The grodog Thither and Hither and Points Between

While the blog and I have languished together in torpid stupor for quite some time now, the blog's silence did not originate in or from wordslessness, but for good reasons that I will delve into soon.  And in case you missed it, this is not in fact my first post in the past ten months ;)

In the meanwhile, we have some catching up to do!

The Recent Past and Near Future

GaryCon XVII - 18 to 24 March 2025

GaryCon was, as always, a mixture of a lot of work and lot of fun.  The fun, as usual, overweighted the work, which is always a good thing and helps me know that it continues to be worth the effort to attend while juggling our Black Blade Publishing booth, playing games, and catching up with friends:  the balance still tilts the fun to the positive for all three, which is a very good thing indeed.  

GaryCon 17 badge and pins

As always, we appreciate the assistance from Rich Franks and Victor Raymond while running the booth, and from fellow gamers and volunteers in setting it up and tearing it down too.  This year, Gilbert Ganse, and Joe Mac helped us set up and tear down in record time!

This year, I played West End Games' Star Wars d6 game for the first time (and using its first edition, in case that matters):  

Star Wars d6 (West End Games) -
1987 original edition

Star Wars d6 (West End Games) -
1996 revised & expanded 2nd edition

While I own both the 1987 original edition and the 1996 Revised & Expanded 2nd edition (which is, I admit, the default I see in my mind's eye), I've never had the pleasure of playing either version before, and I've never played on the same of the screen in the esteemed company of Handy Haversack and his NYC crew---Ross Peabody, Rob Skarbek, Manny, (and maybe Iain too?), along with Chris Kusel, Jim Lohman, Richard Keene---and the rest of the table of diehard gamers on Saturday night at GaryCon in Bluegnoll's "Star Wars: I Got a Bad Feeling About This" event:

Rumors are quietly circulating of an Imperial admiral wanting to defect, but their identity is a well guarded secret. Alliance Intelligence has sent your group to infiltrate an outer rim Imperial base where an unusual meeting of Imperial Navy, Army and Intelligence officials is under way. A local Hutt Cartel smuggler, receptive to Alliance overtures for assistance, has made for strange bedfellows.

My character---anagrammished from my names as Nallorg Godor---was an outlaw (I didn't fix his name on the PC sheet until after snapping the picture, seemingly, and I didn't think to shoot the PC sheet again at the end of the session either, alas:

grodog's first Star Wars character---
an Outlaw named not-Amos!

David used miniatures and scatter terrain with a 1950s road-atlas-sized-, comb-bound book of SF battlemats that admirably set the scene:

The grodog's first Star Wars game!---
our finale battle!

With three additional pics graciously provided by Handy Haversack:

We had a great time, and many thanks to David for finding room for me in the game, and to Handy and crew for letting me crash their party, quite literally!

In addition to playing Star Wars, on Wednesday night I also returned to Greyhawk's Perrenland in Carlos Lising's ongoing The Wolves of St. Cuthbert campaign, which was fun as always.  I really enjoy gaming with this crew, which features a fun mix of heady role-playing, tactical chaos, and Greyhawk shenanigans.

On Friday night, I helped to DM Paul Stormberg's Friday night Legends of Rolepaying tournament.  This year's scenario was a sequel to Allen Hammack's C2 Ghost Tower of Inverness, and was, as usual, quite fun to DM.  The crew at my table (one of 16 tables, for a total count of about 144 players this year) included several folks new to playing AD&D 1e, which is always a treat :D

grodog hard at work,
DMing "Dungeons of the Ghost Tower"

On Sunday night, my business partner Jon Hershberger ran Paul Reiche III's "The Temple of Poseidon" from Dragon Magazine #46 (February 1981) for our Legio V crew of miscreants, which was also fun.  Jon's not only an excellent DM, but he wrangles the Legio crew like a pro!

Jon Hershberger DMing Sunday night's 
Legio V game, "The Temple of Poseidon"

North Texas RPG Con 17 - 4 to 9 June 2025

NTX17 is---from my point-of-view, at least---just around the corner, in particular since free event  registration opens on 15 April 2025 at , a mere 11 days from when I've begun typing these words.  (And it's now one day after registration as I'm reviewing the above words.  So much for timely ;) ).  

Due to the chaos of being of late, I only completed my NTX events submissions very early  on Thursday morning, 3 April 2025.  I'll run three sessions of a new scenario set in my drowic Dark Markets setting:

LEGIO V – Operation: Prism Shards and Unbound Chains

Explore Kiradúvi Mancalënómirond – The Dark Markets, grodog’s new Greyhawk underworld setting:  a flourishing drowic trading hub at the conjunction of subterranean, riverine, and planar travel routes.  In Operation: Prism Shards and Unbound Chains, you are an allied crew of drow minor clan merchants scouring The Undersell—the Dark Markets’ annual secrets auction—to find and rescue a Tormtor turncoat on the run before assassins slay the renegade, or she sells her secrets to the highest bidder.  If you succeed, you will elevate yourselves and your clans in power, and perhaps rise to head new noble houses, while aiding the downfall of the reviled Eilservs-Tormtor coalition; should you fail, your souls will pounded from your bodies by Abyssal goristroi—or worse! 

 

Bring your hex and graph paper, dice, and a Machiavellian dose of paranoid courage!  3rd-5th level pregen drowic PCs will be provided. 

Content Warning:  Gary Gygax’s seminal introduction of the drow to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons portrays their culture and society as chaotic and evil—drow are demon-worshipping villains who actively engage in slavery, torture, and human sacrifice.  The setting in this scenario leverages and extends that baseline depiction into the underworld markets that support and slake their lusts to demonstrate that drow are the antithesis for all that is good in the world:  in both our—real—world, as well as in the World of Greyhawk fantasy game setting.  This includes the pregen PCs and their masters. 

== 

The Lake Geneva Legio V began as a handful of gamers who have attended Gary Con and North Texas RPG Con since their inceptions. We have grown over the past few years to include like-minded individuals united by a respect of Gary Gygax and his legacy. We are the dedicated attendees who love NTX for the camaraderie it establishes, the Game Masters who run games from across the decades, and the committed gamers who spend these four days in a fervor of dice rolling and old-school good times. Although events run as LEGIO V Presents will use a variety of rule systems, our focus is on games authored by Gary and his contemporaries as well as those systems whose designers pay homage to these pioneers. 

My three events run on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights from 7pm to midnight.  I will likely reprise them at Virtual Greyhawk Con #6 in the fall, as well, in case you missed out on them this time around.  

New Toys and Reviews

A detailed run-down on these must await another follow-up post, but that should also land sooner vs. later.  (I do discuss the Greyhawk-related titles a bit below).  

In the meanwhile, here's my loot-fan from the convention to help tide you over!:

Loot captured at GaryCon by the grodog---
did he level up yet??

This includes a host of excellent tomes and wondrous sundries, including:

• A cornucopia of Greyhawk- and Blackmoor-related riches from Rob Kuntz, Lenard Lakofka, Carlos Lising, Will Dvorak, Michael Mossbarger's reproduction of Eric Shook's rendered Castle Greyhawk level 1 map (which he DM'd this year and provided with as a historical handout), Paul Stormberg's tournament (I worked for this one ;) ), and a pile of seven new-to-me, 3e-era Greyhawk novels gifted to me by David "diaglo" Temporado
• New fiction!  From the Goodman Games booth across the aisle, I bought two Gardner Fox novels one of which I didn't already own (One Sword for Love), and grabbed of copy of Kurt "thank you for killing my clone" Winter's debut novel, The Hero's Fall.  
• The latest and greatest from Alex Bates and Shayla Sackinger:  new miniatures (these two resin pieces accompany the huge John Dennet dragon turtle I bought previously, but I apparently forgot to include the new metal goblins I bought too---rats!), the new adventures The Twin Heads of Avarice (a great title!; this is a full module) and The Awful Amber Doom (a one-sheet dungeon|folder-adventure|thingy), and some very yummy birch caramels (which my wife and boys also enjoyed, thanks Alex!)
• And some other curious sundries:
• A nearly-pristine Shure SM57 microphone from David Prata for my older son Ethan, the musician
• On Tyrrany, an all-too-timely gift from Victor Raymond
• A new zine from Noah Davidson, in two different formats; "Welcome to Halishaft" may the title of the zine, or of its introduction, but it looks like a fun project either way!
• A flyer for a new D&D museum being planned by Jim and Debbie Hunton:  see https://museumofdnd.com/ for more information
  
  

Greyhawk News, Both New and Old

I fully intend to catch up on my curated Greyhawk news postings, which by now will be quite out-of-date in most instances, but those that still make the cut will confirm that they were well-worth awaiting:

In the short-term, though, the following news items are definitely worthy of mention:

• The Lenard Lakofka Archive published two new modules at GaryCon:  LAB1 The Lanthorn of Velzarkis (Dan Boggs finished the adventure from Lenard's notes) and RL1 The Ravages of the Mind. 
  
  I've not had a chance to dig into LAB1 yet, but I playtested RL1 when Josh Popp ran it  at Virtual GaryCon #3, in 2002.  
  
  Many thanks to Troy Alleman of Caanibaal Publishing for kindly gifting me a print copy of RL1 at the show!
  
  
• Rob Kuntz's new adventure, Into the Wild Blue Yonder: A Journey Through Blackmoor’s Dark Realm, which he designed for and ran at DaveCon 2 back in the fall of 2024, was published by Griff and Chris, The Fellowship of the Thing crew behind the excellent Secrets of Blackmoor documentary.  
  
  Unfortunately I missed Rob's first visit to the USA since his departure a decade ago, but I hope to catch up with him when he returns next :D
  
  
• Trent "TFoster" Smith just published his new campaign, Brink of Calamity via his Storm Fetish Productions publishing imprint.  (My print copy arrived finally on 16 April 2025!).  
  
  In the sandbox style of Griffin Mountain, Brink of Calamity is set in and around Warnell (Narwell in the Wild Coast of Greyhawk).  I'd hoped to playtest some of its scenarios in my current Greyhawk campaign, but the PCs' excursions to Dyvers didn't lead to entanglements I expected, so that opportunity didn't arise quite yet!  
  
  Trent also has the new campaign book available in a bundle with his Heroic Legendarium book, which we've been using for a few years now in the current campaign:  we have both a single-classed bard and a savant among the PCs.  
  
  
• I finally met William “Giantstomp” Dvorak, and he graciously gave me a copy of his Wicked Studios' Ravensrook sourcebook, and provided several copies to share with other Greyhawk fans who came by the booth, too!
  
  I love helping other Greyhawk fans find books and resources for their games, and several of the folks who walked off with Will's book hadn't been aware of his work yet :D 
  
  
• Vince Garcia continues to publish his monthly zine Gary World in the files section of the First Edition AD&D (Gygaxian AD&D) Facebook group.  The group is private, so you'll need to request membership to join, and Vince publishes the zine PDFs to the files section for a week or so, then removes them.  But they're worth the wait!
  
  

The Crews:  They Keep Me Going

The gatherings of friends and my immediate and extended "gamer family" at GaryCon remind me of how much I love the company of fellow gamers.  I had planned to take more pictures while wandering around the con, the exhibitor hall, in my games, and of games that caught my eye, but I did little photoging, as seems usual these past few years....

I enjoyed wonderful, but always too-short, conversations this year with Doug Waltman, Erik Mona, John O'Neill, Jon Peterson, Matt Finch and Suzy Moseby (including the almost-conversation on Monday morning, had we only known!), and Jay Scott:  they refract among my memories throughout the con.  Longer and deeper ones with Victor Raymond, Paul Stormberg and Doug Behringer, Carlos Lising and Jeremy Breazeale, and Kit at GreyhawkOnline rise above the haze, demanding follow-up....

L to R:  Keith Sloan, grodog, and
Tony "Wheggi" Rosten

I was an unexpected delight to discover and meet Rick Meints at the Chaosium booth---we've corresponded together on YSDC, The Acaeum, and Facebook for years, but this was the first time we met.  I was somewhat dazed from my walk through the hall at the time, but we managed through that.  Rick graciously gifted me a Chaosium 50th anniversary pin, which will I will proudly add to my badge lanyard for North Texas in June :D

Thank You!

My thanks to Luke and Bouchura Gygax, Josh Popp, Dave Conant, Gilbert Ganse, and the innumerable volunteers who bring GaryCon to life each year.  You're keeping the flame alive, and the con vibrant and filled with fun! 

To Rich Franks and Victor Raymond for helping out in the booth so that Jon and I could step away from it, and Joe Mac and [another kind person I've lost track of in my hazy memory :( ] for their help in packing up the booth on Sunday.

To the many friends from online forums, discords servers, publishers, communities, previous  conventions, and the games I've played in and DM'd who I look forward to catching up with each year:  you are why I keep coming back!

Allan.

Mega-Dungeon Map Design Sprints with Henry

Update - 13 June 2022 at 7:18pm:  Well, just like my lost big posts during Kellri's Module Challenge, blogger crapped out and I lost this huge post detailing the fun mapping work Henry and I were doing.  I was uploading pictures from my phone, and perhaps it got too be too much.  Who knows. 

Here's what I'm able to recover by manually retyping it from the preview window on my phone.  *sigh*

Lesson re-learned:  a) type the blog post in Word, and b) eventually move to another platform if I’m going to keep the blog ;)

==

We drove six hours (one-way!) to Dallas for the NTRPGCon and all we got was this Lousy Coronavirus....

Somewhere along the way to/from, or while attending the North Texas RPGCon (NTX as I affectionately dub it) over the end of last week/weekend, my 14-year-old son Henry and I caught COVID.

This is not that story (or convention report, for that matter; that will follow soon-after!).

Neither is this the story of Henry’s excellent learners-permit drive through the Oklahoma City leg of our return journey on Sunday later afternoon for about 90 minutes (this will also be included in the convention report!---sneak peek:  he did great :D ).

This is, however, the story of some of the fun we had while passing the time in our post-infection bubblehuts.

Playing Games in COVID-land

While Henry and I have been isolating from Heather and Ethan (who have tested thankfully negative since our return), we’ve been playing games and hanging out together in general.  Our symptoms haven’t been too bad, all-in-all; I’ve continued to work all week long, although Henry had to drop out of his summer PE class, which is a bummer.

We played several games over the past week, including:

·         Noita:  easily my favorite computer/online game; I’ll have to post our explorations map, too---we began drawing it several months ago, after many more months of playing and exploring its levels in general)

·         Henry introduced me to a new game he likes called Inscryption (the game has spoilers, so you may not want to read the linked Wiki article?); I’m not enthralled yet---it has a bit of a 7th Guest meets Twin Peaks meets Fargo meets Magic: the Gathering vibe thus far, so we’ll see if it sticks or not

·         We also played several rounds of the now-working-again Dungeon Robber (yay!) too

Well, on Friday night after dinner, we shook things up a bit.

Mapping Sprints?—What’s That?

I had mentioned a recent dream to Henry earlier in the week, in which we were designing a big map together, and Henry got the idea to make that dream real, with a twist:  we would design the map in alternating segments, working off of each others’most-recent drawings in regular rotation.

Our process went like this:

1.      After some noodling, we settled on a 6 spi grid size for the dungeon level, and taped together two 11”x17” sheets of Black Blade Publishing graph paper.

2.      We each began to draw/design in opposite corners of the combined 17”x22” sheet.

3.      We ran timed, 10-minute design sprints, drawing and mapping the dungeon environment.  After 10 minutes, we pivoted the map to work on the area the other had just been building.  The two 10-minute “turns” complete one sprint.

4.      We captured one picture of each of our respective work on the map during each sprint, and a single shot of the whole map, too, as we slowly grew it out over about five hours or so. 

This is the setup in our spare bedroom; we borrowed the card table from Heather’s folks so that Henry and I can eat meals in here without getting crumbs all over the bed:

 

Our tools:  pencils and papers,
table and templates

 

Pictures follow in chronological order, broken down by sprint number; times are from the photos, which were captured at the end of each mapping sprint.  

(Some of the pictures look partially erased in places, but that's apparently the glare from the room's light). 

Mapping Sprints 1 and 2---10 June 2022 8:29pm CDT

Since we were just starting out, I didn’t think to capture pictures of our first sprint, so these first three pictures show our work after we’d completed Sprint 1, then swapped once and completed Sprint 2 as well:

 

Sprint1+2 – Allan’s starter environ,
with Henry additions

I began my initial dungeon environ with a 20’-wide stairwell entering the level, with large 20’x20’ landings at the turning corners, too.  That lead into what I intended to be a gated/controlled entry checkpoints area where guards would be above the entry corridor in a kill zone controlled by portcullises. 

Henry then expanded each of the controlling corridors, and began the routing of their directional possibilities.

 

Sprint1+2 – Henry’s starter environ,
with Allan additions

 

Henry’s starting area began with a cluster of small rooms connected with 10’-wide passages, all branching out from the 30’x30’ entry chamber.

To those, I added the outer-layer of 20’-wide edge corridors, and started to rough-in the oval chambers. I also added the hemispherical chamber off of Henry’s smaller original warren of rooms, and the pointy, squid-like chamber with several corridors branching off.

And here we end Sprints 1 and 2 with the full map:

 

Sprint1+2 – Full map view

 

Mapping Sprint 3 -- 10 June 2022 8:49pm CDT

In Sprint 3, for the first time, we both began to respond to each other’s additions to our original mapping areas.

Sprint 3 – Allan’s first return
to his starter environ

I added the portcullises I’d pictured as part of the access control mechanisms into the level design, and then began expanding upon the eastern corridors that Henry had added to the south.  I was envisioning a large, open area with side sections off of it (like an open-air market or bazaar), but such was not meant to be ;)

 

Sprint 3 – Henry’s first return
to his starter environ

 

Henry began to add the first doors to the map within his original warren, as well as to build the larger chamber with a central area accessible via stairs.  He also started to define the zone to the south of the oval chambers.

I didn’t capture a full-map picture for Sprint 3.  Still working on those consistent quality control processes ;)

Mapping Sprint 4 -- 10 June 2022 9:05pm CDT

In Sprint 4, Henry continues to build upon the corridor he introduced to my map, and turns my planned open area into another length of 20’-wide corridor…:

 

 Sprint 4 – Allan’s original environment,
with Henry’s new additions

…while I start to lengthen and expand upon the corridors I’d added to his map, including a 40’ wide corridor with columns* (directly inspired by our recent Dungeon Robber Games, which were, of course, inspired by Gary Gygax’s random dungeon generation tables in Appendix A of the 1e DMG):

 

Sprint 4 – Henry’s original environment,
with Allan’s new additions

And we conclude the sprint properly, with the full-map view, this time!

It doesn’t really look like we’ll ever meet in the middle, does it?

 

Sprint 4 – Full map view

Full map view, attained!

* see also:  https://www.knights-n-knaves.com/phpbb3/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=13328

 

Mapping Sprint 5 -- 10 June 2022 9:19pm CDT

Sprint 5 sees my start on the large temple complex at the bottom of the map…:

 

Sprint 5 – Allan’s original environment,
with Allan’s newest additions

 

…while Henry does more development in the middle of the upper area…:

 

Sprint 5 – Henry’s original environment,
with Henry’s new additions

 

 …and the resulting full map:

 

Sprint 5 – Full map view

==

And there was quite a bit more of that back-and-forth Wimbledon-like commentary for each sprint, and many more pictures taken, but I’m not going to recreate the rest of the posts from my phone preview, except to note that:

We concluded our Friday late-night sprints on Saturday morning with Sprint 16 -- 11 June 2022 12:57am CDT, after which we went to bed.

Then on Saturday night, we ran Sprint 17 at 9:27pm, Sprint 18 at 9:51pm, and Sprint 19 at 10:09pm before turning in a bit earlier that night ;)

 

Sprint 19 – Full map view

 The End!

And that’s where we wrapped up for now.

The process was a lot of fun, and we may try to do a similar effort to key the level when it’s complete, too.

We’ll keep you posted!

Allan.