Last week, I once more attended Gamehole Con in Madison, Wisconsin. This was my fourth visit, and as always I had a fantastic time.

It’s a medium size con (~6000-7000 attendees), and very well organized. In spite of growing attendance numbers, the convention center never felt overly packed. A big part of that is that they expanded to another building last year - and this year they significantly improved that venue. The food trucks were very solid, too. As a vegetarian, my options tend to be more limited, but there were plenty of veggie dishes available. If I had to mention one gripe, it would be the uncomfortable chairs.

One of the reasons Gamehole Con has become my favorite convention is that many of my nationwide RPG friends converge on that con to spend time together. Most of us met through the Gaming and BS podcast that no longer exists, but co-host Sean and his trusted mods do a great job holding the community together. And as usual, Jason Hobbs (former host of the Hobbs & Friends podcast), had a booth at the convention, which was invaluable as a gathering point for our group.

In addition to official games, we tend to play many off-book games together, as well as exploring Madison’s many restaurants in the evenings. It’s that combination of gaming and socializing that makes this con special.

Over the years, I’ve kept cutting back on the number of games I signed up for. Part of that is stamina (I find that I can’t enjoy more than two official 4-hour games per day), but more importantly this leaves room for playing impromptu off-book games together. What I found works best for me is a fairly regular schedule: A morning game from 9am-1pm, one hour lunch break, then an afternoon game from 2pm-6pm. After that, we drive somewhere for dinner (sadly, there aren’t any decent restaurants in walking distance, and none with veggie options), and then head to the Marriott to hang out and play another game.

This year, I only ended up playing 4 1/3 official games (1/3 because the GM had to hastily leave after an hour due to a family emergency - hope they’re ok!).

The games:

  1. Dungeon of the Damned (Shadow of the Demon Lord)
  2. Rumble in the Tunnels (Xcrawl Classics)
  3. Shadow of the Storm (Dungeon Survivor, playtest by friend Edwin Nagy)
  4. Operation Firefly (The Breach)

Without going into details, all were very fun, run by competent GMs, and I enjoyed the varied spread of systems and genres.

As for off-book games:

  1. Green Oaks (a very fun game where you play seniors in a retirement home, dealing with mysterious events)
  2. HackMaster 2e (a super crazy and fun session with 14+ players…)
  3. Shining Kingdoms (my friend Gabe’s streamlined 2d20 Conan hack, great fun!)
  4. Tagline (my own WIP rules-light universal system; I ran two playtests of “The B-Team”, a setting I previously ran using Outgunned)

I also had a chance to distribute some postcards and stickers for RPG Lab, the site I launched recently to help RPG designers get the word out about their games while they’re still working on them, and for players to find new content from their favorite designers or for their preferred systems or genres. See my previous blog post.

On that note: Sean and Hobbs did a fun two-hour long livestream from the convention center. This link brings to straight to an impromptu chat with me about RPG Lab, but the other interviews are worth checking out as well and might give you an impression of what Gamehole Con is like.

I’ll definitely return next year!