The come-down after the astonishing weekend of gaming is never easy and it seems even more difficult this week. To be locked away from reality for a short time in an isolation tank of mayhem has a restorative effect on the soul.

GROGMEET was moved from its usual slot of November to January to avoid a clash with a number of different events, including the MTV awards which took over the city centre of Manchester.

The new slot has a lot going for it. Things are a bit quieter in the pubs and hotels cheaper, plus it was something to look forward to in the normally miserable winter month.

THE GREAT RACE

The weekend started with a multi-table extravaganza Gatsby and The Great Race, a scenario written by Paul Fricker, which involves different dimensions in time and space, time-loops and table-hopping seances where everything seems a bit out of joint. I won’t go into the details here in case you get chance to play it (Paul has rewritten it for 7th edition and intends to publish on the Miskatonic Repository).

There were seven tables, two extra dimensions, twelve keepers, forty players and I was coordinating the proceedings from the centre of the room like a … messianic megalomanic. Thanks to the people who made it all possible. Paul did a great job before the event describing what to expect, based on previous experiences.

The whole thing was a once in a life-time gaming experience. Bonkers.

The Friday afternoon event is normally organised by OldScouseRoleplayer, but he was in Tenby with Dave Paterson and crew. It was their annual weekend of gaming, a remote version of GROGMEET, known as GROGTEN where original players in his ‘Friday Night Barbarians of Lemuria’ game gather for a weekend of gaming by the sea. Absent friends were present.

They were there in spirit as they provided the sound effects for the alternate dimension that players travelled through during the fractured time. They diligently recorded a script of nonsense, that only bore a passing resemblance to what was going on in the scenario. The players thought they were clues and brought them back to the table.

During the preparation, Paul Fricker mentioned a version of the game where his friend Matt Sanderson had the players in an out-house looking for a honey-badger. It was a funny red-herring, so it was included in the recording. Sure enough, at least one player was on the hunt for a honey-badger that wasn’t really there.

PLAY IS THE THING

From my point of view, it was one of the most pleasurable GROGMEETs as it ran smoothly during the event, despite some hiccups in the run up to it. I could relax and enjoy running some games.

I gave my Mean Arena, forged in the dark hack, another run out. It does a pretty good job of replicating the comic strip and the players were pretty inventive in their manoeuvres against The Cottonhopilites, resulting in a 3 – 0 away win.

Andy Burnside tried to convince Matt Talon of The Slayers to throw the game. Not this time Andy, not this time.

On Saturday morning, I ran a Liminal game that had been written by Blythy about the haunting of The Old Man and Scythe pub in Bolton. The pub is one of the oldest in the country. It is famous for being the last place where the Earl of Derby stayed prior to his execution for his role in the Bolton massacre during the English Civil War. The investigation moved at a good pace, which culminated in a challenging confrontation which took all of the characters to the brink. Once again I was impressed with Liminal and its deceptive simplicity.

In the afternoon I had the chance to unfurl a new map for Raclash, the game world we created forty years ago for a play-by-mail game. I explained the lore to the players, showing the original artefact: a hand drawn map coloured with pencils with the odd bit of Tippex, on Games Workshop hex-paper. I have redrawn the map for the 21st Century, and with the help of All Rolled Up, had it printed on an A1 piece of velvety satin. Worth the price of entry.

I ran two scenarios in Raclash (the other was on Sunday afternoon for MORPcon) that were continuing stories from the campaign that I have been running with the Wednesday night group. They were a couple of side-quests which will have a lasting impact on the next stage of the campaign. The first scenario involved intervening in the advance of a storm demon laying siege to the capital city and the second scenario sent the players as assassins to take out one of the key warlords who were attempting to lay claim to the Kingdom. They were different, but both scenarios involved the infiltration of a gorgon’s nest to unleash the ultimate weapon of petrification.

On Saturday the players said, “a game like this would have been terrible back in the day as you’d assume that the GM was out to get you.” Sure enough, on Sunday’s game, following a series of unfortunate rolls, one of the players was turned to stone with an hour left to play. Ah well.

It was all fast and furious fun using my version of BRP (Stormbringer with a dash of homebrew). It had all the swings of fortune that you might expect when the stakes are high, the monsters fearsome and the 80s swords and sorcery movie tropes flow.

SANCTION

On Sunday morning, Paul Baldowski joined me and the GROGSQUAD in FanBoy 3’s basement of role-playing rambling to talk about his experience of running Gary Gygax’s Dangerous Journeys at GROGMEET. How many other conventions are running that? He also delved into his postal gaming past and talked about The Dee Sanction’s influence on his design projects. You’ll be able to hear his contribution in a GROGPOD coming soon.

That was that. Another GROGMEET complete. Emerging from the weekend, blinking in the light, I turn on the news, oh no! Prepare the isolation tank.

I want to go back. Get ready for virtual GROGMEET in April.

Dirk

Thanks to Foundation Coffee House and FanBoy3 for looking after us over the weekend. You can read other accounts of the weekend from people who were there:

Neil

First Age

Stef

The post GROGMEET Jan ’25 Scrapbook first appeared on The GROGNARD Files.