Gamelandia is my go to place for Free RPG Day goodness. In addition to letting you pickup Free RPG Day goodies, they also run free RPGs. I was able to signup for two RPGs.
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6/27/2026 - 11am - 1pm (2 hrs)
Kids on Bikes
System: Kids on Bikes 2e
GM: Molly
6 Players, Ages 13+: Morgan Hua (teen bully), kid scout, teen slacker, teen scout, teen worker, teen animal friend.
I just wanted to try this out. We took 1.5 hrs generating the characters and the town we were in. So, we only spent 1/2 hr having an adventure.
I actually liked the character and town generation. You pick an age group (kid, teen, adult), then a template. A majority of the character creation is either answering set questions based on your template or a d20 die roll and table lookup which may lead to another question. PC Stats are dice which range from 1d4 to 1d20.
I wound up with Billy the Teen Bully (template). Afraid of Adults in Suits. Who is Gross (a strength) and Rebellious (a strength), and Obnoxious (a flaw). I had a Black Bike (+1 fight) with a Milk Crate (lets me carry a large item, a tuba). In my backpack was a Jar with a Scorpion in it, Firecrackers, and a Super Soaker water gun. My highest stat was Fight at 1d20+2. My weakest was Charm at 1d4. Most skills require a 8+ to succeed, during our game, we sometimes needed a 20. The good news is that dice explode, if you roll the max on a die, you keep on rolling. If you miss by 5, it's a Failure with Serious Consequences. If you miss by 10, it's a Catastrophic Failure.
We picked Las Vegas as our town. Various round-robin questions created a Ferris wheel, rollercoaster rides, an alcoholic row, a friendly homeless guy with scorpions (where I got the jar from), a radioactive nuclear crater, a church near the crater, fragile powerlines, a Joshua tree forest, a military base, etc. We drew representations on a sheet of craft paper. Some buildings were created when we rolled 1d20s onto the map and dropped buildings onto the map determined by the die roll and where the die landed.
We also created one rumor per Player which may or may not be true: The water tower is full of root beer, there are underground tunnels connecting various buildings, mutants worship under the church, ghost children ride the rollercoaster, etc. GM wrote out the rumors on Post-It notes and slapped them onto the map.
Then we were ready to play. GM asked why we were together. I proposed that since we had two scouts, we were biking to the Joshua tree forest. I wanted to get more scorpions, but lied and told the others we were going to look for a scorpion nest, so I can set my scorpion free. We find some baby scorpions and when the others were looking away, I tried to catch some more, but got stung instead (failed die roll). After some first aid which wrapped up one of my hands like a giant mitt, the kid scout (my little sister) opened the screw top lid of the jar and tried to dump out my scorpion and failed, it clung to the inside of the jar. Then another teen bully showed up. I convinced her to hold out her hand (I rolled 1d4, but got a total of 15, the d4 exploded three times which was a minor miracle) and I upended the open jar onto her palm. She fled, leaving her orange bike (10 speed) behind. We went through her stuff and looted it. The teen slacker tried to pickup my scorpion and had a Catastrophic Failure, it wound up stinging him up and down his arm. So, we had to rush him to emergency care. We had 7 bikes, but only 5 riders. Teen scout upgraded her orange bike to the 10 speed. Teen worker doubled up on teen slacker's bike which had a banana seat which can take two passengers. So we left teen worker's bike and teen scout's bike behind. On the way to the emergency room, kid scout and teen scout crashed their bikes with the teen scout getting road rash and a damaged 10 speed bike. At least we got to the emergency room, three of us needed it. End of adventure.
I enjoyed the process and random tables for the PC and world creation. This was the highlight of the system. Though it takes too much time for a one-shot. And if you skip this process and just hand out pre-gens, you miss out on all the creative fun. The game play was ok, but not great. Some tests required a 20 to succeed. I asked the GM afterwards and her response was, "You're picking up scorpions with your bare hands." Ok, point taken. I guess realistically, we would have put the jar over the scorpion and then slid a sheet of stiff paper underneath, then flipped the jar over. I guess difficulty level is all in the details.
Some other games such as Brindlewood Bay, shorten the PC creation process by having fewer questions which makes it faster to generate a PC for a one-shot. And there's no initial world creation, but details for locations are added when PCs encounter them.
For this game, the table was blessed with imaginative Players. We had an adventure with scorpions and bikes, but that was because we were willing to do risky things. This could have easily become a snore-fest. If the highlight of a game is session 0 (PC and world creation) and not the game play, there's an issue.
On what they thought was a routine task to deliver a message, a group of heroes must protect a budding Radiant from a skilled and powerful foe. Can they get to him first, and can they convince him to embrace a difficult truth?
We actually played the Free RPG Day scenario. GM had played the system before, but wasn't completely familiar with the system. We ran into some problems when we started combat. I skimmed the free Stormlight Starter rules afterwards and found that we didn't follow the combat rules at all.
I only read the first 20 pages of the first book of the Stormlight Archive series. And I had put the book down slightly more than 10 years ago. I let the other two Players pick PCs first. Both had read multiple books, one said she had read the first 4 books.
All the PCs were 3rd level or split class characters. Some PCs had 3 page character sheets. If they did magic, they had another 2 pages explaining their Stormlight abilities.
The world is very rich (though I did feel a little bit lost, not having read any of the books).
I did have fun playing. 3rd level PCs were pretty powerful, so I wonder how unbalanced this becomes at even higher levels.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
We're given a message and a magic communications token to give to a runaway rich kid. Basically we're to tell him he's forgiven and he can return home, or do whatever he likes. My fellow Players knew that since the kid was nobility, he had blue eyes. Lower caste people had brown eyes. So, we were looking for a sailor on a ship with blue eyes. We had also tracked the kid through two other ports before reaching our current location.
This is a busy port with hundreds of ships. So, the 3 PCs started making contacts with the locals, trying to figure out which ship the kid is on. We eventually figure out that some smuggler had stolen medical supplies from a close-by port. A notorious Constable was going after the smugglers and he was going to raid a ship that evening. After finding out the name of the ship, I had to sneak into the harbormaster's office and look up the ship's berth, previous port of call, cargo manifest, captain, and estimated departure date (1 week). This helped us verify that ship was probably the one we wanted.
We stake out the ship and spot the blue eyed sailor working on the ship. Using a wind magic, Divira whisks the sailor's straw hat towards us and I catch it on the docks. We use that excuse to speak to the sailor. We deliver the message, the token, and warning that the Constable was coming tonight. He tells us the theft was all him, nothing to do with the ship. He wanted to give medical supplies to the unfortunate. We gave the kid several choices: come with us (he likes his crewmates), smuggle the remaining medical supplies off ship (remove the evidence, but my cartel gets a small cut), get the captain to leave the port (as the Constable's authority ends outside of the port. Rasla's law told us this.) I also told the kid to lie to the captain as to why the ship should leave the port ASAP. But he tells the truth. Luckily, the captain agrees to leave the port.
And yes, as the ship is preparing to leave, the Constable shows up (with two lieutenants, I assume scaled to # of PCs) and we have to take care of them.
The Constable confronts the Captain. I pry up the gangplank to dump the two lieutenants into the water, but one manages to grab the ship's railing. I smash his fingers with my crowbar and dump him into the water. The Constable stabs me. Rasla loads his inkwell into his sling and gets the Constable in the face with it. Divira misses with her two-handed blade. I throw a net over the Constable. Rasla, using magic, launches the Constable off the boat and glues the netting to the pier. This gives us enough time to leave port.
We stay onboard to the next port. We got paid (pay was 200 marks, this doubles what we had on hand). We gain the kid as a contact.
A free online convention. There's a shuffler where you set the priorities for all the games you're interested in. I got into 3 games through the shuffler, then as people dropped out before the convention started, I got notified if my name comes up on the waitlist. I got into 2 more games via the waitlist. Then as the convention wound down, I got into another game via the Discord waitlist channel where they announce last minute dropouts and open seats that's available to anyone - first-come, first-served.
Lots of gaming goodness. The quality of games varied. My favorite game was the Vaesen game I played in.
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Slot 5 - Friday, June 12, 2026 at 12:00 PM (4 hrs scheduled, took 3 hrs)
Now you really ARE a person of prime import. The world around you won't function without your guidance, will it? Why then, the insolence...
"De bello mundo" is the new scenario by Carsten Pohl ("Ultima ratio", "Movie Night"). It's heavy on roleplaying and fun with a nice touch of the Cthulhu Mythos. We'll be playing an abridged version. The title is Latin and translates as "About the World War". It is definitely not a wartime scenario, though. Once play starts, you will understand why there is so little content revealed beforehand.
Pregenerated characters will be handed out beforehand. It doesn't harm if you're interested in history.
To play Cthulhu Dark, you should have 3d6 of different colours at hand.
Using the webcam is mandatory for this game because of the strong roleplaying aspect of the game.
Pre-generated characters will be provided
Characters were secret until start of play.
I enjoyed this and the twists that were presented. I think this game is probably better face-to-face where people can act out things more.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Surprise PCs: Emma as Cleopatra VII (she put on great eye shadow makeup and didn't turn on her camera until our characters saw her), Veronica as Julius Caesar, Trish as Joan d'Arc, Morgan as Genghis Kahn.
It's the standard setup where you wake up individually in a strange institution-like room. And it is, but we're all famous generals. We're all awoken and summoned to breakfast, where we get to act out and in-character, we have no idea what's going on. out-of-character, I peg Cleopatra (due to the eye shadow) and Joan d'Arc early on (which is due to good roleplaying) as we didn't tell others who we were. Part of the fun was trying to figure out who was who and trying to keep our identities partially veiled as part of the fun.
We finally realize who the others are, but we're in 1920's bodies, not our own. So, are we insane people in an institution or did something else happen. In character, I posited Reincarnation. Out of game, I was suspecting Mi-Go brain swaps.
At one point, I held a caretaker hostage with a spoon, in an effort to escape. In the end, we're told our brains were needed for a great battle to save the earth. I only agreed if I was made Khan of the earth after the battle was won and I was told it would happen (yeah, right).
We skipped the combat subsystem of leading large armies for the Mi-Go against the Shoggoths. In the end we saved earth. Khan isn't named ruler of earth and pretends he's actually a mild mannered archeologist, and escapes into the wild.
The PCs were actually various 1920s people with the brain wave patterns of famous generals imprinted over them. So, there was a chance they would revert back to their original 1920 host.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Slot 6 - Friday, June 12, 2026 at 04:30 PM (4 hrs)
Wrestling Action Wrestling: Viva La Vengaza System: World Wide Wrestling 2e (PBTA) GM: hellogold (Gold) 3-6 Players, ages 16+: geolore_ (Lore as Mr Calhoun the Manager), MrMerillat (Charles as Multilator the Hardcore), Sharkzillaa (Elliot as Sharkzilla the Call Up), Morgan Hua (as Sas-Squash the Monster)
“Wrestling is real. People are fake.” —The Silicon Valleygirl.
Step into the ring with pyrotechnics and spectacle. Create an amazing superstar, then navigate feuds in front of the camera and behind it at a star studded venue where not even the GM knows what’s gonna happen! Powered by the apocalypse.
Wrestling fandom not required.
Characters will be created during or before play by the players.
Content Warnings: Blood
I heard that this was a good system. It actually is. You play two aspects of a PC, the public facing wrestler personae and the non-public facing regular person. You deal with rising popularity (Audience), Injury, and creating fake drama to bump up your Audience. It really does a good job simulating WWE and behind the scenes. You can request matches, run into the ring, use weapons, cheat at tag team, etc.
My only issue is when a Player (or GM) really knows the wrestling moves and describes them by name, I got lost, not knowing how to visualize what was happening. What's a German Suplex? A Top Rope Shining Wizard? A Moonsault?
My PC was big, but wasn't good at real wresting moves, so it was a bit hard to describe interesting moves that weren't wresting moves. My bit was I would squash various objects like pumpkins and watermelons.
I had a good time, but there was one Player who was very intent on playing his character the same way and wasn't good at reading the room.
I made a beginner mistake of picking A Championship Title as a WANT because if you fulfill that at the end of an episode, you advance. Well, you can't win a Championship title early, but only near the end of a series. It's better to pick Adulation of the Crowd! You can actually get that and get a new Move in order to win a title later. At one point, I was scripted to win, but a PC broke the script and won, and took the title instead.
I think this is a great game if you love WWE. GM did a great job of presenting various aspects of the game.
Slot 9 - Saturday, June 13, 2026 at 07:00 AM (4 hrs)
Scent of a Killer
System: Vaesen
GM: darealju (Jubilee)
2-4 Players, ages 18+: .dmoe (Psychiatrist), JohnTyler (Academic), BryBearian (Butler), Morgan Hua (as Dagmar the Day Laborer)
A series of grisly murders have shocked Stockholm. The capital is in turmoil, the police are overwhelmed, and the hunt for the killer has been unsuccessful so far. With nowhere left to turn, Police Commissioner Gabriel Utterson has contacted The Society, a mysterious group whose members are rumored to be able to see the twisted creatures lurking in the shadows. Is the killer flesh and blood? Or is it something more sinister?
This was actually the first scenario in the City of My Nightmares campaign, modified and shortened to fit into a 4 hour one-shot.
This was my favorite game of the 6 games I played in.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
There's a series of savage murders, men torn limb from limb, all low level criminals, except for a famous Opera star (the last murder which kicks off our investigation). I pegged early that the murders were monthly and cross checked the dates with full moons. Yep. So, an early candidate was a werewolf. There were also a series of missing maids from the poor side of town. A maid's body shows up, but it is strangled with large hands.
We eventually figure out the coroner is a werewolf (one of the PCs called this out early, but we still have to find proof as we had lots of potential theories) using her sense of smell to hunt down various criminals that hadn't been caught.
We also narrow down the maid strangler as a well-dressed blond man with a doctor's bag. He gets attacked by a werewolf, and a PC actually saves his life, but he is sent to the hospital. To be tried for the strangulation murders.
We confront the coroner and find out she suspected that she was a werewolf, but didn't know. When we tell her that we saved the strangler, she's taken aback. The penny drops when we suddenly realize that the strangler is going to turn into a werewolf. We rush to the hospital, but too late, he has turned and murdered a nurse.
The coroner turns into a werewolf and chases the other werewolf. In the middle of a werewolf fight, we help take down the male werewolf. The next day, the coroner has vanished to points unknown.
One of the PCs did get infected during the fight.
As a side note, which was cool, we were told that calling someone by their true name would revert them back to their original form, we tried that with the coroner and it didn't work. So, we thought it wouldn't work. When the PC turned, I called out her name and she reverted. That's when we learned it only worked if someone close to you called you by your true name. Neat-O.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Slot 11 - Saturday, June 13, 2026 at 04:30 PM (4 hrs)
Eclipse of the Heart - A 1980s Call of Cthulhu Scenario
System: Call of Cthulhu
GM: jedi.girl (Morgan Lind)
4-6 Players: bee_four (Bill as Luke the Jock), daupo (as Marlowe the Theatre kid), RailEuropeGroups (David B as Dex Ronson the Nerd), danika.12 (Max as Zane the Burnout), EerieLunarose (as Veronica Libby the Diva), Morgan Hua (as Brian Locke the Prep)
May 11, 1985: It's prom night, Hamilton High seniors! Bring your dates, your big hair, and your corsages, and be prepared to have the time of your life! Nothing bad *ever* happens on prom night? Right
Pre-generated characters will be provided
Content Warnings: Content Warnings are harm to teenagers, blood/gore, death, 80s hair, teenage angst, possession, and PvP.
This game started a little bit slow as we're just vibbing off of the 1980's. That was the best part, the actual mystery was only ok.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
I don't think anything happened in the first half, it was all 1980's nostalgia and setting up the prom. Fights start breaking out at the prom as various people get aggressive and also make inappropriate advances.
We eventually figure out that Jamie Spink, ex-girlfriend of Luke (Luke is now back with Veronica), summoned a Wraith (Cupid) which possessed her and used its supernatural powers to lockdown the school and cause mayhem.
We learn the spell to bind and banish the Wraith from the library. Get salt from the cafeteria and an artifact arrowhead from the library. We cast the two spells as Jamie floats up in the air, suffer various telekinetic attacks, and banish the Wraith.
My PC went from 40 SAN to 51, after the SAN rewards for saving the day.
Highlights:
Luke and Veronica look for Jamie, but stop in the cafeteria, and windup making out instead. Luke's Player quips, we deserve to die. They do discover the salt, but pick up some kitchen knives instead.
Luke tries to talk to Jamie, and he gets telekinetically thrown across the hall. Well, that didn't work.
In passive-aggressive fashion, I took the 3rd place runner up for prom queen as my date and dress her up to the nines to outshine Veronica who's the prom queen. (Selecting the 2nd place girl would have been too obvious, and making the 3rd place winner outshine Veronica is a power move). Veronica quips, that's why I hate you.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Slot 14 - Sunday, June 14, 2026 at 07:00 AM (4 hrs, took 3 hrs)
The Dunwich Horror
System: The Cthulhu Conspiracy
GM: grahamwalmsley (Graham)
2-4 Players, ages 18+: hilmar_firestarter (Hilmar as Dr Avery Pickman - archivist), JimOphee (Jim as Reese Wade - chief reporter), dolphhinhat (Paul Fitz as Red Brown - tech wizard), Morgan Hua (as Kim Danforth - editor)
Back in February, there was a break-in at the Sussex Archives. The burglar, who was caught on CCTV, was a local man identified as Will Whately. He was attacked by a guard dog, which, for some reason, went straight for his throat. Will Whately died at the scene.
But it gets stranger. The Sussex Archives is in Dunwich, where an occult book called the Necronomicon is rumoured to have entered the UK.
What was Whately after in the archive? And why did a highly-trained guard dog kill him so ferociously?
The Cthulhu Conspiracy is a game of modern day investigative horror. We’ll create the story collaboratively and, although it’ll be loosely inspired by The Dunwich Horror by HP Lovecraft, it’ll go much deeper and stranger.
This is a playtest. We've played before and had fun, but there's always the risk it won't work this time or won't fill the whole slot!
Pre-generated characters will be provided
Content Warnings: It's collaborative, so it's hard to know what'll come up, but the X-card will be in play
The system isn't quite baked yet as the endgame wasn't quite there, but it was a playtest. This was a good game because we had a really good table of Players. Graham wanted to just observe (and take notes) for the playtest and tried to make minimal intrusions.
I enjoyed it because the Players created/forced a satisfying story and ending. Which Graham told us was unique for the playtests that he had run. Most of the time, they just sort of end without a full story arc.
Graham acknowledged we gave him good feedback.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Roll 2d6 or 3d6 (if it can be dangerous), look at max, if you get a 5 or 6, get a new lead; 1-4, learn something new about an existing lead. If you rolled a 1 or 2, look up a Pushback based on the dice rolled. Use these to build out a conspiracy diagram.
GM and designer said of our game: "One of the best conspiracy diagrams I've seen in The Cthulhu Conspiracy."
In the end, we discovered there's competing branches of the Whateley family: one that wants to turtle every 188 years, one that wants to prevent the cometary disaster.
The PCs are posting articles, videos, and livestream the final event. The goal: get enough clicks to afford an espresso machine for the office. Before the PCs leave for the ritual of prevention, the editor orders an espresso machine, we've reached 1M viewers and Patreon subscribers. Join now before the end of the world!
In the end, a fragment of the comet arrives, heading toward the Great Stone of Fourstones (soon to be five). PCs are handed robes and join the ritual. Signs of Apophis glow at the site. The Skriker appears circling the ritual (it had previously killed Will Whateley and attacked the Cubic Arch Lodge). Giant teeth come out of the ground to encircle the cultists. The cult leader speaks of swallowing the offerings, and shedding its skin for renewal for another 188 years. A bright glowing light grows in size, heading towards the Great Stone, filling the camera's view. White out.
Credits roll.
In the Dunwich After Dark's offices (our HQ), there's a layer of dust on the old dining room table, a laptop pings as clicks reach 2 million hits. Outside is a battered and weathered Amazon delivery box, a damaged corner reveals an espresso machine. Fade to black.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Slot 15 - Sunday, June 14, 2026 at 12:00 PM (4 hrs)
Miles to Go
System: Call of Cthulhu
GM: highsummer (Erasmus)
3-5 Players, ages 16+: benji04202 (Benji as Philip Riddle - accountant), balrog_aca71 (as Hank Crozier - HR consultant), lecoco (Elizabeth as Rose Bennich - jr exec), viralload (as Brock Rhodes - corp burnout), Morgan Hua (as Tyler Park - corp tiger)
April 2022. The Caldecott Convention Center squats in the vacant downtown of Fort Wayne, Indiana. The hustle and bustle of the PERMIT 2022 event brought an artificial bloom of pop up booths and hype men across the sea of cracking cement over the last few days. Yesterday morning they were gone like a mirage, only fast food wrappers and crumpled fliers left littered in their wake. The attached hotel was the last to go still, catering the waves of security professionals and insurers checking out with their heads stuffed full of seminar talks and management secrets.
Everyone’s gone. Well everyone except you. The unlucky members of the NexRel Corporation’s mid Atlantic division have been stranded without answers for days as corporate fights the airline over overflow seating. Watching the hours tick by in the empty lobby is infuriating, yet you’ve been forced to do nothing but wait as the issue is ‘negotiated’. Amidst the boredom and empty platitudes, a rumor has spread of an ‘alternative travel solution’. It’ll have to be a good one, because to get home you still have many ‘MILES TO GO’
Pre-generated characters will be provided
Content Warnings: Claustrophobia, Vehicle Accidents, Gore, Suffocation, Physical Violence, Corporate Culture, Survivor's Guilt, Chemical Warfare, Mass Casualty Event
This game started a bit slow, but then it gained momentum and got better as we searched for a unique solution.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
PCs are told in order to get to our HQ in Washington DC, we had to take a chartered bus. Of course, it also has other passengers including our corporate rivals, college kids, and several old ladies.
On our way home, we stop at a rest stop and pickup a new passenger, Mr Craig Black, self professed member of NexRel's Acquisitions Dept. Rose convinces Mr Black to show her the contents of his briefcase which contains a handgun and a jug of liquid. We see a stream of police vehicles go in the opposite direction of our travel. A PC looks up news reports and finds out that where we're heading there's been a chemical accident / release / disaster. We tell the bus driver to take an alternate route.
Eventually, the red cloud of chemicals reach our bus. Mr Black gives us duct tape and tells us to seal the windows and doors (including the bathroom). The chemical will kill us. He also tells us the fog lasts for 5 hrs. We have 3 hrs of oxygen in our bus, we'll be CO2 suffocated in 1.5 hrs. The only solution is to kill 14 passengers now. He hands Rose the gun. The PCs refuse to kill.
Yeah, I think all the Players sort of figured out what was happening and we didn't want to just be murder hoboes. We wanted to go as far as we could without killing people. At one point, we created a dry suit from raincoats and duct tape. A PC rigged a blower from the air condition unit, to blow the fog out the door when I exited. I had to refuel the bus. I got it done, but when I got back into the bus, some of the fog got inside.
Hank, affected by the gas, fell unconscious and swam up out of the darkness to the surface, had a vision of people at an old-timey picnic on grass and trees, right before he was dragged back down into his body.
A PC saw creatures in the gas watching us. Mr Black tells us they want to watch us for entertainment. That PC cut a deal with them. Their voice came out of the bus radio, made of snippets of dialog and song from random radio stations. It offered 1 life for 1 life. If you kill someone, you were saved. This started off violence from the other passengers. One of the old ladies fired a gun, trying to save her granddaughter and missed and shattered one of the bus windows.
This time, 3 of the PCs, the bus driver, and some of the other passengers fell unconscious. One PC got control of the bus. Another fought the leader of the competing corporation who was executing unconscious people with the old lady's gun.
Meanwhile, the 3 PCs who fell unconscious ended up at the picnic and at the picnic are the same creatures who now have pinned down the PCs. Rose recognizes the people picnicking is the family of the founder of NexRel in 1890. This is when I cut a deal with Worthy Mycroft, the founder. If I could stay with him, I'd help him with my future knowledge, companies to buy, technology of the future. I convince Hank to stay too. Rose cuts a different deal, she wants to go back and run the company, telling Worthy to take over the media (newspapers, magazines, and radio) to shape the future. Worthy agrees. I tell Worthy I don't want to be CEO, just head of Acquisitions.
In the end, NexRel rescues the bus, recovering Rose (now CEO), Philip, and Brock (and Mr Black). Hank and Tyler are missing. The world has changed, NexRel runs most of the world. Rose et al are brought to the HQ and meet 100+ yr old Hank and Tyler in high tech life support who congratulate them for a job well done.
In the epilogue, Tyler praises Mr Black for another completed mission, told him to take 2 weeks of well deserved vacation and to be ready for his next task.
GM said one group, went murder hobo, killing people and as obstacles showed up, continued to kill and kill and kill. Another group decided to kill Worthy, which changed the timeline and saved them from the bus trip. We were the first to cut a deal and made the world a NexRel paradise. We were cut throat sales people. 😊
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.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
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.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
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.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
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.
