Cannibaal Publishing

Pittsburgh Gaming Expo started off the month of October covering console, arcade, ttrpg gaming for all.

PGX was held October 3-5, 2025 at the Monroeville Convention Center, PA about 20 minutes outside of Pittsburgh. Last year the convention had approximately 6,400 attendees, and this year it was over 7,000. I attended on Friday and Saturday and was busy keeping up with all they had to offer. You entered directly into the vendor area. Special guests booths were located along the left wall and tabletop events were located along the right side. You can check out their website here: https://pittsburghgamingexpo.com/

As I navigated through the vendors checking out what all they had to offer, I started to head to the back, past the concession stands toward the sounds of the arcade games. When I looked beyond and could see the rows of various pinball machines, arcade machines and the sounds from them all I could think of was the time when I was a kid at the local mall and remembered the Aladdin’s Castle arcade where I spent all my quarters at. It was a rush of nostalgia, an awesome feeling like finding and seeing a long lost friend.

There were also rows of various console game systems set up for free play as well. This convention definitely had a strong connection to video games. Plenty of vendors were there selling storage boxes of various games for all systems, old systems still in their original boxes, I even seen an Odyssey gaming system in its box there. I stopped myself from searching out an 8-bit Nintendo and the game Nobunaga’s Ambition which has a place in my heart from long ago. Below are some pictures of the vendor area.

Other offerings from PGX were special groups like the 501st Legion Starwars and Star Trek had booths set up. You could get pictures taken with them.

Now we get to the Panels that I attended at the con:

On Friday, Baron de Ropp had his Geo-Political World Building Master Class panel. If you want insights on factions, turmoil for your campaign world this is the panel for you. You can also check out his You Tube Dungeon Masterpiece on his videos of this topic and much more https://www.youtube.com/@DungeonMasterpiece Baron also holds an immersive TTRPG experience at Green Dragon Fest, in Knoxville, TN. You can check out their website here: https://greendragonfest.com/

Friday night I played in a Vast Grimm game in the Table Top gaming area. My DM, Nick W. was excellent. My goal was to play in games to experience other systems. Nick was awesome in explaining the game and character creation. It took maybe 15 – 20 minutes of explaining the game and character creation going through the book I purchased from Brian Colin’s Vast Grimm booth earlier. We played a game of Vast Grimm and it was easy to pick up on the gameplay mechanics, understand the actions and turns. A very light and refreshing game with a lot of humor, horror and sci fi all wrapped into one. Vast Grimm is currently running a Kickstarter here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/creaturecuration/vast-grimm-2-escaping-stasis

After the game I got to meet up with Brian Colin and talk about the game and the future plans for the game. Brian was very kind and offered help in answering my many questions about game development and being a publisher. He was invaluable to me for offering up this information and willing to help out another creator. Thank you Brian. If you want to check out all of their products you can do that here at their website: https://creaturecuration.com/

(Nick W. the DM, Brian Colin, and me.)

Saturday was packed with panels and a Dungeons & Dragons game with Ted from Nerd Immersion at the end of the day. The panels were back to back starting the day off with The Secret of D&D Content Creation and was hosted by Bob World Builder. Other panelists were Deficient Master, Ted from Nerd Immersion, Baron de Ropp, Seth Skorkowsky, and JP Coovert. They all gave their advice on creating content on You Tube, the importance of thumbnails and titles to earn the “clicks” or traffic to your channel. For more information on Bob World Builder’s You Tube can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/@BobWorldBuilder

And to check out Deficient Master, his You Tube is here: https://www.youtube.com/@DeficientMaster

The next panel was Beyond D&D, Why We Play Other TTRPG’S. This panel was hosted by Brian Colin and had panelists Seth Skorkowsky, Brian Shutter, and Baron de Ropp. This was an excellent panel for me because they talked about other game systems and how they are different from the most popular games.

Brian Shutter had an amazing booth at the convention selling and promoting his games as well. You can check out their website here: https://neonlords.com/ and an interview on You Tube if you want to see more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FzzzgS_ZI80

This panel wrapped up and I went right into the next one, “Strict Time Records Must Be Kept!” Understanding Gygax’s Weirdest Rules. Seth Skorkowsky and Baron de Ropp were on this panel and throughout they brought up interesting quotes from Gary Gygax and discussed their meaning and importance to gaming. You can find more information of Seth’s at his You Tube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@SSkorkowsky

And then the last panel I attended was Let’s Play Something New: Talking Your Players Into Trying Different Games. They gave great insight into how to convince your players to accept playing a different game, to needing a “palette cleanser” after a long campaign and even letting people go and finding new players if the others try to force you to run something you don’t want. The importance being a DM forced to run something they don’t necessarily like can and usually is a bad game.

Saturday night is finally here and a group of us got to play in a D&D 5e game ran by Ted from Nerd Immersion. He came dressed as his patent Orange Wizard. We had an awesome game with Ted, the concept of the adventure he ran for us I hope you all can get the chance to experience some day. If you ever get a chance to go to a convention and Ted is running a game(s), do yourself a favor and get in one. You will have a great time.

If you haven’t seen any of Ted’s videos you can check him out over on You Tube here: https://www.youtube.com/user/nerdimmersion

Overall PGX was an excellent convention and intends to grow for next year. They plan to potentially have better and more scheduled games for the TTRPG area. There are a lot of places to stay in the area, to eat even late night after gaming all day. I was able to have good conversations with the special guests without monopolizing their time. I asked for advice on growing your business, getting more overall knowledge of game systems, and hoped to see them soon at the next convention which is probably PAGE, Philadelphia Area Gaming Expo in January 15-18th. Hope you all liked this rundown of PGX, take care, have fun, and get out there and roll some dice.

Troy Alleman