Concrete Cow 24.5
We are heading down the motorway at 8 am to visit Milton Keynes Premier TTRPG Con Concrete Cow.
I’d missed Owlbear and the Wizard’s Staff due to family celebrations, so was keen to attend this small but friendly gaming con.
Arriving around 9 am, we had time to browse Leisure Games goods and the bring and buy sale before a brief visit to Tescos to pick up provisions, then we laid down our gaming forms!
Concrete Cow has a unique sign-up system, you can fill in a Google form in advance, but you can also rock up on the day and fill in a paper form. The forms for each game are laid out at the front of the hall. Everyone gets a lottery ticket after you’ve paid the very reasonable £5 fee for the day. Lottery ticket numbers are read out and if the last digit matches yours you can go up and write your name in one of the sign-up sheets.
Once a game is full a cry of BINGO! or similar is heard and the GM marches off to a gaming table with their troupe in tow. There is a chance as a GM or player that the game you run or sign up for doesn’t happen, but it always seems like everyone gets a game, so if you are flexible it should all work out fine.
I also like the fact that newbies, under18s and GMs get a golden ticket, so they can jump the queue and pick a game before any lottery tickets are drawn.
Mothership 1e - Gradient Descent the WacoMatrixo Remix
I was first up GMing the above and welcomed Fabio, Neil, Neal and Pookie to the table.
We went through a brief on the system and the scenario background before handing out Hitchhiker-inspired characters and we were off. Though Fabio supplied a decent American accent, he failed to hit the heights with a falsetto for Trillian!
The Wacotmatrixo remix of this game begins inside the abandoned android factory called The Deep (essentially a mega-dungeon). The overall aim is to find a vastly expensive artefact in the depths of The Deep and escape. For a one-shot, we begin inside and to find out where, I asked the players to roll a d100, so it began in the Blast Furnaces. In addition, I asked someone else to roll for the artefact, a clay-like suit of armour. They had the artefact with them so immediately someone climbed into it, feeling the warm, wet clay envelop them.
Suitably attired, the group manoeuvred through the vast dungeon/factory encountering creatures, puzzles and no end of hazards. The group pushed on, unfortunately triggering a self-destruct countdown, but with 7 minutes left they stumbled upon an exit and thanks to some outside help and excellent piloting skills from Trillian they exited the Deep, well almost all of them, Marvin the Android got left behind, perhaps he made it to the REDACTED and was able to REDACT the REDACT. Or maybe he sat down somewhere in the dark, reminiscing about his lost hand.
Overall a fun game, the second time I’ve run it and Mothership 1e (a big improvement on 0e for me) and helped enormously by the players throwing themselves into the hapless, helpless, brutal nature of parts of the game. I especially enjoyed playing NPC George the Brain.
A quick break for some lunch and a chat with a couple of folk, before I signed up for Microscope, unfortunately, we didn’t get enough players so we joined forces with another game and played
Savage Worlds - The Eye of Kilquato
I played Virginia Dare the love/hate paramour of Buck Savage. It was a full-on Saturday morning serial pulp adventure, where we moved from scene to scene looking for the Eye, bashing Nazis and trying to figure out how to make a quick dollar.
The GM and some of the players were very experienced with Savage Worlds, which was excellent as there were times I got lost on which dice to roll and if to take the highest or add them. But by the end, I was pretty comfortable with the system.
I would say Savage Worlds is not a game I’d normally pick to play but it was thoroughly enjoyable, the GM gave spotlight time across the table and brought to life the NPCs as well as keeping a firm grip on all the moving parts of the system.
In the end, we all had our moments to shine, and Buck, ripping his shirt off at every opportunity, got a bit of a comeuppance when two different players inadvertently shot him in the back. An accident… honest!
With Kilquato vanquished, we wrapped up. A fleeting thought to take in the evening game, but a gig the previous night and my usual comedown after running a game, meant energy levels were too low, next time.
Overall I can’t recommend Concrete Cow enough, there are always enough games and a variety of games for everyone, and it’s situated very close to loads of facilities, I even had someone offer me a fridge full of cucumbers!
Until March and Concrete Cow 25!?