A Post-Mortem

A bunch of cool game-makers have taken to publishing reviews of how they got on at the most recent games convention, and I thought it’d be nice to do the same, just in case this is useful for anyone else.

Let’s ride this wave of hyperfocus to the end of the inevitable essay it’s going to produce!

Update: 

This did indeed turn into an essay. It’s over 8,000 words long.

If you don’t want to read the full blow-by-blow account of me careening through the experience of me (as a solo creator) having my own stand at a show for the first time, you can skip to the final thoughts or the TL;DR section.

I’ve also linked to the other post-con write-ups that I’m aware of at the bottom of this post.

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Background Info:
Patchwork Fez Games

So, some background on Patchwork Fez Games first, because context is usually interesting (but you can just skip down to the next section if you want to get to the expo-related stuff).

I’m Sarah Cole, and I am the entirety of Patchwork Fez Games. 

I’m fortunate to have acquired a weirdly broad variety of skills during my chaotic freelance career and personal escapades. That includes most of the skills required to produce a passably-decent game and get it to the printer myself, but I’ve also produced/co-produced a variety of weird arts-games events, helped my sister plan and run expo stands for her cute shop, and other nonsense that I think has come in handy for planning and deploying an expo stand.

Prior to February 2024, I had published precisely zero TTRPG materials. I’d barely even written any, to be honest.

I then launched a Kickstarter campaign for Darkened Hill & Dale on an ADHD-flavoured impulse during ZineQuest that year – it didn’t even exist as a concept 4 weeks before the campaign launched. 

Well, it was funded, and I’ve been living with the consequences ever since.

I impulsively ran another Kickstarter campaign in spring 2025, for TERMINUS, despite the fact I was still manually packing and posting 300 copies of Darkened Hill & Dale at the time. 

That wasn’t entirely wise, to be honest, because the campaign finished less than 24 hours after I finished shipping Darkened Hill & Dale. Nonetheless, TERMINUS went out to backers by the end of January this year.

Since then, I’ve been trying to exercise some more restraint, and have been doing some R&D on potential next projects whilst trying to rest a bit. I’ve also been ill a lot and keeping up with the part-time consultancy work that actually pays my bills. 

So, Patchwork Fez Games has officially published two books (both containing system-neutral scenarios) and started actually sending those books to people about 15 months ago.

Patchwork Fez Games is currently operating as a trading name of TIME/IMAGE – my limited company that I’ve been doing my consultancy work through for 15+ years – for legal and financial purposes, but I treat it as a fairly self-contained department of the business. 

Right, onto the expo stuff!

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Previous Expos/Events

These aren’t direct comparisons for this year’s UKGE, but books from Patchwork Fez Games (PFG) have been available to buy from me at three other conventions prior to UKGE 2026.

UKGE 2025

I was fortunate enough to be allowed to sell Darkened Hill & Dale on the UK TIN stand at UKGE 2025. I took along 25 copies, and sold them all. This was pretty much an even split between the paperback (£30) and the hardback (£40).

I did a couple of stints of helping to staff the stand, which definitely helped them to sell. 

Whenever a game’s creator is present on a stand, their enthusiasm for their games (and knowledge of it) always seems to boost sales.

After TIN’s cut of the sales and such, I received a little over £700, which I was very happy with.

Dragonmeet 2025

Graham Walmsley (creator of Cthulhu Dark and Cosmic Dark, amongst other things) kindly invited me to share a stand with him at Dragonmeet 2025.

We were on a corner there, and I occupied one side of it. I had copies of Darkened Hill & Dale to sell, and managed to get the paperbacks of TERMINUS from the printer the day before the show. I also had some art prints available, and two zines that I’ve collaboratively published with US-based creators. 

The hardbacks of TERMINUS were still being printed, alas. 

My setup the day before was minimal but still took me ages as I worked out what I was doing and pre-packed copies of TERMINUS into bags with the accompanying map handout. I put the large mosaic that became the cover for TERMINUS on an easel for decoration.

Despite showing up an hour after the show opened due to an accident on the M25, I had a good time and sold ~£800 of stuff. 

I’ve apparently lost the expenses breakdown for that event, but I commuted in from home by car (which was nearly a disaster, as per the above), only paid for half a stand, and didn’t have loads of costs besides some display equipment and a table I bought. 

My partner gave me a hand packing down and loitered on the stand as my hype man, but I could also ask Graham and his partner to watch things for a minute if I needed to run off.

I think I made something like £550–600 of profit if we imagine my time has no value.

Dragonmeet: Call to Adventure 2026

I was invited to share a table with Kalum (creator of Rosewood Abbey and, upcoming, The Magic of Inventorying) only a few days before the show, which was held in Kensington Town Hall.

Rather than dumping my stuff in my car, I had to pack everything into a wheeled suitcase and haul it in, and I was still recovering from a bad cold, so wasn’t at my best.

I had all of my products available, and one of the smaller mosaic pieces from TERMINUS as a talking point.

This show was a bit of an odd duck. I think the target audience for Call To Adventure is families, and particularly those who aren’t already into tabletop games.

As someone who produces system-neutral horror scenarios, this is not my ideal audience. System-neutral scenarios are a terrible entry point to the hobby, and the horror content isn’t family-friendly.

TERMINUS saved the day for me on this one – largely because it’s a scenario that’s obviously set around the London Underground, which makes it an easier sell to a London-based audience. Even if folks aren’t totally convinced by the horror element (or it being a TTRPG at all), they sometimes buy it as a novelty.

I sold one related art print, and several copies of TERMINUS, for a total of £196. 

I had no notable costs on this one, as I took advantage of a work-related travelcard I had that week, and brought my own snacks. 

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UKGE 2026

Ok, here we go. 

Prep, Travel, Setup

I panic-bought a starter table for UKGE immediately after Dragonmeet last year. I wasn’t entirely sure about it, but Dragonmeet had gone well and I heard that UKGE tables were almost sold out. 

Preparation for UKGE took ages, and functionally started in March. 

I ran out of the paperbacks for both TERMINUS and Darkened Hill & Dale around then due to me finally offering them to retailers and them taking a chunk of my stock. I was also down to having less than 50 copies of each of the hardback versions, and very unsure about how much stock I’d actually need for the expo, because I didn’t have a proper comparison point. 

I wanted to do a light edit of both books before ordering another reprint, but was then ill for six weeks and unable to actually finish said edit as quickly as planned. Consequently, I wasn’t able to send the edited files to the (thankfully UK-based) printer until mid-May.

This is very late to be ordering anything for UKGE, but 4Edge are absolute stars. The paperbacks arrived a week before the expo to my home in Surrey, and the hardbacks arrived the day before expo setup (i.e. Wednesday) at my Dad’s house in rural Leicestershire. 

For most people, this would probably be fine. Books received. Unfortunately, both of my books ship with handouts, and have to be manually packed into bags with those handouts, so I spent Wednesday afternoon doing that and generally packing stuff into boxes for Thursday morning. 

I’d travelled to Leicestershire the weekend before for unrelated reasons, and then took over some of my Dad’s house to pack art, collate handouts, make signage, spray-paint display stands, etc.

Before travelling up, I’d spent hours and hours across the proceeding week printing the handouts for Darkened Hill & Dale. Each book comes with 21 handouts in a little folder, and my creative choices mean that I have to produce those myself. I was aiming to produce 150 sets of these (to have leftovers for later general distribution), which entails printing something like 4,000 printed sides of material, on different paper stocks and at different sizes… Anyway, that took up most of my time when not at my actual job.

So, I was pretty much flat-out sorting stuff for the few days preceding the expo (alongside some personal errands and such).

I didn’t hire a van to take all my nonsense to the NEC, but did stress-test the suspension on my car, which was jam-packed with stuff – I had to leave most of the boxes of hardbacks at Dad’s for collection another day. 

(Sorry, Dad.)

I’m lucky to drive an estate (well, this sort of thing is part of why I have one), but it really was at capacity and we had to pack it carefully to try and put most of the weight over the rear axle. Alongside the books (books are heavy), I had two display tables, display grids, two stacks of mosaics (glass is heavy), and a big piece of tile-based art (tiles and cement board are very heavy). 

From Leicestershire, it took a little over an hour to drive very sedately and carefully over to the NEC, arriving at the beginning of my 1pm drop-off slot.

I was by myself for setup, so I strapped my unhappy lower back into a support brace, and unloaded in a frantic rush. As standard, the NEC wants you to drive in, unload, and drive out again within an hour. I found this hard work in the heat, by myself, with heavy stuff, and I was all but running back and forth by the end. I just about managed it. 

I had to just leave all my stuff in a pile in my stand space (although I didn’t leave anything super valuable there) while I drove around to the Hilton, failed to drop off my luggage due to a lack of parking spaces, parked up in an East car park, loaded myself up, and then walked the 15 minutes back to hall 4. 

My stuff was fine unattended for 45 mins, thankfully. 

Thus commenced 2.5 hours of sluggishly unpacking and setting things up in the sweltering swamp air of the NEC. I don’t think they run the air conditioning on setup day, and it was grim. 

The Show Preview (Thursday Evening)

I almost forgot that I’d booked a table at the Show Preview, so at 17:30 I ran to the loos to change into something that wasn’t soaked with sweat, loaded up an IKEA bag with stuff to show on my table, and headed over there for the 18:00 start. 

I tried to collect my access pass for the show on the way, but the queue looked like this, so I had to leave it:

I didn’t realise that you’re really supposed to have the access pass to get into the Show Preview; I’m not sure that was made clear to me at any point, to be honest.

Thankfully, I looked so wretched that a member of staff let me in anyway. He asked if ‘a member of my team’ could go collect my pass; I told him that I was a team of one, and that queueing for the pass would mean missing the Preview. I appreciate him accepting that and letting me in. 

That said, I’m not sure how useful it was to have a table at the Show Preview. I really wasn’t sure what to expect, as I hadn’t been before, so I just took one copy of everything along with some of my signage and business cards.

It seemed pretty disorganised and extremely casual, despite being told that we could set up our tables a full hour before it formally opened (which implied it might be worth spending that much time setting up). It was at the back of hall 1 (which is usually used as open gaming space), and not very obviously delineated as a distinct event.

Two guys just started playing a board game on the table next to me and weren’t previewing anything at all, which, just, ok? Whoever the table was actually allocated to evidently didn’t show up (or couldn’t find their table), and nobody told those guys that they couldn’t just use the space as a casual gaming table. 

I’ll be honest – that actually left me feeling like a bit of a chump, sat next to them with my wares, trying to look approachable. Rather than sitting there like an idiot, I got my iPad out and worked on some artwork for a potential future project for a bit. 

More people asked about the artwork than the games, I think.

Folks wandered up and down the aisles of tables, looking at things, but I had no idea who most of them were, and I didn’t think the attendees were actually all press – it seems that anyone with an expo pass can just wander into the Preview.

I hadn’t booked any press interviews or anything because I ran out of time for that kind of thing. Also, UKGE sent us the list of ‘Show Preview Pass Holders’ less than a week before the Preview. This was a Google Sheet containing about 50 rows and three columns of data: first name, last name, and email address. That’s it. No indication of affiliation or what might be of interest to these folks – most of the address domains were Gmail and similar, rather than blog names, so that wasn’t helpful. 

When I received it, I immediately realised that I wasn’t going to have time to research all these people and contact the relevant ones. I wasn’t about to blanket-email everyone, either, so that was pretty useless to me. Maybe I’d be fine if I were more clued up on YouTubers and stuff, but I’m rubbish with names and time-poor, so here we are.

Anyway, a few people stopped to say hello or introduce themselves, but I got the feeling that the preview is probably better for people with boardgames to show off and demo. I’m not sure I’d bother with it again. 

It was probably good for me to sit down and rest in a slightly cooler room for a couple of hours, but I missed my opportunity to get a proper dinner and was left feeling like I’d wasted valuable setup time, to be honest. 

Back to Setup

I didn’t want to run off too early, just in case press people might be working their way around to me, but I decided I’d had enough just after 20:00.

I loaded my stuff back into my bag, and went back to the halls. I asked about collecting my access pass the next morning at a help desk, only to be told, no, I wouldn’t be allowed in tomorrow without one, even with my build day wristband and such. 

Oh, and that exhibitor services might already be closed for the day. 

I did not say ‘Are you fucking joking?’ out loud, but my eyebrows may have conveyed the sentiment anyway.

So, I legged it back across to exhibitor services and was immensely relieved to find that one person was still staffing it. God knows what I’d have done if they weren’t there, to be honest. 

I think the collection of access passes needs work as a system, to be honest. I walked that way earlier in the day to try and pick them up, but the queue was always huge. As a person doing setup by themself, it’s difficult for me to spend ages queueing to collect an access pass; not only does it mean leaving everything unattended, it also really eats into my setup time. 

I didn’t fully finish setting up on Thursday, and got turfed out (along with the other lingering souls) at 21:00. 

I put various valuables, packaging I’d need at pack down, and stuff I needed to sort out, into my wheeled trolley and lugged it back across to the distant car park. There I swapped out some of the stuff for my actual hotel luggage, and dragged everything over to the Hilton.

As a note – that route sucks. The paths are very uneven, and I nearly stacked it with the trolley. I intend to complain to the Hilton about the accessibility of that route.

I checked into the Hilton via their app but struggled to find my room, and reception was so busy I’d have been waiting half an hour for help. I found the room eventually, but was very tired, starving, dehydrated, sweaty, and honestly nearly crashed out when I realised the air conditioning in my room was broken. 

But I ate some emergency food I’d brought with me, drank a gallon of water, sewed a flag to a flagpole (don’t ask), tried to fix the AC, decompressed a bit, and finally crashed into bed at about 01:00.

I was up again at 06:15. I did not feel great, not gonna lie. 

I got myself ready for the day and lugged everything I needed to take over to the NEC to the Hilton’s breakfast bonanza, because I didn’t want to have to go back to my room.

I ate way too much, and made myself a couple of bacon sandwiches for lunch from the buffet, which I jammed into a little cool bag (it didn’t have ice blocks in it, but it helps anyway). If you’re staying in the Hilton and get the breakfast, stock up on pastries for the day and refill your water bottles there (because the queues for water at the NEC were longer than the queues for the women’s loos). Top tip. 

I then schlepped over to the NEC by 08:00, dropped off some books with a couple of retailers who were expecting them, gave an access pass to my sister who had arrived that morning, and together we managed to get the stand finished by the time the expo opened at 09:00.

Phew.

The Stand & Location

I booked a starter stand. I was eligible for it (having not had my own stand before) and it was cheaper at £47 per square metre (versus the standard £65 per square metre, or £90 per square metre for premium stands), so I thought it was a good plan for my first outing. 

I got a 2x3m stand, costing me £338.40 including VAT.

(I’m not VAT-registered yet, although that may have to change in the next year or so, in which case I should be able to claim some things back.)

The downside of starter stands is that you don’t get to choose where your stand is located, and I’ll confess that I wasn’t thrilled with my location when I saw the layout in person.

We were off to the side of hall 4 in a kind of annex bit, to the right of its entrance and opposite the opening connecting to hall 3a. This in itself wasn’t my concern. 

The actual issue was that Warhammer were between us and the entrance to hall 4, and the tall walls of their complex stand combined with the lower ceiling of our section in a way that made it look like there wasn’t anything behind them from a lot of angles. 

In my opinion, this was a crap layout decision by the organisers.

I’d thought we’d have a full catering section behind us, which would drive foot traffic our way, but it was actually a burger & chips van, and an ice cream van. They probably did help, but it wasn’t quite what I was expecting.

I was somewhat lucky in that my stand wasn’t quite opposite the tall displays, so folks could potentially see my flag, large artwork, and purple hair across the heads of people seated and the adjacent ‘paint and take’ tables. 

I think that our participation in UK TIN’s Stamp Quest also helped folks to find us, because they knew we were there somewhere.

I do suspect that our area had less footfall than the main area of the halls – the ‘alley’ we were facing never turned into a scrum, but I had to fight my way around other areas on the couple of occasions I dashed out to run errands.

On the other hand, that meant that we were easily visible to anyone who did walk past, and that people could browse from ten feet away, or loiter without getting swept along.

There was generally a steady flow of people passing us by, so it’s not like we were completely ignored, and there’s no way to estimate how different our expo may have been if we were somewhere else, but I’m not sure I’d pick that spot again myself.

Anyway, here’s how the stand ended up looking:

I did plan the layout in advance, but then tweaked it a bit on arrival to try and make the big red tile art more visible to folks who might look our way from across the painting zone. That meant having the art – and gap between the two tables – in the middle, and putting the branded flag on the left. 

I ended up arranging the products so that my little showcase of indie games was on the left, along with the games I’ve collaboratively published, and my own stuff was on the right. 

I also had the mosaic that’s the TERMINUS cover on an easel just off the side of my stand, to the right, because the neighbouring stand wasn’t using their full space and kindly said we could put it there. 

I had a small table behind the artwork display (artwork held on with magnets) to give me capacity to sort things out and prepare more books for sale if necessary (although I mainly left the art prints on it, pre-packed in cellophane with a bit of greyboard to keep them undamaged), and had some compact folding shelves where I had products prepped and packed ready to go on the other side of the stand. 

Because my games are packed with handouts (and a download code to redeem PDF copies directly from my website), my preference is to have a couple of display copies out on the stand – arranged slightly messily to encourage people to pick them up – and then give customers a fresh copy from the shelf. 

That was less practical for the stuff in the showcase, so I kept three copies of each of those games on display and topped them up as they sold. My hope was that this might prevent everything from getting a bit dog-eared due to browsing.

I picked up the display unit for the showcase a few days before the expo and spray-painted it white. I really wanted a unit that would display the full cover of each of the A5-size books/zines I was hosting, and it was surprisingly difficult to find one! I eventually found one from this seller on Etsy, but I may have bought the last one, unfortunately!

I also had a camping chair by the shelves, and a little rolling stool to let me scoot around – but I was standing for most of the event.

One thing I didn’t have was a proper backing wall of my own; the white curtain in the photo is the back of the adjacent stand’s setup. That’s largely down to me not wanting to spend a chunk of money on a big display item for my first solo expo stand (not knowing if I’d be doing it again in the future), and also because I wouldn’t have had anywhere to store it. 

Overall, I was fairly happy with the layout. Some people interpreted the split tables as two stands, but that didn’t really matter much. I think it made the stand feel more open and approachable in some ways, because the tables became less of a barrier between us and the customers. 

I didn’t have a ‘uniform’ for on-stand folks. I tend to always style my hair the same way and wear similar clothing to every tabletop event, so that it’s easier for people to recognise me (and someone said they did spot me from way across the hall due to this). I’m fairly face-blind myself, and it’s easy to blank people in such busy environments, so I figure every little helps.

I don’t want to do matching t-shirts or such, but I might get some branded (or at least matching) lanyards or accessories for my next outing, just to avoid confusion. 

Anyway, people were drawn in by the mosaics and artwork and scattered handouts and general chaotic array of stuff, as hoped – some people were looking at the art before asking what I actually sold, which seems to be a nice way to start a conversation.

I do think I need to work on general branding a bit more, and more clearly signpost what I’m selling. I knew the lack of a back wall might annoy me (and was appreciative of the handy neighbour’s curtain in the end), but I sort of just forgot to have any signage saying ‘Get your horror here!’ or whatever. 

This is the problem with not being able to visualise stuff in my head, sometimes. I can do spatial stuff quite readily, so I can work out a decent shape for a stand, and consider lines of sight and such, but the visual intricacies can get missed. 

Well, that’s something for next time!

On the Stand

There’s less to say about this, because the three days were something of a blur, to be honest. 

My sister lives in the Birmingham area and generously commuted over to the NEC to help me out on Friday and Sunday (and messaged me at 01:00 on Saturday morning to say ‘You need to package more books in the morning because you sold a lot today!’, which she was quite correct about). 

She also helped me with some of the prep work while at our Dad’s house, and had the brilliant idea of making a little placeholder card for each showcase item in case it sold out; she colour-photocopied the front and back cover of each title, stuck them together, and put them behind the books in the display unit. Her thinking was that the display might look weird if it ended up with gaps, and that it’d be nice to promote things even if they sold out. We didn’t need them in the end – although it was close – but it was a great idea.

She’s a delight, as well as being very approachable (unlike me) and personable, so I’m always happy to have her on the stand. 

A trio of people helped me in shifts on Saturday, following my request for help in the UK TIN Discord when another friend couldn’t make it. They were also great!

Two of them were authors featured in the showcase, and they (predictably) boosted the sales of their own books simply by being present. 

I was grateful the three of them were able to help me out, because I was almost constantly busy and would have really struggled to look after both sides of the stand – plus people wanting their Stamp Quest leaflet stamping – by myself, even though I only left the stand a couple of times during open hours and didn’t really take breaks. 

(I appreciate that this lack of breaks probably sounds unhealthy, but I rarely feel the need to take breaks from these kinds of things, and the prospect of wandering off across the busy halls honestly sounded more exhausting. This is a me thing, generally not advisable, and  probably why I end up running events.)

As an aside, if you’re doing Stamp Quest – a self-inking stamp does make life easier. Also, leave a little spot somewhere on your stand to actually put the leaflets down and stamp things, so that you don’t end up using your iPad or merchandise and a flat surface.

I’ll cover the per-day revenue below, but all three days felt pretty active. Sunday did seem quieter, and I’m sure the morning rail replacement stuff had an impact, but it wasn’t as pronounced as I expected.

A lot of people who stopped at the stand bought something – possibly just to stop me waffling on at them about the archaeology of Tottenham Court Road Tube station. 

A lot of people also stopped by just to tell me that they already had my books, and that they really enjoyed them, which was really lovely. Someone told me that my rural horror scenarios inspired them to write their own, and another person brought their Kickstarter copy of TERMINUS along for me to sign. It was honestly all quite touching, and even if I’d only made 20p at the expo, all that positive feedback would probably have made it all worthwhile anyway. 

I did constantly forget to tell people that TERMINUS was nominated for Best Role-Playing Adventure at the UKGE Judges Awards this year, and a couple of people have told me off about it. In the future, I’ll make a special sign so that I don’t need to remember.

A few people asked specifically about solo games, and we could point them to the ones in the showcase section. Our stand was added to FinleyJinley’s solo games expo catalogue, and I saw a couple of people approaching with those in their hands.

On a more practical note, I was accepting payments in cash and by card. Some customers were pleased to find that I had a card reader that could do chip-and-pin, because they’d already bought enough stuff via contactless that their cards were demanding they do chip-and-pin for their next transaction, and a lot of sellers didn’t have that option.

My web shop is on Shopify (for now, anyway), and I was using the ‘point of sale’ (POS) functionality to process transactions on my iPad, which was connected to the card reader. If I’d actually logged my inventory properly at the beginning of the con, the sales would have been deducted from the stock count and it would have been charmingly tidy. As it was, I need to do some counts and tidying up to bring that all up to date. The system did generally work very well and made it easy to track sales, though.

On that note, I did have some trouble with the app not loading some products properly, and then the card reader disconnecting. This turned out to be my fault. Top tip: update your devices and apps properly before you get to the show, and then they might work as intended!

Oh, one more top tip: don’t accidentally leave the keys for your cashbox in your hotel room on day one of the expo. 

Indie Showcase

I did run a small experiment during the expo, in the form of my little ‘showcase’ of TTRPGs by other indie creators, roughly curated around the themes of horror and strangeness. It looked like this on the stand:

I was meant to have nine titles, but one title went missing in transit, alas. That did mean I could put the price list right on the stand, though. 

I arranged the games based on the technical quality of ‘vibes’, but put the three solo games together at the top for convenience. I didn’t standardise prices or anything like that. I do wish I’d had time to write a very short, one-line blurb to stick next to each title, it didn’t happen. Maybe next time. 

Folks submitted their games for consideration in the showcase ahead of the expo. Most of those submitted were accepted, but I had to omit a couple of items for various reasons. The selected creators then sent me a few copies in advance of the expo (or dropped them off on Thursday). 

I wanted to achieve a few things with the showcase:

1. Help other creators, particularly those who didn’t have their own stands at the expo, share their games with expo attendees.
2. See how well games do when presented as part of a small, curated selection, versus when those games appear in bigger, less focused collections/shops.
3. See if its presence might generally encourage folks to visit the stand – either because it just caught the attention of passers-by, because folks had seen me post about it online, or because the creators themselves had signposted people towards us.

Item 1 was achieved simply by the stand existing, really. Every game on the stand sold at least two copies (more info below on actual sales), but even if they hadn’t, people would still have at least seen them.

I’m still gathering data for item 2, but this is generally going to be a longer experiment. To compare it, it does require some of the games to have been available on other stands at the expo or shows in the past, and some of the games in the showcase were new for the expo. I think it went reasonably well in any case.

Passers-by were definitely interested in the showcase display. A lot of passing traffic came from that body of the hall (rather than the direction of the door), and plenty of people paused to pick up at least one of the showcase games and look at them, even if they ultimately didn’t make a purchase. Some of them then tracked across the stand to look at my works on the other table.

I think the relatively small selection of eight titles, and simple white stand, helped people to avoid being overwhelmed by options. The relatively tall display unit may also have been helpful, as it put the books in people’s line of sight very conveniently when they were gazing around. 

Some people did explicitly say that they’d come to buy a friend’s game from the showcase, which was nice. People who happened to look at an author’s game when the author was on the stand (on Saturday) seemed to be pleased by that and, as far as I could tell, were almost invariably happy to speak with the author about their work.

Most customers who purchased something from the showcase only bought one game, but some bought more than one item. Very few people bought items from the showcase and items of mine at the same time – however, I know that some people did purchase both, but as separate transactions, having ‘finished’ on the showcase table before moving over to my stuff. 

Such is the risk of the table gap and lack of robust branding, but I’m not sure that was a problem, per se. 

Interlude – Expo Evenings

You already know about the sweaty blur of Thursday evening. 

On the Friday evening, my sister and I tidied up the stand, parted ways, and I shuffled back to the hotel to find that the AC in my room had not been looked at, let alone fixed. So, I complained at reception and they gave me a new room to move into. 

The AC didn’t work quite right in there either, but it was good enough and I couldn’t be bothered to move again.

It was getting late by the time that was sorted, and I hadn’t planned to go to any social events, so I looked for somewhere to eat. With the Hilton restaurant occupied by a private event (possibly the Kickstarter party?) and the bar rammed, I decided to amble around the lake to Vietnamese Street Kitchen in Resort World. I’d made a ‘backup’ booking for 21:00, but managed to wrangle myself in as a solo diner at 20:30. 

I honestly really like the food at that VSK, and was very happy to have dinner by myself as a restful break. I ordered way too much, as usual – three small plates is plenty, even if the menu suggests four – and took some ribs to go. I then ran into some friends in the Hilton bar, chatted with them briefly, and foisted the ribs onto one of them when they said they were hungry. 

I then faffed about instead of going to bed, smashed my knee into my wheeled trolley after taking my glasses off, and taped a cotton pad to my leg so that the large graze wouldn’t bleed all over the bedding. I once again went to bed inadvisably late, like a fool, and maybe got a whole six hours of sleep.

On Saturday night I ran into friends on my way out of the con, and sort of just drifted along with them to the Moxy bar (where we played a game and I had only chips for dinner, because getting them to cater to my myriad dietary intolerances was just too much work), and then the Hilton bar. There were loads of interesting and cool tabletop folks hanging around, so I had some wine and chatted with them until midnight-ish. 

Then I – you guessed it – faffed about instead of going to sleep, half-packed my bag for the morning, and slept terribly before getting up at 06:15 to shower, pack up my stuff properly, haul most of it over to the East car park, return to my room, collect my stuff for the day, check out, get breakfast, and stagger over to hall 4 for 08:30. 

I’ve included all of this in this write-up because a lot of tabletop folks I know have ADHD, and I want to make it clear that it’s comedically easy to run yourself into the ground by staying up late at this kind of event, especially if your ADHD medication wears off around dinner time. There are cool people to talk to that you never get to catch up with, and people might offer to buy you another drink, and before you know it, your brain has turned into a pumpkin.

Also, you should absolutely make a dinner plan early in the day, because otherwise you may struggle to get a dinner at all! Getting hot food after 22:00 is difficult. If in doubt, just make a relatively late table reservation somewhere anyway; you can always cancel it later if another option arises. 

Also, there were a variety of networking events happening on the Friday night that I could have gone to, but I thought some time to myself and a little walk would be nice, so I didn’t really try to go to any of them. Plus, I love summer rolls. Solo dinners might sound sad, or like a waste of networking time, but they can be pretty good, actually. 

Revenue & Costs

Ok, the money! 

This is what you’re probably most interested in.

Revenue

Overall, our sales for the expo totalled £2977.

I think that’s pretty good, given that I essentially only have two main products of my own. 

Day to day, that was as follows:

• Friday: £820
• Saturday: £1450
• Sunday: £707

Almost 80% of sales were my own products, 3% were collaborative publications, and 17% were games from the showcase.

Sunday felt slower than Friday, despite being relatively similar in terms of sales revenue, but there was a spike on Sunday morning, so the rest of the day was comparatively slower.

I find it incredibly interesting that other sellers have reported completely different patterns in spending across the three days. I wonder if the differences might correlate to hall locations or some other factor?

Anyway, there was a distinct dip in sales at around 13:00 every day of the expo (which is probably people taking a break for lunch), and then a spike afterwards.

I did sell 11 art prints, but the biggest sellers were my own books as follows:

• TERMINUS hardback, £22 – 38 copies
• TERMINUS paperback, £16 – 25 copies
• Darkened Hill & Dale paperback, £30 – 17 copies
• Darkened Hill & Dale hardback, £40 – 11 copies

My sister and I were surprised about the last two, because we thought we’d sold more of Darkened Hill & Dale in hardback. Having had a look at the data, it seems that we sold more DHaD hardbacks on Friday, but the paperbacks became more popular by the end – probably due to people hitting their spending limits.

TERMINUS, conversely, was pretty consistently more popular in hardback. That’s not wildly surprising, though, as the TERMINUS hardback has a fancy textured cover to match the mosaic design, which has proven very popular.

We did have a couple of people on the Saturday afternoon and Sunday tell us that they’d spent their budget for the expo, despite their interest in our stock.

I’m not going to break down the precise sales of books in the showcase, because I haven’t asked the creators permission to do so, but one item sold eight copies, one item sold two copies, and everything else sold four or five copies. 

I was surprised by how consistent this number was across the collection, but not unhappy about it. 

I’ve kept no more than 10% of a creator’s revenue from the showcase to cover costs.

I didn’t offer any deals or bundles, partially because I ran out of bandwidth to consider it, but I might give that some thought at my next event.

Costs

My costs broke down as follows:

Hotel	-£590.61
Payout to Showcase Exhibitors	-£492.00
Stand Cost	-£338.40
New Display Materials	-£205.70
Sat Stand Helpers	-£120.00
Shopify/Stripe Fees	-£46.92
Sat Night Dinner	-£46.81
Snacks	-£39.25
Travel	-£29.70
Sister Expenses	-£23.00
Sun Night Dinner	-£4.50
TOTAL	-£1936.89

I’m not going to factor my own time into this equation, because there’s no way my expo revenue was ever going to cover that. I’ll comment on that in the summary below.

This leaves me with a notional profit of £1040.11.

The reality is this actually rather neatly covers the outstanding balance from the recent reprint, so it’s sort of already been spent. I’m not unhappy with that.

I pre-agreed to pay my Saturday helpers £15 per hour (and hope to pay more next time), but my sister won’t accept payment for her time – only for iced coffee and chips.

Travel costs have been calculated per mile, on the basis of extra miles driven versus a return trip to visit my Dad, since I was doing that anyway.

While I had some display items from previous events and such, I did buy some new items, including: an easel (because I forgot to pack the one I used at Dragonmeet), a spare folding grid (that didn’t get used in the end), two folding tables (I had one already, so now have three, but I think a third will come in handy in the future, spray paint, the display stand, a rolling stool, and wood for the flagpole. 

Saturday night’s dinner was a little excessive, and I didn’t eat most of the snacks I brought. 

The hotel cost was the biggest expense in the end. I’m sure I could stay somewhere relatively nearby for less money, and might look into that next time, but I’m a big fan of not having to drive around at unwise o’clock while exhausted.

I’m also a big fan of lurching downstairs and gorging on bacon while waking up. 

I’m also a fan of not getting stuck on the motorway and ending up arriving an hour late to my own stand. Not that I’m haunted by that incident on the way to Dragonmeet at all.

Pack Down

Having my sister around for packing up was incredibly useful, but I did make some mistakes. Instead of immediately rushing off to fetch the car and drive around to our loading area, I helped her pack up the stand a bit. The consequence of that decision was that I simply couldn’t get down the small road that serves as the loading car park for the back of hall 4 – it was gridlocked by the time I got there. 

Instead, I had to park in the little car park adjacent to halls 3a and 4, which was busy and chaotic too. That meant that we had to lug everything all the way across hall 4 to the car, dodging forklift trucks and abandoned tables and suchlike. This wasn’t the end of the world, but it did mean that it took ages to get everything out and packed into the car. 

The expo formally shut at 16:00, and I finally managed to leave to drive the two hours home at 18:30. 

I did see some folks wrestling an entire shed on wheels across the car park, though. And two very funny women sang ‘Big dick energyyyy’ out of their van windows at the two guys blocking the car park exit by having a completely unnecessary stand-off with their vehicles (while one member of NEC staff dragged another away from the stand-off, shouting ‘Leave them! They’re not worth it!’).

Anyway, if there’s more than one of you packing up, drive around ASAP at closing to get a good loading slot; I don’t think the one hour restriction applies to packing up. 

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Final Thoughts

So, the expo was a lot of work. Between the reprint of the books and the need to prep so many handouts, the expo functionally dominated my time and brain space for several weeks before the actual event. 

The event itself was a bit of a stress test for my overheated brain and dilapidated body, but I think I weathered it fairly well for all my chaos and grumbling. I’m fortunate that I’m able to stand and chat at people for days on end despite not sleeping enough, but I’m aware that this capacity may well diminish over time, so I’ll try to be kinder to myself next time round.

Anyway – overall, I think the expo went pretty well for me. 

I don’t have previous experience of running my own expo stand to compare it to, but I’m happy with how things went financially, and I really enjoyed meeting lots of friendly people who like my work. I also got to catch up with some friends I don’t see very often, even if our meetings were only brief. 

The aspect of simply being present and visible at a con is valuable – even if a person I spoke to didn’t buy anything, they now know that I exist, and it’s a pleasure to meet folks who I’ve only interacted with online before. 

I didn’t arrange any business meetings for the expo. I’m not sure my publishing efforts are big/complex enough to merit them as yet, really, but I was also wary of committing to anything during the expo’s opening hours because I (correctly) expected to be fully occupied on the stand. 

I also didn’t try to participate in any seminars. Partially because the organisation of those seems to be a bit of a mess, but mostly because of my limited availability.

As mentioned earlier, I wasn’t expecting revenue from the expo to cover the time I’d put into it. Patchwork Fez Games is doing ok financially, but I’m still trying to avoid drawing wages from it so that I can invest in reprints, future projects, etc. I hope that this will change before too long, though, because producing/distributing/etc. games is increasingly demanding more of my time, and I’d like to be able to put more ‘work’ time into it, rather than all of my ‘free’ time.

Will I have a stand again next year? Probably – I’ll try to decide in the next few weeks, once I’ve nailed down my next project and its likely timeline. It’s unfortunate that I’ll need to make a decision on it so soon, lest my preferred stands sell out or suchlike, but I can’t do much about that. 

I probably won’t do the Show Preview again, unless it undergoes radical organisational changes.

It’s weird how some aspects of UKGE are perfectly well-organised while many others (the Preview, the seminars, industry socials, etc.) feel like neglected afterthoughts.

Anyway, I am already booked in to have a stand at Dragonmeet later this year. It’ll be a corner stand, so that’ll be another fun experiment.

I do love a little experiment.

I’ll fix up my stand aesthetics, branding, and signage a little bit before that.

I’m conscious that, given the timelines of my previous projects, my next project is unlikely to be finished and ready to sell in time for UKGE next year. It’ll most probably be in the ‘nearly finished and going to the printers soon’ phase, so I guess I might be able to let people pre-order things, but I think the expo is always going to go better if I have something new to offer (especially for returning fans). 

The showcase element mitigates that a little, but I don’t want to lean on that too heavily (because that’s not the point of that exercise) or accidentally become known primarily as a retailer of others’ games. I will almost certainly run the showcase again, though, as I think it’s benefitted everyone involved.

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TL;DR

• I’ve been creating TTRPGs for just over two years, and have published two system-neutral scenario books.
• I was on the UK TIN stand at UKGE 2025, and shared a table at Dragonmeet 2025.
• This was my first solo stand.
• There was a lot of prep work.
• I had a nice time at the expo, even if it was too warm and very tiring.
• I did not sleep enough.
• My own books accounted for the majority of sales.
• I hosted a small collection of works by other creators.
• The sales total for the stand was £2977. The ‘profit’ after costs (not including my time) and payouts was ~£1040. 
• I’ll decide in a few weeks, but I’ll probably have a stand next year, although I won’t get too fancy with it because I’m not confident I’ll have a new product available to buy at that point.

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Other Reviews of UKGE 2026

This list isn’t comprehensive – it’s just the articles I’ve seen so far.

It’s also in no particular order.

Folks running stands:

• By Odin’s Beard RPG
• Ex Stasis Games
• Blackwell Games
• Rowan, Rook and Decard

Folks without stands, but kind of adjacent:

• Plane Sailing Games