Dragonmeet 2025 – Growing Pains
We all form traditions over the course of our lives. Daily, weekly, monthly, and annually we fall into set patters and behaviours. I have a regular Wednesday group that has been going for 30+ years. I go climbing on set days. I attend conventions.
When I was first really getting into thinking about and designing games I attended Dragonmeet down in London. It was in Kensington, if memory serves, at the time and was very much regarded as an RPG focused event. Over the years it grew, moving to the Hammersmith Novotel. It fluctuated over those years in focus, sometimes bringing in more boardgames, other years focusing on being an RPG focused convention. This year the convention made a big leap, changing venue to the Excel and it felt overall like a mixed bag.
I paid my own way to Dragonmeet this year. I did not have a press pass.
If you’ve never been to Excel it is absolutley enormous. A central concourse contains various coffee shops and places to eat. Off this are several huge hangers that can be split up in various ways to accomodate different types of events. Dragonmeet was in two of these large halls.
On arrival my friend Rich and I managed to walk past the entrance hall, gravitating towards the noise of the convention coming from the main hall. Corrected we grabbed our bands. Apart from the reception desk this hall was basically empty. That felt a bit weird to me but I learnt later that is common for Excel to do this in order to manage crowds into events.
I’d checked out the exhibitor list beforehand, but found myself a bit lost as I started wandering the trade hall. Although there were columns and rows of exhibitors, a lack of signage and odd positiong of trade dress on different stalls, made it a little hard to parse where you were in the hall. The map in the programme and online had a map style grid with letters and numbers but this wasn’t replicated on the floors or walls.
I did eventually orientate myself and started making the rounds. There was a good selection of indie RPG folk selling the weird and wonderful games you regularly find in this part of the hobby. Some of the larger players were in attendance like Modiphius and Chaosium. RPG wise there was a gap in Cubicle 7 not being in attendance which felt a little odd.
The boardgame presence had expanded a little with the addition of Hachette and Asmodee demoing and selling games. The usual collection of dice and accessories vendors were in attendance to fill your bags with all the shiny math rocks and more that you could desire.
The traders did seem to be doing a good trade and I suspect that the single floor marketplace will have been in there favour. I know the Novotel venure had issues with being over multiple floors and that affecting people being able to find the traders they wanted to. Traders were mixed up well meaning wherever you went you got to see a good range of products on display and come across things you might not have considered otherwise.
On the far side of the hall, opposite the main enrance, were some fairly small open gaming areas and a board game library, alongside RPGs on demand. Seminars and booked RPGs were in some rooms at the back of the hall. Honestly if you were attending Dragonmeet for the first time I am not sure you would know that the RPG schedule is a big part of the event.
I spent a good portion of the afternoon chatting with Matt Chapman, my editor at TTGM, and Rich about all things gaming. We did that in The Fox, which was a fine if quite pricey pub just at the entrance to Excel. Be prepared for pricey food and some long queues around lunchtime but isn’t a complaing against Dragonmeet, just the nature of the beast.
The programme to guide you round the event felt very thrown together. The list of exhibitors was split between a north and south hall, making it feel like there were two halls. There weren’t. This referred to the fact that the hall the convention was in can be split in two. It meant that if you wanted to find a particular trader you had two pages to pour over looking at what looked very much like italicised comic sans.
The seminars were listed but there was no indication in the programme that RPG sessions area major part of the event. Sure most of these might be booked up by the time folk turn up at the convention, but folk will drop out and spaces may become available. More than that it gives atendees the idea that this isn’t just a marketplace, it is an event with games and talks running all the time.
Traditionally the charity auction is a fairly important part of Dragonmeet. I genuinely didn’t know it was on until I saw Brian Nisbet, who usally hosts it, talking about it post convention on Bluesky. Here is where it is in the programme
I had a lovely day out at Dragonmeet, but I felt like the convention had lost some of its soul. In moving to a quite sterile location and expanding it felt like the convention doesn’t have clear idea about what it wants to be. This is hopefully just transition year issues, but I couldn’t help but draw a comparison with Tabletop Scotland. That convention also stepped up into a large sterile venue in the Royal Highland Centre, but managed to retain its soul and made it the event we had come to love.
Dragonmeet was simply bigger. That’s nice and all, and great for vendors I’m sure, but conventions need a purpose. Maybe Dragonmeet will become the Games Expo of the south, my words, but in doing so will it lose its focus on RPG promotion? Do we really need ‘just another trade show?’ or would it be better if it brought back the community feel of the previous years. Next year will be the proof.
Thought it might be useful to share some other thoughts on the event. These are a mix of vendor reports and journalists.
Rascal – Need to sign up to their free tier to read
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