North of the Borderlands

 Last weekend we ventured north, stayed with friends, and experienced the wonders of Tabletop Scotland.

It has been a while since I’ve crossed the border into Scotland. As a kid, my parents loved Scotland, and one of my happiest memories of my entire childhood was a quiet little self-catering cottage in the middle of a forest in the Borders. I hadn’t been to Scotland for over twenty years, but Stoo from we-evolve invited us to join their table at Scotland’s largest tabletop gaming convention, so that I could help sell copies of WILD, and Debs could sell her Goth-gaming wares from Misery Makes. 

Scotland was just as beautiful as I remembered it. Crossing the border on the train all you could see were green fields, epic hills, sheep, and dry-stone walling. It was the highlight of the 8 1/2 hour train journey that was (on the whole) exhausting. 

We stayed at Stoo’s, his awesome partner Rhi (author of the awesome Action Potential, and A Show of Hands, as well as a host of mini games) driving us and the piles of stock to and from the convention every day. (Thank you both for your amazing hospitality). 

Friday, we set up for the ‘half day’ of trading. We got used to the layout, checked out the other stalls, and managed to sell a few things. I saw a handful of things I liked, but resisted the urge to purchase - it was Friday after all. There were two more days of this ahead of us.

I did, however, find the most amazing dice in the world. I instantly fell in love with these dice, and pondered spending monies on them…

I mean, look at them. They are amazing. So beautiful. And readable too!! Especially important at my ancient age. Unfortunately, by midday on Saturday, they had sold, and my hopes were dashed. One day, I’ll find them again, and I won’t be so slow to snap them up… (I found them on a great stand called Trayed and Tested - I’ll be keeping an eye on that Etsy to see if they return)

Saturday was busy. Very busy. As you’d expect! I got to meet face to face with a couple of my work colleagues (and former colleagues) and a few regular convention faces from other publishers - but as with most of these conventions, everyone is so busy I don’t want to bother them with gossip about the gaming industry. 

Sunday, however, was like a veritable ghost-town for the first half of the day. I think everyone was either gaming, or sleeping off the late night gaming from the night before. I mean, look at how busy the aisle we were on was at 12:30pm…

Weird, huh?

Anyway, it picked up in the afternoon, and before you know it, it was all over. I thought about popping up to the gaming floor upstairs where a game of Doctor Who was being played on Sunday afternoon. Y’know, just to say “Hi, I wrote that!” but I thought it may be a bit weird. If you were in that Doctor Who game, let me know how it went.

Ho well… we just about covered our costs, so it wasn’t a complete wash-out, but it was certainly exhausting and before long we were back on another 8 1/2 hour train journey home. 

All I want is some good with my bad…

While the sales were a little disappointing, it was worth going. There were certainly a couple of highlights, and I’m not just talking about getting to chill with some awesome cats…

In addition to getting to stay with some great friends (and their lovely cats), there were a few other good takeaways from the weekend. 

I bought Debs a copy of Be Like A Cat from the fab people at Critical Kit, along with the super-cute dice with little paw prints as pips. 

Debs, in return, bought me an amazing tie with dice on from the lovely people at Witch Hunt Tabletop Treasures. 

Everyone at the stands were especially lovely, and there was some awesome stuff on display. From super-expensive top of the line gaming tables to low price zines. In fact, speaking of zines, Stoo bought a copy of the Mothership boxed set which was an inspiration to us all. 

I mean, I’ve been ranting about how I wanted to do an RPG about the size of those classic Traveller RPG books from the late 70s, and here comes an RPG which does exactly that. In a cute box with loads of cool stuff…

It set the brain whirring while sitting on that stand. Many notes were made… 

Many. Notes. 

Anyway, I thought our stand looked fab, and Debs put a heck of a lot of work into all that stock. 

Next stop, Dragonmeet. While we won’t have a stand there, I think I’ve convinced Debs to come to Dragonmeet this year to experience the UK’s second largest gaming convention - at least it’s only a couple of hours on the train…

Maybe we’ll see you there.

Stay Multi-classy!!