BGG.Con Spring 2026 - Day 2
Friday of BGG.Con - I scheduled another game of Trouble Brewing, with the only real difference being that on the Thursday game, I had offered a more extensive teach of the game. Before this Con, in years past and other conventions, I hadn’t scheduled any games, figuring there’d be plenty of time and space for pickups. But this time around I wanted to give it a try, despite the unpredictability of game lengths, and I think it worked out decently well.
I’d do it again, but I’m very tempted to overdo it - I’m thinking about scheduling games specifically without children under 13, because they change the game so much… and can be very exhausting for me and for players.
Extension Cord - 10-player + 2 Travellers - evil won.
In this game of Extension Cord (the only custom script I ended up running at this Con), the evil Matron made the whole game reliably chaotic with some early game moves before he travelled away. He swapped the position of both the No Dashii and the Marionette, so poison was basically everywhere at some point or another, and nobody had any clue what was going on. The Fisherman ended up getting 2 pieces of advice, because she used her ability on a day when she’d been chosen by the good Barista, who also sobered up some of the poisoned people throughout the game. But the Demon did get 2 kills on one night, and used the 2nd one to kill the Barista, ironically. The Marionette wasn’t told and didn’t figure out that he was evil.
Trouble Brewing - 12-player + 2 Travellers - good won.
I came to regret this, but I agreed to help a tween and a kid under 10 to ST a game of Trouble Brewing. Normally I try to be very enthusiastic about letting new Storytellers try their hand behind the Grimoire, although I do think they should be supervised. What I eventually regretted was that the kids relentlessly bugged me about giving them more opportunities to do so, for the rest of the Con. Anyway this was a pretty normal game of TB: the Spy double-claimed the Librarian, the poisoned Saint was executed so the game didn’t end, a Mayor kill bounced to the Washerwoman (I think), the Librarian nommed the Virgin (I think) to get executed, and the Slayer was actually the Drunk. Pretty sure good team was able to solve this one in the end.
Trouble Brewing - 15-player - evil won.
My scheduled game of Friday of the Con. The Drunk (Undertaker) died after seeing only 1 night of true info, which was that the Empath was executed due to the Virgin. The Scarlet Woman outed herself to a friend on the good team, thinking that she could trust her friend to keep the secret. The Monk successfully protected the Chef, but I don’t think the Ravenkeeper got to do anything. As I recall, this ended with an evil victory, with the town executing the Recluse, but this picture of the final 4 instead of the final 3 is making me question it… Hopefully, I just forgot to photograph the last night.
Trouble Brewing - 9-player + 1 Traveller - good won.
I had a kid in this game who strongly wanted to play a Traveller, and she chose the Bishop - my first time ever using that character! I made her an evil Bishop, so that I’d have to nominate a good player at least once per day. I ended up nominating the Recluse a couple of times early on, to make it ambiguous whether the Traveller was good/evil, but I lost the ability after a couple days, because the Traveller had to go to bed. I do think that good solved this one, although even though he was totally sober, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a Mayor win.