We have just had a great weekend of RPGs and company at our twentieth Furnace Convention in Sheffield at the Garrison Hotel. To celebrate this milestone we arranged some merch in the shape of emblazoned messenger bags from our accomplished trader friends ‘All Rolled Up’ and a separately sourced dice tray give-away to all attendees. Dom did such a great job pulling all that together!
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| Dice Trays, Bags and ARU supermodel |
In many ways, Furnace is shaped by our venue, which we have stayed with for our twenty years. There is a really good understanding between our event and the hotel staff. We are a regular feature for them, and we work very well together to make the weekend as enjoyable as possible for everyone that attends. This year, due to changes in the flow of hotel business, we had an opportunity to multi-function use the large restaurant area, in addition to our more usual venue rooms. This large space opened up the convention with eight more large round tables in an airy and well lit space. This year, the ‘Mess Hall’ became the convention hub for our traders, bring & buy and raffle. It worked brilliantly!
This extension to our space afforded us an opportunity to expand our registration to ‘about 100 people’, which was extremely satisfying. I was beyond delighted to see the enthusiastic sign up for the event from regulars, returners, and a good number of very welcome newbies. Of course, this enlargement needed a complimentary number of games to fire the event to life across our five sessions. Our attendees responded by filling our schedule to the brim with, I think, 74 adventures from an astonishing 58 games. Everything from 10 Candles, Alice is Missing, to Legend in the Mist, Daggerheart, to Draw Steel and the Cosmere RPG and everythingish in between. We even had two games of D&D 2024.
We pre-book all games at our conventions. GMs get priority picks based on the number of games they offer, and then we open out to everyone working through preferences slot by slot to get the best fit we can, so that everyone knows who is playing where. I say ‘we’, by which I mean Elaine, our games Tsarina, who worked considerable magic to produce our more extensive schedule this year. I often hear that the convention ‘runs smoothly’, and that’s true in good measure to the beating heart of our game scheduling. Thank you Elaine!
Our regular traders, Patriot Games and All Rolled Up, were in attendance. It’s so good to be supported by both of them, providing a rich shopping experience in amongst the games and socialising.
I ran three games. ‘Legend in the Mist‘ – a very lovely ‘rustic fantasy’ using tag phrases instead of numbers and a charming resolution mechanic. It’ll be a big game for me for years to come. Its scalable versatility has me thinking of all sorts of future places and possibilities. ‘Coriolis‘ – a Middle Eastern inspired space opera set on a giant space station, solving a mystery of a stolen statue. This was a last minute game to help with GM dropouts, and enjoyed the interplay and enthusiasm from my players. ‘Cepheus Universal‘ – a classic Traveller style SF adventure as the ‘pirate bait’ plan went explosively awry. What might next year bring?
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| Pirate Bait – one of my games |
I played in two great games. JohnO’s atmospheric ‘The Harrow’s Scar’, set north of Hadrian’s Wall in the second century AD. My energy was somewhat low, but enjoyed the game a great deal with a background amusement that, unlike my other players, I genuinely had no idea about Cthulhu lore at all. JonR’s sumptuously presented ‘A Box of Old Bones’ using the venerable Dragon Warriors game. The system is very 1985, but good fun nevertheless. Blingtastic game full of imagery, props and a steady hand on the setting. I picked well!
I was glad to receive some canny feedback from our attendees during the event. We have introduced a feedback and action log to make sure we capture, record and agree what, if any, actions we need to undertake in time for our next outing. We want to both listen and act. One of my favourites was a word of congratulations that we had managed to grow the convention, and yet retained the warm and inclusive Garricon feel. Thank you, that was generously given and warmly received.
Today, I’ve paid some conventon invoices, updated the convention accounts, created a Garricon feedback action log, analysed the games offered at Furnace, and just about finished this blog. I was asked how much work goes into running the convention and realised that I didn’t really know. A monitoring timesheet is unlikely, but I reflect that, allowing for the main well oiled processes, the many small tasks over the year will amount to a significant amount of time. I enjoy much of it, and there is a particular reason why this is so.
There was a moment during Jon’s richly realised Dragon Warriors game, when I turned to one of my fellow players and co-organisers, Dom, and pointed to the ‘Mess Hall’ area behind us, full of gamers engrossed and exclaiming in their adventures and said, “Dom, look. That’s why we do it…”.
Let’s do it again shall we?