At this year’s UK Games Expo, I treated myself to a new RPG book. Its creator was part of a passionate team from Belgium, and a quick skim showed something that could improve my improv tenfold. I bought it and walked away, pleased to have supported a small business.
When I got home, the worries began.
While hearing the sales pitch, I’d failed to ask a crucial question. ‘Did you use AI to make this?’
I’m a writer. If I’m having a good self esteem day, I might even call myself an artist. I’m also a journalist working in the age of Google AI summaries. These have spread like an infection across the search engine, and they chew up the words of real people to spit out their own dubious digest.
Google’s summaries reduce website traffic. Websites with reduced traffic cut costs by sacking writers. Some even ditch their workforce and have AI do all the writing instead. Those writers re-enter the job market, to find most of the stable writing jobs have been replaced with AI-checking roles – because the tech can replace our labor, but it still can’t get basic facts right.
I haven’t even mentioned the RAM shortages AI is causing. I haven’t mentioned the concerning environmental effects, or the real harm it does to people with mental illnesses. I haven’t touched on the potential skill loss we face from relying on AI, or the artistic problems caused by hiring a machine that can only regurgitate existing ideas to do creative work.
In short, I loathe AI. I’m not alone there – especially in the tabletop gaming space. Despite vocal critics, AI is still creeping into the tabletop industry, and the pushback is loud.
This year, UK Games Expo was more than a convention. It was a battleground between artists and Artificial Intelligence.
“The lack of stance has been incredibly disappointing”
The conflict began long before vendors were on the show floor. In November 2025, UKGE faced backlash for its paid promotion of a TTRPG using generative AI. Gates of Krystalia’s creators openly defended its use of the tech in social media comments (often resorting to insults as part of their argument). Rascal reached out to UKGE for comment at the time, but no reply was received.
Gates of Krystalia did not appear at the convention this year. However, TTRPG designer Kat Waldman (known as Kat the Lore Mistress in her writing and design work) told Wargamer they saw several other vendors selling AI-generated content.
“There were a lot of stalls that I walked past that I suspected were using AI”, they say, “but the only two I can confirm were Adventure Bears (who used it on their banner and in their advertising) and Map Map Games, for their game Blocks Of Glory, who are very open about the use of AI in their processes”.
UK Games Expo itself has no rules prohibiting the sale and promotion of AI content. Its exhibitor terms and conditions ban the sale of weapons, products unsuitable for families and children, and anything “likely to cause offense or distress” to others. There is no mention of AI-generated works specifically.
Wargamer asked UK Games Expo why there were no policies in place regarding AI, and we asked the con to clarify its official stance on the emerging tech. At time of writing, we have also received no reply.
This silence has been noticed by others in the hobby space, too. “UKGE themselves have been very quiet on the matter of AI, giving no official indication of their stance one way or another”, says Waldman. “Honestly, the lack of stance from UKGE has been incredibly disappointing and acts as its own kind of response, as so many other cons (including MCM, a very large convention) have policies that address its use.”
Judson Cowan, designer and illustrator of the board games Deep Regrets and Personal Demons, tells me he was “extremely disappointed” to see no clear stance from UK Games Expo. “I’m from Atlanta, Georgia, home of the epic DragonCon, and have a bit of pride at the recent PR story where they booted a vendor for selling AI slop.”
“I would love to see UKGE take a public stance against the use of AI and not even allow vendors that sell it”, he adds. “Give that space to creators that are putting in the effort, not opportunistic capitalists.”
“Given the impact that generative AI can have on the lives and livelihoods of creative professionals, it is disappointing that UKGE has not yet taken a firm stance on the issue, as Dragonmeet recently has”, says TTRPG publisher Rowan, Rook, & Decard. “We hope the organisers will reconsider this for next year.”
“AI is a force multiplier for the worst aspects of our industry”
UK Games Expo may have no public opinion on AI, but it also allowed attendees to make their thoughts known. Two panels at this year’s show addressed AI’s impact on the tabletop industry. Coincidentally, ‘Generative AI and Tabletop’ and ‘A Seat at the Table: Women in TTRPGs’ ran at the same time.
Evie Moriarty (designer of Modiphius’ Wolfenstein TTRPG and Soulmuppet’s Mad as Hell) chaired the first discussion. “It was a really interesting experience”, she tells Wargamer. “Generative AI is a huge problem, but it’s really just exacerbating issues that already existed in the industry.”
“Wages are already low in the industry, especially for freelancers, and AI is just making that worse”, she explains. “Low quality products full of junk or stolen content were already issues for the industry, AI has just ramped up the quantity and made it harder to parse.” “AI is a force multiplier for the worst aspects of our industry, and that’s where my worry is.”
Moriarty also points out interesting consumer distinctions between AI art and AI used elsewhere. “I asked at one point for folks to put their hands up if they’d buy from a company that openly used generative AI in their creative works and very few hands went up, but when I asked if they’d buy from a company that openly used it in their backend and logistics, almost everyone put their hands up”, she says.
“Several of the panellists pushed back on this, with Corey from IWGB (Independent Workers Union of Great Britain) citing the impact on workers across the industry, and several panellists pointing out that coding is a creative discipline.”
The second panel was hosted by Women of TTRPG. “Kayla on the Women Of TTRPG panel made a very good point about how creators have had to become far more suspicious while scoping out the con and its creators, and that in itself is a threat to our industry”, Waldman says.
“Many of us are small creators, publishers, exhibitors, artists, and freelancers, and we rely on the sense of community that being part of this creative space brings in order to thrive”, they add. “The fact that we are having to thoroughly research, and cast any kind of discerning eye over the work of our fellow traders feels awful.”
“The pushback needed to happen on the convention floor”
On the show floor, exhibitors found other ways to push back against AI. I first noticed this resistance when viewing a demo of Beardy Boo Games’ upcoming push-your-luck title, Escape the Ghost Train. My teacher, designer Craig Tubbs, was wearing a ‘No AI’ badge. Similar homemade signs appeared at many of the stalls I passed.
Many of these, it turns out, were made by Steph Windross, TTRPG designer at Fistful of Crits. Windross was part of the Women in TTRPGs panel at this year’s show, and she was one of UKGE’s vocal critics when Gates of Krystalia was being promoted.
Windross mentioned her idea to produce ‘Human Made’ signs for the show to Matt Sanders of Rowan, Rook & Decard, who offered to help fund printing. Windross claims Modiphius also supported production. “As we also function as an indie printing company, it was easy to print and have the signs available for anyone who wanted to pick one up – a thing I advertised before the event”, she says.
The final product was a vivid red sign with a huge, anti-AI logo on it. “Customer reaction was interesting”, Windross tells Wargamer, “they appreciated seeing people make their stance clear”.
“AI felt like a major topic throughout the weekend and many people approached me after the panel to say how much they appreciated the signs and the pushback”, she adds. “I noted customer frustration that this was a factor they had to consider when making purchases, though they wanted to support real creatives.” “The signs made that easier for them to navigate, but many expressed to me they wished it wasn’t the case.”
Windross says the signs were her way of pushing back against the “very telling” silence of UKGE on the subject of AI. “In my opinion, boycotting doesn’t work; they will just replace you with another vendor, and that vendor might be an AI user or a dropshipper”, she says. “I felt like the pushback needed to happen on the convention floor, driven by community adoption to communicate to the organisers (in front of the customers) that this was something their vendors felt strongly about.”
“My concern, like most, is that an AI creator is taking valuable space away from a real creator and damaging the con’s reputation in the process”, Windross adds. “This convention is one many of us rely on and I think UKGE ought to remember that its success has been built on creative passion and labour.” “I can only hope that the organisers haven’t put me on a blacklist for this – but I felt it was important.”
Rowan, Rook, & Decard echo these concerns. Founder Maz Hamilton says “generative AI removes the human from the art”. “All generative AI can do is mash together existing ideas – often stolen, as our games have been, and used without permission – and make something that is a smeared mess of what’s come before.”
“Novelty, genius and elegance do not live in these machines”, they add. “They live in people, often underpaid or struggling to find a voice and a space in a world where attention is increasingly hard to grab and art is very rarely a route to making a living.”
This year’s show may be over, but Waldman says “we need to keep being loud” about the presence of AI at tabletop conventions. “I can only hope that if we do, then UKGE will see that this issue is not going away, and that any negative backlash towards AI is not because we want to kick up a fuss or make the lives of the organisers difficult, but because we care about the space, the convention itself, and everything that its existence represents.”
That book I bought, by the way? It was Towns and Villages, a D&D supplement that was, thankfully, human made. May all hobby spaces continue to celebrate the passion and creativity that is so uniquely human.
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Source: Wargamer
