Last weekend, I attended BSer Con 2, subtitled “Electric Boogaloo” - an online RPG convention organized by Sean from the Gaming and BS podcast. While the podcast concluded last year, the close-knit community continues to thrive, with an active Discord server. Last year’s BSer Con was a great success, so Sean decided to organize another one. It turned out to be another resounding success, with tons of games on offer.
As planned (see my New Year’s Resolution post), I ran the following two games:
Warpstar!
Warpstar! is the sci-fi cousin of Warlock!, one of my favorite games of the past year or so. Both use essentially the same mechanics, but of course Warpstar! adds some sci-fi specific rules, such as for spaceship battles. I really like the setting, which gives GMs plenty of room to zoom in on whatever aspects they are most drawn towards.
For this one-shot, I ran the second adventure from the excellent Omoron sourcebook: “Bad Business on Alcatrix IV”. I’ll avoid spoilers here, and only mention that the adventure mainly takes place on a planet surface. It has a solid balance of exploration, combat, and a small amount of problem solving, and I really enjoyed running it. It fit pretty well into my 3-hour slot, although 4 hours would give it a bit more room to breathe.
This was the first sci-fi game I’ve run in ages. I had been on the lookout for a sci-fi system that resonates with me for a while, and I think I’ve found it with Warpstar!. It’s streamlined, fast and easy to run, yet evocative and with plenty of depth to the characters. I hope to have a chance to run more Warpstar! in the future - perhaps even a mini-campaign.
Cortex Prime: Zombies of the Caribbean
This was my first time running Cortex Prime, a game I’d been fascinated with for a while, ever since the Kickstarter delivered in 2021.
I ran a pirate themed homebrew setting where those at sea are the only people that have escaped the zombie apocalypse - tentatively titled “Zombies of the Caribbean”.
Rather than get into more details here, I’m actually planning to record a video about this in the next few days, and I’ll probably write a short accompanying blog post here as well. So stay tuned!
I also had a chance to play in three games:
Fate: Uranium Chef
It had been several years since my last Fate game. The GM ran Uranium Chef, a zany mix of Iron Chef meets Sci-Fi. Great setting, great GM, and great players. But the setting was surprisingly complex and fiddly for a Fate game, with lots of bookkeeping (mostly for the GM). The adventure was also way too long, so we weren’t able to wrap it up in the 4-hour session. With some merciless chopping, it might just fit into a single session, but all of us were a bit surprised by its length and complexity. It really seems like the kind of whacky adventure that’s perfect as a one-shot, perhaps as a palate cleanser in between campaigns, but that would require simplifying and cutting things quite a bit.
Still, a fun session overall!
Tales from the Loop
This had been on my list to play for a long time, and I finally had a chance at this con. Tales from the Loop is a game about “the 80s that never was”. I’m not usually drawn to games where you play kids, but every once in a while, this can be fun. And Tales from the Loop puts a fun spin on this theme, with a nice mix of 80s nostalgia and weird science. A solid game, and our GM did a great job with their homebrew setting. Fun players, too.
Barbarians of Lemuria
Sword & Sorcery is one of my favorite Fantasy subgenres. I had heard that Barbarians of Lemuria does it well, and it did not disappoint! The adventure hit many Sword & Sorcery touch points, including avenging a brutal death, taking out a whole group of soldiers, undertaking a sea voyage, exploring a mysterious city, dealing with a group of cultists to free a captured friend. I enjoyed the system - lightweight, but with plenty of depth. Would definitely play this again.
Overall, this was another very fun BSer Con. In addition to the games, we also had some engaging video hangouts. Already looking to BSer Con 3!