D&D Adventurers League & More at UK Games Expo 2025

Last weekend was UK Games Expo at the NEC in Birmingham and, as always, we had a fantastic time playing games, hanging out with lovely friends, and buying stuff.

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Friday was all about D&D Adventurers League and the new adventures I’ve been working on with David Wright, Ian Hawthorne, and Colin Tweddle from Polyhedral Adventures, set in Murghôm in the Forgotten Realms. 

It was fantastic to see AL return to Expo for the first time since 2019, with its own dedicated room at the Hilton for the weekend. run by the experienced team behind Tabletop Scotland. 

I ran my adventure Trouble at Kobold Crown in the first slot on Friday morning for five players – one veteran, and four friends who were relatively new to RPGs and had little-to-no D&D experience. All were playing 1st level characters so I scaled the APL 3 adventure accordingly. As is often the case with brand new players, they came to the session with lots of energy and fresh ideas, and it was a joy to run for them.

The group managed to defeat the villain and his minions, and finish the adventure in under the time allocated – something I’d been slightly nervous about following the initial playtests. It sounds like the adventure went down well with other groups over the weekend too, and I got some useful feedback on how I need to adjust encounter difficulty before Tabletop Scotland.

In the evening, I took part in the Murghôm Epic, The Sands of Talos, written by Ian Hawthorne. I played a wandering NPC, while Kate played at one of the eight tables (four Tier 1, four Tier 2). I enjoyed (over)acting the role of Torot Dustman, an Imaskari peddler with an ancient map to the legendary Font of Fury, and everyone had a great time.

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The rest of the weekend was spent playing RPGs from Free League Publishing who have become one of our favourite non-D&D/5e publishers in the past few years. 

First up on Saturday morning was A Winter’s Tale, a Vaesen scenario from Seasons of Mystery, expertly run by Martin Wheeler. We enjoyed talking to the cast of fascinating, mostly lugubrious, and often fatalistic NPCs in the remote Russian inn we had taken shelter in from the snow, and solving the mysterious events that had befallen the place, following the tragic death of the landlord’s sister.

In the evening, we played a terrific game of Alien, entitled Somewhere Beyond the Sea. Written and run by Neal Freeman and set in an underwater research facility, it was a tense but, at times, very funny experience, thanks to an incredibly irritating NPC android and some brilliant roleplayers. Amazingly, five out of six characters (including my pilot) survived the adventure – setting the record for the weekend according to the GM. This was despite the space marine rolling 10 stress dice everytime she acted and invariably going into a panic! I still have the song stuck in my head three days later….

Finally, on Sunday morning we played Riddermound a Dragonbane scenario, run by Martin again. As a Runequest player back in the day, I very much enjoyed playing a duck (mallard) knight and liked the system which felt like a clever blend of OSR, Chaosium’s BRP, and 5e.

Of course, no trip to Expo is complete without wandering the trade halls (three this year!) and shopping. It was great to meet Luke and Zac from Limithron and get my copy of Pirate Borg signed and pick up some new adventures, and I’m looking forward to digging into Black Powder and Brimstone, and Dragonbane in the coming weeks.

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In other game design news, Jeff Stevens Games has just released Weapons of Lore, a new collection of legendary magic weapons for D&D 5e. I contributed the Cthulhu-themed Trident of R’lyeh to the book, and there are many other cool magic weapons included along with some great art. It’s well worth checking out.

You can buy Weapons of Lore from Drivethrurpg.

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