Mythic Party at Gen Con

An exclusive annual Gen Con charity event that took place 2008-2011. The event included appearances by industry luminaries, tons of prizes and swag, catered food, and a night of fun and games. The event series ended up raising roughly $20k USD for the targeted charities.

The original event conception was a gathering to honor the life of Gary Gygax, who had passed away in the months prior, but ultimately it was decided the best way to memorialize his legacy was to make the event a party celebrating gaming and gamers.

The Official Billing Read: 

Mythic Party is an annual Gen Con event held for the top 6 donors to a selected charity. These gamers have given to our selected 501(3)(C) non-profit, and to thank this generosity, we provide them with a VIP evening.

It begins with a custom D&D game created/run especially for us by a professional designer using the best elements the RPG industry has to offer.

The free event runs for 6 hours, culminating in a special midnight toast over rare 35yo single malt scotch, & concludes with an after-party for invited friends that is catered by Whole Foods.

This all happens in a giant luxury Hilton suite. 

The Mythic Party events were branded after “Mythic Design”, my personal game design imprint at the time, and were planned in tandem with AvatarArt (a web-based service that offered custom character portraits for TTRPG gamers), where I was also a part of senior staff and the webmaster.

The funding for the event (room, catered food, drinks, etc.) and promotional costs were covered by myself on behalf of Mythic Design, which allowed money raised by the event to go entirely to the featured charities for each year’s party.

The event run ended after the fourth Mythic Party because I needed to to shift my attention from the game industry to focus on running the new web development firm, Webdot Studio, I had founded a few months earlier. When I would eventually return my attention to game design, it would be under the “Paths to Adventure” moniker.

The Mythic Parties took place in the king presidential suite at Hilton Indianapolis during Gen Con, in the after-hours of the convention. The events were hosted by Steve Gerke, project manager at AvatarArt. Mates Laurentiu, lead artist at AvatarArt, provided artwork for several of the events as well as design the official logo.

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About the Mythic Party

With each subsequent year, the party was referred to by incremental levels; so the 2008 event was Mythic Party—Level 1, 2009 was Mythic Party—Level 2, etc. The marketing slogan was, “Raising Shindigs to the Next Level!”

Level 1 — Saturday, August 16, 2008

Level 2 — Saturday, August 15, 2009

Level 3 — Saturday, August 7th, 2010
Main Event: Exclusive “28-Rounds Later” 4E Eberron Campaign, written and run by Keith Baker.
Charity: Oceana (Protecting the World’s Oceans), Gygax Memorial Fund

Level 4 — Saturday, August 6, 2011
Main Event: Gold ENnie-winning Dread Wasteland (horror RPG), run by the publishers, Windmill Game Co: Akira Barnes, Jason Pisano, & Brian Keller.
Charity: Search Dog Foundation, Gygax Memorial Fund

Beginning in 2009, The official beverage of Mythic Party was RootJack, Pirate Energy Drink. And, there was more than an ample supply provided from the booty of Voodoo Elixirs!

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^{Mythic Party pics that somehow survived almost two decades…}

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How we all met… and then had a Mythic Party

Adjacent to Mythic Party, and integral to its realization, was my involvement with Obsidian Portal (an online campaign management tool), which I discovered while it was in beta in 2006. I was impressed with the service and after talking with founders, Micah Wedemeyer and Ryan Felton, I worked with them on designing several “layout themes” that could be applied to campaign pages, and pitched a new “dragon-themed” logo I felt was a better fit than their early logo design (which was an ebon circle surrounded by a soft glow).

Over the years I would remain involved in the Obsidian Portal community, winning two of their “Campaign of the Month” awards, meeting up with the founders at GenCon, a guest on their “Haste!” podcast, assisting with their “Obsidian Portal Reforged” Kickstarter, etc.

It was through my early involvement at Obsidian Portal during the beta that I first met the team at AvatarArt. Their “custom character art” service was only a few months older than Obsidian Portal, and felt like the perfect fit for a fusion of services. When a new character was added to a campaign on Obsidian Portal, the user would be offered a discount to get a custom portrait for that character created.

AvatarArt was in need of a webmaster and someone who could develop the tools to streamline their service, and thus I became a part of senior staff there as the webmaster in 2006. A couple years later we’d be working together to bring Mythic Party to life.

When Jerry LeNeave joined the staff of Obsidian Portal in 2010 as content director, we started up an “ambassador program” to help promote the service, leading the charge with that, I utilized Mythic Party as a venue to hand out tons of swag promoting the service, adding to the already massive pile of prizes for attendees.

I often find it amusing how a series happenstance encounters can converge to bring about something mythic.

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The list of sponsors who contributed to Mythic Party by attending events, performing, and providing swag and prizes: