I went to UKGE. This is what I brought back with me. Also, memories, which I share.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to the UK Gaming Expo. Clearly, I did. This article isn’t hoax. I ain’t got time to lie, except that’s literally my day job. The reason why I wasn’t sure was because there was no real reason to go. I was going to do an RRD panel to justify it, but all the panels got noped due to reasons (technical reasons, apparently, rather than just hating our faces). That led to… why go?
Well to hang with people, buy shit and play games. Why else would you to go a games con? I wouldn’t go back to the NEC to just re-experience the horror of paying above-London money for a drink in Birmingham. That would be like returning to Innsmouth to make sure you met a bunch of folk who resulted from people fucking fish. Of course, that’s a bad comparison. Birmingham is very different from Innsmouth. Birmingham is far from the sea.
(No joking, I love every moment of passing through brum. As a Midlands kid, it was basically the best place in the world, and I glow whenever I step through the bullring. I digress.)
I ended up going for a reason unlike me. I normally only do trips for work reasons. I save my time away from the family for that. Except, I don’t have to do that. That’s my own nonsense. C does stuff solely that it is good and human. She told me, go be good and human. It doesn’t have to be work.
It doesn’t have to be, but I managed to turn it into a little bit of work. Just for the taste of it. I can stop whenever I want.
After my equivalent of standing at the bar, pointedly alone, and trying to look hot (“Mentioning I wanted to playtest The Scions in my last newsletter“), I had a “Hey, I’m around if you wanna” which led to a table of folks prodding at my prototype. Here we are playing…
And here’s the other side of the table.
I picked this photo, as in the other, Ava and Gar looked like they were very annoyed with us two being happy, which is unlike them. So instead, Ava being somewhat Quizzical and Gar having his hands in front of his face. I’ll spare you another full campaign diary for now, but it went well – seeing exactly how it plays differently in the flesh, plus how it plays in the single session. The physicality actually made me realise some key stuff which actually makes the game a few notches easier, while also make me more carefully consider a few ways of making the board be even more transparent in terms of information flow. Plus also allowed me to do things like stand on my chair when I wanted to roleplay as giant snooty spacegiant. That’s harder to do online. The one shot play is pushing me in two directions – firstly to push the opening of the game a few notches faster in a key bit (to get deeper into the game faster) plus more meat for the direction I was heading anyway (As in, it works fine in a one off without a planned ending – you just need to make sure there’s tools for a GM to make an ending when required. In our case, just having an old prophecy about If A Scion Ever Wins The Theatricus Psychic Poetry Gala, They Shall Be The Next Emperor before going to epilogues, and then to the bar. The bar isn’t strictly part of the game, but it also kind of was.)
Here’s a look at the table. Hail the Cosmic Encounter tokens.
Basically, it went as well as a first playtest that is testing two things simultaneously ever really could theoretically go, and played with three lovely people.
Moreso, I managed to get a couple more playtests into the mix too – Jenn Martin’s Aldsworth 1811, which takes Jason Morningstar’s card-driven story game Desperation and makes it Jane Austen. So, more Desperation for touching hands at the Assembly Room rather than desperation not to die, like, I’d really rather not, that would be awful. Worked really well – it’s a great structure, and does some lovely stuff that allows more uncertain players to just read the card and add to the narrative until they’re comfortable. I wasn’t quite as happy as where the narrative went as most the table (I felt We Did The Women Wrong) but as a whole it was great – players did some excellent choices, and there was actually live poetry reading at the table. Can’t go wrong with that. Also, showcase of how narrative card tech can be pushed in radically different directions – this is deeply unlike core Desperation in tone.
Third game was James Wallis’ new game inspired (as most best things) in the shower which was a superhero-themed improvisational game, which is at that interesting place between party game and roleplaying game. As it’s brand new, I won’t say too much, but the core mechanic for generating prompts is both really simple and a great springboard for some A+ bullshitting. I also managed to locate a lot of fellow Mantis Shrimp enthusiasts, which is A+.
Except for that, I spent the time wandering the halls, checking in with people, going to the bar and doing a couple of panels – the State Of the Industry panel which is always a good time to discover all the things I should be thinking about but am not, and the Quinns Quests Play to Find Out Liveplay of the definitely-real J. Theophrastus Bartholomew’s 10 Top Ten Games You Can Play In Your Head By Yourself which was both very funny, and involved me (playing in the audience) closing my eyes so often that I was risking a little snooze. As a parent, trying to stay awake is the game I mostly play in my head by myself.
In reality, UKGE is now a beast, spilling across the whole ground floor. It’s not even an RPG specific con, and has more than enough RPG happenings and places to entertain you across a weekend. It also has a lot of things you can bring home.
For example…
- Triangle Agency. Don’t know anything about this one, but I do know me owning it will really annoy that one The Power Fantasy reader who writes in every issue and reviews it based on whether there’s more circles (bad) or triangles (good) in it. As always, perversity remains a reliable motivation.
- Archeterica: The Invitation: Ukrainian fantastical-napoloeonic TTRPG with the most ludicrous paper stock I’ve seen in some time. I’ve lived in houses with thinner walls.
- Mazes: 9th Level Games modern take on a TTRPG, with each player having a single polyhedral dice each. I was going to buy this, but got given a copy as they quoted a line from DIE in it. If I knew this was a thing, I’d have started peppering one liners in the book, aimed directly at companies who I want free shit from (i.e. everyone). So when you see Superman “I just fucking love Toblerone” you’ll know what’s up.
- Wandering Spark: Nathan Blades’ shortform game of an engineer and a robot, on a roadtrip. First impression makes me think a hipper take on Becky Chambers’ Monk & Robot novellas.
- Page Turners: Robin D Laws’ and company’s take on taking Drama System and turning it into a 1 on 1 shortform game. Looking forward to this – most games which touch this topic are zero prep and generative, and this is scenario-led . That’s some parallel evolution energy.
- Fragments from the Cave of: Tor Truslow’s found-sentence zine, constructed from sentences lifted from other books. I love this kind of stuff.
- Darkened Hill & Dale: The excellent Sarah Cole does Folk Horror.
- Terminus: The excellent Sarah Cole does Train Horror.
- Against Time And Death: Nick Bate riffs on This Is How You Lose The Time War in a two player game of war and connection. This is nagging at me – have I bought this already? I was wondering if it was part of the This Is How I Lost All The Stuff I Bought At Gencon, but it came out too late. Hmm. Unless Time Travel is involved, which it may be. I figured I could just give it to Amal if not, right?
- The Sticker Game: USB filled of audio tracks which give prompts for a journaling game of whatever stickers you have around. Have no idea what this will be like, but I’m a parent of a 4 year old. I have stickers.
- Desperation: As I played the hack above, I figured I should go to the root. Has the small drawback that any time anyone says “Desperation” my head is filled with people singing Roy Castles’ Dedication with the lyrics changed. “Desperation – woo-ho! That’s all you need”. I suspect this is sub-ideal.
- UK TIN: The One Page Game & Flotasam & Jetsam: I bought other stuff from UK TIN’s table, but a plug for their satirical game of community management and conventions of a peer support network is worth. UK TIN do good stuff, and if you’re stepping into this area at all, you should go nose at the above link. Yes, I’ve broke character and done a serious entry. I’m sorry.
- A Land Once Magic: Charming worldbuilding game of fantasy (but not the fantasy you’re thinking about).
- Oh No! I Started A Cult: I just saw this one across the bar and liked its vibes. Solo journaling game where – oh no – you started a cult. Flicking through to a random page gives me “Cult Motto” with the cheery encouragement “Every Cult Needs a motto!” which is very true.
- Modiphius Bag: I actually only bought Triangle Agency from them, but I was carrying a wrist-shatteringly large amount of books at that point and they took pity on me. Thank you!
- Full Send: Laurie O’Connel’s TTRPG of doomed climbers. I gave Laurie a quote for the Kickstarter I thought it was so groovy, and he gave me this fancy edition with a compass. Now I can never say anything nice about your games ever again in case someone accuses me of corruption. Laurie, you didn’t think this through at all.
- Bouncy D20: for Iris, though I’m increasingly thinking giving her an unpredictably bouncy sharp-edged object may not be the best idea.
- Stress Toy Squeezy D20: also for Iris, though I’m increasingly thinking I should keep it for myself, while I watch her play with an unpredictably bouncy sharp-edged object.
- The Cthulhu Conspiracy: Graham Walmsley’s new storytelling horror game involving – eeek! – green paper.
- Doctor Emily Friedman: American Academic who I have brought back to the home to fancy up the place. She’s just handed in a draft of a book called “The Actual History of Actual Play”, which is set in a world where some RPG groups record their games and literally millions of people watch them. Nice to see an academic writing weird fiction.
- Pippers Anglesey Sea Salt Crisps: not bought at UKGE, but I love them – and all Pippers Crisps – and would like free packets in exchange for my dignity.
Good news: I actually did bring them all home, and didn’t have them stolen from me on the train, like that time at Gencon.
Kieron Gillen lives in Bath, for a certain value of the word “lives”.