Had a blast hosting a session of my TTRPG murder mystery oneshot at Tracon last Saturday!

Tracon is an anime and cosplay con in Tampere, Finland, where there is also some role-playing games as well as board games in the programme. The gaming part is a bit of a side event, with most of the con attendees being anime fans and cosplayers.

This was my first time at Tracon. I was going last year as well, but got down with a flu at the last moment.

Monsters of the Void Sea

This year, I hosted a session of Monsters of the Void Sea, a Victorian ghostpunk murder mystery one-shot of my own design. It is set in (or near) Doskvol, the setting of the Blades in the Dark role-playing game. It also uses a simplified version of Blades in the Dark’s rules.

How it went

In short, the session was a dream! The players were excellent, contributing to the plot twists and atmosphere and making all the characters feel alive. They were also super considerate and riffed off of each other, making the session even more awesome.

As the GM, I was surprised multiple times by the plot twists and the players’ ruses to catch the killer red-handed. The one-shot is a co-operative one, where I as the GM throw a lot of questions back to the players. It is a different style of playing a murder mystery, comparable to Brindlewood Bay, but not precisely the same.

Pretty pictures

One of the players, Vilma Vaikka (vilmavaikka on Instagram) drew portraits of all the player characters during our game. I’m sharing them with her permission.

And aren’t they gorgeous?

The nice thing about the oneshot IMHO is that all the characters are pregens, but in every session players come up with different descriptions of their looks and outfits.

Conclusion

All of this made it clear to me that I have to get all of this down in a playtest version of Monsters of the Void Sea soon. And hopefully in the hands of some GMs who are willing to run it and give me some feedback.

Here is one handout from the one-shot as a little teaser: