Musings about the world, life, and everything in it.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Morgan's KublaCon 2014 Excellent Adventures
This year the shuffler was bad to me.
Numerous people were complaining about shuffler problems and the late hours that some games ran to. The only two games the shuffler gave me was Gil's game and Todd F's game, but I was in Gil's game until 4am and I missed Todd's 9am game -- due to oversleeping, I woke up at 9:15am. So, those two first choices destroyed any chance of me getting into any games for the rest of the convention.
But I was able to crash two games and overall, I had a Great KublaCon. I played in three excellent games: Badger's, Gil's, and Dovi's. The Paranoia game I ran turned out incredibly funny and I had a great time running it -- I killed about 49 clones.
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The howl of a bitter wind outside that fail to mask the screaming in...German?...coming front of you. A victrola leadenly plays music in the bathroom. Blood mixed with snow. Smell of a fire. A gun in your hands, but you don't know why, or where you are... (Altered Resonance) takes place in the Black Forest Mountain range in Germany during World War II. The scenario begins in media res, with the player character's memories wiped. Who you are, what your mission is, and who you can ultimately trust will be revealed through the course of the scenario.
This game was pretty simple plot-wise, but the situation and player interaction made this interesting. The gimmick in this game which was well done is that you don't remember who you are and our character sheets were mainly blank. I've played in three other games with this gimmick and this was one of the better ones. Two games I've commented on which had amnesia gimmicks were Jeff Yin's The River Belle and Gil's The Day the Whole World Went Away. As the game progressed, Badger handed out progressively filled out character sheets.
I liked the tension at the beginning when we didn't know who we were and what we were supposed to do. Once we knew what our mission was, the game played out pretty predictably. Still, a very good game.
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The first thing Badger did which was great was that he handed out character sheets with most of it fuzzed out like an out of focus camera. It immediately set the mood. It had WOW factor.
We also started us in media res. We stood in a room with some dead and injured German soldiers. In front of us was a German officer carrying a sub-machine gun and demanding something in German. We asked a couple of questions about the scene to figure out what was going on. I carried a sub-machine gun also. I asked if my gun was warm, as if recently fired. It was, so I shot the German dead.
We searched the house we were in and the surrounding grounds. We found clues and an underground experimental facility. A test subject had escaped. This whole act was fraught with tension and dread as we found more and more strange things as we explored the house.
Once we left the house with our clues and loot (German lab equipment), our memories started to come back and Badger gave us our final character sheet which had all the stats filled out, extensive backgrounds, and a copy of our orders.
We were supposed to find the test subject and take him back with us. We followed his trail to the nearby town and discovered that he was fazing through dimensions.
At the town, we located the test subject, fought some Germans, and escaped.
One of the highlights was that in my packet was a small handwritten note that said there was a traitor in our midst. From my background, I found that I only trusted two of the PCs and from a process of elimination, figured it was either of two PCs and most likely the one played by Dovi (which was funny because what made me suspicious was something Dovi did before he knew he was the traitor -- but he acted in that manner because Badger was handing us back fragments of our memories, small slips of paper with sentence fragments from our complete backgrounds, which Dovi acted on). I called over my commanding officer who I trusted and told him about the note and who it might be. We decided to do nothing and just watch the two PCs closely.
We'll at one point, the Lieutenant, the test subject, and one of the PCs phased out. When they returned, they were struggling to kill each other. The other players didn't know what was going on, but I shouted, "Lousy, Krout spy!" and attacked the PC fighting the Lieutenant. I got lucky and rolled an impale and actually did enough damage with my k-bar to kill Dovi's character.
Another good touch was that some of the Germans had exploded heads. We also experienced a precursor to this when we were near the test subject. This left us in a dilemma as to what to do as our horrible sinus headaches grew in power and frequency.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Damon Gregory's SOS ISS Icarus (BRP)
SAT, 10 AM - 4 PM 6 Players
ATTENTION! Incoming Distress Call: 'Urgent assistance is *bzzzt*ed! There are *bzzzzt*! HURRY! *bzzzzzt*' You are a member of the First Responder team 'Hamilton's Heroes' who patrol the outer rings of the Sol System. 8 hours and 45 minutes ago your team received a Code 3, location is under attack, distress call from the ISS Icarus. The Icarus, a research and development station, lies between Uranus and Neptune. It's remote location generally keeps it out of harms way, so this call can mean just one thing, Pirates. A rare occurrence this far out, true, but there is money to be made in new technology on the black market and the Icarus is known to be working on some bleeding edge tech. As the team prepares for boarding, a thought, unspoken but shared by all, quiets the ship, please let there be survivors...this time. Emphasis on roleplaying and quick thinking rather than gunplay. This scenario borrows elements from Delta Green, and involves adult themes. Mature players only.
I loved how Damon had what initially looked like generic corridor map strips which folded out and became what was on the right or left of the corridor -- as we explored. Neat.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The character sheets were really cool; They were printed on clear plastic sheets with two corners cut off a la Battlestar Galactica.
One other neat prop was a found datapad that was face down, when flipped over you'd find a bloody handprint on top of the display (a plastic Halloween sticky). And information was actually on the datapad that the players can read.
One problem I had with the game was that the space station was mostly empty except for one section. So, we spent a lot of time searching and finding nothing. Damon spent a lot of effort building out the space station and making transforming maps, but they mostly contained nothing. If they contained some clues, then that would have helped with the pace, but after the Nth time of finding nothing, the sense of dread completely drained. At one point my character just went to the mess hall and started to eat grape popsicles -- only to throw it up in my space suit when we ran into a heap of dead bodies.
We found a Stargate that opened up into a medieval setting. We were then tasked to find the missing head scientist from the space station. We were then faced with being stranded on a medieval planet as we tried to complete our mission.
One funny bit, when we entered a castle to speak to the king, we met him plus two women standing behind him. One was a missing security officer from the space station, the other was the unworldly beautiful daughter of the king. Earlier in the game, Chris O. was randomly shooting things such as one of the horses we found. When we entered the castle and Damon described the three, Chris shouted out, "I shoot her." He didn't roll any dice and Damon didn't ask him to roll any dice, so we assumed he was joking. Well, at the end of the game, the big bad guy was the king's daughter. Go figure. Chris O. is crazy like a fox.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Gil Trevizo's China Marines (Godlike)
SAT, 8 PM - 4 AM 6 Players
Shanghai 1941: As news breaks of the attack on Pearl Harbor, a group of US Marines are pulled off their departing boat and 'volunteered' for a special mission: liberate the families of Chinese superhuman Talents that are being held by the Japanese to make the Talents fight for the Empire. Mature themes. I'm not sure if the second edition fixes some problems with Godlike or Gil's hacks fixes problems with Godlike. Several changes made the game more reasonable. Gil's requirement that most talent skills requires a will point spend made the Godlike skills more reasonable.
My main issue with using Godlike at a convention is that it takes too much time to explain the system. Gil took about an hour explaining the system.
Lots of maps, props, and attention to detail makes Gil's game great. His descriptions are full of telling detail. He takes simple die rolls and converts them into effective and sometimes poetic imagery during the game.
The game ran to 4am and all the players were still at the table at the end -- and awake.
Yes, it was that good.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
My favorite part of this game was the beginning when the players started a bar fight. The complexity of the scene was great. NPCs were making a deal with stolen artifacts -- which eventually involved some PCs. Two PCs were brought here for their last hurrah. I found my gal was dancing with an enlisted man -- a PC. This all wound up in a giant bar fight.
My character was HP Lovecraft. A xenophobic man from Providence, RI. He had paid the madame of the bar to make one of the girls exclusively his. The girl "Ming-mei" was now pregnant with his baby. He's also married to a woman back at home. He pays the girl to whip him as he sings the Marine Corp Hymn. Yeah, it's that messed up.
At the beginning, I could tell the other characters didn't like my character (and they should have since I wasn't supposed to be likeable), but as we played and more and more of my secrets leaked out, I found that they seemed more sympathetic. I really liked that. From detested to not-that-bad.
After the bar fight, we were sent to save some Chinese hostages at a Japanese internment camp. The camp held family members of Chinese talents (supermen) to be used as leverage. Gil was brilliant, he showed the characters newsreels of the Chinese talents and why the US must "save" the family members, so the Japanese can't use them against the US. But by also showing us their talents, the Zed can also nullify their talents without going in blind.
I used this opportunity to give money to "Ming-mei" and a letter from me explaining that she was one of the family members of the talents, so I could smuggle her out of China with me. I also give her instructions to meet me at our mission pickup point. Yeah, I was breaking major military rules and potentially letting the enemy know of our plans.
We saved the family members, but due to the chaos of war, we wound up having to cross China and escape through Russia. During our escape, the Chinese Talents were sent against us -- being told by the Japanese that we were kidnapping them. So, this was a great dilemma. Do we kill the talents we're trying to turn to our side? Do we let the Japanese take back the relatives? Well, we wound up killing some of the talents and recruited some of them.
In the end, I got "Ming-mei" out of China. In the epilogue, I continued to fight as a Marine and I sent money to both my wives -- an audible gasp from the other players as they didn't know I was already married, surprise, you bastards, surprise -- and in the end, I went crazy and got sent back to state-side to an insane asylum in Providence where I wrote nightmare stories about whips, tentacles, and half-breed children as therapy.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Dovi Anderson's Kellian's Fist (Fate Core - Star Wars)
SUN, 8 PM - 2 AM 5 Players
For years, you and your companions have honed your unique abilities on a harsh planet bathed in the light of a remote saphire star. Your master's vision has been singular and focused: to hide you from the Empire until such a time that your powers prove strong enough to deliver a mighty blow against it. (A prequel-free Star Wars Graphic Novel, mature minded players preferred).
Dovi has gotten really good with making his games more and more cinematic. He shows us things happening off screen like a movie and he also does great Star Wars alien dialog and R2 whistling (which is totally amazing to me as I can't whistle at all).
Todd F. also makes his game cinematic by skipping from scene to scene and only highlighting key scenes. Dovi also does this, but I think Dovi gives players more freedom of choice. Todd's games are more scripted since he chooses the scenes whereas Dovi's scenes feel more organic and based on player choice. Todd runs 4 hour games and his games are very tight. Dovi's games are longer and maybe that is what gives us more time to play with things and make it seem more like a collaboration between Players and GM.
The character I picked was way different from the standard light saber wielding Star Wars character and I deliberately went way out of the norm just to see whether I could work with it. It turned out great. Of the three great games I played at KublaCon, this one edged out the other ones as my favorite.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Dovi gave us male/female choices for each of the characters except for the one I picked; I picked an Ithorian Priest. I decided I would be a pacifist. Yeah, a pacifist in a Star Wars game with light sabers.
Each character was along the spectrum of good and evil. A slightly dark
jedi, a light jedi with doubts, a jedi that doesn't follow light or
dark, a techno-jedi-cyborg, and my Ithorian Priest. One of the themes in the game was teamwork which we had continually failed at.
Dovi gave us a page of questions to answer about our characters and their relationship with other characters. I decided I was a pacifist and that all life was precious. Ithor was a holy planet and Ithorians do not touch its surface. I was allowed to do so and I was asked what vision I had seen. I decided that I saw "The Doom of Ithor" by the hands of the Empire and that I had joined Kellian to save Ithor.
I had strong Telekinesis skills, Force Shield, Force Healing, and Force Sight. So I was basically a protector and healer. My Bafforr staff could be used to block light sabers.
The game starts with three Sith approaching our planet. We find that Kellian had gone missing and that he had disabled all our means of travel -- in order to protect us from the Sith. But we fixed the equipment and went looking for him anyway.
In another cut away scene, we see Kellian give himself up -- and one of the Sith cuts both of his hands off. Kellian is hoping to leave the planet without revealing our presence. But we catch up with the Sith as they are departing the planet and one of the Sith break off to take care of us. We team up and eventually beat him. The other Sith leave with Kellian. As the Sith lay dying, I try to heal him. My Bafforr staff consisted of a living entwined tendrils of a plant. When I heal, the tendrils unwind and reach out to heal. The Sith snatched the vines and withered them, cursed me, and then died.
We then find gifts from Kellian. I found seeds from Ithor and healing water from Ithor. The water healed my staff. Before we left our hideout, Kellian told us to destroy the base, but I had an Ithorian ecosystem in my room, so I hurt myself in order to sink the room into the depths as the rest of the crew prepped for blowing up the base.
Using the force, I can see through Kellian's eyes and found him being held and tortured by the Emperor.
During our journey, each character fought with their choices: of whether to go towards the light or dark, whether their philosophy was correct or wrong. Our characters grew during the adventure.
So, we head to the Emperor's Palace and get into the boss fight with the Emperor. We also find out that one of the PCs was the Emperor's clone, raised in secret and that there are multitudes of Emperor clones -- babies, adolescents, and teenagers in tubes, being tortured into the Emperor's image.
During the boss fight, one of the Jedi convinces one of the two remaining Sith to sit out of the fight. When the Emperor noticed that, he force choked her. As the fight was going on, I went and healed the force choked Sith, who then decided to join the fight against the Emperor.
In the end, we beat the Emperor.
In the epilogue, we were asked what we would do. I decided to find a lifeless moon and plant the seeds and use the water from Ithor to make Ithor 2. I also took the Emperor clones with me to tend the plants and I would teach them and make them all pacifists. And I got a shower of fate chips for that.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Morgan Hua's Tomb of Paranoia (Paranoia)
MON 9 AM - 3 PM 6 Players
Tomb of Horrors vs Paranoia. I’ll be running Tomb of Horrors, but we’ll be sending in clones from Paranoia.
Welcome troubleshooters, The Computer has found an anomaly. You will be outfitted to explore a strange region in Alpha Complex -- most likely the headquarters of Commie Mutant Traitors. Due to the dangerous nature of this threat, you have been granted more than your standard allotment of clones.
I was surprised, when I showed up at 8:50am, there were already 5 people in the room waiting for my game. When the game started, I had my 6 players. These were really dedicated gamers or there wasn't anything else open on Monday morning at 9am.
The whole idea behind this was that The Tomb of Horrors was a meat grinder, but with infinite clones, it doesn't matter and I thought it would be really funny as what is needed to defeat the Tomb are various magics which the players don't have.
I was surprised, the players actually finished the module in 6 hours and defeated the Demi-Lich Acererak. Go figure.
The players were laughing throughout and I even got one player to lead the others in song. The game was amazingly fun.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
At the briefing room, I tell them that Surveillance-bots had discovered a strange place and that the team was to disguise themselves to infiltrate the Commie Mutant Traitor HQ and to destroy it. I handed out cardboard armor covered in tin foil, faux-chainmail made of syntha-wool, night gowns with stars and moons and floppy hat, faux-leather cloth, a large diaper, and pointy ears with green tights. Swords and other weapons made of Styrofoam and rubber were also handed out.
I did give them a Destruct-O-bot which looked like an R2 unit with a large faceplate with the digital number 10 glowing in red letters. The number does count down pretty quickly unless there's player intervention. Only later does the Computer deliver a Clone-O-matic to them. The Clone-O-matic looks like a giant Slurpee machine with a knob with their names on it. It only dispenses a goopy clone when a player dies and then the replacement clone steps out of the goo.
In this game, one of the players actually programmed the Clone-O-matic to only dispense him. When a player died, he/she was replaced with another clone of that player. Pretty clever.
Then we got full on multiple clones vs other PCs as each death converted a PC into that clone model. When they discovered that their lasers couldn't hurt each other, they picked up swords (from defeated monsters) and started hacking each other to death.
One of the fun bits was when a PC got cursed with levitation and then got teleported outside, and then proceeded to float way up into the sky and died of asphyxiation.
In the end, the players tried to attack Acererak and got their souls sucked into the skull, when that happens, no clones are dispensed. Once the players figured that out, they resumed the countdown on the Destruct-O-bot and blew up the tomb and themselves. Once that happened, they were all dispensed from the Clone-O-matic again. A full team of the same character.
Satisfied that their mission was complete, but without proof, they decided to abandon Alpha Complex and to never return.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Sean Nittner's Under the House of Three Squires(Torchbearer)
SUN 4 PM - 6 PM 3 Players
I arrived at KublaCon on Sunday and didn't get into any games (other than the one I overslept for), so Sean was nice enough to take us to the 9th floor and run Torchbearer for a number of us. The game was incredibly crunchy. We had to keep track of every resource such as torches (which only burn for 2 turns), spikes, food, water, etc.
You also get hungry very fast and even bags of gold doesn't buy you much in the town with its inflated prices.
We got lucky and escaped with 4 barrels of fine ale, a Pomerano, and a scroll with magic spells on it.
My favorite bit was that my "Cleric" had sticky fingers and a lock pick set. He likes to give final unction as he filches everything off your dead body. He actually has Turn Undead. Go figure.
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