This is a fast and dirty after action report for Grellcon 2026. Time has been chugging on by, and I fear if I don’t write a report now, I might not ever do so. 

So, what the hell is Grellcon? It took place on the 4th of July 2026 and is Britain’s only Old School D&D convention. It was created by Andrew Walter, the talented Fantasy artist, Dungeon Master, (and death metal fiend), after he was inspired by Germany’s own Cauldron Con. It took place in London at a lovely venue called The Stanley Arts Centre. 

FRIDAY

The day before the day itself, Friday was not officially part of the Con, but Andrew arranged a pre-con meet-up at one of his favourite pubs; the Shirker’s Rest. We had the whole of the upstairs of the pub to game in, and systems other than Classic D&D were encouraged since during the con itself we would only be playing FAG. 

Unfortunately I was a bit delayed in getting into London. By the time I got to the pub at around 5 p.m. the first round of games were already in session. Sean was running a game of Tunnels & Trolls and Andrew was running a game of Gamma World. They both were full up with players and seemed to be having a blast. But all was not lost as I saw someone tucked away in a corner; Sören (a recent player addition to my ADDKON campaign) who was busy preparing his adventure for the con. So we had a few beers and chatted whilst plenty of other gamers filtered in, faces old and new. 

THE SAGES OF SATURN

Then the time for the second round of gaming began. There were lots of interesting games on offer including Warhammer Fantasy Role Play 1e, Delving Deeper, and Dark Ages Call of Cthulhu, but when I saw that Alex (SandboxSorcerer) was playtesting one of his AD&D Stygia games, I signed right up for that. Alex runs a great AD&D campaign in the CAG discord server, and the last playtest of his I had the opportunity to play in became a finalist in the recent Cold Light Press adventure competition. 

This adventure was called the Sages of Saturn, and we were delving into a large network of caves that was home to a strange and secretive cult. The character I selected seemed familiar, it was an elf fighter/MU 4/9 with a dancing sword, it might have come from one of the TSR tournament modules. 

We entered into the caverns and encountered one of the Sages of an ancient evil deity. Someone charmed him. He was very creepy and prophesied that we would soon be wisened and forever changed through our encounters with his dark god. In the centre of this chamber was a bubbling cauldron the Sage warned us not to peer into. We followed his advice and moved onward in search of ancient treasures. We players made a pact to push as deeply into this complex as possible, and so we did. The cavern was very large and seemed a pretty tricky area to map, so we hugged the left wall. Shortly after we fireballed a giant neolithic tiger, turning it into a singed floor mat. 

Then we moved on and encountered the first Grell of the convention. Naturally, this being Grellcon, it would not be the last. This was a pretty hairy encounter, as it had floated down from the ceiling to attack. I launched my dancing sword to try and hold it off, and with a few lucky spells we downed it after about 50% of the party had been paralysed. Once we’d recovered, we moved on, eventually entering a boudoir of the sages. We neutralised them and questioned them, figuring out where the largest hoard of treasure was. We followed that lead, having to move away from the left wall and well into darkness. We later came upon a bizarre ceremony of human sacrifice, but we were after treasure, so with some silence spells we slipped past.  

We made it to the hoard, a veritable pit of gemstones below a great idol of a toad-ape. I was getting quite excited at this point as this was one of a litany of literary nods to the works of Clark Ashton Smith scattered throughout the dungeon. I knew that from the idol we were likely to fight some sort of shoggoth. As our thief went forward to check it out, indeed a great black shimmering goo came out to consume him. And with our spells, including my Wall of Fire, we destroyed it and made off with a veritable fortune. 

Alex is a fantastic DM who has a great skill at description and building up tone and intrigue. His adventures are always full of pulp fiction Easter eggs and he’s well versed in the Appendix N tradition. I enjoyed this adventure so much that I’ve asked to publish it in a future issue of Beneath the Black Pyramid. 

SATURDAY 

A brief word on the location used for the convention, the Stanley Arts Centre. It was very regal and grand. The hall was a good size and the inclusion of a bar and outdoor gaming space made the area pretty special. Since we were experiencing an intense heat wave, the hall did get incredibly hot over the course of the day. But that’s nothing a few beers can’t help you forget. 

The schedule of games looked really great with a good representation of home-made AD&D modules, classic White Dwarf adventures, and TSR classics. The downside of DMing is not being able to play in all these offerings. 

THE SEARCH FOR THE TEMPLE OF THE GOLDEN SPIRE 

For my morning game I opted to run this classic module from White Dwarf issue 22 (it also appears in the 2nd Best of WD collection.) My reason for running it was its wilderness exploration portion, something you don’t often see in AD&D con games. My only concern with the module was its use of a riddle as its driving impetus, which I usually would not touch with a ten-foot pole, but sometimes you have to just get over yourself and try something new. 

Instead of creating all the pre-gens by hand I printed off a large stack of character sheets from the OSRIC website; the robe of useful things. In total there were around 30 PC sheets of different types. My table had filled up with the recommended seven players, and these are the PCs they selected: 

• Connor: A human Cleric 2 
• Conan: An Elf Fighter 4 
• Niko (never_plays_elves): A Human MU 4
• Sören (_x_y_x_): A Halfling Thief 3 
• Ryan: A Human Cleric 3 
• George: A Human Druid 4 
• Chris: A Gnome Fighter 3 

Before I go into their adventure, a brief word on running this module. The module has a wilderness map, and spread across this are a series of adventure sites. At the start of the game, a standing stone reveals a riddle, if decoded this reveals a series of directions across the map that will ultimately lead to an ancient Chaotic temple that is filled with treasure (and also deadly monsters). There are a few areas on the map that are red herring time wasters. One problem is that the map has no scale, and this goes for the wilderness map and the various dungeons. There is also no recommended procedure for moving on the map. This is what I came up with which I thought would make for an interesting game: I made the hex scale to be one mile per hex. For movement, I used the rules from the PHB, i.e. the party can move at the slowest PC’s movement rate in hexes twice per day, each movement portion being a four-hour watch. Food would need to be consumed every day, or fatigue would set in (-1 to all rolls). The module gives odds of being lost, and I made this only possible if away from roads or rivers. Random encounters are 1 in 10 per hour. As for the dungeon scale issue, I simply printed the maps onto graph paper, eyeballing what seemed about right. 

Back to the game at hand, after the PCs were selected and the spells and items recorded, I explained that this was an early tournament module from Dragonmeet 4 (1984) conventions. There is no scoring guide in the module, which is a pity, but I guess the group with the highest xp earned should work. I explained the real goal of AD&D is to get treasure/xp and that they should use all of their wits and guile as players to do so. 

Then we kicked off with the setup and I handed out the riddle. The players were a mix of old hands at AD&D (some of whom I game with regularly) and some noobs. To my surprise, the riddle seemed to really light a fire up their asses, which is probably not how I would personally react to it, but there you go. They quickly set about exploring the first location, the village of Greywood. 

They figured out the first clue and made their way to All Season’s Folly, which is a sort of grove with magical trees. On the way they had a random encounter with sprites, and they offered coins and food to get rid of them. Then they moved to the north, following the riddle well and finding an old blasted bridge. There in the fallen keystone they saw a fine sword. Here, the module says that a Dwarf with STR 17 can pull it from the stone, which, personally, I thought was bullshit. Instead, after they had figured their way down to its location, I allowed a bend bars roll to extract it.

They followed the next clue pretty well which was “point ye the cross at the cross, and follow the way ye hath found.” The magic sword being one cross, and the spire of the village church being another visible cross. They made their way back. 

Back in the village, they then became somewhat infatuated with the clue about pointing the cross at the cross, and tried all manner of ways of interacting with the sword. At one point they were considering climbing the spire to touch the sword to the church’s cross on the spire. I was lamenting internally, but I kept my well-practised DM poker face. They later went into the church to question the priests, and after a few clues they figured out the next part about “following the road of the dead.” And so they discovered a secret pathway behind the graveyard. They followed that until night, when there was a random encounter with a unicorn, which almost ended very badly for the Druid who was gored in the chest. 

Then they found a giant castle filled with kobolds. It had a giant spire that went up 150 feet, and was obviously linked to the clue, “search then from as high as the eagle doth fly.”

They tried to sneak in through the portcullis but failed. They defeated some kobolds and entered. Ignoring the various areas including a church, keep, and stable, they went for the tower. Inside they encountered dozens of drunken kobolds. I had hastily painted a bunch of miniatures for this castle. I needn’t have bothered, because the reaction roll ended up being 100. So there was a parlay and the kobolds agreed to let the party up into the tower if they could clear out the ghouls who dwelled up there. 

The stairs were narrow. The players formed a marching order, understanding to put the elf fighter in the front rank. Battle commenced, and the clerics managed to turn them. The ghouls fled upstairs into the tower and the party followed. From the windows they saw the chaotic temple in the north, shining with gold. 

At this point we had less than an hour of game time left, and the players gunned it towards the temple. They made their way inside the temple, and with a few good uses of the Scare spell, avoided some nasty random encounters. After firebombing some ghouls they entered the temple proper. Inside was a harpy and this is where it all fell apart. Some party members were separated by the sing ability. Whilst they battled it, a lone halfling snuck up the tower into a sketchy room at the top where a bejewelled skull materialised a wraith. He was level drained into oblivion. Down below there was little better luck, the harpy was eventually slain with large casualties due to charmed infighting. Some PCs made it out, but alas they reaped no large treasure. In all, they had great fun, and it was a fairly different style of game for me as a DM, which was novel. The riddle itself, though, is probably going to split player opinion. Personally I would be resistant to playing in a game so heavily reliant on one. 

THE TOWN OF JOUNDAN 

After a short break with a sandwich and beer, I prepped my next game. I had picked an obscure module by the early Californian RPG company Dimension 6, which was the finale of a series of unlicensed A/D&D modules from the early 1980s. I wanted to showcase some of the lesser-used parts of 1e, which is why I chose this module. It’s an evil city set into a mountain, guarded by 35 griffins, hundreds of soldiers, an iron golem, a level 18 magic user, and plenty more. I wanted to showcase what it might be like to play a high level PC after acquiring some powerful items and other class benefits like armies. So I made up a bunch of PCs around level 10 who would be enemies of the level 18 Magic User, Desan, who ran the town. The fighters and clerics had military forces to use; the thieves had their own guilds, etc. When I set up the game I told the players that they had discovered that their old enemy Desan secretly ruled the City of Joundan, and with this knowledge they could plan to destroy him and claim his treasures. 

To be honest, I picked this rather chaotic setup because I wanted to be surprised with what the players threw at me. I was willing to run mass battles with chainmail, aerial combat, city crawling, however the players wanted to approach it. I wasn’t disappointed at all. I had five players turn up. These are the PCs they selected: 

• Nick played a Human MU 10 with a crystal ball w/ clairaudience, a carpet of flying (3 riders), a wand of detect magic, potion of vampire control. 
• Dave played a Dwarf Fighter 8 with a longsword +1, plate +1, 1k bag of holding, potion of invisibility, a subdued 9 HD adult red dragon mount that could cast 2/2/1 spells. 
• Andrew played a Half-orc Cleric/Assassin 4/8 with a javelin +2, leather +1, a ring of human influence, a philtre of love, poison, and four assassin henchmen of various levels. 
• Tee played a Human Thief 10 with a periapt of proof against poison, a ring of invisibility, boots of elven kind, a short sword +1, potion of healing, and his own Thieves Guild with 7 Thief lvl 1, 2 Thief lvl 2, 3 Thief lvl 3, 4 Thief lvl 4. 
• Steve played an Elf Fighter/MU 7/10 with ringmail +3, longsword +1 / +4 vs reptiles, scroll of light + hold portal, wand of negation (24 charges), scroll of limited wish. 

No-one selected the PCs with military forces, and so the chainmail battle was out the window. Dave did select the dragon rider, and that meant air battles were on the table. I gave a brief background about the town, and then I set up weekly turns for the players in which they could take actions. Each had 50,000gp to spend. Their current location was a week’s ride from the evil Town of Joundan. 

Now, I could probably write a hell of a lot about this game, it was incredibly chaotic. For my sanity I’m going to just give some highlights. 

They sent their thief and assassin henchmen into the town to spy. They discovered a lot this way, about the towns military, its king, its thieves’ guild, and guild of beggars. With this info the MU scried a few locations. One problem was that one assassin was captured on this mission. They scried him, and saw him being tortured by an ogre deep underground. We made some saves for this fellow, and he failed, the result was he gave up all information about his master, Andrews PC. The next turn that meant that an assassin turned up at his door to put him to rest, and we had a combat between the two assassins. This spooked the players a little, and they rode to the city with a plan to kill Desan. 

This was the plan: The thief, assassin, and elf would scale the walls after dark to sabotage the siege machinery atop the towers. Then Dragon-Dave would fly over and create some carnage, being a distraction, but also burning down the stables which held the army’s 40 war horses. Then the MU would fly in invisibly to support, and the party would then penetrate the dungeons. 

Things went to plan to start with. There was a lot of action happening with multiple split parties, so this was fairly taxing for me. There was an aerial battle between the dragon rider and 35 griffins which we resolved using the flying rules from the DMG (basically a dogfighting hex game.) The sneaking crew battled some guards and did indeed sabotage some equipment. The horses were all burnt to a crisp. The invisible MU did sneak past the iron golem that guarded the entrance to the dungeon. 

The aerial battle was probably my favourite part, since it’s the first time I’ve gotten to employ it fully. The dragon essentially negated the human military, with them fleeing in terror and their range severely limited when shooting up at flying targets. The DMG does really give a lot of useful rules for these types of battles. With the dragon’s spells, fire breath, and the dwarf’s use of lance, a hell of a lot of griffins were slain and he caused their morale to break, whilst only taking moderate damage to the dragon. 

We had one PC death before the dungeon, the elf, when they tried to rush past the iron golem and died from the poison gas. The others did make it inside. 

There was a bit of regular dungeon delving and battle, and then they entered an area with magic paintings. They correctly intuited these were portals. Of all the portals available to walk through, they chose to enter a crypt because, and I quote, “we can deal with anything that might be in a crypt.” I guess they had never encountered a lich before. Well, now they can tick that off the list. The lich encounter essentially ended in a TPK, after a Cone of Cold, a Wish, and a Wall of Fire spell. The thief managed to sneak away due to his invisibility, but thus ended the most intensive game of AD&D I think I might have ever run. 

The prep for this game was pretty heavy, I had redrawn the city map with a scale, painted dozens of figures, and rolled the HP and pre-rolled saves for over 100 enemy NPCs. It was worth it, but I think this sort of experience is not for everyone, only for those who want to dig into the peripheral domain-play elements of AD&D. No regrets though, I had a great time. 

PLANET ALGOL: SIDEREAL MALEVOLENCE

The evening was moving on. There had been a break of a couple of hours filled with good conversation and beer. I was in a great mood, and now that my games were out of the way I planned on cutting loose and playing. I signed up for Andrew Walter’s Sidereal Malevolence. This is his own dungeon run with AD&D plus house rules from Planet Algol, the Weird Science Fantasy house rules from the early OSR period. I’ll admit I’m pretty uninformed about these house rules, so it was pretty fun to pore through all the PC sheets containing cactus men, robot men, mutated freaks and the like. I picked out a sorcerer, which is basically a MU with no weapon proficiency limitations. I had a bow and a sword, and was some sort of weird race which I can’t fully remember. 

There were a lot of players in this game, maybe ten (?) so we had a big party and lots of exotic races and classes. Andrew always offers lots of hirelings in his games and this time I picked up some reptile riding cavalry. 

Andrew explained the scenario; there was a location usually protected by a great force field that had suddenly ceased working. It was ripe for the plundering. We set up our marching order with the really cool die-cut tokens Andrew uses ( I think from a Kickstarter he was part of, dunno where, but I want some of them ) and we approached the area. 

There were large Tesla-like coil towers set around a massive square building. We approached. In the side of the mountain there was a crashed black pyramid spewing brain matter. There was too much radiation being emitted from this for us humanoids to approach, but the robot men could. Something was in the side of the mountain gobbling the brains pouring out of this crashed UFO, and so we left that alone. Then we considered climbing the Tesla coil towers, but that seemed pretty dangerous so we avoided it. This whole set up was really memorable. 

Then we entered the square windowless structure and started dungeon delving. There were some reptile cavalry men that we battled and sent to sleep. Then we encountered some weird plants, that might have been yellow musk creepers, and we took some bad damage. Then we delved deeper and battled a bunch of other humanoids. 

We set about going as deep as possible into the dungeon, and after a couple of hours we were the last table standing. Some players had left, and some other players had joined our game. Plenty of beer was consumed, and after midnight sometime Andrew shouted, “I can only handle 30 minutes more!” 

Our final encounter was pretty mad. We had previously encountered a strange giant child that spoke telepathically to us. It was seemingly imprisoned behind a shimmering force field. Behind it was a vast amount of treasure, obviously meant to be a temptation towards our demise. We took the bait. Our thieves snuck around the sides of this creature as we tried to distract it, but it was not surprised, and once within melee range, took on its true form which was like a huge squelching mass with a sucker protrusion. We did quite a bit of damage to it with our spells, I think an ice storm and confusion spell. We didn’t kill it but made away with some nice treasures snatched from its hoard. Andrew later said it was a V Demon or something (gulp).

A brilliant end to a brilliant convention.

I have to give my huge appreciation to Andrew for setting this whole thing up single-handedly. The UK badly needed a Killer Fantasy Adventure Gaming convention, and he supplied it in spades! Here’s to Grellcon coming back year on year! I’ll be there as long as its around. (Also, his merch was killer!)