Steampower Publishing

In a couple of weeks time I’ll be at Concrete Cow 10.5, a friendly little convention down in Milton Keynes. I’ve been plenty of times, but to celebrate the recent release of Dead of Night second edition, this time they’ve invited me as their guest of honour!

As part of my guestly duties I’ll be running a full panoply of games, including two games that will feature in the forthcoming Dead of Night scenarios book (which I talked about here) and a playtest of my Dead of Night hack, XVIIth Legion (which I’ll talk about soon).

Here’s a look at the games I’m running, and a link to Concrete Cow’s website. Hope to see some of you there! And if you can’t make it, I’m running the same games at Furnace in Sheffield at the end of October.

Dead of Night: Bad Signal

5 players, Saturday morning

Arizona, USA and the temperature is in the 120s with no sign of letting up. But it’s not just the heat. There’s a weird atmosphere to the place, a charge in the air that’s getting people all worked up and causing electrical equipment to act all strange. And that’s not to mention the weird voice that keeps cropping up on the radio, in between the static, turning men into killers, killers into monsters.

Something bad is in the air, 10-4 that.

A game of truck drivers, CB radios and psychopaths on the open road.

XVIIth Legion

5 players, Saturday afternoon

In AD9, three legions from Rome crossed the Rhine into Outer Germany to put down an uprising. None returned.

One year later, the Emperor Augustus dispatched a handful of legionaries to recover the standards of the lost legions.

This is the story of those legionaries.

A game of horror, depravity and savagery in the dark forests of Europe.

Dead of Night: Run Silent (by Malcolm Craig)

5 players, Saturday evening

It is November 9, 1983, and the Cold War is threatening to go hot. NATO is conducting a huge military exercise and the USSR suspects this may be the prelude to a massive pre-emptive strike. All Soviet forces are on high alert. The Delta-III class strategic missile submarine K-129 has been stationed south east of Iceland, its six nuclear warheads primed to destroy the north-eastern seaboard of America.

18 hours ago K-129 collided with the USS Michigan, an American Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine. The fate of the Michigan is unknown.

12 hours ago a large portion of K-129s crew attempted mutiny. 17 crewmembers are dead, 34 are locked in forward compartments. During the mutiny K-129 ran aground.

1 hour ago something started banging on the outer hull. Two divers sent out to investigate never came back. Something is out there, trying to get in. And you’re trapped in here, just trying to stay alive long enough to get back to the surface.

A game of horror, paranoia and something sinister lurking in the deep.