SDHistCon 2024 Recap

0:00 hey Gamers this is Liz Davidson from be on soliter and I just want to do a quick recording to wrap up my experience at SD hison about a week and a half ago um it was over the weekend before Veterans Day I had such a good time and this is my second time going and so I just want to reflect on how good a con it was and what makes it so good so if you have not heard of SD hcon it is a small like war and historical gaming convention it's about it's like a little under 200 people uh and it happens of course in San Diego hence the SD it's run by uh Herold Buchanan and then SD hison is like an organization so there's like also a board and a lot of them are present for this particular con so what makes SD hcon so good is that it's small size uh makes it I think a very cozy I think is the word we decided on uh convention where you actually get to really spend time with people that you want to see there's a really high proportion of designers there so there are a lot of attendees who are just players but a significant number of attendees are also designers and so one of my favorite things about SD H his is getting to check out all of the prototypes or games that are about to be out so I didn't get to play as much as I wanted to this year but I did get to you know get a glimpse of you know Alex Knight had hammer and sickle and his John Brown game there um Dan Bullock had his game about bananas there uh you know uh Sam London had a bunch of prototypes there that are going

1:30 to be coming out from GT in years to come Mark Herman was there with a map that was so big that it boggles the mind and it was really fun to help him tape it together uh for the purposes of this convention uh basically there was there everybody was showing out and like had really cool stuff there and you know David Thompson and I have now two co-designs and we also had prototypes that were present at the convention so we played a couple sessions of night wiches still looking good we're just waiting on Eno tul to do the art he's now saying March we'll see but uh the other um the other game that we brought is called queen of spies and it's our second game together and it is basically heavily inspired by but not very tightly based on um spycraft in World War I Belgium and it's a solitary game where you're managing a spiry ring and you're trying to complete different scenarios uh with a very very limited amount of time and a very very serious possibility of going to jail and having it turned into aaster as people who are in the jail inform on people who aren't if you don't manage that situation adequately so we've been having a really good time with it um this is the first time that people who uh were not us play tested the game uh and it was really really wonderful to get to demo it and see people try to make decisions and think about the space that we gave them to play in and see the responses to it it made me feel really really good about our second game and I'm really really excited for its future it's not signed any particular publisher yet but I think it's ready to we're stared to look of

3:01 the games I played unfortunately I only played like three games it was so bad I was too busy running around talking to people demoing eating snacks and just running panels which we'll talk about in a moment I did play three games uh so I learned how to play the expans which I really appreciated that was a pretty cool little area control game um I got to play giant John company so we spent this entire evening playing this enormous game of John company and it was like a staff game where each family was represented by multiple people um so sort of like Harold's giant Liberty of death of the past we got to play Giant jonco and it was really really entertaining Sebastian Bay and I were screaming each other across the table Ananda Gupta was like taking the rules really really seriously and you know some of us were just trying to create chaos around him unfortunately Harold who claimed that he was good at John company I never found out because he abandoned our family but I enjoyed scheming the entire time and I did beat Sebastian so like that was worth it um but we just had a really really good time you know doing a little bit of role playing a little bit of negotiating a little bit of yelling um it was an absolute blast and I would absolutely play John company this way again because it was so funny um so this is actually weirdly the year where I play interesting games of John company so you know it Jen con of got to play the interesting RPG overlay for John company that non-breaking space designed and then at this one I got got to play it as a staff game on a giant table and

4:33 maybe John company's just meant to be in my life I don't know uh but it's been uh some good experiences with that game this year and then actually the best game I played at the con was not even a historical or war game or anything at all it was gibbers it's this like Cooperative almost a party game I guess where you and the people that you're playing with create a word Bank of 18 words in a fake language and then you have to use only that fake language to communicate the meaning of new words to the rest of the group and it was so dumb and it was just transcendently hilarious it was it was fantastic I can't wait to play it again um fortunately even though only some copies were sold Cole has one so I'll be able to like finagle it from him at work at some point but um Jibber is hopefully eventually going to get localized to the United States and come out and when it does I highly recommend that you get it because screaming at people in a madeup language trying to combine words to communicate what you mean and then watching them be confused and having to like redo it is absolutely hilarious somebody referred to it as the caveman game but we had a really really good time so I played that with David Thompson Candace Harris meeple lady and Taylor shuss who brought the game and we all had a fantastic time so those are the games that I got to play during SD hison sadly not as many games as I would wish but that was because I spent a lot of my time on panels and honestly they were quite worth it it um so on my first day I did a panel with Henry lowwood and

6:05 Kathleen Smith and Aaron trell who are all academics about board game archives and how archives are being kept now and also how they're being used by Scholars so Henry and Kathleen are from Stanford and they have like an actual game archive uh that is was initially video games they were the very first video game archive in the United States and now they are expanding into board games Aaron Chell wrote a book privilege of play within the last couple years that just involved the use of archives both academic and personal and he's also Consulting with the black games archive which is more of a database but he talked about his work for them as well so that was really an interesting conversation and if you want to think about the games you're playing as like part of future study and like kind of being a part of History um these are the people to talk to it was very cool the next day I got to have a great panel with Marie suckling and then AAR bardage and Sebastian Bay so I had two professional War Gamers AAR and Sebastian and then Maurice and I kind of represented the hobby end of things we talked about crossover between professional and hobby wargaming and how the two Fields borrow from each other uh what it means to design for both spaces which AAR and Sebastian both do and uh what ethical considerations go into that um you know we did some discussion of Quinn's video from this year but mostly it was just a really interesting conversation about you know what kinds of guard rails exist in a professional war game um you know what kinds of considerations are different for gaming and design in each of those two spaces it was a really really fun

7:35 chat as well and then on my third day I it went four days but I only stayed for the first three a car and I got to announce the winners of Zenobia 2 and so that was also an absolute Delight because I just got to interview all the finalists they're all wonderful and getting to see the final scores and announce the winners was a real privilege for me and so I also really appreciated that so SD hiscan was a great place for casual conversations for me and then also my formalized ones I really enjoyed as well I will also say that San Diego is just a great place to be uh I ate some very good seafood and for the very first time I went to In-N-Out Burger uh because Jason Matthews kindly drove us and it was great um the fries were the fries were not great but the burger was quite good and for 11 and change that was a lot of food I was impressed um so I finally got to have an In-N-Out Burger experience as well I can say that my weekend was a truly blessed weekend um so that is SD hisc con uh I highly recommend if you can make time for it in your life and you like small Cons with a lot of gameplay and a lot of historical war games it's really one of the places to be I would say the only comparable convention would be Circle DC which I'll be going to at the end of March but those two conventions are really really my favorite of the year I feel like it's my two big family reunions and also that's where David and I I think a lot of other designers really enjoy demoing our games to select audiences um so if you want to see new stuff and you want to actually talk to designers and you want to get big games in that are thinky and you know have a

9:08 heavy game taught to you by somebody who really knows I really feel like these cons are some of the best places to do it so that is SD hisc con next November if you can make it you should the weather is fine the seafood is great the location that we used this year and last was is right on the water which is also amazing and just overall it's um it's a really really amazing place to be so that is my SDHC con wrapup but honestly I already can't wait to go again next year I was so sad to have to leave all my friends I was having such a great time um the location definitely doesn't hurt and if you again could fit a small con into your schedule this is one you should really really think about so thank you so much for watching catching up with me uh I'll be back with more videos soon and uh Happy gaming everybody oh