BurritoCon2 over and out

Manchester gave us great weather and a fantastic venue for the nano-RPG Con with the food inspired name, just as perfectly formed and tasty as it’s namesake: BurritoCon!

This is the second time we’ve run the event (I feebly scrawled about the first one) and after filling two tables with great gamers first time we wondered – could we fill three tables?  The three table plan was ambitious, perhaps too ambitious (OK definitely too ambitious) but we did have two tables of fantastic players and GM’s. We planned for more time which I thought really helped, two 4 hours sessions with an hour for lunch.

The day panned out like this:

Morning session 10am-2pm

The table of terror hosted The Cthulhu Hack, expertly GM’d by the author himself @boreders . I’ve played in one of Paul’s games before and he does a great job conveying a growing atmosphere of terror and futility, perfect horror stuff. By all accounts this was a great game, enjoyed by all the players.

I’ve not played Traveller for decades and so was excited to grab a place at @Simplikissimus‘ table. This was a dark future with strong hints of Alien and Bladerunner, a grim future with a dark universe. Tim ran a great game putting together an intriguing mystery and with some dark twists and turns. I was impressed by the Traveller system, it was very tidy and played really well at the table.

Afternoon session 3pm-7pm

By pure coincidence the afternoon session had a post apocalyptic theme, with @ConvergenceUK1 running Rifts, a weird science fantasy game from the 80’s and @M0RT75 running Umerican Survival Guide, more or less Gonzo Mad Max on a Dungeon Crawl Classics chassis.

I’ve heard Rifts described as clunky, but I thought it played really well – I know Kris had simplified things for us. It was a classic rescue mission with some nice set pieces and inter-dimensional beings. Great stuff!

The players in USG were full of enthusiasm telling me how they completed the adventure by nuking themselves (accidentally as it turned out). There aren’t many games that can provide such a memorable and epic TPK; I’d hope to play some USG in the future, will just be sure to avoid any big red buttons!

Star of the Day

Inga was kind enough to grace us with her presence; she charmed both gamers, staff and passersby.

There will be more BurritoCon’s next year, you never know we may get to three tables!

Thanks to everyone who turned up and joined in and to the GM’s Bruce, Kris, Paul and Tim.  Finally a big thanks to the staff at Fanboy 3, they have created a great gaming space and are very welcoming. Look forward to my next visit there (Grogmeet in a couple of weeks!)