Chaosium Con 2024

The third Chaosium Con took place in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA over the long weekend of 18-21 April 2024. Chaosium President Rick Meints said attendance was up again about 20%, from 300 to 400 to nearly 500 this year.

Although only a few official events began Thursday night, many people showed up by that time or even earlier, leading to a lot of mingling in the hotel lobby, and an epic fashion show for the 1920s styled mixer.

We set up in the Vendor Hall again for the second time (having missed the first con in 2022). All the usual suspects were there again, the only change being the lack of the estate sale from last year. For our part, we were able to bring in some additional Chaosium-licensees to share our booth with us. To one side was Stygian Fox Publishing, with Squamous Studios. Our booth included Bayt al Azif and Sentinel Hill Press and Sons of the Singularity again. We also added Sixtystone Press from the UK, and the new edition of Call of Cthulhu Quickstart Rules in Ukrainian from Geekach Games in Kyiv! Other booths included Chaosium, New Comet Games, the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, Pacesetter Games, Petersen Games, and Black Oak Workshop.

Working at these sorts of cons is a strange experience, because so often you are in the vendor area for most of the time and miss out on both events and people, unless they come to you. (For example, Luke Gygax, founder of Gary Con, wandered through briefly. Mike Mason and Paul Fricker tried to read their names in Ukrainian.) Luckily, Rick Meints decided to cut down the hours of the Vendor Hall, 10-4 Friday and Saturday, and 10-2 Sunday. This was greatly appreciated! As it turns out, most hardcore shoppers come on Friday to make sure what they want is not sold out. This Friday was a huge rush, and we did almost the same amount we did in 2023 all in one day! Saturday and Sunday we would get browsers, but not a concentrated rush, even during the lunch slot of 1-2 pm in between games and other events, but both days were still good.

After a panel on Saturday about the self-publishing licensed programs of Chaosium like the Miskatonic Repository for Call of Cthulhu and Jonstown Compendium for RuneQuest, Chaosium put out many print on demand books of the bestselling titles on a table in the hallway. Luckily I was walking by as they were setting up, so I grabbed a copy of the 2023 Jonstown Compendium Catalogue by Nick Brooke and even got him to sign it. A lot of the titles sold out quickly, and then the remainder were eventually moved into the Vendor Hall with us.

Stygian Fox was selling out of books left and right, and we eventually sold out of a few books on Sunday. Bayt al Azif 5 came out last year after the con, and sales on that were up a bit compared to sales on issue 4 last year. A few new people also bought the earlier issues this year. We had also set a suggested price of $10 on the Geekach Call of Cthulhu Quickstart so people could pay more if they would like to donate to help Geekach (who are not only a publisher in a warzone, but also have a physical store to keep open in Kyiv as well). Thank you to the generous customers who donated more for this! All money from selling Geekach’s book go directly to them.

Friday night I got to run my first game at Chaosium Con (I had only played last year), Double Dare from Bayt al Azif 1:
“Bill Wessler is the biggest bully in high school. Heck, he is probably the biggest bully in the small rural town you live in. You’ve all had run-ins with Bill and his two sidekicks. Just this week, Bill dared anyone brave enough to spend the entire night in the old Denford school on the edge of town. Now you are all standing outside the ruined building that was the town school over 100 years ago. Bill and his two friends stand far behind you at the edge of the meadow, the lights of their car on, playing loud music, drinking beers and laughing amongst themselves. “We’ll be watching!” he shouts. “No sneaking out unless you wanna be known as chicken!” Once you enter, you can’t leave until sunrise the next morning. It is almost sunset on Halloween night.”
My table was made up of the MythBrigade crew! It can be awkward when several friends know each other at a table and others don’t, but when the ENTIRE table are friends, prepare for an energetic and chaotic game! At several moments the in-character roleplay was going on so strongly that I just sat back and waited for a moment to add Keeper input. When Matthew McCloud of Lurking Fears wandered by, he looked at the carnage for several minutes and finally asked, “Wait, who is the Keeper in this game?”
Congrats to my players for only having to deal with 3 horrific deaths at the end of the session. I had a great time running it!

Saturday night I had foolishly forgotten to get into any games, and when I finally thought to check, all games were completely full! Here’s my analysis of roleplaying game seats and attendance by the three usual slots of 9am-1pm, 2pm-6pm, and 7pm-11pm:
Thurs 7pm 2 open seats / 59 seats total (skewed somewhat by a concurrent 20+ person LARP)
Fri 9am 15/155
Fri 2pm 4/183
Fri 7pm 15/182
Sat 9am 7/150
Sat 2pm 3/142 (skewed somewhat by the 50 person RuneQuest LARP running from 1 pm-9 pm)
Sat 7pm 3/108
Sun 9am 4/132
Sun 2pm 0/21

Of course, this is only based on the online booking system, rather than actual attendance, but thank you to anyone who couldn’t make a booked game and returned their tickets to the system. This allows Keepers to offer open spots, and people like me a chance to get into a game… which I did at the last minute in La Roulette, a scenario by Jason Sheets and Francis Acquarone, published in Journal d’Indochine from Sons of the Singularity. We had been selling Journal all weekend and it was great to play in a scenario from it, and it was run by one of the co-authors, Jason! His publishing partner Jesse Covner at Sons of the Singularity took on the role of a key NPC, as the players were all members of la Légion étrangère, or French foreign legion, assigned to a remote base near the Chinese border in French colonized Vietnam. Jason warned us about the content of this scenario at the start, and let’s just say, things did not go well. We all had a great time playing despite that!

I managed to buy a few things myself, a single battered copy of the 2002 Call of Cthulhu d20 Gamemaster’s Pack that was mysteriously available (I sold a copy of the d20 rules myself last year!) and the astounding Arkham Investigator’s Wallet from The H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society. Not only is this a truly amazing historical prop, it comes with a tied in scenario by Sean Branney! Nothing has made me want to instantly run a scenario like unwrapping this amazing wallet. Look at it!

A lot of things were only seen in passing. Pickup games were happening.

Panels and livestream games were happening.

A strange ritual ceremony involving a firepit and a congregation was concurrent with the con (leading to questions as to whether some outfits were for a wedding or a RuneQuest game).

Artists filled the atrium, such as Edwin Mullavey, who has done art for many scenarios, including Bridgett Jeffries’ Miskatonic Shoreside Repository, and Tom Sullivan of Evil Dead and early Call of Cthulhu fame.

Strange symbols were spotted on cars in the parking lot.

Thanks to Black Oak Workshop for a cool dice bag, Arkham Files for the cool dice bag and dice, the Stygian Fox crew for watching my table when I needed to take a break or get lunch, all my great players and Keepers, and everyone who stopped by the table to say hi, or pick up some RPG books. We appreciate all the kind words (and are always looking for feedback for our letters column in the next issue of Bayt al Azif!)

While there is an upper limit to how many people can fit into this location, it again seemed busy but not too crowded. Both games I was involved in had an open empty table in the room at the time, and although there were a few slots open in most time slots, most of the RPGs had a five to fifteen person waiting list to get into that game! So clearly there is both space and a high demand for games. Call of Cthulhu seemed to dominate this year, with RuneQuest, especially the 50 person LARP coming in second. Pendragon had only a few, with the new edition starter set just being recently released, and a few early copies of The Grey Knight for sale at the show, and a few Rivers of London. I was pleased to see Ghostbusters and Stormbringer and BRP games also being run (I almost made an ElfQuest/Call of Cthulhu hybrid crossover game). I hope to see other historical Chaosium games make an appearance in the future.

If you haven’t before, this would be a great con to run a game at, there is clearly a demand and lots of fun (and forgiving) players.

Finally, thanks to Chaosium and all their ultra hardworking staff, particularly Bridgett Jeffries, for pulling off another great con! We’ll see everyone next year.