Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Morgan's KublaCon 2014 Excellent Adventures

This year the shuffler was bad to me.

Numerous people were complaining about shuffler problems and the late hours that some games ran to.  The only two games the shuffler gave me was Gil's game and Todd F's game, but I was in Gil's game until 4am and I missed Todd's 9am game -- due to oversleeping, I woke up at 9:15am.   So, those two first choices destroyed any chance of me getting into any games for the rest of the convention.

But I was able to crash two games and overall, I had a Great KublaCon.  I played in three excellent games: Badger's, Gil's, and Dovi's.  The Paranoia game I ran turned out incredibly funny and I had a great time running it -- I killed about 49 clones.

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Badger McInnes's (Altered) Resonance (Delta Green)
FRI, 6 PM - 12 AM     6 Players   

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.





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.

This was an interesting game, but slow in a few parts.  Damon had great props.  My Carnival Magic game and Frank's Calling All Stations!!! This is Attu!!! were also in this vein of a distress call out in nowhere.

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.





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.





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.




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.




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.

It was interesting, but it wasn't my cup of tea.