It all started with what I thought was a brilliant idea.

I said to myself, “Why stress about running a booth for the first time? Let’s just make a vending machine, fill it with merch, and let it do the work. People get their con goodies, I get to actually enjoy DragonCon, and at night I’ll swing by, collect the cash, and call it a win.”

Genius. Pure efficiency. Minimal effort. Maximum vibes.

Except… it didn’t go like that. At all.

The Svending Machine had other plans. It jammed, it overheated, it ate money, it forgot how gravity worked. Someone tried to insert a room key. Another person got a sticker sheet and a minor emotional breakdown. At one point, it started blinking like HAL 9000 having an identity crisis.

By the end of the 2022 DragonCon weekend, I wasn’t collecting money — I was collecting stories. And bruises. And a new friend.

So yes, the Svending Machine was a glorious disaster. It failed in every possible way. But in true Drunken Dragon Hotel fashion, it failed spectacularly.

Would I do it again? Never.

Would I make merch about it? Absolutely.

— Sven

Drunken Dragon Game

(An Origin Story in Financial Misfire and Dyslexic Glory)

Before there were tiki shirts, before the cult patches, before the booth chaos and the Svending Machine meltdown — there was The Drunken Dragon Game.

My first DragonCon-related product. My first big idea. My first financial disaster.

The plan was simple: make a fun, collectible card game for the con crowd — something between drinking, dragons, and dubious decision-making. I thought it would sell out instantly.
Instead… I’m still sitting on boxes of it almost ten years later.

The inofficial drinking rule quickly became:

“Take a shot for every one of Sven’s spelling mistakes.”
(Because between exhaustion, being a foreigner, and dyslexia, it was a guaranteed party.)

And oh, did people play. The rules made no sense. The cards had typos that read like prophecies. One expansion pack was just a collection of random ideas I couldn’t afford to print properly.

A Lawyer thought it was hilarious too. So funny, in fact, that he sent me a serious letter the very next day “kindly reminding” me about trademarks or something. 

It was chaos. It was beautiful. It was so DDH before DDH even existed.

Looking back, that little disaster was the start of everything.
It wasn’t profitable. It wasn’t perfect.
But it was mine — printed, packaged, and powered by sheer enthusiasm and caffeine.

So yeah, The Drunken Dragon Game failed gloriously.
But like all great DDH projects, it failed loudly, with style, and probably still owes me money.

— Sven 
“Founder, Game Designer, and Unintentional Linguistic Innovator”