UK Games Expo 2016

All the people and a bus

I went to the UK Games Expo at the NEC Birmingham, and this is my after action statement.

TL;DR unless you only play Games Workshop war games, why weren’t you there? It was awesome.

A couple of months ago I decided to go to UK Games Expo on a ‘whim’. The line-up looked great, and having had such a good day running HATECON ONE, I thought I’d try a games convention purely as an attendee. I’ve not been to one without being sat behind a stall for 15 years and reckoned I owed it to myself. I also made the conscious decision to not particularly organize a group visit, mostly to push myself into being more proactively social.

Since I was late in booking, I missed staying in the Hilton where most of the gaming was occurring, and stayed in the very comfortable Crowne Plaza, 5 minutes walk from the venues and which serves the best morning filter coffee I’ve had in a UK hotel. It was not a cheap hotel though.

Arriving on Thursday, I explored a bit, picked up my pre-paid ticket and then went and had a pint and chat in the main bar with another ‘solo’ who had posted on Twitter that they were also foot-loose. This was a great start. Tick the being social box.

Otherworld miniatures *heart*

Square Hex *auto kickstarter back*

On Friday I waited for the queues to die down before going into the main hall, where I immediately fell into the traders pattern of running around, not really taking anything in and being in a rush. Dumb. But I did immediately pick up a copy of The Cthulhu Hack, so not that dumb. After reminding myself I was in no rush, I started to wander and started to take in the huge scale of the trade floor, which is similar size to Salute but with wider spacing between the stalls. The variety of board game stalls, demos and traders was really impressive, and several of my favourite companies were there including Otherworld miniatures, Osprey, Square Hex, James Raggi, Leisure Games, Oathsworn, and All Rolled up. There were quite a few non-GW miniature games being rep’d including a huge Star Wars Fantasy Flight area, but I think it was the Meeple People with their boardgame library and play area that really stood out. Honestly, if you’re a board gamer you could play 24hrs a day here quite easily, with the right drugs.

I played two organized play games, an Adventurers League Strahd side quest which was a lot of fun, although I had to reign in my noble lawful good paladin roleplaying, cos it would be easy to grandstand and become THAT dysfunctional player. The second game was meant to be A Shadows Of The Demon Lord game, but it wasn’t where my ticket said it was and nobody could find it, so I (very easily) joined a Call Of Cthulhu game instead. Definitely not the worst way to spend 4 hours but the group was a slower pace than I’m used to, and I was reminded why Trail Of Cthulhu is the better system for investigative roleplaying by the very example I use to sell it. The Alienist with a 78% Library Use skill couldn’t make the roll over and over again.  

Some HATE (James, Dee, Greg & Tim) members came up on the Saturday and after shopping and chin wagging, I ran an improv impromptu game of The Black Hack for them, with a vague Moorcockian Eternal Champions theme. I continue to be impressed with how good The Black Hat is for theatre of the mind D&D, and I had a huge amount of fun running it.

Much beer was drunk, at slightly frightening hotel bar prices. It was great catching up with old and new friends (Colette, Ian, Bruce, etc), and it really is a big part of the reason to go for whole convention rather than just a day.

Ralph and me

On Sunday afternoon I booth sat for Ralph Horsley for awhile, and then just hung out with him which I’ve not had a chance to do since the early days of Dragonmeet. Top dude.

In summary I’d say you’d be absolutely crazy not to go to UK Games Expo next year if you’re a board or miniature gamer who likes cons. If you’re a roleplayer who enjoys convention games then it’s also a must, but book your games early as you’ll want a least one game a day and while there maybe lots of lots of games being run, there are over a thousand roleplayers also wanting to play. The only people I suspect wouldn’t get much from it are GW only war gamers, as neither GW nor FW were there, and there was no hardcore war gaming space that I saw. If you like X-Wing or similar model based tabletop games, you’d be in heaven though. The atmosphere was very relaxed, very friendly and I didn’t see any fuckwittery at all.

For things that might improve the experience even further I’d say would be to improve the tannoy system so that it didn’t deafen. Move the talks out of the trade hall, as they were understandably loud. See if the Hilton has temporary partitions to break up some of the sound in the play rooms, where it was quite noisy at times. Have a code of conduct front and centre in the programme. Maybe bunch up birds of a feather stalls so that, for example, the RPG companies are closer together. And as ever, get the bars to stock good tequila.

Jame Raggi and me, all the metal

Daleks 

Osprey Joe and me  

The one and only Bez (and Dan, is also one and only)

Oathsworn / Sensible Shoes

The Cthulhu Hack & it's genius Flashlight / Smokes mechanic

Dwimmermount Session 22 - Frost Giant Ate The Donkey

(It's been awhile since I posted - work meant I had little time to write up sessions, then holidays meant we didn't play, so the session diary is behind)

After defeating the evil mage Varazes and his minotaur bodyguard Bok last session, the party started searching the rest of the area. A hermetically sealed chamber nearby was too tempting for Calphis the mage who used a precious charge from Rod Of Opening to gain access to what lay beyond. The party were disappointed, as all that was behind the door were stasis chambers, two of which were occupied by a man and woman wearing unusual but non-descript clothes. A debate formed around trying to release them, with Bittersalt suggesting it was too dangerous to the inhabitants and Grigor feeling it was too dangerous to the party. Brother Spenzar, was overcome by knowledge-lust, started pressing buttons on the devices and quickly hit the right combination to drain and release the woman.

After a few moments of confusion, the woman named Arethusa, who appeared to be in her late thirties starting speaking in archaic High Thulian. The party were wary, they knew that she might be a Termaxian and so tried to ascertain when she had been frozen, which turned out to be about 300 years ago, around the time Turms Termax was coming into power. She claimed that she maintained the machines within the fortress-dungeon and that she was something called a technomage. Lots of questioning ensued, and eventually her assistant Colluthus was also released.

The pool of life, as she called the room Varazes had been hold up in, wasn’t initially intended to be used to create beastmen, and that in her time the device that did so wasn’t there but she had heard some of the biomancers talk about it. She said she could turn the beastman maker off if she could get something called an environment suit, and that such a suit might still be in one of the panic rooms north of the party, since they were well hidden.

The party decide they needed to rest, but not before retrieving some supplies from their pack donkey, left outside the dungeon. So they return to the surface, quite a horrific trip for the two maintenance mages due to the damage and changes that have happen in the last 300 years. Finally the reach the the surface only to find the donkey has been attacked and the camp destroyed. Huge foot prints in bloody mud suggest the frost giant found and destroyed their belongings.
Reluctant to go back to Muntberg with a still working beastman machine, the party holed up in one of the rooms they’d rested in before and then went and retrieve a pair of environment suits. Also in the panic room were some healing potions and a dirk designed to fend off the hobgoblins, should they ever rebel, which at the time was a concern according to Arethusa.

The machine is switched off, and the party start pushing on through unexplored areas. They reach a chamber that still has a working glowglobe to find it full of thorny bush, which immediately animate and attack the party. They dispose of these blood sucking plants quickly, thanks to several natural 20’s and move to the next room which is filled with cactus that shoot off large spines in their direction. The liberal use of burning oil puts pay to these floral menances. At this point Mags, our friendly barlady at Bethnal Green Working Men’s club called time, so we finished it there.

It was fantastic to get back into the regular game, and I’m almost sorry I have to skip a week due to my Snowboarding holiday that coming up. Can’t wait for the next session, and I have a pile of models that need painting as the party start thinking about going down to the 3rd level, known as The House Of Portals.