Continuum 2004

I went up to Leicester over the weekend to attend Continuum, a gaming convention focused on Call of Cthulhu and Glorantha (not that I know a thing about Glorantha).

In the interests of me not having to type much, I'll cut and paste something I wrote elsewhere.
It was my first residential con, and really was rather good.
My only complaint is that it was sometimes possible to find yourself wandering around with not much to do. This was, admittedly, at least mostly my fault.
I'd say it would be a good idea to have the films running a lot of the time, so that people could go and chill, but then those films were very, very loud.

As it was, I spent a reasonable proportion of my idle time propping up the bar next to some hack from Dulwich.

I played GB Steve's Hellboy game on Friday night. I was a bit worried about that one, as I've never read any Hellboy, but it was great fun as it turned out. And I won a prize, which surprised me. Thanks, Steve! Two prizes, actually.

On Saturday, I played two games of Call of Cthulhu. Firstly, Camp Sunny (for which, again inexplicably, I won a prize. Go me.) - a rather fun story about students on holiday. Part of problem was that we were pretty pissed most of the time, so not really in any fit state to solve a mystery. It's a miracle any of us escaped. I hear other groups achieved a TPK.

The second Cthulhu game, on Saturday night, was the multi-group "Hesitation, Deviation, Repetition". I cannot even begin to describe how deliriously good this was. It was an excellent concept, which took advantage of the conditions that you can only achieve at a convention. I believe it was Paul Fricker who wrote that one, so well done him.

I can definitely blame Fricker for introducing me to the card game Falling, which (now that I think of it, much like his CoC scenario) is an excercise in mounting panic. I shall not dwell on the joys of trying to play Fluxx very late at night after a few beers.

On Sunday I was in Disaster '74. I played the hotel doctor, and basically just spent my time posturing, trying it on with the ladies and admiring myself in the mirror. Oh, and doling out pills. And not really knowing what to do in the event of a medical emergency.
Someone said I played a very convincing soap-opera doctor. There's a backhanded compliment if ever there was one.

Monday morning, bright and early (the curtains, remember), I breakfasted, handed my room key to a woman I can only hope really was the residence manager and strolled down to the station. Very impressively, it only took me an hour and a half to get from the platform at Leicester to my office in London. Not bad.