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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Retreater" data-source="post: 8975580" data-attributes="member: 42040">I'm your huckleberry. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />On Friday afternoon, one of my friends and I took a trip through Lake Geneva to visit the Gygax plaque, see the house, and also Horticultural Hall. Wanting to take a picture of the landmark, we saw a sign boasting "TSR Con 2" that weekend. I looked it up online and saw that yes, it was being run by the NuTSR folks. And of course, I knew the history of this group. Aware of the risks, we decided to visit the con. (Plus, it was a great opportunity to see the inside of the Hall.)I would describe the atmosphere as "depressing." There were numerous tables set up, but only two active games going on. One was a table of around 5 people, the other I'm guessing was a single family with a couple young kids. The family game was being led by a man with a very long beard wearing what appeared to be some kind of religious garb - kind of like a priestly cassock. He glared at us as we entered.The vendor space included two folding tables. One displayed stacks of the Dungeon Crawl Boardgame and another book (you get to play goblins in it). The other table was a guy selling original fantasy novels (which he gave preview cards of with mildly sexist tropes) and - oddly enough - seasoning bottles that were somehow connected to the novels.Other than that, there was to the left of our entrance a boardgame library - mostly dated stuff. We were greeted by the fellow in center of the picture with Larry Elmore. He told us we were welcome to look around. If we wanted to play or run a game, we could pay $10 for the day. He bragged that we just missed Larry Elmore. We told him we were attending GaryCon and just wanted to check out this place. He then proceeded to talk about how GaryCon was inferior because they checked vaccine cards and required masks - and we told him they didn't this year. He then asked us how much we spent on GaryCon tickets, and suggested this con was a better value. We left after a few minutes. It was a very dour atmosphere, full of sad people, who had decided to stay in a self-imposed exile while one of the best con experiences I've ever had was occurring 5 minutes down the street.</blockquote>

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