Conpulsion Edinburgh - 11th and 12th April 2026

1 Why I Went

Conpulsion has been run in Edinburgh for many years. My impression is that it used to be organised by students at the University. As senior students aged and completed their courses, younger ones got involved in the organisation, stepping in to take more senior positions as people left.

I attended a couple of Conpulsions when I was travelling the country demonstrating my Squadron UK game. In fact Conpulsion was directly responsible for a total pivot in my approach to game design.

The first Conpulsion I visited, I travelled up to Edinburgh on the train, carrying my Superhero Figures and gaming boards. This took a long time and this luggage proved unwieldy. I then found out it was actually cheaper to fly to Edinburgh than to travel on the train - provided you only took hand luggage. So I designed a Superhero game whose rules would fit into a small paperback book and which required no figures or maps, perfect to fit in a carry-on bag alongside toiletries and a change of underwear. This spawned a whole range of such lightweight games and massively widened the number of genres I now work in.

This was to be my first return to Conpulsion since my hiatus from the hobby. I double checked flight and train times and costs. Factoring in travelling to and from the airport at each end of the journey, the train won out this time. (I still kept my luggage light, however.)

Conpulsion is a weekend convention but has no events on a Friday night. When I attend this sort of convention, I usually like to travel up Saturday morning and back Sunday evening to avoid paying accommodation costs on a Friday where I get no games. This is certainly the plan I follow when I attend conventions at the Garrison Hotel in Sheffield.

Neither train nor plane could get me to Edinburgh from Birmingham on Saturday morning before the convention started. However, accommodation costs in Edinburgh are high. It wasn’t worth it to me, economically, to travel up Friday just so I could play a game Friday morning. So I decided to travel Saturday morning as soon as possible knowing this would mean I missed the first game slot.

I decided to attend just as a referee this time. Previously I had watched or even been on panels about TTRPGs. I wanted to come just to play.

2 The Shape of the Convention

Conpulsion is two days. The venue it is held at is called “The Pleasance”. This is part of the University’s student union for most of the year. However, during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe it transforms into a major hub for performances with many of its rooms becoming performance spaces of various sizes. This is a change of venue from its previous home and I found it a lot more convenient. It is only ten minutes walk from the station, for instance. This may have contributed a lot to my decision to take the train.

The various rooms, however, are very spread out. Conpulsion offers a wide range of activities besides TTRPGs but I saw none of these, even in passing. There is no instant sense of coherency you feel at most conventions. There is a lot to do, but you have to actively seek it out.

TTRPGs are still a major focus, however, possibly even the main one. And these are very well organised.

Referees are invited to submit games several months in advance. There is a wide selection of systems on offer, trending toward “indie” games. Dungeons and Dragons does not dominate.

Referees are offered rewards such as free entry.

These games are posted on a clear and easy to navigate website. Nearer the time, people can buy tickets for the convention and to play games through the website. However, only half of the available places can be booked in advance leaving a large number of spaces to be booked at the convention.

Published game slots are rather short for conventions of this type, being typically three hours long. The Sunday morning slot is only two and a half hours. This is not an issue for me due to my experience running shorter games, but some Referees may find they need to develop new skills and adapt games they usually run successfully at other venues.

3 Games Played and Games Run

I was allocated a table in a medium sized room. The route to it from reception was incredibly complex, going up and down and around several corners. I would never have been able to find it myself.

There were three tables in the room and it was noisy but not excessively so. Shortly after games started the reception desk sent down the game sign-up sheet so it was easy to do a quick check that the correct players had arrived.

Slot 2 - Saturday 14:00 - 17:00

I ran my Starfleet Academy game you’ll have seen mentioned in previous reports. Though I’ve refined this to pretty much fill a four hour slot, I adapted it to cut the run-time by removing a starting scene showing cadets in training. I also aimed to run it at a higher pace.

One player had brought a (small) Star Trek original series flip top communicator! I gave her character a bonus point. 

This was the first group to uncover every layer of the scenario and we still finished slightly early. 

There were two other tables in the room I was in and those Referees were still running their games when my group had cleared up and departed.

I get the impression there is an unspoken agreement that games may overrun. This is unusual at conventions where it is normally considered absolutely essential to finish on time.

Slot 3 - Saturday 19:00-22:00

There was a mix-up on the otherwise excellent website. The initial list of games available in each slot gave the times as 18:00-21:00. This made sense as it gave the usual hour between slots. These were the timings I used.

However, the individual game descriptions gave the times as 19:00-22:00. I presume this is to give a two hour gap to make it easier to find an evening meal and visit other items available on the programme.

But I was at my table ready to go at 18:00. My players turned up at 19:00.

This was a scenario using the horror iteration of my rules but not using a scenario of my own design. To test the system, I’d downloaded a scenario written for the most popular commercially available horror game. This was the third time I’d run it. The first time I’d found an incompatibility with the plot structure. For the second run through I’d added an additional scene to make it more like a supernatural TV show. It was that version I chose to run here.

To cut it to fit the shorter slot, I asked the players to use the pregenerated characters I’d created for my own scenario rather than make their own. The scenario played within the three hour timings.

Slot 4 - Sunday 10:15-12:45

This was the two and a half hour slot. I don’t know why it was so short. The same timings applied to the Saturday morning slot I’d missed.

If I was asked to guess, I’d suggest that the convention doors officially opened at 10am and the 10:15 start was to find the time for people to sign up for and find their games. The 12:45 end gives a longer than usual lunch break which would be both relaxing and give time to visit other items on the convention programme.

Conpulsion requests its Referees to submit games months in advance. When asked to do this, I don’t like to just run the games I’m running successfully at the moment. I like to offer some new scenarios to keep my interest up. When I’d submitted the descriptions to Conpulsion I thought it would be a good idea to propose a Doctor Who scenario where players could play different iterations of The Doctor in a cross-over adventure.

As the convention neared, I’d found myself lacking the inspiration for how exactly I was going to structure the game. Rather than emerging as a single great idea, different little plot elements dropped into my head over the weeks, with the last piece of the jigsaw only slotting in whilst I was in my hotel the night before the game.

The range of players I’d put for my games on Saturday had been 2-5 and 3-5 respectively. For some reason my Sunday games had a range of 2-6. I generally don’t like running games for two or six players. I can’t remember why I’d done this. I suppose I was trying to support the convention by accommodating more players.

However, when I found out I had six players who were all going to be playing different versions of the Doctor - in a scenario I’d never run before - I was slightly intimidated. Fortunately one failed to arrive and the game worked well. I had five players who all showed the kind of inventiveness the story required.

One of them even brought their own sonic screwdriver with them. I gave their character a bonus point.

Slot 5 - Sunday 14:00-17:00

I pride myself on arriving early, being organised and finishing on time. So you can imagine how I felt when I discovered I’d made a mistake. Somehow I’d booked my return train for 17:00. This meant I’d have to finish my game at 16:30 to give me time to travel to the station.

I informed the convention organisers. They said they’d explain this to ticket holders and offer to switch their games if they wanted. Also they’d inform anyone signing up later.

There was some confusion at the start of the session. A Referee had arrived early and claimed a table allocated to someone else. Several players arrived and couldn’t find their games. When we tried to help them, they were confused about exactly which game they’d signed up for. It didn’t help that two of us were running steampunk games in the room.

Again, I’d put down that I’d take up to six players. However, the last player signed up was a girl of primary school age. She was, quite rightly, accompanied by a parent - her father.

I’d already adapted this game to fit into two and a half hours, but I decided to scrap some of the optional rules and found an extra character sheet. I don’t like refereeing for seven players but I like a parent sitting and scrutinising and supporting their child even less. I know they’re trying to be helpful but they often end up almost running the child’s character for them.

So I asked him to make and play a character of his own. He still supported his daughter - as did the entire table - but focussing on his own shape-changing Lord of the realm meant he paid a bit less attention to his daughter’s intrepid explorer and her clockwork dinosaur. I think she benefited from that. We certainly came up with some of the more original ideas in the story.

Keeping seven players engaged, however, was extremely challenging. I was reminded why I don’t referee for such large tables.

We finished in good time and I was able to walk to the station and catch my train home without too much stress.

4 Play Reflections

No two conventions are the same. However, it would be interesting to have a discussion with the organisers of Conpulsion to find out the rationale behind the lengths chosen for game slots. Four hour game slots seem to remain the standard. Though this has come down over the years, with three hour game slots not being uncommon, most conventions still seem to have at least some four hour slots. Two and a half hour slots are unheard of. This wasn’t an issue for me, of course. I refereed four games and thoroughly enjoyed them all.

I’d also be interested to find out who they feel they are typically catering for. For a TTRPG convention they seem to offer a lot of other activities and events - guest panels for example. Conversely, for a general gaming event there are a lot of TTRPG sessions on offer.

How much of the current structure is a holdover from previous years and what the local punters have come to expect?

For me it was a long way to travel for four short games. Edinburgh is a lovely city but accommodation there is far from cheap. I really enjoyed Conpulsion but I’ll need to take a really close look at its financial viability for me in future years.

5 Cost, Time, and Value

This section looks at what the convention cost me, as a participant, and what that worked out as per hour of actual gaming. It is intended as an illustrative case study rather than a universal guide.

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 Referee.
Travel cost: £50.30
Accommodation cost: £120.99

Total convention-specific cost: £171.29

Total hours of gaming (played and run): 11.5

Approximate cost per hour of gaming: £14.89

Cost of a pint of lager: £4

6 What I Took Away

Conpulsion is a well-organised, slightly quirky convention with a long history and the second cheapest lager on the circuit. (You’ve got to love Working Men’s Clubs and Student Unions!)

If it’s convenient to you I’d highly recommend it. Unfortunately the distance I have to travel and the relatively high hotel costs in Edinburgh could prove to make it economically unviable for me.