First
up, I was running the new Troika 1:5 adventure written and
illustrated by yours truly, Whalgravaak’s Warehouse. To up the ante
for a convention game, I had set up a scoring system based on the
number of pages the party was able to recover from The Manual of
Operations, the arcane book of instructions to the Warehouse’s
defunct transportation system. This may be the first time Troika has
been run ‘tournament’ style! We should set up a leader board.
A
Claviger, Monkeymonger, Necromancer and a Rhino-Man made up the
party. Thwarted by the evil purple portcullis blocking the main
entrance and its harmful resistance to Open spells, they decided to
brave the Worm-Headed Hound tunnels leading beneath the warehouse
itself. A quick and brutal fight with the squirmy dog-things meant a
nasty mauling for the Rhino-Man, but skilful use of an improvised
noisemaking trap by the Claviger scared off the beasts and allowed
the party to delve into the urine soaked tunnels.
Emerging
into the building proper, they encountered a dual-headed snake
Cacogen of noble occult bearing and cut a deal with him to open some
troublesome doors in return for a bundle of pages he had acquired.
Giving the shifting Sphere Pool room a wide berth after witnessing
the bizarre distance stretching properties it possessed and the weird
machinery inside, they headed to the north through a room full of
giantic spools of rope, and some deactivated-looking forklift
automata.
"Waaah waaah the initiative system is so weird"
Another
room contained a huge vat with a sparkly indigo puddle around it,
dried to a magical looking crust. While some of the party took the
time to eat some provisions and recover stamina, the Monkeymonger
attempted to deduce the nature of this magical stain by lobbing one
their more inferior monkeys onto it. A flash of light! A sudden
forceful psychic assault on the mind Claviger! He made his Luck test
successfully, but it was a near thing – a failed roll would have
meant he’d swapped bodies with a 1 Stamina monkey. The unfortunate
simian was fried to death by the magic.
Several
more rooms were explored, including one so warped by the shifting
energies of the building that the contents of its crates had achieved
sentience over the centuries. The result of this chaotic magic? A
pile of talking dried fish. A somewhat morally grey encounter
occurred in which these tiny amiable delicacies were quizzed for
information about the denizens of the warehouse (the rattling dusty
creatures that lived to the north were described as carrying things
‘wrapped in paper’) and eventually, eaten for sustenance. Time
was ticking on, lamp oil was running low, and still only a handful of
pages had been discovered.
The scoring/reputation system
A
room full of moisture draining black and yellow sponges floating
amongst shattered wreckage was circumnavigated to discover some
substantial rooms full of crated seeds. Investigation of a crack in
the wall from which issued the very incongruous sounds of a battle in
full progress was suddenly thwarted by an attack from two utterly
bizarre monsters – Chaotic Spawnlets!
These
horrors took the appearance of a gigantic crawling vulture’s head
with eyes, ears and noses lining the inside of its beak, and a human
torso atop a pair of skittering legs that ‘fired’ regenerating
heads at range. This was a fairly frantic battle with the
Monkeymonger managing to crawl up the legs of the skitterer and stab
it in the torso multiple times, while the Claviger used his strength
skill to haul crates into defensive positions and protect the
vulnerable Necromancer. Skilled attacks from the Rhinoman aided the
Monkeymonger and eventually the creatures were destroyed. An attempt
by the Necromonger to reanimate one of them using the Posthumous
Vitality spell unfortunately caused the corpse to explode instead, a
very messy business.
Returning
to the sounds of the battlefield through the crack, a battle between
two sets of minute combats was seen, warriors no larger than a
fingernail locked in mortal combat according to their allegiances –
one side sporting red armour, the other green. Most importantly for
the party, however, these armies had repurposed several pages as
their battle standards! An unsuccessful attempt by the Necromancer to
instigate a truce using his relationship counselling skill meant it
was down to the Rhino-Man to wade in and snap off these standards to
add the pages to their collection, though he took significant damage
to his flanks from several tiny phalanxes of spearmen.
Worm-headed Hounds!
Passing
back through the room of dessicating sponges, a final room was
explored by the party - an area stocked with a collection of tusks
taken from creatures of every shape and size. The place was inhabited
by some loathsome Membroid Ghouls. A deadly combat atop the shelving
units nearly made a nasty end for the Claviger as they were enveloped
in a membrane and gnawed on, taking damage each time an initiative
token was drawn. The Monkeymonger’s skill in climbing was used to
advise the Rhino-Man of a safe route to the top of the rickety
shelves to aid in the combat, and once the Claviger was freed, the
remaining ghoul was hurled to its death off of the lofty shelves,
down on to the sharp tusks littering the floor (previously set as a
trap by the Claviger in a wise precaution). Amongst the foul
creatures’ treasure – several Pocket Gods wrapped in pages from
The Manual of Operations. At that, we called the game and tallied up
the number of pages recovered.
The
party’s reputation at the end of the adventure: PASSABLE
NOVITIATES. Not bad!
Thanks
to Will, Fifi, Damien and Axel for an excellent game! Everyone played
their pregens to the utmost, creative play and use of skills,
tactical thinking...everything you want in a con game!
Gratifyingly,
the adventure has played out totally differently each time I have run
it. Since non-linearity was a main design aim I think we can count
this a success. Always lots of fun to bring old-school dungeon
crawling procedure to Troika (complete with player mapping on graph
paper). I hope this book inspires many others to get into
location-based adventures for the game.
The
adventure is now
out in PDF and is currently a
best seller on DTRPG for products under a fiver!
The hardcopy books should be back from the printer soon.
Troika + Dungeon
Subsequently…
(1300-1800)
After
that, it was a matter of scarfing down a banana and a vile room
temperature pre-purchased Tesco sandwich from my bag (Harissa and
Roast Vegetables, essentially a salted sponge with a few extra
calories), then availing myself from the dubious jar of mints
provided by Hammersmith Novotel in their conference rooms before
returning to the bustling trade hall to assist my Melsonian brethren.
The
next few hours (between 1300-1800) are a bit of a blur, if I’m
honest. Tons of delightful people came to meet us, and lots of old
friends were spoken to.
However,
one clear highlight did emerge – the opportunity to meet with Brit
fantasy illustration legend, the almighty wizard Tony Hough!
If
anyone is somehow unfamiliar with his work, this is the guy behind
several iconic Games Workshop and latter day Fighting Fantasy art
pieces (Genestealer Patriarch anyone?). His style somehow manages to
encapsulate all of the murky grandeur of those old days, while still
standing confidently unique, always pushing forward with his style
and seamlessly incorporating modern technology. The man can depict
everything from utter horror to whimsical madness, with crowd scenes
a speciality.
Genestealer Patriarch by Tony Hough
Tony
has done some work recently for MAC, as a result of his flyering the
stall last year, when I sadly didn’t get a chance to meet him. This
year, he was incredibly generous with his time and he tracked me down
to show me a binder full of his original artwork. Trading tips and
methods with old-school fantasy illustrators like this is such a help
in combating the ever-persistent impostor syndrome and a hugely
important part of these events for me. Favourite bit of advice from
Tony? “Don’t show clients your thumbnail sketches, they don’t
understand what they’re for and they’ll just start fucking saying
things!”. What a guy! We’ve got a whole bunch of artwork in the
chamber for some upcoming Troika books by him, and you’ll just have
to trust me for now when I tell you they are incredible pieces of
art.
Me and Tony just hangin' out
Some
other
fortuitous chats n’
meetings in the afternoon
included Alfred
Valley (yet another RPG person I hadn’t realised was a
Londoner), Josh
Blincow (author
of the upcoming MAC adventure The
Perilous Pear & Plum Pies of Pludwick) who
was lovely and so young-looking that I felt like a crumbling skeleton
next to him, the
always delightful Paolo
of Lost Pages (Lasagna Con 2024 maybe!),
JVC
Parry and several others.
I
also got a chance to meet the extremely
friendly guys from Strange
Attractor press, publishers of countercultural books, outsider
art, weird music, occultism
– a panoply of the esoteric and
bizarre. Word is they’ll be organising
some more RPG related stuff in future so keep a close eye. Hopefully
I’ll get a chance to work with them soon.
After
hours… (1800-2300)
One
complaint I have each year is that the con tends to die down very
quickly in gaming terms after 6pm – when the trade hall closes. My
plan this year was to remedy this by
running an
off-grid one shot of Leo Hunt’s excellent science fantasy RPG
Vaults of Vaarn, for which I had put
in considerable prep for a toroidal 19 location pointcrawl (including
a wedge of pregens), but alas it was not to be. Those potential
players most interested – John and Stacey, organisers of Norwich
Games Convention, Bruce Pennington
Cunnington,
and London RPG socialite Turran H
all had reasons for not
being able to play – a long drive home, lack of options to extend
parking, and already
being in their cups – not necessarily in that order. A quick game
of Melee
was mooted but in the end the decision was made to drink and nerd out
instead.
Still,
if I have a GM’s motto, it’s ‘Prep doesn’t have a use-by
date’ so back into the folder this particular adventure (The Skewed
Torus) goes, perhaps one to run for my family this Christmas, or
simply as a one shot around one of London’s venerable boozers.
Somewhat
pleasantly resigned, I settled in for a few hours of mildly bibulous
socialising. Among the topics covered included X-Crawl, Lankhmar,
funnels, weapon vs AC minutiae, inflated HP pools in Gamma World and
its clones, vegan wrestlers, soil, dog skulls, buying books off
people you think are a bit dodgy, the mummy vs mummified human
remains terminology battle, Victorian bastards, lacquered dolphin
skulls and much much more.
Special
mention must be given to the delightful and
hilarious company of the
French translators of Troika, Pattern
Recog Editions. The two gentlemen in question, Jack and
Jean-Christoph, were sat in company with Frank (aka Mottokrosh) and
Dave who publish the Hypertellurians
RPG and we had a great time talking about Manowar disappointing
French metalheads, Magma, French cinema, and dinosaur-related
pornography. I’m not gonna explain that last one but it wasn’t my
fault...
Clockwise from left: Frank, Jean-Christophe, Me, Photobombing Barmaid, Dave, Jack
Each
year, rumours circulate that this will be the last one in the airless
chambers of Novotel West. We can only hope that this – or the next
– will be the last one in these blasted halls. Not that it is
difficult to get to, and it is clean and spacious, but the beer
selection and bar service is, quite frankly, shite. When the bar was
working ‘properly’ drinkers have the following bewildering
selection on draught:
Stella
Artois
Bud
Light
Guinness
Orchard
Pig Cider
Corona,
of all things
I
told you it was bad. Now, picture a scenario where you can not only
wait 30 minutes to get served, but one in which every single one
of those options barring Corona runs out. No, I would not like a
stale lime slice in my pint of tasteless piss thank you barman.
Still, good times were had despite the poor quality libations, and
the evening passed by merrily.
Leaving
the hotel around 2300 to grab some
falafel (food of the gods) from the always
friendly and stalwart
Lebanese
Taverna (which I actually will miss when/if the con moves
location), I quickly consumed the enfolded fried
chickpea snack en route to the station and
headed home to chilly
South East London.
So
in summary, perhaps a more subdued Dragonmeet than last year, but a
pleasant one as always. Next year I hope for some more prolonged
gaming in the evening. Until then, see you all next time!
