Welcome to all the new backers! Today's update is about some of our signature items: doom gongs and wizard vans! Does this qualify as... "marketing"? "creative content"? "convention decor"? Or, as Wayne put it, "Joe's life-size DCC playset"? Whatever you call it, it sets us apart.

But first, in case you missed it, here is the next of our Gamehole Con videos reminiscing on the company history...

Doom Gongs & Wizard Vans

“I can see why you want to maximize your physical presence in a professional sort of way, especially for a convention as expensive as Gen Con, so people take you seriously as a serious game design company producing serious products for serious gamers,” Michael says. “And then there's us, who show up with a doom gong and a ziggurat and a wizard van. We do bring some of that old TSR energy. If you're not having fun while you're doing it, why bother?

The legs of the gong stand are covered in plaques commemorating the winners of our annual Gen Con tournaments. Stu quotes Harley discussing the many gongs throughout the world:

“There are like 20 Doom Gongs out in the world," Harley says. "There's one in Germany. I think there's one in the UK or Brazil. They bring them to conventions, and you ring it when your character dies. Did Wayne Snyder think he was gonna create this thing that would be imitated by other folks? That it would wind up overseas? But what a cool gift. What a cool contribution to this this shared culture.”

You may have seen some of these gongs in the wild!

There are others, too. How did the gong come about? This is how Wayne tells the story:

“Joe said, ‘I wanna do this gong thing. Can you build a thing to hold a Gong?’ But he had no idea that I had worked at the amusement park and used to build shit like that. So I was like, ‘Yeah, man. I can do that.’ I spent that summer in the warehouse, and it was just boiling fucking hot in there. I work outside, but it's extra hot in a building. Shaving foam, carving stuff, you know, painting and doing epoxy. But there's this kick ass band, they're doing really well for themselves, called Book of Wyrms. They had their practice space there. So, I'm carving this big pediment portal looking thing with demon skulls on it, and there's a space metal band playing live 30 feet away. It was fucking great.”

And then, of course, there is the Wizard Van. The dream started 20+ years ago, and we first attempted it as a stretch goal on a swag Kickstarter around 2013 or 2014. In 2015, we mocked one up for the yearbook cover:

In 2019, Stefan painted his awesome Space Van art, and we put it on a T-shirt and GM screen for Gen Con.

In 2021, Doug painted Shana's wizard van as the poster art for the following year's Road Crew.

And then finally, at Gen Con 2022, the Wizard Van came to life!

Stu has so many great quotes from Wayne about the van:

“It's not fast, but it sounds like it's fast.”
 
“Joe said, ‘You know, I think I wanna have the van in the exhibit hall.’ And we kinda talked about it a little bit. I'm like, ‘You do not want my van. It gets leaky. It's loud. It's rusty. It's like tetanus is happening all over the place.’”
 
We used to joke about building the Joe Goodman playset. The ziggurat started as a joke, then it was like, ‘What’s next? The ziggurat? That's exactly what we're gonna do.’”
 
“It’s crazy that it's so recognized. There's 70,000 people at GenCon but people recognize that van. It’s one of the centerpieces of the whole show.”

Readers, tell us in the comments! What's your favorite memory of the Doom Gong or Wizard Van?