Last year’s trip to Gary Con was supposed to be a one off, a ‘Trip of Lifetime’ but as you might have read in last year’s blog post it was an experience I was keen to repeat. I worked hard, I saved my pennies and with the support of my ever amazing (& non gaming) wife I planned a return trip to Lake Geneva.
Sadly my good friend and travel buddy Isa couldn’t join me on this year’s trip so I traveled to Chicago on my own, this time on a direct flight from London.
I’d planned to arrive a day early to allow my body clock time to adjust. Asking around about sharing transport from O’Hare to Lake Geneva I got a message from a friend I’d met at last year’s convention. Jason Hobbs was kind enough to bring his trip forward a day, picking me up from the airport and driving up to our B&B in Lake Geneva. We made plans to head over to Madison and meet Alex Kammer, another acquaintance from last year’s event. Alex runs Gamehole Con, another Wisconsin gaming convention held in the autumn. He is also a big collector of old school D&D books and memorabilia We were able to check out his amazing collection, housed in a custom gaming space he calls ‘The Gamehole’
This is a 1st printing of the 1st Edition AD&D Monster Manual, signed by Gary Gygax.
As well as books Alex also has some unique artifacts. This is the original map of the Forgotten Realms, used to define what is now the default setting for Dungeons and Dragons today.
The exceptionally rare English module ST1 ‘Up The Garden Path’
Me, with a rare first printing of Chainmail, the ruleset written by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren. Chainmail preceded Dungeons and Dragons and was intended to be used in the original edition of D&D to resolve combat. The system we use today for D&D combat has evolved from what was originally intended to be the ‘alternate’ rules for folk who didn’t own a copy of Chainmail!
We got back to our B&B around 10pm, but my body clock wasn’t fooled, it knew it should be 4am and I’m sure I entertained Hobbs with some pretty hard core snoring on the drive back!
Now I’m a believer that if you do something twice it becomes a tradition so on Wednesday we met up with Bruce Heard for our now traditional pre Gary Con lunch, at the ‘Next Door Pub’ Bruce is always good company and it was great to catch up with him. I was pleased to hear his latest ‘Calidar’ product is taking shape, I’m excited to receive my copy from the Kickstarter later this year.
After lunch we headed off to the Geneva Grand Resort, home of the convention to pick up our badges and get settled in.
We arrived a little early so I had a short wait before my room was ready. It was while I waited in the bar watching people arrive that I started to realise that this trip really was going to be at least as magical as the previous year. You see, the magic of Gary Con, for me at least, is the people. Having just picked up my badge and not even rolled a single dice I was happy so see more friends arrive. Much hugging and laughing ensued, setting the standard for the days to come.
On Wednesday evening I ticked off ‘Dawn Patrol’ from my ‘want to play’ bucket list. Michael Bolam facilitated an awesome intro game for a bunch of newbies and despite rolling badly (winning initiative is a bad start in this game!) I survived my first game and even got my first ‘kill’
After the game I had time for a couple of beers in the bar, catching up with friends old and new before getting an early night (well, midnight?) ready to start the gaming the next day.
On Thursday morning I ran my first game of Dungeon Crawl Classics (The 13th Skull) for a great table of players, most of whom had some experience of the system. I felt like it took me a couple of hours to hit my GMing stride but the pace accelerated pretty quickly. The party making good progress until my dice suddenly ran hot and we finished with a TPK!
My afternoon game was the session I was most anxious about. I was running my own adventure for ‘The Umerican Survival Guide’ and I whilst the table was full of familiar faces I was nervous running for so many creative folk! I think it went down ok, we certainly laughed a lot and I’ve got some ideas to tweak the adventure before I run it next at the UK Games Expo.
Thursday evening was another great social night, both in the hotel bar and at the party I was invited to by my roommate.
It was great to have a few minutes with Luke Gygax. Luke is the driving force behind the convention and Gary Con is a fantastic tribute to his dad. I’m sure Gary would be happy to see thousands of people gathering to play games in his memory.
“I would like the world to remember me as the guy who really enjoyed playing games and sharing his knowledge and his fun pastimes with everybody else.”
I also got to chat and hang out with bunch of other well know D&D faces.
Stefan Pokorny, aka ‘The Dwarvenaught’
with Jon Peterson (”Art & Arcana” & “Playing At The World”) and Mike Carr (”Dawn Patrol” and “In Search Of The Unknown” for D&D, amongst others!)
Whilst it’s great to see the new wave of D&D ‘Rock Stars’ promoting the hobby I think chatting with Mike Carr and him shaking my hand to congratulate me on my first ‘Dawn Patrol’ kill the previous night was a highlight of the convention!
Back in the bar I met up with more of the tribe, including Tom Tullis of Fat Dragon Games who produces the amazing 3D printable minis and scenery I use in a lot of my games at home.
Friday was my Birthday. I started an epic day of gaming running Operation Whitebox, a World War 2 RPG by Pete Spahn. It was really good to finally meet Pete and once again he had generously donated copies of the rulebook to all my players. He stopped by during the game to sign books and hang out. I had a great table of friends new and old who worked well together to complete their dangerous mission behind enemy lines with only two casualties!
I ran straight from my own game to sit at Stephen Newton’s table for his DCC adventure. Stephen’s a great judge and I was pleased to be back at his table this year. This was a completely new adventure to me and I was playing with a great bunch of players with a wide age range, kids through to adult. I’ve had some really great experiences playing at mixed tables with kids recently and this game was no exception!
After this game Stephen and I headed off to the next game, we were both playing in ‘Blacklisted in Lankhmar’ run by Jen Brinkman.
This was my first time playing with Jen and I was excited to grab a spot in this game at almost the last minute. Normally coming to the end of 12 hours of gaming my mind and attention would be wandering but Jen is a captivating judge, and DCC Lankhmar is a lot of fun - a great game perfectly reworked to fit this classic setting from the works of Fritz Leiber
I was planning a couple of quiet birthday beers before another early(ish) night - but it was not to be! I certainly wasn’t expecting to have the a couple of hundred people in the bar singing happy birthday before I was presented with this amazing cake by friends Dave and Kathy. I may have been a little drunk and emotional that night!
Saturday Morning’s game was my Dark Trails funnel adventure.
I squeezed a couple of extra players around the table for this and although I’ve added to it since it’s first outing at the UK Games Expo it’s clear I still have some work to do, but I think everyone had fun.
One of the extra players was a fellow twitch mini painter, Ali, it so good to meet her and take delivery of the minis she had painted for me!
Saturday afternoon I found Carl Heyl’s drop in/drop out Basic D&D game. Carl is the current host of long time Classic D&D podcast Save Or Die and I loved sitting in on his game for a little while.
I had to keep my time in Carl’s game short because I’d signed up to play at 5pm in a ‘Super Secret Playtest’ with Michael Curtis.
By the time I sat down the secret was ‘out’ and I was excited to find I’d be taking part in the first public play test of Goodman Games 5th Edition conversion of the classic module ‘Expedition to the Barrier Peaks’ This game was a lot of fun on so many levels. I was out of my comfort zone playing a Bard and in 5th Edition D&D too! However we had an absolute blast playing through some fun encounters and it ticked several things off my bucket list.
Playing with Michael Curtis had been a long standing ambition - he didn’t disappoint, even when he teased me with “Do you want to burn any luck? Oh, sorry, wrong system!” It was also cool to play a classic Gygax module at Gary Con!
Saturday night was another party night. After my game I met some more friends in the bar. Alex, Zach and Greg seemed to have been gaming non stop all weekend but we made time to hang out and enjoy a couple of ‘Old Fashioned’s before the unofficial ‘Cultural Exchange’ social night.
With Jen and my roommate Jobe Bitmann
with Jim and Hayley Skatch
I did it! Last year I failed to get all the Spellburn podcast folk together in a picture but here’s proof it can happen without incurring a Phlogiston disturbance!
The cultural exchange ran on and I enjoyed sampling and sharing local beer and food with friends, although the handful of Wisconsin cheese with Ghost peppers that I inadvertently almost inhaled nearly choked me!
As the unofficial event wound down in the early hours I noticed the bar filling up and managed to grab a couple more photos with the celebs.
Joe Manganiello - my wife is a big fan, clearly she’s just into guys who like D&D, right?
Matt Mercer came across as a really nice guy, clearly really passionate about the hobby.
Sunday arrived with even less sleep than previous days but I was able to grab a quick breakfast bite and a chat with my buddy Victor as we walked down to our morning game.
I ran my Red Box D&D adventure ‘Return To Lion Castle’ which is a tribute to the first D&D adventure I ever played. I only had three players - I’m assuming the other three who signed up were more hungover than me, which is quite an achievment! We still had a lot of fun and I hope to run this one again soon.
In the afternoon I sat down with Jen, Bob, Nick and Marlene for lunch. This is the second year Jen and I have had lunch on the Sunday so I’m calling this a new tradition too!
Speaking of traditions another one that I’m pleased to be part of was my last game of the convention. Bob Brinkman’s ‘Dead Dogs’ game ran past midnight. Bob once again did a fantastic job guiding a very full table of twenty (!) players through an amazing improv pirate themed DCC adventure! I laughed so much I almost cried. When I eventually had to hug everyone goodbye and walk back to my room I might actually have done so...
I checked out of the hotel on Monday and had good company for the day having been offered a ride back to Chicago with Doug, Stefan and co, the DCC art contingent. We had a great pub lunch and checked out the Chicago Art Institute before I took the obligatory selfies at ‘The Bean’
I caught my late flight home and Gary Con was over for another year
The memories live on and with a little bit of luck (and some hard work!) I hope to be back next year.
