I had an awesome experience at Chaosium Con UK 2025 in Cranfield between May 23rd to 26th. It was the first time the company publishing RuneQuest, Call of Cthulhu, and other games organised its own convention in the UK. Before that, they had only held them in Michigan. This year, however, was different, because 2025 marked Chaosium's 50th anniversary, and as part of the celebrations they decided to hold conventions in other countries around the world, such as Australia, Poland, and the UK. It was a great opportunity to meet some of the authors, get the latest news, and play some of their recently released games, as well as meet other fans like me, so I signed up for it! It also was, in fact, my first time at a convention in the UK! Here you can read all about my experience at the Chaosium Con UK. Read Part 2 here. You may also be interested in reading how hard it was to choose what panels and games to sign up for! :-D
Thursday 22nd
I landed at Luton airport at midday, and despite a slight delay I had enough time to get on the coach that would take me to Milton Keynes coach station. Once there, I only had to wait 15 minutes before I could take a local bus to get to Cranfield University. This Chaosium Con was held at a convention centre at one end of the campus: the Cranfield Management Development Centre. It is a hotel and a convention centre all in one building, with restaurant, bar, garden, and even gym and indoor swimming-pool. The room was £64 per night (breakfast included), plus £15 for every dinner. Aside from that, the con badge was 60$ for 3 days, or 25$ for just one day. Through the window in my room I had a view of green meadows with grazing sheep and strange black birds. I spent the afternoon preparing some of the character sheets for the RuneQuest game I was running on the next day. At 8 o'clock I went down to the restaurant for dinner, and enjoyed my meal. I could see most of the Chaosium team sharing a table in the restaurant. Since I didn't know anyone, I sat alone, but that would change in the following days! :-)
Friday 23rd
7:50 - The restaurant offered a wide range of juicy dishes for breakfast, and I sat down at a table and immediately started chatting with a guy from Scotland. We were then joined by 3 other gamers and chatted about different topics. A guy named Adan had been to Gen Con in Minneapolis some years ago and said it was almost too huge, but also totally worth it, and had visited Chicago after that. Nader then said he had been to Gen Con almost every year (as he used to live close by), and also recommended going.
8:55 - I looked for the room where the 1st round of the RuneQuest Tournament was going to take place. On my way there I met Nick Brooke, introduced myself, and he kindly gave me a brief tour along the way and taught me to open doors by touching a button! He told me where the Chaosium store would be set and where the Artists' Atrium was, although at that time the artists were still readying their stands. Still, I saw some originals by Mark Smylie, who has done a number of covers for Chaosium books, and also for Martin Helsdon's awesome RQ supplements.
I then managed to find the table of the RuneQuest Tournament, my first event at the con! This tournament would have 3 rounds (one game played each day) and in order to decide who would go on to the next one the players at each table had to vote at the end of each game who they considered the best roleplayer. At my table there were 4 other players. Adan was already there, and also Vas, Martin, and Dave. Two of them had never played RuneQuest before, but after the game they said they loved it! Our GM was going to be Ricardo Shankland (author of the Skull Ruins: Tusk Riders Need Blood scenario!!!). We chose our player characters from a range of pregens. Three players had already chosen warrior types (a Humakti, a Babeester gori, and Vasana the Vingan), so I decided to go for something different. I was tempted to play a duck thief called Phinneas Pinfeather, armed with two daggers, but I picked up a Lhankor Mhy scribe with good sword and dodge skills, while Adan chose an Ernalda priestess. In the same room there were 3 other tables where other gamers were going to play the exact same scenario, and 4 more tables in a nearby room. I told the GM I wasn't interested in qualifying for the next round of the tournament, and there was no problem whatsoever. In fact, Dave wasn't interested either.
Interestingly, we would be using the alternative RuneQuest ruleset Jeff Richard and Mike Mearls (designer of D&D5) are developing to attract a new audience to RuneQuest and Glorantha (more on this later!). The rules were pretty similar to the current edition, but somewhat simplified and faster. However, this game wasn't going to be a proper playtest, and so the GM wisely did not stop to check the rules when in doubt, and instead kept the game flowing nicely.
Once we had chosen our characters, the organisers gathered us in the other big room and Brian Duguid (author of The Voralans and The Children of Hykim books) told us all the premise of the scenario: a charismatic adventurer called Garrath Sharpsword had recruited each of us and many other allies to board a giant cradle that was flowing down the Zola Fel river (AKA the River of Cradles). Apparently, the Lunar occupying forces in Pavis were going to try and plunder it, so it was our sacred duty to defend it and the giant baby from any assailants. This was the beginning of the classic The Cradle scenario Greg Stafford published in the RQ2 supplement Pavis. After explaining this, Jeff Richard read aloud Garrath's rousing speech, and after a choral cheer we set off on our way north towards the approaching cradle!
The game experience was improved thanks to Roy Duffy and Dario Corallo. Roy provided big colour maps of the giant cradle (I bet Chaosium is going to hire him!), and Dario created dozens of colour standees for the PCs and NPCs, so the game had a great visual component for the battles on board the cradle.
11:00 - During the pause halfway through the session, I hurried to the Artist's Atrium and managed to buy a deck of Gloranthan cards from Lee O'Connor. He was only selling one deck per person, probably to avoid having people resell the extra ones. I later learnt he sold them all, but he's now got permission from Chaosium to sell more from DrivethruRPG. I also got to chat a bit with Katrin Dirim, who was selling prints of her art at her stall.
Going back to the giant cradle, I remember my PC (Sora Halthi) cast Detect enemies at a crucial moment and so managed to alert her companions fighting on the prow, that the stern was being overrun by other Lunar troops! She also managed to fight some dragonewts so that the Ernalda priestess (Orane Garhound) could reach a badly-wounded comrade in time. "You focus on fighting, and let me do the healing!!!" yelled the priestess to her companions. The fight was tough, but still some enemies' heads were cleanly lopped off to everyone's amusement. Later on, we had some time to explore the decks below, we had a strange vision that Sora managed to understand that it had something to do with the celestial realm. Intriguing!
Finally, the second wave of assailants included some elite warriors, and we were forced to retreat. We then voted for the best roleplayer, and were again summoned to the other room for the finishing speech and rounds of applause to the players who had qualified for the second round. Later I learnt that Claudia Loroff (Jeff Richard's wife who played Yanioth in the example campaign in the RQ rulebook) had been going around the tables and at some point she had acted like a Chalana Arroy divine intervention to resurrect some dead PC (!). She also visited our table and handed me a "My favourite age is the Bronze Age" badge.
15:00 - After the game, I stopped to gaze at the small display of the upcoming new plastic miniatures for RuneQuest. There, John Hunter (author of Back to Balazar) told me a bit about them. Some minutes later, Paul Johnson (IIRC) explained these miniatures are being made by Reaper, will come out by means of a Kickstarter campaign, and Chaosium had told them they wanted the miniatures to represent the pregens from the rulebook and the Starter Set first, and then for a couple more adventures they are developing, so fans can use them to play these adventures. I found the broos and trolls to be particularly awesome. I forgot to ask if they are planning to do any scorpion men. At the same time, Andrew Taylor, who has been making several crowdfunding campaigns these past years to make Gloranthan miniatures, is about to release some wargaming rules for playing skirmishes with 28mm minis. After that, I got my badge for the con, together with a second hanging flag I attached to it: "Glorantha Forever". I also attached the "My Favorite Age is Bronze" flag to it. On top of that, I also got a pin and a sticker of Chaosium's 50th anniversary. :-)
15:25 - I went to the bar to buy a sandwich and a drink for lunch. On my way back to my room, I spoke briefly again with Ricardo Shankland, who told me he is now working in a book for the Jonstown Compendium filled with scorpion men and devising new ways of making them even more dangerous (!!!).
16:00 - The Ruins of the God Learners!
I got a couple minutes late to the room, and my 5 players were already waiting there by the door. After this somewhat embarrassing start, I gave them 7 character sheets to choose from. I had prepared the pregens from the rulebook, plus Mago the Fierce from the RuneQuest Starter Set, as I figured someone would like to try one of the newer pregens. One of the players was Roy Duffy (author of Boldhome Blues and some lovely maps) who I had already played with at THE KRAKEN convention in 2018. He chose to play Yanioth, which was nice, because I wanted to see how the scenario played out with her in it. The other players were Dominic Swan (Vasana), Geoff Revill (Sorala), Andrew Sutton (Harmast), and Stephen Mooney (Mago).
The last time it had taken me 2 sessions to run this scenario online. This time I tried to get the PCs to the ruins faster, but the players prepared well for the trip downriver and decided to do some research about the place and two particular King Argrath's thanes first. This allowed me to test a part of the scenario I hadn't had the opportunity to test yet, although I wondered if those veteran players did not really know already what they found out from the published books (?). The preamble in New Pavis took a full hour, so in the 3 remaining hours they didn't have the time to explore the whole ruins and find out what they were used for. That was not a big problem though, because these ruins are kind of a sandbox, so you can choose to go wherever you please. I also fumbled a bit with all the props I had prepared for the game, and I failed to time a couple of events that would have made the scenario better. Nonetheless, the players seemed to have fun, and Roy and Geoff luckily engaged well with all the puzzles. After the game, Roy confessed he actually usually dislikes solving puzzles as a player, as he prefers to just roll some skill so that the character solves it! Although I wish we could have had more time for the players to explore more of the ruins, at least I managed to provide a fitting ending just in time. Another highlight was the heated discussion Yanioth and Sorala engaged in right at the end, when they had to make some tough decisions about the loot they had gotten.
I had a lot of fun seeing the decisions my players made. They played it really smart at different points in the adventure, and produced some funny scenes. For example, I was impressed when Sorala managed to augment her Sleight skill to do something shady, and she succeeded! The Storm Bull warrior managed to sacrifice a magic item to his god and be rewarded for it, and Yanioth was one of the bravest when she dived into the waters to explore the flooded basement! Moreover, Dominic gave me some interesting feedback after the game. By the way, there was no way to switch off the air conditioning in the room we were playing in, and it was chilly.
18:20 - I got in the queue for the barbecue outside on the terrace, and managed to gobble up my dish in time for my next game. The weather was nice and sunny, and I got to chat a bit more with Dominic Swan, and shared the table with Katrin Dirim. Dominic told me how he had worked really long hours in his job years, and we also discussed a bit the alternative RuneQuest rules.
19:00 - I got to play an official Rivers of London scenario titled The Font of All Evil, masterfully GMed by Rob Silk. He introduced the game's setting extremely well. Maybe it was the tone of his voice, or his fine storytelling skills, but everyone at the table started listening to him immediately. Ludovic Chabant sat next to me for that game (author of A Short Detour, To Hunt a God, and The God Learners podcast), and all the other players were also lovely people, like Chris Went. The game started with a gruesome murder and the supernatural branch of the Metropolitan Police was called in to investigate due to the strange wounds on the corpse. That evening I learnt about a peculiar, very London thing called "mudlarking" (thanks to Chris Went!), which I had never heard about. The rules of the game were extremely easy to grasp, particularly for anyone who has played the current edition of Call of Cthulhu. Curiously, one of the players used to work for one of the pubs that feature in the scenario! The investigation went well, we followed the clues, role-played the interactions with witnesses, and other informants... and one of the player characters died horribly in the climax, but the rest managed to avenge her and achieved a resounding victory. And my character got to cast a fireball spell! It was great to try out this game with such a nice group of players, GM, and scenario.
Saturday 24th
8:00 - I had breakfast together with Andrew Sutton, Adan, Geoff, and others. Andrew told me he is currently running a game of RuneQuest using the awesome The Red Cow campaign for HeroQuest. Then Geoff told me about the awesome Prax/Pavis campaign he is currently running, in which all the PCs are Pol-Joni warriors who have established themselves in Pavis County after King Argrath left the city for Sartar. After that, I hurried to go find the seminar room where I would be attending a panel I had great expectations for...
9:00 - What's new with RuneQuest?
Brian Holland (in charge of marketing at Chaosium) was there in the big seminar room, as he joked, to make sure Jeff Richard did not spill the beans too much. First they talked about RuneQuest: Cults of Fire & Sky. Someone in the audience asked Jeff what his favourite part was, and he replied the Lokarnos cult, because they are like the truckers of Glorantha. He also recalled Greg Stafford was fascinated by birds, and owned many field guides to identify them. He even convinced Jeff's wife to get some chickens to raise!
Later he mentioned how the RPG market is undergoing a major transition, both because people are again slowly leaving online gaming to go back to playing face to face, but also because there is a big influx of new gamers for a variety of reasons that are fed up with D&D and want to try other games. I guess it is for this next generation of players that they (Jeff and Mike Mearls) are mainly creating the alternative ruleset titled RuneQuest Fantasy Roleplaying. However, he also mentioned how in 2015 the design goal for the current edition was to gather all the fans together again, but now for this upcoming alternative edition they aim to make it easier to play RuneQuest, streamline the rules (ditch Strike Ranks and substitute them by a phase system similar to the one used in the war-game White Bear and Red Moon), make it more intuitive, and apply all the feedback received in the last years to improve the game.
Then they showed everyone the logo and mock-up cover of the upcoming alternative ruleset, by Loïc Muzy. Jeff mentioned the setting is going to be the city of Pavis and the ruins of The Big Rubble because it is an easy entry point to the setting: the adventurers are basically exploring old ruins, and they can learn more about the setting little by little as they play. They want to release it together with 4 supplements including scenarios so that fans can start playing right away:
- GM book including a bestiary and some scenarios
- 4-part campaign with added material like extra backgrounds and cults
- Player Aid Pack with cardboard standees of PCs and NPCs to make it more visually appealing.
- After that, a cadence of scenario books!
OK, since this post is already long enough, I will stop here for now. Please check the second part of my write-up! In it you can read about my first game of Age of Vikings, a game of QuestWorlds set in Glorantha, and the Harvest Queen scenario for RuneQuest. And then all I did on Sunday: the RuneQuest game set in Furthest, by Simon Bray, the VIP game with Jason Durall, in which I got to play his upcoming game: Lords of the Middle Sea, and finally the big 8-player game of Glorantha: The Gods War I played! Please let me know what you think so far about all this in a comment below!
Keep reading what I did afterwards at Chaosium Con UK 2025
Very informative, thank you. Are you going to the con in Poland? /Gianni
ResponderEliminarI'm not sure I can pull it off again the same year, but one can dream! :-)
EliminarWhat about you???
Muy interesante la entrada. Esperamos un artículo (o al menos un comentario extenso) sobre qué te han parecido las nuevas reglas simplificadas de Runequest.
ResponderEliminar¡Gracias!
Vaya, es que me apunté a ser playtester para dirigir una partida de prueba de las nuevas reglas y ofrecer mi opinión antes de la Chaosium Con UK, y tuve que firmar un acuerdo de confidencialidad. Así que no puedo revelar mucho más de lo que comento aquí. Tiene detalles que me gustan y que tal vez traspasaré al RQG normal. :-)
EliminarEsperaremos entonces a mayo (si se cumple la fecha) cuando puedas hablar libremente.
EliminarI've really enjoyed reading this, hopefully we can talk properly next time we are in the same place!
ResponderEliminarI'm glad to read that, and yes, I hope we can chat away properly next time!!! As I say in Part 2: a bit less gaming and more chatting with people will be nice. :-D
Eliminar