Introduction
Greetings readers, and happy new year! We are back for another TTRPG convention blog! This time we are back to GhengisCon in Aurora. I will admit that I’m very excited about 2025. I’ve done research into more conventions and look forward to visiting conventions in Montana, Nebraska, and Utah in addition to my familiar Colorado and local Wyoming. This site needs an update, but I’m ready to go farther. But for now, it’s the Hyatt Regency ho!
Day 1: Friday
I arrived at the convention site roughly around 11:00 a.m. After collecting my badge, I gleefully began browsing the vendor hall and artist alley. I’d made the decision to trade quantity for quality for the games I planned to play in. I’d signed up for a trilogy games hosted by GooeyCube collectively titled as, “The Pyramid of Norcreus.” The first two of these games ran between 2 and 6 p.m., which freed my mornings and early afternoons to shop and browse for wares.
Many vendors I have seen before: the above-mentioned and bubbly GooeyCube, the dark masters Archon Games, the sublime Strange Fate Crafts, the rock-solid Wyvern Warfare. It makes me no less happy to revisit with them and catch up with their new offerings. Yet for each veteran standing largely in the hall, there are two or three startups wanting to be discovered and given the chance to shine. With Lefty Loosey Games, discovery comes as a samurai-duel-inspired card game: Bokken.
Day 2: Saturday
Saturday started easily with a good breakfast and a quick demo of a luchador-themed, rules-lite game. Then it was more excellent enjoyment as I spent time with three familiar friends: Mr. Jon Lee of Ghost Die Games, and Ms. and Mrs. Sellers from Living Alloy Games. The latter have come out with a new project themed around movie tropes: Jump the Shark!
Featured Vendor: Trinamyk Adventure Chronicles RPG
Also during my Saturday downtime, I had the amazing opportunity to sit with Scott Plaskett. Scott is the designer of the Trinamyk Adventure Chronicles RPG, a system that uses the d100 dice to allow for the creation of hundreds of character types. While at the convention itself, he explained to me the general idea and showed me a digital pamphlet for a sect called the “Order of the Bee.” We couldn’t do interview at Ghengis, but we coordinated an in-person video recording at the Game Masters store in Cheyenne. In both instances, I was amazed by the amount of possible detail in the system.
Day 3: Sunday
Sunday was a change-up from Friday and Saturday. The finale of the Pyramid of Norcreus began at 9:00 in the morning, and we still ran long. The saga’s beginning had the party solve a murder mystery at a local carnival. Then we journeyed across a sea of water and a sea of sand to find an ancient temple of evil power. In the climax, we ventured into the ziggurat and used our fists and spells to kill the evil pharaoh and send the pyramid back into the abyss. It was a great story from start to end! I’m definitely going to borrow the idea for one of my own campaigns.
Closing
This year’s GhenigsCon was a wonderful start to the year. New faces to meet, old friends to rekindle, and a maelstrom of ideas to absorb. March and may will be quiet, while April heralds my local Cheyenne Gaming Con.
James Meyer 