This Con Was Amazing (SDHistCon North Recap)
Transcript
Hey gamers, this is Lisa Davis from Beyond Solitaire, and I want to talk about how great SD HisCon is. It is a non-profit organization that runs conventions. Some of them are online, some of them are in some of them are in person, and the main summit is in San Diego. So, that's where Harold Buchanan and a lot of his volunteers live. So, a bunch of West Coasters have this cool organization that is now sometimes having conventions in other locations. So, this past weekend we got to have SP HisCon, uh aka SD HisCon North, and it was great. Um so, on Thursday night the action got started a little early uh because people came in early enough that I got to have my normal game night, but it featured David Thompson, Dan Bullock, and Kevin Bertram. It was really amazing to get to play games with my friends in my home turf, uh but with, you know, friends that I never get to see there.
David and I also got to check out a printed copy of Queen of Spies. It's the first time, you know, we've been together and had an actual shipped copy of the game, and it felt awesome to get to share that. On Friday, we launched into pre-convention activities. So, the con itself was officially only Saturday and Sunday, but really cool stuff was happening the Friday beforehand for people who came in early and for locals like me. So, the first thing we did was go to Fort Snelling. So, Fort Snelling is a um one of those key landmarks in Minnesota. So, I think a bunch of kids all go there as children, sort of like how I went to the Alamo when growing up in San Antonio as a kid. But, Fort Snelling has a lot of really cool Minnesota history. Um it is a place where Civil War soldiers mustered, so David and I had a lot of interesting research to do for an upcoming game of ours.
There's also a very long history there, so, you know, Buffalo soldiers came through Fort Snelling. Uh it was at one point a hospital, uh and also a bunch of translators during World War II were there. And so, it's just a really neat Minnesota historical site, and we all had a really, really good time checking it out. After that, that was probably maybe the highlight of my year, honestly. Um, thanks to Ryan Schneider who organized this tour for us. We had the best pre-convention event I could possibly imagine. So, we all went to the Minnesota Historical Society and we got to have a tour of cool artifacts in the museum, but specifically this time Civil War artifacts. So, I have a special interest in this right now because David and I are working on a game called Throw Down That Flag, which is about the first Minnesota Gettysburg, and we've been doing a bunch of research and playing with our system a whole lot and it's been really cool. So, we got to actually go and see the flag that the first Minnesota took from the 20th Virginia on July 3rd. Um, this is a flag that's the subject of some controversy because basically periodically somebody in Virginia will ask for it back and Minnesota will be like, "Uh, no. We we we earned that." Um, so the the the history of the first Minnesota is really really amazing. Um, it's they were an absolutely incredible group of people and many of them were killed or injured at Gettysburg in a really desperate charge on July 2nd. So, um, it's really fun to learn about their history and pay them some respect because what they did was pretty phenomenal. As General Hancock put it, there's no more gallant deed
recorded in history. So, we get to see the flag, which is great. Uh, but we also got to see like really cool maps. We got to see dueling pistols. We got to see, you know, how they store swords from this period, which is in Styrofoam so they don't knock into each other. We also got to go look at a room where they were like restoring artifacts. And so, we got to see this really cool drum and some like Civil War era instruments. And um, it was really amazing. And we also got to see a sign that had recently donated to the museum that was like mourning the death of Abraham Lincoln. So, overall, it was just a really amazing tour. The Minnesota Historical Society staff who were showing us around were just incredibly enthusiastic, happy to answer any questions. It was clear these are people who love their jobs, who love Minnesota history, who really care about artifacts, and it was just such a delight to get to see them and to check out everything that that tour had to offer. It was just the best. I'll never forget it.
And then we finally, after this, get into Saturday and Sunday, which is the actual con. So, I had a really, really good time. Um David and I got to demo Night Witches, but we got to demo like the pretty copy. So, as we are starting to finalize what the game is going to look like, we have a nice copy from Panda that we can play with now. It was really great to demo it. It reminded me that I still really love the game. That, you know, we worked so hard on it. It's been a long time since we signed it. And um you know, I'm I'm still really, really into it. Made me really happy to demo it. But also it looks beautiful now that it's all grown up. Uh I also got to demo Root Homeland with uh my friend Clay from work, and we had a really great time showing off the frogs, the bats, and the naves of the deep wood uh to groups of people who wanted to play. That felt wonderful. I'm really excited to be selling Root Homeland at Gen Con in a few weeks cuz I feel really confident about it now that I've just had my hands on it again recently. And I also got to try some games. So, I tried a word game that I really enjoyed. I got to watch Dan Bullock run these crazy sessions of Penitent, where he gave people identical decks and had them build prisons in teams so he could see how different people or different groups of people built different prisons. So, like that was fantastic.
Uh and I got to finally sit and play a game with a bunch of people. Al B played Crisis 1914, had a great time with that. But what these cons are really the best for, I think, is spending a lot of time just talking to people. So, I had some really great chats with people from Minnesota, people who are visiting Minnesota, who just had a lot to say about historical games and were really enthusiastic about trying it all. And you know, there was something for everybody at this convention, and it really made me happy to see so many people in my home turf enjoying historical games. So, one thing I will actually confess is that I hope that this SD Hist North ends up being a convention that happens again because the vibes were really good. The games were really good. Um there are lots of cool things to do in Minnesota if you're looking for pre-convention activities.
And it just felt right to have a whole bunch of people here um doing history games with us. So, I know that SD is for San Diego, but uh I hope they take a walk on the Midwestern side a little more often because it was so wonderful to spend so much time um among friends and doing what we like to do the most. So, if you are looking for a wonderful small con, especially if you're in the Midwest, uh if they do SD Hist Con North again, I highly recommend you try to make it. Uh the events were really cool, the games were really cool, and it was just a wonderful iteration of a con I already enjoy. I will be super bummed if we never get to do it here again. So, that is my report on SD Hist North. Uh I'll have some reports on Gen Con soon probably cuz that's my next con. Uh but thank you so much for watching uh and happy gaming everybody.