The first few trips to Gameholecon we ate almost exclusively at the food trucks and on site. The last two years we've gotten out to eat some better meals and treat it more like a mini vacation.
This is from Mickey's Dairy Bar. We went there last year too - cash only. It's incredibly popular. My pancakes were WAY more than I could eat.
They have this monkey with bananas and this year we were there after Eryn went to Hausu at the Trylon with Peter and Lara, so it had special significance. Bananas, Bananas, Bananas!
We had sushi the second night. This is Muramoto Hilldale,which is the upscale mall. The dumpling place next door smelled better, but Eryn was really happy and I'm always happy with the sashimi plate.
The last night we went out for ramen at
Morris Ramen right downtown. We went there last year too. Hard to find, small place, but delicious. I had the corn and sausage ramen which is a little midwestern (aka not very spicy) but has a great flavor profile. Eryn went spicy. There was s small woman sitting next to us who had hair dyed like my niece and was the same height, but on closer inspection was probably a 40 year old.
And on the way home we went past the Norske Nook in Osseo, WI. I wanted pork and gravy, but it wasn't lunch time. And then someone stole my berry pancake. And so the waitress thought I could have the pork and gravy. But no. So I got my blackberry pancake, just after a long wait. And she gave me my banana pie and Eryn's sugar cookie comped, which was nice but unnecessary. I was AMAZED that she remembered us from our trip to House on the Rock in the spring. Hell of a memory on that waitress. She said she wasn't sure until Eryn ordered her burger.
These next two have nothing at all to do with food. This is from the True Dungeon. Not this year - this year's theme was a blue snake woman and a giant demon. This was in the dungeon last year and Eryn has fond memories of a woman on her phone who was oblivious until the tree grabbed her from behind. Our team this year was much more inexperienced and we actually failed a puzzle challenge and one of the guys dropped unconscious and I had to revive him with a potion as we had no cleric.
My favorite part was on the puzzle we failed where we handed gems into a crypt in the right order to turn some skulls. One of the guys didn't realize there were people in the tomb and kept tossing his gems into the holes. I'm surprised no one got seriously beaned.
And this is the original Greyhawk map they used for inspiration (the Gygaxes are from WI) for the modules. Chris (from high school) was excited to see this photo when I sent it his direction. Eryn's excited about making her own map and has my old D&D map out at the moment to see how I handled it back when I was world building (my rules were: only part of one continent so there was lots of space to expand, different land types, countries basically had a theme (Sherfora, horses, Cthulhu-y, Romanesque, Persian, various novels, ruled by Dionysus, Atlantisa) an; d then populated with geographical features appropriately (Sherfora, forest in the middle of a plain that was more English-like; the Cthulhu area had lots of mountains and the borders were determined by how far someone had managed to make it without disappearing; Atlantis, big volcano; Dionysus area lots of dunes and grapes....etc). It did make it about a million times easier to put a basic framework around any adventure and local color/character building.
