Tabletop RPG designer Venger Satanis says GaryCon banned him for one year over flyers promoting his convention, never warned him a flyer was a problem, and he believes his politics are the reason.
Satanis created the Cha’alt campaign setting and runs Venger Con. He attended the March 2026 GaryCon in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, as a game master, and he told Fandom Pulse that the sessions he runs normally earn him a free silver badge for the next show. He learned of the ban only because he went looking for that badge.
“I always get a free silver badge because of all the games I’ve run at the previous convention. I didn’t see the email where GaryCon gifted me another free silver badge (I ran either 6 or 7 sessions earlier this year), but it wasn’t a problem because I couldn’t go anyway. My wife had scheduled our eldest daughter’s sweet-16 / golden birthday during next year’s con. Additionally, GaryCon moved their usual weekend to a week earlier. But then my wife said there’s like a 15% chance that maybe you could still go if her parents were back from Florida or something. So, I decided to investigate where that free silver badge email was. My inquiry is what led me to find out that I’d been banned. And then I had to keep asking to discover it was only a one-year ban, not lifetime or whatever.”
The notice from GaryCon’s Policy Team, titled “1 year ban for policy violation,” reads: “After further review, Gary Con is banning you for 1 year due to the policy violations that we’ve previously messaged you about.” It does not say what the violations were.
On September 29, a GaryCon reply on the email thread told Satanis: “Unfortunately due to last year’s policy violation, you’re currently banned. You were sent an email from Policy Team some time ago.” Eight minutes later, Satanis wrote back asking whether the flyers were the cause.
He laid out the timeline and his suspicion in more detail.
“Once I got home from the convention in March, there was an email saying ‘Hey, stop putting up flyers.’ I don’t check my email when I’m on vacation or at gaming conventions. And they said they sent me the ban notice (after a full investigation) over the summer, like in June. I didn’t see that email, and asked him to re-send it. That was in September. Seems ridiculous that they’d ban me for a year over flyers alone. I, and many others, assume it’s not just flyers for a TTRPG convention but being a Trump supporter and outspokenly anti-woke.”
What the Published Rules Say
Convention-to-convention promotion is routine in the hobby. At World Fantasy Con 2026, BayCon ran a table in the dealer hall to advertise its own event. Satanis, for his part, is promoting Venger Con VI, “Belief Is Reality,” set for June 25 to 27, 2027, at the DoubleTree by Hilton Madison East.
GaryCon’s published policies do contain a handbill rule, but it sits in the exhibitor terms. It limits handbills to an exhibitor’s booth and exhibitor-sponsored events and bars material posted on convention walls, fixtures, or furniture. It also states: “Absolutely no selling, soliciting, or handbill distribution is allowed outside of rented booth spaces.” The penalty the exhibitor terms name for postings is payment of removal fees and damages.
The rules for game masters and attendees do not mention flyers. The page spells out bans for harassment and for game masters who skip scheduled sessions, and it lets management expel anyone who violates convention policies.
A game master reading the rules he agreed to would have little reason to look in the exhibitor section, and it is easy to see how someone could miss a clause written for vendors. Even if GaryCon considers the rule applicable, a warning before a one-year ban would be the minimum, and Satanis says he got none.
The harassment policy also lists political affiliation among the characteristics it protects. If politics played any part in the ban, as Satanis believes, that would contradict the convention’s own stated standard.
A Convention Built on a Funeral
Gary Gygax, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, died on March 4, 2008. After his funeral on March 8, friends and family held an impromptu game event at the American Legion Hall in Lake Geneva, now called Gary Con 0. His son Luke Gygax held the first official Gary Con there in March 2009. The show moved to the Grand Geneva Resort and Spa in 2016. The 2026 edition, Gary Con XVIII, drew nearly 4,000 attendees and sold out. Gary Con XIX is scheduled for March 18 to 21, 2027, and the convention bills itself as inclusive and family-friendly.
Another Founder Shut Out
Satanis is not the first creator to say GaryCon has frozen him out. Robert J. Kuntz, who co-DMed Gygax’s original Greyhawk campaign, has said the same for years. In a May 2024 interview, Kuntz said the convention has not invited him since 2013, after he moved to France.
In an August 2026 interview with Bleeding Fool, Kuntz said:
“I have been dis-invited from GaryCon, erh, I mean LukeCon, as Gary’s wife Gail Gygax has herself named it. For several reasons: Luke is jealous of my past relationship with his Father; he did not like my book, Dave Arneson’s True Genius, which he let me know about many years ago in an e-mail wherein he also admitted to not having read it but instead had relied on anon friends to tell him about; and Gygax Holdings, formerly Gygax Estate, refuses many demands since 2018 from RJK Estate to return $200,000.00 of my property that they have no legal right nor legal instrument allowing them to retain as their own.”
Kuntz ties his removal to a personal falling-out and a property dispute, not to politics. In October 2026, responding on X to discussion of a ban at the convention, he wrote: “It took flyers for you, it just took being me to get me permanently dis-invited. Nothing lost in the interim.”
Fandom Pulse contacted GaryCon twice for comment on the ban. The convention has not responded.
A one-year ban over flyers is a heavy penalty when the only published handbill rule is written for exhibitors and names fees as its remedy. If GaryCon applied that rule to a game master, where is that written down, and what did the Policy Team’s “further review” find that the published rules do not cover?
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Every con I've been to has tons of flyers everywhere for other cons. Unless he was stapling them to people's butts or something, this is normal. Sounds like a BS ban to me.
Surely there are other victims of the left's overreach that we can care about? I'm not going to get up in arms about a guy who chooses to call himself "Venger Satanis" being shuffled off the public stage.