Issue 16 - Genghis Con 2025

2025 #3: My take on the con, the games I played and ran, and a bit on the RPG convention scene in Colorado.

Mar 04, 2025

Hello again and welcome back to the hearth! Not too long between issues this time, as I’m worried if I wait too long I’ll forget some of the details regarding…

Dating back to 1979, Genghis Con is Colorado’s longest-running gaming convention. (At least to my knowledge!)

Yep, last weekend I attended Genghis Con 2025, Colorado’s premiere and long-running roleplaying game convention. This has been a go-every-year convention for me since 20181 when I resolved to play more live TTRPGs. I owe this con quite a debt, as it — along with various podcast and Discord communities — is where I met many of the folks I’ve gamed with heavily for the last six or seven years.

So. On with my take on what I believe was the 47th edition of…

GENGHIS CON!

Held for the umpteenth time in a Hyatt in Aurora, Colorado, the con ran from February 20th to 23rd, 2025, and looked to be a thousand-plus-ish people in size. There are roleplaying games, card games, war games, board games, a decent vendor hall, and a slowly growing collection of serviceable restaurants within walking distance if it’s not frigid outside. I’ll admit I don’t love the location and venue, but I’m certainly used to it and comfortable playing and running games there.

Games on Offer

There’s usually a nice mix of games at Genghis Con, though it leans pretty hard to the trad side of the RPG spectrum. There’s lots of D&D, Pathfinder, Savage Worlds, many different Free League games, a good selection of 2d20 games, Call of Cthulhu… hundreds of tables of popular games are run. There are some local favorites, like Prowlers & Paragons, and more recently, a really strong annual showing for Pirate Borg — which makes sense considering Luke Stratton and some other members of Limithron are locals.2

From there, there’s usually a smattering of stuff that’s more interesting, at least to a guy who loves small press, niche, and indie games: Delta Green, Salvage Union, Shadowdark, DCC, Mausritter, Freebooters on the Frontier, etc. I wish there was more OSR and more indie stuff generally, so I resolved this year to “be the change you want” and start running on-book games at the con. More on that decision towards the end of the issue.

Colorado Gaming Con Culture

It’s pretty good. Gamers are friendly, people generally don’t trot out their politics, most folks are open-minded about trying and learning new systems, and I don’t see or hear about a lot of toxic behaviors. I’d always love to see more people of color, more girls and women, and more youngins’ participating, but we’re doin’ okay.

There’s one thing I don’t like, and that’s the way many GMs here seem to open their games. Compared to, say, Gamehole Con in Madison, I’ve noticed that GMs at Genghis Con (and other CO cons) often don’t seem to have good awareness that they are, in fact, the master of ceremonies for a group of strangers coming together to play for the first time in a public space. Player introductions are usually given short shrift or skipped entirely, there are rarely discussions about safety tools, breaks, or potentially problematic content. There is almost never a conversation on what everyone would like to get out of the game, and I’d say that name tents are used about 25% of the time — if that.3

A typical, simple name tent. Is it so hard to just pass these out and ask that people fill them out? Nope. It’s not that hard, and it makes it so much easier to see who the other characters (and players) are.

What I Played

Call of Cthulhu: The Thing on the Ice4

When I saw the description of this Call of Cthulhu (CoC) game, I knew I wouldn’t be able to resist it. I mean, I absolutely love…

a) Lovecraft’s mythos

b) Stories of Arctic and Antarctic exploration, and

c) Horror roleplaying in a wide variety of historical periods.

This was the teaser:

In 1845, Sir John Franklin left England to discover the Northwest Passage. You and your comrades were fortunate enough to accompany him on this grand endeavor. Now it is 1848 and events have not gone as planned. Beset in the ice you battle the world’s most inhospitable clime, starvation, disease and an ancient evil that lurks in the eternal arctic twilight.

Oh yeah. Harrigan is all in on that shit.

I’m frankly lucky I got into the game, as I only later realized it was a “special event” being run by You 2 Can Cthulhu, a Call of Cthulhu advocacy group who seem to be a small enterprise (out of Indiana?) focused on exposing new players to Lovecraft’s world and the 7th Edition of Chaosium’s well-known game. The ‘special’ bit was partly that it was run in a private space — the hotel’s concierge lounge. That meant the lights were dimmable, the space was quiet, the table was great, the chairs comfy — it was pretty cool. And the Y2CC guys went all-out with fancy brass name tent holders, custom character sheets, mood music, sound effects, and an Assistant Keeper to help the Keeper with all of the above. It was a great experience, and all of the frou-frou helped.

I won’t ruin the plot of the game in case a reader gets a chance to play it, but a few things really stood out to me that bear jabbering about.

It was a very ‘performative’ game. From the get-go, we were all in-character, reacting to the light level in the room5, the sound effects, the GM pacing around the space, describing the wind and the cold, taking on various roles of our shipmates and such. There was some scenery-chewing by the Keeper for sure, and some others I met up with who played in a different session of the same game described it as having to sit through cut-scenes, but I quite liked it. It took me about an hour to really sink into the game and my character, but overall I had a solid time. I don’t want every game to play like this one did, where immersion is overwhelmingly king, but in the end I was pretty happy with the experience.
Choosing a PC was… interesting. When the game began, the Keeper ‘released’ the players into the game room, in the middle of which was a table set with six place settings. Each one had a name card on a brass spindle, and character sheet with fairly dense background included. But! The GM asked us to choose characters without reading the sheets — so make a choice quickly, based on name, rank, and role on the ship. I ended up playing 2nd Lieutenant George Henry Hodgson, second in charge on the HMS Terror, and a man desirous of the captaincy of the HMS Erebrus (after Sir John Franklin died), and of getting knighted. I enjoy playing characters that are flawed leaders who are forced to make tough decisions, so it ended up being a good choice for me.6
Speaking of the characters, and their sheets, check this out:

Here is 2nd Lieutenant George Hodgson in 1845, hale and hearty and ready to find the Northwest Passage! Full steam ahead!

And then have a close look at this:

George in 1848, after the ships had been trapped in the ice for two years.

Note how the years of difficult sailing, malnutrition, and being stranded in the ice took their toll on the poor guy. The Keeper handed these sheets out as he explained how hard the years had been; check out all the lowered scores, from STR, CON and SIZ to APP, Hit Points and Damage Bonus. Then note what he got better at: Survival, Arctic Lore, Console Other.

I don’t know about y’all, but I was floored. Super-cool thing to introduce about a 1/4 of the way through the game; I dug the hell out of getting the worn and frayed sheet that had adjusted skills and stats.

And on the flip-side of that second sheet…

Cool! But also — lots to process, which is supposed to guide the way you roleplay the character.

I don’t love needing to quickly read and internalize many chunks of text on a character sheet that actually drives decisions the character would make… and in this case I had to do it twice. It worked out well enough in this game, but I do think conveying the important elements in a snappier, easier-to-reference way would have been welcome.

I’ll keep this one short. Basically, as a system, Call of Cthulhu doesn’t do much for me. I’ll play it, but I think there are far better systems out there for historical horror roleplaying.7 There were clues locked behind rolls (boo!), quibbles over which skills should be used (zzz) and loads of failed rolls… but in the end it wasn’t the system that made the experience. I enjoyed the game despite the cruft that seems ever-present in various Basic Roleplaying games from Chaosium, and will admit that I think 7th Edition CoC is far and away the best edition so far.

Editor’s Note: My enjoyment of all this was helped, I think, by the fact that I grew up in a place rich in maritime history and have long loved the Stan Rogers song Northwest Passage, which I used to sing to my daughter as a lullaby. Tracing one warm line, indeed.

Pirate Borg

Sadly, I had to drop this game. Remember my complaining about how busy the start of the year was for me? Well, it continued a little in February, and work briefly interceded on the Friday of the con. Ah well.

I do love me some Pirate Borg, so next time!

Space 1999 Quickstart (2d20)

Another game I had to miss due to the same work flare-up — but in this case, missing wasn’t so bad as I just recently got to play Modiphius’s Space 1999 Quick Start with the Analytic Dice crew.

Additional bummer I later realized: the GM ran a great Dune game last year at Tacticon8. Argh!

Not such a bummer: when I talked to that GM later at the con, he revealed that he actually completely dumped the Space 1999 rules and ran the game with an adjusted set of 2d20 rules taken from Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition. I’m not sure why, but I take umbrage when people do this. If I’ve signed up for a con game, it’s often because I want to try the game out — to see it in action. Meaning… let’s please play the game we all signed up for. If nothing else, I think the GM should list that there will be some rule changes in the game’s description. I have no doubt that the game the GM ran was fun — it just wasn’t the system from the Quickstart.

Outgunned: Escape from Dino Island

Now we get into the really glowing reviews.

Friend of the Hearth Mirko, aka DigitalHobbit, runs a seriously good game of Outgunned. It suits his GM style, he’s got great system mastery of the Italian game by Two Little Mice, and his enthusiasm as he runs it is both palpable and infectious. If you see him put this on offer at a con, grab it if you can.

This particular game was a riot — a pulpy 90s romp where a reality TV series with ailing ratings went to a remote island to investigate dinosaur sightings. There were only three PCs: I played the show host, Damien Dark9, while the other players brought the cameraman and a paleontologist to the table. So — no man or woman of action, no stunt specialist, no big game hunter. No character spoiling for a fight!

Result: there was a lot of running and screaming. And taking ridiculous risks to “get the right shot.” And denying dinosaurs exist in an interview segment while gigantic dinosaurs skulk by in the background. And trying to attract cute little dinosaurs with Dino-pops, the kids’ cereal my PC somehow had in his pack. They ah, turned out to be carnivorous, those cute little dinosaurs.

Total A+ in terms of fun factor.

Regarding the system itself, I think Outgunned is loads of fun, but has a few warts. I’m not sure if it’s a translation issue, but it kind of feels like one — the attributes and skills feel like a bit of a jumble to me. I like a nice, clean skill list that suits the genre and doesn’t have a ton of ambiguity or overlap — even when the system encourages flexibility in approaching various challenges in different ways like Outgunned does. Having Nerves and Cool and Flirt and Style… meh. And bundling Awareness, Dexterity, Stealth and Streetwise nestled under something called Crime? That feels a little off when the characters are TV show hosts, cameramen, and scientists.

Also, the names of the success levels are a little funky, and not in a George Clinton or James Brown kind of way, especially when you consider that the ‘default’ level needed for most successes is “Critical.”

Unfortunately, the term “Critical Success” means something very specific to an awful lot of gamers — and it is *not* a ‘default’ level of success.

The game is better than its antecedent, Broken Compass, but still, in my humble opinion, would benefit from a pass by a skilled game designer. I’d like to see a 2e.

Editor’s Note: Mirko disagrees with me on this , so it could be that I’m just a crazy person. But maybe not!

Savage Worlds: Savage BattleTech - Red’s Raiders

This was another game I jumped at when I read the description:

Towering BattleMechs are the kings of the 31st-century battlefield. Red's Raiders are mercenaries who pilot these brutal machines for whichever side is rich enough or desperate enough to pay them. Mercs don't drop onto peaceful planets. They also don't get paid unless somebody survives to collect. This unofficial crossover between Savage Worlds and BattleTech puts you in a giant mech for some vehicle-stomping action. Try out the new Clash rules from the Science Fiction Companion and see what they can do. Also: BattleMechs, lots of BattleMechs!

So — it was what it says on the tin. BattleTech, including both in-mech and out-of-mech action, using Savage Worlds Adventure Edition (SWADE) as the ruleset.

Pinnacle Entertainment Group’s own Darrell Hayhurst ran this game, and dude was stellar. He had complete mastery of the game, the maps, the pregens, the mechs and their stats / abilities — this was clearly a labor of love, and it really showed.10

As our guide through all this, Hayhurst was both enthusiastic and creative. It played out like a tour of SWADE subsystems that don’t often get used. We played the first mech combat using the game’s Mass Battle rules, the second using a traditional tactical map, and the third using some vehicle combat (“Clash”) rules in the new Science Fiction Companion, which Hayhurst helped to author. There was social conflict (in a space bar!) as well, and the whole thing hung together better than I was expecting it would.11

This kind of stompy, explodey RPG won’t be for everyone, but if you like BattleTech and can at least stand SWADE… this game’s a gem.

Savage Worlds: Saddles & Sombreros, Amigos Unite!

Okay, so speaking of Savage Worlds, whenever top-shelf GM and pro kitsch-crafter Karl Keesler comes to town for a con, I try (often vainly) to get in at least one of his games. Karl hand-crafts and curates some incredible stuff for his table top. I’m not really a minis / terrain kind of guy, but his stuff is so good that I’m able to set aside the fact that typically my IMAX-grade theater of the mind experience is harmed by miniature meat space items that just seem chintzy or lame. Keesler’s stuff is crafted with meticulous care and style, and that TLC extends to the character sheets, cards, name tents, bennies — you name it. He drenches the experience in cool, and is a great GM to boot.

This scenario was a pretty wild one — basically a western comedy RPG that combined Blazing Saddles and The Three Amigos. Literally. The pregens consisted of characters from both movies, the NPCs were from the movies, the locations were from the movies! I will admit it was not what I was expecting — I thought I was in for a light-hearted western that was inspired by those films… not a game that played out like a mashed-up sequel to each of them.

So who did I play?

Remember Gene Wilder as Jim the Waco Kid? Remember him saying, “if you shoot him you’ll just make him mad…”

Well, that played out over and over again in our game, where I could basically have Mongo just ignore people shooting at him. I broke Winchesters over my knee, I threw guys through plate glass windows, I flashed-back to bean-eating scenes for obvious reasons, and in my favorite moment of the whole game, I had Mongo use a pool table to sweep the stage of three bad fellers in drag.

Here’s how the scene was set: a saloon full of bad guys pretending to be townsfolk… gamblers… and dancing girls.

Here’s an example of Karl’s work — and believe it or not, this is kind of ‘mid’ for him. Dude is talented.

Hilariously, once all hell broke loose and the shootin’ and punchin’ started, only then did we realize the three “girls” on stage had beards and cigars and guns. After Mongo’s “Sweep” attack using the pool table (Karl is a generous GM), all three of them guys in drag ended up in an unconscious pile on top of the piano and player. KABLANG!

I do so enjoy roleplaying games.

Plug: we were using the Sidewinder Recoiled rules for SWADE, put out by Dog House Rules — the company Keesler is part of. He added the goofy bits for this con game; it’s actually a fairly straight-laced western, and for that reason I think I’ll probably enjoy it more than Deadlands when I pick it up12.

In short: a killer con-game experience. I think I enjoyed Cocaine Shark more when I played that a couple of years ago with Keesler, but Saddles & Sombreros was damned special.

What I Ran

Okay! Switching gears to the lone game that I ran, and then we’re done with con talk.

Outcast Silver Raiders: The Blasphemy of Wet Flesh

Recall the be the change comment above? This game is the first on-book game I’ve ever run at Genghis Con, and it’s basically me trying to inject some OSR-style gaming into the proceedings with a side-helping of improved culture. Meaning name tents, proper introductions, asking the players what they expect from the game, content warnings and discussion, all that.

And so why run Outcast Silver Raiders (O.S.R.)?

Pretty simple. I like the system, I love the setting, and I’m about to run a lengthy13 campaign of it for the fortnightly Thursday night group I play in. That campaign is meant to be three things:

Long-form. All of us agree we’re jonesing for more than the one-shots and 3-4 shots we’ve mostly been playing lately.
Grisly, bloody, sacrilegious and dark. In the fun way! The game will include loads of gore, corrupt nobles, daemonic possessions, mean nuns, crossbow quarrels through the throat and other horrific moments.
Driven by emergent, faction, and character-focused play.14 No metaplots, no railroads — these things have their place, of course, but it’s not what the group is signing up for.

All that said, I want to start the game off strong, with some immediate stakes and pace. I’ve designed an opening scenario that I believe connects the PCs to the Mythic North and its denizens in a natural way… and it’s that scenario, The Blasphemy of Wet Flesh, that I ran at Genghis Con.

Not going to talk about that here though, since I think most of the players in the upcoming campaign read this Substack from time to time.15 And also because I plan to run the scenario for some folks in the BS Landia community since I had to cancel my O.S.R. game at BSer Con 4 in January.

What I will talk about is using pre-generated characters vs. those born out of a full character generation process at a con game. That is, does the GM hand out some sheets and say ‘pick a character,’ or does the table use some of its very valuable three or four hours together to generate new PCs?

I am normally a fan of pre-gens. Gets things moving, allows the GM to build PCs that fit the setting and scenario, doesn’t bog down if some folks at the table don’t know the game. But for Outcast Silver Raiders… character generation is fun and some some quirks I wanted the players to see. More than is the case with some other RPGs, character generation is part of the game. So I decided to include it, and did two things that facilitated creating PCs at the table quickly.

Thing 1

I partially built the PCs. I printed the official character sheets, but used the class rather than blank versions — so they had a bunch of things already filled out, like class features and (added by me) basic equipment.

It seems a small thing, but just filling out a couple of sections on the sheet probably saved us 10 minutes.

The class-specific version of the sheet, complete with Class Features filled out for the Rogue, and a basic set of gear.

Thing 2

Character generation in O.S.R. is pretty straightforward, and there are only three classes (Rogue, Sorcerer, Warrior). It’s an OSR D&D variant so many people will be familiar with the ‘3d6 down the line’ approach, but there are definitely nuances — such as the character you’re rolling up dying early if your attribute modifiers don’t average out to zero or better. If your PC dies, well, that’s the dead sibling of the next PC you roll up. Name the deceased and describe what happened… write it down and move on.

Anyway, to facilitate this, I created a few aides, including a process flow, a quick-pick equipment list, and a reference sheet that summarized all three classes. These aren’t particularly sexy, but they are legible and I think did what I wanted them to do at the table.

Quick-pick weapons, armor and equipment to cut down on shopping time.

Quick reference that shows the differences between the classes, at-a-glance.

Following this already partly-baked dough recipe allowed the players to focus on things that they hopefully either found interesting, or would need in play. Coming up with ability scores, noting down bonuses and mods, rolling hit points — seeding their memories with bits that will be needed as we play.

In the end, this game was a blast to run, and I hope the players had as much fun as I did. The combat is fast and deadly, there were some great and very gruesome moments, and I think the frosty, nasty flavor of the setting bled into just about every scene. It might have been one of the better con games I’ve ever run… but that also might not be saying very much.16

Oh Wait, One More Game…

Torchbearer

So I’d signed up for Torchbearer on Sunday, the last day of the con.

But it was a beautiful day outside and I was a bit gamed-out, so I decided to cancel and instead spend the day with my wife and daughter. I’m disappointed I missed a rare offering, but it was the right decision and I know that enjoying Burning Wheel-based games is a bit of a tall order for me regardless. So maybe next time!

And that, friends, was my Genghis Con. A really solid experience!

One more short item before we wrap up…

REVISITING THE INVINCIBLE SUPERHERO ROLEPLAYING GAME

One of my very favorite comics, slated to become an RPG. *Woooopwoopwoopwooopwoopwoopwop!*

Remember last issue when I fussed and bubbled about the potential I saw in the forthcoming Invincible Superhero Roleplaying game? Well, some other details about the game have surfaced, and I wanna share ‘em.

There’s an article on the game over at Polygon, and it reveals a little more about the upcoming game: it will indeed include both Health and Resolve damage / stress tracks, and there will be two types of scenes in the game: Action and Social. You get beat up in one, and recover in the other. Sounds pretty on-point for Kirkman’s comic!
Another stray thought about how they might decide to model superpowers… what if they borrowed the artifact dice from Forbidden Lands? That is, have a bog-standard d6 YZE dice pool, but then pepper in d8s, d10s, d12s from the character’s power sets. With success still happening on any single 6 (or greater) in the roll, that’s kind of a sweet way to differentiate between normies and supers. Gimmie that 6d6+2d8 pool!
Johan Nohr is doing the layout. Woot!
A reader pointed out that the Amazon Prime series is actually now on Season 3! Thanks, DED!

And thanks very much to my readers.

Lots of cool stuff coming up in the months ahead. In addition to getting the Outcast Silver Raiders campaign off the ground, I’m very excited about an upcoming Outgunned Adventures series where I’ll be a player in a pulpy 1930s game run by DigitalHobbit. There might be a live DCC Lankhmar game looming on the horizon, and there’s still oodles going in my play-by-post RPG world. Several new games are in early planning, and I’m also about to launch a western duet with Jason Connerly of the Nerd’s RPG Variety Cast podcast— something I’ve owed him for a while now! We’ll be giving underrated RPG designer Len Pimentel’s Six Gun Fury a spin if all comes together as expected…

Hope to see you next time!