I’m still recovering from the awesomeness that was GaryCon IX in Lake Geneva, WI. This is my fifth year going, and my fourth year running Cut to the Chase Games for as many people as I possibly could. That actually predates Cut to the Chase Games as a licensed company too! I’ve met tons of people there, and I can honestly say I have not had a bad table in the five years I’ve gone (as a Game Master at least – there have been one or two “duds” as a player unfortunately, but sometimes that happens). I hope my players have had a great time!

This year, I went with 4-hour blocks of my new adventure, Crypt of Bones. I skipped the first part of the scenario, which is an undead siege on a northern town. It’s a nice nod to Army of Darkness, but for the game I wanted to run it just didn’t fit in, so I worked around it to get players in and running as quickly as possible. The party of 10th-level characters (for D&D 5E) were sent by the aged Father Barondo to find and recover six stolen children, with divination spells pointing to the sinister Black Graveyard as their location.

I didn’t manage to kill any of the characters (which isn’t the point … really I swear!) but I think all of the tables had their challenging moments. The crypt itself I built on poster board sheets using a wide variety of premade cardboard Dungeon Tiles stuck on with 3M sticky buttons. It worked incredibly well – they were light, easy to transport, and most importantly were functional at the table. My Vault of Thrym that I ran at Gamehole Con 2016 was a bit unwieldy in those points, but it made up for it in “wow” factor.

The trip out to GaryCon was quick and painless. My friend (and co-creator of the upcoming Badlands & Barbarians RPG) Taylor drove and we had a friend of his with as well, Troy. Troy was running Adventurers League stuff all weekend, something I was very tempted to do, but ultimately I’m glad I didn’t cram more than my 30 hours of GMing into the con (which was spread over 3 days, since we left on the 4th). Great traveling companions, great weather (well, at least the weather wasn’t BAD), and a great time.

On Saturday evening, I helped out Danny O’Neill from HammerDog Games with the big finale of his Tower of Jing adventure. I’ll post more on that one, as it was a TON of fun and requires more details than I feel I can bang out just this moment. I’m looking forward to working with him at future cons, that’s for sure!

Sadly, I didn’t take any pictures this year, so you’ll just have to take my word for that it was an awesome time. Slung lots of dice, had lots of laughs, and still managed to keep my voice on Sunday. The trifecta!