Concrete Cow 09 games
The following games will be offered at the Concrete Cow 09 convention on 14 March 2009. If you have something you'd like to offer, please email concrete-cow-owner@yahoogroups.com. See the Concrete Cow 08.5 games page for what was on offer last time.
Game Slots
To keep some sense of organisation about the day (ha!), this is the approximate timetable for the day.
| Doors open | 9.00am |
| Morning games | 10.00am - 1.30pm |
| Afternoon games | 2.30pm - 6.30pm |
| Evening games | 7.30pm - 11.00pm |
| Close | 11.00pm |
At previous Concrete Cows, the morning slot often has an excess of games, the afternoon slot is OK, and the evening slot has very few. You may want to bear that in mind when you're deciding when to offer your game.
Allocating games to players is by sign-up sheets on the day, on a first-come-first-served basis.
Note that, depending on circumstances, not all of these games may run on the day.
Guest of Honour games
3:16 Carnage Amongst the Stars
I'm planning on bringing my AT-43 minis and busting out some high-octane 3:16 action at the con. I'll be doling out Nuclear Grenades and broken hearts in equal measure. 3:16 is a kick-ass game about being Space Marines and genocidally cleaning the Cosmos one planet at a time.
- GM: Gregor Hutton
Best Friends, Solipsist, and New Zealand
I'll also be happy to run Best Friends (girlfriends and their petty hatreds), Solipsist (powerful minds bending reality to their will) and talk about games, gaming and surviving a fall headfirst into a rocky creek in New Zealand.
- GM: Gregor Hutton
Concrete Cowncil games
Dead of Night
- Dust
- A J-horror style ghost story, written by Andrew Kenrick
It's been over a year since fire devastated your block of flats, and renovations are complete enough for people to move back in. The flats are now mostly occupied, some by original tenants, some by newcomers. There seem to be other people in the building, though: people who only come out at night. What do they want, and what is your part to be in their strange, dark world?
- Offered by Scott Dorward
Unknown Armies
- We Had Faces
It was supposed to be a simple deal: in, out and sell the goods. Sure, it wasn’t exactly legal or risk-free, but it wasn’t supposed to get you killed.
The world is now a much more confusing and frightening place. Your memories of the last few days are a mess. There is something really urgent you need to do, but no one seems to know exactly what it is. You’re not sure if you can trust your friends: some of them may be planning to kill you. Hell, for all you know, one of them already has.
And your problems are only just beginning.
Murder, betrayal and identity crises, for four adults.
- Offered by Scott Dorward
Heaven & Earth
- Hell Hath No Fury...
Hall Investigations. A five-person team working in Potter's Lake, Kansas.
A normal company in a far from normal town.
Labeled as the supernatural hub of the United States, this is a town where most things have reportedly happened at one time or another. When a beautiful woman arrives asking the company to look into a possible repeat intruder entering her house in the small hours of the morning it hardly seems out of the ordinary. Maybe it would have been, if it was anywhere else...
- Offered by Matthew Sanderson
Indie Game demos
If you haven't already, now's your chance to have a quick try of some of those newfangled hippie indie games. I'll be offering 15-minute demos of a few games in the cracks between the main gaming sessions. If you like what you see, you should be able to pick up the book from those nice people at the Leisure Games stall.
I should be able to offer demos of:
- Cold City (The Allies 'co-operate' in 1950 Berlin to clear up after the Nazi's twisted technology)
- Covenant (The Apocalypse your cult leader promised didn't happen. Now what?)
- Dogs in the Vineyard (almost-Mormon paladin gunslingers in a Wild West that never was)
- Don't Rest Your Head (surreal modern horror)
- Grey Ranks (child soldiers in the Warsaw Uprising of 1944)
- Spirit of the Century (1920s pulp)
- The Shadow of Yesterday (pulpy fantasy)
- Thou Art But A Warrior (Islamic warriors trying to prevent the Spanish Reconquista; a Polaris variant)
- Offered by Neil Smith
Other games
Battlestar Galactica
- Hard Point
- Using Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying System
- Two weeks prior to the Cylon attack an elite squad of operatives known as Hard Point are sent on a vital mission to infiltrate Arch Angel, an abandoned space station, which has become the base for a new religious movement. Hard Point’s mission: to assassinate Gabrielle Schindler, a religious agitator, and locate two government agents that infiltrated Arch Angel but never reported back. Schindler preaches the word of the one true God, a doctrine that is seen as dangerous by the current administration. What they discover will lead to a terrifying revelation in the future, when the last of humanity is fighting for its very existence.
- Four players
- Offered by Nathan Baron
Call of Cthulhu
- Napalm Jones, You've been gone too long
- A modern day Call of Cthulhu adventure written by Paul Lawrence.
- Two years and four months after the outbreak of the Rage Virus that infected the majority of Great Britain, many cities and towns are declared safe and the British survivors have now returned. The capital has been relocated to Birmingham, (following the firebombing of London) and many towns and cities are set up as armoured satellite refuges, as a repopulation of the country begins.
- The town of Middleriver (pop 142,691) is one such satellite refuge, and has been established now for seven months, under local control.
- Middleriver (no stranger to rift activity) exhibits a flurry of rift activity, in the vicinity of St Peter’s Church, Purple Zone 3, detected by the local Torchwood monitoring station. Your exploratory Torchwood group, ( under the command of Group Leader Sapphire ‘Napalm’ Jones ) along with a 'bodyguard' of UNIT military personnel, are flown into the town to investigate the rift activity.
- Simple - Investigate Rift, Kill Zombies and fly home for tea and medals...
- A Call of Cthulhu scenario for 6 players.
- Offered by Neil.
Dead of Night
- Ghost Hunt - DVD Extras
Ghost Hunt: digital TV's most popular ghost watching programme! Watch the final, tragic series of this never to be repeated classic.
The extra features on this DVD include:
- Material filmed for the uncompleted 'Connor House' episode.
- Ghost in the Machine: a documentary on the history of theta field recording, dating from the Ryan Electic project led by Peter Brock in the 1970s to its use in this episode.
- A biography of Jill Greeley, Ryan Electric employee who died shortly after the dicsovery of the theta field.
- A summary of the final report of the inquest into the events that took place at Connor House on the night of filming.
- Memorials for those who died.
- Offered by James Mullen
GURPS
- Sweeter than Success
- A GURPS Action! scenario for four players.
- The robots rebelled. They won.
- The SAS is the last free human military force. You protect the survivors, while trying not to draw too much robot attention. But some people have other ideas about that...
- Offered by Roger Burton West
Monsters and Other Childish Things
"Be good for the babysitter," our parents said before they went out to dinner.
We complained. "Oh, come on. We're too old for a babysitter! It's not like we're babies any more!"
They wouldn't listen, though. Maybe we should have told them that our monsters think babysitters are tasty. Plus, there's that little problem with the Thing in the Basement..
A game for 5 players. Character and monster generation in game - bring your crayons!
- Offered by Elaine McCourt
In the Spotlight
This is a work-in-progress, but its uses the solidly successful InSpectres rule system as the basis for creating episodes of TV series that focus on a central character. It worked at Conception where we played a highly enjoyable game of Doctor Who using the modified rule set. Now I'm pushing the envelope: lets try to create an episode of House! Characters available for players to take on are:
- Dr. Eric Foreman
- Dr. Alison Cameron
- Dr. Robert Chase
- Dr. Lisa Cuddy
- Dr. James Wilson
- The Patient: player will choose who this is, but should be famous enough for the other characters to know them by reputation.
Who plays House? Everyone! Taking actions with your character will earn you spotlight dice (well, if you roll well at least) which you can then use to gain authority over playing Dr. House!
- Offered by James Mullen
Reign of Steel
- Sweeter than Success
- For GURPS Action!
The robots rebelled. They won. The SAS is the last free human military force. You protect the survivors, while trying not to draw too much robot attention. But some people have other ideas about that...
- Offered by Roger Burton West
Slipstream
- Bad Monkey
- A Slipstream adventure by Evilgaz
- Powered by Savage Worlds
- Plucky adventurer Chip Sterling and his loyal crew travel to the arboreal Fragment of Tarzonia, which labours under the furry heel of Gorron the Mighty and his crack Simian Legions. Theirs is a mission of peace to negotiate the release of "prisoners of war" – innocent merchants captured by "pirates" in Tarzonian space. Piloted by the expert Valkeria, silver clad space amazon, their rocketship whines its way through the dense sulphurous clouds and unwittingly, into ambush…
- Tune in next Saturday for daring tales iiiin spaaaace!
- Offered by Evil Gaz
Starblazer Adventures
- Flight of the Star Albatross!
Cargo ships have been disappearing on route to the mined-out ice-planet planet, Bejam IV. Admiral Charles Kenton has tasked your team with a simple job: Find out what's happening to the ships, recover them if you can and stop it happening again. Except nothing's ever that simple for the crew of The Albatross!
Play as:
- Vic Valiant, decorated war hero!
- Princess Yarnball, adventurer and thrill-seeker!
- Robobutler, part butler, part soldier, all robot!
- Professor Mac McMann, pioneer of the positronic AI!
Grab your laser pistol and space-suit for this 80s Sci Fi classic. Alright, "classic" might be pushing it a bit far, but here you have a game based on the British comic which ran for 281 issues from 1978 - 1991. Based on the Fate 3 system (as seen in Spirit of the Century)
Afternoon session, 2-4 players
- Offered by Rich Stokes
Transhuman Space
- Construction and Chaos
- A (rather experimental) GURPS 4th edition/Transhuman Space scenario for four players.
- A young man, a dog, and a couple of worryingly sophisticated and even more worryingly mentally unstable artificial intelligences wander the back roads of East Africa in 2100. In the long term, they want revenge for the death of a friend – but right now, they mostly just want a paying job.
- Fortunately, someone’s offering one, as general hands and botbosses on a construction site – not too many questions asked. But that last part sometimes seems to be as much bad news as good.
- Offered by Phil Masters
Traveller
- A Cold Dark Grave
By Dom Moooney Moongoose Traveller (with FATE Aspects)
There's a recession on and the small privately owned family mining concern you work for, Ernsteyn Industrial Materials, is struggling. The company is based on Yres/Regina which is a Marches frontier world
All is not yet Woolworths. An old colleague and investor Neal Slessinger, who works in the Starport Authority’s mining concession area has a one-off job that will solve all their problems. He has details of the course of a merchant vessel that was destroyed in the Fourth Frontier War and lost in a deep cometary orbit around Yres, having been fully abandoned.
Neal has negotiated a contract for salvage of specific items from the ship, and has agreed a collaborative charter with Evan, the owner of your company. It's a 'Hail Mary pass' of a job but should be the one that turns everything around.
What could possibly go wrong?
- Offered by Graham Spearing
Umläut: Game of Metal
- Special preview event! This game goes to print later this year, here's your chance to play it before anyone else*!
Vicious Demons. Mighty Axes. Flaming Skulls.
These things adorn the covers of hundreds of Heavy Metal albums every year.
Heavy Metal. The very name itself drips with power, testosterone and spray. Warriors on the stage of history, wielding their axes and mics as they do battle for glory! Trusts are forged and betrayed, mighty empires rise and fall. Ultimately, the only truth worth living for is Metal.
Long of hair and tight of pants, you join the ranks of Metal in your quest for babes, booze and glory. Try to Make It Big and hunt down an elusive record contract.
These are the heroes of an age.
This is their story.
Ever wondered what it'd be like to be in your own Metal band? The guitars, booze and groupies? Playing gigs and appearing in the local papers when your partying attracts too much attention?
Wonder no more. Umläut: Game of Metal lets you experience the ups and downs of life in a Metal band.
For 2-4 players
- Offered by Rich Stokes
Wordplay
- Troubles I’ve Seen
- A Wordplay game using the 'Cold Crusade' theme for six players by Mark Galeotti.
- You are all Touched by one of the pagan gods, a secret outsider in a world that does not want to acknowledge your existence and facing the anger of the Abrahamic faiths, who see you as a challenge to their very beliefs. Ever since you realised what you were, you have lived off the grid and on the run, shadows at the edges of society. It's not the way you wanted it, but you haven't got much choice. What’s the alternative? Stoned as a heretic in a Kabul back-street? Gunned down 'resisting arrest' in a Jerusalem market? Locked away as a dangerous delusional in a German asylum?
- As if that weren't bad enough, you owe the Old Man and he’s collecting on his favours. There's not time for preparation and research, you've all been thrown together despite not knowing each other; in short, it feels like a rush job, a recipe for disaster. But sometimes that's the way it's got to be.
- Apparently there’s a list of names – your names, the names of others who are Touched, the names of many who don't even know they’ve been Touched. That list is too dangerous to too many people, it has to be destroyed. That’s clear enough. But it's not quite so clear how you are all going to do that. After all, it’s not on a memory stick or a piece of paper, it's carved in an Etruscan stone stele (and how did those names get carved two and a half thousand years ago?) a metre square.
- The good news? It's written in Etruscan, and so it will take a day or two for experts to be gathered to decipher it.
- The bad news? You have to get it first.
- The worst news? The Old Man twinkles as he tells you this, the *******. It's in the damn Vatican, the heart of the Holy fricken' See.
- A 6-player game of Wordplay playtesting the ‘Cold Crusade’ theme of modern-day paranoia and supernatural conspiracy.
- Offered by Neil.