Steam is hosting a digital tabletop festival and sale next week

Next week, the Steam Digital Tabletop Fest will bring together video games and those we used to bring together to play in person. The five-day event features interviews, panels, game sessions and streaming activities “that explore the amalgamation of physical and digital games.”

Of course, the convergence of video and tabletop games is nothing new. Early role-playing games were often direct translations of Dungeons and Dragons games, and a game called Tabletop Simulator has been available on Steam since 2015. (It’s actually pretty good too.)

But the Tabletop Fest is likely to go deeper than the obvious examples that come to mind, with “main stage events” like a livestream with Elizabeth Hargrave, the designer of the physical edition of Wingspan, an interview with Doom designer Sandy Petersen (the it is also) designed a number of board games in his career), an Armello game session with developer League of Geeks, and a Vermintide 2 session with members of Fatshark and Warhammer fantasy role-playing game designer Graeme Davis.

The full Digital Tabletop Fest events calendar and an option to set up a variety of reminders are available on Steam. And because I know you’re curious, there will also be a digital tabletop sale with offers and demos for “Hundreds of card, board and tabletop-related titles on Steam”. It’s not live yet, but if it is, the sales page can be found here.