Dragonmeet 2025 Debrief - Thoughts & Numbers
- Leo
- 8 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Dragonmeet was our first convention tabling, and it was a hugely helpful experience for us. We have been orbiting conventions for a few years now - going to UKGE and MCM London with our good friends at Soulmuppet, but it’s a totally different experience to running your own stand.
To get the numbers out of the way…
Our costs:
Table cost: £195
Set up cost (buying tablecloths, shelfing, etc): £70
Hotel cost: £248
Petrol cost: £50
Food cost: £70
Total: £633
As for our sales, we made £820, putting us just about into the green for £187 profit.
Units wise, we sold 14 core rulebooks, 6 slipcases, 5 card decks, 21 stickers and 2 pins.
For us, we had a lot of interest on the day and spent a lot of time engaged in conversations with customers, which was honestly delightful. Everyone who came up and spoke to us was truly appreciated! However, there were many slow periods throughout the day, and I think our lower sales figures can be attributed to a few things.
Animon has been available for a few years now.
It has had convention presence through Soulmuppet, and through our publisher Metal Weave in the USA. Despite this being our first time at the table, Animon has been available to those seeking it out for some time. A lot of folks approaching us knew of us and were our lovely backers, but that meant we had little to offer them aside from cute stickers.
Dragonmeet is a convention with many adults.
Animon was made with nostalgic adults in mind, since it’s Zak’s love letter to the monster taming genre and born out of a desire to play those stories at the table. However, it is also a family friendly product. We had kids coming up to our stand and telling us about the animon campaign they are in, we get feedback from backers about the fun sessions they run for their kids, and a lot of conversations we had on the day were with parents, trying to assess if they could use animon to spark their own children’s interest in TTRPG’s. We know the 'nostalgic adult' audience exists online: they have been buying on itch and supporting our kickstarters for years, but they were noticeably lacking at Dragonmeet compared to more grimdark or traditional rpg fans. In addition, the family audience seemed to be a smaller slice than at UKGE, for example. We chatted with a couple of other exhibitors pitching at a similar audience, who mentioned this trend as well.
Small cute stand next to grim horror masterpiece
We are incredibly close with the folks at CaesarINK, all of us being close friends since before any one of us were doing things independently in the scene, so being next to each other was a wonderful way to support each other throughout the convention. However, the juxtaposition of our very cutesy stand with the dark horrors of Doomsong was so jarring it was comical. CaesarINK - very deservedly - are highly popular at conventions, drawing in people who are very interested in their offerings. We learned quickly that there were very few people looking for both Doomsong and Animon Story - though shout out to those few who were! I wish we had prepared some kind of certificate for you.
So why do it? What was good?
Firstly, I’m stoked we didn’t lose money here. As our first convention, I wasn’t sure what to expect. The feedback from our peers is that Dragonmeet is their best convention of the year, but the majority of those peers offer very different games. We can’t expect to have the same results as someone who is making games for a different audience. So despite it being small, I’m glad we didn’t lose money.
Secondly, it was wonderful to connect with other industry professionals and friends. Muppetmeet on Friday evening gave some great talks and panels that we found incredibly useful, alongside the feeling that we aren’t alone in this. There are many people making games I admire, making truly incredible art and supporting others as they grow. Being able to listen to such insightful people, share our thoughts and dilemmas with those who have run this race 100 times already, is so immensely valuable. Words of support and advice from folks with so much experience was reassuring and helpful, and honestly we can’t thank you enough for it. I can only hope we can pay it forward in some way in the future!
Thirdly, we learned so much about our convention audience and our presence was valuable marketing. Being able to talk to people directly about Animon Story, pitching it to folks with different interests, and giving out many fliers to folks on the fence - the amount I learned here is wild, if I went into detail on all my different thoughts on this it would probably make this ridiculously long, but the gist is people are cool and now more cool people know who we are. And that is good!
Lastly, we successfully DID a convention! I bullied Zak into booking this stand this year, and did everything I could to set up for it. Now we’ve done it once, I feel so much more confident in trying again. I loved the way the stand turned out, everyone who approached us already had a very clear idea of what we were offering even if they’d never heard of us before, which was excellent. We’ve already started considering numbers for UKGE, talked about what we would change, been inspired on what we want to do next. So was it worth it? I certainly think so. See you at the next one!