Last weekend was my third trip to Gamehole Con in Madison, WI. At over 6,500 attendees, the con was definitely bigger than the last two years, a fact organizer Alex Kammer confirmed, and the increased energy certainly made it feel that way.

I had a great time, just like I did in previous years. As with anything, there are always ways to do better so lets start with that before we get to the good stuff.

Opportunities for improvement

It is already one of the best gaming conventions so it would be tough to make any major gains in a single year. There are a few points where I think it could be a little better.

A space in a neighboring building was opened up for the first time this year to accommodate more tables for gaming. It wasn’t a very good space. We were placed in a side room of a building that was also used for livestock shows. Even though we weren’t in the main arena, the whole building had the smell of a barn. The room was all concrete and steel and a lot of echo. Everyone had to be loud in order to be heard which made the problem worse. While the intention of opening up more gaming space was good, I don’t think the trade-offs were worth it.

The food truck area was expanded and there were more options to eat. That was a good thing. However, finding a place to sit down was difficult at times. There were picnic tables but not enough to accommodate the number of people who were trying to eat. It wasn’t a terrible situation, since there were concrete walls and planters where you could perch long enough to eat. Having a table would make it better though. Fortunately the weather was nice. If was raining or cold it would have been miserable. A big tent with tables would be good idea though probably expensive.

Though not a thing that the convention organizers can do much about, I hope they mention to the facility management that trash cans and bathrooms need more attention than they get. This has been the case in the last three years I’ve been going to the convention.

I didn’t experience any other major downsides, though a few were voiced on the Facebook group page. The convention staff were monitoring the group and responding to issues quickly and effectively.

The GM’s lounge was a missed opportunity

Most conventions have a space set aside for GMs. This is an area with complimentary refreshments, a place to post notices and info for GMs, and take a moment to relax or prepare between games. One convention I used to go to had receptions and meet and greet events with the special guests in the lounge.

The GM’s lounge at GHC is a curtained-off area in the main hallway. It has dozen or so small tables where you can eat or work and grab a snack if you get there early in the day. I give it a grade of “adequate.”

If I were a major game publisher or retailer, the GM’s lounge is where I would put my sponsorship money for the convention. GMs are the most important customers in the RPG hobby. GMs spend the most money and can encourage a lot of other people to buy or not buy your game.

The opportunity to establish some good will and build relationships with GM’s seems obvious, but no one is taking advantage of it.

Cubecon, True Dungeon, LARP, Dorkstock, and other stuff

There are more events going on at Gamehole Con than I could participate in.

John Kovalic, the creator of the great web comic Dork Tower and illustrator of the Munchkin cardgame, has a little convention within the convention called Dorkstock.

True Dungeon is an immersive walk-through dungeon environment that is popular at Gen Con. There aren’t many conventions that have it.

Cubecon is a large Magic the Gathering tournament with an interesting drafting format. It is more or less a separate convention happening in the same building at the same time.

There is also a large board gaming library and play area, miniature paint-and-take, LARPing, and podcasters doing live shows.

One of the largest areas was set aside for organized play (OP) programs. There were probably close to 100 tables dedicated to the Warden’s of the East Marches, the organized play program for 5E that Alex Kammer created for Gamehole Con and other conventions.

Vendors

The vendor and exhibitors’ hall space was better used this year. In previous years there was a large open area when you came into the hall. This year they used the whole space.

Most of the major RPG publishers had a booth. Catalyst and Monte Cook had big spaces in the upper level of the convention center outside of the main vendor hall. Several of the publishers also had sponsored conference rooms where nothing but their games were played.

There were vendors selling anything and everything you could think of for RPGs and RPG accessories; artists, authors, dice makers, wood workers, board game publishers, and small RPG publishers.

Noble Knight was there with a wide selection of rare, out-of-print games and books in one of the bigger booths. The warehouse and store is in the nearby suburb of Fitchburg. My traveling companion and I were staying in a hotel close to the store and visited on Wednesday night after checking in. If you happen to be in the Madison area for business or vacation, it’s worth a stop. They have unique gaming memorabilia on display like the original painting for AD&D Deities and Demigods. If you want something rare and out of print, they are as likely as anyone to have it in stock.

Seminars

Most of the major RPG publishers come to the con and bring some of their design staff. GHC also has a number of designers, fiction writers, and other well-known figures from the hobby among its special guests . As a result, there are a number of seminars and panel discussions about a variety of topics.

I went to half dozen seminars this year. In the future, I probably won’t go to as many. I enjoyed the panels but much of the information shared was the same stuff I’ve heard in podcasts and YouTube videos. If I’m going to use some of the limited time I have at a convention, I’d like the event to offer something I can’t get online.

The most interesting presentation I went to was offered by Ben Riggs. Though I often disagree with Ben’s interpretations of the information he’s gathered, he does have good sources. Someone leaked 18 years of D&D sales data from WotC to him. The information he had was not as detailed and comprehensive as any of us (including Ben I’m sure) would like. It did offer some insights and was consistent with some of the claims Mike Mearls made in the interviews he gave earlier this year.

I wonder how long it’ll take for the Pinkertons to show up on Ben’s door step.

I am considering offering a seminar. Most of what I saw and heard was along the lines of mainstream thought and advice without any questioning of assumptions.

My Games

The only game where I was a player was a fun home-brew miniatures game. It was a podracing (Star Wars Phantom Menace) game, which was pretty much what it sounds like. You race your pod around the track and try to win without crashing. The system was very simple. The racer had a minute to place a series of templates through the terrain. After placing the templates you would roll some dice to see if you or your pod took any damage on the way. Nobody in my race wrecked, but I was on the edge. I had to play aggressively to catch up after an early setback. I managed a competitive second place finish.

I ran four sessions of Swords & Wizardry with characters around 8th level (128,000 experience points) and four good magic items each. Three of the adventures were of my own creation, and the fourth was a six-hour run of Night of the Walking Wet by Jenell Jacquays. They all exceeded my expectations for both the excellence of the players and the pure enjoyment of the experience.

The first one was the most rough in terms of how it ran. The characters had the task of tracking a large pack of goblins through a glacial valley. The goblins had raided a friendly village of herders who kept giant goats big enough to ride on. The goblins had stolen many goats and taken captive a number of villagers. The goblins had a day’s head start. The party decided to take the most direct but dangerous route through a mountain pass. They managed to drive off an undead thing scavenging fallen villagers, avoid yetis, and sneak past the lair of a frost giant on their way to the ice caves the goblins were going to.

The party managed to capture a goblin, charm it, and use it as an emissary to the goblin king. They found out that there was a more powerful monster inhabiting the caves and made a deal to help the goblins get rid of it in exchange for the captives. After prudent use of magic and violence, the party was able to recover the captives and make it back to the village without getting into too much trouble. I need to make that adventure more dangerous, change up some magic items, or lower the level of the characters if I run it again.

The second adventure involved a group of mercenaries that had gone to banditry and taken over a monastery. The bandits were behaving strangely, and refugees from the villages near the monastery reported that the bandits were not only raiding but carrying away everything the villagers had: tools, furniture, and clothes included.

The party decided to go to one of the pillaged villages since that was the safest place to cross a river between them and the monastery. There was a group of bandits blocking the bridge. With stealth and violence the party killed that group of bandits except one captured for questioning. The bandits were indeed behaving strangely, and the group quickly picked up the clues to ascertain why (I’m not going to spoil it). After a strategy session, the party made their way to the monastery. They took down a couple of bandits who were on their way to warn the leader that the guards blocking the bridge had been killed. The adventurers subdued the pair who turned out to be lieutenants in the mercenary company gone rogue. The party made a deal with one of the lieutenants who was unhappy with their captain. She agreed to convince a large group of the villains to run away. The other was not so lucky.

Some sneaking, thoughtful use of magic, and combat led to the party to victory. Some of the player characters did experience the same affliction as the bandits.

The third adventure was a point crawl through a ruined city in a tropical swamp. The characters had to cross a canal that was choked with preserved corpses, kind of like a log jam. One character had a flying carpet (note to self: Remove that damn carpet from the gear list!), and was able to get over the floating corpses. However, one player couldn’t resist the obvious bait of one of the corpses being loaded with jewels and gold.

It was, of course, undead. There were a lot of undead. Several other party members were engaged with a carrion crawler as the undead started to animate. After dealing with that situation, the party carefully went from ruin to ruin looking for a legendary vault filled with gold and magic.

Their “guide,” it turned out, was charmed by a frog wizard who was having a turf war with a shroom wizard. The party made a deal with the frog to help him and his bullywug minions take down the Shroom and its Pod man minions. There was a big battle in a plaza and terraced garden. Some powerful magic was unleashed by both sides. The party wizard would have bought it if the cleric hadn’t been close by. Several other characters took some damage as well.

I used blank playing cards with wet-erase pens for mapping in that adventure. It didn’t provide exact distances or sizes for the locations. It was fast, easy, and players didn’t have any trouble understanding where their characters were relative to their surroundings. It worked out well.

My last session was Night of the Walking Wet, which I’ve run at North Texas and for friends locally. It’s a classic dungeon I don’t think gets enough love, and I’ve always had fun running. Every time I’ve run it, the groups have played through it differently.

This time the party was quite focused on the main goal of finding and destroying the evil high priest and his cult. They found the evil high priest, but the party wizard got a little overexcited and dropped a fireball into a much-too-small room before assessing the situation. The blow back nearly killed the wizard and another party member while destroying a good deal of clues and information about what was going on. It did, however, kill the high priest in one shot and reveal a secret door, which led the party directly to the high priest’s deity.

After a nearly fatal encounter where the party was engaged from the front and rear, they managed to kill a major monster of the dungeon and get a good haul of treasure, but they were not in good shape. A secret door led them to a treasure room where some carelessness led to the ranger being frozen solid and dying.

Another secret door led to a large natural cavern where the wizard was dissolved by the spit of a giant slug. The four surviving members of the party, now out of spells and potions, decided escape was the best move. They managed to avoid a couple potentially deadly encounters before finding their way out.

It was a very good session of play. It was also a meaningful moment. One of the players had been in one of my games with his dad a few years ago. He told me that his dad had wanted to be there to play in my game but recently passed away. Him and three of his dad’s friends were there together playing. Thanks fellas for playing in my game. I am honored to have shared that experience with you.

RPGs are more than “just games.”

I was able to hang out with several people I know from online and gaming with them at GHC and North Texas. That was great and I always enjoy that as much as I enjoy any other element of the convention.

RPGs are how many of us meet some of the most important people in our lives or deepen the relationships we have with family and friends.

I love the vendors, and seminars, and the events at Gamehole Con, but the parts of it that matter most to me are the moments where I get to meet new friends and reconnect with old ones.

If you are able, I recommend checking out Gamehole Con; meet new friends and make memories of your own.

I suggest signing up for their email list. They do a great job of keeping attendees informed.

https://www.gameholecon.com/