Article:
The Student National Roleplaying and Wargaming Championships

I don’t go to many conventions, but there is always one that I make it to every year and that’s ‘The Student National Roleplaying and Wargaming Championships’ and it’s unlike any other convention that you will find, or at least that I know of, in this country. I know that not many of you will have heard of it so I’ll explain a little about what it is before telling you about this year’s event.

To start with, it’s not open to the general public. If you try turning up on the day with your dice or army or decks then you’ll be turned away, sorry about that. It’s open purely to university gaming societies from around the UK.

The other big difference is in the format of the gaming. At most conventions you’ll have different games and competitions going on at various times, with additional panels and events going on as time goes by, so you could be moving from one game to another, with additional fees for each game you want to play.

The Student Nationals, as I’ll refer to them from here on in, is vastly different to that model. For one, you pay a flat entry fee and the rest of your wallet is your own. There is a list of categories on offer and you enter one category for your team. You’ll then be playing that game all day Saturday and again all day Sunday. At the end of Sunday's games there’s a huge awards ceremony and each category is judged awarding people prizes and points (for their teams) for 1st, 2nd and 3rd. At the end, the team with the highest point total wins, and then hosts the next year’s event.

The category choices are usually split into three sections, with wargaming having choices like Warhammer 40k and Fantasy Battle, Necromunda, Battlefleet Gothic and so on. You’d be expected to bring your army will full lists and you’ll be battling a host of challengers over five or so scenarios throughout the course of the weekend on a variety of terrains.

The roleplaying section will have not only named games on offer (like Call of Cthulhu, DnD and Star Wars) but also genre themed games like Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Humour, Horror and Homebrew where you could be playing literally anything that would fit into that genre and you’ll not be expected to know the rules or the system. The point not about the complexity of the game, the point is to have fun playing the story.