UK Games Expo 2025 Convention Diary – Saturday – Folklore & Slugblasting

My morning at the breakfast area included youths dressed as Mario, Luigi and Wario who were bustling around, getting in the way and that felt exactly like the trio would be, so well done them for their accuracy. I walked past a scene at the Medieval village community which would be a perfect start to a murder mystery:

There are also cosplayers who attend the convention. Some are simply attendees who like to dress up, others are professionals who have come along. A friend of mine from work has dressed up as a Ghostbuster and I thought I saw him on the way in, but the guy wasn’t entirely identical. It turns out, it was his twin!

On to the con!

Parable Games

I’ve chatted with Parable Games before, mainly about Ion Heart. They also make an RPG called Shiver which I admit rubbed me up the wrong way with its combination of funny dice and the main pitch being that it’ll basically do any horror. This time they’ve got a pair of starter sets which actually pick a specific genre. Blockbuster is a dinosaur theme park horror game, then Slasher is set at a summer camp. I like the idea of both of these, and it’d be interesting to see if they mechanically back up the premises in those sets.

Ion Heart’s apparently almost at the point where it can be digitally released, which is pretty exciting. I know they’ve got a multiplayer version planned, but the core concept as a solo game always appealed to me and has a great aesthetic style.

The main event for me was Don’t Play This Game, a solo RPG which I admit my stubborn streak instantly made me want to play, just to prove it wrong. The fliers also announced that you were cursed, just by looking at it.

The author, Charlie Menzies, was there and it was a joy talking to him about the creation and concept behind it. You’re cursed by some kind of entity and through journaling, art or whatever medium you want, you go through the steps taken to placate it. A playthough normally goes through about 20-30 events, and then can be passed on to a new character player by you or someone else. 

Charlie explained that the influences were games like Thousand Year Old Vampire, however he wanted to make sure there was a dramatic arc with a beginning, middle and end. He mentioned that their community already had channels on their Discord where people shared art, journals and audio diaries. He also gave the tagline of, “It’s like Pokémon Go, but where you’re trying to find the Blair Witch before she kills you.”

I bought a copy of the game, so I guess I’m cursed. If it goes well, I’ll resurrect Playing With Ourselves to show you what it’s like. Charlie kindly provided a journal for me, which already has the first two pages filled in with a handwritten run which did not end well. I don’t know if that was intentional, but it’s definitely an interesting start.

1 Sick Puppy 

It’s a nice surprise when I see an RPG and company I’ve not heard of before. Dimday_Red is just such an example. 

Spiros Drakatos introduced me to the concept of his game, which you can probably guess with the board he’s pictured with. Earth has fallen out of orbit and in 52 years, it’s going to get so close to the sun that all life will be extinguished. Well… bugger. That’s a rough start.

Society has understandably gone to the shitter after that, but players will try to use their time to figure out what to do with a life where everything will be gone in 52 years. Now, I’m a 44 year old overweight man, I’ve not got 52 more years in me, but does that mean I act like the world is over after that long? No, not necessarily. In fact, things like that just fuel my anxiety.

In this game, the wealthy have decided to fence in the poor, rather than do anything to help or deal with them. They intend on living well until the end and don’t want people getting in their way. So what will you do? Level the playing field with the wealthy? Get revenge on someone? Do right by your neighbours? Create something? It’s an interesting setting, although the part of me who idolises superheroes finds it difficult not wanting to bash my head against the concept, trying to find any way to fix things. So that’s probably what I’d do.

The system is a Powered by the Apocalypse framework, with lovely trifold character playbooks. There’s been a main release, zines and Spiros plans on having some more zines in this world.

Smirk & Dagger

I mentioned on Thursday about a game laser-targeted to my partner’s interests, and now here’s another one. We have too many books in the house and that’s not stopping anytime soon. I need to put up more shelves for books at the moment, as there are some loose stacks about.

A Place For All My Books is a game of basically that. Players have an apartment where they’re looking to gather and sort their books, gaining some energy by doing tasks. You lay out your shelves using lovely little wooden tokens, then use some energy to go into town and buying more books. So it’s pretty much mine and my partner’s life. The presenter explained that this was very much a love letter to introverts, building up energy with lonely fun and reading, then going out and getting yet more things to read. My one worry was that the set collection goals might seem a lot like the terrible act of sorting your books by colour. Running it past my partner, she said that it’s fine if it’s a game, so it passes that test.

A Place For All My Books is out in August. Hopefully my new book shelves will be up before then.

Three Sails Studios

The big release from Three Sails was Mappa Mundi, an RPG in a boxed set containing a book and cards. It’s basically a ‘Reverse Monster Hunter’, where you’re all people trying to create a bestiary and observe monsters, but also to leave them the hell alone. You might help them, but you’re not fighting monsters in this game.

A disaster cut off parts of the world and has since retreated. Now your group of ‘adventure academics’ must scout it out and track down monsters.

Then there’s the angrier game, which isn’t out yet, but definitely caught my eye. Gallows Corner is about the Peasants Revolt, set in 1376. It’s a game of ‘working class rage’ and sounded like an act of catharsis from the designer after making Mappa Mundi while existing in the real world. The plan is that it’ll Kickstart in February.

Oink Games

The big game Oink Games were showing off is literally a big game compared to their usual offerings. Dying Message comes in a larger box, with cards, a little box, a die and a piece of cloth made to look like a bloodstain.

This is a kind of shorter, simpler Mysterium. One player is the victim, who rolls a custom d12 which determines which one of six suspects murdered them. They pick from a selection of 15 cards and try to position any or all of them in ways which might tell a message, then they die, putting their head on the ‘bloodstain’ and either pointing at or covering part of a card. Players have to read the suspects’ bios, look at their pictures and look at the individual clues to be able to guess who the murderer was.

I was the victim in my first game. The clue cards are all either lines or simple symbols. There was a ‘power’ symbol which I covered with part of my hand to replicate the hat of my murderer. They also had recovered a martial arts scroll, so I tried to pose some lines to look like people fighting. It was understandably misinterpreted and the other players thought it was an act of pottery, then forgot what I’d covered up.

The second game went better, with the murderer being a squid catcher who was scared of whales and resented his work. The victim made a great boat with two cards and a shuttlecock-looking thing which I realised was a squid.

Some touches like the bloodstain and the victim collapsing are just for effect, but this is a great way of boiling down a Mysterium-style experience into a smaller experience.

GMS Hobby Game Logistics

Brother, Why? Is a fantastic-sounding game, but one which might not end up on my shelves, just because of the group I’ve currently got.

The concept’s a nice and simple one. You’re a monk and when you were on the sauce, you drew some daft images in some worthy medieval books. You then need to defend your reason for having done so. It uses 100% real medieval marginalia, and looks gorgeous.

This might be one to get for CabinCon’s “Talking Bullshit” night, even if my regular players are less likely to get a lot out of it.

Mining British Folklore For TTRPGs

The first talk of the day was later than I’d expected, thanks to a misprint, but was worth watching.

The panel were Chris Bissette, Scott Malthouse and Sarah Cole, with Chant Evans asking questions as well as providing some answers with the rest of the panel.

There was a little faffing with the microphones which is pretty usual for these kinds of events, frankly. Once that was done, the group got into what their favourite folkloric things are, which included big cats, hyper-local myths and several local pieces of folklore to where they lived. Things like a “Skull House” near Chris Bissette, a map for the Holy Grail in a church near Chris and Sarah’s love of the many big cats.

The group went into definitions a bit, with clarifications about the differences between folklore and myths, histories and so on. Sarah mentioned the term, “popular antiquities” for folklore, the role of it as cultural expression. One of the definitions Scott mentioned was, “Evil Country File” or as Chris added, “Country Vile”. 

Part of it was that it was passed on, by and for ‘folk’. It wasn’t just a bucolic view of the past. Chris Bissette gave the take, “The trees are evil”, which definitely works well for folk horror. 

One question which got them all going was whether folklore ends at the border of cities. Sarah initially said that yes, it did, mainly as a joke. Scott clarified that it’s everywhere, with work, offices, in-jokes and so on. Also that folklore’s invisible unless you look at it. As someone who works at an office in his day job, I can definitely get that and have experienced it.

Chris asked what the distinction between folklore and urban legend was, and Scott answered that folklore is urban legend. 

Sarah mentioned that folk horror’s often tricky in a city, as it tends to be about community. Chant brought up the local outrage when a thousand year old tree was felled and how it changed the land in the city.

When asked what they loved about folklore, Chris mentioned that it was always how he’d interacted with the world, about an old neighbour who’d tell stories in the pub, often changing them over time. He liked how stories aren’t necessarily truth and to embrace the liminality of stories.

Scott agreed, bringing up the magic and the day-to-day ness of it. A normal world, but with a goblin down the road. Sarah added that it’s like a layer put on top of everyday life. She mentioned the origin of a normal word like ‘bonfire’, which came from ‘bonefire’ thanks to celebrations on St John’s Eve. Also apparently the people of Penzance are doing that again.

So, how can this be used in RPGs?

Scott mentioned about how it’s really malleable in what you can do and where you can put them. It can inform culture, jokes, rumours and more. Sarah said about how she’d sometimes make up folklore and then realise that there is some extant folklore which was similar. An example was some of her use of will o’ the wisps As being linked to kids in a game and then discovering that in the Isle of Wight they’re linked to unbaptised children. As someone born on the Isle of Wight, I was baptised. Kind of. In Dunwich, once my family moved to the mainland. Hopefully I wasn’t haunted by will o’ the wisps.

Chris brought up ambiguity, something already said as something interesting in folklore. In this case, you can build it into your settings. If there’s a dungeon next to a village, there are going to be rumours. The further out, the vaguer those rumours are going to be. This can be in the form of stories from NPCs, either as a focal point or simply flavour.

Scott mentioned bringing up folklore in small, inconsequential things, and letting players make up their own folklore which the GM can then bring back into the game. 

Chris asked whether it’s important for folklore in a game to have a ‘truth’, despite the vagueness of it all.

Sarah said that she likes to write with one in mind, but it’s not likely to be on the page as it’s not needed. Also in providing vague details means the GM doesn’t need too much brainwork.

Chant asked about how to deal with players who want to get to the bottom of things, given the vagueness. Sarah suggested leaving it to the GM and how RPGs are good ‘detective games’ compared to video games, as you interact differently with them. 

Scott brought up his solo game English Eerie, which uses prompts and cards for players to latch onto and drive their stories. Chris mentioned that stat blocks aren’t scary, so keeping things purposefully vague can help.

Chant asked why folklore lends itself so well to horror?

It’s what we don’t know, was Chris’ answer. Things like being enchanted is a scary idea. Sarah added about a lack of certainty about what things are going to do, like the way spiders can react. Or how Dr Who’s weeping angels were far more interesting when we hadn’t seen them move.

Scott said that folk stories are often warnings, and that makes things scary.

Chant asked what happens if players discover the truth and Sarah pointed out right away that it’s probably too late! 

The presenters each shared their reading lists.

Sarah’s included the abridged Reader’s Digest Myths & Legends of Britain, British Folklore Tales & Legends: A Sampler, also to go to places like Vinted to get local books of folklore pretty cheaply.

Scott mentioned Westwood & Simpson’s Lore of the Land, The National Trust’s Treasury of Folklore books, Folkloristics, and to become a member of the Folklore Society as you’ll get access to their archives. Oh, and to talk to folks.

Chris suggested All The Haunts Be Ours as a collection of folk horror films and documentaries and random issues of Fortean Times.

Chant mentioned to go to your local library and there’ll be a librarian who knows where the good stuff is.

There were a few questions about things like whether folklore’s quintessentially British (no) and about trespassing on religions (more complicated, but there’s definitely a distinction between the structure of religion and how folklore behaves).

The talk was really interesting, especially as I’m currently working on a Trophy Gold scenario.

I attended an industry talk with Big Table later, but I’ll get into that in a separate article.

RPG Night: Slugblaster

We decided to move from a packed room in the Hilton over to one where there was only another table playing, mainly as we knew we’d get noisy.

Slugblaster’s an RPG using a loose Forged in the Dark framework, and with a much sillier theme. The concept is that you’re teenagers living in a dull hometown with a rough home life, so you have fun by hoverboarding across dimensions in a sport called “Slugblasting”.

I was the Guts of the group, with a pair of teleporting trainers which allowed me to grind on rails like I was skating. My character, “Amazing Case” wore sunglasses indoors and luckily I had a pair (okay… two) with me, to use as a prop. The rest of the crew were Kevin Can Wait, Secondhand and Saint. Notably, we were missing a Brains, so we decided that Secondhand’s dog Harvey was the brains of the group.

As we were playing a convention game, we missed out on the angst of the aftermath of a run, but we got to play through the fun chaos of trying to win a sponsorship from Scramcat.

We skated through a haunted mausoleum and were chased by an eight-armed ghost. We got chased through a busy labyrinth of apartments and then got blasted into a jungle realm by a rival crew. I love clocks in RPGs and as this is a kind of multiversal Tony Hawks Underground, the GM used words like “RAWR” as a clock for when a dinosaur would try to take a bite out of the crew.

I felt sorry for the GM when we had some great plans to leave the jungle dimension, failed and sent the dinosaurs through instead. We discovered that Scramcat were selling out to the equivalent of Apple, eventually found our way back and I got to yell at Scramcat for being phonies. I challenged their CEO to actually slugblast and we ended up fighting a corporate team of business-skaters. Our rival stepped in to duel the CEO with a kickflip-off, only for me to flip between them, flipping them both off while grinding on a quantum centipede which Secondhand managed to summon.

This was a blast. The system’s nice and simple, with bonuses from taking dares from the GM, and the ability to do a stunt by yelling “Check it!” Just before you roll.

It was almost midnight when we were done, we were all stoked from the game and that gave me the energy to go back to my room and finish my Star Trek Adventures review.