid reporter Tatius Bracegirdle. Megan was my older sister, Nerissa.

For me, Home of the Bold was fine but not brilliant. While I enjoyed reporting on the court cases and events, I found it hard to investigate anything. That’s mainly because, as a reporter, I wanted to discover secrets, and other players (understandably) didn’t want to share them. We've developed some mechanical tricks over the years to help investigative characters (reporters, detectives, police), but Home of the Bold didn’t use them.

Megan had a fabulous time. She was a cleaner and was very proud of her “ignore me, I’m just cleaning” ability, which allowed her to eavesdrop on almost any conversation. It was definitely the best game of the con for her – she much preferred it to Backstage Business. 

With Home of the Bold over, we were shattered and headed back to the room for a good night’s sleep.

Sunday

Sunday started with another glorious breakfast, over which we chatted about Home of the Bold with fellow players. Strangely (for me), Megan knew them better than I did, because she interacted with them more than I had.

Then we did some boardgaming: Coral, Terraforming Mars Dice Game, Dixit and Ohanami.

Brest or Bust

Our last game of the con was Brest of Bust, a light-hearted freeform of aerial racing set before the Great War and run by Graham and Suey. Inspiration for the game was Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines and Wacky Races/Stop the Pigeon.

I played Edward Edwards, the co-pilot of Ric Reprehensible (a thinly-disguised Dick Dastardly). We had a lot of fun modifying our plane for the race – we added a tea set (to provide refreshments if the race dragged on), go faster stripes, a boxing glove on a spring for biffing our enemies, a tail-gunner position (with dog basket) for Ric’s dog, Tyke, and a third engine (taken from a car). We weren’t taking it very seriously – but then, we were cartoon characters…

The GMs had a nice mechanic for item cards. Basically, Suey had a stack of blank item cards, and you asked her for whatever you wanted. Within reason, she gave you the card. I think the best one I saw was the oompah bad ordered by the Prussians.

I also had a small bit of plot, which I resolved when I heard some other players discussing a topic I had an interest in.

We didn’t win the race, but it was light and silly and mostly about the ludicrous modifications to our plane (and occasional sabotage of others). 

(Megan also enjoyed the game, although not as much as Home of the Bold. Mind you, she’s not seen Wacky Races or Stop the Pigeon, so the cultural references passed her by.)

Another con over

And then we were done. We said our goodbyes and headed back to Yorkshire.

Current projects

So we’re about halfway through 2024, and it’s time for a progress update. I last did one of these back in October, and I find it useful to look back and see what I’ve achieved.

What have I done?

Since October I have:

• Published Hazelwood Abbey (a Hillfolk playset inspired by Downton Abbey) on Itch.io. I ran it successfully at AireCon.
• Created an epub version of Writing Freeform Larps and added it to Itch.io and DriveThru
• Published All Flesh is Grass (a freeform larp) on itch.io.
• Written and run The Stars our Destination (a 14-player freeform larp set in the same universe as All Flesh is Grass).
• Published A Purrfect Murder (a cat-themed murder mystery game) at Freeform Games.
• Helped build Freeform Games’ new shop.

Ongoing projects

Right now, this is what I’m working on.

• I’ve formatted and developed (with the author) Backstage Business, a 1980s hair-metal band murder mystery game for Freeform Games. It’s currently being playtested (I'm running it at Continuum) and should be published over the summer.
• I’m building a new website for Freeform Games. We’ve been going since 2001, and our website is a mix of hand-coded pages and two instances of Wordpress. So we’re streamlining everything. It’s a lot of work, but should give us several benefits. With a fair wind it will be live by the end of July.
• I’m taking the feedback from The Stars our Destination and getting the game ready for Consequences in November.
• As I’ve mentioned recently on the blog, I’m running The Dead Undead for Other London: Desk 17. I’ll publish it when we’re done and I’ve incorporated any changes.

The first two of these have demanded a lot of attention and have been particularly draining.

Currently on hold

• I started reformatting Court in the Act for Freeform Games, but put it on hold when Backstage Business landed in my inbox. Court in the Act is an old game and is still in our original game format.
• The Department for Irregular Services for Liminal is on hold. This will expand on this blog post with more detail, three investigations and some pregens. The first two investigations (The Hairy Hands and Hardknott Roman Fort Ghost Realm) are complete, but the third (The Wherwell Cockatrice) is still in pieces. I need to reassemble the pieces and playtest it.
• Inspired partly by Backstage Business, Success2Soon is a band-themed Hillfolk playset that I need to playtest. I may bring it to Furnace.
• Getting Children of the Stars ready for publication and starting to write episode 6 in the series, which follows The Stars our Destination.

Hopefully I’ll get back to these in September.

I think that’s enough to be going on with.

Most Trusted Advisors at the table

A few posts ago, I said how much I was looking forward to playing Most Trusted Advisors. How did that work out?

As this was my regular group, we were playing online using Discord and Trello. We play for about two hours – more than that, and I get tired. (This seems to be an issue online, I can cope with longer sessions when face-to-face.)

Character creation

Character creation took us 90 minutes, which was longer than I expected, but I think that was an artefact of playing online. The playbooks seem straightforward to me, and I copied the key sections to Trello. However, a couple of my players struggled with some concepts, and everything took longer than I expected. I’m sure it would be quicker if we played face-to-face.

Our characters were:

• Margrave Hildegard of House Kolero (The Marshal) – a Zobian Traitor
• Earl Mikolas the Just of House Arachnia (The Treasurer) – an Inquisitor
• Count Lorentz the Surreptitious of House Blackgammon (The Blackguard) – a member of the Sky Chamber

Session #1 (what’s left of it)

With 30 minutes left, I kicked things off with the Liege bringing worrying news to his advisors: he’d heard the ruler of arch-rival Zobia has two birthdays. So he wanted another birthday, with the next one in two days’ time. Arrange it!

The Treasurer suggested a three-day holiday, which the Liege liked very much. (Actually, the Liege might have misunderstood the Treasurer, but three days it is…)

So, rather than raise money for the celebrations (which haven’t been decided yet), the Treasurer bought all the beer on the docks (to sell it back to the inns later). The beer is now in a marquee on the dockside, which is where we ended the session.

I felt it was a bit of a rocky start. I’m not sure why, but my players seemed to struggle with their characters. Although I felt they had lots to go on (character creation created plenty of links and agendas), it took a while for them to warm up. I don’t know if that was me, the game, them – or a mixture of all three.

After the session, I looked through their characters. I pulled together a short list of events, based on what came up during character creation, that I could use in future sessions. Where things were undecided, I filled in the blanks.

For example, the Marshal had the following agenda: “A notoriously lecherous and gullible noble knows a vital state secret. Discover it by any means necessary.” I decided who the noble was (Sir Oscar) and what secret they knew. Then, I added an event to my list: a message from the Zobian traitors asking for an update on progress.

I’m glad I took the time to do this, as it’s not something I could have done easily on the fly at the table. If I ever run this at a convention, I will need to think of how I do this. (I suspect the answer is to use cards. The game has tables, but cards are a physical reminder to refer to.)

Session #2: Planning the birthday

In session two, the advisors determined the outline of the birthday party. Day one will be a blessing of the realm, day two will be a tournament, and day three will be a grand ball. The players start to slot their various plans and machinations into the celebrations.

The Blackguard persuaded the wife of Lord Hawett (Lorentz's bitter enemy) to host it at their enormously extravagant mansion on the outskirts of the city.

The Treasurer’s money-making scheme worked (ish), but dockers complained about the high prices, and the innkeepers were unhappy. The Blackguard tried to steal the money, but The Treasurer spent a twist and foiled it.

I pushed an agenda by appearing as the Liege and asking that Father Brian (whom the Inquisition wanted to stop spreading radical messages of kindness and tolerance) speak at his birthday service. The Treasure arranged for Father Brian’s death, but this backfired by turning him into a martyr! (The roll was a partial success).

The Blackguard then spent a twist to get the Treasurer’s execution order and blackmailed The Treasurer with it in return for details of a secret passage into Lord Hawcett’s mansion.

Finally, the Marshal contacted the Zobian ambassador to arrange for the finest Zobian food for the birthday celebrations.

Session #3: The Blessing

Session #3 flowed smoothly as everyone’s plans started coming together:

The Marshal failed to negotiate down the quote for the Zenobian food, and the ambassador challenged the Marshall to a duel. It will be settled at the jousting.

The Blackguard, in disguise as Father Honeyfeather, gave a blessing on day 1 of the birthday celebrations. (I asked the player what he planned, and he gave such a long and detailed description of the service that I didn’t have the heart to make them go through it all again, so we cut straight to the end of the service.)

At the following cheese-and-wine event (held on the prince’s pleasure barge), Judge Strauss handed The Secret History of the Sky Chamber to the Treasurer. The pages were blank, but the Treasurer successfully concocted a potion that revealed the text. 

Over cheese and wine, the Marshall convinced Sir Oscar (see above) to reveal his secret: the name and location of the true Liege! (That the Liege was an imposter had been decided during character generation.)

Session #4: The Tournament and the Grand Ball

Our last session, and the players seemed to really enjoy themselves. Key moments included:

• The Blackguard married his many daughters off – some successfully, others less so.
• The Marshal killed the Zobian ambassador in a duel.
• The Treasurer foiled a plan by the Blackguard to steal The Secret History of the Sky Chamber.
• The Treasurer created false documents implicating the Zobian ambassador’s widow (who was getting much too cosy to the Liege).
• The Blackguard created a scheme to poison the wine for everyone except for his rival and the Zobian ambassador’s wife, then prevented that plot to turn himself into a hero and expose his rival and the ambassador’s wife as enemies of the state. The plan succeeded, although sadly, some nobles died because they were too eager to drink the wine.

We ended the game there, finishing with the PC’s legacies:

• The Treasurer became the Witchfinder General.
• The Blackguard became known as the famous figure in folklore, “The Black Count.”
• The Marshal changed the political system by installing the true heir to the throne.

Finally, we played ten minutes of How’s it going Geoffrey? This short minigame explores recent events from the perspective of the unluckiest peasant in the land – my players enjoyed this immensely.

So what did I think?

We enjoyed Most Trusted Advisors. We played for about five or six hours (excluding character generation), over four sessions.

While it started slowly, once my players got into their characters and pursued their agendas, things motored along smoothly. I suspect there’s more I could have done to get things going at the start, but at this point, I’m not sure what.

We found it extremely collaborative, with the players chipping in suggestions throughout.

I had a few issues with the rules.

Action ratings: I struggled with action rolls because, often, there wasn’t an appropriate action rating that suited what we were trying to do. Some examples:

• The Treasurer implemented a plan to kill a troublesome priest and make it look like the Marshal was to blame. This was carried out by underlings, as obviously, the Treasurer wouldn’t dirty his own hands. However, there isn’t a “scheme” action rating. We used Ruin for this action, but at a few times, we scratched our heads trying to work out what action rating to use.
• Our characters persuaded NPCs to do things several times. However, there isn’t a “persuade” action rating. We fell back on Appease and Bluff rather too often.

Maybe we were playing it wrong, but it took less than an hour of playing for us to hit some of these issues. So following session 2, I changed the action rolls:

I replaced Ruin with Scheme, merged Survey into Study, and introduced Persuade and Scheme. I grouped the abilities by “base ratings”:

• Physical: Balance, Duel, Shadow, Skulk
• Mental: Bewitch, Concoct, Study, Scheme
• Social: Appease, Bluster, Disdain, Persuade

The players put 3 points into the base ratings (Physical/Mental/Social – no more than 2 points in any one base rating) and then 3 points into the specialisms (no more than one each). Their action rating was their base rating + specialism.

Doing it that way meant that if there wasn’t an appropriate specialism, I could use the base rating. This system worked well – I had no problems with dice rolls for the rest of the game. 

Twists: Twists are powerful; they let the players avoid conditions and introduce new elements into the game. Players started each session with three, but because our sessions were short, my players always seemed to have plenty. Next time I will reduce the number of twists.

Conditions: I found the conditions suggested in the rules (angry, bankrupt, scandalous, etc) hard to apply to our dice rolls. I found it easier to create story-based misfortunes and complications, but I didn’t ever inflict a condition on a PC (although the players used twists to avoid a couple).

While I felt the rules were okay, they didn’t support play particularly well, and I was fighting them before I changed action ratings. 

Scenes: I recently ran a couple of games of Hillfolk at AireCon and have been thinking about the difference between the two games. While I don’t think Most Trusted Advisors needs Hillfolk’s dramatic focus, I wonder if it would benefit from scene discipline. I ran it as I would a traditional TTRPG, and in hindsight, that may have been a mistake.

Revisiting the pdf, I discovered today that Most Trusted Advisors uses the word scene liberally (“scene” appears 25 times in the pdf). But it never explains what it means by “scene”, nor how to set/frame/close them – and whether scenes are framed by the players or the GM.

So what works best? A fluid trad-like approach, or defined scenes? Next time, I’ll try more formal scene framing.

(Bizarrely, even though I’ve done scene framing in other games, I didn’t think to try it. I’ve only thought about it now. I’m not sure what that says about me.)

Overall

For me, Most Trusted Advisors wasn’t quite as good as I had hoped. While the characters and background and secret societies were wonderful, I found two areas let it down:

• Getting started: It took us a while to get properly into our stride. Was that the game, or was that us? I don’t know, but I think the game could have done more (or offered advice) to get things going.
• System: Given its lightness, I found the system fiddlier than necessary (and that’s aside from making a mid-game patch). 

I can’t imagine ever running Most Trusted Advisors as anything other than a one-shot (even though we took four sessions, I regard our game as a one-shot), and it could be simpler and fine-tuned to make that easier.

Most Trusted Advisors

You can get Most Trusted Advisors from the creators’ page on Itch.io, here.

Airecon 2024

Last weekend, I was at AireCon 2024, the games convention in Harrogate’s convention centre.

AireCon is lovely. There’s a great mix of RPGs, board games and other activities and a lovely, friendly atmosphere. I was there Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Friday

Friday was RPG day for me. I ran three RPGs (enough to get me a weekend pass). I ran Hillfolk (DramaSystem), Hazelwood Abbey (DramaSystem) and In Whom We Trust (Cthulhu Dark).

Hillfolk (DramaSystem)

I set off from home a little later than I planned and arrived at my table to find my three players waiting for me. Unfortunately, that was all we had – three players. I know the game was sold out, but two players never turned up. 

Of the players, one had never played Hillfolk, one had run it some years ago, and the other had the Kickstarter, but their partner had played in the game I ran at Continuum last year! They’d said it was awesome, so no pressure this time…

We spent an hour or so developing our characters and creating the network of needs and wants that drive the action. The characters this time were the Chief, the Artisan and the Curate and our story involved cave paintings, the suspicious death of the previous chief and (eventually) the successful raid on a neighbouring tribe.

Some thoughts:

• Hillfolk with three players was fine. It wasn’t as good as with five, but it was more intense for each of them.
• We had quite a few procedural scenes this time.
• I introduced a few NPCs – I think I’m getting better at managing them in DramaSystem.
• I kept track of scenes this time – we had 18 scenes in total.

After Hillfolk, I had a quick bite to eat, and then it was time for Hazelwood Abbey.

Hazelwood Abbey (DramaSystem)

Hazelwood Abbey is Hillfolk but in a Downton Abbey setting. Again, I had three players, and this time they chose the Earl, an illegitimate Heir and the (Dowager) Countess. Our story this time was driven by Dowager Countess’ refusal to accept the Heir and her eventual murder of the Earl!

Some thoughts

• Again, just three players – but I think five had signed up. Again, the game was intense and would have benefitted from more players.
• Only one procedural scene. When I ran it at Furnace last year we didn’t have many either – maybe that’s a feature of the setting.
• Again, 18 scenes. I think that’s a coincidence. The situation for Hillfolk has an obvious ending (dealing with the neighbouring tribe) whereas with Hazelwood Abbey I have to judge the right time to stop – so the Earl’s murder was ideal. 
• I played even more NPCs this time than I did last time.

In both Hazelwood Abbey and Hillfolk, the players embraced the game and the system, and we had lots of lovely dramatic scenes. And DramaSystem games are so easy to run – almost no preparation is needed. I’m now planning my next playset – this time set around a successful rock band.

(My Hazelwood Abbey DramaSystem playset is available on Itch.io.)

After Hazelwood Abbey I went to get some tea and met Philippa, a friend. I had some time before my next game, so I taught her the Villagers board game (and, um, won) before heading back to the RPG rooms for Cthulhu Dark.

In Whom We Trust (Cthulhu Dark)

I had all five players for In Whom We Trust, a one-way trip deep into the Amazon jungle. Inspired by the movies Outbreak and Arachnophobia (the scariest PG movie ever), I originally wrote In Whom We Trust as a Call of Cthulhu “tournament” adventure for Convulsion/Continuum in the mid-90s. Since then, I’ve redone it for Cthulhu Dark and made it available via Itch.io and DriveThruRPG.

Thoughts

• We had one survivor this time – but from what I could see, all the players were enjoying themselves. Even those that died grisly deaths.
• The system was simple and great, as usual. One character was close to going insane – which was about right.
• I last ran In Whom We Trust five years ago at GoPlayLeeds, and it was nice to revisit it.

After finishing, I walked back to the car past several light artworks – it was Harrogate’s Beam light festival, which was an unexpected pleasure.

Saturday

On Saturday morning I brought Megan and one of her friends to AireCon. I’d ignored the trade hall and the board games yesterday, so today was a chance to remedy that.

We played lots of games:

• War of the 3 Sanchos (a small wargame which I enjoyed more than I thought I would – but I won, so I might be biased)
• Forbidden Jungle (a co-up which we lost, badly – I’d happily play it again.)
• Panic Lab (a mental agility game which Megan won both times)
• Giant-sized Hey That’s My Fish (which Megan won – I came last)
• A playtest of a game about finding poison antidotes (which I won – the game was fine but not stellar and we gave some feedback)

Losing at Panic Lab

Then we had to say goodbye to Guy, and so Megan and I played Woof Days (which I don’t recommend, we won one game each) before catching up with Philippa again. We played:

• Wyrmspan (a heavier variant of Wingspan that I won but Megan was bored by – she found it slow towards the end)
• MLEM: Space Agency (a push-your-luck game I enjoyed but came last while Megan won; but the cat-based space theme I found offputting)
• Reef Rescue (a light memory game that I won)

After that, we entered the wonderful charity raffle. There are only a dozen or so prizes in the raffle, but each prize consists of 20 or so board games, and you stand almost no chance of winning. But if you do, you win big (and it’s up to you how you get them home)… We didn’t win, and the raffle raised over £10,000 for charity.

Waiting for the raffle

Entropoly

Finally, on Saturday, Megan and I watched Ivan Brett (from The Traitors) host Entropoly, a game where the players invent new rules each time they take a turn. The rules got crazier and crazier, with rules for wearing wigs, moving anti-clockwise, and changing the spelling of the board.

The game ended up as a co-up, with all the playing pieces merged as one trying to find the correct finish space, which had been duplicated twenty times. There was much laughing and silliness, and it was a lovely way to end the day.

Sunday

I was tired after Saturday and almost didn’t go to AireCon on Sunday. But I decided I would, and I’m glad I did, as I played in a tabletop RPG and did some networking.

What’s Old Is New (WOIN)

I took the last place in a game of WOIN, where we played adventurers with strange abilities (I was a martial artist with mysterious chi powers, another character was a mutant, and another was a cyborg) helping the oppressed. Like the A-Team. We fought vampires, met some nuns, built an improbable vehicle and smashed a sinister vampire plot. I had a good time, but I’m not sure the WOIN system is for me. It was fine but didn’t stand out – we could have used almost any trad ruleset.

After that, I found friends (old and new) and talked about Jubensha, freeforms, escape rooms, and Dune 2 before heading home.

And that was my AireCon. What will I do next year?

2023 in games

And suddenly, it’s 2024. Was 2023 anything to write home about? Some good, some bad – at least in terms of games.

2023's new boardgames

Freeform Games

Freeform Games had a great year. We published two games, transitioned our old shop into a more modern shop, and had our best year (sales and revenue) so far. I will write more on the Freeform Games blog, in a few days.

Conventions and games weekends

I’m attending more conventions these days (largely thanks to giving up the day job). I love going to conventions – as much for catching up with old friends as much as playing the games.

In 2023 I attended:

Retcon (February, Retford): A replacement for the normal UK Freeforms weekend game, Retcon was a convention of smaller freeforms and boardgames. I ran two freeforms and facilitated a game of Fiasco.

Airecon (March, Harrogate): A lovely local convention in Harrogate – I’ve been going for a few years now. It’s primarily a boardgames convention, with a small-but-healthy RPG stream. (It’s like a small UKGE, but more focus on playing and less on the trade halls.) I ran two tabletop RPGs and played lots of boardgames.

Peaky (April, not far from Tamworth): I’ve been to every Peaky since it started in the early 2000s. Intense, creative and fabulous. I wrote one game and played three. Brilliant.

Continuum (July, Leicester): This was my first Continuum in a while – it had fallen off my games calendar. I like the mix of tabletop and freeforms that I get at Continuum, plus I ran into several old friends that I don’t see at the other cons. I ran two tabletop games and played in three freeforms.

Furnace (October, Sheffield): Tabletop roleplaying only, and local enough that I don’t need to stay overnight. I ran one game and played in three.

Consequences (November, not far from Poole): Longest time away (four nights), I ran two freeforms and played in five.

Plans for 2024: Mostly the same, except that the weekend freeforms are back, which means there’s no Retcon. And I’m hoping to get to at least one day of Larpcon in Coalville.

Freeform larps

2023 was a great year for freeforms. I played or ran 20 freeforms, which I’m sure is a record. I also self-published a book, Writing Freeform Larps, which does what it says on the tin.

Favourite to run: Children of the Stars, at Consequences, was my favourite to run. It went smoothly – and although the follow-up (Messages from Callisto) also went well, that was beset by errors on my part.

Favourite to play: The Ashlight Labyrinth, which I played at Peaky, was a delight and my favourite freeform as a player in 2023. (Close runners-up were Across the City, Better than Life, Antarctic Station 13 and Ghosts: It’s not Ibsen.)

Plans for 2024:

• Finish writing and then run The Stars our Destination (the next in my first-contact series of games).
• Publish All Flesh is Grass on Itch.io. Start work on getting Children of the Stars ready for publication.
• Maybe start writing another freeform for Freeform Games.

Tabletop RPGs

I played in and ran fewer ttrpgs in 2023 than in recent years. My regular groups are fairly small (usually just four of us), and if someone can’t make it, then we cancel the session rather than struggle with just three of us. Unfortunately, we had lots of cancelled sessions in 2023.

My 2023 top games in terms of numbers were As the Sun Forever Sets (nine sessions as GM), Good Society (four sessions as a player – this is ongoing), Kingdom (three sessions as GM/facilitator). 

I ran two sessions of Hillfolk, which I’ve been meaning to run ever since it came out in 2023. So it only took me ten years. It was as good as I hoped, and I want to run more.

I published Other London: Desk 17, along with a couple of adventures. They’re not setting the world alight, but I find the whole process very satisfying. I like sharing my stuff.

Favourite to run: The two sessions of Hillfolk, which were a delight.

Favourite to play: The session of Fiasco I played (and facilitated) at Retcon – we had a great group of players and it was one of the highlights of the con.

Plans for 2024:

• Run more Hillfolk (at Airecon – and maybe see what it’s like online).
• Playtest the two scenarios I have written up (one for the Department of Irregular Services, one for Desk 17) and then publish them.
• Finish writing up two half-finished scenarios and playtest them as well.
• Maybe run a bit of Traveller, which would be very old school for me. At the very least, I will buy Mysteries of the Ancients and Wrath of the Ancients, which are completely in my wheelhouse. (I know I can get the pdfs right now, but I’m saving myself for when the hardbacks are ready.)
• If the Urban Shadows 2.0 Kickstarter appears, I’d like to take it for a spin. It’s very late (the campaign was back in 2020), but I’m relaxed about its tardiness. I don’t have room for another game, and I’d rather it was right and late than wrong and on time.
• And perhaps most important, I’d love to meet more gamers and play more games. Maybe run a few one-shots online or find a semi-regular face-to-face group.

Boardgames

In 2023, I played more games of My City than any other game. I played on boardgamearena a fair bit, which has been a lot of fun. While I’ve had a couple of online evenings with friends, most of my games have been turn-based against strangers. It’s been more fun than I had expected, and I’ve tried a lot of new games.

The new games to my collection:

My City: Reiner Knizia's legacy game with 24-episodes, plus an “eternal” game once you’ve done with the legacy game. It's a tile-placing game that takes about 15 minutes to play - so easy to play a few games in one sitting. I’ve played the eternal game quite a bit on Boardgamearena. The campaign is okay – although, toward the end, it can be demoralising if you get too far behind in the overall score.

Mottainai: a small card game by Carl Chudyk with a lot of gameplay. It’s the spiritual successor to Glory to Rome (one of my favourite games), and I like it a lot. It's tricky to get your head around and has some of the craziness that Glory to Rome has – but in a smaller, quicker package.

Daybreak: A cooperative game of decarbonising to solve climate change by Matt Leacock & Matteo Menapace. I gave it to myself as a Christmas present. I’ve played it solo on Boardgamearena a few times, but my first in-person game with Miss H ended in a loss. Don’t put the fate of the planet in our hands!

The Traitors Card Game: A Christmas present from Miss H. A tie-in to the wonderful TV series. I wondered if it was just a reskinned Werewolf (which is all The Traitors is), but it brings in elements from the TV series, such as shields and gold. It's for four players or more, and so we haven't tried it yet.

Plans for 2024: More of the same – no doubt the games collection will swell. Already on order is Kavango (drafting African animals, Kickstarter) and Innovation Deluxe (more card-based craziness from Carl Chudyk, Backerkit), but I should restrain myself. (I try and cull it every now and again, but not always successfully.)

Other games

And as usual, I played the usual assortment of video games: too much World of Tanks Blitz, plenty of Star Realms and Race for the Galaxy.

And overall?

So overall, 2023 was not so good for tabletop roleplaying, about average for boardgames, and excellent for freeforms. So I can’t complain.

Hazelwood Abbey - DramaSystem playbooks

Following its successful premiere at Furnace, I’ve put Hazelwood Abbey on itch.io as a free download.

Hazelwood Abbey

Hazelwood Abbey is Downton Abbey meets Hillfolk. Players play an aristocratic family in a player-led dramatic game of emotional needs and wants for 4-5 players.

Hazelwood Abbey uses Pelgrane Press' DramaSystem rules engine to create a story of high-stakes interpersonal conflict. During the session, players create family members with conflicting needs and goals. And then we find out what happens.

Hazelwood Abbey consists of two sets of playbooks - one for upstairs (the family) and one for downstairs (the servants).

Upstairs playbooks

• The Earl
• The Countess
• The Heir
• The Spare
• The Eldest  Daughter
• The Youngest Daughter
• The Suitor
• The Cousin

Downstairs playbooks

• The Butler
• The Housekeeper
• The Valet
• The Lady's Maid
• The Footman
• The Housemaid
• The Cook
• The Scullery Maid

Download for free

You can download them for free on my Itch.io page.

I’ve proposed Hazelwood Abbey for Airecon in March 2024, and I’m thinking how I can run a DramaSystem game online.

Current projects

I did a progress report in Feb. Here’s an update. I should do these regularly – they’re useful places for me to record what I’ve done and talk about what I have planned.

What did I achieve?

Since the last progress report, I’ve completed:

• Writing Freeform Larps
• Way out West format update (for Freeform Games)
• Other London Volume 4: Tales of Terror
• Count Magnus’ Descendent
• The Roswell Incident (for Freeform Games)

I also completed the formatting for Night Train and The Highgate Club for Peaky Games, but thanks to some technical difficulties, neither is yet available.

Current projects

I’m currently working on several projects, but I seem to work best by working on a lot of things at once. It stops me from becoming tired of any one thing. And if I hit a block, I can work on something else until inspiration strikes.

Freeform Games

Freeform Games is my main source of income, so these are my main focus.

A Purrfect Murder: A new game by Karolina Soltys and set at a cat fancy show. It’s currently being playtested by some of our customers, and when I’ve incorporated the feedback, we’ll put it on sale.

Court in the Act: Once I’ve put A Purrfect Murder to bed, I’ll start to bring Court in the Act up to date. It’s the last game in our old format.

I’m also thinking about starting a vampire/werewolf/urban fantasy murder mystery that we can sell for Halloween (our most popular period). I’m not sure about the details yet, but I’m sure it will come to me.

The Department for Irregular Services (DfIS)

I wrote about the DfIS a while back, and I used the DfIS for Count Magnus’ Descendant (a gloomy Cthulhu Dark adventure).

However, I created the DfIS for Liminal, and I’m expanding the idea with some pre-generated characters and a couple of adventures. I’ve written an investigation based on the legend of Dartmoor’s Hairy Hands, but I need to playtest it. 

Other London

I’m currently working on two investigations for Other London. Well, when I say I’m working on two, I’ve paused one while the other has taken over.

The Dead Undead: A vampire is found dead in a nightclub, and Desk 17 investigates. Before this, I didn’t know what happened to vampires when they died.

The Orphan Room: A room with no doors is found in a hotel complex. It contains a desk, and on the desk are severed heads preserved in jars. It’s a job for Desk 17, but the author has been distracted by shinies and will get back to it in due course.

First contact freeforms

I am writing and running a series of first-contact freeforms heavily inspired by classic science fiction. The series starts with The Roswell Incident (now at Freeform Games) before continuing with All Flesh is Grass, Children of the Stars and Messages from Callisto.

I am running Children of the Stars and Messages from Callisto at Consequences in November. Events that unfold in Children will affect Callisto, and three players are playing in both (two of whom have played earlier games in the series). 

So I’ve given myself a headache working out how to manage the potential different pieces of information for Messages. I have a system in place, and it means that players won’t receive some information until just before the game starts (because until Children finishes, I won’t know what to tell them). I have my fingers crossed that it all works out as I hope.

The Stars our Destination: I’m also starting on the fifth episode, in which an alien spaceship lands on Easter Island.

Other projects

Hazelwood Abbey: I enjoyed running Hillfolk so much at Continuum that I created a set of playbooks inspired by Downton Abbey. I’m running it at Furnace (and I’ve pitched it for Airecon). Assuming it doesn’t break, I’ll make them available for download.

And that’s about it

For now, at least.

RPGaDay 2023 #13 to 17

#14 Favourite convention purchase

My most used convention purchase is my trusty dice bag and dice tray from the fine folk at All Rolled Up. I found that my pens fell out when I turned it upside down, so Miss H added a flap to keep them secure during transport.

My favourite convention purchase, however, might be my most recent: The Floor is Lava and Bored? Games! by Ivan Brett, both purchased at Airecon earlier this year. (I reviewed them here.)

#15 Favourite con one-shot

I run quite a few convention games, but based on my last convention (Continuum in Leicester), it's Hillfolk - specifically, the one-shot playbooks created by Jon Cole. It was a superb session, but I've only done it once, and I'm looking forward to seeing how repeatable it is.

For me, the key to a good convention game is getting the characters right. If you get the characters right (with links between the PCs and, ideally, a little conflict), the scenario runs itself. Much of that can be created at the table, with a shortened session zero.

As a player, my favourite game was a Fate Accelerated game run by Neil Gow at Furnace. The setting was Werewolf: the Apocalypse and we were the last werewolves facing the apocalypse. (Although I was an elf. Anyway.) Alone, we faced the baddies and prevented the apocalypse. It was epic and huge – and it felt like we were playing in a movie. Brilliant.

From a freeform perspective, they're all one-shot games. I don't have a favourite, though.

#16 Game you wish you owned

There's nothing from the past I think I want. (One thing I like about playing RPGs is that it can be a cheap hobby if you want it to be. Some rules, dice, pens and paper, some friends - that's it.)

There are a couple of boardgames that are coming out that I've got my eye on, but I've not made any decisions yet.

#17 Funniest game you've played

Fiasco is often the game I laugh most in, just because it's so wrong. The game itself isn't funny, but the situations players end up in...