SPIEL Essen

AireCon is a friendly and inclusive analog gaming festival in Harrogate Convention Centre. Whether you've come alone or with a massive group you'll find plenty of fun to be had and new friendly faces to meet. On top of that, we've partnered with Travelling Man to bring you a huge library of over 500 games that you can borrow from for free throughout the event. Have a nosy at the FAQ section to answer all your burning questions and if you've got a question we haven't yet answered, drop us a line at hello@airecon.uk! History AireCon started when Mrs C was away on a friend’s hen weekend. Mark decided that he’d have a few friends around to play some games and partake in some other gaming activities. With three tables set up, a schedule of events drawn up and even a sponsor, AireCon (now known as AireCon 0) was born in Mark’s flat. The name came about from looking at how other conventions got their name. Seeing that GenCon was named after Lake Geneva, Mark looked around for bodies of water nearby, and was immediately drawn to the River Aire, hence AireCon, and that squiggle that runs through the logo? That’s the river! Around this time, having returned from a brilliant time playing games at UK Games Expo, Mark looked around for other gaming events. Finding none he spoke to Ben about starting AireCon as a proper, public event and Ben had been thinking along similar lines. The first public AireCon (AireCon 1) was held at the place where Ben and Mark work in Bradford in April 2016, quickly followed by AireCon 2 in October 2016 but the constraints of the venue were already starting to show. Nabil and Rick were brought on board at this point to take the event to the next level. The growth necessitated a move to larger premises and, after an extensive search across Yorkshire, we settled on the Harrogate Convention Centre for AireCon 3 in March 2017. We also changed to running AireCon annually to allow more time to make sure it was an excellent event. AireCon 4, in March 2018, AireCon 5, March 2019 and AireCon 6, March 2020, have continued to see the event grow with more and more space being taken at the convention centre, mostly to allow for huge amounts of open gaming space, probably the largest in Europe! Due to the pandemic in 2021, AireCan’t took place instead of AireCon, where people were encouraged to Play at Home. The AireCon team have always enjoyed bringing people together and seeing the joy that tabletop gaming can bring, and this remains the same today as it did back in Mark’s flat. The emphasis at AireCon is on fun and providing opportunities for people to be able to game and it will always remain that way.

AmberCon UK 2026 will be our twenty-ninth annual roleplaying convention devoted to the Amber Diceless Roleplaying Game and we hope you will join us there from 25th September to 27th September 2026. This year’s Ambercon UK is following the pattern created in 2025 – as such it is being held in apartments rather than a hotel setting and con goers will need to find their own accommodation. A list of variously priced options will be posted in the New Year.. What’s planned? Just as Amber is not an ordinary RPG, AmberCon UK is no ordinary game convention. AmberCon UK 26 will feature events for players of all levels of experience, including new character auctions, stand-alone scenarios, new and continuing mini-campaigns, freeform games and the chance to meet, relax with, and plot hideously against your fellow Amber players in comfort.

Tabletop Scotland returns to the Royal Highland Centre this September! Featuring all aspects of tabletop gaming including tournaments, seminars, role playing games, miniatures, a bring and buy event and a well stocked games library. There will also be plenty of space - with thousands of seats and tables placed well apart from each other to ensure full accessibility. Tickets are available from 28th March 2026. Under 16’s go free - for the whole weekend if you wish - and adult prices vary up to a maximum of £50.00

The World Was Young is a collaborative, worldbuilding card game. By marking a shared map in response to prompts with different combinations of Tones and Verbs, you build the history of a game setting over three Ages, creating lands, peoples, conflicts, and legends together. The end result is a deep setting ready to play in your favorite TTRPG system.  TWWY replaces the GM-generated, seldom-read background doc with a deck of cards and a table full of creative voices. Players and GM share the creative load, and the gap between player knowledge and character knowledge shrinks. Session Negative One Session Zero has improved TTRPGs by increasing communication between players and GMs. It helps ensure that everyone is on the same page about safety, the type of game being played, characters, and more. But it doesn’t solve a major pain point. Even if they’ve read the twenty-page setting background from the GM, players arrive at Session Zero as outsiders. The problem is that players need to create characters that are native to that world. How do we bridge that gap? How do we overcome that outsider status? The World Was Young brings players into the worldbuilding process from the beginning, increasing their investment and ownership of the setting before the game even begins. The twenty-page setting doc is replaced with an hour and a half of group worldbuilding. The result isn’t something that the players read. It’s something that they helped write. Players can weave their characters into threads they helped spin across the history of the world. Maybe their PC is the last of a civilization of Orcs destroyed hundreds of years ago. Or perhaps the descendant of a forgotten monarch. Whatever the choice, the table has an understanding of that character from the beginning. When the GM references the ancient civilization of sentient Axolotls that was destroyed a thousand years prior, she doesn’t have to lore-dump anything; the players already know about that civilization.

Forge Steel is a community-developed, locally-hosted web application and digital utility designed for Draw Steel, the cinematic fantasy tabletop role-playing game created by MCDM Productions. Developed by independent community members during the game's playtest phase, the application functions as a lightweight encounter builder and combat manager. It is specifically built to assist Directors in organizing game data and tracking real-time combat statistics during a session. Description Forge Steel serves as a digital toolkit for preparing and executing combat encounters in Draw Steel. In contrast to cloud-based alternatives, Forge Steel relies on local browser storage. This means the application does not require users to create an account or rely on external servers to save their data. All created encounters, customized monsters, and campaign notes are stored directly within the cache of the user's web browser. This architecture prioritizes data privacy, offline accessibility, and fast load times, though it requires manual file exporting to transfer data between different devices.

The Old School Renaissance, Old School Revival or OSR is a play style movement in tabletop role-playing games which draws inspiration from the earliest days of tabletop RPGs in the 1970s, especially Dungeons & Dragons. More popular systems developed under the OSR system subculture are Shadowdark, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Mörk Borg, Dolmenwood, Mothership, Perils & Princesses, Basic Fantasy Description The OSR movement first developed in the early 2000s, primarily in discussion on internet forums. OSR games encourage a tonal fidelity to early editions of Dungeons & Dragons. Less emphasis on predefined endings, and a greater emphasis on player choice determining the fate of characters. OSR Games provide play where wrong decisions can easily become lethal for characters and do not guarantee satisfying endings to character arcs. Characters live and die by player choice as opposed to the story's needs