GaryCon XV Convention Report - 21-27 March 2023

GaryCon XV has come and gone, and---as usual---I had a wonderful time at the convention playing AD&D, celebrating the life and games of Gary Gygax and the rest of the old-school guard, and catch up with friends old and new!

The Ugly, the Bad, and the Great

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Ugly and the Bad won't take up too much space in this post, and The Great far outweighs these two, they remain important to share nonetheless. 

The Ugly: COVID

To get the Ugly out of the way first:  I caught COVID at GaryCon XV.  Because I worked the vendor hall at our Black Blade Publishing booth, I interacted with a LOT of folks at GaryCon, so I've shared this information as widely as I can on Facebook.

This is the message I sent to the players in my GaryCon XV games via TableTop Events messaging:

 

Hello Fellow GaryCon Gamers!---

As some of you will already be aware from my post on Facebook, I tested positive for COVID on Friday 31 March 2023 after presumably being exposed at the convention.  I had meant to send this out on Friday, but forgot, so if this is the first time you're hearing this news, I apologize.  

If you played in one of my GaryCon games, or visited the Black Blade Publishing booth, you may have been exposed too.  If we interacted, you should consider testing whether you're showing symptoms, or not.  (I was masked while working the booth on Saturday and Sunday of the convention after hearing rumors of COVID cases at GaryCon).  

The CDC guidelines on testing and isolation are at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/if-you-were-exposed.html and https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/your-health/isolation.html and have changed since I had last reviewed them.  For what it's worth, I tested negative twice on the evening of Monday 27 March and Wednesday 29 March before I tested positive four days after my return from Lake Geneva on Friday, 31 March.  

I hope that you remain healthy, that you recover quickly if you do get sick, and I look forward to gaming again together in the future!

Allan.

 
The Bad: Not Much!

With COVID out of the way, I don't have any significant complaints about the convention.  I was pretty tired after the con, and moreso than in years previously.  I attributed that initially and in particular to working the booth alone (it was about 6 hours to set up, and 4 hours to tear down), but some could have been COVID tiredness too. 

Dave Conant and Travis (a volunteer) did come by the booth while Jeff Talanian and I were chatting, and asked for feedback.  We spoke about noise in the louder events rooms, which is a recurring problem that's hard to solve.  

The only other possible complaint is the new location of the vendors hall in the Forum (this was the second year there), but we haven't crunched the numbers on our sales data yet to see how we did, so complaining would be quite premature ;) 

The Great:  all the rest! :D

Other than COVID, the rest of the of GaryCon was  awesome, as always.  

It's always a treat and a treasure to catch up with old friends, to meet folks for the first time who I've only known online via a username, and to game with both groups at the table. 

Black Blade Publishing booth and New Old-School Games!

Allan at the Black Blade Publishing
booth at GaryCon XV

Our Black Blade Publishing booth was one of mainstays in the hall.  It's always a pleasure to introduce gamers to wonderful works created by our friends and fellow designers.  You can browse through some pictures of the booth in my Facebook profile (they're publicly visible) in my GaryCon XV photo album, and John O'Neill of Black Gate Magazine also shared his walk-through pictures of our booth too---John's are more-current than mine, in fact, and show the booth in its "final form" from Saturday ;)

New products to highlight in the booth this year included:

• Black Blade's newest 17"x22" hexagonal mapping pads
• John Eric Holmes' Maze of Peril (his 1986 novella; this was placeholder stock until we reprint Tales of Peril) 
• Goodman Games' Original Adventures Reincarnated series, volumes 1-6, including OAR#6 The Temple of Elemental Evil, which also featured in Paul Stormberg's "Legends of Roleplaying" tournament on Friday night
  
• Lenard Lakofka's L3 Deep Dwarven Delve (along with a number of other TSR classics reprints)
  
• Richard Barton's The Halls of Arden Vul (we sold out of copies by Sunday!) 
• Alex Bates' Fire-Pearls of Aya-Ghan adventure
• Handy Haversack's The Hybrid Bone Effigy Crucible of the Urgent Chimera adventure
  
• Joe Bloch's Adventures Dark & Deep "Tomes" series:  Swords of Cthulhu, Adventures Great and Glorious, Book of Lost Lore, and Book of Lost Beasts
• Larry Wickman's Gamewick Games titles:  Pittsburgh 68, Roswell 51, and Innmouth 32
  

We also promoted new PDF-only products from Rob Kuntz' Three Line Studio (both Gargax's Glorious Gewgaws and Pryce's Price, his 50th anniversary of OD&D tributes to Gary Gygax), and Carlos Lising's Hounds of Oerth, a new casl Entertainment charity supplement supporting the ASPCA.

Other GaryCon XV New Releases and Acquisitions!

Anna Meyer's seminar handout,
two new Lenard Lakofka modules,
and more!

 

The Lenard Lakofka Archive announced the release of two new AD&D adventures, which are free to download from Anna Meyer's web site:  LA1 The Lighthouse and LA2 Devil's Dung. These are newly-published adventures written by Lenard and released to the public for free in PDF form.  I playtested a still-unpublished adventure ("Ravages of the Mind") at Virtual Greyhawk Con 3 last October, so keep an eye out for more new Lakofka materials in the future!  And thank you to the archive team for their hard work---these modules wouldn't exist without time time, talent, and treasure donated by Troy Alleman, Daniel Boggs, Richard Di Iola, Anna Meyer, Josh Popp, Lee Schaidle, Dan Smith, and of course to Lenard Lakofka.

Anna B. Meyer shared her 2023 cartography seminar handout at https://www.annabmeyer.com/2023/03/12/gary-con-xv-handout/ and it's gorgeous!  Anna has many new projects coming this year, including new Greyhawk and Meyerhawk heraldry, and updates to many of her maps including her new Oerth v2 project!  Anna also took the time out of her busy schedule to deliver my copies of Lenard's new modules; thanks Anna! :D

In addition to the above highlights, I also picked up a copy of some old homebrewed character sheets from Shawn and Devon Hibbs at their Die Cast Games booth (the Burntwire Brothers, as they're known among the Acaeum crowd).  I had bought the exact same set from them last year, so I'll be opening the shrink wrap on one of them to see what's on the backs of the sheets.

Zach "Zenopus Archives" Howard also graciously gifted me with a 5e handout that Steve Marsh provided at one of his games at the North Texas RGP Con.  It had caught my eye because it includes a new class that's oriented toward shadow magic (which was first professional gaming publication way back in 1987 in White Wolf Magazine #11).  Thanks Zach! :D

COVID Comforts for grodog

While I've been isolating at home, in addition to reading some of the goodies above, I've also been re-reading Roger Zelazny's second Chronicles of Amber series, which focuses on Corwin's son Merlin.  On my last trip to NJ I had picked up Seven Tales in Amber, which collects Roger's last stories in the series (primarily his short stories from Amberzine).  

The Merlin stories have lately been scrabbling aroud in my backbrain, along with Anthony Huso's Night Wolf Inn (recently given a five-star review from Prince of Nothing at Age of Dusk), so I read through them the past few days while isolating:

COVID comforts for grodog

"Where there's a whip, there's a way..."

My reading pile also includes a new-to-me puzzle dungeon entitled Aberrant Reflections.  I haven't fully read it yet, but the publisher is directsun Games, and I hope to carry them in our booth in the future.

John Popson of Effincool Miniatures also hand-delievered a box of wonderful Rankin-Bass-inspired goblins above, which I will to paint and mix in gleefully with my Max Carr Dungeon Dwellers goblins from Heritage :D  Thanks John!

The last title I leave you with is a book that was recommended to me by Eli Elder, and it looks like it'll fit in quite nicely in my 1:1 solo aquatic Greyhawk campaign with my son Henry:

 

I don't have a copy of this in-hand (yet!), but Knight Owl Publishing's Aquatic Adventures looks like a winner based on my flip-through of Eli's copy at the con. 

Until the next time, when I'll provide a run-through of the games I DM'd at GaryCon XV.

Allan.