Concrete Cow (http://wiki.mk-rpg.org.uk/Index.php/ConcreteCow) is a small convention run by the Milton Keynes RPG Group. It takes place twice a year (the next event in Saturday 14th March 2009) in Wolverton, just outside Milton Keynes.

I'd heard good things about it. Especially the fact that is was a very 'Indie Game' orientated convention. When I was approached earlier this year to attend I was more than happy to accept and give it a go. Despite being small (around 50-60 people) it's a fairly local convention in many ways - just being about an hours drive from London - and we also could tailor our usual stand to cater for the tastes associated with the convention.

We attended in a dual capacity - Leisure Games and Cubicle 7 - which is something we've been doing a lot mroe this year as it makes sense to promote both as I'm in attendence anyway. We took a large selection of Independent and Small Press RPG titles - with 3:16 being particularly popular at the show - as well as a smattering of other games such as Hunter: The Vigil, Shadowrun, Savage Worlds, etc. We added our selection of HP Lovecraft Historical Society T-Shirts, DVDs and CDs to the mix too. On the Cubicle 7 side of things we took the stock of softcover Starblazer Adventures and Victoriana 2nd Edition core rules that had just arrived back from GenCon in the States as well as the range of SLA Industries books (including new stock of The Contract Directory that's been out of print for the last couple of years) and QIN: The Warring States.

We sold a fair bit of all the books - with Victoriana 2nd Edition being the best selling of our new titles. We also sold out of all the SLA Core Rulebooks we took with us and Karma, which now leaves me with maybe 2 or 3 copies max of that book before I've sold out.

Andrew Peregrine (Cubicle 7 Staffer and Victoriana Line Developer) manned the stand with me and ran a Victoriana game in the afternoon whilst Joe and Jan from our Department 7 Demo Team ran a coiuple of games of Starblazer Adventrues and Doctor Who at the show.

Amidst chatting to lots of attendees on the day I also caught up with and chatted with Wood Ingham, another special guest of the convention, who has written loads of material for White Wolf - most recently on the Hunter: The Vigil line. It was good catching up as we'd only previously communicated on email.

Concrete Cow is a very nice convention and I'd certainly reccommend anyone interested in RPGs - especially the smaller press titles - to give it a go. Neil (the organiser) was incredibly friendly and helpful and both Andy and myself had a very nice day and we'll certainly be back in March for their next event.

I enjoyed Continuum so much that I failed to return to London on Sunday evening. In fact I didn't get back until 11.30am this morning when Neil and Dom kindly dropped me off at work.

I am shattered. It's pretty hard to stay awake at the moment and I'm really looking forward to getting home and collapsing in my own bed for some sleep.

It was a really great weekend and a fantastic convention. Loads of old and new friends, seminars, tons of games going on (I even managed to play a game of Incan Gold on Saturday night in the bar), lots and lots and lots of talks and laughter, some very disturbing adverts (more on that later), lots of gossip, some cracking new game ideas (hahaha... poor Nimrod), some cracking possibilities about old ideas, Sandy Petersen (creator of Cal of Cthulhu RPG) really showing everyone else's complete lack of knowledge on horror films - but he's given me a few titles to seek out that he thought I might like, and so forth. I'd like to say that I'll do a proper write-up of the con (or atleast the bits I can talk about) but we all know how that always seems to go (as in - never getting done) so I'll bite my tongue and see what happens.

I also came home with the Cuddly Count Duckula that was auctioned :)

Anyway, back to work, then home (eventually) and sleep.

Hope everyone is well and catch you all soon.

Angus