Tabletop Scotland AAR (after action report)
On the Thursday before Tabletop Scotland we visited two stores in Edinburgh.
Ancient Robot Games is a sunny, cozy boardgame cafe with a killer RPG section, including many indie titles. They’ve only been open for three months. I had a great visit with Dougal who picked up a good selection of our games. Morgan, a staff member at Ancient Robot Games joined the Marketplace with their title MINION under their imprint Forget Me Not RPGs. We saw them again on Sunday at Tabletop Scotland.
I also visited Black Lion Games, a store with a 25 year history. They fit a lot into their relatively small footprint, boardgames, minis and a wide selection of RPGs. Black Lion was very busy when I first arrived, but we still found time to talk shop about the local RPG scene. It was nice to see a copy of Sig: City of Blades already on their shelf. Steve picked up a handful of titles and has a follow up order on the way to the store now.
On Friday we stopped in at Tabletop Scotland and got our booth setup, chatting with a few people we knew from last year and UK Games Expo. There was gaming and previews that night but no vending. We stayed in Dundee that night so headed out early to stop in at Highlander Games.
I met with Tony and Arran at the store. They have a retail section in the center with game room on one side and a game cafe on the other. Tony invited the two RPG game groups who were playing games that evening to come have a look at the titles I had with me. (Always smart to have your customers tell you what they want)! So I had a nice friendly crowd asking questions about the selection of RPGs we had with us.
Highlander Games grabbed a good sampling, which reduced by a few copies immediately by eager gamers.
Saturday! We had some initial sales to some fellow traders which is always appreciated.
We were next to Scot of Venger’s Decks who has some great system neutral encounter desks for your Dungeon Fantasy game. Quite a lot of detailed text on them and nice illustrations as well as a beautiful battlemap bookpack.
Hive Mind Games was on the other side (see Sunday).
In the afternoon, as trading calmed a little, I headed round and spoke with some fellow exhibitors. Chatted with Stoo Goff of we evolve about Gaslight Club, Aegean, and plans for WILD. I also got to meet Rhiannon who wrote and designed Action Potential. I meant to mention to her that I knew someone had run a session of Action Potential at Breakout and will be running it again at Phantasm in November.
We’ll be getting a good restock of the core Aegean book soon (pre-order here), and we brought back some custom d10 dice back with us as well as copies of the two major supplements Book of Empires and Book of Heroes.
Had initial conversations with Cat of Pelgrane Press about joining the marketplace. Circumstances required her to man the booth by herself that weekend which is always a challenge.
Also talked with Tim of Critical Kit, who joined with his 2023 UK Games Award winning solo play game Be Like a Crow.
And with Rich of Hatchlings Games, who joined with Inspirisles a game that uses and teaches sign language as part of game play.
That evening we grabbed pizza in the park with the whole Beyond Cataclysm team, and talked shop and Christian Ska. We got a nice little restock of Tyranosaur Inside (a Mork Borg adventure) and Operation S.A.N.T.A (duel stated for Troika and Mork Borg), as well as adding the solo play A Set of Scrubs.
Sunday was more relaxed. Sipped Irn-Bru (courtesy of pizza night), chatted with attendees and got to browse a bit. I picked up a “boardgame in a book” by Aeronautique Games (golden age of airplanes themed), as well as a system agnostic book of curses "At Your Peril" from our booth neighbour Hive Mind Games (I had recently picked up a PDF of Dragon's at Dawn and in it there was a Sage class who's one major ability was to use curses, and it tickled my fancy.)
Towards the end of the day we got some stock drop offs from some of our UK publishers, including more dice and GM screens for SHIVER (including a couple sets of metal dice) from Parable Games. As well as the aforementioned items from We Evolve, Forget Me Not RPGs, Hatchlings Games, Critical Kit and Beyond Cataclysm.
Finally we had a good talk with Canterbury (Kent) based retailer Dice & Destiny. They will be moving locations shortly.
Kevin of West End Games in Glasgow picked up a handful of titles again this year. They seem like a great shop. If you are out that end of Scotland I am sure it is worth the trip.