Realms

This year (and this weekend) marked the 20th UK Games Expo. So I thought it would be worth a quick writeup of how it's changed and how my approach to it has also changed, over the years. I've linked some much older posts on 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2013 forum summary which chart the early years somewhat erratically.

It's funny to think how back in 2007 it wasn't a given UKGE would succeed. The first year two UK tabletop games conventions tried to launch on the same weekend, one in Manchester and one in Birmingham. Being local I obviously supported the Birmingham one, and as as the time I was part of a newly formed Indie Games Collective I roped in a bunch of folks to try it out. We had a stand to sell games and ran as many indie things of our own and from the community as we could, it went well and we sold a fair few games and people repsonded well to RPGs that weren't D&D and came in odd form factors. Hopefully that set the groundwork for the vast number of small press games you see at Expo today. The first few years were at the Clarendon Suites (affectionately known as the "mason bunker"), and the core of what makes Expo great was already there: aimed at a broad ranger of tabletop games, explicitly family friendly, diverse and focused on play as much as commerce. One of my games, The Agency, was nominated for the Awards in 2012.

Somewhat ironically, I dropped out of actively selling games the year Expo moved from the smaller venue in Edgbaston to the first of its homes at the NEC, The Hilton Metropole. I still ran RPG sessions for a few years, and had some very enthusiastic players for The Queen's Men and The Filthy Dozen before they were even released. I also started taking my family along, with my then primary school aged children very keen on the games but less so on the people dressed as Sith. At this time I'd also usually go along on the Thursday night for pre-con drinks with friends who were attending and stay after the con on some days to play in open gaming.

Round about 2018 things changed again, with the Expo now fully in the main NEC. With both of my kids a bit older the whole family came along and we made a day of it on the Friday, demoing all kinds of games and taking advantage of the board games library. The bring and buy was also a mainstay in the next few years, as a great way to recycle games I hadn't played in a while. Although I gave up with this in 2025, when I spent an hour and half in the drop-off queue...

The Covid years were tough ones for big events, with one year's Expo fully cancelled, one delayed and some doubts if the event would survive. We went along masked up and vaccinated for the first event when restrictions lifted to show support, I remember how it felt weird to be about so many people even with the wider spacing. Fortunately the event bounced back and grew again, expanding to fill 5 halls at the NEC, drawing people from all over the world. I started bumping into people who I knew not from gaming at Expo in this era. You knew it was huge now, so much so I stopped going on the Saturdays due to the crowds and limited attendence to Friday and Sunday.

I think the nicest thing about Expo is how it's constantly evolved, always looked to improve, but kept the playing events at its heart. It would be easier I'm sure just to be one big bazaar selling you things, but there were still seminars, RPGs, open gaming and tournaments. It's adjusted as its expanded, but kept to its ethos. It got everything from queer D&D merch to indie zine games to grognard wargames to massive multnationals to the next big thing from a designer you never heard of before.

Now it's a mainstay of our family calendar. A thing we can share. There was a museum of the 20 years in Hall 1, and I got to reminisce about all the fun times Ive had there. So thanks to Richard Denning and co for building such an amazing event over the years and to all the folks who've made it a great space by running games, exhibiting, volunteering and exhibiting. Here's to 20 more years!

Oh, and this year my favourite finds were Space Gits - a skirmish game of drunk space orcs, CBR-PNK - Forged in the dark cyberpunk RPG with a lovely form factor and The Find - a tiny journaling game.

Over 20 years ago, a much younger version of me got to know a Scottish game designer called Malcolm Craig. I did an interview when he released A|State and we ended up chatting on Forums and email as was the way back then. A few years after that we were both doing Indie game design and after a trip to GenCon in 2006 a bunch of us had the mad idea of creating a UK Games Collective archive to promote indie games at UK conventions, hothouse some games ideas and maybe sell some games as well.

That year Malcolm wrote one of my favourite RPG designs, Cold City. A game of intense suspicion set against the backdrop of a paranoid post-war Berlin. With the characters, all of different nationalities, thrown together to investigate monsters and weird technology, but torn by conflicting agendas and must build trust carefully. He followed it up in 2008 with Hot War, a game that looked at the London in the aftermath of a 1960s world war 3 that never was.

Last year Handiwork games kickstarted a new edition. Malcolm is now an academic teaching and researching cold war history. The new editions bring a new depth and some revised game design tweaks from 20 years of play (I like the way the GM uses "The Cold" as a resource to manage the game's antagonism). They are both now on DriveThru and I recommend you take a look if you like games with a satisfying level of character tension that drives story. Some affiliate links if this sounds your kind of thing: Hotwar 2nd Edition and Cold City 2nd edition.

Since lockdown I've been painting a lot of miniatures (particularly the nice resin ones from Atlantis Miniatures). This has led me to do a bit of work renewing Pulp!, my miniatures ruleset. The PDF has been pay what you want in all sales venues for a while, so at some point I'll be doing an web version and probably releasing it as Creative Commons.

In the mean time I spent a bit of time building a little web app to help people build force lists for the game. The List Builder stores all the info in your local browser, so you can keep the list on your phone and it'll work offline. Let me know if you see any bugs via social media.

If you enjoyed the previous escapades of Spy Team '67 from Gen Con. You'll be pleased to know the team are back for another streaming of The Agency. Featuring colour coded admirals.

Featuring TrooperSJP, Drakoniques, Fuzzy Freaks and Susanah Grace

You can watch the recording over at Twitch TV

Well it was a wonderful surprise to wake up this morning and be tagged into a Twitter thread about people live-streaming The Agency from the main stage at Gen Con!

The stream is on 17th Sept (Today as of posting) at 5pm UK time/12pm Eastern on the GenCon Main Stage Twitch TV Channel. With TrooperSJP running the scenario : "Spy Team 67 and The Quaint Village of Doom!".