# Contingency 2027 — Schedule & GM Load

**Wed 27 – Sun 31 January 2027 · Searles Leisure Resort, Hunstanton**

## Running times

> **Slot times below are placeholders.** Contingency 2026 ran three slots a day
> (morning / afternoon / evening). Confirm the 2027 published times against
> Warhorn before printing anything, then update this table.

| Session | Assumed time | Play budget |
|---|---|---|
| Afternoon | 14:00 – 18:00 | 3h30 play + 10 min break |
| Evening | 19:30 – 23:30 | 3h30 play + 10 min break |

House rule: **3h30 of play in a 4-hour slot**, planned to ~3h15 of actual
content. Session clock counts play time only and pauses for the break.

## The grid

| # | Day | Session | Game | System | PCs |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Wed 27 | Afternoon | ANOTHER BLOODY TREASURE MAP | VANITY | 6 |
| 2 | Wed 27 | Evening | AFTERIMAGE | Blade Runner RPG | 4 |
| 3 | Thu 28 | Afternoon | BLACK SUMMER — Last Flight Out | Walking Dead Universe (modified) | 5 |
| 4 | Thu 28 | **Evening** | DEAD AIR I — Ash & Concrete | Call of Cthulhu 7e | 6 |
| 5 | Fri 29 | Afternoon | THE FAVOUR | The Dee Sanction | 5 |
| 6 | Fri 29 | **Evening** | DEAD AIR II — The Quiet City | Call of Cthulhu 7e | 6 |
| 7 | Sat 30 | Afternoon | THE CURIOUS CASE OF MR PARKER'S DIARY | Vaesen | 4 |
| 8 | Sat 30 | **Evening** | DEAD AIR III — Full Volume | Call of Cthulhu 7e | 6 |
| 9 | Sun 31 | Afternoon | *Reserve* | — | — |
| 10 | Sun 31 | Evening | *Reserve* | — | — |

## Why the slate sits this way

- **DEAD AIR owns Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.** Same session, three
  consecutive evenings: a player who wants the whole arc books one time of day
  and never clashes with themselves. Night suits it — this is the bleakest
  material on the slate and it wants a dark room and no daylight afterwards.
  Each part is written to stand alone for drop-ins.
- **The trilogy runs at 6, the biggest tables of the week.** These are
  document-heavy investigations; more hands means more of the archive gets read,
  and every Act Two is built to split 3+3.
- **Wednesday opens light.** Another Bloody Treasure Map is the arrival-day
  game — a loose comic dungeon crawl for a table that is half strangers and
  entirely unsettled — and AFTERIMAGE follows in the evening needing no prep
  at all, because it is already finished.
- **Afternoons carry the variety.** Zombie survival (Thu), Elizabethan horror
  (Fri), Nordic folk horror (Sat) — each one a complete change of register from
  the Cthulhu that follows it that night.
- **Never two bleak games in a row on the same day** is now impossible to fully
  honour, since every evening is Dead Air. The afternoons therefore do the
  balancing: Thursday's Black Summer is the only other genuinely grim game, and
  it sits before Part One rather than after it.
- **Sunday is deliberately empty.** People leave, energy drops, and two reserve
  slots absorb overspill demand or a re-run without new prep. If Sunday evening
  never fills, that is a feature.

## GM load check

| Day | Games | Prep-heavy? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wed | 2 | One (ABTM) | AFTERIMAGE is a port — read-through only. Gentle opening day |
| Thu | 2 | Both | Black Summer, then Dead Air I. Heaviest day of the week |
| Fri | 2 | Both | The Favour, then Dead Air II |
| Sat | 2 | Both | Mr Parker's, then Dead Air III — the arc payoff, needs the most playtesting |
| Sun | 0 booked | — | Reserve |

**Consequence:** three consecutive nights of six-player Cthulhu is a demanding
run for one GM, and the three afternoons before them are all new material too.
The trilogy shares a setting bible, NPC lineage and art direction, which is what
makes the count achievable — treat DEAD AIR as one production with three
outputs, not three productions. If anything on the slate has to give, it is a
Sunday reserve, never a playtest.

## Prep deadlines (working back from 27 Jan 2027)

| By | What |
|---|---|
| End Sep 2026 | All eight scenario drafts at v1. Trilogy bible locked. |
| End Oct 2026 | Pregens complete for all eight (three sets of six for the trilogy). First desk playtests on DEAD AIR I–III. |
| End Nov 2026 | Playtest fixes applied (v2). Handouts and art briefs written. |
| End Dec 2026 | Art generated, handouts laid out, GM console modules built. |
| 10 Jan 2027 | Print pack produced: sheets, handouts, GM screens. |
| 20 Jan 2027 | Read-throughs done. Everything marked convention-ready. |

## Open logistics questions

1. Confirmed slot times from Warhorn — the table above is assumed, not verified.
2. **Table size at Searles: three of the eight games seat six.** Confirm the game
   rooms take a six-player table comfortably, or the trilogy drops to five.
3. Whether the DEAD AIR trilogy can be flagged on Warhorn as a linked series with
   booking priority for players taking all three nights.
4. Power/table space for the GM console tablet in the evening rooms.