You’ve properly had a chance to wake up by now on the first day of the con, the perfect time to bite into a game.
Games will run from 13:00 to 17:00
Game: For the Honour of Grayskull
System: For the Honor
GM: Vivek Santayana (He/Him)
Game Location – The Loft Bar Table 1
Age Rating: 13+
Content Warnings: Romance. Themes of colonialism.
Short Hook: Based on Dreamworks’ She Ra and the Princess of Power. Play Princesses of Power who fight to Safe Etheria from the invasion of the Evil Legion. This game will use a GM-less story system. We must be strong!
Longer Description:
Based on Dreamworks’ She Ra and the Princess of Power cartoon, players will be play Princesses of Power in their fight against the invasion of the Evil Legion. This will be set some centuries after the events of the cartoon, with a new generation of Princesses and She Ra. Players will play members of the Rebellion, denizens of the various Etherian Kingdoms, the Wilds, or conflicted members of the Legion who band together to repel the Dark Lord’s invasion. Will they save Etheria, or will its magic and infinite power fall into the hands of darkness and evil?
This is a GM-less, collaborative story game by Quinn Vega, based on D. Vincent Baker and Meguey Baker’s Firebrands system. The story will be driven through a series of mini-games depicting a specific kind of scene, such as prom, head-to-head battles, quiet moments of vulnerability, and a unified stand against an enemy.
Vivek is running two games with the same game concept this weekend with two different systems.
Game: Federal Bureau of Control
System: Savage Worlds
GM: Roderick Easton
Game Location – The Loft Bar Table 2
Age Rating: Neutral
Content Warnings: The setting is on the borderline between thriller and horror.
Short Hook: The office of the Administration function of the Rituals Department was misplaced during a recent House Shift. Your squad is one of several that has been asked to investigate into the unexplored areas of the Oldest House to try to locate the office.
Longer Description:
This scenario is inspired by the computer game Control, which is set within the headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control. This bureau is tasked with investigating and understanding any paranatural events and the places and items that are altered by them. The Oldest House is a Place of Power located in New York City. Appearing as a featureless skyscraper of the Brutalist architectural style, the interior of the Oldest House is a space-defying, constantly shifting labyrinth connected to various alternate dimensions through spontaneously occurring Thresholds. The Oldest House acts as the global headquarters of the Federal Bureau of Control, where the Bureau carries out research on paranatural phenomena, and contains hundreds of Altered Items and Objects of Power.
The group consists of an NCO, a ranger (scout), a trooper (heavy weapons) and a parautilitarian (psychic) who are familiar with the interior of the building.
Game: The Book that was Lost in the Dark
System: Coriolis
GM: Aaron Billingham
Game Location – The Loft Bar Table 3
Age Rating: Neutral
Content Warnings: Combat, cinematic rather than gory
Short Hook: You’re a mercenary crew hired to retrieve the Book of the Damned from a planet way out in the Dark. Whether you believe the original science team fell foul of twisted ancient science or soul-corrupting demons from the Dark doesn’t matter: the money’s too good to refuse.
Longer Description:
Tales of the Book of the Damned are so fantastical it was assumed to be a myth, until that is, someone was prepared to pay for an expedition to a distant planet to retrieve it. Almost successful, the team reportedly found the book before sending a final message, claiming “night fell whilst the sun remained high, and people cried tears of Darkness before shadows crawled from their chests”.
Few would risk a journey to a planet so far out into the Dark but the money the Nestera School of Archaeology is offering would be enough to set your mercenary crew up as an independent operation, free of Faction politics and the whims of eccentric patrons. Whether you believe those shadows to be the results of twisted experiments by the ancient Portal Builders or demons from the Dark come to corrupt peoples’ souls, a chance to make a life under your own rules is too good an offer to refuse: you must retrieve that book.
Game: Clever Girls
System: OneDice: Raptors
GM: Ben McCallum
Game Location – The Loft Bar Table 4
Age Rating: Neutral
Content Warnings: violence, potentially towards children
Short Hook: A chance to relive the classic cinematic story, Jurassic Park, only now from a rather cleverer, hungrier perspective.
Longer Description:
It’s Jurassic Park, on that fateful night when Dennis Nedry pulled the switch and all the power went down. The system is dead, the fences are out, and so are you.
You’ve never seen the world outside your enclosure before, but now you have the chance you’re going to seize it in both claws and take a great big bite out of your future. Starting with those slow, squishy, defenceless fools that kept you locked up for all this time.
They may think they’re the dominant species, but you understand jungles. You’re faster, you’re stronger, and you’re definitely smarter. After all, as the story says, you’re all Clever Girls.
Game: Dragonshard Heist
System: Dungeons and Dragons 5e (Eberron)
GM: Richard Coates
Game Location – The Loft Bar Table 5
Age Rating: Neutral
Content Warnings: Any issues will be discussed prior to game and unless agreed unanimously by secret ballot will be avoided: potential issues: “colonial” attitudes by neutral and enemy npcs.
Short Hook: A steampunk fantasy adventure set in the “wild west” of Breland, expect shootouts, goblin braves, undead lawmen, chaotic aberrations, sabotage and explosions.
Longer Description: Help Rickard Sharke, orc cavalry officer returned from the war regain his ranch stolen from him by the wicked Renfield Fletcher. Find out what is taking cattle from neighbouring ranches. What is causing the sickness among the local (peaceful) goblin tribes? What are all these whispers of a wagon with a valuable cargo due to pass through the region? What is Renfield’s connection with the Green Hags of Droamm?
This is a second level Eberron adventure set on the borderlands of Breland and Droamm. It is steampunk, fantasy and wild west in style. Consistent with Eberron some fantasy tropes are reversed: here orcs and goblins and other humanoids are the heroes – the villains are humans. Not all humans in Orcbone are evil of course, many are neutral and one, an enlightened bard from Sharn, is a potential party member.
Guns are common but tend to be simple blackpowder weapons: slow to load, inaccurate but more damaging – faster loading and more accurate weapons exist but operate with magical technology so are rare and expensive.
Pregens are Orc fighter, goblin rogue, warforged cleric, gnome wizard, dwarf artificer, human bard.
Game: Dropzone
System: Homebrew
GM: Alan Jackson
Game Location – The Loft Bar Table 6
Age Rating: Neutral
Content Warnings: Action movie Violence, corporatism, treachery
Short Hook: A colony planet has gone dark. You are the brave marines sent in to find out what has happened and save the people. It must be pirates, right, there’s no such thing as Aliens…
Longer Description: A colony planet has gone dark. You are the brave marines sent in to find out what has happened and save the people. It must be pirates, right, there’s no such thing as Aliens.
Our misfit group of soldiers, the dregs at the bottom of the barrel of the galaxy’s finest must step up and be the heroes of the hour.
The rumours of xenomorphs, consistently denied by officialdom can’t be true, can they? And what was the company doing on this god-forsaken rock in the middle of nowhere?
Run at conventions for many years, Dropzone is a well practised scenario of high octane action and drama.