grodog's Founders & Legends and GaryCon XVI Convention Reports - 14-25 March 2024 - Part 2

GaryCon XVI – 20-25 March 2024

Continued from Part 1 – Arrival through Founders & Legends and Interregnum Tuesday.

With the shift to Wednesday, this required the changing of the badges over from Founders & Legends to GaryCon:

The changing of the guard....

Wednesday - 20 March 

Booth Setup

I came into Wednesday having spent the day before hanging out and gaming, rather than driving cross-country, and I could definitely get used to that!  Robert Brandon graciously agreed to help me unload the minivan, and we arrived at the Forum for the 8am start of exhibitor check-in.  With Robert’s help, I was able to cede my spot at the loading dock by 8:45am or so, and to begin building the booth.  

I had planned for a similarly-open booth design like how we’d set up last year, but this process is, unfortunately, more art than science, and it’s not something anyone who doesn’t know the planned layout and the products as a whole can really help much with.  So, after Robert and I rejockeyed the tables a few times, and with some reconfiguration and fine-tuning by swapping out tables with the able assistance of the hotel staff, the booth settled into its final form, and I thanked Robert and released him to rest of his day by 9:30 or 10am. 

The Forum was reorganized this year, which was a bit of a surprise---I’d seen changes in the layout design, but they hadn’t quite clicked, given the relocation of the GaryCon merchandise to the back-right corner of the hall.  The big surprise (and a hugely positive change overall!) was the shifting of the throughways in the Forum to run the full length of the hall---this really opened the chamber up, and allowed gamers to see down the full length of the halls from the main entry doors.  That in turn gave better line-of-sight to vendors along the throughways, and helped to showcase the breadth and depth of products available at the show. 

Black Blade Publishing and Our OSR Cornucopia

For those folks who are unfamiliar with Black Blade Publishing, we publish our own books (OSRIC, Monsters of Myth, Tales of Peril) modules (Rob Kuntz’s Bottle City, Cairn of the Skeleton King, Tower of Blood), and gaming tools (graph and hex paper pads from quarter-page size up to 17x22”).  However, our content only represents about 15% of the booth’s content footprint.  

The remaining 85% is provided by third-party, old-school publishers, many of whom are friends and fellow old-school designers, including works from The Tekumel Foundation, North Wind Adventures, Gabor Lux’s E.M.D.T., Carlos Lising’s casl Entertainment, Paul Stormberg’s TLB Games and Legends of Roleplaying, OSRIC sourcebooks like Trent Smith’s Heroic Legendarium and Matt Finch’s Tome of Adventure Design, Swordfish Islands and Third Kingdom Games’ hexcrawls, and adventures from Anthony Huso, Jennell Jaquays, G. Hawkins, Paolo Greco, Robert Conley, Expeditious Retreat Press, and Goodman Games’ Original Adventures Reincarnated, among many others!

This year we brought many new-to-our-booth publishers and products to GaryCon, including the D&D documentary films Secrets of Blackmoor and The Dreams in Gary’s Basement, Merle Rasmussen’s new ally-friendly card game I Choose to Rise, Aron Clark’s Holmes & Clark clone (and his conversion of the classic level 1 adventure, “The Lichway”), Knave 2nd Edition, and last but certainly not least, Kelsey Dione’s ShadowDark. 

I can't post a pictorial review of the booth because blogger's editor hates me, so here's one image from just before the opening on Thursday morning, about 9:15am or so:

Pre-opening Thursday morning!---
and who are those VIGs entering from the left!?!

To see the rest of the booth pictures, please use my publicly-visible Facebook album entitled "Founders & Legends and GaryCon 16 (March 2024)" at https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10163493148909832&type=3, which includes many fun images from the conventions as well as booth pics.  

Allan (grodog) Grohe in the Black Blade booth
at GaryCon 2024

The back of the booth,
with our graph/hex pads and more OSR books

New Empire of the Petal Throne maps
from the Tekumel Foundation

Empire of the Petal Throne books
from the Tekumel Foundation

Front-left corner of the Black Blade booth

Holmes & Clark clone, Heroic Legendarium, and more!

Left-side corner of the Black Blade booth,
with OARs and OSRIC modules

Front of the Black Blade booth with OSR books
from EMDT, Anthony Huso, Jennell Jaquays, Hyperborea, and more!

G. Hawkins, Larry Wickman,
Plagmada/Tim Hutchings, and more!

OSR Indies united!---Jacob Hurst,
Ben Milton, Paolo Greco, and more!

To get an idea about the evolution of the OSR through the products in our booth over time, see John O’Neil’s wonderful photo-essays from Black Gate Magazine at https://www.blackgate.com/2023/03/26/gary-con-report-black-blade-publishing-and-limitless-adventure/ and https://www.blackgate.com/2018/03/13/the-1001-treasures-of-black-blade-publishing-and-goodman-games-gary-con-2018-report-part-ii/.

I wrapped up the booth setup by 4pm or so, leaving a few placeholders in the shelves for product that had not quite made its way to the booth yet.   

That left me free to finish moving out from 328 Center Street before the rest of Robert’s crew arrived, time to coordinate keys with Victor Raymond (my roommate again this year for GaryCon) and to bump into Carlos Lising and Erik Mona in passing at Jay Scott’s pre-con streaming show, and a peaceful interlude to find and eat some good food at the Chophouse while chatting with my wife and sons.  

"The Wolves of St. Cuthbert"

After eating, Carlos and the redoubtable Jeremy Breazeale hussled us offsite to the second (?) annual gathering of “The Wolves of St. Cuthbert”—a reunion of the GaryCon 2022 campaign crew, which Carlos eloquently recounted as part of his GaryCon 16 Patreon summary.  As usual, I had a great time playing with Gregory, Danny, Nick, Dan, Triet, Jeremy, and Carlos, and I managed not to lose any dice this year, too ;)

Thursday - 21 March 

The Exhibit hall opened early daily at 9am for special guests, VIPs, and Platinum+ badge holders, while exhibitors were able to enter to finish set-up starting at 8am.  I was able to visit for a bit with friends from the Acaeum (and Jim Kitchen graciously tracked down the last? set of GaryCon lockpicks at the main merch booth for me), and then the Forum doors opened wide.
The Thursday opening crowd proved to be the closest I’ve come to GenCon-level-chaos in nearly two decades.  On the plus side, Thursday morning was very busy from opening through about 12pm or so, which was great for business, but clearly showed the limits of what a one-human booth can manage.  Everyone was gracious and polite, but the long was long for quite some time….

We did sell out of some books even before opening on Thursday (two sets of Anthony Huso’s limited edition of Castle of the Silver Prince), which does happen when we have lower stock on more-expensive books, but I had to reshuffle the booth a few more times than usual during the rush.  ShadowDark flew off the shelves, quite literally, throughout the day, and the Knave 2e books arrived in time for opening too.  The rest of the day was thankfully less insane, and Rich Franks (our chief in the Legio V) lent a hand in the afternoon (and again on Friday and Sunday too), which was very appreciated!

Abyssal Rift 1

Thursday night I ran the first playtest for my high-level, aquatic “Abyssal Rift” adventure:  

Playtest grodog's newest high-level adventure, exploring an aquatic wilderness in the World of Greyhawk. Your mission is to pursue a set of aquatic foes into their lair beneath the waves of the Azure Sea. The ixitxachitl have captured a sea-elven princess and plan to sacrifice her to Demogorgon at the next new moons, in three day's time!  

Bring your hex and graph paper, dice, and a healthy dose of paranoid courage! 12th-17th level PCs will be provided, most with some form of aquatic survival (along with some house-ruled spell changes).

The GaryCon portion of the adventure used Mike Bridges' South Seas of Greyhawk map as the base adventuring environ, and I slapped together a quick hex grid on it using the overlay sheet from the Forgotten Realms grey box set:

Mike Bridges' South Seas of Greyhawk map + 
Forgotten Realms template = instant hex grid!

We played in Evergreen 2 in the dedicated Legio V and Legends of Roleplaying room, which ended up being where I ran all of my GaryCon games.  The PCs accomplished their mission in spite of a somewhat slow start on my part, and the noise level in the room making it difficult to hear at times (one of the players left early due to a noise-induced headache).  

Friday - 22 March 

More Booth

The craziness of Thursday morning opening did not reassert itself, and Friday remained steadily busy, which was wonderful on both counts---plenty of time to socialize with friends and to help customers find the X-level adventure or the new setting or the new zines or the documentaries, et al, that they sought.  

As with Thursday, Rich Franks came by and helped me out a bit, which allowed me to eat some food and take a bathroom break (not necessarily in that order; thanks Rich!).  

francisca and grodog in the booth
(with Dirk Collins' son foregrounded)

Sales were brisk, and some product definitely began to ran low or out completely---many of Melan’s newest zines and adventures, including Castle Xyntillan, and the leatherbound sets of Hyperborea 3rd edition.  And by the end of the day, we had both documentary films in the booth---Secrets of Blackmoor and The Dreams in Gary’s Basement---as well as The Lost Dungeons of Tonisborg, too.

Paul’s Legends of Roleplaying Tourney

Every year for the past several Paul Stormberg has run a large (the largest?) tournament at GaryCon.  The past few years have been themed around exploring the Temple of Elemental Evil, and this year’s tourney capstoned that series, as the PCs attempted to bring battle to the Elder Elemental God itself!  

Similar to previous years, this year’s scenario included some challenging puzzles, but the overall adventure was more streamlined, which allowed more time to work through its challenges, as well as more time to complete the adventure.  My crew of players were all veterans of both the tournament format and of the ToEE background and environs (several played last year).  They fared well during the initial encounters, but were stymied in a puzzle room that permitted three of the PCs to pass relatively unscathed, but which damaged the rest of the party when they attempted to follow.  In the end, they wisely decided to split the party while working through the logic of the puzzle, which permitted the first group to advance to the semi-final encounter.  They were joined by one of the other PCs toward the end of the round’s time, and those PCs were literally saved by the bell---my phone timer went off as I was picking up handfuls of d8s to hit the four PCs with three flamestrikes, which would have insured their doom (dead PCs aren’t worth points in the tourney scoring).  

In the end, they ranked in the middle of the teams, with 100 points.  Paul’s tournament summary and the final scoring results are posted to the GaryCon blog at https://garycon.com/the-legends-of-role-playing-tournament-results/.  

Saturday - 23 March

Yet-More Booth

Saturday saw more of books sell-through, including all of the copies of the ShadowDark rules and zines that we had available—we tried to finagle another shipment to the convention, but it wasn’t feasible, unfortunately.  They were gone by noon.  

On the plus side, Saturday brought a restock from Carlos Lising with new casl Entertainment adventures, and Merle Rasmussen brought copies of his new game, I Choose to Rise, just released in February 2024 for Black History Month. 

  

Abyssal Rift 2, Hollywood Style

My last game of the convention was my second run-through of Abyssal Rift.  I was able to tweak the introductory portion of the scenario a bit to provide more concrete guidance to the players, which got them started in earnest a bit more quickly than Thursday night’s crew.  

And what players!—I knew two of them already (Aron Clark, who plays in my regular group, and John Roberts, who I played Titan with during F&L), but five of the remaining six were Hollywood friends of Luke’s:  Vince Vaughn, Tom Morello, Paul Wight, Dan Weiss, and Joe Manganiello; with Greg Joseph rounding us out at eight.  

I was somewhat nervous about DMing celebrities, but it worked out fine in the end:  they all acquitted themselves well in the south seas of Greyhawk, and accomplished their mission to locate the ixitxachitl lair in time to prevent the sacrifice of the sea olven princess.  (They did employ some non-standard cooperative tactics inspired by 5e mechanics, which we improved within fine).  Afterward we hung around a bit chatting about Greyhawk and its history (including some basic questions about what is Greyhawk, that they had to reign me back a bit in my responses), and the history of Dave and Gary’s work together before they took a group picture with Luke and headed off.  

Sunday - 24 March

Closing Out the Booth

On Sunday the Forum was only open until 2pm (although I think I was still closing out the our last transactions around 2:30pm), and as with Friday and Saturday, sales were steady but not crazy.  The time went by quickly, all-in-all, and before I knew it the hall was starting to shut down.

Thanks to our voluminous sales, I was able to pack the booth up and—through the assistance of some very determined GaryCon volunteers who wouldn’t take “no really, I can manage” for an answer:  Dirk Collins and his son, Mark from Wales, and Jeff MacKay; they loaded my minivan completely!!-- get out of the hall by 6pm!  Perhaps a GaryCon first for me! :D

Empty booth!

The spoils of victory---empty boxes!

Afterward, I gratefully grabbed a burger at the Chophouse bar, and had a fun dinner discussion with another GaryCon attendee, who opened our chat with the gambit, “Your favorite and least-favorite mega-dungeons?”  Only at GaryCon :D :D

Legio V Board Meeting

While packing up the booth closed out the Black Blade books for the show, there was still business to attend to.  Each year after GaryCon the DMs of the Legio V gather to commune with the winds of GaryCons present, past, and future by invoking the Genevan mysteries through rituals of haruspicy and the sacrifice of slain character sheets, conducted by Dionysian celebrants.

This year’s meeting ran a bit longer than usual—from 7:30pm until 10pm or so—and I retired soon thereafter, as I was exhausted from the very busy long weekend, unfortunately missing out on both the celebration and the Hyperborea adventure that Del had prepared :-/

And that's a wrap!

I crashed early on Sunday night, and slept well into Monday, which closed out another fabulous GaryCon.  

I'll conclude in part three with my Thank You acknowledgements and convention loot and swag!

Allan.

grodog's Founders & Legends and GaryCon XVI Convention Reports - 14-25 March 2024 - Part 1

Part 1 – Arrival through Founders & Legends and Interregnum Tuesday

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....

The Trip Northward – Thursday and Friday

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)

Gary's Memorial Stone

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  

Founders & Legends

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

"What is Legio V?"

I'm glad you asked.  From our events descriptions:

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.

Saturday

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:

• Gygax levels
• “The Chessboard” level that I ran at GaryCon and NTX last year
• “The Black Reservoir” level, which I count here in Gary’s rather than Rob’s levels since I built it from Gary’s short story account rather than Rob’s map from the El Raja Key Archive
• Kuntz levels
• The Original Bottle City level
• grodog levels
• “Diamonds in the Rough”
• “Escape from Level 14” (a.k.a., “Drawing Under the Influence of Gygax and Kuntz”)
• “Halls of the Irons Golems”
• “The Four Corners Level”
• “The Heretical Temple of Wee Jas” (with two variant heresy options)
• “The Hidden Aerie of Pazzuzu”

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!

Sunday

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!):

• Alhambra (the card game)
• Cloud Nine
• Great Dalmuti (I think we may have this)
• Lost Cities
• Love Letter
• Roll Through the Ages

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

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)

Interregnum Tuesday

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.