I don’t use my Oriental Adventures book super-regularly, but I was very surprised on Saturday to rediscover that the bookmark I had in it was a New Infinities Productions business card from Gary (likely from when I wrote a few letters with Qs about Necropolis and other topics BITD), and that it was signed on the reverse!!
 |
| New Infinities Productions, Inc. business card from Gary Gygax |
 |
| New Infinities Productions, Inc. business card, signed on reverse by Gary Gygax |
Allan.
The blog has been quiet of late, in part because I'm still job hunting, and in part because I've simply been busy, both writing/designing and planning for the two conventions, as well as attending and recovering from them, of course!
On the writing/designing front, I’ve been building the “Abyssal Rift” scenario since the advent of the No Artpunk 3 contest, and while I didn’t submit it for that, I’ve continued work on it via playtesting at GaryCon (to be described in the forthcoming sequel to this post), and will continue playtesting later in the year at both North Texas RPG Con in June and at Virtual Greyhawk Con later in the fall (dates still to-be-announced, I think). Here's the event description:
I also designed and submitted a scenario for “Return to Perinthos” for the Jennell Jaquays Memorial Jam, which should appear in truncated form in May-ish (I wrote 4600 words for a 750 word limit...), and which Jon and I are working toward publishing in full for NTX in June, too.
So, without too much further ado....
Jon Hershberger, my Black Blade Publishing business partner, and I loaded up my family minivan with books destined for gamer hands on 11 and 12 March, and I hit the road after lunch on Thursday, 14 March. When driving to Lake Geneva, we usually overnight in Davenport, Iowa, to make the trip more manageable, and I did so again this year. (On the drive, I got to catch up with my brother Brian, which is always fun; we chatted quite a bit about the recent Neil Gaiman original artworks charity auction).
Arriving in Lake Geneva around noon on Friday, I met up with Robert Brandon (an active member in the Greyhawk fan community) at 328 Center Street (the house immediately beside Gary’s old home at 330 Center), where Robert graciously hosted me throughout Founders & Legends. We got settled in, grabbed some lunch, and ran around a bit downtown to visit Gary’s memorial stone by the library:
 |
| grodog at Gary's Memorial Stone (photo by Robert Brandon) |
That evening, Robert and I dined at Tuscan with Tony Rosten, my friend and publishing partner in The Twisting Stair (our mega-dungeon design zine). (As it turns out, I think Jon and I dined there one year on a Sunday night, and perhaps once also with Rob Kuntz too). We chatted about gaming, designing and publishing, conventions, our home groups and campaigns, and had a wonderful time. The three of us returned to 328 Center Street to visit further, and Tony and I also did some planning for TTS #4, which we’ll begin work on after his schedule lightens up in May.
Here’s a sneak-peek at the TTS#4 map from way back on 7 July 2018:
 |
| Return of The Twisting Stair begins 15 March 2024!: "That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons, even death may die." |
The Ides of March had already proven to a propitious omen for the trip! :D
One of my primary interests in attending Founders & Legends was to spend time playing games, rather than only DMing them (as has generally been how my time goes at GaryCon for lo these many years). When I was a young lad attending conventions in the greater Philadelphia-NYC-Baltimore corridor, I sampled many games at conventions to kick the tires---sometimes just that once, but occasionally leading to much-longer stints (as with Paranoia and Vampire, for sure).
This year I wanted to return to wargames and boardgames, so I registered for three long (6+ hour) sessions for Divine Right, the Tom-Wham-a-Thon, and Titan, in addition to running three sessions in my version of Castle Greyhawk.
My other primary motivation to attend F&L and GaryCon was to celebrate the 50th anniversary of D&D's publication in 1974. This year our Legio V crew created anniversary dice to distribute to players in our games...:
 |
| Legio V 50th Anniversary Dice (photo by Mark Clover) |
...and, as always, to celebrate the memory and creations of Gary Gygax, Dave Arneson, Jim Ward, and the other founding fathers of our fabulous hobby:
 |
| Legio V - Top 10 Reasons To Go To Gary Con |
The Lake Geneva Legio V began as a handful of gamers who have attended Gary Con since its inception. 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 Gary Con 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.
 |
| Divine Right map (TSR, 1979) |
I played Divine Right for the first time, at long last! (On BoardGameGeek at https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/23/divine-right). I’ve known of the game since the days of TSR’s old Gateway to Adventure catalogs, and from Glenn Rahman’s “Minarian Legends” columns in the early days of The Dragon and Dragon Magazine.
Matthew Archibald ran the game today (and a second session at GaryCon, which I think Robert played in?), and he will be running it again at the second annual Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo (PAGE2) in January 2025, where I hope to return to play Divine Right again.
If you’re interested in learning more about Divine Right, in addition to the BGG link above, a new edition is Kickstarting soon, with current discussion at https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3181902/reprint-coming. You can also follow Worthington Publishing’s KS profile at https://www.kickstarter.com/profile/1456271622 to be notified when the KS launches; they also plan to reprint Rahman’s DR and Scarlett Empire novels, in addition to the two games. Edit 2 April 2024: the DR Kickstarter is at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2141043266/divine-right-2024.
Squeezed between, I managed to sit in on about 40 minutes of Ben Riggs' seminar, "The Creative Legacy of E. Gary Gygax" and was glad I'd made the time to do so. (I hated leaving a little early while he was still speaking, but I needed to setup for my 7pm game).
Ben shared a slideshow with many pictures of fun sites where Gary grew up, pictures of the family when the children were all small, pictures of Don Kaye, etc. He engaged the audience actively in the presentation, querying for who knew what vs. what was new, and soliciting Q&A throughout as attendees raised Qs and clarifications. I hope it was recorded, as I'd like to catch the end of it, if possible.
Saturday evening at 7pm, I DM’d the first of my three Castle Greyhawk events, and the players chose to play in my version of the “Black Reservoir” level, which I designed based on Gary’s 1975 short story from El Conquisator, hosted on my Greyhawk site (with Gary’s permission) at http://www.greyhawkonline.com/grodog/gh_castle_black_reservoir1.html. I brought several levels with me, since I knew that some registered folks had played various levels during previous years:
I left my “Iounic Caverns” and “Enchanted Orchards of the Arimoi” levels at home, along with my expanded version of S4 Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth because they were too large to fit into my divided file folders. (I think I'm forgetting another level or two among the options, but c'est la vie!).
After exploring around the southern end of the level, the players used a wish spell from a luck blade to pass through to the northern portion, where they encountered the infamous pteranadons from Gary's story. They prevailed in their battle, and survived their explorations!
I slept in an hour later, and spent most of the day playing Tom Wham games during the day-long Tom-Wham-a-Thon! Tom’s games are always quick to learn, fun to play, and offer a variety of ways to win so they have great replay value.
The three we played were: Battling Space Ships (BGG at https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/19372/dragon-lairds), Felithian Finance (BGG at https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/19435/felithian-finance), and DragonLairds (we also played using the expansion set; BGG at https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/19372/dragon-lairds, and expansion at https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/45999/ebony-lavender-dragon-lairds). My hope had been to play Feudality (BGG at https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/99312/feudality) too, which I understand is one of Tom’s favorites, but time ran short after the other games, so perhaps next year!
 |
| Dave Conant (in yellow) and Tom Wham (hatted), teaching us games at the Wham-a-Thon! (photo by Mark Clover) |
I enjoyed all three, and had not played any of them previously (although we do own copies of Dragon Lairds and Battling Space Ships, among many other Wham-designed games---he’s a favorite in the Grohe household! :D ). Of the three, I think Dragon Lairds will appeal to our 16 year-old son Henry most (along with Divine Right, and perhaps Titan), while Felithian Finance may catch my wife Heather’s eye.
Speaking of Heather, the players at the table also offered a number of suggestions for 2 player games, that are relatively quick to play (which is an attributes she particularly appreciates in a game these days!):
My contributions to the discussion were Starship Catan, Milles Bourne, Sushi Go, and Incan Gold. (I forgot to mention Cat in the Box at the time, which I played at TsunamiCon for the first time last fall, and is quite enjoyable!).
Saturday night I DM’d again, and the players selected my “Heretical Temple of Wee Jas” level, but the session ended a bit early with a near-TPK as the PCs wandered into three ghosts. Since I’ve first ran that encounter back at GaryCon III in 2011, I updated ghosts to use relative aging, so the dwarf and half-elf PCs got hit for XX and XX respectively while the human PCs, well, let’s say they needed dust pans and brushes to scoop their remains up…. (Other than the paladin, who failed the save vs. fear and sprinted off back the way they had entered from, and was eventually rescued by the dwarf fighter/thief and half-elven bard).
Monday was devoted to Titan referred by Brett King, and which I played together with Wade from Saturday’s Tom Wham games, and with Dwight and Keith from Friday’s Divine Right game (I also spotted Dwight in the audience at the Greyhawk seminar during GaryCon too), and John from one of my D&D games! I hadn’t played Titan (BGG: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/103/titan) since I was a kid at one of the east coast conventions from my teenage years, and I had no recollection of how to play, starting fresh. As with Divine Right, the players and the referee were very helpful, and Keith and Dwight had played it quite a bit, and Keith mentioned an online resource for solo play too (which I’ll have to share later after repinging him, since I couldn’t find it in my notes so far).
The game play was quite fun and engaging, although mastering the stacks of counters and the flow of the game board movement was a bit challenging. I wasn’t able to recruit for several turns in a row due to bad luck on die rolls, which slowed my development considerably. We did run a few Battle Lands engagements by the end of the session, with Keith edging out John for the win on points. A fun time, for sure!
My final session of Castle Greyhawk at Founders & Legends brought a second run into the “Black Reservoir,” where the players explored along the “shore” and caves in the cavernous south wall, meeting a variety of interesting WM encounters (each seemed to segue into another, as their mandatory 1 turn rest resulted in another 1 on the WM die roll ;) ). They ended the session with their discovery of "The Blight House" on a small rocky island (only the second team ever to find it during the 15+ years I’ve been running this level). The Blight House is a site sacred to Incabulos, Greyhawk’s god of evil sendings---nightmares, plague, drought, and the like:
 |
| "Incabulos" by Jeff Easley (Dragon Magazine #71, March 1983) |
Over the course of F&L, Luke allocated some new on-grid games to the schedule for Tuesday (which was originally a day of rest between the conventions), in order to provide some additional gaming options for folks who were in town attending both conventions, or who had arrived early for GaryCon.
 |
| Gaming in the Geneva Lake Museum (photo by Toni Kerschner Smith) |
As a result, I was able to play in Rob Kuntz’s “Boreal Level” of Castle Greyhawk, which I had previously played part of once back in 2019 at the North Texas RPG Con with my son Henry. We went a different route within the level this time, and encountered some different dungeon features (including the same trap for a second time), along with plenty of frost giants! I didn’t initially recognize the level as one I’d definitely played before until I got back to our room (although parts of the intro and setup did feel familiar). Then I checked my Castle Greyhawk history binder, where I found my 2019 player map and notes, and naturally began to compare our exploration across both sessions!
Interregnum Tuesday closed out Founders & Legends for me, with much gaming and fun had by me, and its many other attendees!
To be continued in Part 2 – GaryCon!
Allan.
With the No Artpunk 3 contest having just closed submissions, Prince of Nothing outlined his judging principles for some of what distinguishes good high-level adventure designs---and by implication, good high-level play---in his blog post at https://princeofnothingblogs.wordpress.com/2023/11/29/nap-rating-high-level-adventures/ (as well as in the posts clarifying and expanding the NAP3 entrance criteria too).
 |
| Gary Gygax's D3 Vault of the Drow - for PCs level 10-14, artwork by Erol Otus |
I'm curious to hear what criteria drive your sense of high-level design and good play, so please chime in via the comments.
Some additional discussion and follow-up on reddit at at https://www.reddit.com/r/adnd/s/yPvHskuRje, and Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/40230212669/permalink/10160278890287670/, and Dragonsfoot at https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=91954.
For the record, I did not submit an adventure for consideration ton NAP again this year: I didn’t complete the data entry to make my submission electronic and submittable in time (I’m sans PC since September, and have used my son’s while he’s at school, but that wasn’t sufficient time to wrapped it all up by month-end). It likely needed more time to playtest too, and somewhere along the way I also apparently missed the page count limit, which would have been heartbreaking to have blown had I submitted on time! ;)
However, I found the contest very inspiring, completed about 90% my adventure design, and I plan to run it (and perhaps my drowic slave market) at GaryCon, the North Texas RPG Con, and Virtual Greyhawk Con next year.
Once I refigured out how to submit files to my web site using the new-to-me admin interface, I will also finally share my expanded tables for Appendix C NPC and PC magic item generation, too.
Allan.
 |
| Kron Hills, Gnarley Forest, and Dyvers environs - map by grodog |
Since my last Haruspications in Hardby campaign update in July, the PCs have wrapped up their business in Dyvers (selling some poison-smeared gems liberated from a hidden temple to Nerull in Castle Greyhawk to the Executor of the temple of Nerull in Dyvers---and this turned out far better than I expected!), and are working their way back toward Greyhawk. The characters left Dyvers in the midst of Brewfest, on Waterday, the 5th day of that festival, in the year 576 CY.
 |
| Night Arrant by Gary Gygax |
On their way to Dyvers from Hardby, they passed through the bucolic Gnarlvergia region, detailed by Gary Gygax in "The House in the Tree" in his Night Arrant collection. (For those interested, you can listen to Jason Zavoda's readings of much of Night Arrant over on Canonfire! at http://www.canonfire.com/cf/ghnovels.php but unfortunately he did not make it through to record "The House in the Tree" prior to his untimely death in December 2021. This reminds me that someone in one of the Greyhawk-related discord channels suggested that I might carry on with those recordings, perhaps; I will chase that idea down again!). There's not an entry for Gnarlvergia in the Greyhawk Wiki, but that's probably less of an oversight since the region is only mentioned three times by name in Night Arrant. But I digress....
On their way to Dyvers from Hardby, the PCs encountered two groups that turned into useful informational meetings. The first was with the Urûl-Kotár, a group of Flan tribal woodsfolk led by the druidess CÃaran-ap-Tulvea. After some initial tensions, the two groups broke bread together under the auspices of hospitality, and the PCs warned the Flan of two groups of marauding dragons (one brass, and four blue) rumored to be attacking merchant caravans in and around the Hardby region, and the woodsfolk were very grateful: Reaction Roll of 100, before adding 40 for the bard's 18 Charisma to make it a 140% total reaction! This is not nearly as uncommon in this campaign as you might think....
The second encounter of note was with a group of olvenfolk patrolling/hunting for brigands, and they surprised the PCs. They also noticed that one of the PCs (Henry's character Nohr, a half-olven fighter/magic-user from a future alternate timeline of Oerth) was wielding a drowic tentacle rod as a weapon: this was "sloat gaacor" (sloat like moat, gaacor like gay soar)--an elvish taboo cognate meaning "forbidden darkness." The PCs discussed how they acquired the weapon (in their Astral adventure in Zjelwyin Fall), and learned little about the strange nature of the ojbect, save that it gravely concerned the olven captain Sillirifran, of the Moonsilver Pool clan (Ilmkelisil in olven). Still in pursuit of the brigands, the elves departed relatively quickly, but urged the PCs to rejoin them later at their home, Silverwell (Celebthiltin Eithimbar: the "silver shining sparkles homewell"), the source and spring for the Silvern Stream that runs from within the Gnarley to the Nyr Dyv.
The PCs encountered various other animals---wild horses (some of which they captured and sold/traded to the Silvern-Selintan Ranch, with the well-recognized brand $$) and giant weasels (which they killed and skinned)---and NPCs (a merchant caravan on the eastern side of Selintan, including the Womtham magic-user Eriena Nabestiana, who sold some acid and potions to Nersiv), some en route to and within the city, but the woodsfolk and olves may prove to be the most interesting from the lot. Time will tell!
Negotiations with the Temple of Nerull took awhile, but were successfully concluded after the services on Godsday during Brewfest. The result includes a proposal of alliance with the Greyhawk Assassin's Guild. While Haj worked the Reaper's clergy, some of the other PCs worked opportunity jobs that arose during the festivities:
 |
| Kermit and Fozzy, on the road again.... |
