Games
Any tabletop roleplaying game. You want to play it, bring it along and run it. It doesn't matter whether it's a mainstream system like Dungeons & Dragons, an indie game such as Apocalypse World, or something entirely of your own design. We welcome published and unpublished one-shot scenarios, free-form role-playing, and everything in between.
Game Submission
Games can be submitted in advance via the submission form and will be added to this page. But you can just pitch up with a game on the day and offer it then too!
If you're offering a game, please note that you're still responsible for writing your own sign-up sheet; we don't create them for you. You can download a blank sign-up sheet or create your own custom sheet.
Player Sign-up
Player sign-up will take place on the day, before each game slot. You may want to learn more about our signup system.
Game Schedule
Game submission is open for Concrete Cow 25, and games will be added below as the submissions arrive. Additional games will be offered on the day.
(And here's some of what was on offer at Concrete Cow 24.5)
Morning Games (10am-1.30pm)
Darkest Night
Players are members of the Virtous Honour mercenary company, but lack both in equal amounts. The company while bickering and conniving needs a job…ales not cheap and death is a constant companion…
System: Call of Cthulhu - Elizabethan Era
GM: Andrew Gardner-Blatch
Number of players: 6
Notes: X Card. Pre game briefing on x card and safety.
Orestes & Helia - The Twinned Islands
You are the Heroes of ancient (pseudo-)Greece, crafting your immortal legends through great deeds and mighty heroics. Returning home from war, your ship of Heroes has visited many dangerous isles and legendary kingdoms, and now you approach another, the twinned islands of Orestes and Helia.
Agon is an RPG of the 'swords-and-sandals' genre of media. It's styled with a more serious tone, but is fairly straight forward, with scenes being resolved through one-roll resolutions. We'll have time to craft our mighty Heroes and their personalities, and explore the mystery of what chaos over the horizon.
System: Agon
GM: John Stynes
Number of players: 4
Notes: Roughly PG12. The island of Agon contain many scary creatures, and also some terrible humans. Violence may always the answer, but this is an RPG so some is probably expected. Blank character sheets will be provided. Dice are needed for the game, but if you don't have any you can share mine.
Constantinople
Core concepts:
-Set in a fantasy world inspired by the 7th century Byzantine empire
-Players are shunned from society due to the supernatural powers they have and the stigmata they manifest. They have little choice but to become monster hunters, an otherwise disagreeable profession.
-Missions are given to players by their magus - someone who collects rumours of supernatural goings on and passes the dirty work on to the characters.
-Missions require that clues about the nature of the monster are collected before it is confronted.
-Player driven narrative and the ability for players to influence and even create the story as they go along is built into the core mechanics.
System: Playtest of unique game
GM: Theodore Young
Number of players: 5
Notes: Mature themes about horror, injury detail, death, cruelty. 16+ recommended
...so we 'ad a cuppa tea.
A plague of Amberblight is passing through Three Masks. Only the right sort of tea can cure the afflicted, and there's none here. Jakestra is an amberclad, rescued from the Wildsea 30 years ago. She's on a mission to the Ambered Irons, to find the herbs and the amber fragments to brew the right healing teas. Perhaps she will also reclaim her past.
The Wildsea is a weird fantasy tabletop roleplaying game set in a rampant ocean of verdant green.
System: Wildsea
GM: Neil Smith
Number of players: 5
Notes: PG rating, X-card, lines & veils.
Into the Blackwelt
Just outside San Francisco Memorial city we picked up a beat up station wagon from some spaced out kid who was hopped up on neurozine and permanently jacked in. We do not really know each other, and definitely dont trust each other - but we had the cash for gas and all have reasons to head to Tonopah, a dead town in the evacuated, irradiated Blackwelt Exclusion Zone. It's a place only the desperate or damned would visit, and us of course. .
The year is 1997 but in an alternate future, neuro tech has mapped the human brain, and it's secrets,and implemented with terrifying consequences, a nuclear civil war has devastated the US and divided it, and the world is going thru a slow apocalypse.
System: The Electric State
GM: Robin Poole
Number of players: 4
Bees of the Invisible
Five bookhounds convene for an auction of unusual items at a Welsh country house.
System: Gumshoe QuickShock (Bookhounds of London)
GM: Mathew (Abstract Machine)
Number of players: 5
Notes: This is an adaptation to Gumshoe QuickShock of a scenario I ran at Concrete Cow some years ago. Safety tools will include the X-card & an open table.
Afternoon Games (2.30pm-6.30pm)
Siege of the Silver Stag
Imagine the Shaun of the Dead Battle of the Winchester scene, but D&D. The party are staying at a roadside inn, the Silver Stag, on their way between two large cities. While partaking in a drinking contest one evening, they hear an ominous thudding on the tavern door, then a smash as the fist crashes through the door and they realise that zombies have besieged the tavern.
How long can they survive, as wave after wave of undead attempt to overrun the tavern.
Pre-generated characters will be provided.
All participants get a free set of polyhedral dice as a souvenir.
System: D&D5e
GM: Malcolm L. Hazel
Number of players: 6
Notes: Mature / Undead content. Recommended 14 year age limit
A Star, a Star!
In the savage world of Mongo ruled by the dread Emperor Ming, our heroes must prevent a catastrophe and recover a valuable treasure from a terrifying wilderness, all in the cause of the freemen rebels led by Flash Gordon, Dale Arden and Prince Baran. Will your skill with rocket ships and ray guns prevail? This tongue-in-cheek adventure leans on the heroic tropes of the 1950's classic comic strip in Pinnacle Entertainment Group's official Flash Gordon setting for Savage Worlds. No previous Savage Worlds experience is necessary. Pre-generated characters will be provided.
System: Savage Worlds
GM: Guy Sargeant
Number of players: 4-6
Notes: There are no adult themes but characters can die heroically and there's plenty of peril. Age 12+ is recommended. Everything is provided for play.
Sweetness
The secret Program of Delta Green calls agents to Tampa to investigate a strange apparent hate crime that has attracted media attention.
System: Delta Green
GM: John Hutchinson
Number of players: 4
Notes: Mature themes, 18+ recommended. Child threat. Racism/Anti-Racism. Mental illness. (will be handled carefully) If there is interest, I might run another DG game in the evening session.
It's Time for Snow
Josh Tang is a nepo baby, extreme sports enthusiast, and fledgling neo-Nazi. He's got more money than sense. It's your patriotic duty to con him out of some of it.
Tang has his eye on buying out Denali.co, a sports-gear fintech website. But Denali doesn't want to be bought. That's where you come in. Can you convince Tang that you're a group of hostile takeover facilitators, "arrange" the sale of Denali, then take the money and run?
The Big Store is a game of long cons, of gently separating a mark from his money and getting away with it. Think Hustle, Leverage, or Oceans Eleven.
System: The Big Store
GM: Neil Smith
Number of players: 4
Notes: PG rating, X-card, lines & veils.
Of Sorrow and Clay
Family is everything in the Appalachian Mountains; when everyone else turns their backs, they will be there, waiting. They may not like you; they may even hat you. But there is a loyalty to blood that runs deep into the black soiled holler.
Deep in the central Appalachian highlands, Carson Taft has gone missing at the age of 89. He just up and walked out, saying, “Best go see Sadie, she’ll be waiting”. The brooding mountain forest of the holler where Sadie, Carsons first wife, went missing 45 years ago is treacherous and no place for a foolish old man. Worried his neighbor contacted Carson’s children to come back home to help look for the old bastard. It’s been year since you’ve been to that old shack, but he’s family right? What else can you do?
System: Call of Cthulhu
GM: David Gibson
Number of players: 5
Notes: This game contains violence and horror, 16+ recommended.
Valentine's Day
Most people in Avalon Copse assume the suburban watch group is just an excuse for some of the older residents to get together and have a cup of tea. But you know better. Weird things happen in Avalon Copse - things that the police can't handle. You don't fight crime. You fight monsters.
It seems a bit odd when your friend Asani from the coffee shop calls you for help because her new barista is being harrassed. But Asani's got an eye for the unusual, and if she thinks something's up, it's worth taking a look. Besides, someone's going to have to eat all these chocolates.
System: Monster Of The Week
GM: Sue Savage
Number of players: 4
Notes: Urban fantasy/horror with themes of mind control. Safety tools will be used.
Plasticine Panic!
Things have been a bit strange since you all woke up about a year ago. It's pretty hard for them not to be when you're made out of plasticine and you've suddenly been given consciousness for no discernible reason and with no real instructions as to what to do with it. However, recent events have got everyone even more confused than they already were. Objects have been fixing themselves without any outside input, you've been feeling a bit more flexible lately and the cat has been acting very oddly. It's time for you to investigate. If you've learnt anything from being on a kids tv show it's that you can solve any problem if you just work together.
This is a playtest scenario written for Graham Walmsley's Cthulhu Dark system. Players will create characters at the start of the game.
System: Cthulhu Dark
GM: Sarah Dovey
Number of players: 4
Notes: Safety tools will be in place. CW: body horror as experienced by people made of plasticine, existential dread, themes of personhood
Evening Games (7.30pm-11pm)
Brides of Brixton
Your private detective agency deals with more than the usual problems of crime-ridden Victorian London. Because you know about the hidden world, where the supernatural bleeds into the mundane.
The Reverend Nathanial Arthur Garland is seeking help on behalf of one of his parishioners. Mr Sprout came to him this morning in a state of absolute terror, after hearing a knocking at his window last night and seeing his dead wife's ghost standing there. He asks that you look into this haunting and help the man find peace.
System: Darkness of the Demimonde
GM: Sue Savage
Number of players: 5
Notes: Age 15+, includes themes of coercion and social attitudes of the 1890s.