In May 2025 I went to the first Chaosium Con UK in Cranfield for a weekend of intensive gaming and some socialising. I had so much fun that I decided to go back in 2026, and here you can read my write-up: the games I played, the lovely people I chatted with, and the news Chaosium announced about their upcoming publications.
When I started signing up for games on the Tabletop Events website, I regretted not having started earlier, because many interesting games were already fully booked. For example, I would have loved to play in Michael O'Brien's RuneQuest game set in Sun County "Vrok Hawk Down". Or in Ian Cooper's QuestWorlds game set in Glorantha: "Handra Delivery Service". Still, I managed to sign up for very interesting games, some of which appeared on the website later than expected... and I gorged. I managed to play 9 games in 3 days!!! So, one tip for this convention is: Never stop checking the website until the start of the convention! You can even suggest games once the convention has started by posting them on a flipchart in the main hall.
Thursday 21st
After a combination of car, plane, coach, and bus, I got to Cranfield University in Bedford in the afternoon, chatting with Adan (who I had met the previous year), and Colin Driver (author of the maps in The Guide to Glorantha). Adan was in a hurry because he had to play in a game in a question of minutes! I bought some fruit at the Coop minimarket, and went into the Cranfield Management Development Centre, where the hotel and con venue is.
At around 14:00 the hotel rooms were not ready yet, so I went straight to the convention centre to get my con badge. With it came a small gift celebrating the publication of Campfire Tales for Call of Cthulhu: a patch of the Miskatonic scout-investigators and a scout identification you can use as a prop if you play those scenarios.
15:00 Vistas of New Pavis
Matthew Cole offered a presentation of his New Pavis in 3D project and told us all the ins and outs of bringing to life the city of thieves. Even though the Blender program crashed when he tried to show us a panorama of the city, minutes later we were flying through every quarter at a time. He stopped by the pieces and nooks he is most proud of, like the inside of several temples like Orlanth and Storm Bull, the house of Kost the Tracker, and many others. I was particularly impressed by the inside of the Humakt and Yelmalio temples, and by the wooden and stone stairs that lead up to Rich Hill. The realistic textures he has applied to all the buildings are also impressive. His Vistas of New Pavis book should be ready for the Jonstown Compendium soon, but he is also being sidetracked by adding more and more details, and by doing some commissioned pieces for Ian Thompson's publications about Pavis. Aside from that, my hope is that some day, all this work is used in some sort of videogame!
Collage of some of the pictures I took from Matthew's presentation - I should have taken many more!
As in the previous year, Matthew was also offering several opportunities during the weekend to walk around his 3D New Pavis through his VR headset, which must be an out-of-this-world experience for any Glorantha fan! Maybe next time I'll get a chance!
Afterwards, I hadn't been able to sign up for any game, so I signed up for the...
19:00 Chaosium Mixer
This was a dinner in the hall of the convention centre, where there are several big round tables, and you could sit there and chat with whoever from the Chaosium team was sitting there too. In the queue to get our food, I started chatting with the person standing next to me, Mark Davidson, who told me he is currently running a Rivers of London campaign, so I told him about the game I played last year (The Font of All Evil), which he had obviously run to his friends. Later, I just sat on the first empty chair I found. The Chaosium team had spread out in 4 or 5 of them. On my table were Doc Cowie (who is helping Jeff Richard playtest the upcoming RuneQuest Fantasy Roleplay), Jeremiah Evans (Chaosium's convention coordinator), and Rick Meints (President of Chaosium), but also other fans like Andrew and Kathy Smith, and Mr. Moose. I had contacted Doc Cowie through Facebook that week in case he was going to run any games of the RuneQuest Fantasy Roleplay game that is in development, but either they overlapped with games I had already signed up for, or they were already fully booked by the time I saw his reply on Facebook. Anyway, he told me to be around the Atrium zone on Sunday at 14:00 to maybe play in his playtest!
The conversation on the table soon turned to the Gloranthan freeform House of Malan that David Hall and Dan Barker were running on Saturday. Jeremiah told me about his experience in the freeform he had played in Chaosium Con 2024 in the US: Home of the Bold. He had played the role of a cook cooking a walktapus, and he had also been in charge of the bets, so he had rigged the odds to earn a lot of money because no one had checked his math! He also managed to pull off many other shenanigans, like getting paid in mercenary pikemen (!) and later on putting some of them in service to the Lunars and some in service to the Sartarites, to fight a battle for Boldhome!!! Doc Cowie commented how he had also had misgivings about participating in freeforms, up until the point he had played in Home of the Bold, and now he loves them. He jokingly compared participating in freeforms as swinging, because it does not seem like much when you are not doing it, but apparently it is great when you are! For more information about Gloranthan freeforms, listen to this podcast. We also talked about THE KRAKEN convention in Germany, and Doc mentioned the Christmas edition, on early December, is very relaxed. I told him I had been there on October 2016 and 2018, and agreed they are really nice (except for the Snoratorium!). Later on, I realised I had lost the opportunity to chat with Rick Meints. Oh well...
After dinner, I came across Brian Duguid on the terrace (author of some Jonstown publications like The Children of Hykim, The Voralans, or The Winter King) and we chatted for a short while. He told me he is playing in a QuestWorlds Glorantha campaign run by Ian Cooper, and also in a RuneQuest campaign in Sandheart. He informed me Ian Cooper has the manuscript for the Glorantha book almost finished. Their campaign is taking them from Handra in Maniria all along the coast, involving merfolk and heading towards Nochet, with a lot of referencing Martin Helsdon's impressive Ships & Shores of Southern Genertela. He also told me his RuneQuest GM is mixing the Sacred Earth, Sacred Water scenarios with the 4th volume in the Sandheart campaign. Since I am also currently running a Sandheart campaign, I told him needed to speak to his GM!
The garden terrace of the Cranfield Management Development Centre is a nice place to sit, drink, and chat.
Afterwards I got a Guinness for 6.90£ at the bar and chatted further with Mark Davidson about the best Call of Cthulhu campaigns, and things players do. I went to my bedroom at around 22:00.
Friday 22nd
I had breakfast while chatting with Mr Moose and Nick Brooke (Community Ambassador for Chaosium). Nick told us all the varied cool projects he is now doing the layout for. Some of which I can't divulge, but you could tell he clearly loves his dream job. Afterwards I headed towards my first game of the convention:
9:00 The Repentant's Tomb: a RuneQuest game by Harry Parker
The blurb of the game claimed this was going to be a dungeon bash, and it did not disappoint! We were a party of adventurers in New Pavis and a Lanbril priest offered us a job while celebrating at Gimpy's: to find an ancient magical item in a Mostali tomb recently discovered in the Rubble. I had also run a dungeon bash on the previous year, so I was interested in seeing what the GM had in store for us. We soon found out the tomb was defended by several cool traps and puzzles revolving on the different metals of Glorantha. I played a huge Agimori hunter with lots of fire magic, and the other players were from different Praxian tribes. At first, I wondered if the morokanth PC (a tapir-like creature) would be useful at all, and he actually was key to resolving a puzzle thanks to his high Swim skill!
We had to think hard, but we also came up with crazy ideas like placing the Impala rider on a wheelbarrow with a copper helmet that was too big for her (it made sense in the scenario, I swear!). The game was also enhanced by the participation of lovely players like John, Luzya, Adan, Jack, and Craig. In the final scene, Craig's character was brutally cut in half, but the laconic Humakti PC (played by Adan) came to our rescue, while the berserker Storm Bull PC (played by Jack) was cut down and quickly magically healed up again twice! I rolled a critical with my magically charged firespear and destroyed one of our enemies' arms right off. In the end, we managed retrieve some treasure, but we also released an ancient evil into the world. That would have led to further adventures, but alas, this was only a one-shot. Even so, I had lots of fun and I enjoyed the game a lot.
Harry told us he is currently running a Six Seasons in Sartar campaign, and they have just finished the first volume. Finally, I found interesting one little prop the GM is using in his face-to-face campaign so that players can track their location hit points in an easier way: a black plastic tray with indentures for placing green D10s in the 7 hit locations, so you just need to turn the dice in each location to note the current hit points, and then when you reach negatives, you replace them with red D10s. Have you ever seen anything like that?
Later I saw Katrin Dirim was selling prints of her beautiful art, and I could not help buying the piece he did for the Yelmalio cult in Cults of RuneQuest: Gods of Fire & Sky. Then I chatted a bit with Dan Barker, who was also selling his art. He told me he had created Orlanthi tattoos you can stick on your skin! He was selling them for 2£ and they were primarily for the freeform on Saturday, as the symbols stood for the several Orlanthi clans involved in the story. Such a cool idea!
After the game I went to the bar to buy a sandwich for lunch and I sat there chatting with Mr. Moose and Brian Duguid. His friend Craig sat down next to me and we immediately started gushing excitedly about our respective Sandheart campaigns in Sun County, exchanging ideas, funny anecdotes, and evil plans. Uwahahaha...! It was great fun.
Afterwards I headed towards the room for the afternoon game, and I came across Chris Went, who was nervous before the RuneQuest game he was about to run: a heroquest to find Pinchining, the last surviving goldwheel dancer... perhaps in the Green Age? He had prepared lovely background sheets with art for every pregen, drawn by Phil O'Connor. I admired them for a few minutes, feeling strangely envious of the players who were about to play in Chris' game, and then I went to my next game.
14:00 Lost in Moonbroth, a RuneQuest game by Ben
Ben handed out the character sheets he had prepared for the game. Paul played an Issaries merchant whose name was Saradra, IIRC), Brian Duguid played Arale, an Ernalda assistant priestess, Darren played a Humakti warrior named Yenir, and Andy played a Storm Bull warrior called Natalir. I played an Eirithan High Llama rider whose name was Varanyne, and whose job was to take care of the beats of burden in Saradras' caravan. We were all members of the White Quartz clan in the Aranwyth tribe. Recently, a fellow clan member, an Issaries salt trader named Dangstan Watertongue had gone missing in the oasis of Moonbroth. Actually, he had been in a spying mission to find out exactly how strong the Lunar garrison there was. However, the gods had told our priests that he was not in the hands of the Lunar army, although he was still alive in the oasis. I loved the premise!
So, we went to the oasis, left our beasts in the pens, paid for rooms at an inn, and slowly and carefully tried to investigate where Dangstan was. Arale tried to get some gossip from the local temple to the grain goddesses, but Brian rolled two fumbles in a row (!!!), and so we had to get out quickly after apologising profusely. :-D She then went to relax at the spa next to inn, and she fumbled her Scan roll. Yeah, not a great start... but she got an important and mysterious clue anyway, and we laughed out loud when she said "I will come back for further stimulation...". Another funny scene was when that night, at the inn, we tried to make friends singing songs and playing the flute, and we got such good rolls that the whole inn started singing along loudly with us!
Meanwhile, the Issaries merchant went to the Issaries shrine in the marketplace. The following day he participated in a holy ceremony before the market started, assisting the local priest, but he also had to walk a thin line and not arouse the suspicions of the local Etyries priest. I loved how Ben described the place and the NPCs, particularly the worship ceremony involving the two trade deities. The oasis of Moonbroth is a cool place for a scenario, and Ben revealed some of its secrets (gathered from Nick Brooke's article in Tales of the Reaching Moon #15). In the end, we managed to get our comrade out (ironically thanks to the Ernaldan, who much later cast the Rune spell Charisma on herself, and rolled a special success at the right moment), and had to ride away while being chased by the Lunar forces, with missiles raining on every side. It was a cool scenario in a cool location. I only felt bad for the two players who were playing the bodyguards of the merchant, and who were itching for a fight in the final scene, as they did not get their chance for combat. At the same time, it was great that the scenario could be solved without resorting to violence.
Ben later told us he owns a hobby store and is developing a campaign for the Aranwyth tribe that he may end up publishing in the Jonstown Compendium.
18:00 Dinner
That day dinner was a lovely BBQ on the garden. I stuffed myself with food while chatting with Ben, Brian, and Matthew. I recall chatting about the upcoming Sartar book for RuneQuest, and Brian revealed he had had a sneak peek into it! How cheeky! :-O Soon after, I went to my evening game:
19:00 Dam You, a QuestWorlds game by Simon Phipps
I have been a fan of Simon Phipps' website since my 20s, so it was an honour to finally get to play in one of his games set in Dorastor, the most Chaotic land in Glorantha, and a heroquest no less! I played with Matthew, Ant, Mikko, who is Finnish, and Andreas who had come from Germany. Of all the character sheets, I decided to choose Mallar, the Eurmali PC (an illusionist thief and peddler), who had lots of interesting keywords, magic, and abilities. We played a houseruled version of the QuestWorlds rules Simon calls QuestWorlds Lite, and he let us assign a set of fixed ratings to each of our abilities and keywords so we could each customise our PCs.
Our characters were Orlanthi settlers in Dorastor, and we had been chosen to perform a heroquest to dam the Sludgestream, a heavily polluted stream, so the ducks in Fowlvale (Foulvale actually) could have pure water. To achieve that, we needed to follow on the steps of the hero Dirty Den who in the past had managed to dam another filthy stream in the region. But how were we supposed to accomplish such a heroic feat? Easy: You just turn into beavers with some hsunchen magic, swim upstream past the gloomsharks, chop some chaotic trees to help the Chaos elves, push the trunks upstream, ask the river god for permission, build a dam, and then just summon a giant Chaos slug and bind it so it swallows the Chaos in the water so that the stream is purified. Euh... OK? I know it sounds crazy, but hey, this is not only Dorastor, but a heroquest!!! So, we put on our beaver pelts, chanted the magic, and on we went!
At some points it felt like we were in a cartoon film, and Simon actually agreed that is how it must feel to be on the heroplane, often. Although the scenario was linear because we had to tread on the hero's steps, it was fun to try to use our skills in original ways to overcome each obstacle. Besides, if you used the same keyword twice in a row, Simon did not grant the full bonus to your roll, which encouraged us to be creative in our descriptions. "You are not here to have fun" warned us Simon right from the start, smiling "...you are here to provide me with amusement". Haha! Despite that, something we all learnt (by rote) is: "Simon Phipps is a nice GM!!!". :-D
My character sheet and some doodles of what I was imagining. On the back of the sheet there was a rules summary.
In the end, it was an extremely trippy, fun session, that produced scenes like the Eurmali character in beaver shape turning into a sexy slug to seduce the giant Chaos monster. Just a regular day on the heroplane! On top of that, Simon noted our names down as playtesters of his supplement Hahlgrim's War, gifted us a digital copy, and even sent us a sneak peek into his next publication: Hahlgrim's War Part Two! Isn't he a nice GM or what? :-D So if you want to run Dirty Den's Quest in your RuneQuest campaign, be sure to buy a copy of that book. Then you will have proof I have not made up any of this! And you will get a ton of playable material too. :-)
After the game, I met Chris again, who had brought his miniatures of the Cradle and the Watchdog of Corflu, together with the tiny miniatures of yelmite troops, wyrm riders, bison riders, and even Yello Mello the baboon, and was displaying them on the main hall. I stared at the miniatures while chatting with him. I had seen his miniatures on Facebook, and I thought he had made them for a RuneQuest campaign, but actually he had not run any campaign with them yet, he just thought it would be a nice pastime to build the giant cradle and paint the minis! :-O
So these were my first two days and first games at Chaosium Con UK 2026. I will go on with all I did on Saturday and Sunday at Chaosium Con UK 2026, but this post is already long enough, so I will leave the rest of the weekend for a second part. Get ready for more games not all of them of RuneQuest (including the VIP game I played!), interesting people and the panels about the upcoming books by Chaosium!
