Below are no spoilers about the games – mostly about my impressions about the various game systems and the event.
1. Wilson Zorn's Apocalypse World: Red and Green. Friday 2pm.
No one is sure what life used to be like, but it was better. The great Golden Arches attest to that. The Fertile Bowl, an overstatement of a name, is the best hope for those wanting safety and supplies - but also a great target for those wanting to steal those. Nearby the Redlands are kicking up dust as a new Hard-Holder is amassing untold power. And The Locusts are coming. And then there's the usual Black Rain and Red Winds and Psychic Maelstrom. Life's a bitch. And then...
I was waiting to signup for Jack Young's Godlike game at 6pm. Shannon told me that the signup forms were posted early and people would line up to get into the non-shuffler games. So, I showed up at noon and found out that registration didn't open until 1pm and that it looked like signup sheets didn't get put up until an hour before the scheduled game. Darn, now I have 4 hours to burn until the signup sheets showed up. I ran into Noam and Mark and they were milling about, so we decided to try out Apocalypse World, one of the games on my "to try" list. Wilson was in the gaming room with only one signup. All three of us crashed the game, but told Wilson that we couldn't stay for the whole game and asked if that was alright with him. I guess we had Wilson over a barrel considering he only had one player (sorry Wilson). During the game, Shannon calls and tells me the signup sheets for Jack's game was up -- near 3pm, so I run out and find 4 names already on the signup sheet. At one point Noam had to leave and he thought for good, but then he dropped back into the game. I left early to play in Jack's game. Random people would show up, make noise and leave. So, considering the circumstances, Wilson had a lot of adversities to overcome. There was no way Wilson could bring his A-game with all these distractions going on.Wilson's GM style is to ask questions about your character during character generation, mostly in a round-robin order. Each character is a template with multiple choice answers, even character names. We would create small chunks of each character and read aloud what we've selected. This allows the whole table to listen in and collaborate. Wilson would ask you questions to clarify details about your character and relationships between characters. It felt like character generation took up about half our time, but it was the most interesting aspect of the game.
You have two aspects that are highlighted. If you use that aspect, you gain an experience token. After 5 experience tokens, you can turn them in for a new talent. This means that in one sitting you can ramp up your talents several times.
Mark had a 3 legged, triple jointed, mechanic that lived in a junkyard filled with lethal traps. Noam had a psychic Brainer in a old fashioned diving suit with a Freddie Kruger knife claw. I had a Hocus in a white suit and preached the Truth, we always told the truth no matter what -- not the smartest thing for a Post-Apocalyptic setting. The official signup (I don't remember her name) had a healing Angel with nasty weapon skills.
The setting is always an Apocalyptic setting, so unless the GM spends a lot of time world building, you'll wind up with a bad Sci Fi movie setting. Due to how fast you gain experience tokens, people ramp up skills very fast. So, an Apocalypse World game would run for probably 5 sessions before the characters are maxed out, so unless you plan on running multiple campaigns in the same setting, you wouldn't spend time building a highly detailed world.
Each character is a power in their own right, even though they all belong to the same Hold. So, each character had an introductory scene. Then the characters started to slowly find their way to the same scene. Due to this, there’s lots of wait time, as we switch from character to character. There were few character to character interactions. Lots of character to NPC interactions. Once we got to the climax, we were too busy firing weapons to interact.
I think Apocalyptic World at a con would work better if the characters were thrown into the same scene earlier with pre-set conflicts; it would have sped the game along faster.
But I finally was able to try Apocalypse World. Thanks Wilson, and I apologize for making your game not the best experience. I truly hope that your KublaCon was like Shannon’s: “After Friday, it only got better.”
2.Jack Young’s Godlike: The Wolves of St. Croix. Friday 6pm.
Winter, 1944. As the sky turns grey and snow blankets the French countryside, Patton’s Third Army creeps forward against orders during an uneasy winter stalemate.
Your Talent Operation Group has been assigned to vanguard elements of the 25th Calvary Recon Squadron, currently deployed in hills above the provincial village of Frahan. The last patrol sent to reconnoiter the surrounding forest hasn’t report in and you’re being sent into those dark woods to find out why.
The world of GODLIKE is a gritty, deadly, alternative WWII setting for mature gamers. Players play average soldiers gifted with extraordinary paranormal abilities known as “Talents”. These Talents set you apart from humanity and make you larger than life. But the war is larger than you.
Jack is a damn good GM. I’ve been in several of his games and he never fails to deliver a complex and engaging game.Though the characters were pre-generated, we still spent over an hour going over the One-Roll Engine and reviewing our characters. A necessary evil.
In Godlike, each character has one talent, a super skill that makes each person ex-ordinary. We didn’t wear primary colored tights, but WWII army gear.
I found the combat system amazing. It is perfect for chaotic gun battles. I don’t think it’ll work for sword and shield games. Each player in round-robin declares their action. Then everyone rolls dice and depending on what is rolled, we see who goes first and the outcome based on how many matches you get and how high that number was.
People would shoot at the same target and it would get nailed multiple times even though it was dead 4 bullets ago. Targets you were aiming at, suddenly move out of range or die before you get to fire.
The only slight flaw is that since the declarations are done around the table, if you listen to the people declaring before you, you can meta-game and make your decisions based on what people ahead of you at the table have declared. Of course, the action sequence would be based on the to-be-determined die roll, but you get a slight edge. Good players should just look at the tactical situation on the board and act accordingly.
Gil Trevizo was waiting to signup for this game even before I was. I think he was the first name on the signup sheet. Gil’s character was a soldier whose talent was hyper-fast hand-to-hand combat moves.
As part of character generation, I decided I had a pet Badger named Valarie Heart and it became our squad’s mascot.
Jack: Are you keeping it a secret?
Morgan: It wouldn’t be much of a mascot if it was.
Jack: What do you do with it when you get deployed?
Morgan: I take it with me in my ruck sack.
Jack: Badgers are mean and nasty and wouldn’t like that and would make a lot of noise.
Gil: We dope it up with morphine.
Gil got an unanimous vote for best character in Jack’s game. In the big boss fight, Gil’s character gets set on fire from a distance. Instead of rolling in the snow to put it out, he runs all the way across the board (due to his hyper-melee skills, otherwise he would only be able to move a couple of feet), past several trees, a parked car, dead bodies, jumps a fallen log, past a half-track, over a Nazi, and then screams at the top of his lungs “Badgers GO First!” and punches the face of the Boss Monster. The Boss Nazi Monster draws a pistol and fires at the same time. Gil's brass knuckles caves in the Boss Nazi’s face as Gil takes a bullet to the head and both fall backwards dead.
Amazing GM, amazing system, amazing players.
3. Travis Lindquist’s Little Fears: Pop Goes the Weasel. Sat 1pm.
You've seen...well, things! Monsters under the bed. And then at school, some kids noticed. And you noticed them notice. And now you've got a club. Literally. And figuratively.
But Dennis, turns out he wasn't playing the same game as everyone else! He popped poor Mary, and now he's on the run, and you have to catch him!
I had signed up for Travis’s “Notre Dame De Reims” as a backup in case I didn’t get in Jack’s game. I thought I could cancel out of Travis’s game once I got into Jack’s, but since I was playing in Wilson’s Apocalypse game, I felt really bad if I skipped out just to adjust my schedule on the Shuffler, so I mistakenly thought I still had time to do this between Wilson’s game and Jack’s game. The line at the PC’s for the shuffler was 20 feet long and people took their sweet time on the system. I spoke to one of the help staff and they said they would try to cancel me out of Travis’s game, but no promises. Well, it was 6pm and Travis’s game wasn’t until 8pm. Guess what? They didn’t cancel me out of Travis’s game. So, one day into the Con, and my signup weight was probably shot to shit since I played in two games and was scheduled for another where I didn’t show up. So, I was happy I got into this game through the Shuffler.I had played in one of Travis’s game at Minicon. Unfortunately, for that game there were only 3 players for a Civil War: Jack, me, and some girl that didn’t do much. Shannon had played in the game previously and told me what a great game it was – how the Union and Confederate characters fought amongst each other in addition to the main nasties. I was lucky that Jack was in the game. Though we were both Union soldiers, we actually had a great animosity towards each other. He shot my horse and tried to shoot me and left me to die as a pack of unearthly creatures chased us. I still don’t know why I saved his character’s ass at the end, maybe because his character’s wife was one sweet piece of ass and she would never let me sleep with her again if I let him die. :-)
I had heard good things about Little Fears and wanted to try it. The feeling I had was “Monsters, Inc.” Closets that open to another twisted dimension with monsters in it. But we belonged to the Monster Bashing Club. Though we feared monsters, we hunted and killed them. That was why I thought it was more akin to a Disney movie than Nightmare on Elm St.
Character creation follows the fill out the questionnaire format. The questions are about what makes the character afraid, what they love, and their family. Characters go from 6 to 12 years old. We were allowed to pick from ages: 6, 8, 10, 12 with no duplicates. The problem is that unless you have children of your own or have read a child psychology development book, some players are unable to play children. At our table, one player showed up 1 hour late (dropped her stuff off early and said I’ll be back – we thought it was going to be only a few minutes) and played a 7 year old girl that was definitely much more mature than 7 – if anything, she seemed very much like an adult. When we took a break, she came back ½ hour late also.
The qualities were a bit unbalancing depending on what you picked. What would have helped would have been a list of examples. I picked athletic. That trait seemed to apply to too many tests.
The best moment I had was when my character ran across a fight between a character and a shape-stealing monster that had taken his shape. My character had been frightened enough to lose all of his care and speech, so he started clubbing one of the two kids to death – luckily I picked the right one (there were hints). The other children looked on in horror and tried to speak to me. Mute, I just kept on clubbing the monster into pulp. This also gave the other characters a horrible flashback to the hook at the beginning of the adventure. When I was finally calmed down, I could speak again and said, “Ok, done” and tried to hand the goo smeared baseball bat to the character that had reached through my madness and asked for the bat.
The problem was that the setting was supposed to be creepy and scary, but with the setup that we’ve killed monsters before, I felt that the fear level was greatly reduced. It would have been better if we were neophytes.
We filled out these forms for the character, but it didn’t seem to tie into the game very much. Not like Don’t Rest Your Head, where the questions are key to your character and story.
I think allowing people to pick different ages gave some variety, but it changed the chemistry because there were no peers. It would have been better to have most of the characters to be the same age and maybe one would be older and be the club leader.
The players were avg to excellent (Wilson Zorn was in this game too). The GM was imaginative. The game just didn't gel very well.
4. Wilson Zorn's Don't Rest Your Head: Rural People Have Dreams Too. Sat 7pm.
You can't sleep. It started like that for all of us, back when we were garden variety insomniacs. Maybe you had nightmares (God knows we all do now), or maybe you just had problems that wouldn’t let you sleep. Hell, maybe you were just over-caffeinated - or maybe it was the meth...but then something clicked. That was when you wandered into the Dark Forest and came across what locals call the Bizarre Bazaar, which was sort of like the Farmer's Market back home...except for the cloaked old woman with the long nose, big teeth, and flashing eyes selling children...and the local deputies who all look exactly like Barney Fife but with gunbelts...and the well-dressed mafiosi-looking men with clocks for faces...
This is Don't Rest Your Head but for the small town/rural set. We'll make characters together and explore those characters' dreams and nightmares - the real world, the one most of us only visit when we sleep.
It's Wilson again. I've played in both Mike Garcia's Don't Rest Your Head games which are excellent and I've played it two other times with different GMs which were more akin to Road Runner and Bugs Bunny cartoons, more dreamlike and less menacing. I prefer the dark and twisted.Wilson's Don't Rest Your Head is set in a Rural Area instead of in the Mad City. He added his own Mythology which was great.
Wilson was on fire. The other players were top notch and I had an amazing time. One gal played a split personality mom that worked at a diner, J played a priest about to lose her church, and Victor played a loser art teacher retuning to his home town to one-up his town. I played a depressed farmer that was about to lose his farm who sleep walks and runs the thresher machine in his sleep.
I was floored by the gal playing the split personality when she stood up and did her scene in the diner. Well, that's a great performance. No one's going to top that. Then it was J's turn. She got the Archetype Preacher to fill the pews with spirits to listen to her speech and instead of just telling us what she was going to say and rolled some dice, she actually started a real sermon -- and it wasn't gibberish either. It was actually pertinent to the game. Holy Smokes.
Wilson's NPCs were spot on too. It was an incredible experience.
5. Morgan Hua's Grimm: Trick or Treat. Sun 3pm.
It's Halloween and your group of friends are going Trick or Treating. Your younger sister is tagging along and you're responsible -- and she vanishes -- on the other side of the train tracks, on the bad side of town. You and your friends search for her and wind up in Grimm. Grimm is full of twisted fairy tales and dark menace.
3rd-grade starting characters will be generated at the game. Character Archetypes are: The Bully, The Dreamer, The Jock, The Nerd, The Normal Kid, The Outcast, and The Popular Kid.
The tone of the game is dark with a overlay of humor as it is a world of twisted and fractured fairy tales. The juxtaposition of a serious dark world (that the children live in) with a deliberate tongue-in-cheek world overlay (which as players we will recognize on a meta-level) creates an odd dissonance.
What I liked about Grimm was the setting. It's a twisted Brother's Grimm Fairy Tale land. Where as Little Fears is modern urban fantasy, this taps the myths. Also little children are more familiar with fairy tales. I enjoy the shock of discovery when you can map the twisted version of the tale vs the ones we well know.
The system uses a single d6. Well sometimes you roll two when you specialize -- I forgot about that until we started play and everyone had already pulled out a d6. The system is very simple and is non-crunchy and pretty stupid. If two kids wail at each other with fists, they won't hurt each other unless one gets very, very, very lucky. The result would be two kids rolling on the ground until they get tired. e.g. characters can roll dice until their face turns blue before they can hurt each other. Of course, monsters are much bigger and much more dangerous.
So it was time for my game and who's there? Wilson Zorn and June Garcia, and nobody else. Four no shows. June immediately calls the Shannon network and bang. We fill the table. We get the one and only Shannon McNamara, Bryan Hitchcock, and two guys who show up and say, "Is this D&D 3.5?" "No?" "Do you have room?" With fear and trepidation, I say, "Yes." But then I do the Shannon speech and see if I can scare them off.
I tell them it uses 1d6 ONLY. And that my gaming style is that there will be few dice rolls. I stare into their faces and see if they flee. They SIT DOWN.
Half an hour later, three guys show up and said they were registered, but their car had broken down. The dangers of carpooling. Sorry, we're full up.
When I run a con game, I have a timeline for each scene. To check for timing, I need to glance at my watch. I don't wear a watch anymore and generally use my cell phone to tell the time, but me flipping up my cellphone every once in while is a distraction, so I dig through my drawer of watches and the only watch that still has a running battery is a cheap plastic Shrek 2 watch with the Donkey on it -- perfect. If the game runs behind, I can cut scenes or hurry the players along. If I'm ahead, I can add extra scenes or let some scenes run longer. I finished my game at about 9:09pm. Right on time.
The game was fantastic. I had a blast and the interaction between the players was hilarious. At one point I was doing the voice for one of Humpty Dumpty's Guards and I suddenly realize I'm channeling Keanu Reeves's voice from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure -- WTF? Where did that come from?
The game came together very well and everything fell into the groove. Even the objects players brought into the Grimm world became significant and organic to the story -- I couldn't have planned it any better.
Everybody played their characters to perfection, even the two new guys who asked about D&D 3.5. There was even a moment when two players said the same line at the same time.
Bryan bought me a beer afterwards and told me that two games at KublaCon made it all worthwhile and one of them was mine. I'm stunned and humbled. Thank you Brian.
June afterwards gushed about my cracked and crazed Humpty Dumpty NPC. Thank you June.
I told Shannon, there's no way I can run this game again. If I did and it sucked, it would be a great let down. The game went from potential disaster to exultation.
6. Jill Stapleton's Call of Cthulhu: The Howard Project. Mon 10am.
It’s 1852 and San Fransicso is bursting at the seams. The Sherrif is overwelmed and organized vigilante groups regularly take justice into their own hands. Earthquake and fire are constant dangers and with no way to get water to the fires, the volunteer fire brigades fight ineffectually. In the midst of the chaos, rumors say that many of these fires are started by people… not as arsons, as the source: spontaneous human combustion. Other rumors are worse.
I show up and there's no Shannon. He told me the Shuffler gave him a seat. I thought, it would be ironic if he didn't show up and I got his seat. The clock gets to 10am and finally Shannon shows up. We get Mike Garcia (he didn't get in Gil's game either), Shannon McNamara, Nick, Geoffrey, some guy who showed up late (and Shannon said he was one of the people who's car broke down yesterday), and I.
Hey, where's Wilson Zorn? It was getting to feel like Dead of Winter. At the first Dead of Winter, Shannon and I were in every game together and we had carpooled to the game together and we were sharing the same room. I told Matt Steele that there might be a murder before the end of Dead of Winter.
Jill's game was very well constructed. One of the smoothest Call of Cthulhu investigations I've ever been in.
Shannon's Vigilante and Nick's Volunteer Fireman were the best played characters.
My best character moment was when the creature latched onto my character. I had the non-combat character, with the least hit points, that doesn't carry any weapons and hangs back. And who gets attacked first? Exactly. :-)
Another top notch game.
7. Afterwards.
After gaming, a number of us hung out and socialized. We compared notes and talked about good and bad players and good and bad games. Since some GMs run the same game multiple times, we get to hear stories of the most amazing games and the most horrible disasters. Same game, same GM, different players and different results.
Shannon said, "50% GM, 50% Players." I think he's right. Also one bad player can sink the whole game. But several great players can elevate the whole table. Wilson's DRYH game and my Grimm game had that experience.
Shannon is now trying to get me to go to CelestiCon. We'll see.
I also have a really twisted wicked game idea for Matt Steele's Dead of Winter -- that should only be run at the Dead of Winter location. I had the idea at the first Dead of Winter, but now it makes even more sense to run it.
