Bedford Tabletop Expo 7th and 8th March 2026

1. Why I Went

This convention is what I call an “Expo” type convention. It even has it in the name! Very much like Paradice last weekend. A large hall, in this case a sports hall, full of all types of gaming events including Tabletop Roleplaying Games.

I wrote to them to introduce myself and see if they had any space for the kind of games I offer. They wrote back promptly and were very flattering about my credentials within the hobby. I get the impression that many events “allow” me to attend. This one WANTED me to attend.

I was promoted on their website as a special guest. I was given a table to run my “Choose Your Adventure” games (for the first time in over 5 years). I was given a slot to give a keynote speech about self-publishing Tabletop Roleplaying Games and was asked to run a “Premium” TTRPG scenario in the evening.

In the run-up to the event, they sought my advice about a few issues, for example checking the wording of policies needed to cover the premium evening TTRPG games.

A few days after agreeing to attend and booking travel and accommodation, I found out I’d mixed up my diary and would have to miss one of my absolute favourite conventions, the peerless Concrete Cow, in order to attend. However, by then I was committed and this convention was offering me opportunities I rarely get.

2. The Shape of the Convention

Bedford is a delightful market town. Eating breakfast in my hotel each morning I looked out across a river with swans and rowing teams sculling up and down. Across the river were market stalls and the river was illuminated at night. The town centre was full of many historic buildings. It was a picture-perfect postcard image of Old England.

Unfortunately, when you travelled into the centre it showed signs of the decline so many British towns are beginning to exhibit. Additionally, now that I have a Senior Citizens’ pass I have been using buses to travel around the various destinations I visit. The Bedford bus service was unable to provide convenient travel between my hotel and the convention, which I needed as I was travelling with more than usual luggage, multiple game set-ups, a display banner etc. So I had to travel to and from the event using taxis. Fortunately these were prompt, polite and cost-effective.

The event itself was in the Bedford International Athletics Stadium in the main sports hall. There was an eclectic collection of stalls with a separate area with tables for open gaming. Another area was set aside for speakers, of which there were four across the weekend.

There was a Bring and Buy set-up and a small food and drink booth. Upstairs was a bar area where food could be ordered. Like Paradice the previous weekend, this was inadequate for the numbers attending. It seems to be a given that venues always radically underestimate how much gamers can eat and drink.

There was no dedicated area for TTRPGs and, as far as I could see, I was the only person offering TTRPG-related activities during the day. Most of the stands seemed to be people presenting the results of their model-making, which were really impressive. Directly opposite me was a 3D printed model of Bleecker Street from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, for example.

The organiser had everything well managed and responded quickly to stall holder issues. For example, I’d been emailed the previous day informing me my stand had been relocated from the edge of the hall to the centre because another exhibitor needed access to a power supply. I arrived early and had no issue setting up, but the stand to my right arrived just before the convention started and apparently needed more room. Even at this last minute the organiser was able to rearrange things to please everyone.

In the evening the stands closed down and a number of premium games took place. These were a mixture of TTRPGs, board games and war games. I’ll admit I didn’t pay much attention to what games were offered apart from my own.

These premium games had been advertised on the website months in advance. People wishing to play bought tickets before or at the convention.

The convention ran for two days, Saturday and Sunday, with Sunday being slightly shorter.

3. Games Played and Games Run

Saturday Morning

My Choose Your Adventure set-up relies upon me offering to run short games for people passing by. There is no guarantee that people will want to play. This is especially noticeable at the beginning of events where punters are browsing other stands in the hall. In addition, my stand could not compete visually with the superb models on display at other stands, and I was directly opposite Bleecker Street.

I got no interest in playing games in the morning. However, I had several promises to come back later, had many interesting conversations and across the weekend met many people who knew about my games and had played them. Far more than I usually meet. I felt flattered.

Saturday Lunchtime

Early afternoon was my talk about self-publishing. Bedford Tabletop Expo has never had speakers before. My attendance had encouraged them to try something new and prompted them to find three other people. Again, I didn’t pay much attention to what their speeches were about.

I had a very small audience but was given a radio microphone and was able to wander around. I’d created a presentation for the screen in the area and had planned to interact with the audience. Rather than talking about how I published my games, I aimed to find people who had written their own scenarios and games and use them as examples to build my advice around. This worked extremely well.

Feedback I got was that the presentation was “entertaining”, which was flattering.

Saturday Afternoon

In the afternoon I had a man interested in playing a game. I needed at least one more player to start. I saw a participant from my earlier talk and asked her to join in.

She said she’d play my game if I played hers. Apparently she was at the convention playtesting a game. I agreed. As too often happens, once we started playing with two players other people joined in.

They elected to play Steampunk and I ran the one-hour version of “One of our Dinosaurs is Missing”, the published starter scenario for the game.

It went well, it always does.

True to my word I joined in a playtest of the game offered by my erstwhile audience member. Another player joined in.

This turned out to be a delightful little card game of collecting food and toys to attract cute little dragons into your collection. I was very impressed by the quality of the play-test set and asked where she’d had the cards printed. It turns out she’d drawn every illustration herself and printed and cut every single one of the dozens and dozens of cards at home. There are some very talented people out there.

Saturday Evening

I had two people buy tickets for this game. Whilst I told the convention organiser that I was happy to run the game for two people, I asked him to allocate me a member of the convention staff to join in to make up the numbers. This worked well.

Of the two ticket-holders, who knew each other, one had only played a couple of games of Dungeons and Dragons and the other had never role-played before. He’d chosen my game to find out what it’s all about. I was flattered again.

This was the full extended cinematic version of my Dinosaur Scenario. I’ve run this before and it makes a good four hour scenario. Because of only having three players it ran slightly under time at three hours and forty-five minutes. As the players had paid to play I apologised, but the player who was new to role-playing said it had been extremely good value for the pittance he’d paid for his ticket, which made me feel better.

I personally thought the tickets were slightly overpriced but the idea was that the payments were split between the Convention and the Referees. I’m not used to being paid in cash for running games, many conventions offer rewards of some kind, so I’d asked for my share to be donated to Birmingham Children’s Hospital.

Sunday Morning

I grabbed a father and daughter as they left a demonstration at the Marvel Comics Bleecker Street stand. She elected to play Doctor Who. Upper Primary School at a guess. The world is in safe hands.

She played an errant Time Lord student caught by a maintenance robot, played by her father, whilst doing some late night research in the Tardis museum on Gallifrey. My standard introduction had them accidentally activate a Tardis and go hurtling into the Time Vortex. They washed up on a space station being stripped by insect-headed humanoids. The aliens disabled the robot so the Time Lord student was forced to open an airlock and have them sucked out into space, grabbing the robot just in time.

Throughout all of this the father thoroughly enjoyed making his daughter work out the arithmetic of multiplying two dice together and adding her skill score.

We were joined by two more players, a couple. The husband wanted to play. His wife said she’d just watch but I asked her to sit down, put a character sheet in front of her and said she didn’t have to do anything she didn’t want to.

I explained to everyone that the Time Lord student and robot discovered a crashed Tardis on the space station with three figures in it. The Time Lord who had piloted and crashed it, apparently their name was The Protagonist, was dead but their companions, a Caveman and a Conman from 1960s Earth, were only unconscious.

The four characters tracked the villain to his spaceship attached to the space station, an evil space scavenger called Solomon (an 11th Doctor villain) with his big red robot and more insect humanoids. By this time the wife was fully involved in playing.

Great fun.

Sunday Afternoon

Part 1: Another four player game of rescuing the dinosaur. Because it was the end of the weekend, some of the older players were relaxed and a bit hyperactive and began really chewing the scenery. Rather than taking its usual hour, this game lasted ninety minutes and ended up with a Toho-style battle between the Diplodocus and a giant Tarantula with the characters escaping to leave the dinosaur to be consumed by the spider.

Needless to say, I loved it.

Part 2: Two older teenagers played in a game of The Code of Warriors and Wizardry. I don’t often get asked to run this one but it’s enjoyable to show people the differences between my “Code” games and more standard D&D-type adventures. Unfortunately we weren’t able to attract any more players. Still the three of us had a fun session, there was a goblin kebab.

One of the players observed that the game fitted somewhere between the complexity of D&D and the simplicity of “Honey Heist”. I’ll take that.

4. Play Reflections

What I offer entails a lot of hanging around, trying to convince people to sit down and play. Once I get a couple of people into a game, the table usually fills up.

There was some waiting around, but four short games, one premium game and the opportunity to give a talk on self-publishing made the weekend a success.

My presence allowed the convention to try things it has never done before. The organiser told me he’d had some good feedback on what I’d done. He said he’s going to get in touch with me to see about running sessions in his shop.

I wouldn’t recommend this convention to people looking to play TTRPGs. If you’re local I’d say it’s a great day out. The sheer talent on display was amazing.

5. Cost, Time, and Value

How I calculate this

This section looks at what the convention cost me, as a participant. It is intended as an illustrative case study rather than a universal guide. As this is an Expo-type event and I was offering ad hoc games, I won’t calculate a cost per hour.

I do not include routine food costs, as I would incur these whether or not I attended.

I do report on the cost of a pint of lager as this is an important metric for some of my readers.

My travel costs reflect my own circumstances (travelling from Birmingham and making use of available rail discounts), so readers should treat the numbers as indicative rather than directly transferable.

Headline figures

Convention cost (ticket): £0 - free entry for “Special Guest”
Travel cost: £13.74
Accommodation cost: £54
Total convention-specific cost: £67.74

Cost of a BOTTLE of Lager: £3.90

6. What I Took Away

The organiser of Bedford Tabletop Expo believed I was an established TTRPG designer with things I could bring to his event. It’s been years since I’ve offered my Choose Your Adventure games or spoken in front of an audience about TTRPGs.

I learnt a lot. My table could not compete visually with the other amazing stands at the event but I reorganised for Sunday and ended up running three times the number of ad hoc games. I’ve got ideas for further improvements before I roll it out again.

I’ll definitely be back for Bedford Tabletop Expo next year, if they’ll have me. I’m happy to do the same as this year but I’ll also communicate with the organiser about the possibility of widening the TTRPG offerings.