Tabletop Scotland

Looking down at the Open Play area on Saturday afternoon

I was in Scotland in the latter part of August. Because I was considering how cool it would be to run a Road Crew game while there, I contacted Bill Heron at TheMandragora.com, who I found by using a Google search for Edinburgh gamers. He put me in touch with David Wright, who is the Convention Director for Tabletop Scotland.

The convention ran from the 24th-25th of August in Perth. The convention was in its second year, but managed to pull in quite a crowd. People were there from all over the United Kingdom, from Europe, and (in at least my case) from Canada. The event was well organized, well attended, and there was definitely energy. Dave told me that attendance was about twice that of their inaugural year.

There was a large focus on board games, but there was good participation for role-playing games as well. A room was set aside for Dungeons & Dragons, and another room set aside for other systems. I ran a playtest of Beneath the Temple of Doubt for a fantastic group of six in the Other Systems room.

From what I could tell by passing between areas, the Other Systems area received more traffic/players than did Dungeons & Dragons, but that could just be a result of the times I was in each area.

Beneath the Temple of Doubt is a 3rd level adventure. I was asked at several points if I was going to run a funnel by diverse people. I have little doubt that, had I planned my schedule around it and given sufficient notice to the convention, I could have run 6 games over the weekend with strong attendance (5-6 players) at each.

Beneath the Temple of Doubt

Because I was on vacation, and I had a fairly full schedule with the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, visiting the palace in Linlithgow, etc., I came by ScotRail to Perth on Saturday morning and had to leave fairly early on Sunday. This was poor planning on my part, because there was a lot going on at the convention which I wasn't able to get involved with.

Andy Meechan and myself; his photo

This was a great convention filled with wonderful people. If I could somehow defray the costs of airfare I would be happy to attend every year. If you are able to attend a future Tabletop Scotland, it gets my recommendation.