Simon Burley 🔜 AIRECON - Harrogate

Triceratops. A gentle herbivore that could take out a T-Rex.

That was always a nicely designed news page, wasn’t it?

I’m sure I didn’t pay that when I came just to play last year.

My god…..what’s a PINT going to cost this year?

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Since this was the instant it went up, this as being a bit previous. But then I noticed the cost…..

£7 a ticket. I know I’m an old man and behind the times and 2 guys paid £8 each for one of my games last weekend - and one of them said was a pittance - but when did UKGE games cost £7?

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There’s just so much else out there that’s good. Might not even be top 10 by the end of the year.

And how big does a convetion have to be to require their (unpaid*) volunteers to do training? #Airecon? #Dragonmeet?

* OK we get rewards.

So I went on to my first game to if any tickets sold.

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There IS a late-night bus bit that’s get me back into Birmingham after midnight and my days of doing 6 hour nights are past. If this was a really important convention to me, I might consider doing it but I’m afraid UKGE isn’t even in my top 5 any more. Nothing wrong with it.

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The last train leaves Birmingham International before the games finish. I’m not taking up the UKGE excellent offer of free on-site accommodation because that would mean sharing a room with another human being (and there’s only one person on the planet I’m prepared to do that with).

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#UKTTRPGCONS

I completed my GM Orientation for UK Games Expo last night. So I’ve uploaded the 6 games I’m offering to Referee - in blatant disregard of their advice not to offer more than 5 because that leads to burnout. 2 games each on Fri, Sat, Sun. I can’t offer any Fri/Sat night.

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Some people do it right:

Vampires could save themselves a lot of fuss if they just gave out free tea and biscuits.

Ah! To dream the impossible dream, eh? Patching a system into a huge snowball is so much easier than refining it to a perfect statue.

since Warhammer makes up about 75% of the UK economy & most British bank notes will go through their tills at some point anyway, why not just stick Khorne, Tzeentch, Slaanesh & Nurgle on them & be done with it?

Fuck it, reintroduce £100 notes, stick rat boy on it & that’s wildlife ticked off too

Now THIS is the kind of journalism the world needs:

I don’t got to game stores.

I’m a miser. I don’t buy stuff. One of the big draws of this hobby to me was how CHEAP it was. Once you’d got the the rulebook you made up all the dungeons and stuff for FREE. The only real cost was biscuits.

Fav FLGS: Leisure Games. Indie games and conventions.

You mean:

“Tomorrow”

(Someone had to say it.)

Good point!

If I don’t start doing this it isn’t because I disagree. My problem is I’m usually enjoying myself so much I forget to be a journalist. I’ve only just remembered to take some photos!

Sorry to bang on but quick prologue/session minus 1 - a one shot with pregens - makes Session 0 so much better.

At a convention take regular short breaks and tell people if there are any issues they want to raise they can catch you privately during a break.

Reposted for the immense wisdom of being “happy to walk back my misinformed opinions”

I know that in the past I've written entire chapters about safety mechanics. But over time I've come to realise they're not a good substitute for open discussion. They're actually a really bad substitute for that. So I'm totally happy to walk back my misinformed opinions.

Thanks for the feedback.

Nice to know someone reads them.

Any comments on the style and structure of my reports would be welcome.

Wisdom.

Are you stalking me?

We probably won’t see each other this time. TTRPGs have been farmed off into their own special building.

And big trade halls scare me. I’ll only come running over if I need any dry-wipe pens or cards at the last minute.

Do you have an example of a good one?

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Which was originally published with (some) stats as part of:

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/1...

Which is currently on sale (underpriced) for 1/5 of the cost of the stand-alone scenario.

Now THAT doesn’t feel right…..

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So where am I morally?

Are you as suspicious as I am about “System Agnostic” scenarios? Are they ever useful or do they leave you to do all the hard work? If you know of any good ones, please let us know what they are.

For me, I’m talking about:

www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/4...

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Strong enough to stand alone outside the game. So I decided to strip out the stats and publish it as system agnostic.

But I haven’t tested out by using another system - not even my own. (I wrote and ran it using Squadron UK. I’ve not run it using The Comics Code, The Super Hack or Manifold.)

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A whole campaign outline, in fact. I played it through to conclusion before including it in a rulebook with full stats. Since the rulebook came out, over the years I’ve played it through to conclusion some more times with different groups.

I though the central ideas were strong.

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Are you worried you might get the balance wrong?

I mean it had to have some stats in it when you played it, right? (I’m not sure the term “play-tested” can even be applied to a system agnostic scenario.) Why not stick those in?

Unless you HAVEN’T run it.

For me, I wrote a scenario.

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#TTRPGTHOUGHTS

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System Agnostic?

Is producing a system agnostic product just a way of avoiding work?

A system agnostic scenario is like a short story where you can’t be bothered to write the story, just an outline.

Or it’s like a proper scenario without the stat-blocks.

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U.F.O. YouTube video by The Wedding Present - Topic

The Wedding Present did a cover of the UFO theme as a Bside. www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFUb...