The Next Convention

 I've just signed up for Tabletop Scotland 2026, which takes place on the weekend of the 4th - 6th September at Ingliston Showground by Edinburgh Airport.

I'm pretty hyped about going. I went last year for the first time and loved it. The buzz was great and I met some lovely people and was introduced to new game genres, mini makers and rpg systems. I also ran two games of Dirtbags!. That was a steep learning curve, as I'd never run a convention game with a hard time limit of 3.5 hours.

Running a convention game is a real test of your game mechanic knowledge. Running a convention game for a newly released rpg system is doubly so. Thankfully, last year's games went well and both tables of players were fully engaged with the system and appeared to have a lot of fun.

I ran my own published adventure, Rescue on Gillon V, a short hex-crawl. I wanted to give the players some form of visual representation to help dial in the focus on the setting - a mix of fecund jungle, open woodlands, hill country and savannah. I bought mdf hexes and painted them with watercolour paints then sealed them. They looked great and really helped the players to see the path their Dirtbags were taking toward their objective.

This year I've again signed up to GM two game slots for Dirtbags! I'm going to run an urban point crawl. I'm at the early stages of plotting out the scenario and working out the adversaries, locations, clues, and breadcrumbs to help the Dirtbags along.

I've become hooked with the concept of player agency, as opposed to railroads. Rescue on Gillon V was designed to provide players the freedom to decide how they were going to achieve their objective and which route they would take to get there. Each hex had its own challenges which may or may not be activated depending on player actions and choices. Some hexes provided a boon, whilst others were more inherently dangerous. Rescue on Gillon V was very much a game about the journey, with reaching the objective being the climactic finale. It worked out well when I ran the scenario at Tabletop Scotland 2025. I've had great feedback from other Dirtbag referees who have ran it in their own groups or at conventions.

For the scenario I'll run at Tabletop Scotland 2026, I want to replicate that freedom of choice, that sense of journey and adventure. I'm not sure if an urban hex-crawl will work. I suppose that it should be no different from a wilderness hex-crawl, as it's all about location, and the challenges and rewards of that location, or cluster of locations on offer.

The new scenario I'm designing is entitled, Dr Theoloph's Semi-Autonomous Return, a scenario about a mad doctor and his robot army that are trying to take over the city. The Dirtbags are employed to oppose that coup. Unlike in Rescue on Gillon V, the end objective is not a hard place that the Dirtbags can see and have to journey to. Dr Theoloph's lair is somewhere in the city. The Dirtbags have to 'discover' where the BBEG is before they can then attempt the objective.

And so, I've been doing a lot of research into hex-crawls and point-crawls, reading numerous blogs, reddit posts, and falling down the Alexandrian rabbit hole. I don't want the scenario to be too complex, after all, it should be fun and achievable within 3 - 4 hours.

I've done a lot of thinking on the topic and it's high time that I start putting pen to paper. Tabletop Scotland 2026 takes place in early September. I've got four months to design, write, playtest and finalise the adventure before then.

Time to get to work.

Get razed you Scab!

 Since May of last year I've been dipping my toes into game design, working alongside Jean-Luc Lariviere-Lacombe from The Dungeon's Key. I'm a member of The Dungeon's Key Discord server and Jean-Luc put out a request for play testers for a new game he was developing. I jumped at the chance and it has been one massive learning curve for me and my gaming pals.

Jean-Luc has been developing a Sci-fi Shooter RPG, emulating the ethos and styles of the movies Aliens and Starship Troopers, and pulp comics such as Tank Girl. It's a fast paced, gung-ho, paramilitary shooter where players control penal convicts who have signed on with a corporate military scheme to pay off their sentence quicker than languishing in a prison. The characters fight hordes of xenomorphs, pirates and other scabs whilst completing corporate missions to earn credits and a discount to their sentence. Characters that survive missions can spend creds to upgrade equipment, learn new skills, grow lost limbs, or pay down on their sentence.

Mechanically the game is d6 based. Players have two dice pools to use - the Action Pool (AP) and the Ammo Pool (AM). AP is used to carry out actions such as moving, seeking cover, reloading weapons, using a tool or interacting with a construct or vehicle, etc. AM is used to shoot a weapon. Players have complete agency and use both pools to progress the mission and to defend themselves against attacks. Ultimately the pools become exhausted and the characters' combat effectiveness degrades. Good decision making, resource management and successful dice rolling will win the day. Poor decisions and crap rolls lead to only one result - character death.

It's been a great privilege to work on this project. Jean-Luc and I have chewed the fat over rules, weapon types, ammo types, typefaces, whether CAPs or lowercase should be used, how to determine initiative and distance, and many other niggly observations and rulings. I've play tested the game intensively with my regular gaming group and we have had an absolute blast, literally, blowing stuff up, mowing down enemies in a hail of lead, and biting off various body bits in close quarters, no-holds barred combat. It's dirty, nasty and so much fun.

I have writing credits for one of the supporting missions, and my name on the inside cover as playtest lead. I'm very grateful to Jean-Luc for giving me the opportunity to become involved in TTRPG game design. I'm just at the beginning of my journey, and I can truthfully say that I'm a published author, as I've actually been paid for a writing gig. It's a dream come true.

Dirtbags! went to Kickstarter at the end of January this year and was successfully funded by 235 backers who raised about ten and a half thousand Canadian dollars. I went all in on the physical tier and I got my filthy mitts on the loot by mid May.

I'm so very, very chuffed with it all.

Currently, as I type, there is a live Dirtbags! Game Jam on itch.io. I'm working on submitting a setting supplement, and if I have time, a short mission, but I'm not sure I'll have the time to be that productive. The final submission date is 1st August, so I need to get my finger out.

One thing I'm definitely looking forward to is attending at Tabletop Scotland on the first weekend of September this year. I'm signed up to run two sessions of Dirtbags! on Friday evening and Saturday afternoon. I'm super hyped about this for a few reasons. The first is that I've not been to a convention since summer 1993, when I attended at Claymore in Edinburgh. The second is that it will be the first time I have ever hosted a game at a convention, and the first public play of Dirtbags! in Scotland.

If Dirtbags! intrigues you, please consider supporting it and introducing it at your own game table. You can purchase the core rule book from the Dungeon's Key website, if you're in the USA or Canada or at Composed Dream Games if you're in the UK or EU.

And if you're attending at Tabletop Scotland in September, don't be afraid to come along and say hello. I'll have copies of the Dirtbags! Quickstart rules to hand out to anyone who is interested.