UK Games Expo 2020, a.k.a. Virtually Expo

UK Games Expo 2020

I'd never played an RPG at UK Games Expo before, as I've only ever been for one day and as I'm also a board gamer, the trade hall takes up that entire day.  But nothing is happening as usual in 2020, so I decided it was time to change things up and pitch a game.  Apparently there's a demand for Alien, as it sold out almost immediately.

The run up to the event was pretty stressful.  There are a number of ways that an online convention works differently to a face-to-face one, which we're all still learning in this strange plague-ridden year, and one thing the organisers hadn't taken into account is that the RPG GMs might want to contact their players ahead of the game.  I had a Roll20 link in the description, but it wasn't until the day of the game that the players all joined.  Along with that came website problems that periodically caused my game to vanish off the site, and while the Expo staff did a great job applying web fixes and attempting to do something about the contact problem without breaking GDPR, I was pretty damn stressed by Friday evening.

And then suddenly all my players were there on Roll20 and Discord, and everything was lovely as I introduced a new group of travellers to the delights of planet JWL-5.  This was the third time I'd run this adventure, with some small tweaks each time, and at this point I'm really happy with everything about it except my own notes, which are an appalling mess that I need to do something about.

I keep thinking of Alien as a complicated game to run, but in reality most of the complication is in the creation of the scenario and character motivations, all of which I've already done.  Actually running the thing is pretty smooth.  The Roll20 character sheet is superb, and makes things easy at the players' end.  Things can get a little hectic when a recursive panic chain goes off, but it turns out I handle those pretty well.

I enjoyed running it so much that I convinced myself to pitch the game again for GrimCon.  Sign up this week to join the fun!

Saturday morning I played The Cthulhu Hack.  A scenario called Jake's Last Letter saw a group of investigators looking into the mysterious events surrounding a friend's death.  I'm sure I've played The Cthulhu Hack before, but it was several years ago and somehow I remember nothing about it (looking back through the Concrete Cow archives has not helped, and I don't seem to have mentioned it on social media either.)  This was a great opportunity to see it in action, with what I'd think of as a 'normal' Cthulhu adventure.  Having since then done actual Call of Cthulhu character creation, a process that took us two hours, I really appreciate the uncomplicated character sheets of The Cthulhu Hack.

After that, I decided to do something I've never yet managed to do at the Expo: attend presentations and seminars.  Fitting things around my own plans meant I couldn't fit in any more RPGs, and I wasn't particularly interested in the board game demos, but the various Twitch streams and Discord calls kept me happily occupied for the rest of the weekend.  The various tech issues from Friday all appeared to be sorted by the time I logged in on Saturday, and everything went smoothly from then onwards.

Hopefully by next year things will be a little closer to normal and the Expo will be back in Birmingham.  If so, and if dates don't clash, I'll be considering running a few more RPGs and maybe making a weekend of it.  If not, the organisers now know how to put on an online event and will doubtless have everything running smoothly from the start.  I'll be back with more online games.