Thoughts on Gamehole Con 2024 (Prologue)

As I've explained before, I first attended Gamehole Con in 2017 – my first convention since GenCon 2001 (unless one counts OSRCon). I enjoyed the experience enough to go back in 2018. I intended to do so again in 2019 until a run-in with a car at a crosswalk interceded. I also intended to return in 2020, but Fate once more prevented my doing so. By 2021, my nascent habit of attending GHC had been broken and I didn't seriously consider going once more until this year, thanks in no small part to the stated intention of a couple players in my Twilight: 2000 campaign to do so. 

That was the push I needed and I am grateful for it, because I had a blast at the con. Perhaps my favorite part was seeing people in the flesh. Though I've refereed the House of Worms campaign for nine and a half years now, I've met fewer than half of my players in person. Don't misunderstand me: I consider all my online players my friends and am deeply grateful for them and the time they spend with me, but hanging out and gaming at the same table together just feels right and good in ways that simply can't be replicated in a virtual space. Gamehole Con demonstrated this truth again and again.

Among the people I got to hang out and/or roll some dice with whose names you might recognize were:

• David "Zeb" Cook: Former TSR designer. 
• Jeff Grubb: Former TSR designer whom I first met years ago.
• Allen Hammack: Former TSR designer, who refereed me and four others in his classic AD&D modules, The Ghost Tower of Inverness (about which I'll have much more to say later).
• Jason Hobbs: Host of the Hobbs & Friends and Random Screed podcasts.
• Mike Mearls: Former WotC designer, now working with Chaosium. He refereed me and several others in a fun RuneQuest adventure scenario.
• Marc Miller: Creator of my favorite roleplaying game, Traveller, and one the nicest, most gracious people I know in the hobby – a true gentleman.
• Travis Miller: Fellow blogger, whose Grumpy Wizard site is devoted to sword-and-sorcery literature and old school gaming.
• Victor Raymond: An old and dear friend of mine, as well as my co-host on the Halls of Blue Illumination podcast.
• Seth Skorkowsky: Youtuber and author, who played the most awesome Yelmalio cultist in a RuneQuest session. 
• Steve Winter: Former TSR and WotC designer.
• Ronin Wong: Actor and fellow lover of Holmes Basic. 

There were undoubtedly others whose names I have forgotten – most importantly the wonderful people with whom I played AD&D, Hyperborea, and RuneQuest. They were the reason I went to Gamehole Con. I wanted to be with real, living people, unmediated by technology. I wanted to be able to see them, hear them, and touch them directly with my own senses. At one point, early in the con, I was out for lunch at a local bar with two of the players in my Twilight: 2000 campaign and I was immediately struck by how weird it was to hear their voices without wearing a headset and to see their faces without looking at a screen. Of course, that's not weird at all; it only seemed so because I'd spent so much of the last decade gaming online rather than across a table. Maybe that needs to change.

I left the convention incredibly energized and enthusiastic about this hobby of ours. Lots of ideas and plans – some of them no doubt harebrained – began to percolate in my brain. I'll be talking more about some of them in the days to come. Others I'll keep to myself for a while, since I can't be certain that they'll ever come to fruition (or indeed if they could). What I do know is that I am so glad I decided to return to Gamehole Con after too long an absence. I'm pretty sure I'll be making this an annual pilgrimage. I may also add another con to my schedule next year, too, perhaps GaryCon or North Texas RPG Con, depending on scheduling. If anyone has any thoughts or recommendations about either of them, I'd love to hear them.

More specific posts about my adventures in Madison, Wisconsin will follow in subsequent posts throughout the week.

Return

I am now safely returned to my lair, after spending a delightful five days in Madison, Wisconsin at Gamehole Con. I have a lot to share about my time there and the many fellow gamers, both well-known and otherwise, whom I met. Regular posting will resume later today or, more likely, tomorrow, as I'm still recuperating from my travels. 

Off to GHC

As I mentioned previously, I will be attending Gamehole Con this year. I leave for Madison, Wisconsin today and will return on Sunday. It's been several years since I was last at GHC and am looking forward to it, even though I absolutely loathe airline travel. There are quite a few people whom I'm keen to see in the flesh again and I'm sure I'll make the acquaintance many more over the course of the next few days. For the duration of my travels, I'll likely be offline, so I won't be able to answer emails or approve comments on the blog. I likewise won't have any new posts until a day or two after I return, since I'll likely be tired (though not, I hope, afflicted with the dreaded con crud). 

Until then!

The Articles of Dragon: "Languages Rules Leave Lots of Room"

Issue #66 of Dragon (October 1982) includes several different articles related to fantasy languages and their use in Dungeons & Dragons adventures and campaigns. While not all of them are good, several are – or at least are interesting enough that I still remember them after all these years, which is why I'll be devoting a few more posts to them, including today's. The first of these interesting language articles is A.D. Rogan's "Language Rules Leave Lots of Room for Creativity in Your Campaign." It's not the most inspired title by any means, nor does it really convey much about its content. Nevertheless, it does, in my opinion, raise some good questions about languages in (A)D&D and provides some intriguing answers to them.

The first thing one needs to know about this article is it's primarily concerned with linguistics, specifically the connections between languages, their degree of mutual intelligibility, and what sort of information a given language is capable of conveying. That probably sounds hopelessly nerdy, even within the context of RPGs, and it probably is. For a kid like me, who was deeply interested in foreign languages and their development, this was catnip. Add in that Rogan's article includes language trees showing how he imagines some of the demihuman, humanoid, and monster languages relate to one another (and, in some cases, to human languages), I found it really enjoyable.

Consider this language tree, which I hope is at least somewhat legible:

Here, Rogan makes connections between Middle Elfin and the languages of elven subspecies, woodland and fairy creatures, and even the secret language of the Druids. As I said above, it's hopelessly nerdy stuff, but simply looking at this language tree tells me a lot about the author's own fantasy setting. Ultimately, that's what makes the article so remarkable: it illustrates how something as specific as languages and their interrelationships can help to define a fantasy setting. 

Of course, Rogan doesn't limit himself to examining language trees, cool as I found that as a kid. He also devotes quite a lot of time to looking at what the AD&D rules say or imply about languages, literacy, and similar questions. As it turns out, the rules say quite a lot about these topics, though rarely in a cohesive way. That makes sense, since most of the comments are scattered across multiple books, written over the course of several years. Further, these comments are usually, like so much in Dungeons & Dragons, ad hoc rules put together to deal with specific problems, like how many languages can a character speak and so forth. Rogan attempts to make sense of them all, or at least raise questions for each referee to consider as he makes his own fantasy setting.

Naturally, I don't agree with all of Rogan's answers. For example, he assumes that members of the monk class must be illiterate, because they are unable to make use of scrolls and lack the thief's read languages ability. That's a defensible, if odd, extrapolation of the AD&D rules and one I don't share. However, it is, in my view, a good illustration of the kinds of things a referee might want to consider as he tackles the question of languages and literacy in his campaign setting, especially if that setting is an original one of his own creation. This article is, therefore, a useful one with a lot of recommend it. As I've said a couple of times already, I thought pretty highly of it in my youth and found, in re-reading it, that it still holds up reasonably well.

Our Toughest Challenge Ever

As if to prove my point, last week's Dark Sun posts have generated a lot of interest, not to mention comments, which I appreciate. Here's another ad for the setting, this time from issue #173 of Dragon (September 1991), the same issue as the Brom cover I previously highlighted.

Looking at this advertisement, I have several thoughts:

• It's important to remember TSR's D&D novels were very successful for the company, so it's no surprise that the release of the Dark Sun boxed set would also see the release of a novel at the same time, in this case Verdant Passage by Troy Denning. Though I never read any of them, there would eventually be thirteen novels published for Dark Sun during the TSR era.
• Speaking of TSR, is that not the logo at the bottom right the ugliest the company ever had?
• Once again, we see this ad emphasizes that Dark Sun is "the toughest AD&D game campaign ever published." I can't help but wonder what this is about. Was there a perception at the time that TSR's other settings, like Dragonlance or the Forgotten Realms, were "easy" or otherwise inadequate to the tastes of AD&D fans? My recollection, albeit from more than three decades ago, was that the 2e era was concerned far more with "story" and similar things, so I wouldn't have expected much clamor for a "challenging" setting. Perhaps that's the explanation? Could it have been that there some segment of the game's fans who felt the game had strayed too much from its roots and wanted a setting where death was ever-present? I wish I knew.

Wulfwald Bundle of Holding

Most people who read this blog are probably already familiar with the Bundle of Holding, which offers limited-time sales of tabletop RPGs in PDF form at bargain prices, with a portion of the revenue going to various charities. It's a great way to take a chance on a game or game line that interests you without having to blow a huge amount of money to do so. I've made use of it a few times myself and have never regretted it.

That's why I wanted to draw your attention to a new one that I think many readers will appreciate: Wulfwald. It's a low-fantasy, old school RPG inspired by Anglo-Saxon myths and legends. I bought a print copy of the game a couple of weeks ago and love it. I'm in the midst of writing a review for it, which I hope to have finished before I leave for Gamehole Con next week. However, the sale only runs until October 17 and I wanted to alert everyone to it now, in the event I don't complete that review before I depart.

For only $5.95, you get all five rulebooks in PDF form, along with an electronic black-and-white regional map of the game world drawn by the late, great Russ Nicholson. At that price, I think it's more than worth it and I highly recommend it to anyone fascinated by early medieval Britain.

The Darkest Shadows

Whatever one's feelings about the setting itself, Gerald Brom's artwork for Dark Sun was truly stunning. Take, for example, this piece which appeared on the cover of issue #173 of Dragon (September 1991), one month before the formal release of the boxed set. The issue featured a number of different articles intended to introduce Athas to the magazine's readers, but, for me, this cover image probably did more to sell me on Dark Sun than did any of those articles.

Character Trees

I hadn't intended to devote so many posts to Dark Sun, but they've proven quite popular and have generated a lot of discussion, so I thought I'd do a few more that I think have a wider relevance for fans of old school roleplaying games. In its advertising, TSR frequently described the world of Athas as AD&D's "toughest challenge ever." This train of thought can found throughout the boxed set's rulebook as well, such as this paragraph:

This paragraph appears under the section header "Character Trees," which continues:

Since it's been so long since I last read Dark Sun, I'd completely forgotten about the existence of character trees. When I re-read this section, I immediately thought of Goodman Games's Dungeon Crawl Classics Role Playing Game and its "character funnel." 

For those of you unfamiliar with a character funnel, it's an adventure for DCC RPG in which each player generates four 0-level characters to throw at its dangers. At the conclusion of the adventure, the player chooses which of these four – assuming any survived – to elevate to level 1 and become his player character. DCC is dangerous, even for characters of levels 1 and above; it's especially dangerous for level 0 characters. Consequently, many of them die during the course of a funnel and it's not at all uncommon for a player to have to generate a second (or third ...) set of four characters to get through the funnel with one still alive at the end. 

I've played through several funnels and they're a lot of fun. They're a great way to introduce new players to Dungeon Crawl Classics – not just its game mechanics but also its embracing of randomness as a gateway for unexpected fun. The other thing I really like about funnels is that I never know which of my four level 0 characters is going to be the one that makes it out alive. Often, it's the one I least expect, which I find delightful. Left to my own devices, I tend to fall into the same old ruts when it comes to generating a new character. Leaving the final decision to Fate breaks me free of that.

Now, Dark Sun's character tree concept is actually quite different from DCC's character funnel, but I nevertheless wondered if maybe there'd be some influence. The character tree is intended to provide players with a source of back-up characters whose levels are not too far below those of their current characters. This is a concern because the world of Athas is a dangerous one, player characters will die often. Since no one wants to replace a higher-level character with a 1st-level one, having three others as part of a tree is insurance against that. 

A player in Dark Sun may only play one character in his tree at a time. The other three are inactive and may only be activated between adventures, upon the death of the current character, or – rarely – during an adventure. Only the current characters gains experience points. However, upon the current character's gaining a level, one of the other three characters in the tree also goes up a level as well. This happens every time any played character in the tree advances. Ideally, the player will be swapping between characters, thereby ensuring that most of them are within a level or two of each other. Even if he doesn't, at least one of them should be fairly close to the level of his current character, thereby obviating the need to generate a new level 1 character.

I think there's something to the idea of a character tree, though it's really only needed if the referee is a stickler about requiring that a new character enter the campaign at level 1 without exception. It's been my experience that most referees are fairly flexible about this, though strict, by-the-book AD&D, even in the 2e era, discourages this practice. I've generally been more inclined to let replacement characters begin at or close to the average level of the remaining ones, but maybe I'm too lenient. I'd be curious to hear others' opinions about this, especially if they're based on experience born of play in a campaign.

The Dawn of a New World

Here's another teaser advertisement for Dark Sun, from Dragon #172 (August 1991) – a month before the formal release of the game. What stands out to me about this ad is that it calls the setting AD&D's "toughest challenge ever" or some variation thereof. This makes me wonder more about the genesis of the setting within TSR and what segment of the game's audience the company was hoping to attract.

A Drama of Unparalleled Heroics Unfolds

The second teaser advertisement for Dark Sun, this one appearing in issue #171 of Dragon (July 1991).