GaryCon 2026 Convention Report

 

I made it back yesterday afternoon.  TL;DR is I had a great time... but if you want details, keep reading, hoss!

Staying on-property forced my tentacle into staying 4 nights (anything less wouldn't allow me to book a room there), so I came up Wednesday afternoon.  I ran 6 games, which seems like a lot... probably because it is, but I wish I had booked 7.  Also, I wish I had written in the event submission notes that I'd like my games to be held at the Timber Ridge because that's where I was staying.

Two of my games were tabled at the waterpark.  I mean inside the waterpark.  They literally turned the water off and got the kids out so a dozen or more tables could be set up on the edges of the pools and waterslide areas.  That was weird, but it worked out because I just told my players to come up to my room where I arranged the couch, coffee table, and chairs to run the game in the peace and quiet of my hotel room.  Worked great!

The rest of my games were in Loramore B, and they were all loud and distracting.  

I had a lot of players from previous years, which was awesome, because the games I run (especially, Cha'alt) are unique in play-style, atmosphere, genre, and attitude or approach... I prioritize narrative over numbers, for instance.  I heard from other familiar faces that they tried to get into one or more of my games but were all booked-up, though two games in particular were short-handed.  The first because a couple women bailed without us knowing the reason.  I can understand not signing-up for a Venger Satanis game, but when you already have the tickets, why flake?  The second was because a player had, in my own words based on what I'd heard, taken too much of something, went crazy, and never came back to the Air BnB they rented with friends.

For the first time, I brought boxes of Cha'alt books for a booth to generously stock and sell for me... but they didn't sell a one.  I have a feeling that if that's the direction I want to go in at a place like GaryCon, I'd need to get my own booth and do the selling myself.  I saw very few system-neutral books of adventures, guides, and GM advice, so who knows... maybe I'll look into that. 

Spent some quality time with my friend and VENGER CON alum Bill Allan and his friends, which was cool.  We talked about games, future projects, and conventions over dinner and chilling in the lounge listening to Black Sabbath.

I'll just list the highlights because to go through each session would absolutely fucking break me.  I'm already playing catch-up and don't have the time.  But will elaborate on key points as I go, and if you have a specific question, please ask.

Very few people carried cash around.  Out of 10 people asked, only 2 or 3 of them had a $20 bill on their person.  I thought that was strange, but with technology I guess we're moving to a cashless society.  Kicking myself in the tentacle for not remembering that my paypal "name" is Kort'thalis Publishing, and not based on either of my names, which I use to log-in.  

I had 8 pre-generated characters and every adventuring party included Becka'ala, the pineapple-folk sorceress.  I almost didn't include her in the lineup because she was such a ridiculous gonzo PC, but when in Cha'alt...

One of the most badasss moments was when the PCs commandeered a starship, blasted a massive Lovecraftian entity that had been released from The Necronomicon, may their slumber be short and resplendent with psychedelic dreams, and the party's warrior jumped out with his newly acquired ultra-telluric, vorpal sword, got a crit (possibly via fuchsia burn), and decapitated it... and then (as per the sword's magical ability), the giant Lovecraftian creature head sprouted alien spider legs and served the sword-wielder as a mouth while keeping that eldritch book in its mouth until they reached Wa'avenjour.  That deserved Divine Favor, but I was probably too wrapped-up in the moment to process game mechanics.

At one point, while traveling on the back of a reptilian riding-spider, I had Ta'al (the former slave NPC) ask the adventurers what got them into this kind of life.  It's one of those quiet, introspective moments coming from social interaction that is probably rare in gaming - especially at conventions, I don't play enough to know for sure.  Everyone had something to say, those who took their character's provided backstory synopsis and made it their own, synthesizing how the PC was presented with how players decide to roleplay them, were able to improvise something deep that felt like PSYCHOCOSM to me.

I got a tremendous compliment from a player who had been in one of my games years ago at either GaryCon or Game Hole, vaguely remembered that it was "crazy, wild Lovecraft gonzo" but didn't remember Cha'alt or myself, and rediscovered it when he signed-up for one of my sessions.  His name is Jay, and he said "Yours is the strangest game I've ever played."  Which simply gives credence to my claim that "the Cha'alt experience" is rather unique in the anals (yeah, I know) of our gaming culture. 

A friend of mine who always tries to play in at least one of my games made me a really cool violet-hued set of dice which I rolled several times throughout the con.  Thanks again, David - awesome dice!

The "Black Skull Suggestions" happened.  I mentioned that house-rule, along with Cha'alt X-Cards [FREE PDF here!!!] during all the Cha'alt games.  I wish I had done a similar thing with my Alpha Blue session, ask the players to write down a familiar scifi or X-rated trope, character, concept, or what-have-you.  It forced me to improv in spots where I wouldn't have necessarily gone for it.  Without that concept, we wouldn't have "The salacious cat-warrior gave me herpes" or something about Bruce Campbell's chin, tentacles, and being an Elvis impersonator. 

I finally did the Lovecraftian investigative horror genre justice (last year wasn't bad, but that session was, again, in a noisy crowded room).  Not only did it last the full 3-hours (the allotted time-slot), but it was solid, unexpected, and all the players loved it.  It helps when their expectations are low, a couple of them (maybe more) had recently come away from lackluster games of that ilk, so by comparison, mine seemed graded on a curve.  ;)

I came up with the horror blurb for my adventure six months in advance, like all my games, and my mindset 3 weeks prior to the con is invariably worlds away (quite literally, sometimes).  But I did my best to take what I had outlined months before and use it for inspiration on whatever I come up with in the actual adventure writing process.  

Not every time I GM Cha'alt, but maybe every other session, something happens that becomes established lore in how I run it.  Before GaryCon, I didn't have strip club customers taking their pants down before the lap dance commences, thus being able to enjoy it more... known as a "full-release lap dance."  

Similarly, giving a reptilian riding spider a zoth enema boosts their speed three-fold.  A player asked if there was a demon bounty, probably since I mentioned the brief history of talons.  And that makes so much sense (in certain places) I can't believe it never crossed my mind.  Various sorcerers, priests, and prophets through the ages removing and attaching their foreskin to The Necronomicon in order to become part of it... visceral attunement.  Such a cool idea, and that came from a player who was just winging it; though, I wouldn't be surprised if he had in-game experience of dealing with stuff like trying to use dangerous artifacts of the Lovecraftian variety.

And when it came to Alpha Blue, I came up with klitorian crystals aka sex crystals for female humanoids.  Extremely rare and valuable crystals that made female fantasies more immersive, virtually coming to life while they're being railed.  It was a player who asked how it works, do you grind it up and snort it?  To which I replied "Uh... yeah, you can grind it up into powder and then sprinkle it over the clitoris.  

What else?  I had a player who took the degenerate gambler aspect of his character's personality and made that the focus of his adventure while the "A-plot" felt more like a side-quest.  While that can be tricky for a GM to manage, I think that kind of commitment really enhances a session.  

I remember a theoretical discussion on whether drinking the water of a man who transformed into liquid could be drunk and then pissed-out later... and cleansed of impurities.  The almost immediate gonzo card stimulation (within the first 10 minutes of the game, highly unusual, but also welcome) forced me to come up with an idea - the soap opera characters briefly mentioned in a throw away detail about the cantina they started out in - became real patrons in the cantina that the PCs could interact with, and ended up asking them to come along.  This helped both fill-out the roster (that was a session with only two players), and also gave us some awesome social interaction throughout the adventure.

And of course the jokes!  So many hilarious things said at the table, I only managed to jot a few of them down as things were being said... "If your sleaze factor-5 lasts longer than 5 hours, consult a doctor."  Lol, that still cracks me up.  "Did the stripper dream of The Necronomicon?"  Due to the green-skinned privatives sacrificing the most beautiful of their women, "Eugenics based on ugliness becoming the desired trait in girls."  A sorcerer communicating with a slime entity by jiggling his belly (like a bowlful of jelly) cracked-up the entire table - hey, he rolled a 19.  If I do come up with future Alpha Blue scenarios, "Strange New Holes" has to be a title.

The Cha'alt scenario was very exposition-heavy at the beginning, so let's talk about that.  For a convention game, I think that's fine... maybe not ideal.  You want (mostly, because of player expectations, based on the format) a lot of structure for the session.  Those guardrails get narrower and narrower until it almost kind of feels like a railroad, but there still has to be some free range possibility with plenty of off-ramps.  You also need players to feel like they have plenty of narrative choices at the beginning, middle, and end.  I tried to provide that as each of the four times I ran that exact adventure with the same list of pre-gens, and the middle sections were wildly different.

I also think, for a setting as... unexpected as Cha'alt, introductory exposition gives players a sense of place and a window into what the world is like.  However, next time, I want to go in the opposite direction and just have the PCs wake-up in a strange cave, unsure exactly how they got there or what's going on.  That will also require some sophisticated maneuvering of the adventure writing variety, but I'm always up for the challenge.

Speaking of adventure writing, I spoke with my friend and fellow GM Bill Allan, Merchant of Mela'anj over at VENGER CON, about opening-up a limited license later this year for those who want to write Cha'alt content.  I'll have a formal announcement about that this summer... just wanted to tease the idea ahead of time.

Before I forget, the only time anyone the entire weekend said anything complimentary (or anything at all) about my hand-made maps (I only brought 3, but they were some of my very best ones) was this random guy who said "Cool looking map" while I was standing there holding all my stuff, waiting for a shuttle or trolley that would take me back to my hotel room.  But that happens in my home game, too.  It doesn't bother me so much as it just seems weird that more people don't comment on the one visual element that's presented at the table.  Also, I showed players images on my phone of various NPCs (mostly strippers, prostitutes, and nubile potential sacrifices) and creatures.

As for the dealer's room, it was... fine.  I bought a handful of old Dragon magazines that were reasonably priced from Noble Knight Games.  That's about it.  I've exited my dice acquiring phase, and will wait until a set of seven really knocks my tentacled socks off before purchasing.  And I really don't need any more RPGs at this point in my life.  If I want to explore vintage games from the 80s and 90s (and I do), trying them out at a convention like GaryCon or VENGER CON (attend the con happening this July in Madison, WI right now! Link below) is the way to go.

Thanks for reading, here's a video about GaryCon that I made while there.  As it goes, there's actually no part 2... Lol.  But this blog post definitely serves as a exhaustive follow-up.

VS

p.s.  Yes, weekend badges are now available for July 2026's VENGER CON V: The Will To Power.  Want a great new TTRPG community where you can hang out with other gamers, get ideas, advice, and training in order to improve?  Look no further than the fastest-growing group on X - it's the Kult of Kort'thalis.  Want the hardcover Cha'alt trilogy?  Here's how (and they're currently on sale!)!!  

GaryCon 2025 Convention Report

 

This won't be a multi-part blog post like my recent videos here, here, and here.  Instead, I'm gonna try to get it all down right now.

Overall, it was a great time.  I saw Joe Manganiello at the bar during the charity auction on Saturday (was heading there for my dinner reservation - the yukon gold mashed potatoes were not as creamy or buttery as I remembered, but the prime rib was on point), and I had to get a quick photo with him.  For my wife if anything, but it's always cool to meet a celebrity.  Even if the entire interaction took 3.47 seconds.

Had dinner with the old-school, gray beard, X crew who saw me about to eat alone and asked me to join them.  Thanks, guys!  I'm all-in if they want to make this a yearly tradition, dinner together Saturday night followed by a gaming session (I volunteer, as tribute, to GM in 2026 and after that, whoever wants to), probably off-site.  Cerulean Rex mentioned a brew pub and pizza place just a few miles away that sounds ideal.

Anyway, I met a ton of friends, fans, familiar players, and well-wishers throughout the weekend, and that was awesome, too!  Bought some cool stuff + got a sack full of swag.  You can see all that in part 3 of my con report vlog.

But yeah, let's dive into the sessions themselves.  Obviously, I'm not going to detail the five sessions I ran at GaryCon, even if three of them began in nearly identical fashion.  Rather, I'm going to hit the highlights and talk about what worked, what didn't, noteworthy stuff, wisdom gleaned, and inspirational detritus (in no particular order)... 

Too much boxed text?  I'm not sure what the right amount is.  I think you can err on the side of a little more "read aloud" since PCs seize on any tangible (albeit in our collective imagination) stuff they can find.  I've recently been experimenting with X's grok A.I., and it gave me some nice descriptions for a Cha'alt location.  I asked grok to describe things in the style of Clark Ashton Smith - and it did - which made it so cool that I kind of wanted to use it all.  But when I publish the scenario, I'm going to rein it in.

The pre-gens were a hit.  I still can't believe (yeah, I can, actually) I forgot to hand-out the 2nd group's character sheet notecards until two-thirds of the way through the session.  But hey, it worked out.  There wasn't too much on the notecard, anyway, and the players focused on roleplaying, as they should.

Demographics: There was one woman each in the first and second sessions (both Cha'alt) of the five I ran, two LGBTQ+ individuals total (I didn't ask, just made a judgement call based on perception), and zero "people of color" or non-white folks.  Not that I care about mutable or immutable characteristics when we game (just thought it was interesting data), my focus is on the game, not identities or politics.

Interestingly, one of the women was in that Cha'alt session I ran years ago at GameHole Con around Halloween with the downbeat ending.  She remembered, especially since the PCs entered The Black Pyramid's museum and that's one of the rooms the other adventuring party explored, too.  She remarked that she was one of the few PCs in that other session who wanted to do stuff.  Everyone else (well, not everyone, surely) just kind watched and waited, believing discretion was the better part of valor, perhaps?  Years ago, that session was heavily criticized by another player at the table; you can see for yourself in the comments section here.  

Anyways, that was just one of the many strange and awesome coincidences that occurred at GaryCon this year - like finding a rogue d6 of the blue variety under an empty table next to where we were supposed to run Alpha Blue (the system uses d6 dice pools and it's called Alpha Blue)... except that I found the space too distracting and loud, so we moved to a hallway where it was relatively quiet.  I took that as a sign - one of many!  

Speaking of blue, that color was a theme in the dramatic reading (I handed out a two-page script to a couple of players and they read / acted it aloud while I took on the narrator and loud speaker parts) that began all three Cha'alt sessions.  It was inspired by those two older guys in the movie Cabin In The Woods.  I'd never done anything like that before, but I think it worked.  Mostly because it was referenced later in the sessions, and became a major plot-point in at least one of those sessions.  It led to a greater understanding of what was going on behind the scenes, causing an apocalypse (yes, another one) as a Great Old One awoke, which actually would happen later, off-screen.  

Everyone who read did a great job, and that's something I want to experiment with again.  Just getting players to loosen up and interact with the story in a physical but also theatrical way helps prepare for the session ahead.  I believe last year or the year before that I opened with a dream sequence where a specific line was repeated several times throughout the narrative like a feverish esoteric refrain.

The fruities were a big hit, they always are.  At the end of one of the three, the PCs encountered a small army of fruities from a mirror universe or dark timeline, providing another opportunity for combat.  I know my sessions aren't combat focused, but I was really surprised how many PCs did everything they could to de-escalate potentially violent situations.  That means, I should either skew encounters to have more non-combat usefulness / gameability or take them out altogether and replace them with more interesting non-combat encounters.  Of course, as soon as I do that, players are going to want to rip someone's head off.  Lol, sometimes you can't win.

When something comes up that's just tentacles-down fantastic (in terms of lore, more so than PC or GM success), it becomes more or less canon, unless something happens to upend it down the road.  The desire to taste a fruitie after its demise and some inter-player commentary led me to officially recognize that tasting a fruitie will leave that particular flavor in your mouth whenever you eat something.  I assume a priest could maybe cure that, or it goes away after several months, maybe a year.  So, be careful which fruitie you're going to munch on, if at all. 

The all-time greatest lore addition to any session of the weekend has to be the Chad-player who cut through all the fancy language, romantic prose in order to get to the crude, sleazy center of those polished fuchsia stones representing points of Divine Favor.  "Dude, thanks for the cum-rock... nice," he said as I handed him the Advanced Crimson Dragon Slayer metacurrency which has been incentivizing awesomeness at my table (and many others) for at least 5 years.

Sexual gratification wasn't the only way to acquire Divine Favor, but it was definitely one of them.  Referring to it as a "cum rock" made me laugh the hardest at any point during the convention.  Wow!

I love it when groups of people who know and game with each other sign-up and play in my sessions because they already have the rapport of adventurers who've been doing this for awhile.  The built-in comradery is infectious and easy to (role)play off of. 

Case in point, another highlight (at the same table) of the weekend was the demonic possession of a PC.  I gave those other two PCs who knew him best the chance to notice that the possessed PC was acting "not himself."  The first PC rolled poorly.  The second who was balls-deep into his character rolled a natural 20... and without missing a God damn beat, said aloud to anyone who cared "I don't care at all what's happening to him," and went on to say that another person's, another character's concerns were so far beneath him that it wasn't worth another thought.  Which goes to show - stay in character even when you're speaking out-of-character.  It actually made perfect sense because that's the way he played his character from the get-go.  Honestly, I was taken aback for a micro-second but immediately realized that this is the way.  That player was doing what so few dare to dream - he found his character, got into character, and stayed in character.  It was immersion personified.  

Definitely, grab onto whatever scraps of personality / background the GM has provided and hold on tight.  But the rest is up to you, the player.  Treating it as an acting gig can help introverts and wallflowers overcome their reticence.  You've essentially been "hired" to do a job, which is to become that character for the entirety of the session.  It would be a shame if that character was never fully realized at the table, which is basically our stage, as roleplayers.  

So, my advice to all players in the future (in my games, if nowhere else)... 

• Find your character (who you're supposed to be that session or campaign, however you want to bring that character to life). 
• Once you've found him, get into character using whatever means at your disposal.  I think I'm going to write more about this soon.
• Stay in character - no matter what happens.  I'm not talking about occasionally breaking character when the table explodes in laughter or clutches their collective pearls - that's fine.  But if you're portraying Vanilla Ice with a crippling cheese addiction and penchant for buggery, then for the love of Yog-Soggoth, be that character until the session's over or your character dies.  That commitment is worth more than a carafe of zoth on Cha'alt.

In fact, I'd be interested in examining just how players make their characters come to life when in the company of other players that they're familiar with.  It's like the apprehension melts away and you instantly get a full-fledged character that is being roleplayed, back and forth.  But it wasn't simply familiarity - because I saw that at a similar table and it didn't fast-track or super-charge characterizations, the actual roleplaying.  And it wasn't interpersonal conflict since I had another group that were constantly trying to jack each other, but it was like their characters were merely pawns or masks they were wearing in order to get the other guy.

Yeah, I'm not sure what it is, but I'm going to keep thinking about it.  Eventually, the answer will come... it always does.  Maybe it's healthy competition?  When the potential conflict or agreement has friction (doesn't necessarily have to be two characters at odds with each other, but that tension / chafing / friction must come from somewhere... perhaps another faction, NPC, the dominant / counter culture, or even one's own disparate needs), it seems to create more juice than either cooperative or destructive.  Maybe that's the Goldilocks conflict... not too cold, not too hot, etc.?

But how to instill this - especially into players that don't have a long history with each other?  I suppose, come up with encounters that force them to compete, right?

Oh yes, I want to talk about one of the ways my old-school renaissance is very much venn diagram squished with story-gaming.  If a PC comes up with something on the fly, and it has potential (gameable potential) without breaking the proverbial bank by being over-powered, ridiculously stupid, or genre breaking, I'm going to ask for three things.  And if an answer for all three is presented, then it exists as the player has suggested (at the GM's discretion, of course).

1. What does it do?
2. Where does it come from?
3. How did you acquire it?

For example, a player wanted to use some poisonous or explosive (something like that) fairy dust because, after all, she was playing a pixie-fairy.  After she provided explanations for my answers, I was satisfied and allowed her to have it.

I'm not sure I need to explain why that's a net-positive thing, but can if anyone likes - just ask me in the comments below.  Debate me, bro!

Two of the three Cha'alt sessions got to play around with the Cha'alt X-Cards, and that was fun.  I talked about that in one of the videos.  Imagine (it helps to perceive it animated) sentient tentacles having a disagreement with each other that eventually breaks down into throwing tiny cream pies at each other.  That wouldn't have been possible without the Cha'alt X-Cards, my friend.

Outside of the game, I chatted with one of the Alpha Blue players the next day, and he asked me, though admitted he was almost afraid to ask, how much of the adventure was scripted / plotted and how much was improvised.  "It's a combination," I said.  And that whole acknowledgement of our hobby being one thing while also kind of being something else entirely, the elusive shift.  That's what makes it special, giving it power which almost no other hobby can claim.

For instance, it's about winning... while also not at all about winning.  It's about meeting player expectations, while also doing the opposite.  It's about saying yes... and no.  Simulating a natural or unnatural world as it is, while also having a narrative in mind.  Sandbox vs structured adventure.  The push-pull creates tension which generates energy and that gives roleplaying games life!

For the cosmic horror investigative 1970s scenario, I loved it because it all came together and lasted the 3.5 hours I wanted it to, right down to the minute.  Also, the players were fantastic bringing their characters to life with what little I gave them.  But at the same time, it was perhaps my least favorite because of the noise.  It was really difficult to hear people and I constantly had to project rather than use my normal, casual voice.  Nevertheless, I'm glad I ran it and everyone seemed to enjoy what happened.  

Without further ado, here are the quotables (not just at the table, but in private conversations and on social media, as well)...

• "That's not elder god money."
• "The partition of sleaze."
• "I know it seems like I've gone off the deep end, but trust me when I say there's a perfectly rational explanation for why I have to kill her."  A PC trying to tell us why he's about to murder an NPC who a pixie-fairy just had sex with on the beach after the party had a bitch of a time saving her from a giant crab.  Apparently, the player decided that each of his 11 daggers (part of his pre-gen backstory) was named after a woman he killed, and he had one unnamed dagger left.
• "That's a cum rock, dude."
• "Those fruties are tragically delicious."  
• "If women were a dessert, they'd be cheesecake."
• "Venger, I think you're the best Game Master I've ever experienced."
• "It's ShadowDark's con, we're just gaming in it."

Ok, I think that's it.  Feel free to ask questions if you're so inclined.  The Cha'alt campaign continues this Saturday, and I'm excited to get back to our "home table."  I will probably launch another Kickstarter at the end of April, so look out for that.  What will it be for (no, it's not Book 4 of the trilogy - I still have around 100 more hardcovers left to sell before I can crowdfund that son-of-a-bitch)?  Here's a hint... less is not always more.

Thanks for reading, hoss!

VS

p.s. Want the hardcover Cha'alt trilogy?  Here's how (and they're currently on sale!)!!  Want to join the Kort'thalis mailing list to stay up-to-date on what's going on in the skinematic Vengerverse?  This is it!!  Last but not least, I'm organizing a based-as-fuck RPG convention in Madison, WI this July.  Grab your weekend badge for VENGER CON IV: Post-Modern Apocalypse!!!

VENGER CON III (the post-convention write-up, part 2)

 

Let's start at the end...

The last session of the con (that I participated in) was an investigative horror scenario that I wrote last October as a between Cha'alt campaigns break.  

This was my 3rd time running it.  Even though it was all typed up nice and neat, my organization strategy was abysmal.  I was flipping pages all over the place, and it was only about 7 pages long.

Nevertheless, I think it was successful.  More than any other type of scenario, investigative horror separates the active players from the passive players.  There isn't much call for GMs to ask quieter PCs, "So, what's your opinion of the new gods?" or "You see a sexy elf barmaid straining to pick up a heavy barrel of ale, what do you do?"

But now that I think about it, sure, I could have done more to rope the wallflowers (and I use that term affectionately... at certain times, I used to be more of a wallflower player) in.  But the post-lunch malaise was also a thing, and overall I think all the players managed to get their roleplaying beak wet.

I suppose it's because investigative horror is more goal-oriented?  Of course, that's the trouble (if you can call it that) with pretty much every convention game.  It's very rarely about meandering around, seeing what's happing, and occasionally getting into trouble.  And when it is, some players complain.  Haha, there's no winning.

Anyway, I like the scenario and finally remembered to break-out the sanity rules - 3rd time's the charm!  Nothing says you've entered a weird dimension of cosmic horror like magenta gloom, dark ambient (thanks, Lull) playing in the background, and the roll of sanity saving throws.

Roger's Sunday morning game was a lot of fun.  Judd and I played that, just the two of us.  It was like a buddy cop movie.  We were partners in crime, mercenaries under a fuchsia sky, just trying to make their way through Cha'alt.  The fact that Judd and I have gamed quite a bit with each other over the years (mostly in Cha'alt), and that we're both on the same page, RPG-wise, made it remarkably easy.

Also, getting to play in Cha'alt again was a lot of fun.  I was all juiced up from Judd's Alpha Blue session the night before, I guess, because once we got to that Chucky Cheese type restaurant, my character was hyper focused on getting a sexy waitress in the ball-pit!

As Roger correctly pointed out, and Judd confirmed, getting to play the game with the actual creator means that certain aspects and avenues of the game, which might be ignored under different circumstances, rise to the top.  

Having sex in the ball-pit (don't worry, I kept yelling for the kids to get the fuck outta here while doing it under the cover of colorful squishy balls) was Hetch's main concern, but getting that sweet, sweet +5 bonus to saves, skill-checks, and hit-points for the next 5 hours (that's why it's called Sleaze Factor-5) wasn't bad, either.  Hetch gave new meaning to the phrase "balls deep."

Torvak was Hetch's companion.  I was a blue velvet-elf sorcerer and Torvak a half-orc warrior.  Roger started us out at 3rd level with max HP (which is what I always do), and allowed us to choose a special ability from Cha'alt Ascended.  I forgot how awesome that is.  Sorry for lubricating my own tentacle, but I had forgotten over half of those 60+ options.  I kept running across feats that I would really like to have, both in a one-shot and campaign.  Will definitely utilize that PDF more going forward...

The three of us came up with some cool stuff in that adventure, some bits of lore that will probably carry over into CHA'ALT PRIME... whatever that is.  I'm thinking a kind of greater repository for Cha'alt related stuff that just becomes part of the overall eldritch, gonzo, science-fantasy, post-apocalypse culture.  

Speaking of which, from now on - and this goes for everybody in the RPG hobby, industry, community, or whatever - when you narrate something that should have (or could have, let's not get presumptive) come earlier, don't call it a ret-con.  What we're doing is presenting a flashback or analepsis of what happened earlier.

Ret-con implies that we're stopping the narrative flow to go back and fix something that's broken in order for the rest of the story to continue unabated.  A flashback or analepsis is a non-chronological event that's necessary to the narrative.  

For me personally, the word "flashback" conjures something else to mind... either frequent LSD use or a momentary remembrance of an event that has already been experienced; roleplayed.  And no one knows what the fuck "analepsis" means, so what I would do is call it an out-of-sequence cut-scene, letting people know that what's happening now actually took place earlier (or later). 

Between singing and dancing lizard-bears, bantha jawbone weapons, klikna'ars as a unit of distance, ziggurat schemes, and words of wisdom like "They don't fuck you at the drive-thru," we had a great time.

Last but not least, let me tell you about Judd's Alpha Blue game Saturday night.  It both seemed completely off-the-cuff, spontaneously improvised and also like something he'd been diligently working on for weeks.  I didn't want to ask, as a magician should preserve his magic whenever possible.  

Not being super familiar with the system, he asked me to help everybody with character creation, which I did.  Probably the best way of doing it since I've done that dozens of times over the years and each time it gets a bit easier.  The only thing I wish I'd done differently is that I neglected to mention the advantages (other than starting life as a typewriter, of course) of being a droid.

However, before long we were off and running.  I think we had 6 players or so, and everyone was in the mood for humor, sleaze, and retro-futurism.  Basically, the entire adventure was one massive pun broken-up into 37 bite-sized pieces.  

I played Bashir, an alien (crystalline) pimp.  It wasn't until well after the session that I realized I never used the alienisms I rolled on the d100 table.  Next time I run it, I'm going to offer players a point of Divine Favor... Blue Favor(?) to those whose character actually roleplays the stuff they rolled at character creation.

BBQ is the universe's second oldest profession.  The Baron Hard's conys (that's colloquial slang for coney-dog - a chili-dog you'd find at Coney Island - in certain parts of the country) versus Duke Tradee's delicious BBQ.  The spices must flow as the entire galaxy holds its collective breath to see who will win the culinary guild's cookoff competition.  

We took our Federation ice-cream delivery shuttle to the planet Dude in search of Duke Tradee's son and side-piece.  Half the session I was laughing, the other half trying to piece together the mystery of who was trying to grease the wheels within wheels with delicious mesquite-flavored pork juice.  Oh, and my character had sex with a uniformed woman at the Alpha Blue food court.  Getting an in-game bonus was so far away from my mind, that I only now realized I could have rolled for extra hit-points.

I might not get to play in an RPG until next VENGER CON, so I take my pleasures where I can.  ;)

Here's some funny stuff heard around the table...

• "The Huffle Puff in him dies a little inside."
• "Put your penis in the box."
• "I should really create a random prophecy generator." 
• "I don't judge, I just hashtag."
• Many, many things having to do with the cult of Ron Jeremy.
• "The Potter boy?  That lightning-scarred trollop!"
• "Never trust a girl that went to a bene gesserit high school."

By the time 10pm rolled around, I was beat.  However, I stopped by the convention's main room to see what was shakin'.  All the games were over, and people were drinking beer, talking, and partying.  I drove 10 minutes home shortly after that.

For those who attended, here's the $437,000 question... did you experience PSYCHOCOSM?  In layman's terms, did you momentarily feel like you were really there, in that make-believe world?  Like you were someone else, that your character's actions were your own?  At the end of the day... or convention, in this case, immersion should be our primary concern. 

Really, the entire weekend was beyond fun... and can't wait to do it again next year!  Still waiting on confirmation of availability.  Stay tuned!

Thanks,

VS

p.s. If you still don't have your hardcover Cha'alt books, order now!!!

GaryCon 2024 Convention Report (part 2)

 

You may have read part 1, already.  But this is part 2 of my time at Gary Con XVI...

As mentioned, I ran 6 games... 3 of them were Cha'alt via Advanced Crimson Dragon Slayer.  I decided to ask players a short survey of questions before running to find out their familiarity with me, the campaign setting, rule-set, weirdo game mechanics like Cha'alt X-Cards and Gilded Die of Satanis, along with their favorite movie.

I remember way back when... it might have been my first GameHole Con.  I went around the table, asking players the same thing, but might have narrowed it down to "genre movie."  During an "x" moment in the game that could have gone in virtually any direction, I incorporated a guy's pick of The Thing, especially since The Thing is one of my all-time favorite movies.

After the session, the player who had said The Thing complained because my including an aspect from the movie somehow ruined his immersion.  I suppose because he could no longer pretend that the game world and characters were "real" and independent of influence or inspiration from non-canon sources or something?

It took me a while to get over that because I assumed other players would feel the same, as if my player base was some monolithic aesthetic.  That's also when I was young(er), impressionable and believed that "gonzo stupid" wasn't as cool as serious, Tolkien by way of Gygax, "realism" that many nerds assert in order to fool themselves into thinking that one kind of fantasy and therefore elf-game is inherently superior to another.

But I've long since gone full-gonzo and stopped caring what people thought about my games, if they get too silly, are too off the wall, or people laugh too much instead of... I don't know, mentally masturbating about pretending they're Aragorn but toothless and dressed in rags exploring a dungeon so dry and boring that it must be real?

Anyway, I got a lot of movie suggestions (which, incidentally, helped when it came time to improvise something on the spot using the Cha'alt X-Cards and Gilded Die of Satanis).  Plus, chatting about movies helped everyone get to know each other a little bit and eased the tension of meeting for the first time, even though I had played with some players before, and many players knew each other.

One player let me know that he was in my Cha'alt game 2 years ago at GameHole.  And he must have brought his whole group because all 6 of those guys knew and gamed with each other.  A couple guys in the Alpha Blue game had played in my virtual Roll20 sessions, and grew to be supporters of my content and play-style.  Another session contained guys who saw my session in the game roster, thought it sounded cool, signed-up, and then started researching my stuff to get more familiar and they fell in love with the campaign setting and overall vibe.

As you may recall, most of my games were in good-sized rooms with lots of other games happening right next to me, making it difficult to sit back in your chair, make an off-hand comment, watch how PCs respond, and basically let the game come to you.  Although, that's exactly what I did for the Alpha Blue session on the last day.

But for all those other games, I sat up, leaned in, prepared what I was going to say with my notes, did my best to speak-up, say things clearly and distinctly, and focused my hearing so I wouldn't miss anything the players were saying as the game moved briskly along.  I felt like I was chasing after the game in several spots, if not those entire sessions.

Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing.  I can only assume that many GMs run their sessions like that all the time.  However, my style is different.  As I said, I like the game to come to me.  That means I set things up as partial sandbox with PCs able to kind of do what they want, I'm able to interject improvised bits and pieces on a whim or at the drop of a hat, and turn up and down the heat as needed.

I won't say too much about the Cthulhu hack scenarios because those went well, aside from both scenarios drawing to a close in about half the time they should have.  So, that just leaves Alpha Blue, and the 3 Cha'alt scenarios that were actually 1... a trinity as it were.  It is the prophecy!

Based on my pre-gen sheet (actually, 9 pre-generated characters were divided between 3 sheets of paper) - I think I preferred last year's arrangement where all the possible PCs were on a single sheet of paper.  However, I was able to provide a little more background this time, which is just a trade-off, balancing act, I suppose.

One player took to the idea, based on my provided pre-gen notes, that Cha'alt culture was based on demon civilizations from thousands of years ago.  Because of this, he (and soon the group) decided to keep 3 vials of zoth for themselves, and deliver 1 to the blood-elf's brother, instead of the other way around.  

Every GM worth his salt likes it when PC actions directly correspond, one way or another, with the campaign setting.  When something affects something else, that's amore!  Lol, no.  It's an internal consistency that feels like reality... the building blocks of immersion.  

I believe it was also that player who really took the "tentacle fetish" note to heart.  At some point, based on everything that had transpired, we decided if there's a chance he's not at least a little bit aroused, the world will end.  I think that was in reference to a tentacle-fashioned apocalyptic magic item stolen from the palace vault... probably an adventure unto itself.

A couple of the scorpion-men PCs in different games befriended a little blue scorpion and used it as a familiar, which wasn't so much a part of my plan as something that unconsciously matched the pre-gens to the scenario and flowed like it was supposed to - guided by higher powers, with whom, as a lowly Game Master, I am barely worthy enough to comprehend.  Yes, the dice have their uses, but strokes of the GM's vibrational senses are how we navigate those PSYCHOCOSMIC waters.

Talking to a player who chose the tangerine-elf PC, I had an idea for a hybrid race between tangerine and blood-elf to make blood-orange.  No details on what that might look like, but the idea was intriguing and made me chuckle.  So, soon...

I already mentioned that the Cha'alt X-Cards were used to color / flavor randomly stolen magic items.  There was an A.I. banana... I tried to incorporate the banana motif as much as possible, without overdoing it. 

I liked that the PC(s) wished for a working starship that had the correct documentation papers, tiki bar, voice activated autopilot, was nearby, and a few other things, just in case that demon-genie was trying to screw them over, monkey-paw style.  Oh yeah, the key was a banana-shaped electronic fa'ab.

A couple guys asked, I think it was either after they had provided a movie to reference / parody, or when one of them stimulated a Cha'alt X-Card, if I could include a bologna sandwich somewhere in the session, as that was a running gag with their home group.  So, of course, I obliged.  A giant bologna sandwich scuttled sideways across the S'kbah desert until a sandworm jumped out of the sand and gobbled it up in one bite.

That's the kind of thing that might ruin a player's idea of immersion in another game, but in Cha'alt, that's just how we roll.  Reveling in that way of doing things has closed doors but opened windows to new ways of experiencing the game.

Oh, yeah.  I wanted to mention that it wasn't until about halfway through the first Cha'alt session that I realized why none of the sorcerers were casting spells or even considering that option.  I never provided a spell list or any spellcasting information at all.  So, I gave the sorcerers in that game a brief synopsis going forward, and physically wrote out all the possible spells on a blank sheet of paper for the following two sessions, which obviously helped enormously.

Two of the three ended sort of similar to each other, while the other went in a slightly different direction.  I don't know if one is the right choice over another, but I like the idea of multiple possible endings - above and beyond player agency and PC choices, of course.  Reminds me of the Clue movie from the 80s that had three different endings.  

Did I mention that I only bought one thing in the dealer's room?  The first time I went through, I browsed the aisles, looking at books, knick-knacks, "ultimate gaming tables," and dice - so many dice.  It's a tradition of mine to buy at least one set of dice at the cons I attend, but this time, as occasionally happens with me, I decided to break with tradition.  No dice to just buy dice.  If a set didn't really speak to me, I wouldn't bother.

My second time through the dealer's room, I noticed some kind of massive worm creature in a clear plastic container sans box.  I asked about it, and sure enough, it was half price in the "scratch and dent" section.  I was hoping the $68 price tag was the original price and I could get the thing (which turned out to be a space-worm for the Spelljammer set) for $34.  That would have been a steal!  Alas, $68 was the halved price.  So, I hemmed and hawed a bit, trying to decide if it was worth it to me to have my very own gigantic miniature sandworm.  

I haggled a bit, trying to negotiate a better deal (which is now illegal in the state of New York), and the shop owner was nice enough to roll me for it.  He beat me on a toss of two massive foam d20s.  I picked the hot-pink and he rolled the teal.  So, I paid the seemingly ridiculous price for a really big, painted, plastic miniature and brought it back to my hotel.

I'm tempted to make the Alpha Blue session its own blog post, but my wife is getting tired of me writing about the convention I just spent 3 1/2 days at.  So, let's do this here and now!

I had everyone make their own characters, which is my customary way of doing things with that RPG.  The characters should be unique and getting to the finish line provides at least half of the adventure or seeds thereof.

There was Daskanzia a mutant conman, Bashir, an alien mercenary who likes to get squishy and turn invisible, Jira, a female droid and former gumball machine (like Servo) who was also a pimptress, Arden, a human pirate and psion, and Gunstarra, an alien metallic humanoid who was dog-sized.

I had the idea on the way over to the main lodge that morning of starting with part 2 of a sleazy space opera movie, where the original had done pretty well at the box-office.  However, "The Sequel" got its budget slashed and all the movie stars portraying the main characters, like George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Vince Vaughn, and Sophia Vergara were replaced with C-list actors (the PCs themselves) constantly referencing awesome things that happened in part 1 but made no sense to anyone (like all of us) who'd never seen the original movie.

The players thought that was a neat and/or funny idea, and I awarded points of divine favor whenever they made an out of context reference to the first movie that, obviously, none of us knew anything about in real life because I just made it up.  I think that went well.  Each player did that a couple times throughout the session to reinforce the "sequelness" of the adventure. We even used crappy on purpose sound effects with our mouth for various scifi-isms, noting that a grip or catering guy was probably making the sound just off camera.

At the end of the original movie, the principle characters were sentenced to 18 months on the penile planet Cygnus Beta where the PCs had been working at a monastery devoted to an old god whose name must never be uttered.  

Before long, whilst transporting toilet paper or TP (also known as treasure paper to the head abbot - from whose inner sanctum they stole a number of things, including a tall, ceremonial candle with a note that read "Do not light as this will resurrect a Great Old One"), Jira was impregnated by a penis-worm, but saved when another member of the crew threw out a "humper," distracting it.

There was a transport shuttle taking the PCs to Alpha Blue where some penis-headed aliens tried to get the Sleazoid Express hijacked.  "One-eyed Johnson got himself circumcised in the clone war."  The PCs thwarted that plan and took a lot of the unstolen cargo themselves.

On Alpha Blue, they located a worm wrangler and obstetrician shop, like those Taco Bell and Pizza Hut combo restaurants, and got the baby penis-worm gumball hybrid out of Jira.  The built-in petting zoo helps to domesticate penis-worms (for which there definitely is a market).

Then, they were wandering around the red hologram district and received a message from a 6-inch hologram of a dark zedi relating to a mysterious idol of an unnameable Great Old One sitting in an antique shop.  The PCs got it, and were about to leave when the dark zedi himself (3-feet tall in actual size) told them all that the run-time of the movie was almost up and this was their only chance for a laser battle.

So, we finished with a blaster shootout against the Knights in White Satin.  I tried out a sort of Blue Escalation for this combat.  Basically, on the first round, anyone who rolled a 6 on their dice pool scored a critical-hit and pretty much killed their opponent.  On round two, anyone who rolled a 5 or 6 scored a crit.  We never got to round three, as the survivors ran away.

That was all the time we had, and resurrecting the unnamed (although, I think I did accidentally say Yog-Soggoth towards the end - hey, this was supposed to be a really bad movie) would have to wait until part 3 because they didn't have anything left in the budget to create old god monster special FX.

Not sure where this fits in, but one of the nights I was in the hotel room, there was the Jack Palance Dracula movie on TV.  I watched a fair bit of it.  At one point, the vampire hunters found the sleeping brides of Dracula.  The audience heard what sounded like a stake being driven through a heart and then a close-up of her mouth filling with blood.  It was just for a second or two, really quick (which made me feel cheated), but at the time I remember thinking that's exploitation.  

Exploitation is the stuff we really want to see and hear, but the bastard censors won't let us because we're all just impressionable children in a nanny state.  In 2024, this is all just so ridiculous when The Bachelor puts a black bar over a woman's butt - who still has her swim bottoms on!!! - but if you try to hide blood and bones and body parts by cutting up the corpse and draining it down the pipes in the house you're squatting in, it's fine.  No bail.  Just come back to court in a couple months and we'll see if it's even a crime at that point.  We are truly living in clownworld!  

I have the vague memory of including a gut-munching cannibal scene (or maybe it was worms) with blood-splatter and the sound of hastily eaten, greasy fried chicken or something when the GRINDHOUSE EXPLOITATION Cha'alt X-Card was stimulated, but for the life of me, I can't remember what session that was in, or if it took place at all.  Maybe I fell asleep and dreamed it?

Regardless, I had a blast at the convention.  Really, all the sessions were amazing in their own way.  The only things I would have preferred is less noise and distraction in the first 5 sessions and a non-stinky room for the 6th.  Yeah, I'm definitely going to see what I can coordinate for next year because GaryCon is my favorite RPG convention... if you don't count VENGER CON (get your weekend badge now), of course.  

This July in Madison, WI is gonna be lit with the flammable zoth-based lube of a thousand tentacled whores.  Grab your badge today, hoss!

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.  I know this is an info dump that's missing a lot of details and some context.

VS

p.s. Aside from VENGER CON III: Revenge of the OSR convention, now's the time to get your hardcover Cha'alt trilogy if you don't already own it.  

GaryCon 2024 Convention Report (part 1)

 

I got back yesterday afternoon from Gary Con.  Overall, it was a great time!

My notes and game prep stuff is in the car, and getting all that stuff would wake my sleeping wife who was good enough to hold the fort and watch the kids while I was away.  So, in the meantime, I'm just going to mention some takeaways in no particular order.

I ran 6 games and while that felt kind of overwhelming and "too much" at certain points, I'm glad I went for it and achieved that much gaming.  There's almost never a "perfect session," even in one's home game, but at a convention?  Forget about it!  However, I was extremely pleased with how the sessions turned out.  

I had between 4 and 6 players for every game, which I think is ideal.  BTW, part 2 of this post-GaryCon report is here.

I noticed that the only game where I took lots of notes was the last one, the Alpha Blue session.  There's only one common denominator there, and that's the peace and quiet of a private room without all the noisy distractions.  But why, oh why, did that room have to stink so bad?  As soon as I walked in, it was like someone had let out a wet cheese fart about an hour ago and that smell never fully left, even after we kept the door open for the first 30 minutes.

The silver lining (aside from the fact that we had the whole room to ourselves) was that one of the randomly rolled qualities of a PC was their disgusting smell, so I suppose... it added to the immersion, kind of?  But yeah, the room stunk and 4 hours of that was about as much as I could reasonably stand.

Other than that, the Alpha Blue session was fantastic and I got to play in-person with guys who were big fans of mine and really loved my stuff.  

In fact, one guy, David, who'd played in one of my Cha'alt games, too, said he wanted two autographs at Gary Con this year.  One from old-school D&D artist par excellence Erol Otus, and me.  So, that was a bit overwhelming and extremely flattering, making the whole trip worth it for me just for that.

But why would a higher level of background commotion keep me from taking notes?  I was thinking about that on the drive home, earlier this morning, and again right now.  Maybe a fear that if I wasn't focused on moving things along at a quick pace that the session would be swallowed by all the commotion around us?  Perhaps there was less inter-player chatter, banter, and casual one-liners (which I usually like to observe and write down) due to the need for everyone to speak-up clearly and intentionally in order to be heard?  Also, if I wanted to hear anybody, I had to watch their mouth (I estimate I had to ask folks to repeat themselves about 5 or 6 times per session) - which is another reason why wearing masks at a gaming con is just not ok.  

Anyway, these results mean that I don't have copious notes from the first 5 sessions, only the last.  However, I ran the same Cha'alt scenario (an original piece I wrote the week before the convention) 3 times, so the details of what happened, generally speaking, are firmly in my head... and I have my prepared game notes.

Apparently, when I'm running my rules-light d20 Lovecraftian investigative horror hack, I either need to pad-out the scenario to exceed 2 hours or simply schedule it for a 2-hour game.  Additionally, I should include stage directions in my GM notes that say HAVE THE PLAYERS ROLL FOR SANITY, YOU DUMBASS because I neglected to do that in both scenarios on Saturday!  That, and the shortness of those games irritated me since I always want to deliver (overdeliver, actually) on what's promised.  

With that night-time Cthulhu hack session, I should have morphed it into Cha'alt using something akin to that method between Cha'alt campaigns in our home game, but I didn't think of that until later.  We still hung-out and talked for about 30 minutes after, so wasn't the end of the world, but when it's listed as a 4-hour game, I feel like the shortest it should be is 3.

I can still remember my first (possibly second) ever Gary Con I attended.  My hotel room that I booked got bumped to a golf course villa or something a little bit off property, but a bus took me back and forth to the main hotel whenever I wanted.  That villa had its own well-appointed, private room with a big round table and plenty of comfortable chairs.  

I remember being fed-up with gaming in open areas alongside dozens or hundreds of people who weren't in my session but doing their own thing right next to me, and thought... why don't I just use that private space in my villa?  

That was the first time I ran The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence.  The book wasn't out yet, but the Kickstarter had ended, and I had maybe 40 pages of word document type stuff printed-out and spiral bound for ease of use.  T'was a fun session made all the more awesome because of the quiet, peaceful, and luxurious location (FYI, this is what gaming at VENGER CON is like).  

The two negative take-aways from that playtest con game were that wandering around, sandbox-style, wasn't what a few players had expected.  They preferred a more directed adventure with something specific to do.  The other was a player whose character got killed when an enemy critted him and I rolled a 12 on a d12 critical-hit table that I had included in the purple islands setting.  

It happened at the tail-end of the session, so he didn't miss out on anything, but when it was all over, I thanked the players and hoped they had fun.  The player whose PC died said something like, it was fun until my character died; or it would have been fun, except my character died.  In that moment, and still today, I'm glad he got killed.

Nevertheless, to this day, I'm sensitive about PC deaths and not providing some kind of overarching plot, story, or narrative to guide players in a general direction - without it turning into a railroad, of course.

Admittedly, there was a single point in the Cha'alt session where the PCs get rounded-up and imprisoned, but everything else was up in the air and could have gone a dozen different ways.  Being a con game, I think the vast majority in the hobby would let it slide.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll sign-up to attend and GM the crap out of Gary Con next year... but perhaps I can arrange something with the convention, like a private room where I'm staying, so I can run my games without taking up precious space at the actual hotel.  The private room experience really does bring out the best in gaming, and since GMing tremendous fucking sessions is one of the things God put me on this Earth to do, I want to do it to the best of my ability.

What else?  Got to playtest a psion class for Advanced Crimson Dragon Slayer, which was fun (it's just based on the psionic rules, page 50 of the Cha'alt book), and a couple new races... an obsidian-man and tangerine-elf.  The obsidian-man, I now realize, needed more mechanical flavor to really come alive.  However, I'm quite pleased with how the tangerine-elf turned out, being able to make himself into orange juice in desperate situations + that race's high immunity.

Speaking of playtesting, I brought out the Cha'alt X-Cards for every session (except the Cthulhu hack ones) and the Gilded Die of Satanis for a few.  So, folks got to try it who'd never heard of anything like that before.  I think they found it somewhere on the spectrum between interesting and really cool.  

It was especially useful when we were flavoring random items quickly stolen from a treasure vault.  Since it was vast and full (imagine the cave of wonders in Aladdin), I let the players pick out what they found... with potential complications once they brought it out of the vault.

I remember the eyes of expectant players gazing into my GM soul, burning holes through my imagination as they patiently waited for me to improvise something awesome and contextually appropriate and badass... those eyes... the eyes!!!  Lol.  No, but seriously, there was some pressure to perform and not disappoint.  I think I did well under the circumstances.  The players occasionally helped with the creative lifting too, which is a feature of the design.

I remember thinking up a conch shell that when you held it up to your ear, you could hear the Great Old Ones devouring souls from beyond this universe.  So, like I said, the Cha'alt X-Cards came in handy and provided a lot of additional flavor to the session.

A player in a different Cha'alt session was spamming the cards at one point, trying to trick-out their stretched sand-speeder to include a pool, high-tech weaponry, hot chicks, extra tentacles, etc.  As I mentioned in the one video I made while at the convention, when a particular mechanic, system, or way of playing and interpreting the rules drifts organically into something the players can use to improve their overall experience, I try not to stop them but encourage how they've intuitively latched-on to it. 

Sometimes, the cards and gilded die were merely excuses to get the players conceptualizing a particular location, event, or NPC.  Occasionally, they were used as a "fail forward" device that had a built-in cost of either creative energy or shameful consequences for their PC.

After each session (again, not including the Cthulhu ones), there was a clear refrain... there's nothing quite like this.  It was completely different than any session they'd played at the con - or, in some cases, their entire lives.  They had assumptions and expectations, but this was just... weird... beyond weird.  There really is nothing comparable.  Cha'alt (using Advanced Crimson Dragon Slayer and the way I run it) is a unique roleplaying game experience.  

That's what comes with focusing on a particular niche, adhering to your own aesthetics and sensibilities, and honing the vibe with an easy going and flexible manner until you get exactly the kind of game you're looking for... then, on top of that, never stop trying to improve.

GaryCon is a solid, well run convention.  It's sheer size puts it in a large gaming con category where you should know ahead of time if the crowds, noise, and expense are within your wheelhouse.  For example, Friday night, I opted for the prime rib buffet, which was good, but $50 + $3.50 for a Mountain Dew... before tip, obviously.  That's not in everyone's budget.

Of course, I'd be remiss for not mentioning my own old-school, OSR, and traditional RPG convention happening this July in Madison, WI... VENGER CON III: Revenge of the OSR.  Weekend badges still available - max attendance capped at 100, so don't delay!

Oh yeah, and I sold a ton of books... which was nice. If you want either the first, second, or the entire Cha'alt hardcover trilogy, here's the ordering info + price list.

Thanks to the con organizers and volunteers, thanks to all my players and those who wanted to get into one of my games but couldn't for one reason or another.  Part 2 of my GaryCon XVI convention report will either be tomorrow or the day after.  Thanks for reading, and I hope you're enjoying it so far!

VS

p.s.  [this space left intentionally awesome]