Our intrepid team of conventioneers braved the cold and dark of Midwinter Con over the weekend!
A bundled-up Nick Baran of Breaker Press Games reports:
Midwinter Gaming Convention was WILD! Light snow hit Milwaukee on Wednesday and escalated through Thursday and Friday. On Friday night, during my 6pm-10pm game, the power went out during the boss battle. The convention space ran on emergency generators for the next 14-16 hours and when I returned for my noon-4pm game on Saturday the room was on emergency lighting and was very chilly because there was no heat. I still had seven people at the table despite the crazy conditions, and not all of them were there because they were trapped at the hotel. There was a lot of strong commitment to the cause.
All told, I ran three games of DCC, Jim Meyers ran six, and a gentleman named Andy, who drove up from Chicago, ran two playtests for his first DCC adventure that he’s prepping for ZineQuest. Additionally, DJ Foxy ran an off-books MCC game of Frozen in Time on Friday night (during the power outage — not that that stopped them!). Jim and I both had a lot of packed tables and a lot of those players were new to DCC.
One of my favorite moments took place in my Saturday game. A guy wandered by the game once or twice. He was smiling as he was listening to the action and since there was an open chair he asked if he could sit and watch because it looked like a really fun session. He sat down and he was watching for a minute and the party entered the final boss fight. I asked the stranger his name and told him to roll a d4. I wrote a character name, AC10, 1d4 damage, and what he rolled on the d4 as his HP on a post-it. He got two stabs in with his dagger before his post-it PC perished, and then he experienced his first dramatic death stamp! His experience with DCC at that point was about 20 minutes. HE LOVED IT! An hour later I was at my booth and I watched him walk over to Foxy and get the DCC Rulebook and a set of weird dice and I was so stoked. A lot of people I ran games for over the weekend couldn’t wait to get a copy of DCC for themselves, but that ‘post-it PC to new fan conversion’ was my favorite sale of the weekend!
Awesome report, Nick — seems like the difficulties just made everything that much more memorable. Maybe next year we’ll have some DCC hand warmers ready in time for the show!
But we’re just getting started in 2024! For a full list of our convention appearances in the upcoming year please check out our 2024 Convention Schedule.
