Furnace XIX

It's a credit to the organisers of this excellent gaming con that they are now in their nineteenth year and still going from strength to strength. This year saw nearly 70 people playing in fifty different games over the weekend, making use of the armoury, the dungeon and the jailhouse of the magnificent Garrison Hotel. It really is one of my favourite locations for playing games, without some of the noise issues of larger cons in big halls. 

After an introduction from organiser Graham, everyone found their assigned tables with minimal fuss. I was down in the armoury running a game of Tales of the Old West from the Quickdraw rules. I'd billed this as a potentially gritty setting, but the players leaned into their characters and had a great time. Using poker chips to track faith points, playing cards for initiative, and a toy gun to demonstrate how the shooting rules worked really added to the atmosphere. They picked up the rules quickly and I was able to improvise a few additional elements on the fly with no problems. The scenario was a tale of revenge for a murdered compadre and built up to an epic showdown with the bad guys, using a lassoed cougar and a fistful of dynamite.  Yee-haw!

Table bling

Your friendly neighbourhood gunslinger

The posse!

After lunch from Morrisons, the afternoon game was the intense and unique Alice is Missing, hosted by Peanut. This scenario involves a missing teen in a Pacific North West town in the middle of winter, and the responses of her five friends as they talk to each via text messages on their phones. After a explanation of how the game was going to run and setting up a WhatsApp group chat, a timer was started on a laptop with music playing. At ten minute intervals, different players would turn over their event card which gave instructions on revealing locations, suspects, clues and secrets to bring into the narrative. As the clock ticked down, the conversations became quite intense as the situation became increasingly desperate and the conclusion left us all emotionally stunned as the in character voice mails that we had sent to Alice were played out. This is something that everyone should try if they get the chance.

How it started ...

How it ended.

Sunday morning was The Temple of Artemis, run by Sue Savage, one of the best horror GMs around. She set the scene of a run down Edwardian country house that had been inherited by one of the characters and the ghastly secrets that were hidden within. The rules were simple using the Cthulhu Dark D6 system, but the atmosphere was like an MR James ghost story as we unravelled the story. Her softly spoken narration made the jump scares all the more effective when she dropped them on us. Sue is working on this one for publication and it's worth looking out for if you want to be spooked on a dark evening.

The final game was a run of one of the dungeons from the Dragonbane starter set, GM'd by Debbie taking great glee in unleashing monsters on our unsuspecting adventuring party. I really do enjoy this system and setting, and the maps and figures included in the box are of excellent quality. The final battle with a giant water serpent was a close run thing with half the characters reduced to zero hit points or being knocked off the raft we were trying to fight on and nearly drowning. An excellent conclusion to the weekend!

All in all, another amazing weekend of gaming, thanks to Graham, Dom and Elaine for organising it all! See you next year!