March saw just one convention for us, but it is one of our favorites each year - Gary Con! Gary Con celebrates the life and work of Gary Gygax the innovator of Dungeons & Dragons (along with Dave Arneson). It is a fun show that is unlike any other and is held in the quiet community of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin (the birthplace of D&D). This was a great year with many highlights - read on for more!
Almost immediately, we got to experience the new Dungeons & Dragons pinball game by Stern. There were several free-to-play units on hand to give a try thanks to Stern. It was a blast to play!
Later in the weekend, I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Gary Stern and he seemed like a great person.
We are able to introduce something new at almost every show and Gary Con was no exception. We brought a limited number of our Advanced Dice & Crayon sets. These hearken back to the early days of D&D when dice came with crayons for manual coloring on the numerals. Believe it or not, it was a lot of fun (to me anyway).
These cool dice come in 6 colors and are slightly larger like all the rest of our dice. We have been working on them for several years and we love the end result! We also think they go perfectly with this dice bag!
We saw many, MANY friends at this show and even had some helpers! Thank you Jason and Troy for dropping by and chipping in! And a big shout out to Doug who could not attend...outside of t-shirts.
We were offered and accepted a private game of
Call of Cthulhu and invited one of our
Top Fans along (great seeing you JTaylor!). It was a game generously run by an exceptional
Lurking Fears Keeper and we had a BLAST! Thank you Glenn!! I will forever love the fish goddess! Seriously...I have no choice....please help me.
It was great seeing legendary artist Larry Elmore who stopped by the booth to say hello and chat a bit. Larry is as nice as they come and a good reminder of home (down south) when you feel isolated in The Land of Cheese.
A personal highlight for me this year getting to sit and have a drink with two great human beings. Jolly and Lester have each had a significant impact on my life for the better and it was great hanging out together over a drink. These guys mean more to me than they will ever know.
Our best evening of the weekend was spent with friends sharing a meal at The Chophouse to celebrate our wedding. The food was fantastic and the companionship a blast. I was told later that the private table of top echelon convention celebrities in an adjoining (and private) room were envious of our raucous merriment - true story! Thank you Dave & Suzanne Kenzer - I only wish I had gotten a picture!!
This was possibly the best Gary Con I have attended. We were asked to provide custom product for the convention merch booth (always an honor) that seemed to sell quite well. There were games with friends (I loved playing Johnny Taco!). I got to raise a solemn toast to my friend SteveJ who has gone on ahead of us (we miss you). I taught the son of a friend how to play a cool boardgame which I think he enjoyed. I remembered to pick up Spotted Cow before leaving the state (never a fun ride home when you realize you forgot). No blowouts, no breakdowns and no hangovers. It was a great con! We didn't get any snow, but maybe next year.
Show Highlight: excessive highlights.
