In the first part of my write-up I told everything I did at the Chaosium Con UK 2025 from the day I arrived until Saturday morning and the panel "What's new with RuneQuest?". Below you can read all I did from that point until the end of the con on Sunday night! With more Glorantha, more RuneQuest, more new games I had the opportunity to play, like Age of Vikings, QuestWorlds, and Lords of the Middlesea, and more interesting people I met and talked to! Let the games continue! :-)
Saturday 24th (continued)
10:00 - I played an Age of Vikings demo game run by Carol. The GM had the table set with lots of Viking runes, and even wooden figurines of Viking gods! Diana Probst (author of many JC publications such as The Dregs of Clearwine and Sacred Earth, Sacred Water) role-played her character for around 10 minutes before her head was brutally gored by a crazy ox (her character's, not Diana's!). She had previously told the GM she had to leave early, so they had both actually arranged that PC's horrible death in advance! Haha, at the time I thought it was for real, so I felt totally sorry for her! We kept playing with Mark and John, and learning more about this awesome game set in Iceland. I chose one of the pregens called Njáll Þórólfsson, because Njáls Saga is the only Icelandic saga I've read so far, and I enjoyed it. Although, of course, this was a different Njáll: a towering, honourable fisherman skilled in sword and shield.
The rules are pretty similar to the ones in RuneQuest, with passions and augments. I liked that characters have 3 favoured gods and goddesses they can automatically get inspiration from in order to increase their chances in a skill roll, if appropriate. For example, my character was devoted to Heimdallur, god of duty, protection, and vigilance, so in a situation in which these topics where relevant, such as in trying to perceive hidden enemies, I could get inspired by the god to get a +20 to my Spot hidden skill once. The rules for the Viking rune magic also looked interesting, as one of the other players played a character who could use it (Þrymur), and he did it by actually carving specific runes on an item. You can also sacrifice points of POW called Wyrd in order to turn failed rolls into successes, and the fact it is so costly will no doubt make this a last-resource mechanic. The demo game was a short, but interesting investigation, with magic, guilt, and some creatures of the Viking folklore involved. After the game, Carol told us how much she was into Viking history, reenactments, and culture, and also recommended the Contingency Con that takes place every year in January.
12:00 - Time to buy things:
I went to the Artists' Atrium and bought some things from Daniel Barker's stand. He had prints of many of the art pieces he did for Tales of the Reaching Moon and other publications from the 90s, but he also had excellently crafted Gloranthan bank notes I could not help buy as a gift for a friend. I then went to the store Chaosium had set up, and bought some of the thinnest books I could find on the Jonstown Compendium, as my backpack only allowed those. But hey, fortunately one of these was a limited preview edition of Rhigos: Kulyanan's Tale by Martin Helsdon! I also bought some RuneQuest dice for a friend and me. I would have bought half the store if only I had had more space in my small backpack! For example, the print edition of QuestWorlds, the recently released Age of Vikings corebook, the book on Furthest...
On my way to the restaurant, I chatted a while with the guys from QuestPortal. They happen to be from Iceland, so they are promoting the Age of Vikings game, among the rest of Chaosium's games you can play in their flexible VTT. Their website also supports Call of Cthulhu, Rivers of London, and soon also RuneQuest. I asked how easy it would be for users to translate the character sheets into other languages, and they showed me it was a piece of cake. They also generously gifted me with a cool set of purple dice! Thank you guys!!!
Once I reached the bar, I spotted Ludovic and we chatted for a while, then Jonathan Webb joined us, which was great, as he is the author of the campaign set in Sandheart (in the Praxian Sun County) I'm currently running at home. I showed them a picture I had taken of the cover of the new RuneQuest, and we chatted a while about the upcoming alternative edition. I told Jonathan I had devised a murder scenario set in the Sandheart district he had created and he was delighted to hear that.
14:00 - I was excited to play in a QuestWorlds Glorantha game GMed by Matthew Cole, author of the yet unpublished Vistas of New Pavis, and the full 3D-render of the city! The other players were Chris Went, Roy Duffy, Katherine from the Never Mind the Dice Rolls magazine, and Hervé Carteau, whom I also remembered from THE KRAKEN con, although I had never talked to him yet. We found out Matthew is a very meticulous GM, who had a really interesting heroquest scenario laboriously prepared for us. We started by creating our PCs from a template. We were all riverfolk fishermen, and had to help Zola Fel who was trapped in the Underworld. Apparently, a powerful Zola Fel heroquester had fucked up really bad in a previous heroquest, and now the river gods' magic was no longer working! Hervé played a loud-mouthed merchant duck excellently (and he hates ducks!), and was very funny ("Quack! That's what Issaries always says!"). Roy and Kat role-played the twins who were often bickering, which was also really funny, while Chris played a good-hearted, but absent-minded fisher. I played a hard-working fisherman, and assigned to him abilities like "Swim against the current", "Friend of the newtlings", and "Tavern pariah". It was great to be playing QuestWorlds and building most of our characters as we played.
All through the game, I was amazed at how many little details Matthew had prepared for the game. We had tiny runes we could stick on our character sheets, stickers for the magic items that we would use on our quest, poems for their powers, cards with myths/customs we could introduce into the adventure... All of a sudden, poor Matthew accidentally turned his glass of water on the table, and someone exclaimed: "Of course, what better way to start a Zola Fel heroquest!" to try to cheer him up. Hahaha! I hope he gets to publish his scenario one day, because it is a crazy trip down and up the heroplane. It was a pity he had to rush us through the second half of the scenario in order to get to the end in time, but I had great fun nonetheless. We had to retrieve the "Tarn Bough" from the failed heroquest, which would then allow us to "Become the Rain at the Celestial Rainbow...", but remember: Hide it from the Sky People! And do not become prisoners...!
18:00 - I had lunch with Nader, Vas and his friend, while chatting about various topics, such as the games and panels we had attended so far. The food was lovely all through the con, by the way. We even got vanilla ice cream for desserts.
19:00 - RuneQuest game with Andrew Moreton: Harvest Queen
This was the second half of a scenario the GM had run the previous day with a different group of players. I got to play again with Geoff (who played Kallyr, an Orlanthi rune lady, but not the Kallyr you may be thinking!), Dominic Swan (Ulvera, her Ernaldan fiancée), Steve (Griselda Black Axe, a bloodthirsty Babeester Gori), but also with new people like Diecke (who played an armoured bear!), and Rob Marcus (who played Harmast, a Humakti near rune lord status). We went into the Woods of the Dead and killed lots of ghouls, talked to trolls, explored a tower, and killed many Lunar hoplites. It was great to play powerful characters. For example, Yalana Goldhair (the Yelornan mounted warrior I played) had 7 rune points and rode a unicorn. At one point, I spent 4 rune points to cast a powerful Shooting Star spell, and shot 8 flaming arrows dealing 3D6 damage each against a unit of 14 Lunar hoplites. Pity I fumbled my 5th shot and immediately lost my bow, but anyway... The other characters were as powerful or more, particularly the Vingan runelady, and the Odaylan initiate who had transformed himself into a bear for two weeks (a clever character concept)! However, the opposition was obviously on par...
Our mission was to catch a Lunar witch who had tried to kidnap the harvest queen of an Orlanthi clan in Sartar (that had happened in the previous scenario). Her tracks led us to the Woods of the Dead, so in we went! I liked a lot how the GM was really quick at managing combat with lots of enemies. For example, he threw a small horde of 14-16 ghouls against us, and we dealt with them in about two or three rounds of exciting combat. This happened again midway through the adventure as we faced a full unit of Lunar hoplites, and then also at the climax, where we fought the Lunar witch and Brangbane King of the Ghouls mounted on his zombie horse, protected by another horde of 20 ghouls, and 15 more hoplites! The duel between the witch and the Vingan runelady was truly epic, with almost unfathomable amounts of magical armour, and damage. I had to note down the details when the Stormlady dealt 29 damage to the witch's leg, and she immediately fell down, cast Heal Body, and got up again! She eventually was cut down only when she fumbled a parry, and Kallyr dealt 43 points of damage to her abdomen! At the same time, the Humakti faced Brangbane and managed to cut his leg, and then also his horse's back in one brutal blow thanks to his Humakti gifts and powerful sword magic (looots of rune points!). I almost felt bad for our archenemies in the end. xD Haha! I have just remembered another funny scene: when we charged the first unit of Lunar hoplites, one of them fumbled her attack against Steve's Babeester Gori, who then fumbled her parry, and they both got exactly the same result in the fumble table, so they rolled down the hill together for a couple rounds!
Afterwards, I spent some time in the bar chatting with Rob Marcus. Wait for it: he's not only the author of The Indagos Bull scenario, but he also created one of the scenarios in the Masks of Pavis original fanzine by Ian Thompson... and his current boss is Jonathan Quaife! (he created the Greydog clan campaign published in the last issues of the Tales of the Reaching Moon magazine). It was great to talk with Rob about the Pavis and Zola Fel valley campaign he's running, and about a hundred many other things with a Guinness in hand.
Sunday 25th
9:00 - After breakfast I headed excitedly to play a RuneQuest game run by Simon Bray (long-time illustrator of HeroQuest books and author of Furthest: Crown Jewel of Lunar Tarsh). That game ("Strange Aberrations") was also set in Furthest, and one of the first things our GM did was to unfold his beautiful full-colour map of Furthest on the table. One of the players was none other than Simon Phipp, whose incredible website dedicated to his high-level Gloranthan campaigns, cults, and material I have been a fan of for many years. He's also the author of many Jonstown Compendium publications about Dorastor, such as Dorastor: Seven Hills, or Secrets of Dorastor, and Secrets of HeroQuesting.
Simon Bray's scenario focused on investigating the disappearance of a well-to-do scholar from a noble family. The party leader was Marius, a somewhat horny scribe and private investigator played by Dominic Swan, accompanied by a couple of his bored rich friends (Emilia and Lorilia) played by Neil Edmond and Ray Irving. The rest of the party was hired muscle: Jurus the exgladiator (played by Jon Reed), Nobil, a shady servant (played by Simon Phipp), and Talin the Yelmalian mercenary (played by me!). All characters had their own colour portrait by Simon Bray of course, which was great to better imagine them and their personalities. Each also had their quirks and nice details. For example, my light cavalryman was a veteran who had won many horse races in his youth, but had later been sent to the Risklands right next to Dorastor as punishment for some slight, and now had to take his medicine in secret so as not to cough constantly. His nickname was "Hoarse-Whisperer"! He also had a pet hawk in mindlink who kind of despised him. I loved my character!
We started by exploring a noble mansion and soon found out that foul experiments had been attempted. We interrogated some philosophers, talked with shopkeepers, found out a bit about entropic alchemy, met the local mafia, and ended up forging a deal that benefitted us all. Well, some of us more than others, but it was good enough! xD I can't tell you more, because Simon Bray plans to publish this scenario and others in an upcoming supplement for his book on Furthest.
Afterwards, I sat down for lunch with Chris Went and Simon Phipp. They told me how they were going to attend the Games Expo UK down in London in just a week's time, although that one is more focused on publishing companies and not so much on playing games. And then in July Continuum Con would take place at the exact same venue as Chaosium Con UK!
14:00 - I hurried to the room where I was going to play one of the VIP games, meaning a game run by a Chaosium author, which cost 25$ extra, but what the heck. Even though I had already met Jason Durall at THE KRAKEN convention in 2018, it was a unique opportunity not only to play in a game run by the guy who put together the Big Golden Book and the new Basic Roleplaying book, but also to try out the new yet-unpublished RPG he is developing: Lords of the Middlesea!
In the scenario "Hard Cargo", we played the crew of the Bella Dama, a dirigible in an post-apocalyptic North-America that was now mostly underwater, and where new nations had been created. The tone was very much like a sci-fi Western. Actually pretty similar to the Firefly TV show, only not in space, but on an airship in a post-apocalyptic version of the Earth. It was pretty cool, and the rules, with passions, a short list of skills, and such, was easy to grasp if you have already any experience with any other BRP game like RuneQuest or Call of Cthulhu. It also has personality traits like in Pendragon, and a rule by which each of the members of the crew has one character they feel is their "best friend", and another one they hate, which produces interesting group dynamics. You can also create the details of your airship. For example, you have to choose a quirk your airship has, and ours had a "puffballs infestation". I sat between Martin Helsdon, who played the resourceful mechanic, and Ludovic Chabant, who played Diego the charismatic captain. The other players were Nader, who played a crazy armed-to-the-teeth nun, and Simon, who played Dr. Chan, who was secretly a deadly ninja with one subtle mutant power. As for me, I chose to play Esmeralda, the rogue pilot, who had secretly fled from a highly patriarchal island nation.
The crew's job that day involved taking a group of passengers to a rendezvous at a place two days away. We prepared for our trip, roleplayed our characters as if we had been playing them for ages, and had a lot of fun. Obviously, we soon found out our cargo was not precisely easy to carry, and in a short period of time blood was all over the place, and we had to deal with a storm outside and inside our airship. I loved how Jason roleplayed the NPCs, and how the players played their characters. For example, the mechanic manipulated the engine to cause the dirigible to make a sudden turn to catch the baddies unaware so we could get an advantage over them, while Sister Manita and Dr. Chan made a bloody short work of our main enemies! Another highlight for me was when the captain retorted the following line to an unpleasant NPC:
"See Boyd, the difference between you and me is you like to stay in the middle of the storm, while I'm more the type trying we don't go into the storm..."
And right then... Jason narrated how the airship faced the actual storm ahead of us... Brilliant! If they ever make a TV show out of this game, the scriptwriters should definitely include that line in the dialogues! After the game, Jason told us the text of Lords of the Middlesea is 90% finished, and now he is giving the final touches to the air-land and air-water combat rules. Then it will go into layout and art procuring. After they release the rulebook, the plan is to publish a "companion" volume with additional rules and scenarios. The scenario we played will probably feature in the rulebook!
After the game, Ludovic introduced Pookie to me, the man behind the Reviews from R'lyeh blog. I used the opportunity to ask him how he manages to write so many reviews per month, and he gave me some tips. It was great to chat with him about writing reviews. He even told me he's already preparing something special for his 3000th review!!! We then talked to Neil Robinson, who kindly arranged a short demo of the upcoming Credo! board game by Chris Gidlow later on for us.
18:15 - At the central room in the venue, the Chaosium team gathered all the attendees and made a speech as a closing ceremony. They were delighted the con had managed to attract way more people than they had initially expected, 350 people in total!, so they announced they are going to organise another Chaosium Con UK at the same time next year! Hooray! As a token of appreciation, they told the audience we each could choose one publication that had been left over after the "Issaries Market" event to carry home. At that event, Chaosiums and fans had brought old publications they wanted to sell or barter. But many had been left sitting there on a table. I quickly inspected them and chose a copy of Wyrms Footprints, the compilation of Wyrm's Footnotes articles from the 90s, profusely illustrated by Daniel Barker. Since there were some left over after everyone had made their pick, I also took a copy of the Convulsion 4 fundraiser: a compilation of Gloranthan short stories. There were also many issues of Tales of the Reaching Moon #17 which I already own, a copy of the German box set "Glorantha - Die Götter", and a copy of the German RQ3 scenario Schatten in den Hügeln, which I was very tempted to pick up, but did not.
18:50 - After a nice dinner at the restaurant, we got to the room at the appointed time, and Susan O'Brien told us a bit about how to play a game of Credo. In fact, Chaosium had published this board game in 1993, but now they are doing a much nicer edition wonderfully illustrated by Kalin Kadiev. The game mimics the agreements about the core Christian doctrine the bishops convened during the First Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. As a bishop in that council, your role is to try to get into the core Christian doctrine as many of your faction's beliefs as you can. But beware, random event cards and the rest of the players can foil your plans! Ludovic stayed to play a game, but I had another appointment...
19:00 - The big game of Glorantha: The Gods War
Brian Duguid hosted an 8-player game of this board game by Sandy Petersen with huge miniatures. Hervé played the Malkioni faction, Ricardo played the Solar faction, Martin Smart played the Earth faction, Brian played the Storm faction, Thomas Zunder played the Darkness faction, Geoff played the Chaos faction, and Dominic played the Lunar faction, while I got to play the Sea faction. I started on the wrong foot when I made a risky move against the Earth faction, and never recovered. I figured if I had any chance of winning the game I had to take risks early on... but unfortunately it didn't pay off, and I was defeated. Next time, I need to be more conservative during the initial turns and group together many more of my huge monsters before committing to an attack! Anyway, it was great to participate in such a big game of Glorantha: The Gods War, because this game is a show in itself no matter who ends up winning in the end. In my last game at home, the Darkness faction had achieved a resounding victory, but this time it was funny to see how the Solar faction was one of the three best. In the end, it was a very close game between 3 of the factions: the Malkioni empire, the Yelmic celestial armies, and the Lunar forces. Dominic was declared the winner although in 4,5 hours we didn't even get to the middle of the game!!! I suspect the Lunar strategy was to look unmenacing and keep building shrines and temples in a corner of the board!
Yelm managed to get out from Hell quite quickly, and the biggest fights involved the Solar faction and the Earth
23:00 - After the game I spent my time chatting in the bar with Hervé, who told me great and many things about the cons at Castle Bacharach, Greg Stafford, Chimériades, and other stories. Dominic joined us later on, and then also a guy called Francis.
The next day I had breakfast with Ludovic and Hervé, and I again forgot to ask Hervé how the RuneQuest game he had run on Friday had gone...! Ahh, maybe next time! Stuart Morrison kindly gave me a lift to Milton Keynes coach station, and from there to the airport and back home.
What a weekend! In just 3 days I ran one game, played in seven, and one board game! I also played three games I had never played before. Moreover, it was amazing meeting so many people I had only known from Facebook or the BRP forums and blogs so far. And everyone was so friendly and kind!!! Next time, I now know I need to perhaps play a bit less, and spend more time chatting with all the fantastic people there! I honestly recommend everyone to go to one of these cons at some point. Chaosium Con Poland is taking place next October, so... who knows! ;-P
