--- /dev/null
+Title: Strange Artifacts Invitational, 2025
+Category: Blog
+Date: 2025-10-20
+Tags: events, wargaming, gallery
+
+October 5th, 2025, the Strange Artifacts crew hosted our first [Forbidden
+Psalm](https://www.forbiddenpsalm.com/forbidden-psalm){. .anchor} event, the
+__Strange Artifacts Invitational__. Held at [Total Escape
+Games](https://totalescapegames.com/){. .anchor} in Broomfield, Colorado. As a
+relatively new club, we've hosted game days and we've made our appearances at
+local cons, this was our first attempt at an organized event.
+
+When it comes to running an indy game event, we are fortunate to have plenty of
+fantastic examples to learn from. We all greatly admire Ana from [Gardens of
+Hecate](https://gardensofhecate.com){. .anchor}. Her own Forbidden Psalm events,
+[Turm 2023](https://gardensofhecate.com/blog/miniature/turm-2023-report){. .anchor} and
+[Turm 2024](https://gardensofhecate.com/blog/miniature/report-turm2024-kamping-kitbash){. .anchor}
+are massive standouts for the entire community. I am in no way ashamed to tell
+you that I borrowed heavily from the Turm format when putting together the
+event, down to the player packet and rules. I owe a debt of gratitude to Ana and
+her willingness to share her experience.
+
+{: .image-med}
+
+## Planning and Execution
+
+We wanted our first event to be successful, and that meant making sure that
+everyone who participated could play and have a great time. The first most
+important lesson we learned from Turm was to limit the size of our first event -
+we chose to follow suit and limit the event to eight players.
+
+But how do you get invitations out for an invitational? After setting aside
+seates for the Strange Artifact Crew ourselves, we extended personal invitations
+to friends local friends, and a few more to members of the [In Rust We
+Trust](https://discord.gg/g2nXPbhguU) community. While our more remote friends
+were not ultimately able to attend, we did have enough folks locally to go ahead
+with the event.
+
+{: .image-med}
+
+## Expectations and Scenarios
+
+Strange Artifacts is a good crew and we all came together with an ethos that
+makes narrative games fun and safe to play. That being said, it felt important
+to me that expectations were made explicitly clear. Taking another point from
+Turm, I wrote up some basic rules and expectations. Each player would bring
+their pre-rolled and fully painted warband, adhering to Forbidden Psalm: End
+Times Edition rules. We decided on three rounds of play, and as a narrative
+event, I wanted to be clear that this was not a competitive tournament.
+
+Eight seats means four boards, and we wanted to have the full diorama
+experience. One enthusiastic member took to the task right away and built two
+excellent, thematic boards and even went so far as to write an original scenario
+for one of them. Our own [Kitbash Chaos](https://www.youtube.com/@KitbashChaos)
+brought his beautiful red desert board, and I built the last, specifically
+intended for Dashed Hope, a scenario from the Forbidden Psalm core book
+campaign.
+
+Some weeks before the event, a few of us got together and discussed the
+scenarios we'd play. Since none of us had completed the original campaign, we
+decided to pull scenarios from the book. This gave us time to paint monsters for
+every scenario. In some cases, that was a lot of models! As for the narrative
+hook, we deviated a bit from the original scenario, and tweaked each one to fit
+our own story.
+
+Even though we had plenty of time, naturally much of the narrative was written
+the day before the event!
+
+Our player packet with rules, narrative hook and scenarios can be found
+[here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bXWhwfV3oB7JKDCFES2f7TcqzKUpjSUXOV_pgR13yDA/edit?usp=sharing){. .anchor}.
+
+{: .image-med}
+
+
+## End with Gratitude
+
+We are forever grateful to Total Escape Games, who charged us absolutely nothing
+to hold our humble event at the store. Not only that their Event Manager Kyle
+asked many questions and gave helpful suggestions which helped guide us towards
+smooth execution of our goal.
+
projects / vexingworkshop.git / commitdiff
