Games Expo 2024 – Day 2 & 3
I am safe aboard my train, no derailments so far! Headed home from UK Games Expo 2024 I wanted to summarise my day 2, and a little of today, as I have for day 0 and day 1. I’d also like to talk about how I have felt over the course of the con and why I went the direction I did.
I started the Saturday a little ahead of my compatriot Rich. Running into Mike from Boardgamewire, who had introduced himself the night before, I found out that I could get in early on my press pass. This allowed me to get in on a demo game of Arcs.
Arcs is the new game from Leder Games, Cole Wherle, and Kyle Ferrin. This rockstar team brought you the fantastic Root and the interesting, but not for me in the end, Oath. I had not backed it on Kickstarter as I wasn’t sure if this next game would be an auto back from me due to my reaction to Oath. Well…
Arcs is really interesting. Now I only played two chapters with 3 other folk. On each round within the chapter someone is the lead player. They play one of the four suits into the lead position on this little track. There are 4 suits and each suit lets you do some of the several actions the game permits. Each card has a value and some dots on it. The dots tell you how many actions of the types on the card, you are allowed to do. As value goes up, number of actions goes down.
Everyone else can now follow, playing a card of the same suit as the lead. They get to take actions equal to dots if they do. They may also get the initiative if the card is of a higher value. You could also copy, playing any card face down and taking just one action of the lead suit. You could pivot, playing a card from a different suit entirely and taking one of the actions on that card. There was something else I forget now as well.
On top of this trick taking style action selection choice at the start of each turn, you can also play a resource along with any face up card that gets played. This allows you to take the action of the resource in addition to the action the cards allow you to take. What these two things give you is a lot of depth in what actions you can choose, and some really tricky plays you can pull off. It is at its core very simple and within 3 turns of the first chapter we all had the core of the game down. Learning how to manipulate that and take advantage of all the bits around it is something else entirely. I really enjoyed it.
Once Rich joined me, our first stop of day 2 was to Handiwork Games. They are a Scottish publisher of RPGs who I know very well. Jon Hodgson who runs the show is always great to chat with. Malcolm Craig who I’ve known for a long time was helping him out on the Saturday. It was lovely to chat to them both and I got to catch up with Malcolm a bit more later in the day over lunch.
Wandering the halls I had some folk I wanted to talk to, but still wanted that element of serendipitous discovery. First of these was the International Roleplaying Youth Exchange. This started out online but is now aiming to give teenagers from across the world the opportunity to meet and design games. The games have a theme, with the next one being focused on climate change. I picked up their first game ‘Trickster’s Net‘ to check it out.
Next up was a journey back to Soul Muppet who I talked to yesterday. I asked Zac, the head honcho, what game represented the company best. I was pointed towards Orbital Blues. This is a game about ‘sad space cowboys’ and the artist Josh and designer Sam were on the stall. I spent some time talking to them about the game, its influences, and the UK indie RPG scene in general. A tap on the shoulder and Eryk, who does work for Soul Muppet as well, was introducing themselves. Eryk is also the organiser for the tabletop portion of the IWGB union that we covered in Brainwaves 142. It was lovely to chat to Eryk about that and make that connection.
Making connections has been a focus of the show for me. I’ve met loads of enthusiastic people making the weird and wonderful. It was lovely to see smaller folk pulling their strengths together to support each other like the UK Tabletop Industry Network. I spoke to Freddie from this organisation who took me through some of the games and what the organisation does. I had not heard of them before but they seem very organised. They are especially keen to help new creators out with anything they might need. Do please check them out if you are wondering how to get that RPG idea out of your head, and onto some paper.
I ran into Dougal from Ancient Robot Games who was checking out lots of games for inclusion at the shop. He was good enough to point me at a publisher called Slightly Reckless Games who had an interesting adaption of the Mork Borg system called Ronin. Mork Borg is a game I am aware of, but have not played. It was great to talk to Sacha who designed the game and could educate me a bit about Mork Borg. They gave me a review copy which will get a first read soon and then some play when I can fit it in.
My last stop on my RPG part of the day was up at the back of hall 2 with Wandering Tome. This is a Maltese design studio of Chelsea and Fleur who had designed a game called Flabergasted. Think Jeeves and Wooster with the aesthetic of Bellevile Rendezvous and you basically are in the right area. Really interesting to see a game focused on 1920s hi-jinks with a comedic tone at the core. One to check out in the future for me and I got a little insight into the Maltese design and RPG scene to boot.
In the afternoon I met up with my friend Matt Thrower one of my co-hosts from Cult of the Old. Matt had a similar nightmare to me getting to the convention, but made it in the end and it was lovely to see him. Matt is a much bigger fish than me reviews wise but was good enough to let me ride around on his coat tails for a couple of meetings. This was incredibly kind of him, and very useful to me. I got to put my face in front of PR folk from Hachette, Osprey, and Modiphius.
Hachette we saw a load of games and I was particularly intrigued by Courtisans, which seemed to be a light card game of courtly intrigue and betrayal. We were shown all sorts of games from this to heavier euros. Rob who was showing us round was fantastic at the pitches. Hachette are a company on the rise. Every time I see them at a convention their range and presence has grown.
Osprey Games, publishers of Undaunted amongst other titles, was an interesting visit as well. Benji, who I have spoken to a couple of times before, took us through the upcoming titles and their pipeline to support some of those releases. Undaunted Calisto was the big sell but there are also some RPGs coming that sound interesting. I’ve been meaning to check out Osprey’s RPG range for a while. I hope this chance to connect with Benji will provide an opportunity to do so.
Last stop was Modiphius and a look at the forthcoming Mass Effect game. We were joined by the designer Eric Lang, famous for games like Chaos in the Old World and Blood Rage amongst many other titles. This is a mission based game with branching paths, with a phsyical setup akin to Jaws of the Lion, with a book that will fold out flat for the missions you play out. Looks good even at this prototype stage and seems to have an interesting dice action selection mechanism. I couldn’t take any photos of it.
Matt joined Rich and I for a pint before he headed off. It is always lovely to spend time in the company of Matt. He has an incredible knowledge of board games and I respect his opinion a lot, even if I don’t always agree with it. It’s good to pick the brains of someone who has been in the criticism gig a lot longer than I have. Hoping to see him again before the year is out!
Rich and I spent the evening with a few beverages and excellent company. We ended the night talking to Paul Fricker. Paul is a massive name in the RPG scene, and specifcially has written loads for Call of Cthlhu. It was really interesting to get his insights into the kind of games he runs and pick his brains about RPG theory. It was a very late night, but a wonderful time.
Day 3 and reflection
Sunday morning was a bit of a slow start for me and I quickly realised I was basically done with expo. I did go and chat to the folk from Crossed Paths an RPG publisher doing a GMless game aimed at kid. They are going to be up at Tabletop Scotland and Ash was good enough to give me a quick interview. A once around the halls and some more dice in hand Rich and I packed up and headed our seperate ways. I was knackered but happy.
I’ve spent some time on the way home, and today as I recover, thinking about how expo overwhelmed me at first. This is all me, not the fault of the convention. UK Games Expo is very well laid out, maps are provided, and the folk I chatted to about press passes in the run up where friendly and helpful. Aisles are wide, and despite the crowds it felt relatively easy to walk about.
I last attended the convention in 2019 when it occupied, as far as I recall, all of hall 1 and about half of hall 2 in terms of trade space. This year both those halls were packed with traders. That doesn’t sound like a massive leap in 5 years but it felt like it was. I’ve realised t wasn’t the physical increase that I found difficult. I know the hobby has grown massively over the course of the last few years, I report on it all the time. This was the first time I had ‘seen’ the results of that growth. As an example I think you could have spent all 3 days on the Hachette stall and not run out of games to play, and that is one, relatively new, publisher.
I think over the last year or so I’ve been thinking a lot about how I remain relevant in the wider criticism space and ‘useful’ to my audience, while also bring more people to my site. I’ve never been at the cutting edge, keeping up with new releases and the like. I don’t really want to be on that treadmill. It’s not that I am worried about disappearing into obscurity. The site gets regular traffic and I am happy with the work that I have done. The podcast is going strong and I feel like we are doing better with that as it goes on. I am really happy with the work we do at Cult of the Old.
I am generally satisfied with the work I put out. Last year I wasn’t as active due to some family illness and other ‘life’ stuff that needed attended to over the course of the year. A change of job has helped a lot and I am getting more opportunities to write. With that extra freedom comes those moments to think and consider what I am doing and how I am doing it. It is healthy to take a moment from time to time and ask yourself ‘is this still fun?’. Unless you are actually making a living writing about tabletop games, and very few do, this is all fundamentally a hobby. If you are finding it a slog and dreading the next game plopping onto your doormat for review, it might be time to take stock.
You’ll have noticed that I have talked a lot about indie RPGs over my convention coverage. To help my brain sift through the sheer volume of publishers I decided early on to go this route. It is a section of the tabletop hobby that not as many people cover. I hope this means my coverage can help those folk out and allow me to stand out from the crowd a bit. That is a little selfish, but it has to be a two way street. The publishers get something. I get something. It has to work like that a bit for criticism to work at all!
I still love the tabletop hobby. The games, the people, and the conventions are all part and parcel of that. I am going to Tabletop Scotland in September and Dragonmeet in December. Next year I don’t know what I will attend but I think I’ll have to cut it down a little bit. So far this year I’ve been rediscovering my ability to write, and what I want to write about. I’ll be experimenting with form and looking to you for feedback. I am excited about what the future holds, with a tinge of trepidation as there are always unknowns. I anticipate coming across the brilliant, the ‘fine’, and the terrible.
At the end of the day, all we critics really want is to help people enjoy themselves. Along the way I hope to help some smaller publishers reach a wider audience. In turn this will bring some people to my work. I want to help you find your next favourite game, and I want you to tell me about the things I might have missed. There are so many games, so many publishers, that it is impossible for us to know everything. We can however help each other find the really cool games and then play them together.
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