Day 335 of Year 2020...

So it's been 3 days since I last posted here. That's got to be the shortest time between posts for a LONG time!

So what's happened?

My adventure, Unsettled Ground, has been published on DMsGuild! Exciting!

Not only that, but people are buying it!

Day 332 of Year 2020...

So it's been 184 days since I last posted here. Certainly some of the weirdest days most of us will have experienced and no doubt most of those days will have blurred into one another.

So what's happened?

Conventions -

After cancelling Tabletop Scotland 2020 I saw a slew of online cons materialise, maybe some of them already existed but I wasn't aware of them. Not to be outdone and needing something to fill that Tabletop Scotland shaped void a group of us got together to organise an online RPG convention, one that had a dual-primary focus of playing RPGs and raising money for charity.

So AlbaCon was created.

On October 3rd & 4th we hosted 40 GMs from 6 countries who ran 70 games for 178 attendees from 9 countries.  Which translates into 402 virtual seats taking part in 1,434 hours of RPGs. We hosted 8 video panels about various topics and published them on YouTube. Plus we also raised over £3,000 for It's Good 2 Give which is fantastic and beyond our original expectations.

Not bad for our first event.  Naturally we're doing it again in 2021.

What about Tabletop Scotland 2021?

Well, as you will no doubt have noticed things are in a state of flux at the moment with respect to large gatherings of any kind. That aside we're working on the assumption that the event is going ahead and slowly getting our plan sorted.  The slowness is partly because the other parties we need to work with are also in a state of flux in many respects. When we have more info, we'll share it through the usual channels.

Other conventions across the UK & Ireland are generally in a similar position. Plan to happen but be prepared.  As a reminder, I maintain a list of the board game & RPG conventions here - http://bit.ly/UKIRPGBGCons

I update it semi-regularly but if you're curious about the status of the cons you usually go to, best to ask them directly.

My Gaming -

Board gaming has stopped for me.  I can't play with my regular or irregular groups and the online presence of board games underwhelms me.

RPGs online continues to be my main gaming outlet.  In fact I think I've spent more time playing RPGs this year than I have for many many years, like probably 20 years if not more.

I'm running two Dungeons & Dragons campaigns on a weekly rotation and playing in an adhoc D&D game.  I took part in games at D&D Live, GenCon Online and D&D Celebration; now granted some of those were as research for AlbaCon planning but I still took part and played games etc.

I've also, during this month of November, taken part in the RPG Writer Workshop programme and I should (will!) have published my first DMsGuild product in the next few days.  As I've said to a few people, it was either do that or organise _another_ online RPG convention... I think I made the right choice.

Will I publish more stuff? I hope to.  I've had numerous other ideas pop into my head (which I've written down) throughout this process so it is likely that I will.

So there we have it.  Day 332.