Is Tabletop Gaming Escaping the Tradition Convention Hall?

From board gaming in Welsh fields and RPGs around woodland campfires to fantasy markets in pubs and trading cards in Bermondsey market, Britian’s tabletop event scene is getting considerably more varied and harder to define.

For decades the basic shape of a tabletop gaming event has been fairly predictable. Hire a hall. Fill it with traders. Put games on tables. Charge admission. Encourage several hundred (or several thousand) hobbyists to spend a Saturday walking between them and possibly trying out some new games.

Now there is nothing particularly wrong with that model. Britain, and many other countries, have extraordinary healthy calendars of tabletop gaming conventions, shows and tournaments, with multiple events taking place across the country on any given weekend. I’ve even helped set-up and run conventions in the past, helping out organise events as Gen Con UK in the late 90’s and being the team who started London’s Dragonmeet convention and then owned and ran it for a number of years until 2011 when I passed the torch along.

But look slightly beyond the established circuit and something interesting is happening.

This summer, RulesFest put board games, camping, outdoor games and fireside social deduction together on a farm in Pembrokeshire. Strange Games Festival gathered more than 500 gamers at a woodland activity centre in Sussex, with RPGs, board games and social deduction sharing the weekend with archery, megagames, outdoor activities, food, drink and campfires. Field of Games has been pursuing the even simpler proposition of getting tabeltop gamers together on a campsite for years,

Meanwhile, Wanderer Market brought fantasy makers and tableop gaming into a Nottingham pub venue; Brotherhood Games effectively turned a Bermondsey street market into a TCG festival; and SPRU, later this month, is building a sizeable convention specifically around independent wargaming rather than the industry’s largest manufacturers.

Taken individually, none represents an entirely new invention. Taken together, however, they suggest that the definition of a British tabletop event is widening with a growing number of events looking at doing something different. More unCONventional.

The Gaming Convention is Becoming The Gaming Festival

The most obvious departure from the convention mode can be found in a field.

This July, Cardiff retailer Rules of Play launched the first RulesFest, explicitly subtitled A Board Game Camping Festival, at Dewslake Farm Campsite in Pembrokeshire. Rules of Play described the event as an evolution of its existing RulesCon conventions, combining tabletop gaming with its love of camping and the outdoors. Gaming took place in a barn, marquee, and cafe, while the programme included outdoor games such as Molkky and Kubb and fireside social deduction sessions. Attendees were actively encouraged to wander off, visit Tenby, go to the beach, eat, drink and return to play more games afterwards.

Alongside organised tournaments and RPG sessions, there was also yoga on Saturday morning, open gaming, and a Rules of Play pop-up shop. RulesFest charged separately for event admission and the campsite, with the gaming ticket cocvering the additional organised activities. In many aspects the event model owed at least as much to a small music or folk festival as it did to UK Games Expo.

Strange Games has spent a decade developing the idea

If RulesFest indicates that established gaming businesses are noticing the potential of the festival format, Strange Games Festival demonstrates that the idea has much deeper roots.

Strange Games began in 2016, essentially because a small group of friends wanted to play Werewolf in a field, and then the simple gathering grew.

By 2026 Strange Days has developed into three seoarate camping events: the smaller Strange Days Campout in Sussex, a new Bristol event, and the flagship Strange Days Festival back at Bushy Wood in East Sussex. The flagship Festival, held over the August Bank Holiday weekend, catered for more than 500 campers.

On offer at the August event were board games, RPGs, dedicated social deduction areas, mini-megagames, archery, quizzes, mobile immersive games, organised D&D Adventurers League play, food stalls, a bar, and other activities spotted around a woodland site.

Games took place in marquees, shelters, glsdes, and among the trees. Communal campfires became locations for storytelling and playing Werewolf. The organisers explicitly tell visitors that participation in optional, so if you simply want to disappear into the woods, sit around a tent playing something quietly, or simply spend some time with friends you’re entirely welcome to do so. The campsite becomes a little temporary gaming village, and you decided what you want to do while you’re there.

Here is a campsite, Here are a lot of gamers…

Then we have Field of Games. A BoardGameGeek listing from 2017 describes Field of Games simply as “an informal gathering of tabletop gamers camping in an open field”, bringing friends and family together. Rather than attempting to programme every of the event, the proposition is essentially “here is a campsite, here are lots of other gamers, bring some games and start playing”.

That informality has survived through to its current event information. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own tables and chairs, contribute games to a communal library, use the Bring & Buy, and to invite people who don’t seem to be in a game into their session, with games lasting well in to the night if people are up for it.

There is no attemnpt to imitate a typical convention, or trade show, the attraction is 100% the other gamers, playing games, and getting away from the computer screen to the open air and closer to nature for a few days.

Wanderer Market takes tabletop into fantasy-market culture

The campsite festivals aren’t the only sign that tabletop events are spreading out from the convention centres and town halls. On the 5th-6th September the first Wanderer Market took place at the Old Cold Store at Nottingham’s Vat & Fiddle pub.

Admission to the event was free and gave you access to an market-style environment with more than 30 independent artists, makers, and small businesses with a strong emphasis on fantasy and tabletop gaming. The traders were also joined by Pen and Board, a Nottingham based board and Gamemaster hire company that caters for parties, corporate, and pop-up events. Pen and Board ran a selection of games from Blood on the Clocktower, to a number of hour-long drop in RPG sessions, all aimed at being accessible to beginners.

TCGs take over Bermondsey Market

The Brotherhood of Games Market, held on 29th August, effectively took over The Blue Market, an existing pedestrianised community market in Bermondsey, London, for a day of trading cards, collectibles, games, artists, food, and live music.

The event, now in it’s second year, included Card Galaxy, The Subcenter, Azgard Collectibles, Loongcana, and Brotherhood Games among the TCG vendors, with demonstrations of Lorcana, Yu-Gi-Oh! and Cyberpunk taking place alongside board games, arists, face painting, a Creative Alley, local traders and live entertainment. eBay Live also attended, hosting a £20,000 live stream from the event.

The event was open for all and saw existing collectors checking out the stores and entertainment alongside local residents and familes.

SPRU - A Big Event For Small Stands

SPRU - SpruConvention, which is taking place in Nottingham on 26th September, is slightly different as it is a convention in the, er, conventional sense, as it is not escaping the convention hall. Taking place over both floors of he Albert Hall Conference CentreSPRU wsa created to highlight those companies that usually have the smaller stands at larger conventions dominated by big named companies.

SPRU describes itself as “an independent convention celebrating the independent wargaming community” with 20 independent participatio games, 20 independent traders, and talks and Q&As involving designers, artists and sculptors. Participants include Bad Squiddo Games, Turnip28 creator Max Fitzgerald, Planet Smasher Games, Ramshackle Games and Rogue Hobbies!.

The organiser has this to say about the show:

SPRU, to me, is a missing piece of a very obvious puzzle. The creative space of tabletop wargaming, roleplaying and board games is full of some beautiful events and I’m happy to have attended some of them in the last couple of years. Yet they all share one thing: They’re massive, and dominated by massive companies.

Small conventions do exist, small gaming events are very common! But there’s not enough big events for the small events. As silly as that sentence sounds it was this slapdash statement that started the conversation and led to the early planning of SPRU.

SPRU was conceived as essentially a big event for the people who usuallu occupy the small stands. What’s more, traders aren’t being charged anything for their table space, and every trader is given the same amount of space so there are no' ‘big stands’ at the show.

And some gamers are taking the convention to sea

If camping festivals demonstrate how far tabletop events can travel from the exhibition hall there is an even more literal example taking place in the US, and elsewhere.

Some of them have gone to sea.

Board game and roleplaying crusises have developed into quite a business over recent years, basically inserting a gaming convention onto an ordinary passenger cruise. Instead of hiring a hotel ballroom for a weekend, organisers reserve dedicated areas aboard a cruise ship. Participants get the restuarants, bars, entertainment, swimming pools, and the destinations of a conventional holiday, but also have a ready-made community of people with whom to spend hours playing games.

Meeples at Sea, for example, deliberately keeps its cruises really intimate, capping the gaming group at around 100 people. Attendees receive access to a dedicated 24-hour gaming space, a library of more than a 100 board games, learn-to-play and play-to-win titles, welcome bags, and organised social events. Its announced 2027 voyagers use Celebrity Cruises ships for Caribbean and Alaskan trips.

At the larger end, both BoardGameGeek and The Dice Tower have turned thier existing convention communities into recurring cruises.

The Dice Tower Cruise has been operating since 2016, when Tom Vael and Jason Levine set out to take the Dice Tower cpnvention experience to sea. Its January 2027 event is aboard Royal Caribbean’s Icon of the Seas and combined a week-long Caribbean cruise with the Dice Tower’s gaming community and organised tabletop programme.

BGG@SEA runs much like a travelling version of a BoardGameGeek gathering, with substantial open gaming and a large BGG library of games available to choose from. The 2026 Caribbean cruise even allowed each participant to nominate games for the travelling library in advance. Future BGG@SEA cruises are already scheduled for Asia and Alaska in 2027.

Youtubers No Rolls Barred have a Caribbean cruise planned for March 2027, on Royal Caribbean’s Independence of the Seas, which alongside the gaming areas will also see exclusive sessions with the No Rolls Barred cast, as well as live shows and opportunities to playtest games.

D3atSea have taken the same idea, but for tabletop roleplaying as opposed to board gaming. Its October 2026 Alaskan cruise, aboard Norwegian’s Encore, includes more than 12 hours of scheduled gaming with professional Game Masters, with campaign sessions deliberately concentrated on sea days soplayers remain free to explore the ports when the ship docks. Its games extend beyond D&D, with previous voyages including systems such as Monster of the Week, Kids on Bike, Starforged, and Call of Cthulhu.

Taking a look at BoardGameGeek’s current convention directory shows a remarkable amount of gaming voyages, including Spiel@Sea, Clocktower Cruise, and Stonemaier at Sea, and others travelling through the Careibbean, Alaska, Europe, and Asia.

Gaming gatherings are certainly diversifying and finding new locations for people to meet-up and play. If you’ve been to one of the above, or a gathering held in a weird and wonderful location, please let us know in the comments.