Mr Newt does 7 Hills

7 Hills was a laid back, but strangely perky con and everything I wanted out of my first con of the year, banishing the last of the winter blues. Paul and Graham had efficiently organised the con, which ran like clockwork and purred like a satisfied pussy cat 🙂

Friday Night
I arrived straight from work, courtesy of Guy Milner. Despite being stuck behind red lorry and driving through thick fog over the tops we would not be stopped. Quick check-in then food, booze n chat at the social. Perhaps bit too much booze, but ooooooooh the Bombardier was on form [For real ale lovers despite being a hotel the Garrison has a decent selection now]. Note to self: “can no longer drink like its my 20s”. Awesome to see friends old and new, but don’t ask me to remember what we talked about 😉

Saturday
After a typical but satisfactory Garrison full English with concessions to veggies breakfast it was time to game. I was expecting the lack of numbers compared to Furnace to really show, but everyone was up for it so their natural exuberance spilled out all over the place during the very quick opening speech by Dr Mitch.

Then on to game.

Sat Morning: Operation Mudbrick (The Company)
A game of two Johns (Ruddy & Ossoway) who along with the rest of Assault Group Maximum #5 hub nobbed with archaeologists from the British Museum, dug out ancient secrets in the Mesopotamian city of UR, and when confronted with the ‘strangeness’ at the heart of the adventure decided a tactical withdrawal was in order. Classic moment alone in the desert “Where is everyone?”. Great stuff. There was always a chance with this scenario it would turn into a bad Cthlulhu adventure, but the players helped me keep it on track for being a good little Ufology mystery, with the Company’s trademark Military action underpinning it. Which is exactly what I wanted. I’ll stop there since its a contender for a re-run at Furnace. Big thanks to the two Johns.

Sat afternoon: Out of Step (River of Heaven).
This was a “big ideas” type of sci-fi scenario and thanks to the players for running with it and making it work. The adventure is very much an ensemble piece, but I ran out of time to write up characters that I had originally intended to use who were tightly bonded to the adventure. So I used a group of pre-gens from one of John Ossoway’s scenarios, who had a very tight group relationship but no ties to the place were the adventure is set. Which meant part of the player’s entertainment was watching my face as I reacted unconsciously to them taking the adventure in different directions to what I had intended. John was also tickled by who the scenario went, which seeing as he created River of Heaven is a good thing for me.

Saturday evening: Zarth Wars (Crypts and Things).
This was me pulling inspiration from John Carter from Mars, Flash Gordon and even Prometheus (watch it with the attitude that the characters are a typical D&D group and you’ll get where I’m coming from). There’s always a chance with OSR stuff that players won’t take to the setting assumptions or nature of the rules, but Alex, Andrew and Richard took it and ran it out of the ball park. A game that was never in danger of dragging and had some excellent fun Roleplaying. It will definitely get a write up and be published in the near future 🙂

Post gaming there was more chat and booze, and perhaps a bit too late to bed.

Because…..

Sunday
…I was spent, so I had a nice restful morning pawing though my pressies from Patriot Games (who were nice enough to run a stall, even though the number of customers was so small), before gleefully floating back over the hills with John O back to the ample bosom of my family unit.

Definitely up for it again next year. Well done organisers and attendees for such an Awesome con so full of Win!