The last year has been awash with fantastic online RPG events, but both Grogmeet and Virtual Grogmeet stand out, not just for the quality and range of games on offer but also for the extras – the pub quiz and traditional Sunday morning celebrity interview. Here’s how it went down for me this April.
The Pub Quiz
A popular feature of Grogmeetish back in November, this event made it’s second appearance on the Thursday evening. I was quiz master for the Caring Pseudo Intellectuals team who came in with a very reasonable 25/50 and rather fine joint fifth place, but the scores really don’t matter, it’s all about the fun we had running through it (say all those who don’t win). I’d like to congratulate and give a shout out to the winning team, but I worry their ego’s might explode, so we’ll just leave that there.
The Persephone Extraction
Although I doubt I’d ever run Gumshoe games, I’ve really enjoyed the ones I’ve played – Night’s Black Agents, Fall of Delta Green and a little bit of Trail of Cthulhu, so when I saw this three session game running Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings GMd by @theGROGNARDfile I knew I had to sign up for it.
With my character Jian selected (a hacker/martial arts expert) and note taking app ready I sat down to meet a new group of players, some of whom I know from Twitter and Discord but hadn’t met virtually face to face. I always enjoy meeting new gamers, and it turned out this lot were a good bunch who really bought into the world of NBA and the story that unfolded.
Over the three sessions my digital notebook filled up with details of scenes, exciting encounters and clues (I enjoy this note taking exercise, apparently I have over 4000 words noted down for this so far). The game was fast paced, gripping with some cracking scenes and great character interplay, and as always @theGROGNARDfile delivered a fantastic game.
@jwmuk has produced excellent write ups of the sessions, adding his own narrative flair, they are great read.
@theGROGNARDfile ‘s ambition was to run the whole of The Persephone Extraction over the weekend, but it after the first session it became clear that squeezing the whole thing in would be a sub-optimal experience, so we’ve done the first bit and are continuing it at Virtual Grogmeet 2022. I can’t wait!
The Maleficarum Heist – A Midderlands Adventure
I’ve been running Old School Essentials every week for the past 18 months, but until the Virtual Grogmeet weekend I hadn’t been a player in an OSE game, so when I saw @sjamb7‘s Midderlands adventure for OSE I scrambled for a place at the virtual table. I’ve played with the good judge before and he always runs a great game, a combo to good to resist.
As the adventure name tells, this was a heist adventure where we needed to recover the Maleficarum – a priceless volume telling magic-users in the Midderlands how to hide their magic from witch finders. The witch finder general, Mattias Hopkiln has temptingly left the book in public view on the body of an executed witch.
Planning our route into Duddingly, executing the plan (with a few hiccups) and dealing with the infamous witch finders was hugely satisfying. A great session which delivered on it’s OSE and the Midderlands promise and then some.
Into the Awaroth Woods
I’ve ran this adventure a couple of times before and really enjoyed it, although I knew the timing would be tight for a 3 hour con game. I’d paired this one page dungeon adventure with Worlds without Number and even had a trial run.
The adventure sees our heroes heading into the Awaroth Woods to track down the hidden treasures of the sorcerer Urgaan. The game presents a decent sized area to explore and doesn’t restrict the PCs who can head off in any direction, but I knew I’d need to steer the players towards a satisfying conclusion. I had a great group of players who engaged with their characters and the setup of the game, but I have to admit that the timings didn’t quite work out as I’d planned. Still we reached that conclusion, and the PCs just escaped, with their lives if not the treasure!
I’d like to run this adventure again, but without the time restriction – I reckon this could easily run into a 6-8 hour game, probably across two or three sessions.
Interview
The traditional Grogmeet Sunday morning interview featured Tim Hartford. Being honest, I knew nothing of Tim before this, but really enjoyed the interview. You can listen to it here.
And that’s it, Virtual Grogmeet over for another year, but plenty of other events to look forward to ahead of us. Massive thanks to @theGROGNARDfile for organising the event.
Hope to catch up with you all face to face a meat space Grogmeet in November!
Old Scouser Roleplaying 
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