Gary Con 2025: Day 0

Gary Con XVII illustration by Chet Minton

In March, I attended Gary Con in Lake Geneva for the sixth time, and for a con report I'm going to make a short series of blog posts with highlights from each day.

The first is for Wednesday, March 19th, or "Day 0", when I traveled to Wisconsin, checked in to the hotel and picked up my badge, before the official start of the con the next day. Highlights included:

—Stopping at Renaissance Books in the Milwaukee Airport. The only used bookstore in an airport in the US, Renaissance always has a good selection of Appendix N and adjacent paperbacks in the sci-fi/fantasy section. I normally stop here on the way out, but this year I had time after arriving and before I was scheduled to get my rental car. 

Taking advantage of a "buy 3-get 1 free" for paperbacks, I picked up H. Rider Haggard's The People of the Mist (1894), ERB's Tarzan and the Leopard Men (1935), Alan Dean Foster's Splinter of the Mind's Eye (1978)(for a friend; I read this in the 90s); and Conan the Undaunted (1984), #19 in TSR's Endless Quest series and written by the late Jim Ward, a longtime Gary Con regular.

—Visiting Mars Cheese Castle, a humongous cheese shop in the shape of castle located in Kenosha, which I stopped at on the way to Lake Geneva. Coincidentally, this is not far from the University of Wisconsin Parkside, where Gen Con was held from 1978-1984, during the heyday of AD&D 1E. 

Mars has gone all-in on the medieval theme, which you can see in the photos:

The Mars brand cheese curd selection

—Having lunch at the diner inside Mars, where I had the "World's Best Fried Cheese Curd's", which did not disappoint, with Dang! butterscotch root beer, which I'd never heard of before but was excellent.

—Arriving at the Grand Geneva hotel, checking in and feeling like it was the day after last year's con. 

View from my room at the Grand

—Seeing the new D&D Pinball Machines in the lobby. There were a few units set up throughout the hotel for free play, and on another day I was able to try one for a few minutes.

—Meeting up with friends from back home also attending the con, and sharing pizza delivered from the venerable Next Door Pub, a favorite of TSR staff employees, and a pecan kringle from Mars for dessert.

The extensive Kringle stand at Mars, with a wide variety of flavors

—Super quick badge pickup. In an improvement from last year, they had many more check-in stations so that there was essentially no line by the time I arrived.

—Luke Gygax's annual Welcome Party, with free Spotted Cow on tap.

Next: Highlights from Day 1.

Holmes Day 2025

J. Eric Holmes at his chalkboard game table, contemplating miniatures and notes.
Taken by Tony Bernard for the 1979 L.A. Times article, "Fantasy Life in a Game Without End";
a cropped version appears with the article. Scan of the original photo courtesy Bill Galaxy.

For fans of the Holmes Basic Set, today is notable as it marks the birthday of its editor, J. Eric Holmes. And this year he would have been 95 years old, although sadly we lost him in 2010 at the age of 80.

To mark the occasion, here are some Holmes-ian highlights from the last year:

February

For Leap Day 2024, I shared a new monster inspired by Holmes' Sample Dungeon: the Giant Zenopus.

March

At Gary Con 2024, I ran two games, one of which was a session of the Forgotten Smugglers' Cave, my Ruined Tower of Zenopus-adjacent dungeon. Later in the year I worked on preparing this for publication, although I haven't been able to finish it yet.

April

At our local Scrum Con 2024, I ran the Forgotten Smugglers' Cave again, and also an impromptu fill-in session of the original Ruined Tower of Zenopus sample dungeon, which is always a blast.

May

May saw the publication of 50 Years of D&D, which includes an article, "Doctor Holmes I Presume?' How a California Neurology Professor Penned the first Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set", co-written by Tony Rowe and yours truly. Read more about the book here: 50 Years of D&D.

June

Pacesetter Games published the Islands of Peril, the latest adaptation of Holmes' original campaign maps and notes, to which I contributed a Foreword discussing the maps and notes on which it was based.

Wizkids promo photo. Source.

July

WizKids released a line of miniatures for the 50th anniversary of D&D, which included the Red Dragon, Blue Wizard and Green Knight from the cover of the Holmes Basic set. I have been somewhat frustrated with the availability of these figures, and haven't written a separate post about them on the blog, although I still might.

August 

I wrote about the return of the OSR zine Fight On #15, with an issue dedicated to Holmes, including an article by myself about how to Holmesify your OSR game.

September

I reviewed a Holmes Basic metal sign available from Ata-Boy via Amazon.

November

I wrote about the Coleman-Rider-Waite Deck tarot card The Tower, and its thematic similarities to the Tower of Zenopus.

December

I shared the "Tower of Xenopus", a writeup by Tony Stroppa of his adaptation of the Sample Dungeon for the Greek mythology-based Mazes & Minotaurs RPG.

January

Looking forward to Gary Con 2025, I wrote about the games I will be running, one of which is The Eye of Arzaz, Holmes' other sample dungeon from his 1981 book Fantasy Role-Playing Games.

 

Gary Con 2025 Games Scheduled!

Gary Con XVII illustration by Chet Minton

In March I'm returning to GARY CON, now in its 17th year, and as has been typical for me the past few years, I will be running two sessions of D&D; one that I've run before and one that is new to me. These are:

(1) Party of Balrogs on Thursday afternoon from 1-5 pm. Character level: Balrog; 6 seats.

Description:

"The 1974 D&D rules allowed for a character to be "virtually anything", even a balrog. This adventure takes this to 11 by having *all* of the PCs be balrogs! Ensorcelled to serve a wizard deep in a megadungeon, the spell is now broken. Can you get past the other guardians and make the wizard pay? This game by the Zenopus Archives celebrates 50 years of D&D. Balrog PCs provided."

This will be my second time running this after a successful session last year.

Find it here on Tabletop Events: https://tabletop.events/conventions/gary-con-xvii/schedule/1962

(2) The Eye of Arzaz on Friday afternoon from 1-5 pm. Character level: 1; 6 seats.

Description:

"Delve into a classic dungeon filled with monsters, traps and magic in search of the legendary jewel, The Eye of Arzaz. J. Eric Holmes, the editor of the original D&D Basic Set, wrote this introductory dungeon for his 1981 book Fantasy Role-Playing Games, and it will be run using OD&D rules. First level characters provided."

This is Holmes' other sample dungeon, from his 1981 book about RPGs (one of the first every written), and I will be running it for the first time.

Find it here on Tabletop Events: https://tabletop.events/conventions/gary-con-xvii/schedule/2131

* * * * *

This will be my sixth time attending in person, the previous years being 2017, 2019, 2022-2024, eight counting virtual years (2020, 2021), and my third consecutive year in a row. I've run two game sessions each year starting with the second time I attended.

I have a page on the Zenopus Archives site with a full list of scenarios I've run at game conventions.

Read previous Gary Con convention summaries I've written:

Gary Con 2023 (unfinished): Day 0

Gary Con 2022: Day 1 --- Day 2 --- Days 3 and 4

Gary Con 2019 (unfinished): Day 1 --- Day 2 (part 1)

Other Gary Con links of interest:
Gary Con website
Badge Purchase
Full Schedule of Events on Tabletop Events (searchable)
Grand Geneva Resort website
Facebook Group (main source for announcements)

The Mirkwood Tales RPG: the link between the original D&D rules and text-based computer games

Cover of Mirkwood Tales, 1977, by Eric S. Roberts

In May 1977, the all-text computer game Adventure, also known as Advent or Colossal Cave, "became the first computer game blockbuster", per the book 50 Years of Text Games by Aaron A. Reed (2023). Its popularity led to a whole genre of text-based adventure games that enjoyed popularity in the 80s, the best known being the Infocom games such as Zork, a close cousin of Adventure. While the start of Adventure approximates a real-world cave system, the game includes many fantasy elements, and it has long been known that the initial developer, Willie Crowther, was inspired by playing a D&D-type fantasy RPG.

Some of the earliest information came from Barry Gold, husband of Alarums & Excursions editor Lee Gold, in his article "Computers and Fantasy Gaming" from issue 30 of A&E, January 1978 (which I happen to have a physical copy of):

"As far as I know, Willie Crowther of Stanford University wrote the first fantasy simulation game. Don Woods added several features and expanded the dungeon to produce the current ADVENTURE game. Tim Anderson and Dave Lebling of MIT built on the Adventure game by using a more powerful computer language and including some ideas from D&D (Dave Lebling plays it). With help from two other users they came up with ZORK, sometimes called DUNGEON."

Later in the article, Gold adds follow-up information from Adventure co-designer Woods:

"ADVENT: Willie Crowther was at BBN (Bolt-Beranek and Newman - Massachusetts) when he wrote the original Adventure program. He was inspired by a Middle-Earth offshoot called Mirkwood Tales. Neither Willie nor Don appear to have drawn any ideas from the D&D rules in building Advent. Don Woods doesn't play any RPG games."

"The original program by Willie Crowther was much less complex than Don Wood's current version, and the dungeon was only about half its current size."

"Don Woods also provided a short genealogy of these games: war games, D&D, Mirkwood Tales, Adventures (original), Adventure (Don dropped the 's' from the name of his version), Zork."

From Gold's account, one might gather that this Mirkwood Tales was some kind of game situated between D&D and Adventure, but from this it's not really clear from this which it is closer to.

A 1996 Washington Post article by Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon clarifies that Mirkwood Tales was a version of D&D set in Middle-Earth, in which Crowther played a thief sharing his first name:

"Dave Walden, who had been a programming ace working under Crowther at BBN, got his introduction to the game one night in 1975, when Eric Roberts, a student from a class he was teaching at Harvard, took him to a D&D session. Walden immediately rounded up a group of friends for continued sessions. Roberts created the Mirkwood Tales, an elaborate version of Dungeons and Dragons set in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth. The game stretched on for the better part of a year and was played mostly on Walden's living room floor. One of the regulars was Will Crowther. Where the dozen other players chose names like Zandar, Klarf or Groan for their characters, Crowther was simply Willie, a stealthy thief."

In 2012, the epilogue of the first edition of Playing at the World by Jon Peterson has a section "The First Virtual Worlds", which contains the first detailed description of the Mirkwood Tales rules, based on an unpublished 1977 manuscript written by Eric S. Roberts, the DM of the game (page 617). Peterson quotes from the Introduction and Acknowledgements section to demonstrate the "debt of Mirkwood Tales to Dungeons & Dragons", and then notes some of the significant differences in classes and combat from D&D, but concludes:

"Mirkwood Tales is a game of stratified progression, where characters accumulate experience points while adventuring and go up in level as they reach certain experience totals. It moreover relies on underworld exploration, combat and treasure to drive an engaging narrative. In all those respects, it very closely follows the precedent of Dungeons & Dragons" (page 617). 

Later in the section, Peterson reveals that Dave Lebling, one of the developers of Zork, also played in Roberts' Mirkwood Tales campaign (page 622).

(Note: The 2012 edition of Playing at the World is out of print, and is being republished in a two-volume edition; the first volume is already out but does not contain the above material).

Until this month, this was the most detail about The Mirkwood Tales RPG that was generally available. Now, however, Eric Roberts has made public a reformatted pdf of Mirkwood Tales, as announced recently on Renga in Blue by blogger Jason Dyer:

Renga in Blue: Crowther's Adventure and Mirkwood Tales

Head over there to find the link to the pdf, hosted on the Internet Archive, and much more in a deep dive back into Crowther's original version Adventure - before Woods added on to it - as viewed anew through the lens of the full Mirkwood Tales rules. Dyer has an ongoing project called All the Adventures, wirh the goal of playing and blogging "about every adventure game ever made in (nearly) chronological order" (!), and has previously played through the many variations of Adventure, and thus has great insight into the details of the game. 

Unlike Gold's early assertion, which appears to be based on communication with Woods rather than Crowther himself, after playing through Crowther's original version again, Dyer concludes that Adventure does draw upon several elements from The Mirkwood Tales:

"It isn’t like Crowther was trying to “adapt Dungeons and Dragons” entirely — this is not an RPG, and nearly every room has an analogue in the real cave — but there’s still clearly some flavor of Crowther’s world found in the campaign he participated in, with the treatment of magic, direct reference to the computer as the “eyes” of the player, and heavy emphasis on dwarves (if a bit more aggressive in this game)"

Of these, the element with the strongest ties to the original D&D rules is "the treatment of magic", which here refers to the identification of properties of magic items in the game. Dyer asked me about how magic items were identified in OD&D, and I pointed to the Example of Play in Vol 3, where a player tries on "old boots" to identify them as magical Elven boots:

Dyer notes that this concept, which is merely exemplary in OD&D, is expressly stated in The Mirkwood Tales rules:

"In addition to spells, magic appears in the Mirkwood Tales in the form of magical artifacts and equipment. More often than not, the magical effect of some object will not be clear from simple examination of the object, and it may require experimentation or searching for further clues to its nature" (The Mirkwood Tales, page 21, section "3.5.3 Magical Artifacts")

Adventure, in turn, requires the player to experiment to figure how out how to use magic such as items or words. The first magic item encountered in Adventure is the "the iconic three foot black rod with a rusty rod", which has two different properties in the game, and "the experience of fiddling with the rod — and finding two effects, both positive and negative — are similar to OD&D campaigns", per Dyer.

The Mirkwood Tales rules mostly rewrite the first volume of OD&D, Men & Magic, with some material from Vol 3, including a much longer Example of Play. The subject matter of Vol 2 is almost entirely missing; there are no lists of monsters or treasure. If I find time in the future I will take a closer look at how the Mirkwood Tales RPG rules differ from OD&D.

Tower of Xenopus: Mazes & Minotaurs RPG adaptation by Tony Stroppa

In the comments to "Zenopus Built a Tower", Part 46 of the Holmes Manuscript series on this blog, reader Tony Stroppa wrote in about his adaptation of Holmes' Tower of Zenopus dungeon for the Mazes & Minotaurs RPG, a reimagining of OD&D as if it was inspired only by Greek mythology, and which can be found for free on DriveThruRPG. With Tony's permission, I'm sharing his comments here:

"I am running a game of "Mazes & Minotaurs", which is Mythic Greek inspired OSR game (instead of based on Tolkien and the Middle Ages). The setting is "Kriti" (Crete) during a quasi-mythical version of the Late Bronze Age. As an homage (plus, I am lazy) I repurposed and repackaged "The Tower of Zenopus" to be more Greek-sounding as "The Tower of Xenopus", and tied it into the myth of the Labyrinth of the Minotaur. The stone tower was a fortification built by a Mycenaean warlord, Xenopus ("Strange Foot") which is still standing. It is built on top of the earlier ruins of a Minoan temple on a mountaintop (a "peak sanctuary") in central Crete. Like many Minoan peak sanctuaries it was also a sacred burial cave, which dovetails nicely with parts of the original "Tower of Zenopus". The tunnels of the "dungeon" would have been carved out of the soft limestone rock common to Crete and filled with bones. (Minoans practiced primary and secondary burial, where remains would first be stripped of flesh, then re-interred en masse in ossuaries like jars, small caskets, etc. with several sets of remains in one container). Floors are limestone, all walls have extensive Minoan murals (dolphins, bulls, female goddess figures of Rhea/Cybele, etc.). Most doors have been removed to fit the archaic burial cave theme. Also, metal for hinges was scarce in the Late Bronze Age.

To adapt the map I flipped it over left-to-right but left it mostly unchanged. Above the initial entry stairs was a Mycenaean square stone tower fortification typical of the period (a ground floor and a roof accessed by a stairs). As the underground complex is on a mountain the underground river is the same. But the tunnel to the ocean is now instead a mystical passage to the Underworld. The pirates inside it are all changed to be "Telkines", mythical Greek "fish-children" (aka "Sons of Dagon" or off-brand Deep Ones). The goblins are changed to "Kobaloi". ("Kobalos" is linguistically related to "Kobold", which is itself linguistically related to "Goblin".) The ghouls become "Vrykolakes", a sorta-similar undead cannibal of Greek folklore. Giant rats and the Giant Spider are the same. Room S still has stairs up, these lead to another burial cave. The sorcerer inside is changed to be a Telkine water Elementalist with a Telkine guard.

Room S now also has stairs down, these lead to the Labyrinth of the Minotaur. At the middle of the maze are the remains of the Minotaur, slain by Theseus (and with the sword he used still in its ribs). At the entrance to the Labyrinth a "clue" (ball of thread) is tied off. This is what Theseus used to navigate the Labyrinth. It becomes clear the Labyrinth is not a real maze; although the path twisted and turned there are no branching paths or dead ends. (This is the classical Cretan labyrinth diagram.) It becomes clear the thread does not somehow mark off branches to aid in navigation, it simply measures distance to the middle of the Labyrinth. This is because it was intended all along the Greek (Hellene) sacrifices would be forced to travel a single path inwards to the centre where the Minotaur would be waiting to kill them. There would be no side passages, no dead ends. They would simply travel the path and it turned back and forth, becoming disheartened and confused, then die. Theseus, as he knew how far he would go, was forewarned by the thread running out. Thus when nearing the centre of the Labyrinth he was ready for a fight, unlike all the other sacrificial victims.

Thus, the classic "Tower of Zenopus" becomes the "Tower of Xenopus"!"

"Silver coin from Knossos displaying the 7-course "Classical" design to represent the Labyrinth, c. 400 BC." Source: Wikipedia page on the Labyrinth

 

Followup comment:

"It would be my pleasure! There are a couple of monsters that do not need adapting: the giant spider and crab, and the skeletons. The players are very into the quest; they have passed up every chance of looting even though there are glints of gold and valuables mixed within the bones in the ossuary vessels, a couple chests of silver in the boats on the shore of the vast underground ocean (the Gods warned them to not proceed further in that direction as it leads to the underworld, and it was not yet their time). As another "Greek" touch the rotating statue is of Poseidon, and the talking mask looks like the "death mask" of Agamemnon. In the central circular room are stairs leading up (into come caves on the mountainside) and a trap door leading down into the labyrinth.

The labyrinth is a classic "Cretan" one: circular with no branching paths with dead ends. One single path to the end. Clearly not the confusing maze they are expecting! The purpose of the labyrinth was to execute prisoners. So they wander the single path to the end where the Minotaur waited to end their lives. By that time they would be disoriented and demoralised, easy prey in the darkness. How Theseus prevailed was using a "clue", a ball of yarn. I could never figure out how that would help to navigate a maze unless it was really, really big! But if the path has no branches then a strand of twine can do one thing well: measure distance. Therefore Theseus would know exactly how far he'd gone and how close to the end. Instead of the Minotaur ambushing him as he stumbled along, confused, he would know to be armed and ready for a fight. A fight the Minotaur would not expect, the advantage would be his. In this case the PCs would follow the twine to the centre, there to face the Minotaur."

Second follow-up comment:

I decided to not do random encounters, although the Kobaloi (employed by the sorcerer as guards) are not doing a great job and could start patrolling. The sorcerer "boss" is a recurring NPC in my game, a woman. She's annoyed the Kobaloi are not doing their job!

Although like everyone I read Zenopus in the D&D Basic set, I never experienced it as a player or DM. It just has so many nice touches. And as mentioned it converts well to other fantasy systems.

As a GM's note, I thought the giant crab would give them a lot of trouble as their claws are very deadly in a low-HP system like Mazes & Minotaurs. But this turned out to not be the case. We are using the optional "Homeric" combat rules (critical hits) and the first shot with a sling stone nailed it in the eye and it spasmed, losing its turn. I determined it had been flipped on its back and needed a turn to right itself. (The actual result was the target fell down, which doesn't make sense for a squat 6-legged behemoth. Instead of ignoring the result I decided on something cinematic.) The PCs piled on and got several good hits in. By the time it stood back up the fight was practically over. It tried to disengage and they finished it off.

My commentary: This is a very creative adaptation of Holmes' Sample Dungeon and would be a great deal of fun to play through!

The Tower Card

"The Tower" card from the Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck

The recent miniseries Agatha All Along prominently features the famous Rider-Waite-Smith Tarot deck, originally published by Rider in 1908, with sublime illustrations by Pamela Colman Smith and instructions by poet-mystic A. E. Waite, both members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a secret society devoted to occultism.

Pamela Colman Smith

A pivotal scene in one episode of the series employs the Major Arcana card The Tower (pictured above), which per Waite's instructions in the Pictoral Key to the Tarot represents: 

"Misery, distress, indigence, adversity, calamity, disgrace, deception, ruin. It is a card in particular of unforeseen catastrophe. Reversed: Negligence, absence, distribution, carelessness, distraction, apathy, nullity, vanity"

Note the emphasis on "unforeseen catastrophe", which is illustrated on the card by the lightning strike that knocks the crown and "wizards" from the tower and sets it afire. Per the Wikipedia page, Smith's design for this card is drawn from the card in the Tarot of Marseilles, which in turn had merged earlier concepts.

Rider-Waite-Smith cards at the Whitney

I've been a fan of Smith's illustrations since seeing the Rider deck on display in an exhibit of modernist art at the Whitney in NYC, where the Tower card jumped out at me, obviously, given my interest in the Tower of Zenopus. Seeing it again in the Agatha show reminded me of how well it resonates with the backstory of Holmes' sample dungeon, where the wizard and his tower are destroyed by unknown forces and a consuming fire, although here from beneath rather than above:

"Fifty years ago, on a cold wintry night, the wizard's tower was suddenly engulfed in green flame. Several of his human servants escaped the holocaust, saying their master had been destroyed by some powerful force he had unleashed in the depths of the tower"

I'm not suggesting that the Tower Card had any particular influence on Holmes' story, only that it has a similar theme, which also recalls ancient legends like the Tower of Babel or Zeus smiting the legendary doctor Asclepius with a bolt-from-the-blue for advancing his medical knowledge so far that he brought the dead back to life.

Holmes was a doctor and a scientist, but being a life-long fan of pulp and weird fiction, would have been familiar with the occultism as practiced around the turn of the 20th century. For example, he was a member of the Machen Society, devoted to the author Arthur Machen, who was friends with A. E. Waite and even briefly joined the Golden Dawn. In writing his own fantasy, Holmes occasionally employed the trappings of the occult. One Boinger and Zereth story, The Sorcerer's Jewel, features a medium, Misteera, who conducts seances, and another, In the Bag, even has the wizard Murray employ a tarot deck, albeit for solitaire rather than fortune telling; Boinger suggests that he "Play the knave on the Queen of Cups". 

However, in crafting the tale of Zenopus, Holmes was more likely directly inspired by the various doomed wizards in the Weird Fiction. In the Holmes Manuscript series, part 46, I went through the introduction to the Sample Dungeon and examined where Holmes may have taken inspiration from the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard.

The Making of OD&D: Half-Price Sale on Amazon

The Making of Orginal D&D is currently on sale for $49.99 on Amazon, which is 50% off the cover price ($99). This is the lowest price I've seen for the book so far, which came out back in July. It says "Limited Time Deal", but there's no date indicated, so I don't when it ends. If you've been on the fence due to the price here's your chance. Find the table of contents  below.

Find it here: 

The Making of Original Dungeons & Dragons: 1970-1977

See also these earlier posts:

Early Greyhawk Lore in the 1973 D&D Draft

"The Making of Original D&D: 1970-1977": Out Today! 

"The Making of Original D&D: 1970-1977": Table of Contents

"The Making of Original D&D: 1970-1977": What Might the Precursors Be?

"How Dungeons & Dragons Started" (video about the book)

"The Making of Original D&D: 1970-1977": Everything we know about this upcoming WOTC book

Playing at the World revised edition out in July