Gamehole Con Review

Cons and I have a kind of strange relationship. In general, I absolutely love meeting people but I get very concerned with large crowds. So Gamehole turned out to be just about the perfect size for me. Plenty of people but easy enough to walk around without having to struggle through a crowd. One of the main concerns with a “smaller con” is that its harder to get big names to show up to the cons. Gamehole Con doesn’t have that problem at all. People from all over the country flew into Madison for the event!

So with that, Who was there?!

There were tons of TSR old guards there. I was able to sit in on a panel with Ed Greenwood, David “Zeb” Cook, Jeff Grubb, Steven Winter hosted by Mike Mearls. It was suppose to be on the history of TSR and their progression but ended up being a rather endearing discussion of what it was like to work in the offices. It apparently was a heck of a time and deadlines were always approaching. One of the things I didn’t know was that Ed Greenwood was a consultant and not on the staff of TSR specifically considering how much of D&D has been shaped by his hands.

Seth Skorkowsky also showed up! Which was fantastic, I was able to meet with him and give him a gift I had made (Acid etched tumbler with the Trauma Team logo) and I am very pleased to say, he is in fact that much fun and chill in person. I am only sad I had to miss chatting more with him because I met him right before I was going into True Dungeon. I did carve out enough time however to have Seth sign as a copy of Damoren and my Traveller core book, since his videos have been instrumental in my group being able to get into the stars. If you haven’t heard his stuff, definitely run over to his site to check it out!

Marc Miller of Traveller fame was also at the Con and the man is a delight to speak too. He was excited to hear that we were starting a The Pirates of Drinax campaign. He as well was more than happy to sign my core book and his own novel that I did purchase while I was there. I also got plenty of Traveller swag. Marc was incredibly generous with the Traveller extras (including dice and extra copies of their 5e equipment card packs). Very enjoyable to talk to and in general is one of the greats!

Seminars

I was able to take in a few seminars as I had mentioned before. The two that really stuck with me was the Psychology of Tabletop Games and Using Psychology to make Better Characters. Those two panels were given by 3 different psychologists who got into the nitty gritty of how to make more subtle characters and why they need to be more than their hang ups.

I was also able to take in a seminar on branding and trying to grow your gaming site/properties. This is kind of a tough one for me. This is definitely something I do in my dwindling free time, but at the same point. I would love for this thing to become something more that I could start working a bit less at the normal 9 to 5 and start working on this (mostly making tools and creating more interesting posts). With this in mind, we now have a mailing list that I will offer to send new posts directly to your email along with any updates.

Games

I was able to play quite a few games at the con, which was fantastic to get into some games I’m completely unfamiliar with. I was able to give Symbaroum and The Magnus Archives a try. I’m a huge fan of The Magnus Archives Podcast so I’ve been waiting for the book to drop. I preordered the fancy edition of course, but I also picked up a table copy since they were available. Symbaroum is kind of strange to me, it definitely has a great feel to it, but the simplicity of the system turned me off a little bit. I need to try it again before I can cast too much judgment.

Pictures from the event

My final Swag!

Getting a picture after my talk with Jason Hardy of Catalyst.

My Shadowrun group for Paradise lost with Ronin (Tom) Wong.

Website News

I will be continuing on with my Shadowrun examinations, reviews and the likes, however I may be expanding on some of the things I write about. I love Shadowrun, don’t get me wrong, but I am a massive RPG fan in general. I own something like 300+ gaming books. I hope that I can write some things that will help more than just the Shadowrun community. Especially for adding more horror and deeper emotion into your game.

If you have made it this far, I thank you for your attention to my ramblings after con. The ConCrash as I’ve heard it described is real, though I also got my flu and covid updates, so who knows what’s really hitting me. Please sign up for the newsletter and I look forward to writing more for you all!

-Dean, Unofficial Shadowrun Archivist

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