Edinburgh’s Tabletop and Graphic Storytelling Festival (tagfest.co.uk) has just wrapped up its 2025 event at the Fruitmarket, cementing its status as a vital showcase for the UK’s independent press.
While the floor was bustling with creators of indie comics, zines, and games, the undeniable star of the show was the print debut of Carved in Stone, a new supplement for tabletop roleplaying games that is changing the narrative on Scotland’s Picts.
Forget the blue-painted barbarian stereotypes popularised by Roman accounts and fantasy tropes. Carved in Stone: A Storyteller’s Guide to the Picts is a deeply researched, system-neutral guide that presents 7th-century Pictland as the complex, multicultural, and advanced society it was.
As detailed in coverage dating back to 2021, the book – part visual encyclopaedia, part setting guide – is backed by historical scholarship and aims to bring the Picts to life “in technicolour.” It moves far beyond stereotypes to explore the real-world language, fashion, beliefs, and politics of the era. Published by Stout Stoat Press, whose co-founder is one of the festival’s organisers, its presence set the tone for the entire event.
TAGS Fest is an explicit celebration of the indie scene. As noted by our sister site Edinburgh Reviews, the event is a crucial platform for small press creators. The stalls were proudly filled with imaginative, creative, and personal projects, with a clear focus on local talent, contemporary folklore, and LGBTQ+ stories. As one video review of the event put it, this was a space for games that are “not D&D” and graphic novels that are “not Marvel.”
The event, which ran over the 25th and 26th of October, was praised for its “bright and airy” venue. It was also a notably inclusive and welcoming “mask positive place,” with the Edinburgh Mask Bloc on-site providing free face masks for any attendees who needed one.
A walk through the aisles revealed the sheer diversity of the indie scene. Titles on display ranged from the quirky Boyfriend & Burger and Incarnated As a Trash Can to the Lovecraftian horror of Innsmouth: The Stolen Child. Other notable finds included the beautifully illustrated Blacksad, the classic The Incal, and a host of zines on everything from “Mothman” to “Why We Mask.”
TAGS Fest is done for this year, but it has proven itself an essential date on the calendar for anyone interested in the future of independent roleplaying games and graphic storytelling.
