Gamehole Con X in Madison Wisconsin was a great time. I have GHC XI marked on my calendar for next year.

Gamehole is, by far, the largest convention I’ve attended. There were more than 6,000 people in attendance over the four day event. Despite the size and complexity of managing such a large event, it is one of the most organized and well run conventions I’ve attended. Everything from getting registered, submitting games, getting a hotel room, and finding the locations of my events was well managed and easy.

Check in

I did have a few hiccups over the weekend but they were minimal. The first one was my badge. My badge was not in the file when I arrived. I had to do a bit of back and forth between the information desk and registration to get my badge. It was quickly sorted out and I got on my way.

I expected that there might be a big line but they had a good setup to make the check in process fast.

On the Fly Game and Event Sign Ups

One thing that is very impressive about Gamehole Con is the online event finder and sign up system. You can search and filter results based on time, day, type of game, system and more to find an event that suits you. You can join a game using the site on your phone right up to the time the game starts. I had a few players drop out but the seats were filled by players who joined in at the last minute.

What I played

I spent most of the convention game mastering and only played in a demo of Free League’s Symbaroum, a grimdark fantasy setting. It’s largely a D20 roll under system with some interesting characteristics. Players do all the dice rolling against targets modified by the particular adversary and what the player is trying to do.

The adventure was an introductory one intended to show you some of the elements of the setting. It is not a heroic setting. Most everyone is trying to survive in a bad situation. Characters are likely to become mutated, insane, and corrupted as they explore the forest of Davokar. Free League always has great art and what I saw of the art in the Symbaroum books was excellent.

There were a few players who knew the game and setting along with the game master who was part of the demo team for Free League. The system is simple enough that anyone with experience playing RPGs will get it quickly. The pre-generated characters were interesting though I think the scenario they selected had a slow start.

Marc Miller’s Seminars

I went to two seminars presented by Marc Miller, the creator of the Traveller. Rather than give a lecture, he answered questions and facilitated discussion. One session was about rules, the second was about the setting of Traveller. Marc has been a game designer for a long time and having a chance to listen to what he had to say about the craft was worth showing up early in the day. A couple of things I picked up from Marc’s talk:

1. Marc encouraged referees and players to interpret the setting and apply rules according to their own preferences.
2. Marc continues to think about and mess with rules and system of the game even if they don’t get published.
3. The major forces/polity of the setting are not nice and that’s intentional to encourage aspirational play. What do “heroes” do if there isn’t something villainous to fight against?

Socializing

The other thing I did besides run games was to socialize with people I met at North Texas RPG con and know from online. Jason Hobbs of Hobbs and Friends invited me to visit and use his booth during the weekend. He introduced me to a number of gamers who participate on the Gaming and BS Discord server. We had a lot of laughs. I’ll be posting a one question interview with Jason on my YouTube channel in the next week.

I spent quite a bit of Saturday evening talking with Jeff Jones of RPG Ramblings. We had dinner together and some deep conversations about gaming and life in general. I was wiped out from running games by Saturday. The low key hang was welcome. Jeff was also kind enough to let me film him for my channel and that video will be showing up soon as well.

Several readers of the blog and newsletter were at the convention and came up to introduce themselves. It was great to meet and talk with you about gaming. I want to give a special shout out to Dwayne! GHC was his first convention and I’m pretty sure he had a great time. We spoke several times throughout the weekend. He was super enthusiastic and positive.

My Games

I ran five 4-hour game sessions. I thought about six and I’m glad I didn’t. I ran two on Thursday and two on Friday. Saturday morning, my throat was getting sore and voice starting to go. I managed to get through the Saturday afternoon session without my voice turning into a hoarse whisper.

Four of the five sessions went very well. There were lots of laughs and players had a great time so far as I could tell. Four of them were set in the village of Hogwater. One was a dungeon level featuring a mind flayer who fancied itself an artist and scientist. That was something I ran at Total Confusion years ago and revivified for this convention.

One of the Hogwater games, didn’t go as well as I hoped. I haven’t spent as much time on it as the others since it isn’t going to appear in the finished book. That may have impacted the result.

As a convention game, it had a number of problems.

• Too much exposition was required.
• Too slow of a start (due to exposition)
• I should have crafted the pre-gens to the specific scenario
• I could have been more aggressive with the major monster.

In a way, the session went well. It did what I intended it to do. The scenario challenged some of the traditional tropes about dragons, heroes, and pseudo-medieval European fantasy while remaining familiar enough for players to maneuver in the setting. Players were uncertain about what was going on and continued to speculate and dig into the mysteries surrounding the problem they were presented. There was a dilemma that fed into the thematic elements of the setting. Players had to think and there was some debate about what was going on what to do about it.

The adventure, despite its interesting characteristics, was not well suited for convention play. The pacing was too slow. They faced a dilemma. That may make for great role-playing overall, but it can slow the pace of a game when players disagree about how to proceed. I find convention games are best when players are spending more time making choices than debating their next move. There was a lot of analysis paralysis in the session.

Pacing was made slower by a player who insisted on being the center of attention in every social interaction, a problem I wrote about after a similar experience at another convention. I have a hard time keeping a player like that moving along during a convention game. This is a skill I need to work on. I did better than the last time I had a player like that at my table, but not well enough to keep them from being a problem.

One experiment that went better than I anticipated was a Hogwater sandbox session. I gave the players first level characters and introduced them to Hogwater as if it was the first session of a campaign. They checked out the town, got to know a few of the major NPCs, solved several small problems for the locals, collected a few clues that had them wondering what was going on around town, and earned the trust and admiration of the local peasants. I tested out some of the referee facing mechanisms and random tables I designed for the book and they worked great.

I want to give a special thanks to Jesse from the YouTube channel EpicSolo. He played in all four Hogwater games and brought a humor and enthusiasm to the sessions that was infectious. I enjoyed having him. We had been having good conversations on X for a while. It was nice to meet and game in person.

Wrapping Up

Everybody I talked to at Gamehole Con said they had a great time.

There was an amazing number and variety of events to choose from. All the major tabletop game companies were represented in some capacity and many independents as well. The dealer hall was amazing.

There was a big Magic the Gathering tournament going on. YouTubers shooting videos and live streams. A massive open play area was available along with what was probably thousands of board games in the board game library. Many well known game designers, artists, and writers were there playing games and participating in panels and seminars. There were parties and receptions, special gaming events for large groups of people. A crew from Crawl for the Cure ran a charity dungeon crawl in the demo area on Saturday and brought in several thousand dollars for cancer research.

To say there was something for everyone, while trite, would be true.

I had a great time at Gamehole Con and plan on attending again next year.