I
ran See How They Run (a companion piece to Three Blind Mice) on Friday
night and across the Sunday slot. I think it was well received and it
raised £52 if I recall correctly in the auction. As it involved trading I needed brokers again and as well as inventing some new ones recycled Weekea-da
- the Bwap - from my Traveller Adventure nights in the pub. He of the enthusiastic hand flapping, tongue flicking and often slipping back into the Bwap language. Bakaka! Welcome! Two of my Traveller Adventure players chose to sign up the first time I ran the game so I think it's the first NPC I've ever introduced to
almost a round of applause! He went down just as well the second time and I think one other referee at least might have nicked him.
I
also ran a game of Star Trek Expeditions on Saturday to fill in one of
Andy's blank slots. Not quite Traveller but enjoyable none-the-less. I framed it as Traveller just for form's sake by making it scouts on the edge of Solomani space having obtained an old training simulation that they need to evaluate for potential use by themselves. Some spectacularly poor die rollling on behalf of the Enterprise meant that on the second run through of the simulation (captain level) not a lot of success was achieved.
Elsewhere others were either being or avoiding the noisy Chirpers once
again (an on going series by Andy and his wife Sarah) of somewhat dim
little avians who get themselves into all sorts of usually quite funny
scrapes), playing ArchDukes and Emporers, searching for Lost Knowledge, staging Strike attacks and much more. Steve Ellis ran all three of his incredible interactional adventures across the weekend, so if you up for it, you could have bagged the whole set.
I
managed to play in two games and chose two corkers! The first was
Steve Ellis' wonderful Mirabilis. (I may have raved about playing
Emperor Strephon in his ultimately high level game three years ago - Eve
of Rebellion.) In this one we were five planetary governors trying to
apportion priority to problems we were facing and (limited) resources we
had. It could have been dull and work-like but in fact it was a
terrific interactional game in which you were really made to feel the
effects of the choices you made. At one point I assigned a rather low
priority to maintenance, and a floating city crashed - killing 10 million...
The
second game was with James Firminger, a very young referee brought
along by his Dad. In it we were young tribesfolk in a coming of age
trial that involved climbing up to the eyries of dragon like creatures
(think: Avatar) to persuade one to bond with each of us psionically so we could
ride them and help protect the tribe. The highlight was one of our
number, an alpha male, who for various character reasons
wanted to go after The Biggest of the dragons. And the dragon was much
too proud - and alpha male - to be easily caught. Cue a face off
between the two which took maybe 20 minutes of game time, in which these
two challenged each other and battled for mastery without either being
quite able to get the ascendance. It was interesting enough in game
terms but played out by exceptionally gifted player and referee it
was mesmerizing stuff and I could have watched it for longer! At the
end, when we discovered that decisions we'd made would - in many many
millennia, eventually effect the more usual Traveller setting of the
Third Imperium and lead to The Virus was a stunning conceptual breakthrough moment in a high
concept game that it was a privilege to be a part of.