Rowan, Rook and Decard pull out of Gen Con 2025 over international travel concerns
"Crossing the border into the US simply isn’t safe for us at the moment, and it doesn’t appear to be getting safer."
UK-based tabletop RPG publisher Rowan, Rook and Decard will not be attending Gen Con 2025, at least not in person. The studio behind Heart, Spire, Eat the Reich, and dozens of one-page games posted to their website on May 6 that no staff would travel from the UK to Indianapolis, Indiana to attend the industry’s largest public-facing convention this year.
“Crossing the border into the US simply isn’t safe for us at the moment, and it doesn’t appear to be getting safer,” writes Rowan, Rook and Decard’s head of conventions Matt Sanders and lead designer Grant Howitt. “We aren’t the first to make this decision; we suspect we won’t be the last, either; the political climate is only getting worse. While the odds of most of us encountering resistance at border control are low, we don’t want to risk running the biggest convention of the year without the members of staff we need because they’ve been detained, deported, or otherwise penalised for their beliefs or who they are.”
Rowan, Rook and Decard’s games will still be available to purchase through an independent convention business working in collaboration with the publisher. The post assures players that both new and old productions, including the new GM screens and adventure for Heart, will make it onto the show floor. Any scheduled events, after-hours meetups, or panels have been canceled.
Sanders told Rascal that the team had been deliberating since before the US elections in November 2024, but they could not ignore the growing number of innocent travelers detained or denied at border checkpoints, airline security, and customarily safe crossings. He cited the French scientist who was denied entry into the country to attend a research conference and later expelled, along with two different German tourists who were detained for weeks each before eventually being deported. The Independent listed several individuals caught in the Trump administration’s bigoted dragnet — including the still ongoing detention of Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil.
