June Newsletter
TIN is going to the UK Games Expo!
Hi! I’m Michael, and welcome to the TIN catalogue for UK Games Expo.
We have more to show off than ever before… partly because our community of creators has grown so much, but also because we’re sharing a stall with Hive Mind Games and Leith Illustration, and participating in #StampQuest24 with two dozen other stalls!
Please stop by stall 1-592 to say hello, and grab yourself an amazing haul of indie tabletop goodness.
To support TIN, join our Patreon or give a one-off donation on Ko-fi.
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Meetups & Events
May was our busiest month so far, thanks to the last minute organisation of an industry networking event on Friday 24th, hosted jointly by TIN and SoulMuppet Publishing. It was a fantastic event, with lots of familiar faces, fun conversations, and great talks by Zach Cox from SoulMuppet and Anna Poulter-Jones from Sheridans. Thank you to everyone who could attend, especially at short notice!
Our regular social events in the coming month are:
London: Thursday 6th June, 7pm, The Arcanist’s Tavern (then the first Thursday of each month)
Glasgow: Friday 31st May, 14th June and 28th June, 10am, Beco Building, 62 Kingston Street (then fortnightly)
Virtual Coffee Morning: Sunday 16th June, 11am, coffee-morning channel in the UK TIN Discord (then the third Sunday of each month).
There is no Manchester meet up this month because it would clash with UKGE, but they will resume again in July (the first Saturday of each month at 2.30pm).
UKGE Highlights
UK Games Expo is this weekend: Friday May 31st and Sunday June 2nd at the NEC Birmingham. We’ve joined forces with Hive Mind Games and Leith Illustration at stall 1-592.
Hive Mind Games are a game design powerhouse based in Manchester. Their main offering is the Kickstarter mega-hit Brother, Why?, a rules-light boxset comedy game about silly lil guys in weird medieval art. It’s perfect for a fun, relaxed game night, and we’ll be stocking tie-in merchandise for all your favourite goobers!
Leith (they/he) is a non-binary artist and writer from Norwich. Their illustrations explore identity, gender nonconformity and mental health through the lens of fantasy, mythology, gaming and popular culture. Leith also illustrates for independent RPG companies and they are happy to discuss commissions. What’s more, anyone at UKGE who commissions Leith over the weekend for personal character illustrations will receive an exclusive 15% discount! Check out their current work on Instagram or on tumblr, get in touch via their website or browse their Etsy shop.
Stamp Quest 2024 is a brand new, interactive scavenger hunt and art collaboration. More than 28 stallholders across UKGE are participating quest givers, ready to receive intrepid convention explorers and bestow a boon in the form of an ink stamp! Collect the stamps on your Stamp Quest leaflet (shown above, and available on the day from stall 1-592), whilst connecting with awesome creators and discovering new games along the way.
Find and collect all 28 stamps, then return the stamped leaflet to stall 1-592, and you’ll be entered into a prize draw after the con, with a wondrous £1000 worth of prizes up for grabs!
The TIN stall is offering a huge selection of games and game-related products from exciting up-and-coming developers, many familiar to friends of TIN or long-term readers. Our library includes zines by:
Michael Duxbury, including Crying Wolf and Golden Eggs (both inspired by dark twists on Aesop’s fables), LadyBeaste (80s romantic fantasy), Field Trip (kid-friendly adventure), and PolyTheist (in which clerics navigate their relationships with multiple gods).
Eleanor Hingley, including Ex Libris, about returning books and creating a filing system for books in a fantasy library, and Seed of an Idea, a book of prompts for writers and worldbuilders.
Mikhail Malkin, whose goal for the system-agnostic fantasy adventure Fishbone Archipelago: Lost Lighthouse was to make an adventure with as much art as possible.
Button Kin Games, including group games like Drama Llamas (about llamas competing on reality TV) and solo games like Bumbling, as well as the D&D 5e adventure The Tillvayle Committee.
LunarShadow Designs, both from his Dyson Eclipse sci-fi series (e.g. Hopes and Dreams of the Orbital Bound) and his games of Cold War espionage (e.g. the psychic spies game Project Cassandra), as well as the system-agnostic adventures The Dusk Bringers (fantasy) and The Kandhara Contraband (sci-fi).
Artemis Games, including Pet Rescue, about demigod pets looking for their missing demigod caretaker, and Shards: Worldbuilding Zine.
Eran Aviram, including Menagerie of the Void and Caregiver, about a sad zoo in space and the guidance of a benevolent healing spirit respectively.
Sealed Library, including The Sealed Library, a solo game about the last surviving librarian of the greatest library in history, and The What on the Borderwhere, a tool for playing old-school dungeons the way you remember them.
Tori Truslow, including Tending: A Game of Devotion, a mixed-media journalling game about a devotee at a holy site, and Cut-up Catacomb, an activity zine to inspire worldbuilding.
Far Horizons CoOp, who are bringing Outliers.
Marx Shepherd, creator of a loud noise in a quiet place.
W.H. Arthur, including The Sol Survivor, Molotov College, D12 & Delve, CONVICT-ION, as well as the wordless RPG A Game Designer Is You.
Frederic Walker, including Scribe and his recently funded The Kingdom of Prester John.
We’ll also be selling accessories and other fun stuff, including:
A collection of battlemaps, stickers, Ash Nocktem’s Travelling Companions, and live character sketches from Mikhail Malkin.
Concept Cards by Artemis Games, for timely inspiration and support for GMs who need a character or other setting element right away.
The card-based board games Would Like to Meet and WordStacker by Ingenium Games.
Beautiful, centrepiece D20 candles available in a range of sizes: mini, medium, and massive. They’re very popular, and they’ve been known to sell out before the end of the con, so make sure you visit early to get the one you want!
Contributors to this month’s edition of the TIN newsletter were Jack Terry, Stephen Morffew, Josh Gane, and Michael Duxbury. If you would like to contribute to the newsletter, drop a message in the #tin-volunteering channel of the UK TIN Discord or contact Stephen Morffew via email at stepintorpgs(at)outlook(dot)com.