This long-running games convention had another instance at the start of January. With images; cc-by-sa on everything.

Friday

Pretty much the clearest run I've had going north: no diversions, just a bit of sluggishness where the M6 is being "upgraded to managed motorway".

Ran one of my current GURPS demo scenarios, Marmosets on an Airship (steampunk with an atom-powered airship crossing the Atlantic in Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee year). Nobody died, quite.

While wandering through the rooms afterwards, I spotted a game of Captain Sonar starting up; so now I've played in real-time mode. It's much harder work (in particular for the captain and engineer) but rather good fun even so; I can see myself happily playing either mode again.

And then it was 1.30 in the morning and I went to bed.

Saturday

No RPGs booked this day, so I looked around a bit and then got into a five-player game of Firefly playing the full board with King of All Londinium and the Blitz setup.

I started at Meridian and was just getting started after a slow build-up, when the game's owner (and other non-newbie player) hit goal 1; so I abandoned my active jobs and went all-out for the goals.

Both of us ended up on Boros hammering away repeatedly at goal 3; we were both one dice-pip away at times, but my opponent ended up getting it before me. I feel I made him work for it, though.

Some of us went on with a succession of 2- and 3-player games: Splendor,

then several games of Flash Point, completely failing to do much good on the "easy" four-door house map (with two firefighters),

but sorting out the hotel

and the garage with a total of four crew. I think that's probably the sweet spot: firefighters can spread out enough to keep the whole board suppressed, while hunting for victims to rescue with any spare action points.

Went on to The Awful Green Things From Outer Space, which I actually managed to win (first time ever). The crew took heavy casualties, but with some decent weapon chit draws we ended up holed up in the fuel pods and able to double-shrink and stun the attacking forces.

Then a few rounds of Red 7, as we were starting to get a bit tired. Too long since I've played this one. By the end we'd been gaming for thirteen hours with only occasional breaks for biological necessity.

Sunday

The morning was for The Inheritance of Doctor Spallanzani, one of Phil Masters's GURPS demo scenarios, which I'd missed when he ran it for the Cambridge group. Good fun, with steam-tricycle chases, Strange Mechanisms, my character dangling from an airship, and the obligatory Webley-Fosberys.

Then I went home, again with a fairly clear run apart from the usual slowing on the M6.