Recap: Digital 2 Dice CON ‘25
Here's a quick recap of what was yet another super fun sports game gathering: Dave Gardner's Digital 2 Dice Con 2025 (with special thanks to Mike Canestrari!)...
I arrived at the hotel Friday afternoon, checked in and immediately the games began! The convention didn't officially begin until Saturday morning, and the convention meeting space was in use by another corporate gathering on Friday, but that didn't stop games from breaking out pretty much everywhere across the hotel! The sound of clattering dice and sports game chatter was emanating from the lounge, business center, patio and every common area of the hotel.
I ended up in the business center, along with Dave, Mike, ST Patrick, Derek Jones, Arnold Hunter, Phil Raia and others. First thing I noticed was that me, Dave and Phil all were wearing Whalers gear! (See photo). It was a sad day in sports when the Whalers left Hartford, but they do get remembered and celebrated probably more than any other relocated team in sports history, I think. In any event, it was cool that there were others "representin" the Whalers besides me!
Dave brought a number of games, including a vintage racing game called "Straightaway," released in 1961 by Selchow and Reichter (the creators of Scrabble). Interesting, in that (if you look at the picture below) there are no straightaway areas on the game board!
That’s because the game was originally released in 1948 under a different title, "Huggin' the Rails," but got a make-over in 1961 to tie in with a TV show on ABC-TV ("Straightaway" ) which centered around two partners in an automobile workshop who designed race cars. This is the version of the game we played, below…
"Straightaway" is a simple game, but fun. You roll a die, move that many spaces. The strategy comes in positioning your car to block the path of others. The game comes with a plastic "rattler" which is shaken to determine the race order each turn. I think Mike won, but I don't 100% remember--I was too busy trying to avoid finishing in in last place. (I’m in the green car in the photos above.) I did finish last--just ahead of Dave!
Next we played a non-sports game, called "Fuse." Basically, it's a cooperative game in which game players try to de-fuse a series of bombs before the big one goes off. It's a ten-minute countdown, there's an app that you can download that counts it down in dramatic fashion, complete with a classic, matter-of-fact British female voice marking the time remaining. We played twice--and lost both times. Very fun, though. It's the kind of game you can get good at, the more you play it.
I wandered out to the lounge area to visit with some other folks, and wound up going to dinner with Vinny Mancini, ST Patrick, James Hart and others. We had a lively chat about all things games, sports and non-sports. Turns out ST is a big fan of the 1970s TV show "The Waltons," as am I! My wife and I watched every episode, start-to-finish, a couple years ago. I have a game idea that's loosely based on the show, I showed it in our most recent Game Lab episode, "The Greatest Generation." So, among other things, ST and I talked about how "The Waltons" could be presented as a board game.
After dinner, I got out our soon-to-be-released fishing game, Reel Time Pro Fishin' for me, Pete Adams and his brother-in-law George to try our luck. I brought along a set of the new custom lakes for us to try out. Our first excursion was at Lake Wewatta, CO, one of the tougher lakes in the series. Pete and I struggled, George busted without catching a single fish. Steve Tower joined us for the second fishin' expedition, at Howard Quarry, BC (much easier!). There, Pete struggled but me and Steve each hauled in about 40 pounds/points worth of fish. I was really pleased with how the lakes were distinctly different fishing experiences--I think this is going to be a big hit once released in a little more than a month!
Saturday began with much excitement, as the tables were set up, drinks, snacks, prizes, games and supplies brought in, and the convention began in earnest. Dave opened with a few remarks, thanking everyone for being there and setting out a basic plan, and then each of the special guests got to introduce themselves and say a few words as well. Then it was "game on."
I had arranged to play Second Season with Vinny (Mancini), who was one of the very FIRST people to play the game nearly 30 years ago. We've known each other that long, but had never actually MET--until D2D con! We continued my in-person play-through of the 1974 Southern California Sun of the late great World Football League. I'm playing as many of the scheduled games as I can against a live opponent. As you can see, I was wearing my Sun jersey for the occasion (#74 Dave Roller, the WFL's defensive MVP for the '74 season). This game featured the Sun's second game against the New York Stars (Vinny is a long-time Jets and Giants fan, and the Stars featured a number of former Jets players like John Elliott, Gerry Philbin and George Sauer.)
I held a 14-3 lead with about ten minutes to play, as Roller and the Sun defense had pretty much shut down the lackluster Stars offense, led by QB Tom Sherman. Looked like the game was in the bag. But NY's Jamie Ford broke off a long run to set up a score, and after a short Sun punt with about four minutes to play, Sherman found Ray Parson for a big gain near the two-minute warning, and Don Highsmith punched it across for what proved to be the game-winner, 18-14. (Maddeningly) this was almost a carbon copy of the previous Sun/Stars game, where I held a nine-point lead with just over two minutes to play and lost 38-31!
Next on the checklist was a Hockey Blast game with Steve Tower using the 2005-2006 Carolina Hurricane NHL champions re-configured in Hartford Whalers colors against their real-life cup opponents, the Edmonton Oilers. (This was offered as a freebie in the April PLAAY CONNECT e-newsletter.) Alas, the Whalers didn't fare so well in this one, losing 6-2. Chris Pronger had a big game for the Oilers.
Hockey continued at the PLAAY table with the debut of the XHL! Me, Steve, Vinny, Joe Cards and others got the XHL Hartford and Southern California teams on the ice for a little exhibition double-header. The XHL Whalers fared much better here, winning both games. We used the games to test out the new rules innovations that will be included with the XHL cards once they're released. It was good that we played--we made a couple of rules tweaks that will make for better, smoother implementation of the new XHL concepts. That’s Mike Ignatoski (flowered shirt) and James Cast (in the FLOTA jersey) looking on in the photo below…
Following hockey, the action moved from black ice to brown dirt--Pete Adams had brought Demo Derby Smash-Down and we tried out the "Derby Day" pre-race events chart he's created for use in his own demo derby series. Wouldn't you know it, the pre-derby dice rolls called for Pete and I to be feuding!! (That could never happen in real-life--Pete is just too great of a guy! But we rolled with it...) We never actually got to act on that feud, though as we were each early victims of other drivers' antics and we both wound up as "kills" before we could so much as dent each others' fender! The event featured sixteen drivers, four of them human--me, Pete, Steve Tower and Corey Robeson. Congrats to Corey, who made it to the final four as the "Last Human Standing." He eventually got done in, and finished third.
Too soon, it was time to say goodbye! Here’s the group photo…
Fortunately, we'll see a number of these folks again in a few weeks at PLAAY-Dot-CON. For Dave and Mike (who will both be at our convention, Dave is the keynote speaker Friday night), it feels like this might be the start of a new sports game convention tradition! The feedback for Digital 2 Dice con was overwhelmingly positive, and deservedly-so. Well done!