Recap of Gamehole Con 2025

My experience of a midwest tabletop gaming convention

I’ve attended Gamehole Con since its first year in 2012. It’s an annual tabletop convention in Madison, WI. It started small, but it has now grown to over 6000 participants playing games for four days. For the past seven years, I’ve been a volunteer helping with set up, will call, and tear down. Some years I also run games.

This year, I ran a one-shot RPG adventure using the Sentinel Comics RPG system, but set in my own story world.

I took my novel, Bound by Chacoal and Clay (not published, still querying), and created an alternate reality version where the antagonist muse wins and has a super-villain plot to stop all creative inspiration besides his own. In response, other muses rise up, give their artists superpowers (the player characters), and send them to defeat him.

My novel is not a superhero story at all. It’s a magical realism / grounded fantasy women’s fiction relationship drama. It was fun to put my characters in a new genre and share it with people to play at this convention. The players had a great time, too!

I also played many great games in the MilCoG Games Library, pictured above. Love their selection every year!

The Masks rpg game I played in was a blast, definitely a highlight. I would love to play more adventures in that system.

The exhibitor hall was excellent with many great vendors, and also still pleasant to walk through, not too crowded.

This was one of the best Gamehole Con experiences so far and I’m already looking forward to next year! It remains my favorite convention.

---

Thank you for reading! If you’re new here, I’m Katelin Cummins, a Catholic writer, book coach, gamer, and fantasy fan. If you would like to know more about what I write, check out this post. If you want help planning, writing, or revising your novel or nonfiction book, get started with a concept assessment.