Rolling the dice on creativity: the story behind Go Play Brisbane 2025

Brisbane’s much-loved tabletop role-playing convention, Go Play, is back for another year, transforming The Edge at State Library of Queensland into a hub of creativity and connection on Saturday 30 and Sunday 31 August 2025. What began as a modest gathering in 2008 has grown into a vibrant, two-day event showcasing the spirit of storytelling and collaborative adventure.

Ahead of this year’s convention, State Library sat down with Andrew Smith, founder of Go Play and member of the organising committee. They delve into the origins of the event, its evolution, and what’s in store for the 2025 attendees as Go Play continues to foster community, creativity, and connection within Brisbane’s gaming scene.

Q How did Go play first come about?

Andrew Smith During Gen Con Oz (another game convention many years ago), I had the opportunity to talk with Robin Laws, an experienced game designer and writer who was a special guest at that event. He dropped this pearl of wisdom for me, "The local game community needs the local game convention." Gen Con Oz was a massive event and drew in attendees from all over the country. I thought that I could turn Robin's advice into something concrete and began to organise the first Go Play Brisbane.

Q How long has it been running?

AS The first one was in 2008 and only had eight attendees! Some of those eight people still come to Go Play and they're always a delight to see again. 

Q Has it changed how? What’s the focus this year?

AS It's become much larger, now spreading across two full days instead of one. We also see a wider diversity of attendees across age and gender than we did in the first few years. The organising team is always working to grow Go Play in all those dimensions, to build the local gaming community. In 2025 our theme is Connections and you can see that across the imagery this year. We've offered that to the people who run the games as inspiration. I'm excited to see what that brings.

Q Why do you host it at The Edge?

AS We love hosting at The Edge! The venue is central to Brisbane and has so many great accessible features. We've had attendees with mobility limitations tell us that this is one of the few gaming events they can come to because of The Edge's facilities. And we also love the activities of The Edge to inspire creativity across language and physical objects. Many of the games we've seen at Go Play add to their narrative content with beautiful objects such as cards, game pieces, maps and more. The team at The Edge have been supportive, year after year, in helping us bring to life an event for the Brisbane gaming community and that makes it such an attractive choice for us when we think about venues. 

Q What type of participants come along and what do you think they get out of it?

AS We find a wide range of people come to Go Play, but they have much in common across those differences. They love to tell stories together, stories of adventure and drama across many genres. They're able to bring their creativity into the room, meeting with others around the game table to make something collaboratively that they will talk about for years to come. Some people have subsequently decided to make their own games and then bring it to play the next year. Most of all, people make friends at Go Play. Out of that community have come many new gaming groups that continue their shared interest long after Go Play has finished for the year. Speaking even for myself, I still play games with some people who came to the very first Go Play all those years ago. 

Q What are some of the highlights over the years? And what are you excited about this year?

AS I'm always delighted to list all the games that have been at Go Play that are locally designed and made! South East Queensland has such a talent pool for game design. This year I'm especially excited about a couple of designers who launched games in Brisbane, moved away and are coming back to bring their latest games. Let me add that we'll also have out of town designers too, people who have never been based in Brisbane but who are making the trek from out of state. This range of award-winning talent is not to be missed.

Go Play is a highlight of my year as an organiser because of what I see on the faces of people during that weekend. They're excited to walk in, to be at the game tables, and then to walk out having had new creative experiences. No prior experience is necessary! We welcome the long-time attendees just as much as the people who've never even heard of story games. I hope that anyone reading this who is curious about this form of creating and telling stories will come and check out Go Play in 2025.