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D&D at Denver Comic Con 2018

Comic Cons are great places to take the pulse of geek culture.  Even with the internet its sometimes hard to get a feel for what Geeks are into now.  At this year's Comic Con I certainly felt some things were out (Zombies, Resident Evil and Walking Dead) and others were in Wonder Woman.  Certainly one fandom on the rise was D&D.

It was very apparent that to me that Dungeons and Dragons was rising as its emblems were everywhere.  I saw lots of D20s, lots of Dragons and lots of Critical Role themed art and shirts.   To be fair there has always been some D&D themed things at every con I have gone to but it was typically consigned to older bearded fans.  At this con it was young under 30 crowd that were most interested in the game.  They were wearing T-Shirts, they were cosplaying and they were buying D&D gear.  I heard multiple conversations about Stream of Many Eyes and the coming Waterdeep Adventure module.  That was a very sharp turn from just a year ago.

There were not a ton of Dungeon Dragon's merchandise vendors and artists but the ones I saw all had crowds and all were doing well.

There were multiple panels on Table Top gaming and RPG of all kinds.  Including panels that acted just as meet ups.  The most curious thing though was how D&D would come up in panels that were not expressly about D&D.  In a few panels in writing characters or monsters for example the topic of D&D arose and often formed the entire skeleton of the conversation that occurred.

The coolest vendor specializing in D&D was Lair of Abraxas.


You can find their website at https://www.lairofabraxas.com/ and they were there selling cool dice, and awesome Leather Pouches.  They have a Viking Mead Hall in Westminister CO where you can meet up and play D&D plus drink meade out of a horn.  Yeah I dig that, that is how D&D should be played.  They were really cool and personable and I will definitely need to check them out.  Maybe the Companions of the Silver Apple (Toylab's House D&D group) will need to venture over for a game.

I did buy two of the leather holders from them, one for me and one for the wife.  You can basically put notes, character sheet, dice and writing utensil in there.  Really neat and cool.  They also had a huge variety of dice and leather bound journals.

I saw a lot of art in the D&D vein as well.

Speaking of which check this out....




My favorite piece of art I saw was this cool Stranger Things Inspired print from an artist named Johanna Taylor.  You can find her website here --> https://www.websta.one/johannamation

She also designs D&D characters and other art.  She had a really fun booth.

Johanna even cosplayed as Matt Mercer.  Yes I am serious.




Critts Critts and more Critts
Yeah Critical Role fans there are a lot of you, and you are all cool.  Yes I knew the show was popular but its hard to tell how much internet over a global scale translates into a region like Denver.  How many of these people actually live near me.  Well the answer was a whole heck of a lot more of them than I thought.

The other part of the con where I noticed the D&D presence was with the show Critical Role and cosplays and fans.  I actually talked to 4 people there who had Critical Role T-Shirts and I spotted 3 different Critical Role cosplays.  Pretty awesome, I have never noticed this kind of attention given to Dungeons and Dragons so that was really neat.  I know my DMing services are in demand and now I know that is not a fluke but part of something larger.

Check out these Critical Role Cosplays

Critcal Role Cosplays

Another Fjord and Jester cosplay

My overall impression of D&D is that it has not peaked but it is definitely on the move upward.  It is a good time to be a D&D player I don't think its ever actually been this cool.

I am very curious if this trend will continue to grow at San Diego Comic Con coming up in about a month.  The many eyes of the Toylab blog will be watching.

Also for all D&D fans whether you are in Denver or not.  Please follow along with Toylab's House D&D gaming crew the Companions of the Silver Apple!

For more Companions of the Silver Apple click here!