Pulp! Army Builder

Since lockdown I've been painting a lot of miniatures (particularly the nice resin ones from Atlantis Miniatures). This has led me to do a bit of work renewing Pulp!, my miniatures ruleset. The PDF has been pay what you want in all sales venues for a while, so at some point I'll be doing an web version and probably releasing it as Creative Commons.

In the mean time I spent a bit of time building a little web app to help people build force lists for the game. The List Builder stores all the info in your local browser, so you can keep the list on your phone and it'll work offline. Let me know if you see any bugs via social media.

Spy team 67 - Loose Lips Sink Ships

If you enjoyed the previous escapades of Spy Team '67 from Gen Con. You'll be pleased to know the team are back for another streaming of The Agency. Featuring colour coded admirals.

Featuring TrooperSJP, Drakoniques, Fuzzy Freaks and Susanah Grace

You can watch the recording over at Twitch TV

The Agency - Streaming From GenCon 21

Well it was a wonderful surprise to wake up this morning and be tagged into a Twitter thread about people live-streaming The Agency from the main stage at Gen Con!

The stream is on 17th Sept (Today as of posting) at 5pm UK time/12pm Eastern on the GenCon Main Stage Twitch TV Channel. With TrooperSJP running the scenario : "Spy Team 67 and The Quaint Village of Doom!".

Spaghetti Conjunction

Spaghetti Conjunction is a fine one day convention in Birmingham, put together by the stalwarts of the local scene Pookie and Simon Burley. I've been to most of them, but realised I hadn't mentioned them here. Since the most recent (2B) was held just this weekend, I thought I'd rectify that situation.

Taking lots of inspiration from the excellent Concrete Cow in Milton Keynes, Spaghetti Conjunction uses a tom-bola ticket based signup that reverses order between morning and aftenoon sessions. This means everybody has a good chance of signing up to the game they want (and newbies to the con get a golden ticket to pick one game in one slot, which is a nice touch).

As a small convention of about thirty to forty people, it features a fine variety of games. From D&D to Dead of Night, so whatever your RPG tastes there's something for you. I played one of Neil Smith's Gloranthan Heroquest scenarios in the morning, which was a great little tale of a peace process between two rival tribes that goes wrong and revolves neatly around the conflicting agendas of the characters. In the afternoon I played a small suburban horror scenario Lamp Posts In Bloom, run by Robin Poole, which I later learned was written by Scott Dorward (an excellent scenario writer friend of mine who also happened to edit The Queen's Men).

One of the nice things about the convention is the raffle, which thanks to the industry folks involved attracts a lot of good prizes. So you've a good chance of winning a giant Zweihander hardback. The raffle also raises money for the local charity of Birmingham Children's Hospital, where any profits over the cost of running the con also go.

So as a convention Spaghetti Conjunction offers a lot in a one day package, and if like me you're local then attending is an easy yes. It's not without a few issues though. The venue is Geek Retreat, and as a cafe it does a good line in teas, coffees and sweets, but the food is mostly of the bland burger or nachos variety. Given the many amazing food places in Brum city centre, you might want to decamp for food, but the con only get the venue on the assumption people will buy lots of food and drink, so that puts you in an awkward position. The venue is also beginning to start to strain under the numbers attending the con, which means the upstairs get a bit stuffy around midday. However, too many people is a nice problem for any con to have only a few years in and these are minor quibbles over what is a wonderful little one day convention that you should definitely go to if you are in the West Midlands.

70s TV, Dexter's Lab and UK Games Expo

Were all things discussed when I joined the nice folks on the Unlucky Frog Gaming Podcast to chat about Indie RPG publishing, design, the growth of the gaming scene in recent years and more.