There's now two KublaCons, KublaCon Prime during Memorial Day weekend and KublaCon Fall during Veteran's Day weekend.
As a GM, you get to sign up games one week ahead of the general ticket holders. This is a great perk. The VIP ticket holders get this same perk, but they pay extra and get other bennies such as a welcome dinner and some door prizes. Sign ups are first-come first-served, no more bad shuffler. It's almost an all-you-can-eat buffet of games. I love this.
Before, I'd get into two official games and then you try to crash into other games hoping for an empty seat. I was able to fill my Fri-Sun schedule without having to crash games.
All the games I was in had good GMs and Players. The Paranoia and Star Wars games were my favorite.
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5/22/26 Fri 9am-1pm (4 hrs)
Ignorance is Mandatory
System: Paranoia, Mongoose Red Clearance Edition 2017
GM: Charles Walters
5 Players: Mark W (Hygiene), Madhav S (Equipment), Adrian R (Happiness Officer), Kimberly C (Loyalty Officer), Tom M (Team Lead), Morgan Hua (as Fe-R-eL - Tactical Officer)
Troubleshooter! Friend Computer has tasked you with apprehending an arch-traitor and bringing them to the scaffold. But watch out! This arch-traitor's crimes are so treasonous that even knowing about them could put you up on the scaffold with them! Communists, mutants, and traitors lurk around every corner, so be careful Troubleshooter! Trust no one, and always keep your laser handy!
We played the 2017 KS edition. I really enjoyed this version. I looked this up after the game and found that there's the Red Clearance Edition and an updated Perfect Edition. But what I loved was the cards with your Mutant Power and Secret Society that gets shuffled and handed out. Make sure the core starter set includes the cards.
The first thing I loved was character creation. There's 16 skills. Players sit in a circle. Player A picks one skill to be +1, the Player to the left, Player B, sets that same skill to -1, Player B picks a skill to +1, and Player C sets the same skill to -1, and this continues until the last Player picks a skill to be +1, and Player A sets that skill to -1. Then Player A picks a skill to set at +2, and this repeats until +5 is done. Skills without values are set to 0. If you do happen to pick a skill the Player to the left had already set, then it doesn't get modified.
Then the GM tells us that there are 0 to 6 Mutants and deals out Mutant Cards to us. He tells us there are 0 to 6 Secret Society cards and deals them out to us. The cards explain our mutant powers and our secret societies.
This was a great game. We got into hijinks pretty quickly. At the end, I was on clone #5, so were several others.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
PCs don't know each other. We're told go to the bus stop for our briefing. Eventually we get on the Briefing Bus. We're handed out equipment, including explosive eggs, fizzy Riot flavored drinks (shake, pop the top, and throw), a plasma rifle, and mechanical pants (as per Wallace and Gromit's The Wrong Trousers).
We're to pick up a Yellow clearance traitor, Buddy-Y-Pow, to put him in the mechanical pants, and take him to the Bubbly Bouncy Stadium for execution.
The bus stops and right outside is our traitor waiting for a bus, holding onto a yellow balloon. Grabbing him and putting him in the pants devolved into slagging several buildings into molten lava, fizzy Riot foam all over the place including inside the bus, and slagging the bus and man who briefed us.
Getting him to the stadium devolved into slagging multi-lanes of highway, several buildings, getting re-educated (executing the citizen who re-educated us - I stealthily replaced his pamphlets with Communist pamphlets and the others killed him), riding a tank, running over Commies (who were trying to free Buddy), infighting inside the tank (as I tried to free Buddy), shooting mortar and tank rounds into various buildings. At the end of this, the GM gave my next clone (#4) a hat saying "Not a Commie."
Once in the stadium, the traitor is brought to a platform and is presented with the annual Bubbly Bouncy raffle Grand Prize. And we were all given commendations.
My PC was an actual Commie Mutant Traitor, so I got up to the podium and espoused some dogma hoping to recruit more Commies ("I'm not a Commie," pointing at hat, "but if I we're blah, blah, blah ..."), and I then crowd surfed away (Levitation mutation). No other PC was brave enough to use the microphone. (I assume I got caught and executed as the GM told me I was now on clone #5, after the end of the game.)
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
5/22/26 Fri 4pm-midnight (8 hrs)
The Last Stop
System: Call of Cthulhu
GM: Badger McInnes
6 Players (+1 crasher): Kevin S (Patrol Officer), Renata C (Waitress), Mark J (Trucker), Joseph R (Mechanic), Sean P (ATF), Brian S (FBI), Morgan Hua (as Donald Spencer)
Nebraska, 1999. Somewhere on a desolate highway, a lone truck stop shines a weak light in the rainy night. Within it, six people hunker down and wait for the weather to pass. But on this night, something lurking in the torrential dark may not let them survive to see the sunrise. Terror, paranoia, and death loom, ever present. Ever waiting.
The Last Stop is a modern day Call of Cthulhu scenario that contains intense situations, violence, and gore. Mature players only.
I tried to get into this game several years ago, but wasn't able to. Finally, Badger was running it again and I got a seat. We had a good table of Players too. Badger posted afterwards that this was the 3rd run and the highest body count so far.
A good game. We took all 8 hrs. I actually think we ended the game past midnight.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
PCs are a mix of DG agents (ATF, FBI), a Highway Patrol Officer, a Bounty Hunter (me), and employees in the Truck Stop (Waitress, Mechanic). My job was to apprehend the truck stop owner's wife as she's skipped bail and is on the run for murder (or murders).
In private conference right after character selection, I immediately told the GM that most Skip Tracers / Bounty Hunters notify local PD that a warrant would be served, so there wouldn't be any misunderstandings, but I was told my PC was too confident in his abilities to do that. Well, I tried. Of course, I got into trouble when I tried to arrest my target. I wound up in cuffs and my target was still free. Didn't help that I tasered her husband when he got in my way, but I'm getting ahead of myself.
The game starts in the Truck Stop's diner near midnight with a heavy rainstorm. All hell breaks loose. A big rig smashes through our cars, shatters the front glass windows of the diner, and runs over the gas station pumps, and then smashes into another big rig. The majority of the PCs (mostly law enforcement) rush to the scene of the accident and other PCs (employees of the Truck Stop) rush to put out the fire and shut off the gas pumps. With the diner mostly empty, I make my move to arrest my target. Her husband gets in the way, so I taser him and my target screams, so the other PCs return to the diner and I get handcuffed.
The other PCs discover the runaway big rig was run by remote control with no driver. We soon find that no emergency services are arriving, that PD dispatch is unresponsive.
Chaos happens: kids go missing (and are found), a guy gets attacked in the bathroom by some creature (in dropped down from the false ceiling, and returned there), Waitress and Mechanic try to fix up a truck to flee (but run back in panic after being attacked), lights go out, a woman and her kid almost die by hypothermia in the beer cave, etc.
We learn the creatures infect anybody that's hurt. Turning them into rage monsters after 20 mins.
Deaths:
The bathroom guy turns violent and chows down on the waitress's husband. I taser him to no effect, fire a shot and missed, then blew his head off with the second shot. (I had lockpicked my handcuffs earlier and recovered all my weapons during all the chaos).
Waitress's husband turns violent, but we used the handcuffs to chain him to a diner stool, just in case. The FBI agent kills him.
The Mechanic feels he's turning, the Trucker attacks him, FBI shoots him, but Waitress brings him back from edge of death (he's her boyfriend). They handcuff him to a diner stool (those turn out pretty useful). He tries to fight the infection, but fails, so the Waitress stabs him to death.
On the escape from the Truck Stop to the big rig cargo container, the FBI gets a wound. PCs turtle in the container, FBI feels she's turning, leaves the container and commits suicide.
In the morning, gov't guys in armor and automatic weapons (MJ-12) show up and haul us away to a secret facility.
In the end, we're offered $1M each to keep quiet and to not have contact with each other. Almost all the PCs take the deal. The Patrol Officer had a crush on the Waitress and refused. The ATF got 20 years in prison (for being DG), but got released after 4 years. Trucker got nothing as he worked for MJ-12. I took the deal, released the contract I had to arrest the Truck Stop owner's wife, and took a long vacation in Tahiti and vowed to never set foot in Nebraska again.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
5/23/26 Sat 11am-3pm (4 hrs)
The Great Bank of San Rafael Heist
System: Call of Cthulhu
GM: Steven Drouin
4 Players: Shannon M (as Chair Smith and Karl - little kid and chicken), Christine H (as Charles Finny - Priest), Sean P (as Olive Oatman - rescued Indian captive), Morgan Hua (as Sally Deno - Deputy Marshal)
San Rafael, Texas: 1869. Join a team of downtrodden outcasts seeking salvation by means of the heist of the ages, before heading off into the sunset. The target is none other than the jewel of Texas, the Great Bank of San Rafael. This Call of Cthulhu mystery horror adventure is for one night only.
Steven, the GM, always builds great games. Lots of pictures of period people and places for our entertainment.
We had a good table of Players, we all knew each other. And it was a good game.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
We start off in media res with Jim Owens carving a sigil on a saloon's table and tell us we're going to do this job right. His played out mine exposed a tunnel underneath the San Rafael Bank. We're to get Jack L Canine, a retired safe cracker to join our enterprise. Case out the bank. Then rob the bank via the tunnel.
Various colorful people inhabit the town and odd occurrences led my PC to conclude that there are signs and portents a plenty: a talking horse, piles of bison skulls, a murder of ravens flying off in a V, a ghost run over by black horses.
Later we learn that both Charles and Olive have books with mysterious writing in em that have drawings of these signs and portents. Though it was odd that when I brought that up, the Priest poo-pooed my comments as hog wash.
So, Olive drugged the banker's food, so he and his dog had sweet dreams. Inside the tunnel, there was an odd section with strange archways. My PC, Sally, was totally freaked out and fled the first time she saw them. I said they looked like the gates of Hell, with a capital H. The others said it was hog wash.
The heist actually happened without a hitch other than a posse pounded on the bank doors as we skedaddled. Odd, inside the safe was a ginger colored scalp, we left that behind. As we travelled through the tunnel back to the mine entrance, smoke filled the tunnels. Jim had earlier smacked the hornets nest and pissed off his neighbor. They had set things aflame outside.
It was a sore task to get out of the mine. Only Chair (and his chicken) and I made it out, to split the loot. Charles and Olive didn't make it out.
Inside the tunnel, Olive activated one of the gates and went through. Charles also close to passing out followed her. Both appear in a saloon, just as Jim carves a sigil on the table and says, "This time, we're going to do this right." The End.
After the game, we learned the Priest was an imposter, actually a drug addict. Out of game, we learned that Olive yearned to return to her Indian husband. Olive is the girl rescued by John Wayne in The Searchers.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
5/23/26 Sat 4pm-midnight (8 hrs, took 7 hrs)
Chariot of the Gods
System: Alien 1e
GM: Morgan Hua
5 Players: Ben V (Davis - Pilot), Mark W (Cham - Roughneck), Andy C (Wilson - Company Man), Sam S (Captain Miller - Officer), Sveta B (Rye - Techie).
Starfreighter USCSS Montero receives a distress call from the USCSS Cronus. W-Y policy is to render aid especially to other W-Y assets, failure to render aid will lead to forfeiture of all bonus pay. The crew is taken out of cold sleep to investigate the derelict.
This is the full 3 Act cinematic scenario from the Alien 1e RPG Starter Set. Will be using the Alien 1e ruleset.
I had a good table of Players. I've run this twice before online, using the PDF. This time, I used the printed pamphlet. OMG, the hardcopy was different from the updated PDF. I was looking for rules that I knew were in the scenario and couldn't find them, and when I did, it was different than what I had remembered.
Anyway, we had a good time. I did feel after 6 hrs, table energy was fading. It didn't help at one point, there was a NPC fighting a Xeno and I was rolling dice against myself which took too long. I'll need to do a quick resolution in the future. Also this was when the original PCs were dying and being replaced by backup PCs. In the end, out of the starting PCs, only Davis made it home.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The rule I was missing was the infection and vaccine die rolls. One spot seemed to indicate that I should just hand out the infection agenda card to the first surviving PC who got the vaccine. I did a search on the PDF and found the exact rule (p.34) and looked for the corresponding text in the hardcopy (p.32). They were different. PDF had a save throw. Hardcopy said only if the GM wanted to be nice.
Again, I didn't have to bring in the Space Pirates. The scenario has this option if the PCs needed more backup characters or to extend the scenario. Close to the 7 hr mark, the PCs had killed all the Xenos, so I asked if they wanted optional Space Pirates or to end the scenario. Table agreed to end the game, so I wrapped up and we stopped near 11am. I figured that would have been their answer, but this was posted as an 8 hr game, I felt obligated to ask.
Online, someone created Banter Cards for each PC. I put them on the back of the character portraits, so the Players had a bit of roleplaying as they rehydrated from cryosleep at the dinner table. The talking points replaces the block text that's read at the beginning of the game. It makes it more interactive.
I found an audio file which is the 10 minute self-destruct countdown. After 5 mins, the override fails. I used that to great effect. Rye, the only PC on the Montero failed to turn off the self-destruct, and decided to pilot the Montero away from the Cronus. He got into a life pod and jettisoned before the Montero exploded. Somewhere out there is Rye in cryosleep. The PCs never picked him up.
The PCs hated Wilson (great , the Company Man. But when a Xeno ripped his arm off, they did save his life, but still hated him.
Capt Miller at one point turtled in the Cronus command center. He was injured and took the vaccine. Unknown to the others, he had turned (Act 3 infection card). When the PCs entered the command center to talk to him, he launched himself at Wilson. Wilson swapped places (Personal Safety talent) with the Cronus's Company Woman who swapped places (Personal Safety talent) with the Cronus's Captain who got hit. Eventually, Miller killed Wilson before he himself was taken down.
Cham went outside to repair the engines, but got killed by a Xeno. Davis found some armored environmental suits and swapped as his Mk.50 was running out of air. A replacement PC put on the other suit and they both went outside and killed the Xeno, repaired the engines and comms array.
By then, the air scrubbers were also working, so Davis kept wearing the environmental suit, and recharged the air until it was time to go into cryosleep.
PCs decided to return to a WY space station. As the credits roll, days later, the infection had jumped from their ship to the space station and Xenos chase people in the space station.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
5/24/26 Sun 9am-1pm (4 hrs)
Takeover at Whisper Base
System: Star Wars - Age of Rebellion
GM: Zachary Paul
4 Players: David K (Cael - gunner), Demian V K (Tendar - engineer), Kimberly R (Zal - pilot), Morgan Hua (as Vendri - spy)
War rages across the galaxy. Both the brutal Galactic Empire and the desperate Rebel Alliance reel in the face of terrible losses. Though Rebel forces managed to destroy the superweapon called the DEATH STAR, their victory did not come in time to save the world of ALDERAAN. Fear and uncertainty swell in the galactic community.
Now, one small battle begins on the verdant world of ONDERON. Deep in the jungle, Rebel intelligence has discovered a listening post built by MOFF DARDANO to spy on his rival, ADMIRAL CORLEN. The Rebel Alliance has sent a crack team of infiltrators to take the secret listening post and turn it into a forward Rebel base in the Japrael system. After hours of slogging through the dense jungle, with its poisonous foliage and oppressive heat, the heroes have reached their destination: Whisper Base. Compared to staying in the jungle, the prospect of ambushing an Imperial patrol and breaking into a heavily guarded base seems almost pleasant....
I tried this system twice and had a mediocre experience, but I wanted to try this again properly. The system uses special dice with unique symbols on them. I had problems reading the dice and relied on the GM to interpret them. It's like you're throwing down some cattle bones marked with runes and the priestess is the only one who can tell you what it foretells. This is the scenario from the Starter Set where they ease you into the system without a big rules dump.
I really enjoyed this and at the end, I could read the dice properly.
I'm entertaining the thought of getting a copy of the game.
I asked the GM as to which starter set to get. There are three: Age of the Rebellion, Edge of the Empire, and Force and Destiny. He told me Age of Rebellion is simple good vs evil and the PCs are good guys, the Rebels. Edge of Empire is more grey, you're like Han Solo doing questionable jobs. Force and Destiny is for people who like Jedi.
He did run a Force and Destiny campaign where everyone wanted to play a Jedi. When you have 6 Jedi, they just murder everything they run into. They were hard to stop. He did say you can have Force sensitive PCs and other classes, but I mean if you're going to play Force and Destiny, why wouldn't you play a Jedi?
His warning about Age of Rebellion is to NOT have a Pilot PC, but to give them a NPC Pilot. Otherwise, that PC would have nothing to do.
The system works for two types of Players: one who rolls the dice and uses the result for colorful narration, and one who rolls the dice and don't care about narration. Interesting.
Anyway, the GM was great. Had a great grasp on how to interpret the dice in very colorful ways.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
We're told to trek through a jungle, infiltrate the base, disable the comms link, prevent the commander from leaving the planet (there's a shuttle at the top of the base), prevent the commander from alerting any outside forces.
We sneak in the base garage and cut the giant comms cable. Step one done. Some troopers show up, so we stun them. I start closing the garage doors. Then we disable all the speedsters and one of the two AT-STs in the base garage. Just then a Janitorial-bot (a reprogrammed combat unit) shows up. I remove the restraining bolt and after some tinkering, restore it to Murder-bot mode.
After some fire fights, we get to the shuttle and rig it to blow up if someone engages the engines to take off.
Then we search the base for the commander. Attack the comms center and take it, but learn that he's taken a secret tunnel to the garage. In the garage, we find he's taken one of the AT-STs. We re-enable the disabled AT-ST and one of the speeders and go after him.
In the distance is another communication tower with some auto-cannons. We chase after the commander, and a returning patrol of speedsters come up behind us. The PCs in the AT-ST takes care of the speedsters. I go after the commander, he has to push his AT-ST past its operational parameters. I lose it in the jungle. I head to the tower. The auto-cannons open fire, but shoots at the commander's AT-ST instead (horribly bad die roll), so he shuts down the auto-cannons. His AT-ST breaks down. Our AT-ST makes it to the communication tower first and take out the building after two shots. I search and find the commander. Before I can ask him to surrender, a jungle creature eats him.
Credits roll. End credit scenes happen (epilogues).
My PC and the Murder-bot (dressed as Imperial Janitors) are pouring poisonous insects from janitorial buckets into air vents. Once done, we slam closed the vent covers and smile. During play, we learned the Murder-bot hated being a janitor and loved killing Imperials.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
5/24/2026 Sun 2-8pm (6 hrs)
Festival and Fire
System: Call of Cthulhu 7e
GM: Colin Dimock
5 Players: Brent M (Adam Davis - fire fighter), CRO magnon (Rachael Kelly - forestry), Max B-H (Benjamin Barry - young politician), Scott M (Tanya Brewerton - cop), Morgan Hua (as Noah Sullivan- high school gym and history teacher)
The small town volunteer fire department of Evenstone South Carolina has been asked to investigate a series of potential arson fires for the neighboring community of Darby, which is too small to have a fire department of its own. Concerns are high as October has come, and Darby hosts the “Scariest Corn Maze in the USA” which attracts enough tourists to account for a sizable portion of Darby’s annual budget. While Darby has been modernizing since the main road was paved, there is still an older insular element that distrusts outsiders, so you have been asked to ‘be respectful’ while conducting your investigation.
I will be running this in Call of Cthulhu 7th edition without luck points. Characters provided.
I had a good time and the scenario was sufficiently complex.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
An interesting scenario, mostly a no-win scenario.
Funny, we never went into the corn maze.
There is an escalating series of arson, all on the edge of a forest. There's the old town bordering the forest run by a controlling minister. The mayor of the newer town asked us to look into the arson.
We went to the latest arson site and found two bodies. Rachael and I tracked boot prints into the forest and found that they lead to another one of the crime scenes. Also I found abnormal prints of large goats, claws, and a large slithering thing. Separately, I create a blind in a tree to watch for cryptids. Rachael decides to camp out. We wind up near each other. At night, Rachael gets attacked by a mutated goat-thing and is infected. I get a blurry photo of the cryptid (which I now call the goat-duck-en).
Tanya, Ben, and Adam talk to the minister. Tanya almost pisses him off with her overbearing demeanor and threats, but Ben saved the day.
Eventually, we figure out the arson is committed by the gas station owner. He's been hunting the monsters. He tells us annually, there's a ritual that brings forth a whole bunch of monsters on an island (done a few months ago), and after the corn maze festival is over, a child is caged in the middle of the maze for a week which draws all the monsters into the maze. Then the maze is set on fire.
He tells us the minister's daughter might help us. We hunt her down and try to talk to her. Ben fails with a pushed roll. She panics and tries to cast a spell on us and it backfires and she dies horribly. On her body is a diary telling us that there's a ritual to free the mother spirit in a tree on the island. The ritual is in a spell book in her father's house. We steal it.
We get to the island. Tanya casts the spell with our help, but fail. This kills Ben and my character. In order to retry, Tanya must sacrifice a life and takes Adam's. The spell succeeds and Shub-Niggurath is freed and makes Tanya and Rachael her priestesses.
Shub-Niggurath furious at the minister for imprisoning her destroys him and the town.
I always thought that horror works better with fewer PCs as lone PCs are more isolated and tied into their own personal horror. But as a game, it's best to bounce off at least another PC. The great thing about this online convention is that there are games with fewer headcount than the standard 5 to 6 Players.
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May 15, Friday 10am-2pm
Midnight Descent
System: Kult Divinity Lost
GM: Bitburg_Chef (David)
2 Players: Warshtub (Simmons), Morgan Hua (Walker)
You and your partner find yourselves as rookie police officers thrust into an eerie assignment. Due to some events you prefer to keep silent about in your first week of training, you’ve been delegated to take over the last shift at the soon-to-be-closed police precinct.
As you step into the dimly lit station, the air is thick with an otherworldly tension. The veteran officers have hastily left, leaving you alone with the weight of their unspoken fears. The flickering lights cast long shadows on the worn-out walls, and strange noises echo through the empty corridors.
Armed only with their rookie training and an uneasy alliance, you must confront the unknown. As the night progresses, you’ll grapple with your own fears, face darkness, and uncover the secrets hidden within the precinct’s haunted history. Your decisions will determine your survival and may unveil a deeper, cosmic truth that challenges the very fabric of your reality.
Players will receive a set of questions prior to the game to personalise their pre-generated characters.
Two rookie police officers stuck late night at the last shift of a shuttered police station. The new precinct is open and everyone's been notified of the change, but some people still show up at the police station, so we're there, just in case. Phone calls go to the new dispatch station, but some calls still get routed to the old station. The place has mostly been emptied out. Locals have already vandalized the station. Strange sounds and apparitions haunt the station.
I loved this. It's basically a haunted police station where the PCs are forced to stay inside.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
When we enter, we find the reception desk is empty, so we use the intercom to call whoever is on shift to tell them we're here to relieve them. A cop shows up, has problem getting the card reader to unlock the door, and tells us that the Health and Safety crew hasn't shown up to take the last of the drugs out of the secure safe in the evidence locker. He also looks a bit uneasy. He tells us there are some odd sounds that he's investigated, but found nothing. He's happy to leave and tosses us the keys.
I brought an Igloo with cans of non-alcoholic beer, to help pass the time. We first open up the drug safe and do an inventory. It's all there.
There's some dead case files still in the evidence locker, so I start perusing them. There's a phone call, a little girl's voice on the line pleading for help, I get her name, but not her location, and she says they're coming back and hangs up. I call dispatch to try to trace the calls and tell dispatch that Health and Safety hasn't shown up yet.
One great bit is Simmons's father's portrait is still in the old station and it gets abused by unseen forces and a homeless man who pees on it, Simmons's trys to throw the bum out, but gets vomit all over himself. Which leads to a creepy shower scene in the station's locker room. Ghostly writing on mirrors, children's laughter, locker doors which open themselves, found items like an old photo.
I keep on getting ghostly phone calls from dead children asking for help. I go through the case files and google old newspaper stories and find that a series of children were murdered 40 years ago. A cult was caught by 3 police officers: my father, Simmons's father, and a third cop, the homeless man who peed on the portrait. While going through the case files, the homeless man had broken in and took a knife from the evidence locker and tried to attack us. We subdued him and took him to the holding cells. When I put him in, the holding cell door closes itself and locks me in with him. Simmons is on the other side of the door. We can't open the door. During the commotion, the homeless man takes my service pistol and shoots himself. I blame Simmons for closing the door on me. Simmons blames me for the death of the homeless man.
In the end, Simmons and I hear sounds in the holding cell area. We both go down there, but suddenly all the holding cell doors fly open. I noped out of there. Simmons continues forward and finds his father in a hellscape and has a conversation. He learns he was groomed by his father to be a serial killer and he had killed other people under his father's directions. I got out the station and sat at the station steps, drinking some non-alcoholic beer. I see my dead father beckoning me in, but I just toast him, and pour the rest on the ground for him. That's when I hear gunshots, so I run back inside. Simmons had shot his father. We both shoot a few strange ghouls and we flee the station. We agree to burn the station down to the ground. Simmons steals the contents of the drug locker. I siphon gas out of our cars and use some road flares.
Simmons leaves town. I don't.
My PC:
Officer Walker, M, 32 single
Officer Walker, born and raised in Ravenswood, comes from a legacy of law enforcement. Their father was a former Police officer at Ravenswood PD, as his father was before him. However, growing up, Officer Walker witnessed a change in their father. The reclusive and easily shaken demeanour was accompanied by haunted eyes that seemed to hold secrets. Officer Walker's father, grappling with inner demons, succumbed to the clutches of addiction and ultimately took their own life when Officer Walker was just 11 years old.
What did you do to be demoted to the night shift? Unauthorized discharge of firearm (while drunk).
Who else knows about what you did? Everybody in the precinct.
How did they find out, or are they blackmailing you? I shot a power transformer and blacked out 10 blocks of Ravenswood.
What are the other repercussions for your actions? I have to go to counseling.
How do you usually spend your spare time? Drinking at local cop bar, but now I can't.
Choose 3 memories you guys remember from your past - ideally one when you were 8-10, 11-15, 16-19 years of age. 8-10: Father gifting Walker with his first bike on xmas. 11-15: Finding father's body after he shot himself in the bathroom. 16-19: Losing virginity to Peggy Sue.
Content Warnings: Body Horror, Violent Death/Gore, Psychological Horror, Claustrophobia/Isolation, Themes of Exploitation
Life at Hadley’s Hope hasn’t been the paradise that Weyland-Yutani promised when you signed on the dotted line, but you still showed up and put in the work. W-Y found ways to take most of your paycheck back before you could spend it, let alone save it. But that’s about to change, as you and a couple like-minded colonists have hatched a plan to rob the Company-run casino. All you need to do is wait for the right time...
I personally wanted to come up with a way to tell other stories about Hadley's Hope, but one issue is how to have a cohesive group at the colony without PCs spread all over the place. This GM was able to come up with 3 scenarios. I played in this one. I had also wanted to try out the new Evolved edition.
The Evolved edition worked well with the Foundry VTT which took care of a lot of the extra die rolls needed for this edition. I still don't like the extra required rolls.
GM repurposed Hope's Last Day with 3 new scenarios. This scenario is about PCs planning a heist of the local casino. A nice way to tie random PCs to a group goal. I had a lot of fun. I got the full Alien experience.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The goal is to sneak out of housing, get a torch from the mechanics bay, get to the casino, get into the safe, steal a vehicle, then hide out at a processing unit until we can catch a shuttle off planet.
That's the plan.
There's an announcement about staying in our quarters, the lights go out, and off we go. We sight something as we leave the housing area, but we don't care. It goes into an air duct. We get our giant canister of acetylene and head outside to the casino. Then a Xeno spots us. Then it all goes to hell.
There's a lot of running and dying. In the end, all the PCs were dead except for Willems who got facehugged.
Highlights: One of the PCs is gripped by a Xeno and he uses his flamethrower anyway. I have a pistol, but I'm not sure about using it. The other PCs tell me to shoot, including the PC with the flamethrower, so I fire and hit the Xeno, acid sprays and kills the guy with the flamethrower.
I'm almost dead in the casino, I climb up a ladder out of danger to the 2nd floor, upstairs is another Xeno. The Xeno chasing me, stabs me with it's tail, slicing off an ear, breaking the me (no more dice rolls, I can only crawl). I'm in the middle of a Xeno sandwich, so I decide to slide (fall) down the ladder past the Xeno. I fall on a PC chasing the Xeno. I mutter that there's two of them upstairs. He decides to use his fireman's ax on it. As he swings, I yell out that it has acid for blood. The spray of acid burns both of us to death.
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May 16, Sat 10am-2pm
From the Womb
System: Kult Divinity Lost
GM: rocinante_on_focus (Robert / Roci)
3 Players: penny676 (Martin, Sandy - fails to get GPS signal), sam.ius (Sam, Bob - searching for something), Morgan Hua (Roy - trying to quit smoking)
Content Warnings: Harm to animals, harm to children, violence, gore, religion, natural disasters, torture, sexism.
Unsuspecting social workers are sent to investigate a girl’s mysterious absence from school. While they think they are following up on a simple truancy case, they find themselves cast in a decades-long family drama full of monsters both human and otherwise. Will they flee, or will they allow themselves to be drawn into the unmerciful truth?
Another great spooky game. This one was more investigative. GM did a great job juggling events, split parties, and our backstories.
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My PC customized by various available choices:
Roy, 34, loudly chewing nicotine gum. Why did you stop smoking? Stopped smoking because wife is pregnant.
Your partner handed you the divorce papers this morning. You haven’t even begun to process it yet, and you haven’t told anybody. [Starting Stability: Shaken]
• What is your partner's name? Renee
• What did you do to make them leave you? Right now in denial as to why she'd divorce me, so many reasons and so many reasons not to. My bad driving? My addiction to sports betting? She says she's a weekend widow during sports seasons: basketball, football, baseball, and hockey. That's a joke, sort of.
Gym Rat (+3 Fortitude), all other stats +1.
The Players in agreement picked (out of 3 choices each):
Location: Without warning, sheets of rain fall from the sky. Everything is overgrown and wet. In the distance, thunder rumbles. Abandoned houses covered with graffiti sink slowly into the bayou. It feels like you’re driving into the end of the world.
House: The house sits on top of a wide but low hill. Surrounding the hill is a cemetery. Nearby sits a run-down wooden church with someone standing in the doorway. The road stops at the bottom of the hill, leaving you to walk the rest of the way.
Knowles Family: Overdressed for the environment. The men wear starched white shirts, freshly-pressed trousers, neat coats, and suspenders. The women wear short veils and long, unpatterned dresses. They try to look at you kindly, but you feel the anxiety thrumming beneath their limpid eyes. A young woman exits through the front door as the PCs arrive.
---
Of course, nothing is quite right when we look around and interview people. The Knowles family seem a bit autistic, a bit paranoid, a bit simplistic. After snooping around, we find the girl being held in the barn. We break in and get restrained. The girl involved in a ritual involving a pregnant cow.
The big secret is that the cow will birth a baby with three umbilical cords. The three PCs are each to cut an umbilical cord, the girl will drop the baby into a metal coffin. The Knowles family will bury the coffin. The PCs will then be released.
Of course, we have PCs and everything goes to hell, literally.
Bob cuts one of the umbilical cords. I look through the illusion and see my wife holding our baby in one hand, the divorce papers in the other. I decide to cut up the divorce papers. Sandy sees me trying to attack the girl and tries to intervene with pepper spray, but I muscle through it and cut up what I think are the papers. I actually cut the girl and she drops the baby. Sandy stands in the way and convinces me to back off. In my head, I see my wife ask me to leave, I tell her I'll do it if she doesn't go through with the divorce. She agrees, so I leave the barn.
After that, Mr. Langdon erupts from the body of the baby. The veil lifts and the barn is a Hellraiser torture chamber. Mr. Langdon is a demon. "I am finally free." The Knowles family panics. Sandy pepper sprays Mr. Langdon. He screams in pain and banishes her, she vanishes. Bob takes the shear he used to cut the umbilical chord and stabs himself in the heart.
Sandy shows up outside of the house of a man who has been stalking her for taking his child away to protective services. He bashes her head in with a baseball bat. She wakes up in bed, and he hunts her and kills her, forever.
Bob wakes up in the car with Sandy and Roy, heading to the house. Ad infinitum.
I take one of the Knowles trucks and finally stop when I'm past the rain. Beside me is my wife, who's holding on to our baby. She asks me what to name the baby. I say, "Langdon." She says that's a strange name. Anybody else would only see me alone in the truck.
I wait to see if Bob and Sandy show up for work the next day. They don't. I report that I had escaped from a Branch Davidian cult and they had murdered both Bob and Sandy. ATF is sent to raid the compound. Bob and Sandy's bodies are found.
Roy lives happily ever after with his phantom wife and child.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
May 16, Sat 4-8pm (2 hrs, game ended early with 2 Players)
the terrifying Nature of things
System: Kult Divinity Lost
GM: willberratte (Will Barrett)
3 Players (one missing): mal6666 (Sarah - Elias Boone - Senior Trooper), Morgan Hua (Don Fife - Junior Trooper), Jane Doe (missing).
Content Warnings: gore, violence, assault, torture, pvp abuse, trauma, police, Texas, guns, yellow, this is imprvo so thing may come up
a lot of people have gone missing in a small town in Texas but good new we found a survivor. while the state and local raid the mansion two trooper go the pick up the one and only survivor to take her back to the seen.
This game was the weakest as it was very railroady as we just went through various rooms and there was really no choice of path. It was mainly a gallery of horrors. GM admitted it would have been a much better game with 3 Players.
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We're told to take a woman, Jane Doe, with amnesia to a house. The tactical team would breach the house and clear it and we'll take her in and see if she remembers anything. Inside it's bigger on the inside than the outside. There's 3 doors with signs that specifically point to each of the PCs. Art for Jane Doe, Sculpture for Elias, For Mom's Favorite Boy for Don.
I wanted to go into my gallery, but mannequins flood the entrance hall and block every door except the Art door. So we go to the Art door. Inside is a gallery of our own personal backstory horrors and a progressive display of the tactical team being killed and destroyed. A woman addresses us and tells us to enjoy the art. Someone who Elias recognizes attacks us, but I see it as a mannequin, so I shoot it and take it down. Beyond is a door.
The door takes us to For Mom's Favorite Boy. There's paintings of the abuse my PC went through. And finally Mother shows up, I try to arrest her, but fail. Elias sees Mother as a Demon, shoots her for no effect. I still try to arrest her, she stabs me, so I shoot her with an assault rifle for no effect. We finally flee through another door.
This leads to Sculpture where human body parts are made into chimeric art. Elias kills the sculptor who tells us that they make him make the art. That the black stone summons them. The woman from the Art gallery tells us that one of us would replace the sculptor. Elias shoots her and she dies and turns into Jane Doe. Then she shows up again as the Art gallery demon.
Through another door is a library, inside is the black rock. I smash it to pieces. We hear the woman's mocking laugh.
Through another door and we're finally outside. We go to the hospital. Elias quits the police force. I recuperate from the stab wound. Both of us, separately, hear the voice of the Art gallery demon, urging us to make art.
I bought Sleepy Hollow because it's a version of Vaesen for the Americas. I really enjoyed Vaesen and wanted some adventures in Ichabod Crane's neighborhood.
The game is set in Sleepy Hollow 1810, 20 years after Ichabod Crane disappeared from the town. Sleepy Hollow has an annual Headless Horsemen Festival which is a big deal. PCs arrive to start a new life there during the festival.
Sleepy Hollow did an odd implementation of the Year Zero Engine (YZE). They went with a modified version of Alien RPG. Pushing added Stress instead of Conditions. And seeing spooky stuff allows a save throw from getting Stress. I've run the published scenarios and rarely did the PCs get enough Stress to Panic. In Alien, Stress just goes up, there's no save throw, but when you Panic, and roll low, nothing happens, so the Panic roll is really a modified save throw. So, I might ignore the Stress save throw as my own house rule. Sleepy Hollow also made combat a lot more deadlier. At zero Health or if an attack gets two successes or more against you, you get a Critical Injury. I ignored the second rule as being too deadly for PCs as half the Critical Injury table was Lethal (where you will die unless tended to) and 11% was Instant Death.
The bundle came with the following:
Sleepy Hollow Corebook - 180 pages total. Introductory scenario, The Headless Horseman Festival, 12 pages. The town of Sleepy Hollow, 30 pages, with 24 town locations and story seeds. Eight Archetypes: Wandering Minstrel, Hunter, Retired Hessian, Reverend, Schoolteacher, Barber-Surgeon, Butcher, Village Youth.
Faithful Companion - 64 pages of session 0, including 12 more pages of useful info for the Headless Horseman Festival. Three more Archetypes: Gravedigger, Midwife, Gentleman. Seriously? This should have been part of the core book. Ah, I looked this up, it was a BackerKit/KS, so I guess they're trying to keep page counts down, but seriously, splitting this up into another book is terrible.
The Parish Ledger - 68 pages of 52 fleshed out NPCs. What's odd is there's are great character portraits except for 6 of the NPCs, a bit annoying, especially when one is the blacksmith and the other the town reverend.
A Little Darkness - 68 pages, 4 scenarios. All of them are single session scenarios, pretty straight forward to solve. The scenarios ranged in quality.
Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground - 78 pages, 12 wilderness locations that can be happened upon. Includes rules for hex crawling outside of Sleepy Hollow. The locations are 3 pages each and are pretty interesting. Full of random tables which actually work, but when you read them they're pretty non-sensical; for instance, the weather table is mostly bad weather. The core book has hunting tables which are wonky, sorted by ascending food values, not organized by most likely to be encountered on a 2d6 bell curve. Expect lots of unrealistic wonkiness in all their tables. I'm having fun with the hex crawling though.
Folk Magic - 70 pages, spells and five spell casting Archetypes: Witch, Granny Witch, Hearth Witch, Acolyte of the Occult, Pilgrim of the Divine.
Ichabod Crane's Field Guide to Uncanny Creatures - 68 pages, 30 creatures.
Player Journal - 64 pages, character sheet and various player aids, and blank pages.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow - 17 pages, the story by Washington Irving. Written in 1820. A bit of an anachronism since the game is set in 1810.
The Devil's Nine Questions - 64 pages rules for solo play.
The art is great.
I found it odd that the town is full of occult happenings. "One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach; all the damn vampires." It's the same with Sleepy Hollow. So, when I ran the game, I tried to fill the town with normal people and normal events. I made the population several hundred, so the 52 NPCs with their dark secrets aren't the only inhabitants. If Sleepy Hollow was full-on creepy town, why would you stay?
The introductory scenario, The Headless Horseman Festival, with the Faithful Companion additions made for a more interesting scenario (took 2 sessions). The scenarios in A Little Darkness were too simple (each took only one session). Almost all of the scenarios was a monster of the week where the solution was to kill the evil. More variety would have been better. Thornwood Manor is equivalent to Castle Gyllencreutz in Vaesen, so if the PCs need a place to stay, then I'd run The Haunting of Thornwood Manor, a scenario in A Little Darkness.
The NPCs, locations, and uncanny creatures are good inspirations for a GM to make their own adventures.
Overall, a nice package for building your own campaign, but not enough meat if you just wanted to run the published scenarios.
A campaign consisting of 4 scenarios, each giving clues to the finale, the 4th scenario. Since each scenario is about 20 pages each, they're a lot more complex than the ones found in A Stitch in Time.
In my game, the PCs don't have the TARDIS, but they have the Hermit's Lantern, a scaled down version of the TARDIS. Since the Hermit's Lantern is slightly damaged, it sometimes takes them somewhere they did not intend to go to. This does two things:
Deus ex machina. I ask them where they intend to go and then drop them in the wrong place/time. I can sometimes tie in their intention with their destination, sometimes not. So, now they have to figure out where/when they are when they arrive which is sort of fun.
Since the Hermit's Lantern is unreliable, they can't use it all the time to just teleport around because they might end up somewhere unintended.
I have 2 small negatives:
Pictures are lacking, most are stock images from episodes of Dr Who, there's not enough useful pictures. I had to do web searches for pictures and used some AI generated images for my game.
Some information is spread out in different scenarios, so GM has to read all of the scenarios to figure some things out.
My Players really enjoyed this campaign, and I did too. So, I highly recommend it.
Most of my sessions are 3 hours long. Different groups take different times, but my run times are here for comparison purposes.
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The Sigils and Mandala of Scaravore
The issue is that the book doesn't really show what the Sigils and Mandala look like. You only find out by reading the last Chapter. And no examples were given in the book, so I made some myself.
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Aldersgate
Aldgate
Bank Station
Bishopsgate
Cripplegate
Ludgate
Moorgate
Newgate
I didn't make a Mandala, but it's a odd circuitous route going from gate to gate. Tracing various streets and also going through the central hub of Bank Station.
The Sigils and Mandala are patterns that follow the mental patterns (neurons) of the Scaravore. The streets were built following its mental pattern.
I made 8 Sigils. If the Sigil for the Scaravore (god) was needed, I used the Bank Station Sigil.
In Paradise Lost, I made an effort to tell the PCs that the Sigils were definitely not Silurian.
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Paradise Lost
Time Period: 2769
Location: Aridius
Pages: 20
Run Time: 1 session
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The Plot: PCs are dropped in a forest of Cretaceous and Holocene plants. They soon realize they're in one of three connected domed habitats. Outside of the dome is mostly a desert-scape with occasional dinosaurs. Inhabitants are educated Neanderthals (The Caretakers). Soon, the PCs realize the Neanderthals are clones and are a lower tech level than the domed city. At some point, the PCs trigger an automated sterilization of the city and the PCs have to leave the city and find the Masters and shutdown the self-destruct.
Foes: Security Drones, Dinosaurs (T-Rex), Myrka, Silurians. Scaravore Clue: The Caretaker script consists of Scaravore Sigils. Silurians created the Caretakers as a docile servant race, but something (The Scaravore) modified their DNA and brain patterns to be more independent and rebellious.
Cretaceous Plants (and yes the PCs asked about the dinosaur)
AI generated Caretaker (I couldn't prompt it to remove the animals)
I used this for the Security Drones
In my game, one Player recognized the Sigils of Scaravore as London streets. I was gobsmacked.
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A Kind of Magic
Time Period: 2552
Location: Saphira
Pages: 27 pages
Run Time: 2 sessions
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The Plot: PCs get dropped into medieval forest. Tech doesn't work; magic does. Local knights are hunting "dragons" which the PCs learn are Draconians. Zygons have infiltrated Kelos Castle, hoping to learn the secret of "magic." Draconians have crashlanded and were investigating why there's an unauthorized colony on Saphira in the neutral zone. Zygon's bio-tech still works on Saphira. The Draconians have a standing order to bombard the planet from orbit if the Draconian scouting party isn't heard from. PCs need to contact the Draconian Dreadnaught before it sterilizes the planet.
Foes: Forest wildlife, knights with magic, Draconians, Zygons. Scaravore Clue: The magic is psychic power. The human locals are from London 2152. Their DNA has been modified by The Scaravore. Due to contact with the mined crystals on Saphira, their DNA activate and psychic powers manifest. One lucky PC will gain psychic powers. This PC will have horrible headaches until they put on a Dreamcatcher which blocks out "the voices." The Dreamcatcher is a mesh with thread and crystals in the design of a Scaravore Sigil.
In my game, the PC picked Telekinesis, so I charged him 2 Story Points (permanent cost). I used the skill description from p.59, Archbishop Edwick Foss. Typically, a Distinction like this would cost 10 XP (p.62 core book).
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Westward Bound
Time Period: 1843
Location: Earth
Pages: 22 pages
Run Time: 2 sessions
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The Plot: PCs are dropped onto the Oregon Wagon Trail. They find a small stranded group of wagons and realize a fair number of the emigrants are aliens. Some have bounties on their heads. As bodies pile up, the PCs need to ferret out the shape shifting killers. What complicates this is that there are two sets of killers competing with each other.
Foes: Dysen Teri (alien bounty hunters), The Piyuri (alien poachers) Scaravore Clue: One of the wagons has two humans, Scaravore cultists sent west to learn about mining techniques, especially tunneling.
I found it hard to tie in the cultists, so I put a few Scaravore Sigils carved onto one of the boards of their wagon. This got the PCs to talk to the cultists. I made up a story where they were told as a prophesy that in the future, the railroad would go west and would go through mountains. Also gold would be found out west and they should learn about mining. That they would need to learn these techniques for the Cult. I also told them it was foretold that Scaravore would rise again in 9 score 3 years = 183 years + 1843 = 2026.
Jax
Styne
Ben Connolly
Daniel Warner
Jim & Sarah Shankford
Swannson Family
Circling the Wagons when at rest
Campfire
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
The Mandala of Scaravore
Time Period: 2026 (present day)
Location: London, Earth
Pages: 22
Run Time: 2 sessions
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The Plot: PCs arrive in London 2026. A walking tour guide sells them a tour of London, mainly around the old Roman gates. By now, the PCs should realize the Scaravore Sigils matches the modern streets near the old Roman gate locations. The only exception is the Bank Station. Under the Bank Station in an area under construction is The Scaravore's prison, a large metallic cube. Etched on the cube are instructions to lock away/free the Scaravore. What's needed is a key of 3 parts. The PCs need to find the 3 parts and lock away the Scaravore. Foes: The Cult of Scaravore, Scaravore.
The scenario recommended that the PCs can do a statical analysis of the Sigils and figure out the 3 most likely locations of the key pieces. I didn't do that. I made them work for it. The PC who had gotten the psychic powers looked at the Mandala of Scaravore* and got flashes of 17 and the inside of a family home. PCs had to snap him out of it. With the 17 clue, they went from gate location to gate location, looking for houses with a 17 address and found the right location at about the third gate.
One Player noted that 17 Erovarac Street (backwards) = teert ScaravorE 71. After getting part of the key from here, the PCs had the psychic PC look at the Mandala again and got flashes of the church and tavern.
Scared Church of All Righteous Angels (Votive Order of Religious Ecumenical) = SCARAVORE (using the initials). How the PCs found this church was by going back in time to when the Roman wall was still present. They looked around for the other two parts of the key, but I wasn't going to make it that easy for them. I did let them notice the Christian church at Aldgate. They spoke to the priest, but that was about it. Back in 2026, they found a small church, surrounded by large buildings, the foundation of the church looked like old Roman stone. The Reverend tells them that luckily, the church owns the land since the Roman times, otherwise it'd be gone by now.
Unfortunately, The Rod and Vault didn't follow this pattern. The PCs tried two of the gates, looking at the spacing of where the key parts were found, and found The Rod and Vault at Ludgate, after spending hours going to various pubs and taverns.
The PCs got the Mandala of Scaravore* by following one of the PCs in a Street Taxi taking a ride to the homeless shelter (called the toll free number for a free ride). The other PCs followed in another non-Street Taxi. All the PCs made their mental save, but the non-Street Taxi driver didn't, so they realized the route was special. The PCs then made a GPS map of the route they took, and lo and behold, The Mandala of Scaravore. Oops!
In my run, out of the 4 PCs, only one made it to the Scaravore. The other three didn't survive the collapsing buildings (as buildings collapsed, I let them toss the key to someone else). I did think some of the tests were a bit one note, so I allowed them to use any appropriate Attribute + Skill to get past the Army of the Storm (p.106). I did follow the strict stipulation on p.108 for Final Confrontation as I wanted it to be a tough test, two successes were necessary to beat the Scaravor. The last PC succeeded, failed (lost 2 attribute pts), and succeeded (the even tougher test); and locked away the Scaravore.
I also used a lot of modern pictures of the locations, too many to post here, but here are some of the ones I used.
