A new Grogmeet and the first at the Brickhouse Social. I’d missed 2025, adjusting to the new Jan slot, post Christmas, winter weather, but put in the organisational efforts to adjust family, work and other events to make it happen. Storm Goretti did its best to scupper things, but in the end, my first dry Grogmeet, well, I had a few pints but no drizzle, mizzle or slothering.

NOTE THERE WILL BE SPOILERS IN THE FOLLOWING…

Friday

A 5.30 am wake-up call and then a smooth train journey, and straight to the venue to become one of the (self-named) legendary preppers. This soft, tender body was forced into manual labour as chairs, tables and sundry items were deposited in the basement of the Brickhouse Social. Then off for a cheeky coffee, a chat on things DCC and more before game one.

Call of Cthulhu - The Bleeding Stone of Iphtah

The multi-table themed event this year was a “respectable in the 80s” scenario picked from White Dwarf. I’d plumped for a Call of Cthulhu 3rd edition from WD60 written by Steve Williams and Jon Sutherland.

I was joined on this nostalgia trip by Martin, Catherine, Mike, Neil and The Tall One, aka Chris. We’d been “promoted” up to the top floor of the Brickhouse, nice and light with lovely views across Manchester, a bit of a chill in the air but nothing that a chequered shacket couldn’t keep at bay.

After a visit to the frankly unimpressive Charles Lacy pottery exhibition, a local contact suggested a visit to Otto’s bar, Mr Otto, a private collector of antiquities, who may have an interesting opportunity. Meeting Mr Otto started getting the PCs’ spidey senses tingling; he was definitely not just the avuncular collector of antiquities he pretended to be, given he was flanked by bodyguards and his bar featured the comings and goings of various reprobates and opium addicts.

But Otto convinced the PCs to visit Iphtah, far to the south of Jerusalem, out in the desert, where Otto had paid for the services of renowned but recently missing archaeologist Professor Foster. Otto wanted faster progress, and Prof Jordan, one of the PCs, is perfectly placed to assess the dig site.

So, accompanied by Lakey, the PCs travel to Iphtah, meeting Professor Foster and are given a tour of the dig site. It definitely feels like there is little or no progress, but Foster is in turns defensive and almost collapsing with exhaustion.

A secret search of the dig site uncovers a tomb, with a pale egg-like stone inside, and figures shuffle inside the stone, causing various people to run screaming from the tomb. They decide to sneak this stone out of the tomb.

At dinner with Foster and Lakey, the Professor takes another turn, our Doctor sees to him, but also searches the Professor’s tent, finding a brown box full of Opium and a chest with something wrapped in black velvet, he slips this into his doctor’s bag.

Retiring for the evening, they unveil what is under the velvet cloth… a red stone, similar in size and shape to the milky white one. They decide to place the two stones next to each other, the red bleeds into the white, charging it. As they leave it, the stones vibrate, setting teeth on edge and shaking the ground, until they sensibly separate the stones.

As they sleep on what to do next, they are awakened by a horrific scream. Entering the tent of Foster, they see him hunched on the floor, with a needle in his arm and Lakey, dead, a dagger in his back. Foster slurs and points at Lakey, “…self-defence… attacked me…”. They decide to tie up Foster and arrange to leave the site.

As they load up the truck and start the engine, the doctor gives the sad news that Foster has passed away, a drug overdose. The party groans as the engine won’t start, and then the parapsychologist drops the stone wrapped in the velvet cloak he was carrying. It falls to the floor of the back of the truck, then rises up, growing in size. An inhuman ape-like creature with insectoid features throws back the velvet and points at the rock, then back at the tomb. Our Aniquarian can take no more of this jumping from the truck and heading off into the growing dust storm. The parapsychologist nods fearfully at the creature, picking up the stone and carrying it back towards the tomb. The private eye decides enough is enough, emptying his pistol into the creature to little effect as it advances on him.

The Doctor is up front, encouraging the driver to get the truck started. Eventually, frustrated, he pushes the driver to one side and gets the truck going. It lurches forward; only the Archaeologist is still on it. He falls backwards, gropes at the tailgate and then tumbles out of the truck as it speeds forward, disappearing into the dust storm.

The Parapsychologist squeezes back into the tomb, replacing the charged stone. At once, the creature dissipates, the storm clears, and all that is left is the truck heading off into the distance, the Archaeologist gingerly getting up off the ground, the Private Eye, stupefied, gun dropping to the floor and above them all perched on a rock is the Antiquarian, squatting, legs crossed in the lotus position, eyes staring out over the desert.

A cracking scenario that lurched into action when Mike’s character decided to steal the truck and leave the others to deal with the beast. Great players, pushing the Cthulhu tropes to the max and creating some memorable moments.

Time to book into the hotel, grab a snack and a beer before…

Liminal Horror - Messenger National Park

We are down in the darkest depths of the Brickhouse Social. Luckily, our table for possibly a small retinue of knights is well lit, so we cosy up to one end of it, ignoring he slightly squelchy feel of the floor.

A bit of an experiment, Liminal Horror is fast becoming my go-to for more action-packed horror games, described as a blend of survival horror. This scenario by Capacity for Wonder is termed a depth crawl, driven by random tables that start with mild threat and wonder before escalating as you roll higher numbers. How do you roll higher numbers? Get deeper into the park, plus one for each location delved into!

Paul, Vaughan, Andrew and Stef took up the mantle of This Mysterious Life, the standard pre-gens for Liminal Horror, their YouTube channel and this was the opportunity of a lifetime: to visit a national park, affected, mutated by an extraterrestrial entity, closed for over forty years, today was the first time it had been opened to the public since the event.

The players improv’d a couple of other groups on the bus to the park entrance, their deadly rival channel, This Curious Life and a more academic collection of debunkers that frequently ridiculed their releases.

As the three groups entered the park, heading off in different directions, our party found themselves in an abandoned campsite, only a can of bear spray had been left behind. They also noticed a pattern of stones, but were unclear what, if anything, it presented. Sending a drone up into the sky, all became clear as the drone’s camera looked down towards the ground, the words THE BODY IS A SEED were set out in neat pebbles at the centre of the campsite.

As they gathered around the phone, looking at this warning? Challenge? Clue? They heard a cry from a bird, the first wildlife they’d either heard or seen. Sending the drone off in the direction of the noise, they saw a large crow, its wizened, wrinkled face stared back at them, no beak, a cracked set of lips parted into a grin as it croaked at them, “lovely dog, yummy dog”. It was clearly eyeing up This Mysterious Life’s mascot. It swooped down, making a grab for the dog, and one of the PCs leapt at it, throwing their coat but missing. The dog was carried up into the air until an acrobatic leap from its owner caught it, pulling it from the grip of this mutated bird, as it spiralled up into the air, cackling madly.

Time to move on, but now with some incredible footage, they continued through the forest to reach another clearing with a Visitor Centre at its heart, nobody here, but it looked fairly well stocked: cryptid socks, many leaflets on park safety and a Messenger Park themed water bottle. As they investigated, they heard scratching coming from the back of the centre. Rushing to the rear of the building, something brown and mottled was wriggling in the long grass. As one of the PCs poked it with a stick, it turned out to be a half-decomposed hand and arm, attached to a partial chest. It grabbed the stick. PCs freaked out, but still kept filming it. Eventually, they left it to its scuffling and headed out of the clearing, down some switchbacks, before ending up in front of a marsh.

The marsh has a warning sign, a hand with a test tube dripping fluid onto the hand - corrosive, as confirmed by dipping some jerky into the marsh, which fizzles and dissolves. Luckily, there is a metal bridge across the marsh, which is double luck for the star of This Mysterious Life, as she fools around for the camera, pretending to almost fall in; the clicks are going to go through the roof once this is uploaded. The cameraman, though, sees a figure behind their anchorwoman, a large seven-foot-tall figure, with many, many eyes. He slaps the woman with a tentacled arm, a pop and an eye appears on her neck where a wound festers.

The Anchorwoman, almost delirious, can now see in both directions and beats a swift retreat, “This is incredible, keep filming!” Even so, with time seemingly running faster in the park, it is time to leave. Darkness has fallen quicker than is natural, and so they stumble back up the paths towards the small visitor centre, the roaring of the strange multi-eyed cryptid now far behind them in the marshy valley.

As they pass the visitor centre, they see a figure, Maxwell of This Curious Life, he’s dazed, looking grey and sickly, hiding something in his shirt. As they get nearer, he almost collapses, and the previously seen mottled brown arm reaches out of his chest; somehow, this partial corpse has merged with Maxwell, which would account for his peaky looks. Rivals they may be, but they can’t leave him here, so they tie up his newly acquired third arm and help him back to the entrance.

For some of the PCs, this is all too much; they quit the show, aiming for a quieter profession. For others, it’s the footage they’ve all been hoping for, and now they have a new crew member who is going to be very handy.

We had a good discussion after the game, drinking a beer and outlining what worked on this procedurally generated venture. Some suggested they’d use this, but would pre-roll everything in advance, definitely an option, though I like the adrenaline and creativity that can come from these prompts. I’ve run this three times, and definitely this run through accelerated more than others, with a lot of high rolls on the Points of Interest and encounters, meaning more deadly opponents earlier on - though I like the randomness at the table of what comes up and then the GM’s ability to improvise around that, there is definitely a thought to tailor i.e. choose results, for 3-4 hours or shorter sessions. Fingers crossed this scenario gets completed, as I definitely think it deserves it.

A few more drinks and a chat before a long day came to a close.

Saturday

I had intended to get up early, I’m usually an early riser, try and find others for breakfast or have a wander around the city, but a snoozed alarm meant I was late, jogging to the venue, only to find a queue of grogs waiting to enter. We recounted past battles, deaths and horrors as we waited in an orderly line, before the doors were flung open and we stomped up to the top floor to be presented with our Sheriff’s badges!

Tales of the Old West - High Stakes in Silver City

I’d been very keen to play some TotOW, I’m running a campaign and loving the sandbox aspects and the lack of anything fantasy or supernatural in the setting, proper historic, old world jeopardy. Also, I’d quizzed Neil on the campaign he’d been running to get a feel of how it could work, so I knew it would be a scenario not to be missed.

We had some excellent characters to work with, much of the scenario centred around Loretta, a ranch owner, and we all worked for her. Loretta had a problem; she owed money to the bank in Silver City, and they wanted it paid by the end of the week, or they’d take her ranch. A deadline was set, and the clock was ticking.

So how could we make $1000 when our prospector PC (Angus) was only picking out $10 of silver for a morning’s work? Cue a newspaper fluttering in the breeze, picking it up, we saw there was a bounty on a female outlaw. My PC (Archibald) looked sidelong at Fox; they definitely had a mysterious past. Could we count on the Doc to get a steady stream of patients coming into his practice? Judging by the aroma of brandy around him, unlikely.

But, a card game, high stakes, winner takes all, Archibald and Doc’s eyes lit up; this was the answer. Archibald would head into town to try and get a bit of leeway with the bank; meanwhile, Doc would find out all about the game. Loretta would accompany them to pick up some dynamite to help our prospector with that big seam, if and when he found it.

Before they could leave the ranch, a friendly neighbour, Elijah Davenport, popped by asking for permission to hunt a mountain lion through Loretta’s property, but also with a few sly digs at her financial problem. He was keen to take the ranch off her hands, if she ever decided to sell.

Things progressed quickly in town. Archibald got a bit of money off the debt, but also saw a full safe and some rowdy customers of the bank. Could the bank manager, Smooth Steve, aka Stephen B. Elkins, be about to do a runner? Doc found an old soldier, who gave him a map in return for a tipple, and Doc also got the lowdown on the poker game, various landowners coming from across the county, but a high entry fee, $100 per hand. Loretta got the dynamite, and they returned to the ranch. Fox decided to accompany the mountain lion hunters, killing the creature, as the hunters provoked it for a bit of sport. Our prospector’s luck had changed for the worse, struggling to find any more silver.

The game continued with attacks on the ranch by persons unknown. The killing of two of Davenport’s hands by Fox. Help for the local Apache community in return for part two of the map, and culminated in the poker game, Archibald and the Doc bluffed and cheated their way to a $1000 win!

We ended the scenario with Davenport arrested for an arson attack on Loretta’s ranch. Loretta secured all three pieces of a treasure map - a veritable fortune, and Fox and Archibald disappeared to avoid awkward questions from Loretta and, more importantly, from the Pinkertons.

Neil did an amazing job with handouts: sheriff badges for all the players, newspapers, lovely stand-up character sheets and authentic tea-stained maps. But more than this was replicating the brilliance of this RPG with a con sandbox run in three hours. Excellent turns from Roy, Vaughan, John and Angus, impressive accents, some bold moves and a mix of ruthlessness, memorable lines - “Don’t you call me a woman!” and compassion - “Let’s get these Apache on to our land so we can help them out.” ✋🏻 …but we have no money or food!

Blathering away to people, I realised it was only to be a quick lunch before the last game of Grogmeet.

Basic Roleplaying - Sky Rig

Paul Baldowski pulled out all the stops with an impressive array of handouts, standee character sheets and IDs on lanyards. Plus, Sky Rig plans with 100s of rooms, and we only had 210 minutes to complete the mission. Paul had also placed a white electronic device, which he said was a timer, but could have easily been some kind of device to enhance stress and nerves as we played.

Martin, Andrew, Angus, Mikey and I donned our suits, and after an exposition that may have confused those who even understood the Trade Federation tax blockade from The Phantom Menance, we were on our way… look, the why was not important; we had a job to do, and nothing was going to get in our way, unless it was our own incompetence.

Paul had bastardised the Basic Roleplaying system for this game. I had assumed it was a percentile roll equal to or under, so the finer hacking elements passed me by, but it seemed well-suited to fast-paced action and investigation.

Deciding the control centre was the first port of call, we casually ignored the other ship already docked and only passing interest in a corpse in the entrance, and made our way to the brains of this mobile refinery, floating above the mass of Jupiter. Figgis, my character, fumbled a roll trying to bypass the door lock, frying it, disabling the lights and getting some serious burns - impressive for a single roll. Inside, our crew faced off against interlopers, demanding that they throw down their weapons, encouraging them with a few flash bangs, and miraculously, they complied. This was easy.

With the control room locked down, we started noticing power was draining fast, and the rig was descending towards Jupiter; gravity was increasing, crushing us. Logs were found that suggested little critters had gotten into the rig and were busy killing off crew and disabling the functions. They’d got in via the Pipeline Drive, at the bottom of this floating death trap, but we were being paid for this gig, so we took the express elevator down. Gravity was punishing as the oil refinery was creaking and groaning, as the lights flickered.

Daniels was there, the only surviving member; he was close to death, only able to get out a few incomprehensible words and then, “It’s…” Poovey, the medic, jolted him with doctorin’ stuff, and we got out of him that it’s, “…in the ducts…” Good enough.

Into the ducts went Kreiger, encountering some viscous goo that seemed to suck his life force, but said goo must have a beginning and an end. We pondered this with a little prompting from our GM. OF COURSE! We just need to find the arse and the mouth and connect them up, or something like this. Strangely, no one tapped the X card as we pondered the development from high-action sci-fi to a Human Centipede variation.

After whizzing up and down in the lifts, Kreiger found the head, and we pinpointed that the, er, “tail” must be in storage. With the power drain now stopping any lift movement, someone would have to carry the coils of electrical cable from the mouth to down below. Poovey and Tunt then decided to arm wrestle, debate and play rock-paper-scissors to decide who would have the honour of connecting bum to bouche. Eventually, Tunt won and proceeded to lose their footing, plunging down the ladder. Bruised but alive, they were faced with eight storage containers to check. The first was empty, so the rest of us clambered down to help check the other seven. In storage pod three, the end was exposed, and the cable was inserted. The creature imploded. The power was still low, but we could divert the…

With a creak, a groan, a crash, the oil refinery rig tore apart, along with our crew, plunging downwards, the atmospheric pressure hitting us like a wall at high speed. We were not going to get paid for this one.

An excellent scenario, run with aplomb by Paul, who, with some relish, held up the timer, showing we had gone over by one minute when we finally destroyed the energy-sucking beast. If only we’d done a lot of things a lot quicker, but would we have had as much fun?! The players really lived up to their characters, who were subtle pastiches (and not so subtle) of the series Archer. I was particularly impressed with Poovey, our medic, checking out the dead body as we stepped onto the rig, “They’re dead, but how dead and what kind of dead are they?”

Until next time

Rushing for the train, my social battery depleted, I was still pondering a possible extra night, Morpcon on Sunday, but maybe next year. A wonderful con, loads of enthusiastic tabletop roleplaying gamers flexing their big brains and creativity to deliver some fantastic experiences. And of course so much thanks to Dirk the Dice and Blyth for the mammoth effort in pulling all of this together.

As long as the weather gods, wallet gods are kind, I’ll be there in 2027 and hopefully for the full weekend!