Dragonmeet 2024

By Alex White

- 20 minutes read - 4184 words
In which Dragonmeet is followed by Muppetmeet, and I take on too much! But had a great time nonetheless.

Dragonmeet

In what way did I take on too much?

I agreed to run two game sessions for iGoth (indie games on the hour), meet up with a friend, attend a seminar, and help on the London TIN booth for two hours. Let’s talk about each of these.

Indie Games on the Hour (iGoth)

I think this is a great part of Dragonmeet, as it’s an opportunity for people to come along and just try out indie games without booking ahead of time. There are lots of games on offer, and it is great for people who fancy trying something different, or who were not able to book into a scheduled game.

This year it seemed as though it wasn’t as well supported by Dragonmeet itself as in previous years - it wasn’t mentioned in the brochure, or on the website!

I had agreed to run two game slots, one from 10am-12, and the second from 12-2pm. Nobody turned up at 10am at all, but all was not lost - the other three GMs were interested in trying out my beta test of Road to Romance, and we had fun with it.

Road to Romance

We had three players, and I acted as a facilitator. We agreed to limit the stories to a ‘sweet’ level of romance and set our lines and veils. You can read more about Road to Romance. The stories were:

  • A classic wartime romance of Barbara falling in love with the transgressive black market rogue ‘Flash’ Harry, which is opposed by her father.
  • A classic regency romance of Mr Martin falling in love with the artist who came to do his portrait, opposed by his fiancée - not unreasonably, one might expect.
  • A paranormal Wild West romance of Josephine the cowgirl falling in love with her friend Duke, the landowner. Dorry is a rival for Duke’s affections, and she is prettier and a better shot.

Air raid sirens sounded every night, which added to Barbara's feelings of insecurity. In addition to that, her father (a General) was a harsh taskmaster, and almost impossible to please. She had tripped at the train station and lost one of the pages of the secret documents she had been carrying. Searching for it later, she found it in the possession of the dashingly handsome ‘Flash’ Harry - nightclub owner and black marketeer. He had found it, and sold it back to her... for a kiss. She couldn’t get Harry out of her mind, but her father knew she had been to his club and forbade any further communication. They kept seeing each other, until one evening the military police raided the nightclub and dragged Harry away to military prison. It looked as though that was going to be the end, but it transpired that Harry and her father both answered to a higher authority - Harry was secretly with military intelligence. Her father’s objections vanished, and we last see Barbara and Harry climbing on board a train, surrounded by clouds of steam, and falling into each other’s arms as the train’s whistle blew.

It is 1812 and Mr Martin is engaged to be married to the formidable Catherine. He feels guilt and shame that he is completely under her thumb. He yearns for a sense of fun in his life, but can’t see any future that way. He is due to have a portrait painted by an up and coming young artist, but is shocked when the artist arrives and it is a young Yorkshire woman called Anna. She is light hearted and bantered with him while sketching and preparing the work. Catherine gets wind of the fact that the artist is a woman and furiously tells him to stop the commission. But when Mr Martin gets to her artists garret in London he is once again taken by her spirit. They end up fooling around and laughing, and some paint gets spilt on his top hat. Back in the country, Catherine has taken matters into her own hands, and arranged with her father for Anna to be given work up in Scotland, the other end of the country. Mr Martin rushes back to London to try to persuade Anna not to go, but she sees no choice, and is sadly packing. One of her pieces falls out of a packing tube and unrolls in front of them. It is a candid portrait that she was asked to do of the Duke of Wellington and his secret mistress. It is shocking that there is such a candid portrait. Even more shocking that the mistress is his fiancée, Catherine! It is the evidence he needs to get her to break off the engagement, and frees Mr Martin to start a relationship with Anna.

Josephine is drunk in a bar. She's a dam' good cowgirl, and enjoys working the land for her friend Duke, but why won't he see the woman as well as the worker? Why does he keep making eyes at that pretty little thing Dorry? Sure maybe Dorry is currently the best shot in the West, and pretty and all, but why her? Duke wants Josephine to help investigate the killing of some cattle on the high plains, and Josephine agrees as long as she is in charge. Duke doesn't mind, as long as Dorry is along for additional protection. As they ride out to investigate there is some bickering of the not good natured kind between the two women. It starts getting dark and Dorry suggests that they ought to be getting home, but Josephine pushes them on. and when Dorry suggests that they split up Josephine agrees grumpily, and sends Duke off with Dorry! The full moon rises, somewhere a wolf howls. Josephine hears Duke cry out from the ravine, and she finds him there with an injured leg. She goes to lift him up, but she stumbles and ends up falling on top of him. Face to face. In the moonlight. Then they go in for a kiss. In the bush behind them we see glowing red eyes, and a werewolf bursts out from the darkness - the tattered clothes it wears are Dorrys! Josephine is brushed off, Duke is slung over it's back and the werewolf leaps off while Josephine draws her colt-45 and shoots wildly - but she injures the werewolf's leg and Josephine is able to catch up. The werewolf charges here and she draws the derringer with its silver bullets she keeps for emergencies. "Down girl" she breathes and two bullets slam into the werewolf, killing it. Josephine looks Duke over, and sees that he has already started changing, his injured leg was infected by the werewolf back in the ravine! She isn't willing to put Duke down before he finally changes... and she chooses a different path - gashing her leg on the werewolfs teeth, she commits herself to this transformation - and by dawn there were two new howls on the high chapparal.

The Long Road Home

I had three players and myself for this GMless game. You can read more about this game of mine and see how it plays in this collection of Long Road Home posts.

This was a heroic story set in a sylvan land of high mountains, deep woods and rune magic. Our serene valley hidden in the mountains was under threat from an evil wizard who was spreading his reign over the land and wanted to conquer our hidden valley.

The valley was fertile, peaceful, and quiet - three runes created by the founder of the valley and which were reflected in life there. There was a rich earthy smell and a deep sense of serenity. Our heroes were part of a rag-tag band who had set out to foil the wizards plans by creating a gem that would entrap the evil one’s power.

The characters were

  • Tom Hardy: son of the village elders, who had a rune of protection but tended to be too hasty, and whose story was going to include political intrigue
  • Sid: an apprentice runesmith who was good with runes but lackadaisical with his work. His story was going to include redemption.
  • Padraig: a blacksmith who was strong, but took offence quickly. His story was going to include personal sacrifice.
  • Martin: an artist who was creative, but tended to be careless and slow. His story might have included being a pawn of prophecy.

Companions along the way were Ashen, the bookish tutor who came along to keep up Tom's studies, Astrid the fierce barbarian they met in the jungles and who enjoyed testing her strength against Padraig, and Valerian, the treacherous advisor who continually led them astray. For a short while they travelled with Orion, the relentless gladiator, but he soon separated for them, cursing them for their weakness.

In one battle Astrid was mortally wounded, and Sid attempted to use his healing runes to keep her alive, but failed because he had not studied hard enough. Padraig picked up a wasting disease in the jungles.

Tom against his better judgement was spending more time with Valerian, intrigued by the tales of political intrigue amongst the great houses.

At another cliff top battle against a small army, Orion would have killed Padraig, but Ashen bravely tackled the gladiator and both went over the edge to their deaths. Padraig couldn't believe that this man he considered weak had given his life to save him. Padraig had been expecting personal sacrifice to be an element in his tale, but hadn't expected it to be this travelling companion. Martin found a shield that protected from fire, and claimed it as his own.

At the bottom of that cliff Sid detected a flicker of life in Ashen, and this time redoubled his efforts on the rune of healing - and where he had failed Astrid, he did not fail Ashen.

In the final battle at the wizards tower on the dunes, we found the mighty wizard attempting to create a giant rune to bind everyone in the land to his will. Padraig fought him, Martin protected us against his fiery blasts with his shield, and Tom used the rune of protection to shield Sid... who crafted a new rune on a gem which would act as a circuit breaker for the giant rune! When the wizard attempted to cast his power into the giant rune, it was all sucked into the small gem and locked away, breaking his power.

At their homecoming, Sid was hailed as a hero of the valley, the creator of a new rune of industriousness and he set up a new runemasters teaching school. Padraig came back to his forge, but found that he was now too weak to use the forge he once called home. Martin found that his desire to create art had deserted him, and his flame-burnt fingers couldn't hold a brush without trembling. And Tom never got to be the new elder of the village. His heart was corrupted by Valerian, and he turned his back on the serene valley and followed Valerian off to the great city, to try to get involved in political intrigue.

The game was a success, ran to time, and the players said that they were surprised how quickly they had come to care for the supporting characters who joined them.

Seminar

Sadly I only had time for one seminar today between iGoth until 2pm and starting on the TIN stand at 4pm. I chose carefully, and attended

First product to first convention: The Creator Experience

Many of us dream of creating and releasing our own games or gaming related products, either as a hobby or to build an independent business. Join a panel of this year's exhibitors who have taken the jump for a discussion of their journey from first product to exhibiting at conventions and the reality of creative life. What do they wish they'd know at the start, what would they do differently and is there actually any money to be made from it?

The panellists were

I didn’t take as many notes as I should have done. The first part of the seminar was about first product and concentrated on issues like printing. The second part which I was more interested in looked at being at a convention.

Craig was on his third year of Dragonmeet. It is an RPG focused convention, and he finds that it is more productive than the conventions which are more about Boardgames and also include RPGs.

Rori is an artist as well as a publisher, and she has exhibited at MCM as well as others. Although it isn’t as dedicated a convention, it does give the opportunity to reach additional audiences that might be interested and won’t normally come across your games.

Important tips
  • wear comfortable shoes, because you are going to be doing a lot of standing!
  • Don’t go solo - find someone to run the table with you. It allows you to take breaks (loo etc) and shares the load. That might be with your partner (like Rori) or with another designer who has complementary games (like Craig, who the last two years has run a table with Nick Bate)

London TIN booth

I helped staff the London TIN booth from 4pm to 6pm and then helped with some of the packing away at the end.

It was the first time I’ve stood on that side of a table, and I found it very stressful - a long way outside my comfort zone! It didn’t feel natural to me to invite people to look at games and purchase them, or to add additional purchases. It didn’t help that there was a huge range of games on the table, and there was no way for me to know enough about each game to tell people what they were good for.

Happily the Point of Sale app in use was foolproof, and I was able to take money three times from people - selling two copies of “Rosewood Abbey” and one copy of “Me, the Singularity”. So I didn’t feel like a complete fraud.

I think that one copy of one of my products was sold during the day (that covers my train fare down to Dragonmeet). I’ve got to work out how to do better than that! I’m convinced that they are good games, but a clearer and more compelling pitch would be helpful.

It was interesting watching Mikhail at work; I think he was looking after the stand all through the day, and seeing how he approached people and encouraged them to look at things they might be interested in was very instructive.

What did I miss?

So much!

I didn’t have a proper opportunity to look round the exhibitor stands, so I didn’t purchase anything, nor did I manage to talk with any of the people whom I’d hoped to catch up with that I knew from social media or the TIN discord. I had a brief conversation with Josh of Black Armada, but didn’t even see many others.

In a future year I think I would need to focus on either one thing or another, and not spread myself too thin.

Muppetmeet

A joint venture by Soulmuppet and Dragonmeet, this was a Sunday event of seminars and networking for the RPG creative industry.

It’s a great idea, my experience was hampered by travel problems (trains cancelled on the Mildmay line because of overrunning engineering works meant I had to travel round the houses by Tube to get there, taking MUCH longer than expected)

10am Networking

Unfortunately I missed this because of travel difficulties

11am Seminar - How To Be Good At Conventions

With Mol Joule (they/them) from SoulMuppet, Josh (he/they) from Hive Mind, and Rori Montford (she/her) Conventions are an exciting, often overwhelming and incredibly chaotic part of the TTRPG scene in the UK and abroad. SoulMuppet's head of marketing Mol Joule, Josh from : Hive Mind and Rori Montford have the inside track on how to succeed at conventions, i how to arrange your stands, and how to pitch your products to punters.

Unfortunately I missed this as well because of travel difficulties.

12 noon Seminar - Actual Play vs actual play

With Edward Spence (he/him) moderating, Liv Kennedy (she/her) from 3 Black Halflings, JC Darcy (they/them) from Euphoria APs, and Drakoniques (he/him) As Actual Play becomes increasingly prevalent in the TTRPG industry - and as its i parameters become ever more experimental - join award-nominated producer Drakoniques (Beyond the Brook), EUphoria's JC Darcy, and Liv Kennedy (co-creator of the award-winning 3 Black Halflings) in a discussion moderated by award-nominated Game Master Edward Spence, as they explore: does this medium present a true experience of tabletop gameplay? And is that its purpose?

I missed the first half of this, but the second half was interesting.

You can see a summary of the points that I took away from it and engage with me on Bluesky here

Actual Play can have many different aims, and those inform what is done and the way that you do it. For instance, is the main point entertainment? Promotion? Teaching the game? Each of those will lead to different focus. There are some great entertaining Actual Plays which would be useless for learning how to play the game, for instance.

Tech has changed a lot even in the short time that AP has been a thing. Both in terms of hardware, software and software as a service. Expectations are also higher. Audiences can be less forgiving of poor audio quality now.

The experience of listening is quite different to the experience of playing. This has been one of the drivers for more attention to sound and effects, to make it more experiential.

There was a thread on Bluesky which showed a 50/50 split between people who liked to hear well produced AP vs those who liked ones with messy table talk with might sound more ‘real’. I’ve not been able to track down that particular thread. I know that I personally prefer to listen to an AP which feels like I’m at the table rather than listening to a production. Shout out to Black Armada Tales for their podcast in that respect.

Streamers are very collaborative and helpful, and online communities typically very willing to help people out with advice on things.

2pm Seminar - Brick and Mortar: RPG Retailing in the UK

With Tom Mecredy (he/him), eCommerce Manager at SoulMuppet moderating, Casper from Orc’s Nest, James (he/him) from Leisure Games. Are you a creator looking to build a more sustainable business or get more eyes on your product? SoulMuppet's eCommerce manager Tom sits down with Casper from the Orc's Nest and James from Leisure Games to talk about the physical retail side of the TTRPG industry.

This alone would have made the day worthwhile for me. It was excellent.

I wrote a summary thread about it on Bluesky here if you’d like to discuss any of these things further: https://bsky.app/profile/planesailinggames.com/post/3lcbra2zxgk27

What does a physical store offer?

Access to the general public. People coming off the street, and exposing people to additional kinds of games like indie games. They can use their expertise to recommend new games to people.

Leisure games is in the suburbs and supports local clubs in their communities. They notice that back in the original heyday of D&D the ratio of D&D stuff to other games used to be 10 to 1. Now it is more like 100 to 1. James suspects that this might be because there are fewer sales made through physical stores than was the case back then.

What misconceptions are there?

Small publishers often don’t understand the volume of initial orders that shops will look for. Shops are most likely to take no more than 2-5 copies to begin with to test the market. If those sell quickly, then they will come back for more. They don’t want 20-40 copies if they don’t know they can sell it (and this can stumble some publishers, who want to send them higher “minimum quantities”).

What percentage of your shop is RPGs?

The shops sell lots of board games and both Leisure Games and Orcs Nest have been around 40yrs or more, so they have more RPGs than is typical for many games stores, at 25-25%. Volume of sales of RPGs is on par with other stuff, but it contributes less towards total sales because units are typically cheaper.

Thousand Year Old Vampire is definitely their top seller in the RPG market.

What is the space for indie creators? Any thoughts about price points?

leisure Games has leaned more into zines in recent years, and some of those have done very well - mork Borg and mothership for instance. They now have a whole zines section and people like browsing them.

Orcs Nest also find people like browsing through zines. Those that are priced at the £6-7 range are common impulse purchases for people. They also find customers coming and asking them about Mothership, Heart, Spire and the like.

Crowdfunding is a net benefit for the RPG market, but unfortunately a lot of people put all their marketing effort into the crowdfunding and not as much after the event. There can be a temptation to plough effort into the next crowdfunder rather than put effort into the longer tail of their product. This is a shame, because once the product has been produced the harder work has been done! What’s next is marketing the product that has been made and realising profit.

It can be helpful to bring new things in to an existing line, or to add products which are thematically a match (Eat the Reich has been a success for Rowan, Rook and Decard partly because it is such a good thematic match for Heart and Spire).

Working with Distributors is really important to build sustainably income within the tail of the release.

What do you think about building out product lines?

When the buyers look at a catalogue of products it is good to see a set of related things. However, customers often don’t go from expansions back to purchase core rules. Leisure Games said that establishing a brand is really useful, if people know what kind of games you produce and what you stand for.

What are key features of a good product

It must sit on the shelf. Good quality paper is really important too. The days of thin photocopier paper being good enough are long past. Use good quality printing and care about the product you are making.

Orcs Nest likes to look and see whether they have hired an illustrator, and don’t use AI. They like to see effort, a good cover, a readable title, good layout on the inside. It is also good if it can identify cultural touchstones (e.g. “Battle Royale” or for Brindlewood Bay “Murder She Wrote and Cthulhu”)

Knowing how to pitch it to the customer is also useful.

Leisure Games said that in an increasingly digital age, the physical product can be the ‘value-add’, not the default. So don’t make it an afterthought. TYOV is a fabulous art object in itself. This has all changed in the last decade. He was sorry that when Monsterhearts 2 came out it hadn’t really added new art or improved its appearance.

What can creators do to increase their chance of success?

Orcs Nest said have a clear title. Eye catching, people must want to pick it up. Stand out well from other covers. Describe on the book how many people, how long, what they need to play it.

Starter Sets?

Boxed starter sets can be very useful. Of course, they attract VAT (like cards and anything that are not books), which makes it difficult for the retailers to deal with publishers who are not themselves VAT registered, as it costs them extra.

I had a discussion with James afterwards because I’m thinking that Road to Romance would probably be best as a boxed card game like Fedora Noir or For The Queen. The Bottom line is either

  1. Get yourself VAT registered (and accept all that goes with that)
  2. Get a publisher who already produces card games and is already VAT registered to take on the publishing
  3. Tout your game to the big publishing houses, because who knows?

There were some which were not recommended, but I don’t feel comfortable reporting them here in case it gets the panellists into any trouble.

3pm Networking

I think this may have happened, but if it did I couldn’t find it! After looking around for 15 minutes I assumed that perhaps everyone had left and gone home, so I did the same. I’ve seen some comments since that it did take place; I guess I failed to make my ‘spot check’. I wonder what the DC was?