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Travel into and out of the US has become more difficult for many people, with stories of deportations and detentions at the border rising as the Trump administration’s scattergun approach to border control takes effect. Rowan, Rook, and Decard, an RPG publisher from the UK, have looked at the current political climate in the US and decided that they would skip this year's Gen Con rather than risk their staff’s safety.

“Crossing the border into the US simply isn’t safe for us at the moment, and it doesn’t appear to be getting safer,” Rowan, Rook, and Decard said in a statement explaining why they wouldn’t be traveling to the biggest RPG convention of the year. “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 us encountering resistance at border control are low, we don’t want to risk running the biggest convention of the year without members of staff we need because they’ve been detained, deported, or otherwise penalized for their beliefs or who they are.”

The Rowan, Rook, and Decard booth will be run by US reps for the company and will sell products from the publisher, but they won’t run any events, signings, panels, or meetings with other companies or press without the UK staff. The company has published multiple games with anti-fascist themes, including Eat the Reich and Spire: The City Must Fall, which might make them feel like they are more at risk of running afoul of Trump's border policies than other companies.

This decision couldn't have been an easy one for the company to make. Gen Con is the biggest event in the tabletop industry and represents a big chunk of their annual sales as well as networking and promotional opportunities. With Trump’s tariffs also causing chaos for the boardgame industry, this is certainly shaping up to be a difficult year for a sector that had only just managed to find stability after the COVID-19 pandemic.

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