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.

1977 Gen Con X Souvenir Program

Gen Con X Souvenir Program, 1977. Source: Gen Con Guru

The Holmes Basic Set debuted in the summer of 1977, with TSR selling it at Origins in July, and then at Gen Con X in August. In this year Gen Con was held at the Playboy Resort in Lake Geneva for the first and only time, a site that is now the Grand Geneva Resort where Gary Con has now been held for a number of years.

I'd seen the covers of the 1977 Souvenir Program before, for example at the Gen Con Guru, but Demos Sachlas (editor of the B1 and B4 fan sourcebooks) just sent me a few photos of the interior that he took of a display copy at Gary Con last March. Page 19 is an ad for the Basic Set, which is now the earliest ad for it that I've seen:

Basic Set advertisement from the Gen Con X Souvenir Program. Source: Demos Sachlas

This advertisement is similar to the first one that ran in Dragon magazine, the next month in issue #9. Of note, these ads use a black and white excerpt of the original artwork rather than a picture of the actual box set cover.

Differences between these two ads include:
-the earlier ad is two-tone black/red, like the rest of the program, later ad is just black
-the later ad adds the subtitle "Swords & Sorcery..."
-the later ad revises "dungeon geomorphs" to "full set of dungeon geomorphs"; "polyhedra dice" to "set of five polyhedra dice"; "revised D&D booklet" to "revised D&D rules book".
-the later ad adds "*T.M. Reg. App. For", although the earlier ad includes the asterisk to which this refers, so perhaps it was removed during the program book layout
-the later ad adds the price, $9.95 plus $1.00 postage and handling
-the later ad replaces the "Other Recent Releases from TSR" and Booth information with a mail-order form

The program also includes a hand-drawn maps of the "Lake Geneva Area", which Demos suggests are by David Sutherland:

Maps of the Lake Geneva Area by David Sutherland. Source: Demos Sachlas

Of particular note is the drawing of the lake monster confronting a galley in Geneva Lake (confusingly, the town is Lake Geneva, but the lake is properly Geneva Lake):

Compare this with his lake monster from the cover the World of Greyhawk Folio (1980):

Detail from the cover of the World of Greyhawk Folio (1980). Source: TSR Archive

See this post for another Lake Monster, attacking a Rhennee barge, by Sutherland from the interior of the Folio.

Perhaps surprisingly, the advertisement for Holmes Basic is on page 19, and not on the back cover of the program, page 32, which instead advertises another new TSR game, Warlocks & Warriors, designed by Gardner Fox:

Warlocks & Warriors ad, back cover of Gen Con X Souvenir Program (1977). Source: Gen Con Guru

The illustration here is also by David Sutherland, and also appears in the Warlocks & Warriors game instructions. The wizard wears a conical "stars & moons" hat, much like the one on the cover of Basic, and the warrior has a helm with an especially realistic-looking dragon:

Gary Con XI Annotated Slideshow (2017)

I had a fantastic time at Gary Con IX last weekend! I've put the photos up in a public FB album and annotated each photo:

Gary Con IX Annotated Slideshow

The slideshow should be viewable even if you don't have a FB account. Follow the link and click on the first photo (of the Zenopus Archives badge) to start viewing the photos.

Thanks to everyone who made Gary Con happen! 

I plan to return next year and run a game - something Holmes-related.

Gary Con Bound!

I'll be at Gary Con for the first time this year, from Fri at 11 AM until Sun at 4 PM.
The event is being held in the same hotel (now the Grand Geneva) as Gen Con X, almost forty years ago in Aug 1977. This was the year the Holmes Basic set debuted and the first Gen Con that J. Eric Holmes attended. This summer is also Gen Con 50.

I'll wear the above homemade id in addition to my official GC badge. Please say hello. 

Here is my schedule of games: 

Fri
12-4 Acrid Herald (espionage RPG) scenario with Merle Rasmussen (author of Top Secret)
4-8 "The Last Great Adventure - in 3D" AD&D adventure with Harold Johnson (author of C1 Hidden Shrine of Tamoachan)
9-12 Gen Con 50 celebration at Horticultural Hall, original home of Gen Con

Sat
8-12 Orc's Drift CHAINMAIL game
12-2 Caves of Chaos - Cave G - 5E adaptation of B2
2-4 Dungeon! boardgame with the designer David Megarry
4-6 Auction run by Frank Mentzer
7-12 Battle of the Brown Hills CHAINMAIL written by Gygax, run by Paul Stormberg

Sun
10-12 Dragon Lairds card game with Tom Wham (a Holmes Basic artist!)
12-4 Braunstein IV: Banania with David Wesely

(I signed up late for the con, so I am not scheduled to run any games, though I will bring my Basic Rulebook)