I have climbed the mountain and discovered Shangri-La!
Back in October of this year (October 17th-20th), I finally made the trip out to Madison, Wisconsin for my very first Gamehole Con held at the Alliant Energy Center. For years now, friends and industry colleagues have praised this event which is promoted as "the largest majority RPG gaming convention in the world," and this year I decided to rip off the bandage and experience it for myself, especially since there were almost 100 Savage Worlds games on the schedule (thanks to the efforts of the Savage Alliance) and Pinnacle was going to have a presence and booth in the dealer's hall.
I was there as a regular paying attendee, though I did, as always, offer my hand to assist if Pinnacle required it. I submitted two games, and I signed up to play four others. A relatively full schedule, but I also wanted to leave plenty of gaps for socializing/networking.
Overall, I had a terrific time and I'm already contemplating a return in 2025!
Thursday
My first event of the con was a Dungeon Crawl Classics game (Goodman Games) run by the one and only Brendan LaSalle. I've never been in one of Brendan's games before, but his reputation certainly precedes him (and he's also written some pretty great adventures for DCC as well as the infamous X-Crawl).
Taking its title (and elements of its plot) from Black Sabbath, "Electric Funeral" was a 4th-level adventure that had us traveling to a distant, doomed world to do a "favor" for a Patron in return for saving the life of one of our party. It was weird, wild, and totally METAL! I played a sword-wielding cleric I named "Delgado" and this was definitely my favorite game of the con. Thanks to Brendan for running an epic adventure and also to the rest of the players for making it such a fun time!
Later that day, Carl Davis of Tabletop Tango over on YouTube and the Mastering the RPG podcast slid behind the GM screen to run us through a classic (though updated for Savage Worlds) Dragonlance adventure set over on Krynn's neighbor, Taladas. I took on the role of a Knight of Solamnia as we bravely penetrated a recently revealed wizard's tower that had been encased in stone. Another highlight of the con for me as I've been a Dragonlance fan since the beginning.
That evening, I enjoyed dinner and drinks with Carl and a couple colleagues from Pinnacle at Liberty Station (try the "Tavern Tots") and that was it for day one.
Friday
Friday morning began with an excursion into Deadlands: the Weird West! "Whispers of the Haunted Peak" dropped our posse into the middle of a standoff between outlaws and the US Army over a ghost rock mine. I played a Mad Scientist who proudly stated the elaborate names of each of his gadgets before using them and the adventure was a great mix of intrigue, political machinations, and exploration.
At 5pm, there was a largely
unannounced gathering of Savage Worlds creators and fans held in the primary
Savage Alliance room (Mendota-5). While the idea was sound, far too many didn't
even know what was going on. I hope that it can be better promoted in 2025,
even with a sign or two slapped on the doors well ahead of time.
After this, I ran my adventure, "The Locked Door" for Pinebox Middle School. This was my third (or fourth) time running it and overall, it went fine, however I think it's time to put that one up on the shelf for a while. I will devote a future blog entry to the adventure, especially since I had some amazing art produced for it and I'd love to share it with you all.
Saturday
Saturday was my final day at Gamehole as my friend (and roommate) Mike and I had decided to fly home early the following day. My understanding is that Sunday at Gamehole is relatively light anyway, so we were OK with that decision.
My first adventure of the day was an
abbreviated version of "Crypt of the Everflame" for Pathfinder® for Savage Worlds. Adapted from a First Edition Pathfinder® adventure by our GM
(Chris Valentine of MetaMorphic), this relatively straight forward dungeon
crawl was a lot of fun! I enjoyed it so much that I am planning on running more or less the
same adventure for Savage Saturday Night at next year's KublaCon! More about
that later!
For my last event, I ran John Goff's "Final Rest Stop." This grindhouse horror adventure has been a big hit at previous conventions, but for a wide variety of reasons, it was a DISASTER this time around. I was baffled by some of the choices made by the players including completely skipping an essential element (location) that MUST be visited in order to obtain ALL the clues AND the key to defeating the enemy (as well as a couple helpful weapons). I literally shined a spotlight on this area (in the form of moonlight) and they turned around and walked away from it, never to return. I really had no way of introducing them to everything they needed to uncover in that location and the adventure just wound up being a fade-to-black, implied TPK.
To top it all off, as we were wrapping up, one of the player's accidentally spilled an entire glass of water across the table destroying my large inkjet printed map, a few handouts, and character tokens. DESTROYED! It was pretty clear that like my aforementioned Pinebox Middle School adventure, it's time for me to shelve this one for a while as well.
After that, it was back to the room to pack, a couple hours spent at an evening party, and then an early flight back to L.A. the next morning.
