Finally made it out to Chaosium Con (third one, I think?) this year, my first ever gaming convention. Here is a very brief overview of what I ran, what I played, and what events I snuck into, as well as some general thoughts and lamentations. I’ll eventually do full reviews for at least the new games I ran. For more detailed writeups of the Con (and pictures, I took exactly two pictures, and one was this), I recommend the personal recounts by Bucho, Doc (Dactyl), other Doc (Tracy), Evan Perlman, Jared Smith (of Bayt Al Azif fame) and the RPG Reanimators podcast.

Lamentation 1 – I should have arrived earlier. I got in very late Thursday night and left very early Monday morning. If at all possible, I’d rather sacrifice a bit of the slower Sunday in favour of getting into some of the fun social shenanigans on Thursday like the LARP, speakeasy, and general drunken carousing in the bar.

Friday, Session 1 – The first Call of Cthulhu game I ran was Cartoon Reanimation, by Nanamine Kizashi, from the Japanese Call of Cthulhu scenario anthology, Bibliothek 13. This was my first time running the scenario, and I had a blast with it, and it seemed like most of the players did too –literally in the case of one investigator who accidently blasted there own face off (incidentally, the player was the Apocalypse Players podcast’s own Joseph Chance, which I didn’t notice until the end, proving how absolutely god awful I am at placing names and voices).  The scenario is a delightful mix of cartoony goofiness with horrific violence and body horror. It has a nice classic scenario vibe being set in 1920s California (the only such scenario in the anthology, the rest all being Modern day Japan), and a largely freeform investigation design. A small nitpick I have with the Bibliothek 13 scenarios in general is the lack of pregen investigators or any real suggestions of how to make suitable investigators, but luckily all the players in the group really took the basic pregens I throw together and ran with them, playing off one-another to make for a very dynamic group despite the short run time. Also, it’s the first session I’ve had where I can say five investigators died and one escaped, despite only having four players. A hint for anyone running this – be prepared to handover control of the NPCs to the players as back ups, or have some extra investigators handy just in case. Rabbits are deadlier than they look!

Lamentation 2 – The food in the convention hall was firmly acceptable. It did not make me sick, and it provided the calories required to not pass out. I also completely missed it on the first morning and accidently had the hotel breakfast in the Terrace restaurant. That was an expensive mistake. Also, while the Bearclaw coffee truck was fantastic, I feel the convention food is a solid one-time thing. I got very tired of tatter tots very quickly. Next time, find friendly people to latch onto earlier to go get food at the nearby strip malls. I didn’t do that until Saturday, meaning Friday was the day of tatter tots.

Friday Session 2 – I played in Matt ‘Doc’ Tracey’s run of Paul Fricker’s Dockside Dogs. I knew going in that this was a bonkers scenario. It was. Starts off as Reservoir Dogs, slowly gets weird, and then flies of a cliff into crazy town in a very fun way. The players were all great, and Doc did a great job (and very obviously enjoyed) tormenting us. You can always tell a session is going well when a player (Buccho, in this case) repeatedly threatens to murder the Keeper. Can’t say too much more of it without getting into super spoilers, and I’m very much aiming to torture my own group with this someday, so let’s save it for a full review.

Mini-Lamentation – I saw Paul Fricker a few times as I was heading to things while hew as also engaged in things. Next time I need to engineer a complicated plan to run into him directly. Or just say hi like a normal human being.

Extra Thought – In all the games I ran and in Doc’s Dockside Dog’s, the Bouts of Madness in the rulebook was replaced with Ruined Relic’s (Aaron Sinner and Todd Walden) Bouts of Madness Deck. I’ve been meaning to write a full review of these cards, but in short, they are in almost every way superior to the regular table. They especially (and obviously) work best in person, and it was a joy to hand the deck over to a player whenever their investigators had a bout, and watch their face as they laugh or cringe at whatever madness is about to be inflicted on their character. I’ve only bought the PDF, and so just printed and cut out the deck, but Doc was cool and had the actual physical deck. He also had the neat idea of having players take three cards, then choose the one they think is most applicable to the current situation, which was a nice touch that I’ll probably go with in the future. If you haven’t tried the deck yet, I 100% recommend it.

Lamentation 3 –  I enjoyed grabbing pins and stickers from all the podcast tables and people wandering around. One thing I had been hoping for was a shirt – unfortunately no one seemed to be selling shirts. Next time, order a shirt before hand. Everyone had fun T-shirts. I did not. Sadness.

Friday (and Saturday) Evening Event – After running Cartoon Reanimation in the morning, Joseph revealed who he was (by saying his name and pointing at his branded T-Shirt – again, I’m very good at identifying people) and said the Apocalypse Players were doing a live improv actual play at night. I very intentionally left all the third evening slots open, so I popped in. I’d never been to a live show, and only really listen to Actual Plays for scenarios I’m preparing to run. I had no idea what I was getting into, but this, and the second show Saturday night, ended up being the highlight of the con for me. The four guys were so god-damned funny, taking all the weird suggestions from the crowd and really running with them and expertly playing off one another. The first show ended up being about stinky zoo. The second show was about sentient, very shy yeast at a distillery. I’m not sure how to summarise them beyond that, so I wont. I can only imagine how annoying it is to coordinate everything from across the Atlantic for the team, but I really do hope they come out again next year, as the shows are a great way to round off the night (before heading to the bar).

Saturday Session 1 – I ran No Breaking Off (which really should be titled ‘I Can’t Stop It’, same as a its Japanese title, but I digress…) by Uchiyama Yasujirou, from the Japanese modern-day sourcebook and scenario collection, Cthulhu 2020. I am quickly becoming a big fan of Uchiyama’s scenarios, and No Breaking Off hasn’t changed that progression. It’s a relatively simple and short scenario, but it has a lovely creeping tension and then a sudden jolt into madness. It’s a more of an atmosphere piece than some of Uchiyama’s other more mini-sandboxy scenarios, but it still gives plenty of room for players to wander about and approach issues in their own ways. It’s essentially three scenes strung together, but investigators are largely free to do what they want in each scene, even if they are ultimately linearly connected. This is a very light example of a somewhat common structure I’ve noticed in some Japanese scenarios that lean heavy into feeling like a visual novel or text adventure, but done via a Keeper, and I did want to show that style off at the con, but without doing anything too strictly linear. Sidenote: Lex and Holly from RPG Reanimators played in this, and both their characters survived (there fellow player’s investigator did not, sort of)! 

Lamentation 4 – I scheduled all of the sessions I was GMing in the morning slots, as that’s when I’m most on the ball. Unfortunately, the two events (or really one combined event) that I was the most interested in turned out to be right during the first session – that being the Miskatonic Repository Creators Meeting Creators event (with Mimosas!) and the Miskatonic Repository book popup stall. I snuck out during a break to try to find two books I’d been wanting to nab there to avoid DTRPG’s shipping prices (and lead times to Canada…). I was able to get one, David Trotti’s 1920s Japan source book, Empire of Shadows, but unfortunately the other, Heinrich Moore’s Call of Cthulhu Guide to Carcossa, supposedly sold out immediately (I later did get to at least see it in person, along with Heinrich himself, that evening at the bar – it’s a chunky book, and so very pretty). Didn’t have time to pop into the mixer though, and even with the session ending early, the event had already wrapped up. Assuming its at the same time next year, I’ll definitely be leaving Saturday morning open so I can chat with other writers/editors/artists/etc.

Saturday Session 2 – The second and last scenario I played in was run by none other than the creative director himself, Mike Mason, running an unpublished (yet to be published?) scenario called Aurora Blue. The players took the roles of US Treasury agents raiding a supposed moonshine distillery in rural Alaska. I won’t give much away as it’s not available yet, but I do enjoy its set up, with the players being given pretty much all the time they want to plan out the raid however they like. We spent a solid half an hour brainstorming and devising a plan to infiltrate the property as well as back up plans and contingencies. Of course, everything immediately went to hell and we had to improvise, aka shoot and blow things up. My investigator’s highlight was First Aiding a grandma to death (accidently!). Also a near TPK, a TPK in spirit. A very fun session, and of course it was an honour to watch Mike Mason work.

Saturday Evening – The rest of Saturday consisted of getting some dice at the vendor hall and having the will power to not buy any books I know I wouldn’t actually be using any time soon (I desperately wanted to grab the RuneQuest and Pendragon rulebooks, but I currently don’t have a group to run those with), getting away from the hotel to eat some restaurant food, going to the second Apocalypse Players improv show, and going to the bar to mingle. It was a good time.

Lamentation 5 – I am garbage with branding. As mentioned early in the shirts’ bit, lots of people have podcast shirts. Also, most people are smart enough to use their real names on their online stuff. As I am a very smart person, I go by either MJRRPG or JR on all the internet things, while my badge was just my real name. I did have stickers of my little dice logo, which I promptly forgot to use pretty much the whole time. I really should have just stuck one to my badge or shirt or face to make it easier finding internet acquaintances. So, I met a solid quarter of the people I meant to say hi to, and most likely walked past most of those three quarters simply because there was no way for them to recognise me, and I had tunnel vision and wasn’t paying attention. A handful of people I played with did mention they read or listened to this blog/podcast thing, which was absolutely lovely, to know I’m not completely talking into the empty void (or at least a handful of people were kind enough to lie about me not yelling into the void).

Sunday Session 1 (The Last Session) – I ran Uchiyama Yasujirou’s Three Requests, also from Bibliothek 13, for the second time. I love this scenario, and already wrote a review of it. The players were once again great, and I love watching them piece together what is happening and coming up with plans. This is really one of the best scenarios for that, as the information and goals given to the players is fairly front loaded, giving them plenty of time to decide amongst themselves what to do, and each time they get a new piece of information can change their perception of what’s going on. It’s impossible for me not to smile and eyeball the players whenever they’re spitballing theories that just happen to be exactly what is happening, or on the other hand their ideas are much worse than what’s actually happening. Special sidenote that Colin Richards, writer of the Miskatonic Repository scenario Signal to Noise, and an amazing artist, was present and did just a fantastic sketch of his investigator while playing, complete with a dog, fish, hamster, and chicken wings.

Sunday wind down – I didn’t plan a session 2 slot for Sunday, and instead joined Lex and Alex from the RPG Reanimators for some food, then milled about for a bit and said goodbye to anyone I recognised leaving. Then I slept.

Lamentation 6 – I came in with the goal to play a RuneQuest and a Pendragon game. I did neither. Womp womp.

This was my first ever in person convention, and I think the size was perfect. Not massive, but not small either, and with a scope that makes sure almost everyone has something in common with everyone else. I fully plan to attend next year assuming the airfare and my pocketbook continue to vaguely align.