Again, due to weather and time, I didn't get to visit the Foresthill Bridge, but I got to visit the Haggin Museum in Stockton and see the Alex Ross exhibit. The Haggin Museum is a small museum situated in a nice park. It contains some historical displays about the early days of Stockton and a fine art collection. I was in there for about two hours.
The art of Alex Ross was very interesting and the museum included Norman Rockwell and J.C. Leyendecker pieces that influenced his work. And the Haggin collection has over 50 Leyendeckers, the largest of any museum.
Shannon M. and I went through the museum and Frank F., uninterested in comic book art, decided to skip "The Jewel of Stockton" and visit a Starbucks instead. So much for getting some culture. :-)
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Sunday 11am Game System: Call of Cthulhu, 7th Edition
Scenario Title: The Woebegone Winter
GM: Josh Clark & John Castillo
Variations: Modified sanity rules
Power Level: Plain ol’ Humans
Number of Players: 6
Characters Provided: Yes Description:A family treks across the 1850′s
American frontier to lay claim to a plot of land bursting with gold, but
what they find once the snow starts to fall should have stayed buried.
Players: Badger M. Dovi A. Gil T. Jack Y. Matt A. Morgan H.
An amazing game. I guess I'm becoming jaded by CoC games that follow the template of follow the clue trails, figure out how to kill the big bad, and then confronting the big bad. Well, this game was way different. The players were excellent and we picked the right scenes to highlight and pulled in the right PCs at the right time. It was one of those games where everything clicked and worked out.
The game was full of surprises brought on by the players. Some gems were:
Dovi wrapping his fleece jacket into swaddling and playing a crying baby audio from his cell phone as he rocked the "baby."
Gil started as the most hated PC and wound up being a favorite and the only survivor.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
This game was more Donner Party than The Waltons. There has been a trend of resource management games, maybe brought on by Euro-gaming. For RPGs, Trail of Cthulhu and Torchbearer come to mind. I found the record keeping in Torchbearer a bit mind numbing -- I mean if I wanted to keep track of supplies, I'd play Be An Accountant, The LARP, The endless record keeping and grind of Torchbearer becomes more tedious than fun. In this game, as supplies ran low, we didn't keep track of any supplies, but we felt the unrelenting cold and lack of food. So, what I'm saying is that you don't need recording keeping mechanics to simulate starvation and despair. One interesting conceit was that there was no supernatural agency in this whole game. We saw things that might have been supernatural, but we didn't get attacked by strange creatures or find magic spells or face a big bad. We faced our own wants and desires, our own hearts of darkness, and a very, very cold winter. My favorite bits were: 1. We were attacked by wolves and we wound up hitting none of them because of a string of bad die rolls. 2. Jack shot at a wolf and caused an avalanche that started a chain reaction that was exciting and horribly tragic. The avalanche caused the river we were crossing to flash flood and it flipped our wagon. We lost an ox, our wagon, most of our supplies and most tragically, a baby who's head was bashed against a rock. Dovi's character also broke her ankle. 3. Finding that the gold was a scam and that I (I played the patriarch) had brought tragedy to my whole family. The trip also revealed horrible truths about my family. When I found that I had been had, I rolled 2d10 and got a 20 point san loss -- how appropriate was that? 4. After finding the baby was dead and that my son was having an affair with my wife (and the baby was theirs), I wanted to reconcile with my son who understandably was avoiding me. I said, "We need to talk, but I know this is not the time. We should sit in prayer and contemplate why this has happened." My son (played by Badger) then punched me. 5. I was allowed to save one item after the wagon was destroyed with all our supplies. Some people picked some useful items. I picked the family bible. 6. Gil played the only non-family member, an ex-soldier and drunken guide. Everybody hated him, but he did save some of us and he was saved twice by Patience (Matt's character) during the flash flood. He wound up returning to Placerville to get some supplies, but when he returned to the mining camp, everyone else was dead. Because the players were so good and the GMs were flexible, we were allowed to create scenes where we interacted with each other. Each scene we invented seemed real and were real gems.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Saturday 7pm
Game System: Call of Cthulhu 6th ed
Scenario Title: Pale Harvest
GM: Badger McInnes Variations:Maybe
Power Level:Competent Officers
Number of Players: 6
Characters Provided: Yes
Description: Los Angeles, 1950. In the late 40s, the
Los Angeles Police Department created what became to be known as the
“Gangster Squad”- an elite group of police officers, reporting directly
to Chief of Police William Parker. Their job: to combat organized crime
in LA, and to eradicate mob boss Mickey Cohen. Given wide latitude, you
and other members of the Gangster Squad were able to use any means
necessary to stamp out the mob.
That’s your official duty, anyway. But Chief Parker has called you
and a few of your fellow officers in with an assignment that he says he
needs to bury in the books of the Squad (which itself is buried in the
LAPD’s finances). Seems some teenage girls have been gone missing. One
body has been found. The press hasn’t gotten a hold of it yet, but it’s
only a matter of time before they do. And the last thing the department
needs is another Black Dahlia PR disaster. Your assignment: find the
girls. Find out who’s kidnapping them. Bring them to justice. By any
means necessary.
Note: This Call of Cthulhu scenario deals with sensitive
topics of an adult nature. Strong investigative elements and role playing
emphasized. Mature players only. Players: Anthony B. Morgan H. Shannon M. Jill S. Gil T. Jack Y.
Another great game with great players. I'd seen the movie "Gangster Squad," and enjoyed it. We basically played the characters from the movie, but instead of busting Mickey Cohen, we were solving a CoC mystery. I was entirely immersed in the police procedural and loved it: multiple clue trails, red herrings, dead ends, interrogations, bribery and murder. What was there to not like?
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The beginning was a bit slow because we broke up into three teams of two and as two PCs followed a clue trail, the other four players had to sit it out, so we would have to wait a fair bit before we could have our turn at a potential clue. This game did fit the standard CoC template, but it emphasized the following of the clue trails. In most games, the big finale was the big bad confrontation. This game was more front-loaded and de-emphasized the other two parts of the CoC template. So, this game felt very different for me and was refreshing.
If we were playing ToC, we would have just spent some Resource points and gotten our clues, but I think we would have missed out really trying to solve the mystery by using our own brains instead of simple point spends.
Early on, we found one of the girls at a home for wayward youths and thought the clue was a dead end. In a nice twist, we actually had to face the mastermind at that place. At another point, we busted a brothel (like the one in the movie) and found one of the missing girls there and found that the other missing girls were "bought" by a farmer. Taking down the brothel was where we showed that we were bad asses and could kick butt. We caught the farmer and was able to find his farm and another twist was that the farmer and his father were killing girls who were infected. The only way to remove the infection was chopping off their hands and head. Then we found out that the home for wayward youths were infecting the children and sending them out into the world. At the home, we confronted the matron who came with us quietly -- which is another nice twist. There was no big fight. But when we put her into a restraining chair and started a ritual, we had a moment of panic as she started transforming and we had a string of bad luck as we failed to chop off her head and hands -- critical fails all around -- for maybe about 6 die rolls. Once that was done, the question of what to do with the children came up. Luckily, Jack's character went insane and without telling us, got a school bus, loaded up the children and drove them off a cliff. There was some discussion as to having the players make a hard moral choice at the end as the finale. But by then, I understood my character and I would have chosen to just put the children into an institution. So, having Jack get rid of the children did not bother me. I had already made up my mind at that point. So, an interesting and different game. I enjoyed it a lot.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Sunday 11am
Game System: Call of Cthulhu 6th Edition
Scenario Title: Thirty-Five Miles to Jalalabad
GM: Gil Trevizo
Variations: None
Power Level: Wives and Daughters
Number of Players: 6
Characters Provided: Yes Description: It’s been five days and three thousand
dead since the column left Kabul, where not long ago you were drinking
madeira wine and watching the men play cricket amidst what then seemed a
bastion of the British Empire. The men had taken Afghanistan back in
1839, all for Queen, country, and the greater profit of the British East
India Company. Now, just three years later, the men had lost
Afghanistan, lost your homes in Kabul, and perhaps lost all your lives.
As the snows deepen and the tribesmen snipe from the mountaintops,
rumors have spread that the women and children will be allowed to
surrender. Nonetheless, your husbands and fathers have spoken and it
will not be: a proper Englishman would never allow their woman to fall
into the hands of these rapacious savages, not when the column is so
close, just thirty-five miles left to go before safety awaits at the
garrison in Jalalabad. Players: Marcus F. Janaki S. Shannon M. Morgan H. Skylar W. Scott M.
Another really good game. This time Gil has taken some mechanics from independent storytelling games and put them in CoC. Given the historical context, Gil gave us scene cards where we read out the historical event and we made up a scene with our characters. This added or subtracted points from our bonds.
More great players and the incredible Gil, who ran this game again right afterwards to replace Dovi's game (who had gotten very sick with the flu). Gil was also sick and I would be surprised if he still had his voice the next day.
Kudos to Skylar who played an amazing Grand Dame, the epitome of British stiff upper lip, unperturbed by almost everything: from a starving death march to gunfire by Afghan savages.
The game was unrelenting and grim. Perfect for DoW.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
In this game, Gil treated our Con points and Hit points as resources. As we did the death march, we continued to get worn down by losing Con points; once those were gone, we'd lose Hit points. San points were also lost as we watched the horror of war and attrition remove all the hope that we had left.
My favorite bits were scenes of Skylar's character:
While we ran for cover, she walked nobly as bullets flew by, none hitting her.
As Afghan boys told their mothers and sisters to stone us, she stared them down and they failed to throw a rock at her.
When the German solider and his Afghans threatened to kill us, she stood her ground as we all fled. The Afghans pulled out their swords and cut her down.
In our game, we decided the cult was a better world than the outside world. Half the characters were already insane. So, it was no surprise that all but Shannon's character joined the cult. My backup character was Wendy who thought she was in fairy land, so she didn't technically join the cult, but she was happy running around the underground complex and some horrible fate probably awaited her. Technically, the game was a TPK.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Sunday 7pm
Game System: CASTE
Scenario Title: The Dust Lust Bust GM: Arthur Stone Wallis
Variations: Historical Number of Players: 5 Characters Provided: Yes Description: San
Francisco, 1849. The discovery of GOLD at Sutter's Mill has created a
worldwide panic of immigration. Once a backwater Spanish missionary
village of less than a thousand, the City by the Bay as become a vibrant
boom town...more than a quarter of a million souls have arrived in less
than a year. Abandoned clipper ships choke the harbors, their crews
running to the gold fields along with their passengers...only to return
scant weeks later, wealthy or penniless. Crusty West Virginia miners rub
elbows with East Coast industry magnates in the saloons, risking
fortunes on the turn of a card.
In mere days, a disaster of terrible proportions will befall this fledgling city.
Far
from the diggings on the American River, where Christ is Lord and men
pull wealth from the earth, a war of commerce is being fought in the
boardwalk-lined streets of San Francisco. What little law there is must
be swift and brutal, as the rules of warfare have not yet been written
here. Players will take on the role of various immigrant
personalities in this tumultuous time and place, just before the famous
disaster. With a level playing field, a certain saloon is out earning
its rivals to a vast degree. Chinamen, former slaves, and other
unscrupulous types have been seen coming and going in the night. Solving
this mystery would be worth a lot of money to the waterfront saloon
league...but don't expect any help, and steer clear of the law.
CASTE
is a system of merciless chance, and deep humanity. Easy to learn
because it is so hard to forget. Bring your love of character
development, history, storytelling, and at the bottom of the bag pack
your blackest cruelty. Just in case...
Players: Morgan H. John C. Marcus F. Andy V. Basil B.
CASTE is an interesting system. It uses tarot cards instead of dice. Character classes fall into suits of the tarot deck. If you draw your suit, you get a bonus. Face cards and Major Arcane cards have special meaning. The only flaw is that you use a standard tarot deck and for the cards with special meaning, you still need a lookup chart.
Another fun game with great character interaction.
Marcus played a great Chinese character and had the best bits.
The mystery did keep us guessing until I figured out which movie we were in. But it was the character interactions that were fun.
A good end to DoW.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Our group was hired to figure out how the bad guy was making a lot of gold. We started to put the pieces together and realized the scheme was taken from the movie "Paint Your Wagon."
The scheme wasn't really illegal. The only problem is when the bull (from the bull-and-bear fight) comes crashing down into the tunnels and ruins the town.
Near the end, we were being chased by some unknown assailant in the
tunnels underneath San Francisco. My character and Marcus's tried to
escape through the top of a tunnel whereas the other three players kept
on running. We wound up making the assailant flee (I got knocked unconscious, I probably died, but Arthur was nice and let me live), but the other three
characters made it out of the tunnels. We all had grabbed bags of gold
dust, so two of the three decided to leave San Francisco with their
bonanza, so in effect they exited the game. I had actually hoped that
they were going to exit into the bear and bull cages, but that didn't
happen.
Without the two players, the rest of us were enlisted by the sheriff into capturing the bad guy -- the guy who was chasing us in the tunnels -- at the bull-and-bear fight. Once we grabbed the bad guy, the bull ran into the tunnels and did its damage off screen. I think the ending was foreshortened as a fair number of us had seen the movie (we're old folks, maybe some young-ins haven't seen this movie), so there wasn't any reason to do an extensive description of the bull crashing through the tunnels.
As an epilogue, my character decided to follow Marcus's character to Deadwood, since he saved my life. What could go wrong?
GM: Gil Trevizo
System: Delta Green RPG (Playtest)
Number of Players: 5
Characters: Provided
One year ago, a platoon of Guatemalan “Kaibiles” commandos was sent
into the Congo to capture or kill Caesar Okeke, an African warlord
wanted for numerous human rights violations carried out by his army of
child soldiers. The entire platoon disappeared, along with the Delta
Green agents leading them, who were there to end Okeke for a wholly
different order of crimes against humanity. Now the lost unit’s radio
has been reactivated and is broadcasting strange transmissions in an
ancient language never before spoken by human tongue. A-Cell is sending
you into darkest Africa to silence that radio, terminate Okeke, and
contain any preternatural threats at all costs.
Delta Green is a game of modern conspiracy and cosmic horror, setting
government agents against the terrors of the Lovecraft Mythos.
Published in 1997, an updated version of Delta Green is in production,
and this game will use the latest rules still in development.
We played using Delta Green Beta version 3.0. The system takes ideas from Trail of Cthulhu (Pillars of Sanity), Unknown Armies (Stress Notches), and Call of Cthulhu 7th Ed (Pushing the Roll) -- and tweaks them. Those DG changes worked really well and I liked them. One addition, kill % for grenades and machine guns didn't seem necessary to me. Without the instant kill %, the average damage from 2d10 will generally kill anybody, so it's usually moot, also to roll the small kill percent (of 10% to 15%) most likely the 10's die is a 0 (= 10 pts), so the average damage with a kill is about 15 points of damage.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
My two favorite scenes in the game were:
1. Shannon's character got shot in the head and he was dying, so my character had to save him since he was a bond. My character missed most of my die rolls, so to succeed in First Aid, I had to "Succeed with a Consequence." I took some damage, but saved him, but it left me without cover. Shannon's character failed to pull me into cover and my character got shot. I then tried to throw a grenade and critically failed, so I also opted to "Succeed with a Consequence." I wound up blowing up the bad guys but got killed as a consequence. My character was a bond for Shannon's character and after all the horror and insanity, his character committed suicide.
2. The finale. An NPC was working a counter ritual and critically failed and exploded. Noam's character wound up finishing the ritual at the same time my character (replacement #3) shot a priest dancing on top of a pyramid. This stopped the big bad from fully manifesting and destroying the world. Note: None of what I wrote in this paragraph is quite true, but that would spoil some surprises. :-)
Kris and Lisa run a great convention and each year it gets better and better. They give you a feedback form when you pickup your badge and they actively want you to give them feedback and they act on your requests.
I love how they do signups. They open a few seats in each game for early signups and then the remaining seats are through a shuffler. They look at the statistics for who gets in which game and found that anybody that signed up for multiple games in a time slot always got into a game. And only people who put only one choice for a slot was SoL, but most people got into their 1st or 2nd choice games. That is great since in other conventions, people keep on complaining about the shuffler.
This time my experience at the con highlighted a theme for me: Failure is an option.
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Desert Places
Friday 6 PM in Carneros for 6 hours (ran for 6 hrs)
GM: Scott MacPherson
Type: RPG
System: Cthulhu Dark
Edition: 1st
Players: 6
Provided: All characters provided by GM
'They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars--on stars where no human race is.
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.'
Years after a horrible event, old friends and enemies reunite to solve a mystery. The answers they find will either save - or doom - the world. Heavy roleplaying.
Cthulhu Dark is a rules-light system that fits on one sheet of paper.
I was amazed by the props that Scott used. Almost all of the props were found items. He took booklets, videos, and other items that were authentic and created a game from them. The clue trails were organic and made a good mystery. Throughout the game, Scott had either period music or various snippets of special effects audio.
If Scott is running this game, you should signup for it.
More in the spoiler section, but player success or failure in the first scene sets up the 2nd and 3rd acts. So, failure was an option.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The game started with some high school buddies looking for UFOs in Sonora. A storm and a horrible auto accident later, several PCs went to prison and others went scott free. What was cool was that Scott found either high school yearbook pictures of actors or pictures of them as child actors. He then picked pictures of them 20 years later in either "clean" roles or "hardened criminal" roles. Depending on whether you went to prison or not, you got either the "clean" version or the "hardened" version.
During the introductory scene, I was wondering where the game was going, which was pretty rare.
The 20 years later choices were a very nice surprise. I loved it.
The game resumed at the 20th year high school reunion. In our game, two PCs went to prison. One for 6 years, another for 10. My character saw on a telephone pole a "missing persons" flyer of the man our van ran over 20 years ago, but the flyer says he was missing since January -- which was impossible.
I brought the flyer to the reunion and we go to solve the mystery. We called the number on the flyer and meet the man's wife and we stole an envelope of clues. The envelope contained various items (all authentic from various time periods). We returned to Sonora and we got maps of Vortex Tours (real tri-folds for these), a new age temple (and a real video introduction). As I said before, the props were amazing.
As we followed the clue trail, we got more and more authentic props. One of the props that Scott made was just a well-worn folded sheet of paper with a phone number on it. But when you unfolded the sheet of scratch paper, inside was a printed email with a clue in it. Very nice.
The climax of the game was the end of the world. I unfortunately got eaten, but the other players, using the vortices and other clues we found changed the timeline and saved the world.
One interesting bit, the PCs who "failed" and went to prison had skills that were more appropriate to the 2nd and 3rd acts than the ones that avoided prison. So, failure was an option.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Dead of Winter : A Crossroads Game
Saturday 10 AM in BG Foyer for 4 hours (ran for 2 hrs)
GM: Tyson Fultz
Type: Board
System: Dead of Winter
Players: 5
Provided: All characters provided by GM
Play the new Dead of Winter game by Plaid Hat Games.
It's a cooperative resource management game with a zombie theme. The theme integration is great. The flavor text on cards reminded me of The Walking Dead. Each player has a hidden agenda. Someone may also be a traitor who's agenda is to tank the colony.
The flaw of the game is that you roll your dice and you decide whether to scrounge for items or kill zombies. Since the die roll is already made, you know you'll kill some zombies, but you risk getting injured or infected. I prefer a more visceral zombie game where you gun down zombies on a tactical map.
In this game, we failed and died just as we were about to meet our victory conditions, so it was a nail biter.
Acthung Cthulhu! - Alien Transmissions
Saturday 7 PM in Salon 6 for 8 hours (ran for 6 hrs)
GM: William Lee
Type: RPG
System: Call of Cthulhu
Edition: 7th Edition - Quick Play
Players: 6
Provided: All characters provided by GM
February, 1942. The Second World War rages across the globe. The Axis Powers are at their zenith. Hitler's empire stretches from France through Ukraine. Night time bomber raids by the RAF are the only way the Allies can strike at the heart of Germany. But the Germans have constructed an advanced radar at Bruneval, France, directly in the path of RAF's bombers. The British Special Operations Executive plans a daring operation to send paratroopers to destroy the radar with the help of the French Resistance. But mere moments before their drop, the instruments on the transport plane go haywire. Strange transmissions come unbidden over the radio. Could there be something more dangerous than German soldiers waiting for our heroes at Bruneval? Acthung Cthulhu is a pulp-action World War II supplement for Call of Cthulhu. It invokes the feel of classic Hollywood war movies like Kelly's Heroes, the Dirty Dozen, and the Devil's Brigade, while mashing it up with Lovecraftian cosmic horror. Although no experience with the rules are necessary, a love for the genre is required.
The first thing we did was pick characters. There were about 6 Canadian Commandos and 2 female French Resistance Fighters. Since the whole table was male, I thought I would be different and picked the French Resistance Fighter with the least sanity points. To my surprise, the other French Resistance Fighter was picked and two other non-combat heavy Commandos: one technician, one ex-lord, and the Capt who lead the Canadian team. So, we were light on fire power.
The game was interesting enough, but overall, I felt like I'd seen the movie before. There's something about WWII games that fall into certain tropes. I guess I'm waiting for something completely different.
There were some genuinely creepy stuff in the game. So, that was a plus.
Anyway, the game was very entertaining as our Capt made a lot of mistakes and we wound up almost with a TPK. We lost 4 out of 5 PCs and completed 4 out of 5 objectives. The survivor was the Capt, but he became permanently insane; locked up somewhere in a Canadian Asylum.
Without the failures we had, I think the game wouldn't a have been as interesting. So, failure was the best option.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
One thing I noticed was this game and Badger's game at KublaCon involved a villa with dead Germans in it. Is this the new cliche for WWII Cthulhu games? In CoC, the tired trope is the haunted house that investigators explore due to an inheritance or being hired to do so. In WWII games, soldiers are ordered to enter an enemy villa with Germans in it and we find Germans dead in bizarre and grotesque ways.
We also had a botched parachute drop. This also matches several other WWII games I've played. Another over used trope?
Also what's with this green glow in the dark stuff? Almost every game has this radium glow = unearthly menace.
I picked the female with the least San points hoping that I would have some Cthulhu Mythos or some spells. Well, the character had none of those. Oops. My dark secret was that I was actually a French Communist and I had a Russian handler that wasn't in the game. My secret mission was actually very close to the mission we were on so there was no real conflict of interest. But if I could, I was supposed to interrogate one of the Radar operators and to steal any important papers.
My favorite bits from the game were:
Having both female French characters hanging off the arms of one of the
Commandos (wearing a captured German uniform) and staggering towards a
machine nest, distracting the sentries as the rest of the commandos sneaked
in from behind to kill them silently.
Finding a dried out body underneath a blanket and then throwing the blanket back on the body to save the rest of the party from making San checks, but then finding that the hallway had 3 more bodies that couldn't be avoided.
Having one character deciding to put a German out of his misery by suffocating him with a pillow and accidentally pulverizing his half-dessicated head with the pillow. Ugh.
The Captain throwing a grenade into the room in front of us and hitting the monster with 10 pts of damage and 5 pts to everybody except for the Captain. Everybody else basically went to about half hit points with that move. Then one person in the rear went insane, unloaded his whole clip of ammo and hit my character in the back of the head with a machine gun burst, killing her instantly. Then after the monster tears the ex-Lord in half, the Captain throws another grenade and yells, "Duck." Well, in this system, that doesn't really work. The Captain had the highest initiative and the grenade would have just gone off and killed everyone else. This was when we all broke out laughing. OMG, he had just killed us all. After we stopped laughing, the GM was nice and allowed the rest of the PCs to try to dive down a stairwell. Everyone made it, but took fall damage. This resulted in the other French Fighter falling unconscious. Above them the creature looked down the stairwell.
The technician decided he had to save the unconscious female French Resistance Fighter. He spent all his "hero" point in order to fireman carry her out of the villa. At this point, the Captain went insane and fled to the pickup point at the beach. The technician ran to the beach, but not in time to catch the departing boats. The GM gave the technician a choice. He could abandon the Resistance Fighter and get another chance to get on the boats, or stay as an eldritch glow started to engulf the beach. The Captain on a boat watched as the technician still carrying the French Resistance Fighter was swallowed by the green glow.
If we did a better job, we would have made it to the boats with few if no casualties. But I don't think this game would have been as fun. In the end we had the perfect CoC game: one character in an insane asylum and everyone else dead.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Tomb of Paranoia
Sunday 2 PM in Napa for 6 hours (ran for 4 hrs)
GM: Morgan Hua
Type: RPG
System: Paranoia
Edition: 2nd Edition
Players: 6
Provided: All characters provided by GM
Tomb of Horrors vs Paranoia. I’ll be running Tomb of Horrors, but we’ll be sending in clones from Paranoia. Welcome troubleshooters, The Computer has found an anomaly. You will be outfitted to explore a strange region in Alpha Complex -- most likely the headquarters of Commie Mutant Traitors. Due to the dangerous nature of this threat, you have been granted more than your standard allotment of clones.
When I created this game, I thought it would be funny to send clones without magic and appropriate skills to defeat the Tomb of Horrors. Their only tool was clones and unlimited lives, so I wondered how long this joke could go before the players would get tired of it. When I ran this at KublaCon, the players wanted to finish the Tomb and had a great time. The energy was up until the defeat of the demi-lich. That game took the full 6 hours.
This time, I had several Paranoia veterans with high energy plus two newbies to Paranoia. At the end, one of the newbies got into the spirit, but the other was more focused on solving the Tomb and was relatively quiet. Near the 4 hour mark, the players only got through four rooms in the Tomb. But I could tell their energy was flagging -- earlier I couldn't get a word in edgewise with all the laughter, now it was dead quiet -- and I asked if they just wanted to skip to the end. They said, "Yes." So, I fast-forwarded them to the last two rooms to face the demi-lich. Though this group laughed louder than the KublaCon group, I felt everyone in the KublaCon group had a good time and they were more creative.
Problems, But a Witch Ain't One Monday 10 AM in Carneros for 4 hours GM: Jeff Yin Type: RPG System: Fading Suns Players: 6 Provided: All characters provided by GM While on a survey of Imperial lands, a Questing Knight and their companions must adjudicated conflicting claims of witchcraft.
The game was full according to the signup sheet, but only Jeff Yin, Jason F. and I showed up. Jeff said he needed 4 players (out of 6) for the game to go. This is the danger of a morning game on the last day of the con. So, instead Jason F. pulled out his Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game and we played for two hours.
I've only played this game once. Jeff never, and Jason owned the game. I played the Rebels and they played the Empire. Each side had 100 build points and we met on a field of battle in the midst of an asteroid field. After a few rounds, my 3 rebel X-Wings shot down 3 (out of 6) Imperial Tie fighters and had them at a great disadvantage. Jeff and Jason conceded. The Empire failed.
Cold Dead Hand
Saturday 6 PM in 217 for 10 hours
GM: Shannon Mac
Type: RPG
System: Delta Green
Edition: 6E Call of Cthulhu
Players: 5
Power Level: Experienced yet mortal Spetsnaz (not heroic)
1991:
The hard-liners of the Communist Party have ousted Soviet Premier
Mikhail Gorbachev from power. As a result the Soviet Union is in
disarray and many fear that the return of the Old Regime has increased
the possibility of a nuclear war.
Don't worry. It gets worse.
Mother Russia has lost contact with Site 6, an ICBM silo far to the
wintery north on the Taymyr Peninsula (Siberia) and needs politically
reliable yet capable soldiers to investigate the matter.
The worst storm in years has hit Site 6.
You are all veteran Spetsnaz. Most of you have served together multiple
times and on average the typical Spetsnaz has served at least two years
in Afghanistan. Yours is a tight brotherhood with a distinctive chain of
command (though that may not be fun at the gaming table so it will be
likely loosely recognized unless we have a very hardcore group).
This Spetsnaz company is led by a Kapitan Kozlov, a senior LT named
Babenko and a handful of Warrant Officers. Included are Strategic Rocket
Forces technical advisors. The total size of the company is in the
fifties so if your first character dies don't worry about a replacement.
I played in Shannon's playtest, so I didn't play in this game at Celesticon, but since the Acthung Cthulhu game ended early, I decided to drop by and say hello. Andy W. was DJ taking care of Shannon's ambient music and sound effects. Andy and I quietly snickered as this group totally F*ed up everything.
When we played in this game, we were very tactical and set up choke points and kill zones. This group made a lot of mistakes and died left and right, top and center.
So, the question is, is it better to play a game effectively with few screw ups or totally F* everything up and have more interesting situations and massive death and destruction? In the game I played in, I felt like we were Spetsnaz. Watching these guys, it was like an episode of Gomer Pyle. But it did look like they had a lot of fun.
So, failure is an option.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
At the beginning of the game, the GM gave the players a portable nuke and three nuclear technicians (one main character and two backups). Though it was a secret, the rest of the party found out about it.
At one point, the players set the timer on their portable nuke and left it upstairs and unguarded in an armored car -- where terrible intelligent creatures roamed. An earlier encounter with several creatures had them rip open one of the vehicles. So what makes you think the nuke'll still be upstairs when you need it?
Later, they decided to detonate the nuke earlier, so almost everyone went back upstairs to retrieve the nuke. Well, guess what? Yep, it wasn't there. Not only that, a massive Cthulhu creature showed up and drove most of them insane. The survivors scrambled back downstairs.
Later, a PC who was clearly unstable was allowed free movement. That PC had clearly killed at least three of the backup PCs and the other PCs bought his excuses repeatedly. Finally, that PC gunned down a key NPC right in front of them. The response was swift, but the quote of the day was, "I should have killed him way back when."
Another funny failure was when the creatures opened up the armored vehicle, one PC open fired with a rocket launcher at point blank and it exploded inside their armored vehicle. The back blast would have ignited the ammo, Molotov cocktails, and loose fuel inside anyway. This killed everyone inside the vehicle.
So, lots of horrible failure, but plenty of fun situations.
In this game, I think the Spetsnaz team had 50 PCs. Six main PCs and the rest were backups.
Shannon said only six survived at the end and I have a feeling that he was being nice.
Hey, Shannon, you didn't know you were running a Paranoia game, did ya?
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Drive-Thru Armageddon
Sunday 7 PM in Sonoma for 5 hours (game ran 6 hrs)
GM: Micheal Garcia
Type: RPG
System: Apocalypse World
Players: 4
Twenty years ago, the bombs fell, society collapsed, and we now live in the
smoldering ruin. The radiation has made us all sterile, and humanity is
doomed to extinction. Except now there is hope in the form of the first
pregnant mother in twenty years. Too bad she is in the heart of an
enemy hardhold. You have been tasked to get her out and bring her back
so we as a species have a fighting chance. Load your guns, get in your
car, and save the day. The fate of the whole human race is riding with
you.
Take Children of Men, the Road Warrior, and Escape from New York, and
put in a gasoline powered blender and hit frappe. The result: this game.
You've got shootouts, car chases, and good old fashioned melodrama
powered by the Apocalypse.
My Paranoia game ended early, so I dropped by hoping to pick up an empty seat, but no luck, so I stayed and watched the game. I fell asleep twice and I hope I didn't snore (sorry Mike). But I woke up in time to see the climax.
In the end, there was a very tense scene and almost everything went wrong. Earlier in the game I watched the players roll success after success; finally, their luck caught up with them and they got a long string of bad luck, but then the tension level kept on rising as it looked like a TPK. But Mike was nice and the players squeaked through the situation.
So, looming failure was a great option.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Near the end of the game, a driver (PC), action gun guy (PC), and madam (PC) were in the front seat of a Lincoln Town car. In the back seat was a mind-control psychic (enemy NPC), gun guy (enemy NPC), pregnant lady (neutral NPC and MacGuffin), and a healer (PC).
At one point everybody knew it was going to go to a head and all hell would break loose. The nurse tried to slap a knock out patch on the psychic, but the psychic reached out and ordered the nurse to do that to the PC action gun guy instead, if she refuses the order, she would loose 75% of her hit points due to a brain hemorrhage. In the front seat, the madam was already suffering from massive bleeding when she had disobeyed an order from the psychic earlier. The psychic whispers into the gun guy's (NPC) ear. The driver sees the gun guy (NPC) start to shift his gun from pointing at the driver to pointing at the action gun guy (PC). The driver jerks the steering wheel and fails to make the gun guy (NPC) point at no one. The gun goes off and the driver loses 75% of his hit points as the gun shot goes through his chest and splatters the windshield. Not wanting to hit the pregnant woman, the action gun guy (PC) pulls out his machete to kill the psychic. The madam rolls an assist. The action gun guy (PC) fails badly and in Apocalypse world, not only does something bad happen, but to people assisting too. The machete kills the madam and since the psychic had armor, the machete only cuts off the psychic's hand. The nurse is given the choice of trying to save the dying madam or slapping a knock out patch on the action gun guy (PC). She decides to save the madam and takes the 75% damage. She botches her roll and winds up mentally bound to the dying madam.The driver grabs his gun and shoots blindly behind his seat and takes out the gun guy (NPC). The psychic then grabs the action gun guy (PC) pulls him to her and impales herself on his machete. She then kisses him and transfers her consciousness into him and takes him over.
At this point, two PCs are dying, the action gun guy (PC) is now inhabited by the psychic and the driver is sorely hurt.
The psychic only needed to touch the driver to command him and the game would be over. But Mike was nice and let them get out of this pickle. From the depths of despair, the PCs survived and actually had one more big action scene.
But without teeterring on the brink of failure, the tension level wouldn't have been so great and the scene wouldn't have sizzled so much.
Sunday, 24 Aug 2014 11am - 6pm (game ended at about 3:30pm)
GM: Mike "Aniki" Montesa
System: The Mountain Witch
Number of Players: 5
Characters: Created at the table
The icy peak of Mt. Fuji looms overhead, concealing a dark terror so
great no one has ever attempted to confront it. Yet you have come.
More money than you ever dreamed of was laid at your feet
if you would undertake the task that is sure to lead to your
death. Yet you have come.
You are a ronin and you have your secrets. So do your companions.
You cannot trust them, but without them you will
surely fail. Yet you have come.
Courage. Fear. Trust. Betrayal. All will be revealed when you
face...
THE MOUNTAIN WITCH
Grab a seat in this classic storytelling game of doomed ronin going
to meet their dark fates. It’s The Seven Samurai crossed with Resevoir
Dogs in a full throttle session of this legendary game! No experience
necessary, just bring your Awesome!
It was an interesting game, more because of the GM and players than the system. When you want to accomplish something, you roll 1d6 and the GM rolls 1d6, tie goes to the GM. The delta determines the degree of success. Other players, whether in the scene or not can help or hinder based on available trust points. They can also take over the narration for a trust point, but the outcome will remain the same.
So, basically, if you trust someone and give them a point, they can during your scenes, spend a trust point to help you and add 1d6. If someone you trust betrays you, then each point they spend can subtract from your die roll or add to your enemy's.
If you want to duel someone, you then get no help from companions and both sides roll 1d6 and keep it hidden. They then decide to either "hold" or "charge". If one of the two players declare "charge" then the d6s are revealed and totalled up and compared. If they both decide to "hold" then, they roll another 1d6 that is hidden. On the 3rd 1d6, it becomes an automatic "charge." This is to replicate samurai duels where it is all about honor and nobody can interfere.
The most innovative part was that we were given random hidden agendas and even the GM doesn't know what they are. One card was a Traitor card. But since there are 5 players and 6 agenda cards, it may or may not be in play. So, during play, each player is allowed to narrate some scenes and those scenes help the other players figure out each other's hidden agendas. The GM is also in the dark and he gives players opportunities to show who they are.
At one point the GM started a scene where one player was approached as if he was the traitor, but the PC reacted aggressively towards the insinuation that he was the traitor. What was cool was that even though the GM guessed wrong, it created more paranoia among the players.
Numerous people were complaining about shuffler problems and the late hours that some games ran to. The only two games the shuffler gave me was Gil's game and Todd F's game, but I was in Gil's game until 4am and I missed Todd's 9am game -- due to oversleeping, I woke up at 9:15am. So, those two first choices destroyed any chance of me getting into any games for the rest of the convention.
But I was able to crash two games and overall, I had a Great KublaCon. I played in three excellent games: Badger's, Gil's, and Dovi's. The Paranoia game I ran turned out incredibly funny and I had a great time running it -- I killed about 49 clones.
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The howl of a bitter wind outside that fail to mask the screaming in...German?...coming front of you. A victrola leadenly plays music in the bathroom. Blood mixed with snow. Smell of a fire. A gun in your hands, but you don't know why, or where you are... (Altered Resonance) takes place in the Black Forest Mountain range in Germany during World War II. The scenario begins in media res, with the player character's memories wiped. Who you are, what your mission is, and who you can ultimately trust will be revealed through the course of the scenario.
This game was pretty simple plot-wise, but the situation and player interaction made this interesting. The gimmick in this game which was well done is that you don't remember who you are and our character sheets were mainly blank. I've played in three other games with this gimmick and this was one of the better ones. Two games I've commented on which had amnesia gimmicks were Jeff Yin's The River Belle and Gil's The Day the Whole World Went Away. As the game progressed, Badger handed out progressively filled out character sheets.
I liked the tension at the beginning when we didn't know who we were and what we were supposed to do. Once we knew what our mission was, the game played out pretty predictably. Still, a very good game.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The first thing Badger did which was great was that he handed out character sheets with most of it fuzzed out like an out of focus camera. It immediately set the mood. It had WOW factor.
We also started us in media res. We stood in a room with some dead and injured German soldiers. In front of us was a German officer carrying a sub-machine gun and demanding something in German. We asked a couple of questions about the scene to figure out what was going on. I carried a sub-machine gun also. I asked if my gun was warm, as if recently fired. It was, so I shot the German dead.
We searched the house we were in and the surrounding grounds. We found clues and an underground experimental facility. A test subject had escaped. This whole act was fraught with tension and dread as we found more and more strange things as we explored the house.
Once we left the house with our clues and loot (German lab equipment), our memories started to come back and Badger gave us our final character sheet which had all the stats filled out, extensive backgrounds, and a copy of our orders.
We were supposed to find the test subject and take him back with us. We followed his trail to the nearby town and discovered that he was fazing through dimensions.
At the town, we located the test subject, fought some Germans, and escaped.
One of the highlights was that in my packet was a small handwritten note that said there was a traitor in our midst. From my background, I found that I only trusted two of the PCs and from a process of elimination, figured it was either of two PCs and most likely the one played by Dovi (which was funny because what made me suspicious was something Dovi did before he knew he was the traitor -- but he acted in that manner because Badger was handing us back fragments of our memories, small slips of paper with sentence fragments from our complete backgrounds, which Dovi acted on). I called over my commanding officer who I trusted and told him about the note and who it might be. We decided to do nothing and just watch the two PCs closely.
We'll at one point, the Lieutenant, the test subject, and one of the PCs phased out. When they returned, they were struggling to kill each other. The other players didn't know what was going on, but I shouted, "Lousy, Krout spy!" and attacked the PC fighting the Lieutenant. I got lucky and rolled an impale and actually did enough damage with my k-bar to kill Dovi's character.
Another good touch was that some of the Germans had exploded heads. We also experienced a precursor to this when we were near the test subject. This left us in a dilemma as to what to do as our horrible sinus headaches grew in power and frequency.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Damon Gregory's SOS ISS Icarus (BRP)
SAT, 10 AM - 4 PM 6 Players
ATTENTION! Incoming Distress Call: 'Urgent assistance is *bzzzt*ed! There are *bzzzzt*! HURRY! *bzzzzzt*' You are a member of the First Responder team 'Hamilton's Heroes' who patrol the outer rings of the Sol System. 8 hours and 45 minutes ago your team received a Code 3, location is under attack, distress call from the ISS Icarus. The Icarus, a research and development station, lies between Uranus and Neptune. It's remote location generally keeps it out of harms way, so this call can mean just one thing, Pirates. A rare occurrence this far out, true, but there is money to be made in new technology on the black market and the Icarus is known to be working on some bleeding edge tech. As the team prepares for boarding, a thought, unspoken but shared by all, quiets the ship, please let there be survivors...this time. Emphasis on roleplaying and quick thinking rather than gunplay. This scenario borrows elements from Delta Green, and involves adult themes. Mature players only.
I loved how Damon had what initially looked like generic corridor map strips which folded out and became what was on the right or left of the corridor -- as we explored. Neat.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The character sheets were really cool; They were printed on clear plastic sheets with two corners cut off a la Battlestar Galactica.
One other neat prop was a found datapad that was face down, when flipped over you'd find a bloody handprint on top of the display (a plastic Halloween sticky). And information was actually on the datapad that the players can read.
One problem I had with the game was that the space station was mostly empty except for one section. So, we spent a lot of time searching and finding nothing. Damon spent a lot of effort building out the space station and making transforming maps, but they mostly contained nothing. If they contained some clues, then that would have helped with the pace, but after the Nth time of finding nothing, the sense of dread completely drained. At one point my character just went to the mess hall and started to eat grape popsicles -- only to throw it up in my space suit when we ran into a heap of dead bodies.
We found a Stargate that opened up into a medieval setting. We were then tasked to find the missing head scientist from the space station. We were then faced with being stranded on a medieval planet as we tried to complete our mission.
One funny bit, when we entered a castle to speak to the king, we met him plus two women standing behind him. One was a missing security officer from the space station, the other was the unworldly beautiful daughter of the king. Earlier in the game, Chris O. was randomly shooting things such as one of the horses we found. When we entered the castle and Damon described the three, Chris shouted out, "I shoot her." He didn't roll any dice and Damon didn't ask him to roll any dice, so we assumed he was joking. Well, at the end of the game, the big bad guy was the king's daughter. Go figure. Chris O. is crazy like a fox.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Gil Trevizo's China Marines (Godlike)
SAT, 8 PM - 4 AM 6 Players
Shanghai 1941: As news breaks of the attack on Pearl Harbor, a group of US Marines are pulled off their departing boat and 'volunteered' for a special mission: liberate the families of Chinese superhuman Talents that are being held by the Japanese to make the Talents fight for the Empire. Mature themes. I'm not sure if the second edition fixes some problems with Godlike or Gil's hacks fixes problems with Godlike. Several changes made the game more reasonable. Gil's requirement that most talent skills requires a will point spend made the Godlike skills more reasonable.
My main issue with using Godlike at a convention is that it takes too much time to explain the system. Gil took about an hour explaining the system.
Lots of maps, props, and attention to detail makes Gil's game great. His descriptions are full of telling detail. He takes simple die rolls and converts them into effective and sometimes poetic imagery during the game.
The game ran to 4am and all the players were still at the table at the end -- and awake.
Yes, it was that good.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
My favorite part of this game was the beginning when the players started a bar fight. The complexity of the scene was great. NPCs were making a deal with stolen artifacts -- which eventually involved some PCs. Two PCs were brought here for their last hurrah. I found my gal was dancing with an enlisted man -- a PC. This all wound up in a giant bar fight.
My character was HP Lovecraft. A xenophobic man from Providence, RI. He had paid the madame of the bar to make one of the girls exclusively his. The girl "Ming-mei" was now pregnant with his baby. He's also married to a woman back at home. He pays the girl to whip him as he sings the Marine Corp Hymn. Yeah, it's that messed up.
At the beginning, I could tell the other characters didn't like my character (and they should have since I wasn't supposed to be likeable), but as we played and more and more of my secrets leaked out, I found that they seemed more sympathetic. I really liked that. From detested to not-that-bad.
After the bar fight, we were sent to save some Chinese hostages at a Japanese internment camp. The camp held family members of Chinese talents (supermen) to be used as leverage. Gil was brilliant, he showed the characters newsreels of the Chinese talents and why the US must "save" the family members, so the Japanese can't use them against the US. But by also showing us their talents, the Zed can also nullify their talents without going in blind.
I used this opportunity to give money to "Ming-mei" and a letter from me explaining that she was one of the family members of the talents, so I could smuggle her out of China with me. I also give her instructions to meet me at our mission pickup point. Yeah, I was breaking major military rules and potentially letting the enemy know of our plans.
We saved the family members, but due to the chaos of war, we wound up having to cross China and escape through Russia. During our escape, the Chinese Talents were sent against us -- being told by the Japanese that we were kidnapping them. So, this was a great dilemma. Do we kill the talents we're trying to turn to our side? Do we let the Japanese take back the relatives? Well, we wound up killing some of the talents and recruited some of them.
In the end, I got "Ming-mei" out of China. In the epilogue, I continued to fight as a Marine and I sent money to both my wives -- an audible gasp from the other players as they didn't know I was already married, surprise, you bastards, surprise -- and in the end, I went crazy and got sent back to state-side to an insane asylum in Providence where I wrote nightmare stories about whips, tentacles, and half-breed children as therapy.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Dovi Anderson's Kellian's Fist (Fate Core - Star Wars)
SUN, 8 PM - 2 AM 5 Players
For years, you and your companions have honed your unique abilities on a harsh planet bathed in the light of a remote saphire star. Your master's vision has been singular and focused: to hide you from the Empire until such a time that your powers prove strong enough to deliver a mighty blow against it. (A prequel-free Star Wars Graphic Novel, mature minded players preferred).
Dovi has gotten really good with making his games more and more cinematic. He shows us things happening off screen like a movie and he also does great Star Wars alien dialog and R2 whistling (which is totally amazing to me as I can't whistle at all).
Todd F. also makes his game cinematic by skipping from scene to scene and only highlighting key scenes. Dovi also does this, but I think Dovi gives players more freedom of choice. Todd's games are more scripted since he chooses the scenes whereas Dovi's scenes feel more organic and based on player choice. Todd runs 4 hour games and his games are very tight. Dovi's games are longer and maybe that is what gives us more time to play with things and make it seem more like a collaboration between Players and GM.
The character I picked was way different from the standard light saber wielding Star Wars character and I deliberately went way out of the norm just to see whether I could work with it. It turned out great. Of the three great games I played at KublaCon, this one edged out the other ones as my favorite.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
Dovi gave us male/female choices for each of the characters except for the one I picked; I picked an Ithorian Priest. I decided I would be a pacifist. Yeah, a pacifist in a Star Wars game with light sabers.
Each character was along the spectrum of good and evil. A slightly dark
jedi, a light jedi with doubts, a jedi that doesn't follow light or
dark, a techno-jedi-cyborg, and my Ithorian Priest. One of the themes in the game was teamwork which we had continually failed at.
Dovi gave us a page of questions to answer about our characters and their relationship with other characters. I decided I was a pacifist and that all life was precious. Ithor was a holy planet and Ithorians do not touch its surface. I was allowed to do so and I was asked what vision I had seen. I decided that I saw "The Doom of Ithor" by the hands of the Empire and that I had joined Kellian to save Ithor.
I had strong Telekinesis skills, Force Shield, Force Healing, and Force Sight. So I was basically a protector and healer. My Bafforr staff could be used to block light sabers.
The game starts with three Sith approaching our planet. We find that Kellian had gone missing and that he had disabled all our means of travel -- in order to protect us from the Sith. But we fixed the equipment and went looking for him anyway.
In another cut away scene, we see Kellian give himself up -- and one of the Sith cuts both of his hands off. Kellian is hoping to leave the planet without revealing our presence. But we catch up with the Sith as they are departing the planet and one of the Sith break off to take care of us. We team up and eventually beat him. The other Sith leave with Kellian. As the Sith lay dying, I try to heal him. My Bafforr staff consisted of a living entwined tendrils of a plant. When I heal, the tendrils unwind and reach out to heal. The Sith snatched the vines and withered them, cursed me, and then died.
We then find gifts from Kellian. I found seeds from Ithor and healing water from Ithor. The water healed my staff. Before we left our hideout, Kellian told us to destroy the base, but I had an Ithorian ecosystem in my room, so I hurt myself in order to sink the room into the depths as the rest of the crew prepped for blowing up the base.
Using the force, I can see through Kellian's eyes and found him being held and tortured by the Emperor.
During our journey, each character fought with their choices: of whether to go towards the light or dark, whether their philosophy was correct or wrong. Our characters grew during the adventure.
So, we head to the Emperor's Palace and get into the boss fight with the Emperor. We also find out that one of the PCs was the Emperor's clone, raised in secret and that there are multitudes of Emperor clones -- babies, adolescents, and teenagers in tubes, being tortured into the Emperor's image.
During the boss fight, one of the Jedi convinces one of the two remaining Sith to sit out of the fight. When the Emperor noticed that, he force choked her. As the fight was going on, I went and healed the force choked Sith, who then decided to join the fight against the Emperor.
In the end, we beat the Emperor.
In the epilogue, we were asked what we would do. I decided to find a lifeless moon and plant the seeds and use the water from Ithor to make Ithor 2. I also took the Emperor clones with me to tend the plants and I would teach them and make them all pacifists. And I got a shower of fate chips for that.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Morgan Hua's Tomb of Paranoia (Paranoia)
MON 9 AM - 3 PM 6 Players
Tomb of Horrors vs Paranoia. I’ll be running Tomb of Horrors, but we’ll be sending in clones from Paranoia.
Welcome troubleshooters, The Computer has found an anomaly. You will be outfitted to explore a strange region in Alpha Complex -- most likely the headquarters of Commie Mutant Traitors. Due to the dangerous nature of this threat, you have been granted more than your standard allotment of clones.
I was surprised, when I showed up at 8:50am, there were already 5 people in the room waiting for my game. When the game started, I had my 6 players. These were really dedicated gamers or there wasn't anything else open on Monday morning at 9am.
The whole idea behind this was that The Tomb of Horrors was a meat grinder, but with infinite clones, it doesn't matter and I thought it would be really funny as what is needed to defeat the Tomb are various magics which the players don't have.
I was surprised, the players actually finished the module in 6 hours and defeated the Demi-Lich Acererak. Go figure.
The players were laughing throughout and I even got one player to lead the others in song. The game was amazingly fun.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
At the briefing room, I tell them that Surveillance-bots had discovered a strange place and that the team was to disguise themselves to infiltrate the Commie Mutant Traitor HQ and to destroy it. I handed out cardboard armor covered in tin foil, faux-chainmail made of syntha-wool, night gowns with stars and moons and floppy hat, faux-leather cloth, a large diaper, and pointy ears with green tights. Swords and other weapons made of Styrofoam and rubber were also handed out.
I did give them a Destruct-O-bot which looked like an R2 unit with a large faceplate with the digital number 10 glowing in red letters. The number does count down pretty quickly unless there's player intervention. Only later does the Computer deliver a Clone-O-matic to them. The Clone-O-matic looks like a giant Slurpee machine with a knob with their names on it. It only dispenses a goopy clone when a player dies and then the replacement clone steps out of the goo.
In this game, one of the players actually programmed the Clone-O-matic to only dispense him. When a player died, he/she was replaced with another clone of that player. Pretty clever.
Then we got full on multiple clones vs other PCs as each death converted a PC into that clone model. When they discovered that their lasers couldn't hurt each other, they picked up swords (from defeated monsters) and started hacking each other to death.
One of the fun bits was when a PC got cursed with levitation and then got teleported outside, and then proceeded to float way up into the sky and died of asphyxiation.
In the end, the players tried to attack Acererak and got their souls sucked into the skull, when that happens, no clones are dispensed. Once the players figured that out, they resumed the countdown on the Destruct-O-bot and blew up the tomb and themselves. Once that happened, they were all dispensed from the Clone-O-matic again. A full team of the same character.
Satisfied that their mission was complete, but without proof, they decided to abandon Alpha Complex and to never return.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Sean Nittner's Under the House of Three Squires(Torchbearer)
SUN 4 PM - 6 PM 3 Players
I arrived at KublaCon on Sunday and didn't get into any games (other than the one I overslept for), so Sean was nice enough to take us to the 9th floor and run Torchbearer for a number of us. The game was incredibly crunchy. We had to keep track of every resource such as torches (which only burn for 2 turns), spikes, food, water, etc.
You also get hungry very fast and even bags of gold doesn't buy you much in the town with its inflated prices.
We got lucky and escaped with 4 barrels of fine ale, a Pomerano, and a scroll with magic spells on it.
My favorite bit was that my "Cleric" had sticky fingers and a lock pick set. He likes to give final unction as he filches everything off your dead body. He actually has Turn Undead. Go figure.
Dead of Winter was held again at the Carey House in Placerville. I found that the Foresthill Bridge is the tallest bridge in California and is a few miles from Placerville. One plan was to go early and do a little bit of site seeing, but due to work schedules and such, I decided to go after work and carpool with Jack Y. and Shannon M. Maybe next year?
On Saturday morning, I met a few people who are guests of the Cary House each year. One guy belonged to a group of tree researchers who measure the trees in the Placerville area annually -- who would have guessed that was a job. Another guy visited each year but I didn't ask what he did because he had an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of Placerville. He told me that the new owners of the Cary House was better at increasing the occupancy rate, so it'll probably be full all the time.
Interesting tidbits about Placerville (could be true or this guy is a real good spinner of tales):
1. The hanged man was taken by a couple of kids as a prank. They cut him down and hid him, but the hanged man was found. The kids had climbed up the scaffolding around the renovations, but to prevent possible injury in the future, the hanged man has been put away. Unfortunately, a lot of tourists come by to take a photo of the hanged man and they'll be disappointed.
2. There are about 1500 historical markers around town.
3. Here's the story of hanging as told to me (but different from the official history): Four men lost their money gambling and decided in the evening to rob the owner of the hotel they were staying at. In the morning, a posse caught 3 of the 4 men. The 4th man got away. They held a trial out in the open with the towns folk and it was presided by Judge Lynch. The sentence was something like 39 lashings each. After they were bleeding and lying on the ground, a sheriff from a different town dropped by and said that the 3 men were wanted for murder. Another swift trial occurred and they were found guilty and were hung on one of the only trees in town. Not long after, the tree was chopped down to expand the building next door. The original stump from the old tree remains in
the cellar of "The Hangman’s Tree" tavern
on Historic Main Street. At one time it was covered in glass to show case the stump.
4. The 3 hanged men were buried near the freeway and there's a marker there.
5. Ancient pilings have been found around Placerville.
6. Another hanging happened in Placerville. One man accused another man of cheating and the accusee pulled out a knife and stabbed the accuser. The accuser died. The murderer was found guilty. Further outside of town was another tree. The murderer offered to save them the trouble and to climb the tree and hang himself, but the town refused and hung him instead.
7. Nearby was a community of Japanese samurai. A trader brought a clan of Japanese samurai to the area to escape the Japanese civil war. They brought with them silk worms and plants for the silk worms. Unfortunately a drought killed all the plants. The ship captain who had brought them here promised to return to Japan and return with more plants. He never returned. Each day, a young Japanese girl stood on a hill each day to watch for the returning ship that never came. Either the captain had a mishap or lied and never intended to go to Japan again and just left the area. In the Placerville museum are some artifacts from this Japanese colony.
So much for Placerville, onto the games of Dead of Winter.
Overall, I had a really good experience, almost rivaling the first year at DoW. Having the bathrooms locked at 10pm isn't the same as a missing urinal at the Brookdale Lodge, but we have to make due with what we have.
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Saturday, December 14, 11AM – 5PM Game System: Call of Cthulhu 6th edition
Scenario Title: Upton Abbey
GM: Gil Trevizo
Variations: None
Power Level: Incompetent Upper Class Twats and Sniveling Lower Class Morons
Number of Players: 6
Characters Provided: Yes.
Description: The manor house is in an uproar as the Earl of
Groantham invites his new heir presumptive, the callow Mr. Crowley, to a
weekend of shooting and dining, where he might vie for the hand of his
eldest daughter Mary and thus secure the shaky family fortune… but the
arrival of a strange Turkish diplomat and the revival of long-dead
customs brings a darker chaos for those that serve Upton Abbey.
I had a great time playing in this game. This was my favorite game at DoW, it only beat out Matt Garu's game The Block by an insignificant margin. Definitely a game for those who are fans of Downton Abbey. We play all the servants of Upton Abbey and the Upper Class characters are all NPCs.
I decided that since the Family was going to be evil, I didn't want to play any of the evil Machiavellian characters (O'Brien or Thomas) -- evil vs evil isn't that fun. The good characters (Bates or Anna) were not that interesting to me either. So, I decided I wanted to play Daisy, dumber than cardboard and the ability to make horrible mistakes without being accused of plotting.
My favorite part of the character sheet was the back:
My favorite bit from the sheet: "Thomas is dreamy. (...) Mrs. Fatmore claims that Thomas is a Sodomite but you know he's really from Manchester. You want to have his babies."
Gil gave out prizes too and I won this.
One of the cool things Gil did that worked really well was that he let you burn San points to flip-flop a percentile die roll (1d6 san loss) or re-roll a die roll (1d20 san loss). This represented your character becoming unstably obsessive with succeeding.
It was great fun, I think we went through the whole first season of Downton Abbey in the 6 hours of play.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
We were told that we're the new staff. Last Christmas, all the staff died in a fire except for Miss O'Brien who was sent away during the fatal event. So that didn't bode well for us. Metagame-wise, we knew we were on the chopping block as Christmas was upon us and the Family were evil cultists.
The towers and 3rd floor of the Upton Abbey were locked off and off limits to the Staff due to safety concerns from the previous year's fire. Of course, due to curiosity, most staff would go to the off limits area given the opportunity.
My favorite game bits:
The Crowley's automobile crashing into the staff and catching on fire. Daisy caught on fire and Gwen (played by June G.), tried to put the fire out with a bucket of water, but critically failed and nailed Daisy with the bucket, so Daisy decided it was safer under the burning car which could blow up at any moment. Gwen was nice enough to pull Daisy out from under the car before it blew up.
Thomas (played by Karen T.) sneaking into Mr Pamuk's room (NPC) and having Turkish sex.
Mr Bates (played by Frank F.) discovering the Librarian.
Thomas and Miss O'Brian (played by Jim M.) knocking Mrs. Fatmore (NPC) unconscious and leaving her face down on the burning stove. Then when Daisy finds her and wakes her up, Mrs. Fatmore says, "Grab a knife, Daisy, we got some killing to do." We head up into the tower and confront Miss O'Brian and Thomas and Daisy critically fails with the kitchen knife and it shatters. And when Mrs. Fatmore gets murdered by Miss O'Brian and Thomas, Daisy runs into the kitchen and grabs a frying pan and huddles in a corner. Thomas then convinces Daisy to look for a Canopic Urn. She finds the dust markings of one (with critical success) that used to be in Lord Groantham's dresser (stolen by Mr Bates), so she tells Thomas she found it in the dresser. "Daisy!" was Thomas's comment when he found the empty dresser.
The Fox hunt and asking volunteers to wear the Fox fur. Sheer genius, Gil.
Daisy trying food for Mr Pamuk and going unconscious and when later when all the players were asked if they would eat the Christmas dinner, Daisy said, "Yes, of course, she's the cook; she has to taste everything." And she fell unconscious as she was trying to clean the blood off of the Fox fur.
Daisy waking up in the field ready for sacrifice and asking Lord Groantham (NPC) if it was alright if she returned to the Abbey and got the Fox fur for him as she was supposed to. "Sure," he said, "If you're coming back." "Yes, mi Lord." And Daisy came back with it. "Now lay down," ordered Lord Groantham. "But it's cold and damp." "Well, put on the cloak, then." "Ok."
The final fight where the Staff kills the Family.
Daisy got to brain the Dowager Countess with a frying pan, repeatedly.
Gil gave out two cups and a Downton Abbey reusable shopping bag as prizes. I got the cup for going insane first. Thanks, Gil. It was a great game.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Saturday, December 14, 7PM – 1AM Game System: Unknown Armies.
Scenario Title: Night Shift
GM: Duane O’Brien
Variations: Some House Rules
Power Level: Regular Joes
Number of Players: 6
Characters Provided: Yes. Description: Normally the night shift at this
institution is pretty quiet. Occasionally the police will bring someone
over for an involuntary hold, but for the most part nothing really
happens. But tonight, a series of unexplained attacks will leave
everyone praying for the dawn.
We're all staff at a mental institution, except for one PC that was a patient. To help determine which players played which character, Duane showed us ink blots and asked us what we saw.
I got to play the doctor and select the patients and their disorders. The time period was late 1800's. So, knowing some history of that time period, I picked some pretty unacceptable diagnoses (by our standards). My favorite was the woman who was "1/8 Black who claimed that she was White" -- yeah, WTF. And we're going to try to cure her by making her accept that she's Black.
I've been in a couple of Duane's games and they're always
excellent. Most of them are epic in scale; this time this game was more
of a locked room mystery and very different in flavor.
I did enjoy the game, but it wasn't on the same epic scope as some of his other games.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The game starts with police bringing in a new temporary patient.
At first, I tried to get some background info on the patient, but we soon learned that due to lack of technology, and long traveling distances, that this was a locked room mystery. Without access to external information, our only avenue of investigation was the new patient.
Back then, you used to look at a person's teeth to determine how healthy they were. They do that with horses. The patient spoke oddly and I tried to get him to show me his teeth, but he refused.
We soon learned that Tooth Fairies were collecting people's teeth and leaving behind strange coins. Duane had great props: A bag of bloody teeth, various foreign coins, and great vintage photographs.
In the end, we learned that we had to nail 32 teeth (per person) around window and door frames to keep out the Hungry Mouths. After being eaten by the Hungry Mouths, you turn into a Tooth Fairy.
At dawn, you're safe to leave your warded cell.
In the end, Skyler W. took over a patient's protected cell and left the patient out to die. Chris O. got eaten while trying to save that patient and was turned into a Tooth Fairy. Shannon M. who tagged along with Chris somehow just walked out of the institute after Chris died horribly. Badger M. and Karen T. killed a Tooth Fairy and used it's loot of teeth to ward a cell. I was graciously invited to spend the night in safety with them.
I had already decided to resign my post as the institute's head doctor (during a bout of insanity). In the morning, I left. Badger and Karen were dedicated enough to stay and when the police arrived, they got into trouble.
I escaped to the West and became a dentist. My #1 recommendation? Extraction. My log cabin has teeth studded windows and door frames.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Sunday, December 15, 11AM – 5PM Game System: The Veil (Diceless/Narrative)
Scenario Title: The Block
GM: Matthew Grau
Variations: Base-Level Convicted Felons
Power Level: Mortal Humans
Number of Players: 6
Characters Provided: Yes
Description: You’re just trying to do your time. Felons don’t
have it easy at San Quentin. Yeah, they built on so that you and your
fellow cons weren’t living on top of each other. Yeah, they built that
new medical facility. That when things got weird – weirder than the
usual race fights, gang BS, and crap from the CO’s. Word on the block is
that they’ve opened up one of the oldest wings again, trying to
renovate it. They say that place has been closed down for more than a
hundred years. Nothing feels right in prison, but something that really
ain’t right seems like it’s coming.
Matt had great maps and info about San Quentin. We were all inmates in San Quentin.
This was my character sheet:
I had a really good time being a depraved homicidal Mexican Gang Hitman. One of the other choices was someone that looked like a serial killer. That was my other choice, but Jill S. took that character. Well, after seeing Jill in action, I bow to her genius. I don't think I could have played the serial killer as masterful as she did. She was an artist. It was great seeing her in action.
One of the best moments was at the end. Martin H. wound up in a car chase and gun fight with Jim M., Nik G., and Dovi A. across the Golden Gate Bridge. Jill and I just drove by, but then Martin decided to hold a innocent girl hostage by dangling her over the water -- that was the last straw and Jill decided that Martin's Skinhead character wasn't a good protege and turned our car around. Jill then saved the girl and dumped Martin's body over the bridge.
Good times.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
This game starts with power getting cut off from our cell block. After hours with lack of food and water, a few cells popped open. The chosen few, the PCs and a few NPCs decided this was time for revenge and mayhem.
One of my favorite bits was that I had gotten a shiv from Reese, another Mexican gang member (but not my cartel), if I promised to shiv Jim's character. I got the shiv, but when Reese saw that I was loose, he said that I didn't need to shiv Jim if I got him free. Jim and Nik's character got into the control room and wouldn't let us out of the cell block unless I killed Reese, so I went back to Reese's cell and told him I need to whisper to him the secret of getting out. He came up to the cell door and I shiv'ed him good multiple times and told him, "You're free now." I then cut off one of his tattoos as proof. That was poetic justice.
The game was pretty simple, just get out of prison. But it was the situations and character interactions that were a lot of fun.
We had a Mexican hitman (Morgan H.), a white cannibalistic serial killer (Jill S.), a mafioso (Dovi A.), a skin head (Martin H.), a black serial rapist (Jim M.), and a gang banger from the hood (Nik G.).
We ran into the medial ward, the mess hall, the library, the chapel, death row, residence quarters, etc. We had fights with other inmates, riot police, guards, and the warden.
We had loads of depraved fun. There was actually a nurse rape/murder scene -- I can't believe we went there -- but we were good enough to keep it tasteful.
In the epilogue:
My character escaped back to Mexico and rejoined his gang, MS-13. After being seriously injured, he retired as a priest. Decades later, he wound up giving last rites to Dovi's character.
Jill's character returned to San Quentin as a sadistic prison guard.
Unfortunately, I don't remember epilogues of the other escapees.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Sunday, December 15, 7PM – 1AM Game System: CoC 7e
Scenario Title: Psychopaths on a Plane
GM: Morgan Hua
Variations: Delta Green and PvP
Power Level: Abnormal People
Number of Players: 5
Characters Provided: Yes.
Description: You’re at 35,000 feet, cruising at 590 mph on
Asianic Airline Flight 313, flying across the Pacific Ocean on a Boeing
777. Your seemingly ordinary flight goes horribly strange and horribly
wrong. The inflight meal was a live octopus and a boiled fish head. In
the bathroom, your warped reflection winked at you. All the passengers
look a bit tense and unhappy. Then your flight gets hijacked. Who will
survive Flight 313 on the night of Friday the 13th, 12/13/2013?
I had originally designed the game for six players, but by the time we got to the late session, I was down to 4 players (one of my 5 players volunteered to play in Karen's game) as Karen badly needed a 3rd player for a missing seat. For a PvP game, the more players the better, so having 4 players severely limited the character interactions.
I had 25 character portraits made up of fictional serial and cold blooded killers from various movies. I emailed my players the portraits and asked them which PCs were they interested in and asked them to fill out a questionnaire. I used the questionnaire to customize their first character sheets.
I felt the game went ok, but it didn't go great. Also Jason F.'s die rolls were amazing and I didn't want to penalize the players for great die rolls. I had assumed the plane would go down and I had another act set up for that eventuality. But due to good role playing and amazing die rolls, the plane landed safely.
Of course, if I run this again, I got suggestions for how to guarantee that the plane would go down, so we could proceed to the optional last act.
In the spoiler section is a breakdown of how the game was constructed.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The psychopaths:
Every psychopath needed their weapon. I had a lot of fun getting various weapons through airport security.
Plastic Gun disassembled
Plastic Gun
Credit Card Knife
Ceramic Knife
Garrote Watch
Put in it into a sock and wham-o
Old Straight Razor
A 4 inch blade is legal
Nobody said anything about a 6 inch handle
Good for strangling people
Shoe Knife
The game started with introductions of each PC. Each PC got to do a quick vignette as the camera goes over their faces in their plane seat.
As an experiment, I decided to hand out bennie points for good scenes or good role playing. The bennie points could be turned in to burn a luck point. Each bennie point let you burn one luck point to change a die roll. The point gains were slow and people horded them for the critical moment of landing the plane. So, I think this experiment didn't succeed.
The players fell into several camps: Cthulhu Cult Terrorists, Hastur Cult Anti-Terrorists, Delta Green Agents, and Civilians which may include Air Marshals and off-duty cops. One player automatically starts off as an Air Marshal (this time it was Shannon M.) and he is armed with
Sig Sauer P250
Glaser Safety Slug, x-section
Glaser Safety Slug
Switch Blade (yes, it's illegal)
Next was seating assignments. I based it on the character's credit rating.
Boeing 777
If you were a cultist, I gave you spells like Wither Limb and Breath of the Deep.
Initially strange things would happen like tadpoles in drinks and unusually long bathroom lines (several PCs and NPCs had to assemble their weapons away from prying eyes). During the meal service, half-eaten fish heads and live octopus arrive with the first class meal. The cargo hold is actually flooded and live aquatic biological have escaped and contaminated the food service.
Dinner Service
Dinner Service
When a PC enters the cargo hold, he'll discover that it is flooded waist deep. Once deep into the cargo hold, a shark will attack the PC (Sharks on a plane!). In the game, Jason F.'s 2nd character missed his spot hidden roll, but the shark missed and Jason plugged the Shark with two shots (one was an impale) from the Air Marshal's gun and killed the shark. There were other things like Moray Eels and Piranha (I would have used them on other players if they entered the cargo hold too), but Jason did a smart thing and shot a hole through the fuselage to drain out the water.
After the meal service, the Cthulhu Cultists hijack the plane and try to make everyone chant: "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn" ("In his house at R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.")
They are channeling magic points to get a ritual off. Etched into the ceiling of the cargo hold is a large arcane sigil that channels the magic energy. Each death also powers the sigil.
Unknown to the Cthulhu Cultists, one of them have been replaced by a Delta Green agent (Jason F's first character). During the hijacking, Jason actually dispatched the other two hijackers. But unknown to him, there was an Air Marshal on board and the Air Marshal "took care of business." Thus one Delta Green agent bites the dust.
I also looked up Air Marshal tactics and info and put it on the Air Marshal's character sheet. They're trained.
One of the first thing air marshals learn is where not to
shoot. The old myth that depressurization by bullet hole is the greatest
danger. Normally, this is not the case. The pumps/compressors that keep a cabin
pressurized can normally deal with a couple of small bullet holes.
A far greater danger is hitting hydraulic lines or
electrical wiring. Which is the reason why, trainees learn where critical
systems are located, so a shot may be placed without hitting them. Of course,
the most important system to avoid shooting is the pilot or co-pilot. As a
result, shot angles and ammunition type must be considered. (Glaser rounds)
Strong marksmanship skills is paramount. The ability to
shoot at relatively long range, for example, could be critical should a shot
have to be taken down the length of the cabin. Air marshals practice moving
down the aisle while maintaining their shooting base so that they can close the
distance to a potential threat, but a shot may still be necessary at 25 yards
or more.
Tactics Used While Seated
Aircraft seats create problems, it’s difficult to pull yourself out of one.
Under the stress of a hijacking, this can be even more difficult. Air marshal
must train to take a shot while seated. He/she must also train to take a shot
as he levers himself up out of the seat. One tactic is to choose a seat on the
aisle and on the left side of the aircraft looking forward if you were
right-handed (on the right side if left-handed). This allows you to take a
lean-out shot while seated. Much attention and rehearsing of drawing the
handgun discreetly from the seated position is just as important as shooting,
drawing the handgun undetected is emphasized.
A lone air marshals must be able to
engage multiple hijackers quickly. Reportedly, in training, U.S. air marshals
must demonstrate the ability to engage three opponents quickly. Since a
hijacker might well have grabbed a flight attendant or passenger as a shield,
the air marshal must also be capable of making a head shot. Normally, a
center-mass shot is preferable as the bullet will more likely stay within the
chest cavity. Special ammunition (Glaser round) will, however, minimize the
danger of over-penetration.
Monitoring Passengers
Monitoring of passengers prior to boarding and while in flight is another
factor in identifying any problems. This skill is an art in not only
observation of body language, but also being able to social engineer. In other
words being able to socialize with passengers in your surroundings is vital in
gaining intelligence. Air marshal emphasizes “we’re not stereotyping, but
monitoring behavioral”. Recognizing behavioral that affects public safety is the
priority.
Defensive Tactics
Training in non-deadly force is just as important as using a firearm all
dictated by the “Force Continuum”. There is a time when the objective is not
defending the flight cabin but on subduing an agitated aggressor. Air Marshals
receive optimum hours of training on physical controlling a subject utilizing
physical apprehension techniques. Defensive tactics includes one man, two man
tactics to physically control an individual, also includes:
Disable an attacker from a seated position
How to fight from the ground position in an aisle
How to use different onboards items to subdue and
restrain an attacker
Using seatbelts to restrain an attacker
These are the many skills required
to perform air marshal duties. The other side to this profession is the law
enforcement side which addresses the logistics and investigative functions.
The pilot will not open the cabin door under any circumstances. When the players open the cabin door, it will become evident why. The pilot has killed the co-pilot (a dried out husk) and is flying the plane in an arcane pattern around an island in the pacific. When they force open the cabin door, the pilot will either fight the players or shoot himself in the head.
During our game, the pilot shot himself, but Jason's 2nd character could fly the plane. A suggestion was to have a Cultist Bomber take down the plane. I think that'll work. The plane will crash on the island (full of cultists). Luck rolls will determine who gets hurt and who dies in the plane crash.
Boeing 777 Pilot's Cabin
In the game, the players dispatched all the remaining cultists on the plane and then safely landed the plane on Hawaii. But if the plane is headed for a crash, I have the following images:
We're Crashing
Water Crash Landing
Mountain Crash Landing
On the island are cultists still intent on summoning something real bad. The players though possibly injured will now have to try to stop the big ritual.
