Gary Con XVIII Recap
Last weekend I (officially) attended my third Gary Con. My first was in 2020, which was unfortunately moved online for obvious reasons, and I also attended in 2024. In 2022 and 2023 I went to the con without a badge on Saturday and met with out of state friends. Here's a recap of what I got up to, plus some thoughts about the convention at the end.
Thursday
I got up way too early on Thursday morning and drove to the convention so I could save on a night of hotel costs. I arrived at the Grand Geneva at about 8:20 AM and got in line at will call for my badge, but we were quickly told that anyone who had a 9 AM event should just go without the badge, so I headed off to the Puzzle Dungeon seminar. I was lucky to run into Amanda P (read their post-con report here) in the hallway and they were kind enough to introduce me to Skullboy, Yochai Gal, and a few of the other Cairn folks. It's always nice to meet people you know from online discussions face to face!
Designing Puzzles for Adventure Games - Seminar
First on the docket was directsun's seminar about designing puzzles, featuring Joseph R. Lewis and Brad Kerr (I think there was a fourth panelist as well but my recall is failing me, alas!). I've read adventures from all of them before and played Lewis' Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow. They had a great presentation and I had fun with the panel.
After this one wrapped up I ran down to will call, where the lines were greatly reduced and managed to get my badge.
Diffusion Theory and the Spread of D&D - Seminar
Next up was my friend Victor's seminar about the spread of early D&D. I enjoy listening to Victor lecture, but this one unfortunately did not contain any new information for me - it essentially remixed some of what I've learned in other seminars Victor's given about early D&D combined with a lot of what I learned in Jon Peterson's Playing at the World.
A Familiar Tower - Old School Essentials
I was a backer of the crowdfunding campaign for this one, so I was eager for a chance to play it with Chris/directsun. The table was provided with third level pregens and I ended up with Serbar the Dashing, an elf. Warning - spoilers abound!
We opened with the party sailing in a small boat to the island tower of a wizard who hasn't been seen in a decade. As we neared the island, the sky suddenly went dark, the only light provided by a dim green glower visible on the door of the tower. We waded ashore on the small island and saw that the light came from a gem seated in the knocker on the door. We were also reasonably sure that something was watching us from the water.
As we approached the door, the knocker animated and began to speak with us. It told us that the owner hasn't been around much recently but that we still had to knock before it will let us in. We tied our boat to the knocker and then knocked very softly before entering the tower.
Inside was a shag carpeted room where a giant key was wrapped up in vines growing on the walls. We heard a catlike yowl coming from outside and something banged loudly on the door. The vines grew agitated and lashed out towards us when we approached, so we left them alone for the time being.
We opened a door in the side of the room and headed down a spiral staircase into the cellar. It smelled like rotting fish down there. The storage barrels in the room were mostly empty, but when we moved them we discovered a decorated, foot-wide hole leading through one of the walls. I could also see the outline of a secret door, but no mechanism to open it. At this point, a large pink cat came down the stairs to the party's immediate delight. We all gave it a lot of pets and attention and then decide that the way to deal with the hole in the wall is to strip our halfling naked and grease him up so we can push him through. There's a pool in the next room, which opens up to the sea outside through a tunnel. The halfling managed to lure the sea dog we had seen hints of outside onto a large switch in the room, but even the beast's weight wasn't enough to trip the switch.
As we tried to figure out what to do next, a pigeon-rat arrived and led us to its dying mother, who requested a potion from the wizard's workshop. We returned to the main floor, where we saw a giant cockroach sniffing around. We tried to talk to it, but it proved to be an unthinking beast and quickly attacked. When it tried to flee after being injured, we chased it upstairs and killed it.
On the second floor, we arrived at a landing full of taxidermied animals. We entered the room off the landing, which had a freestanding door sitting on a platform, not obviously leading to anything. Next to it was a table with circular depressions labeled Wardrobe, Vault, and Exit. A black marble sat on the table and a citrine marble floated above it. We played around with this for a bit, but experimentation proved fruitless, so we moved into the next room.
This room contained five vertical cylindrical vats filled with vaguely humanoid shapes. A table was covered in dead pigeon-rats. One of the creations in the cylinders awoke and attacked us. We tangled it up with ropes, but it proved invulnerable to non-magical attacks. I borrowed our fighter's magic sword while he held onto the ropes and cut the mutant down.
We grabbed a potion from the tables here and returned to the mother pigeon-rat. She tells us that we need the green marble to be able to leave this place. Returning to the lab, we looted potions, a spray bottle full of magical perfume, a potion recipe, and some miscellaneous valuables. We also found a jar full of marbles that looked like TV static. I also took advantage of a clue that Chris gave in the morning's seminar to look some secret treasure from inside one of the taxidermied animals on the landing.
We headed up to the third floor where there was a door with a lock matching the motifs of the giant key below, though unfortunately it was far too small to be used with the key. We could hear a psychic entity behind it - through that we learned that this was the library and this psychic had eaten all of the spellbooks contained within. We proceeded up to the fourth floor after agreeing that we'd let the entity out if we could.
The fourth floor had a basin table with what looked like a model of the tower in the middle and a ladder leading up to an attic. As we moved around within the room, it became clear that the model sitting on the table was in fact the tower itself - we were stuck in a sort of recursive loop. We were able to reach inside the "model" tower and retrieve the key, now normal sized, and also used the tower to make the marbles we'd looted much bigger so they would fit the large depression next to the freestanding door. We also found miniatures in the rooms cabinets, which we were able to embiggen and then take as loot.
We returned to the third floor and opened the locked door, where we found Carbuncle the spell armadillo. We led Carbuncle outside and the purple cat we had met earlier chose to attack this juicy prey. I intervened and grabbed the cat out of midair. Due to the wonder of the claw/claw/bite routine, I was very swiftly slain thanks to some lucky damage rolls. The others rushed Carbuncle away from the cat and gave him his wish to watch something small die - himself. They grabbed the spell gem he'd been carrying within his forehead.
At this point we conveniently had Hamez, the magic-user, show up so I'd have another character. We headed up into the attic, where we found the wizard's kitchen and bedroom. We looted some more treasure and decided to shrink down our thief to find the green marble which we were reasonably sure was in the cat's den up here. We used a Removable Limb spell to detach my arm, stuck it to the end of a ten foot pole, and I grabbed the shrunken thief and guided him to the cat tree where he was able to cut the green marble free of the tie it was on.
Unfortunately, we had to cut here for time. I had a good time with this one, but it was a little frustrating to have a third level character very quickly die to something I had not thought was a real threat in that way.
Eat the Reich
This is Grant Howitt's game about vampires eating Nazis. We played a scenario in which we were coffin dropped into Paris with the goal of finding Hitler at his zeppelin moored at the Eiffel Tower and drinking all of his blood.
We moved through a series of set piece combat/action scenes where we used increasingly over-the-top descriptions of how we defeated the Nazis, including super science weapons and dark magics, fighting through a church, the German Technology Pavilion, the Nazi Pleasure Garden, and the Eiffel Tower and Zeppelin. Coming up with the descriptions of the ridiculous action was fun, but honestly I felt like the rules got in the way of these descriptions while not adding much to the experience. I'll have to see what I think about the game when I get around to reading my copy.
Friday
The Friends We Made Along the Way - Empire of the Petal Throne
Victor was running Tekumel, as he always does at cons. In this session, we were playing the pregens from his upcoming Egg of the World, escorting one of our number, Amau the priest, from Jakalla to Thraya where he was to take up a new post in the temple. We jointed up with a caravan led by Senjallu hiMekrane along with a cast of interesting characters.
As we journeyed, we worked on introducing ourselves to our fellow travelers. When we arrived at Setnakh, where the road forks, Amau was attacked on the streets. At this point, he revealed to us that he was also carrying a secret package for the temple and he believed others had found out and were trying to steal it. We pressed on, but a few days later one of the other travelers coordinated with a large gang of bandits to attack the caravan. We were able to drive them off and safely arrive in Thraya.
As always with Victor's adventures, there was a lot of politicking and trying to sort out who we could trust in this one. Obviously, this is something I enjoy so I keep coming back. There wasn't a lot going on in the first half of the travel, but I thoroughly enjoyed the back half.
Out of the Frying Pan, Into the Odd - Into the Odd
My friend Matt has been running absurdist games at cons for as long as I've known him and this was no exception. We were playing as 1930s-ish bank robbers trying to escape to Peru with our ill-gotten gains, one step ahead of the sheriff. As we drove through the forest, the environment began to look strangely fungal and before we knew it, we'd rolled the car trying to escape the cops and were firmly entering a strange fantasy world.
We fled through the mushroom forest and came out near a greenish, sugary pool with giant crawfish on the shore. We ended up following the stream exiting the pool and eventually saw a strange, candy-striped steeple ahead. As we approached we saw a sign reading "HOUS OF SALVATION" with a giant squirrel dressed as a cardinal sitting below it. He greeted us warmly and several of us agreed to confession with Bishop Squirrel.
After that was sorted out, we continued south to some more normal-looking trees where a monkey riding a gorilla wearing wooden armor came out to challenge us. The monkey said he would let us pass if we brought him ice cream sandwiches from the mermaids in the sugar river, but since we could see the cops following not too far behind, we demurred and rerouted around the stand of woods.
We ran into some tiny stags guarding a castle that looked to be made of gold, but proved to be foil-covered chocolate. Inside the castle was a golden hind and a silver doe. We talked about his mortgage and he began to get upset that some of us were eating his house, so we left somewhat hastily.
Next up on our journey was a group of horses at a skate park. I attempted some cool tricks and then Zeraglio, the hostage we'd been dragging along, tried to escape on horseback. Our goon Max immediately shot the hostage and we bandaged him up and continued to keep him with us. As we continued to flee south, we came to a slow, shallow river. At this point we saw a battalion of ambulatory carrots and celery armed with muskets marching toward us. Our driver, Woody Earle, lost his shit and decided to charge them, but was cut down in a hail of fire. The rest of us hid, only coming out after the army marched past.
We found a nearby cave where we're greeted by a young goat with a tommy gun. The kid told us that the Carrot Brigade rose up a few weeks ago and killed all the adult goats and also informs us there's a road across the river. We waded across and found a sign that said "Welcome to Indiana." A strange beaver with wings and snakes for legs happened by and offered to light our campfire, saying Peru was just over the hill. We saw the cops just on the other side of the river and thought better of camping. We crossed the hill and found ourselves in Peru.
Can't say that's a route I though was possible to take to South America, but anything that gets us away from the cops!
Dawn Patrol
I originally had a Doomsong session scheduled, but unfortunately it was canceled, so I looked on the Gary Con schedule to see what still had tickets available and landed on Dawn Patrol. I'd never played before and I appreciated the old hands there being willing to teach the several new folks at the table. Unfortunately, my dice were ice cold so I missed my shot the first three rounds before both of my guns jammed and stayed that way for the rest of the night. I'd probably give it another shot, but it wasn't quite as interesting as X-Wing Miniatures was for me.
Saturday
Brunch
We had the semi-annual meal with the pandemic Tekumel campaign crew, meeting up as we do at Gary Con and Gamehole Con every year. It was good to share some laughs in person!
The Tomb of An-Rah Nassak - Vaults of Vaarn
I played a True-Kin because the Mycomorph pregen got snapped up very quickly! Our group was sent to the Tomb of An-Rah Nassak to recover the Manifold Box, with a secondary objective of acquiring some Friend Fungus.
The first day out from the Eigin Oasis, we encountered a pack of phthalo wolves chasing a cacklemaw woman. I tossed a smoke grenade to cover her retreat and the others let off a few warning shots, which scared off the wolves. The woman introduced herself as Jall and told us a bit about the tomb before agreeing to lead us there. We found a nearby campsite where we could get a bit of water from the inside of a tree and spent the night. It took another day and a half of travel to arrive at the tomb, during which time we had to dodge some lizard/lion creatures.
The tomb proved to be a 50 foot tall cube of blue stone with faces on three sides and bright orange fungus running down the sides. DAVE, our synth, scaled the side of the tomb and found a corpse on the top that seemed to be the origin point of the fungus. Once he returned, we put some luminous paint on our weapons and headed into the darkness of the tomb through one of the faces.
Inside, we found plexiglass cylinders holding mummified warriors with prismatic blades. Smaller cylinders held orange goo that puffed out spores when DAVE touched them. One of the corpses began to wake, so we skedaddled into the next room. In that room, cybernetic hounds were mummified in a tank on the wall. Fearing further animation, we headed upstairs to a room with a crystal cylinder reaching from floor to ceiling with a bulge in the middle.
The central bulge was filled with the orange fungus wrapped around a core. Four plinths were lined up on the edges of the room. Two contained canopic jars and the other two were empty, with red light glowing from their rims. A pile of fungus in the corner of the room occupied the same space that a fifth plinths should be located. As we fiddled with these, two fungus creatures wearing the missing jars as hats approached. We tried to talk to them, but they proved hostile so we beat them up and then stuck the jars on the plinths. This opened a door in the glass pillar.
DAVE and Bleet (one of our mutants) went up the pillar to the fungus sphere, quickly learning there was no gravity inside. As everyone else piled in except for me, the fungus animated and attacked. Staying in the gravity section, I acted as an anchor to stabilize everyone else's movement as they fought the fungus, which fled after it took enough damage, revealing a sarcophagus. Inside the coffin, we find the Manifold Box and a synth-hunting dagger along with An-Rah Nassak's skeleton. We returned to the oasis and received our rewards.
I enjoyed this one - I'm looking forward to VoV 2e and feeling slightly guilty that I haven't done more than skim my copies of the 1e stuff.
Reading D&D Aloud with Jeff Easley and Erol Otus - Seminar/Podcast Recording
This was a fun recording session involving Easley and Otus reminiscing about their respective times at TSR, their inspirations, and the current state of art. I think it will end up on Ben Riggs' Patreon feed at some point and it's worth a listen if that interests you.
Operation: Jumbotron - Top Secret: New World Order
I had another open slot with no plans, so I grabbed a ticket for this game. Unfortunately, I didn't have as much fun with it as I hoped.
I was playing a street magician who was part of the international spy organization. All the PCs were summoned to Lake Geneva where we were told we needed to go to the Paris Olympics and recover plans for an unjammable artillery drone that the FSB was buying at the Olympics. It was believed that some of the athletes might be enemy agents in disguise.
In Paris, we worked up backgrounds on many of the athletes, turned a few, and were able to work out that the handoff would be taking place at the team gymnastics competition. When we identified where the drop was to take place and headed to intercept, a gunfight broke out and chaos erupted among the spectators, but we managed to recover the thumb drive holding the plans and complete the mission.
Sunday
Blue Cheese Left to Rot - Swyvers
I named my character Tuppence for your Thoughts for this one. I was lucky enough to be able to read. Our group of scoundrels got a tip about an abandoned manor we could rob, so we headed there posthaste.
Arriving at the Lindsor Estate, we discovered it to be in poor repair and headed in the unlocked front door. It smelled like acrid shit inside. We immediately split up after one of us made a dare to the others to try to find the most valuable item they could in the first five minutes. Two Times and I rushed into the lounge, where I grabbed some bottles of brandy. I then opened a door to the cellar where I found a rat man waiting. He attempted to recruit us, saying his people could give us title to the house if we'd kill off the inhabitants.
He tailed us as we returned to the foyer to meet with the others and extended the offer to everyone, but we were noncommittal. Pony Trap had managed to loot some occult books and I was forced to tell them that they were better treasure than my brandy. After we get away from the rat man, some of the others admit they met a mother and son upstairs who asked us to rescue their daughter/sister from the rats below. We returned to the library where Pony Trap found the books and looted it and the adjacent smoking room for all they were worth before we headed down to meet the rats.
They took us to their leader, the Big Cheese, who demanded that we kill Cecilia, the daughter. We agreed to his face and headed to the larder she'd barricaded herself into. Persuading her to let us in, we looked around and discovered that the meat within was came from humans as well as more typical sources and that Cecilia's teeth were filed to suspicious points. We agreed to help her against the rats anyways, charging out and slaying the Big Cheese, which caused the rest of the rats to scatter. We headed back upstairs, Cecilia in tow.
Her mother refused to reward us directly and we began to get agitated. At this point, her grandfather arrived and began to draw up some hostile-looking magic. The mother then offers to give us an immediate reward if we kill the old man, so we do, but I end up getting cursed with age. The mother is true to her word and hands us a bunch of jewelry, along with a promise that she'll have more work for us in the future if we're willing.
We headed out and found a fence and some buyers for our loot, ending up invited to a party where a buyer is interested in the occult tomes. Prudence Garland meets us and we complete a deal for the books. We use our funds to improve our gear and clothes and rent some better accommodations.
I loved this one. I'm now regretting not going in on the Swyvers campaign and I'll probably pick up a copy when I have a chance.
Thoughts on Gary Con
Gary Con makes me a little uncomfortable. While I think OD&D was a fascinating, interesting system that spawned an enormous number of good things, I also think Gary's racism and sexism harmed the hobby. The con makes no attempts to grapple with the shadier side of Gary's legacy. It simply ignores any idea that there's a problem. I'm not sure there's any delicate way to resolve this, but it feels like some sort of public acknowledgement would be appropriate.
The transportation and food situation at Gary Con is the worst of any convention I've been to. The con is awkwardly sprawled across the Grand Geneva resort and is stretching it to its limit, with events across the length of the sinuous main lodge, at the indoor waterpark, and in the ski chalet. Shuttles run the mile plus distance from the main lodge to the other two locations, meaning that you could easily be looking at needing a buffer of 20 minutes or more to make it to an event on time.
Parking on site is now paid as of this year, but the convention was running roughly hourly shuttles to many of the hotels in the city. Unfortunately, as I discovered after I took the shuttle in one day, the last round of the shuttles departs at 11 PM, well before the last events end at midnight. Even on the final day of the con, the last shuttle left at 3 PM before the 4 PM close of the latest events. This makes the shuttles useless to anyone actually attempting to get the most out of the con.
I'm not a big fan of downtime at conventions. I'm there to play games, so unless I have a group I'm hanging out with, I like to have just enough time to grab a quick meal between events. Unfortunately, the food available on short notice at the convention is pretty abysmal, mediocre room-service food that's been kept warm in catering pots for hours and sold for highly inflated prices. Even if you are parking at the convention, the lots are far enough from the resort that taking a shuttle back to your vehicle, driving in to town, getting fast food, driving back, and taking the shuttle back to the main lodge can easily take an hour or more. I ended up going to Walmart the first night of the convention and buying the necessary ingredients to make sandwiches I could pack for the rest of the con.
I'm not a particularly gregarious person when it comes to people who are new to me, so games are a great way for me to add some structure to interactions with new people. I've met a number of folks at cons over the years that I still keep in touch with. I don't know who that might be from this year's con yet, but I hope to find out in the future. This year's Gary Con was a mixed bag for me, but I will likely be back again at some point in the future.