Dragonmeet

Dragonmeet is London’s tent-pole convention. It’s great for catching up with people and this year I was hoping to also give a few games I’ve been wanting to try a go in the Games on Demand sessions.

Games on Demand

I ran a fun game of Lasers and Feelings with a group that included some experienced gamers and a father and son. These kind of games rely on a lot of understanding around the table but are often fun as children’s ideas are often direct and slightly wilder than people attuned to cultural tropes and genre expectations. Naturally we didn’t focus much on the sexy aliens side of the game though.

Later I got to play few rounds of For the Queen which I had wanted to try for a while.

Games on Demand during the afternoon was absolutely bonkers with around forty gamers turning up at one point. While it was possible to press-gang facilitators and take over twice the tables that were allocated eventually the main barrier to running any more games was literally physical space. During the afternoon the bar and the open gaming space was absolutely rammed as well.

The key appeal of Games on Demand is a mixture of people wanting to give certain games a go and the flexible organic nature of the structure that allows you to turn up without needing a sign-up sheet and essentially haggle over what game you’re going to play.

Seminars

I usually try and catch up on few of the seminars and catch some industry gossip. However this time I wasn’t really that excited by the programme. There’s increasingly a number of sessions that are company’s talking about their upcoming release schedule for the year and a few about how to run a crowd-funding campaign or break into freelance writing. Probably the more relevant one from an indie point of view was one about podcasting but I still felt that was in a vein of “how to turn your side-hustle into income” but maybe I’m just being judgemental.

I did take part again in the “What’s hot in indie gaming?” this year hosted by Helen Gould. I always feel a bit tense about the performance part of it (an hour goes quickly) but it does offer a lot of interesting information about what’s happened in the previous year and there were some great contributions from the audience this year.

Loot

Part of the appeal of Dragonmeet is picking up new and interesting things from the various people who have stalls there. This year had lots of interesting small things on offer.

Podcasts

Podcasts are not really my thing (honourable exceptions aside) but the conference had a dedicated Podcast Zone this year with recording areas and several stalls lined up on the mezzanine lobby.