The GROGNARD Files

Remember the GROGVINE project? We sent out five books into the world, passing from one member of the GROGSQUAD to the next, slowly building a unique collaborative creation.

They’re starting to make their way back to the den. On this video, you will see the content of the first GROGVINE. If you want to find out more, follow this page.

Dirk

This week, I recorded and issued the second Dirk’s Dossier —another loose-leaf page that’s fallen out of the GROGNARD Files folder and fluttered to the floor of the den. I’ve scooped it up, dusted off the biscuit crumbs, and put out as exclusive Patreon content.

It’s rambling and a bit more relaxed than the usual podcast, if you can imagine such a thing, but it does give me a chance to reflect on ideas that won’t normally fit into the GROGNARD files, and a place to stick the off-cuts that are taken out because they’re too long, and a bit boring. Don’t let that put you off.

In the latest episode I chat about organising GROGMEET, the face-to-face gaming event that we host in Manchester. It has moved again to January (9th-11th), probably as a permanent fixture, because it worked out so much better for us than November, when it is busier in the city. Don’t worry, we are putting in another online GROGMEETish on 7th-9th November. The best way of keeping up to date is to follow the page.

GROGMEETing like this …

Organising GROGMEET isn’t rocket science—it’s event-bodging, powered by hob nobs, Post-It notes, and a group of very tolerant participants. It started as a simple meet-up in 2016: a room, a date, and a few people off Twitter. Since then, it’s grown beyond recognition, but at heart, it’s still the same thing—a gathering of like-minded folk who want to play and chat and roll some dice.

Let’s start with a question I’ve been asking myself since the first GROGMEET back in 2016: what even is a convention?

In the UK, we’re spoiled for choice. You’ve got the headliners like UK Games Expo, Dragonmeet, and a raft of local cons popping up in pubs, scout huts, and community centres across the land. But where does a con stop being a con and start being something else entirely? If it’s just a game that happens once a year in the back room of a pub, is that a con—or just an annual club night?

In my mind, I conflate the idea of conferences with conventions: there’s trade stalls, seminars, panels, maybe even a keynote speech from someone who once playtested Talisman in 1985. The gaming’s often on the side-lines.

GROGMEET keeps the gaming front and centre. It’s not quite a club—too big. But it’s not quite a convention—too small. It’s a weird hybrid. A con-club. A clunvention? A convlub? Or just a simple “meet-up” of the GROGNARD files listeners.

What grounds it—and gives its flavour—is the venue and the city. Manchester is perfectly imperfect. Compact, connected, and packed with character. Everything’s within walking distance. We’ve used venues from the plush to the peculiar (ask anyone about “The Year of the Shed”). But the challenge grows as we grow. Over 100 people came last year, which makes it harder to keep that casual, cosy feel, and have the appropriate level of lavatory provision.

It all started with one decision: Book a place. Find people. Roll dice. The rest is GROGMEET.

A BONE TO PICK

Also featuring in the Dossier is an ‘I’ll Get Mi Coat’ segment that didn’t make it to the final cut of the Rivers of London GROGPOD . I was away on holiday when that one came out, so didn’t have enough time to cut it down to size. It’s included here in its raw rambling.

Judge Blythy—our resident rules lawyer— dug out The Secret of Bone Hill and declared it “an experiment ahead of its time.” Back in the day, it landed with a bit of a thud because it didn’t spoon-feed you a story. It just put you in a region and said, “There you go, figure it out.” Blythy sees it as a prototype for sandbox play.

I had been running Rivers of London RPG, a couple of convention games. It doesn’t always end in a climactic scrap. Sometimes the satisfaction comes from solving something, talking your way through it, and feeling like you’ve stepped into the world of the books.

But is that enough for a convention game? Do people want fireworks at the end or is a neatly tied bow of narrative satisfaction okay?

WHERE WERE YOU IN 2020?

During 2020, the Year of the Apocalypse, as I declared a the start of the year (a title that proved a little too prophetic), I adapted Famine in Far-go for a short online campaign. Gamma World is gloriously bonkers, and Famine is a road trip through a mutant-infested wilderness, ending in a showdown with humanoid chicken-men in a derelict food plant. Yes, I made them talk like Colonel Sanders. Yes, they wore gingham.

There you have it. From toilets to Bone Hill to radioactive poultry. If you want to listen to it, then please head to Patreon to throw some coins in the beret, to keep this show on the road. It’s cheaper than a pound of “Processed Chick-O-Tron.”

—Dirk the Dice

“Are you Dirk the Dice, can I claim a pint?” These were the first words that Andrew Jones, Dimbyd on social media, said to me back in 2015.

It was at DragonMeet shortly after the podcast had been released. He went on to say that he was a fan of the show due to the RuneQuest content and more importantly, it had mentioned F.C.Parker, the games shop in Cardiff where he went when he was young.

The tragic news of his death on Sunday (13th April) has brought back the memories of good times that we spent together, playing games and talking bobbins. 

That meeting was the first for a real-life listener to the GROGNARD files. Social media posts had been exchanged and comments made on this blog, but the only evidence that someone was really listening was Andrew saying hello. His broad smile through his beard and twinkling eyes were very reassuring. People were listening to us. 

We went on to meet others who have since become friends like Andrew, and he was part of the organisational effort for us all to have a gaming day together in Manchester. At the first GROGMEET we met in a pub the night before. The plan was to sit around and chat. Andrew pulled out Feng Shui2 RPG from his bag and said, “let’s play!” 

At the old FanBoy Three we had a wonderfully chaotic game involving kung fu action and finger cymbals. His original humbrol painted Citadel miniatures as markers. It was brilliantly fun and inclusive and his first step set the tone for all the GROGMEETs that have followed. 

His desire to play created the first GROGMEET eve. He was and always will be, the first GROGMEET GamesMaster. 

EXPO-EXPOSURE

At UK Games Expo the following year, he acted as a chaperone, introducing me to other gamers, “this is Dirk the Dice, he does a podcast.”

“Don’t listen to ‘em,” responded one bluntly. 

Andrew was great company over that weekend. He’d brought along an ashcan version of the new RuneQuest in Glorantha rules for us to play-test. The character sheet hadn’t been devised yet, so he had characters on reams and reams of paper. Pookie (or Pookie Wookie, as Andrew insisted on naming him) was part of the team too, putting new fangled ‘augment’ rules through the paces. There was a duck, a zombie duck, there were always ducks with Dimbyd.

At one GROGMEET he took the Ducks to the Red Moon. “They were part of the zeitgeist in the 70s,” he would explain, “Howard and Scrooge McDuck, all the hippies loved them. Like the fashion for zombies today, ducks are in Glorantha because they were trendy.” 

He was one of the Runemaster bunch of RuneQuest GMs and he was always very creative with his Glorantha sessions. They were respectful to the lore, but never a slave to it and he injected a sense of adventure and wit into his scenarios. And Ducks, I did mention the ducks. One time, when I was GMing RuneQuest to a bunch of unwitting players at a convention, he loomed up behind me and said, “Kill them, kill them all!” 

When we weren’t gaming he was a gentle, insightful, funny conversationalist. We talked about local and national politics, comics, music and his family, who were very important to him. His mum, dad and sister. Every time I saw him, he’d talk about plans to learn to drive so he could get to them more and do more errands. “Have you started learning yet?” I’d say, “not yet, but I’m getting there.” We also shared a passion for The Goodies, so it was good to give him “The Goodies Files” and “The Goodies’ Book of (Criminal) Records” as a gift for looking after me at Expo.

He withdrew from social media and extracted himself from the scene for a while, for health reasons. It was delightful to get a positive response to an invitation to a Moorcock/ Tolkien Weekender a couple of years ago. He was a chief antagonist of the debate between the two factions: who is better, Tolkien or Moorcock? Spending the weekend was a great chance to see him back on form and what we had missed: his cheeky sense of humour and expansive knowledge of … everything.

Recently, he was giving me advice about The Borellus Connection, the new Fall of Delta Green campaign released by Pelgrane Press. Before my campaign started, he warned me that it seemed high-risk, and to have some back-up characters ready to go, just in case. He was keen to know how it was going to progress. It’s sad to think that I won’t have chance to tell him.

I’m pretty sure that I honoured the ‘pint’ (probably a pepsi), I did say terms and conditions applied, nevertheless I will be raising a glass to him tonight: Gorffwys mewn heddwch … Dimbyd.

The come-down after the astonishing weekend of gaming is never easy and it seems even more difficult this week. To be locked away from reality for a short time in an isolation tank of mayhem has a restorative effect on the soul.

GROGMEET was moved from its usual slot of November to January to avoid a clash with a number of different events, including the MTV awards which took over the city centre of Manchester.

The new slot has a lot going for it. Things are a bit quieter in the pubs and hotels cheaper, plus it was something to look forward to in the normally miserable winter month.

THE GREAT RACE

The weekend started with a multi-table extravaganza Gatsby and The Great Race, a scenario written by Paul Fricker, which involves different dimensions in time and space, time-loops and table-hopping seances where everything seems a bit out of joint. I won’t go into the details here in case you get chance to play it (Paul has rewritten it for 7th edition and intends to publish on the Miskatonic Repository).

There were seven tables, two extra dimensions, twelve keepers, forty players and I was coordinating the proceedings from the centre of the room like a … messianic megalomanic. Thanks to the people who made it all possible. Paul did a great job before the event describing what to expect, based on previous experiences.

The whole thing was a once in a life-time gaming experience. Bonkers.

The Friday afternoon event is normally organised by OldScouseRoleplayer, but he was in Tenby with Dave Paterson and crew. It was their annual weekend of gaming, a remote version of GROGMEET, known as GROGTEN where original players in his ‘Friday Night Barbarians of Lemuria’ game gather for a weekend of gaming by the sea. Absent friends were present.

They were there in spirit as they provided the sound effects for the alternate dimension that players travelled through during the fractured time. They diligently recorded a script of nonsense, that only bore a passing resemblance to what was going on in the scenario. The players thought they were clues and brought them back to the table.

During the preparation, Paul Fricker mentioned a version of the game where his friend Matt Sanderson had the players in an out-house looking for a honey-badger. It was a funny red-herring, so it was included in the recording. Sure enough, at least one player was on the hunt for a honey-badger that wasn’t really there.

PLAY IS THE THING

From my point of view, it was one of the most pleasurable GROGMEETs as it ran smoothly during the event, despite some hiccups in the run up to it. I could relax and enjoy running some games.

I gave my Mean Arena, forged in the dark hack, another run out. It does a pretty good job of replicating the comic strip and the players were pretty inventive in their manoeuvres against The Cottonhopilites, resulting in a 3 – 0 away win.

Andy Burnside tried to convince Matt Talon of The Slayers to throw the game. Not this time Andy, not this time.

On Saturday morning, I ran a Liminal game that had been written by Blythy about the haunting of The Old Man and Scythe pub in Bolton. The pub is one of the oldest in the country. It is famous for being the last place where the Earl of Derby stayed prior to his execution for his role in the Bolton massacre during the English Civil War. The investigation moved at a good pace, which culminated in a challenging confrontation which took all of the characters to the brink. Once again I was impressed with Liminal and its deceptive simplicity.

In the afternoon I had the chance to unfurl a new map for Raclash, the game world we created forty years ago for a play-by-mail game. I explained the lore to the players, showing the original artefact: a hand drawn map coloured with pencils with the odd bit of Tippex, on Games Workshop hex-paper. I have redrawn the map for the 21st Century, and with the help of All Rolled Up, had it printed on an A1 piece of velvety satin. Worth the price of entry.

I ran two scenarios in Raclash (the other was on Sunday afternoon for MORPcon) that were continuing stories from the campaign that I have been running with the Wednesday night group. They were a couple of side-quests which will have a lasting impact on the next stage of the campaign. The first scenario involved intervening in the advance of a storm demon laying siege to the capital city and the second scenario sent the players as assassins to take out one of the key warlords who were attempting to lay claim to the Kingdom. They were different, but both scenarios involved the infiltration of a gorgon’s nest to unleash the ultimate weapon of petrification.

On Saturday the players said, “a game like this would have been terrible back in the day as you’d assume that the GM was out to get you.” Sure enough, on Sunday’s game, following a series of unfortunate rolls, one of the players was turned to stone with an hour left to play. Ah well.

It was all fast and furious fun using my version of BRP (Stormbringer with a dash of homebrew). It had all the swings of fortune that you might expect when the stakes are high, the monsters fearsome and the 80s swords and sorcery movie tropes flow.

SANCTION

On Sunday morning, Paul Baldowski joined me and the GROGSQUAD in FanBoy 3’s basement of role-playing rambling to talk about his experience of running Gary Gygax’s Dangerous Journeys at GROGMEET. How many other conventions are running that? He also delved into his postal gaming past and talked about The Dee Sanction’s influence on his design projects. You’ll be able to hear his contribution in a GROGPOD coming soon.

That was that. Another GROGMEET complete. Emerging from the weekend, blinking in the light, I turn on the news, oh no! Prepare the isolation tank.

I want to go back. Get ready for virtual GROGMEET in April.

Dirk

Thanks to Foundation Coffee House and FanBoy3 for looking after us over the weekend. You can read other accounts of the weekend from people who were there:

Neil

First Age

Stef