Concrete Cow 18.5 games

The games below will be offered at the Concrete Cow 18.5 on 15 September 2018. If you have something you'd like to offer, please drop us a line via the UK Roleplayers forum or any of the other places where we publicise Concrete Cow. See the Concrete Cow 18 page for what was on offer last time.

Game Slots

To keep some sense of organisation, this is the approximate timetable for the day.

Doors open	9.00am
Morning game sign up	9.40am	(ABCDEFGHIJ)
Morning games	10.00am – 1.30pm
Afternoon game sign up	2.10pm	(JIHGFEDCBA)
Afternoon games	2.30pm – 6.30pm
Raffle draw	6.30pm
Evening game sign up	7.10pm	(EFDGCHBIAJ)
Evening games	7.30pm – 11.00pm
Close	11.00pm

Sign-ups will be on the day only. You may want to learn more about our signup system.

Offering games

You can download blank sign-up sheets as sign-up sheet (MS Word) or sign-up sheet (PDF). (If you're offering a game, please note that you're still responsible for writing your own sign-up sheet; we don't create them for you.)

Send us your game blurbs via the UK Roleplayers forum or any of the other places where we publicise Concrete Cow and we'll put them here!

Note for GMs

If your game has pre-generated characters, please take a look at their demographics. If the pre-gens are mostly straight white men, ask yourself why. If that's what's required by the scenario, fine. If not, please include more diversity in the characters.

If you game involves content that some people might find upsetting, please note that in the game blurb.

If you don't want someone at your table, you have every right to ask them to leave, at any time. You don't have to provide a reason, but please try to remain civil. Ask an organiser to step in if it's needed.

During a game, if you notice that one person's behaviour is making someone else uncomfortable, please don't ignore it. Do something about it. Take note of the harassment policy.

The GenCon Games on Demand advice and parts of How to Run Safer, Accessible, and Inclusive Game Conventions go into much more detail, even if it is rather US-centric.

The Games

Note that, depending on circumstances, not all of these games may run on the day.

Morning

The d6 Hack: One of our Clerics is missing

Father Millwort has been kidnapped by a group of goblins. Nobody can work out why. He's a Holy Man, for sure. Very devout. But he's not a particularly high ranking or gifted member of the local clergy.

His superior - Deaconess Telesa - has tasked a group of brave adventurers - you - to recover the poor man. If you do, surely you'll be blessed of the Gods. She's promised to give you a benediction of her own should you succeed.

The d6 Hack is my lightweight D&D clone which only uses d6. It's been developed as part of the Role-Play Relief book to be sold in support of Comic Relief. Designed specifically to introduce new players into the hobby. This adventure is the introductory one I intend to publish in the book. Neither the system or adventure are anything innovative or clever. Just an old school romp run by an experienced and halfway decent referee. I'd really appreciate your feedback on the system and scenario. You will make your own characters as part of the session.

GM: Simon Burley

Players: 2 - 6

The Dee Sanction: A Day Will Come at Last

June 1584. Edward Kelley has fallen into a prophetic trance, claiming to speak for the Archangel Uriel. As he and Doctor John Dee rest within the curtain walls of Wawel Castle in the middle of Krakow, you have been set a task:

Retrieve a sliver of enchanted flint, necessary to accurately scribe the words of the angels; Dee believes the Cave of the Virgin Mary, more than a days ride away, a viable source.

GM: Paul Baldowski

Players: up to 4

Dungeon World/Grim World: Down and Out in the City of Brass

The City of Brass! The capital of the Efreet, A centre for Subjugation, Patron City of the Almighty Pazuzu, and the plane of fires only decent place for nightclubs. Here the Grand Sultan oversees a group of unruly nobles and their insolent slaves as they toil in the great copper mines to produce ever more resplendent and phallic towers for their edification.

You are one such slave, plucked like a lucky pebble from the dross of your earthen filth, given the rank of Ghulam, and elevated to perform a secret mission for your masters in the Efreet House of Daivari. Such leisures as you have never known since your freedom! Fresh water! Adequate Food! And little information on your quest, you are surely honored among the fallen and freakish, and will perform your task well.

Travel with the marvel of your masters design, the Gorgonic Velocifer, into the accursed mote of doom, to the palace of one hundred shrines to bring your Masters offer to the sage of oblivion. Simple enough for even you!

GM: Robin Poole

Players: 3-5

InSpectres: We Are Detective

An online community dying in strange accidents…

A client hiring a detective to follow herself…

A bag of coffee being stolen and returned repeatedly…

A cast of misfits and eccentrics are drawn into investigating these seemingly unconnected events but soon come to realise the sinister secret behind them all that threatens to destroy the world. One thing remains clear: they must Stop The Elevator…

Strongly inspired by Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and Happy!, this is a player driven narrative of dark humour, bizarre mysteries and weird characters.

GM: James Mullen

Players: up to 4

Kult Divinity Lost: Unchained

January in Las Vegas. The weather has been changing and now the rain has started to fall. In the storm sewers under the neon-lit streets, the homeless live in darkness and fear, because when heavy rain comes, people die. As night descends, they will realise there is more to fear under the streets than just the rain.

NOTE: Adults only, please - Kult is a game that deals with mature themes.

GM: Matt Sanderson

Players: up to 4

OSR/Stormbringer: Stolen Moments

A hundred years ago Huegot the Particular, a merchant travelling between Karlaak and Jadmar wrote of ancient ruins at the cliffs of Doom Point. Today, increasing unrest in Old Hrolmar prompts Duke Avan Astran to journey north into Vilmir’s provinces to make contact with other states. But his motive is not only political. He knows Huegot’s story and is greatly interested in Doom Point’s ruins, which he suspects are Melnibonean. And naturally, he needs companions…

This is a classic Stormbringer scenario from 1991’s Perils of the Young Kingdoms, updated for an OSR-style system.

GM: Ralph Lovegrove

Players: 6

Trail of Cthulhu: A Week of Kindness

It was a great party: drinking, dancing, surrealists throwing hissy fits… but now Max has been taken into hospital, Breton has threatened to excommunicate everyone involved and Sandrine from Le Batifol says you have a week to pay for the flood damage to her premises.

Can you save surrealism from the success of Une semaine de bonté?

Starring:

• Claude Cahun • Robert Desnos • Valentine Hugo • Kiki de Montparnasse • Man Ray • Tristan Tzara

Dreamhounds of Paris (Trail of Cthulhu): scenes of moderate horror, nudity and violence.

GM: Mathew (Abstract Machine)

Players: 3-5

Afternoon

Call of Cthulhu: The Idol of Cthulhu

March 1929. A firm of private investigators in Rhode Island is hired to find the whereabouts of two missing men. Both have been named as beneficiaries in the will of a recently deceased academic but they have both gone into hiding. But what are two apparently unconnected men, from very different walks of life, possibly hiding from?

GM: Matt Sanderson

Players: up to 4

The Cthulhu Hack: Ggantija

April 2016. Your flight in to Malta Airport is delayed, and you land well past one in the morning. Piling into a MPV that Peter Catterick sent for you all, you bump westward across the island, catching glimpses of neon-lit hotel signs amid areas of rural darkness.

The famous theatrical director has gathered you together on the 400th anniversary of the Bard, to perform as the leading actors in a production of The Tempest. You just couldn’t refuse!

GM: Paul Baldowski

Players: up to 4

Everway (Grand Tableau): The Death Hand of Saint No-one

An unexpected visitor puts a small cabal of mages on the trail of a dangerous artefact — a missing reliquary containing the visitor’s own hand and forearm. An auction house, a reclusive collector, and rival magicians lie in the cabal’s path. What do they all want with the Hand — and what damage can they do to the fabric of reality?

The system is an updated version of Jonathan Tweet’s card-based system Everway, in the style of modern magical games like Mage the Ascension and Unknown Armies.

GM: Ralph Lovegrove

Players: 4

Manifold: Lock, stock and two....... what?

The East-End. And you owe a big one to Danny "two fingers" Henderson. Especially as he used to be Danny "three fingers". Your fault.

The only thing letting you keep you knackers - and other assorted bits - is your agreement to hit the Matt Brinks Safety Deposit Facility in London's Hatton Garden. If you can pull it off, it'll be the crime of the century.

A simple - OK, not at all simple - heist scenario requiring flexible thinking - and, possibly, morals - as things are almost certain to spiral out of your control in unexpected ways.

Manifold is my 2d6 multi-genre system where magic happens every time somebody rolls a double. Described as "the love child of GURPs and Paranoia" or simply "2d6 shennanigans". This adventure will be based in the contemporary, realistic setting of a British Gangster Movie. You will make your own characters as part of the session.

GM: Simon Burley

Players: 2-6

Evening

Lovecraftesque: Through the Waters, Darkly

Lovecraftesque is a GMless storytelling game of brooding cosmic horror. You and your friends will each contribute strange clues to a slow-building mystery, culminating in a journey into darkness that ends in a climactic scene of horror. The game focuses on a single Witness, who is at the mercy of strange and terrifying events. Lovecraft's stories rarely featured parties of investigators, and the hero rarely wins - that's how our game works, too. You rotate responsibility for playing the Witness, but the role is much more about revealing their inner thoughts and fears than solving the mystery or beating up cultists.

Scenario : Through the Waters, Darkly by Joshua Fox. At the bottom of the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean, a research team uncover something horrifying.

Location : The Challenger United Nations research expedition, at the bottom of the Mariana oceanic trench, 10km beneath the surface. The year is 2025. The characters are a team of experts seconded to the UN from their home institutions.

The Witness : Vicente “Tasi” Fuentes, a Guamanian marine biologist, trained in California. He is driven by a burning need to know what’s out there. He is an avid consumer of science fiction books and movies, and has avivid imagination.

GM: Robin Poole

Players: 3-4

Unspecified

Board & Card Games...

...will be available should anyone be without a game