Gumshoe and Pelgrane Virtual Con 2024, Part 1
Gumshoe and Pelgrane Virtual Con 2024, Part 1
So it's all over, 11 games run over 12 days that featured a different GM for each game. We had around 70 registrations on Warhorn and ended up with over 40 players across those games. This is the second year we've run it and we decided to change it up, firstly by allowing more than just Gumshoe, so we included other Pelgrane Press games like 13th Age. Secondly, we used Warhorn to assign users to games, this massively reduced the workload on the organisers aka me and I "think" on the whole it worked. The primary benefit of Warhorn, which is a little esoteric, is that it is easy to point people not on our Discord to this place and, once the initial games are set up and players assigned, it is easy to sync changes in Warhorn with any set-up you have in Discord.
So on to the games and we opened with Da'Zoon a dark Swords and Sorcery Gumshoe game from Steve Dempsey.
Described by one of the players as, "...kinda like you're playing a drinking game with Jack Vance and Leigh Bracket at the arse-end of a convention, in the middle of nowhere."
Much of the game was improvised from player input see below.
Various journeys across the plains and swamps of the Crimson Empire and the Empire of the Giant Brains including encounters with goats, until a showdown with Tal-Bellar.
All the players seemed to love this more freeform take on Gumshoe and many stories were told, ales quaffed, and legends made!
Game two was Swords of the Serpentine, John ran this, a very popular game and homebrew for beginners, that had a fantastic pitch "When the powers that be of the great city of Eversink needs heroes, it turns to someone else. When someone of means wants an ancient ruin plundered, an artefact stolen, a rival disposed of, or a wrong avenged without involving the City Watch or the Church of Denari's Inquisitors, they turn to you. During your latest heist, you begin to uncover a plot that threatens not just your life, but the City, and maybe even the goddess herself. It turns out, you might just be heroes after all."
I'm hoping John will run again so I can experience his take on Eversink.
On to three, Night's Black Agents, probably the Gumshoe game I haven't got to play as much as I've wished to. The GM, PT, always runs a good game and with this mini-sandbox, there were loads of opportunities for all the agents to shine.
The scenario, without giving too much away, is quite discombobulating, you're never quite sure what is real or imagined and this adds to the dream-like state of the setting. Some lovely art in Foundry set the scene and some of the automation on the character sheets allowed more focus on the story. There was a fantastic redacted play report from Ian, on the experiences of his agent Ashanti, you can imagine their inner turmoil when we were faced with a horrendous moral choice at the end. Luckily with RPGs, there is always a sequel, so we chose the least bad outcome, promising that if everything went wrong, we could always come back again and sort it out.
So, that's it for Part 1, to come, games of The Fall of Delta Green, 13th Age and Trail of Cthulhu.