Morgan's KublaCon 2018 Excellent Adventures

The shuffler gods were kind to me this year. My first 3 games were my #1 choices and then of course, I got into nothing for Sunday afternoon and evening, but Todd Furler came to the rescue and I got to try out the new edition of TORG Eternity. I probably would have gotten into something on Monday. When I woke up on Sunday, I was tired and I decided I would be completely a vegetable on Monday and cancelled all my shuffler choices for Monday and get some needed rest.

Most of the games I was in were of the highest quality - one of the reasons KublaCon is one of my favorite RPG conventions.

KublaCon switched from a prize table to giving out $5 gift certificates to various vendors in the Dealers Room. I picked up some neat tokens from Dapper Devil LLC, War of Ashes from Zombie Smith, and dice from Chessex.

Dapper Devil LLC tokens

Zombie Smith also makes miniatures for this RPG.

This time, I think the players at KublaCon elevated the games that I was in and raised the bar of excellence for already superb games.

I hide spoiler sections with JavaScript. If you have JavaScript turned off, you can skip the spoiler sections I have marked. 

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Friday, 5/25/2018, 6pm

The Wraith of Loch Tay
System: One-Roll Engine/Nemesis
GM: Dovi Anderson
6 Players: Morgan H, William L, Matt S, Gil T, Morgan R, Ryan R
Duration: 8 hrs.
Characters: Iron Age Smallholders.
Description:

Loch Tay, Central Scotland, 450 BCE.

The burning of the druid’s Sacred Grove has wrought a fierce and deadly winter, and the rains of ash have returned. You must hold fast within the timbered walls and thatched roof of your family’s stilted crannog.

Dovi visited Scotland and was inspired to run a horror period game. This game was the result of that visit, not to imply that Scotland is a horrible place or horror inspiring. 😀 Let's just say it's inspiring.

We got the deluxe 8 hour edition of Dovi's game; The game was run at Dead of Winter for 6 hrs. Normally, Matt S turns into a pumpkin by midnight and this game ran til 2am. We joked that we would force a TPK, so Matt could get some sleep, but we were totally engaged and wide awake at 2am. A wonderful start to KublaCon. And my favorite game of the convention. Dovi set a high bar.

Our table was full of experienced GMs and we totally bought into the setting and mood. We also built our narratives on each other's character stories, enriching the improv that naturally came with play. When one of the characters finally died, there was a touching moment a natural reaction, but what was incredible was that there were many touching moments that felt right and weren't forced throughout the game. Excellent character choices by the players and great storytelling by Dovi.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

We started the game with 4 members of a household at a crannog run by a matriarch. Dovi went over the setting in depth which I appreciated. Who could forget bog-cheese? The two other PCs start off camera. One is a dead member of the family, sacrificed to the river gods, and the other is the brother-in-law to the matriarch, returning from years-long Druid training.

Part of the horror is a white ash falling from the sky, endangering the community, threatening to infect the inhabitants and killing the crops and chattel. Starvation becomes a looming threat. As the family tries to save their animals, grain, and fish, other external factors such as raiders, hostility and suspicion from surrounding neighbors, and supernatural occurrences increase the pressure and the likelihood of survival drops.

Do you help your starving neighbors who think you're the cause of this calamity? Do you let them die? Do you pay your tithe to your Chieftain? Answers to these questions affect your chances of survival.

I played the matriarch and she is suspected of burning down the sacred island in the middle of the river. Her husband has been missing for over a year. The blacksmith, the neighbor, saw him naked on the sacred island before the burning. After he disappeared, the island burned down a month later along with the female druid that lived on the island. One of her daughters also sacrificed herself to the Gods in order to save her brother.

What do you do when white ash falls from the sky instead of snow and your dead daughter returns?

The Chieftain asks for a tithe of food to be dumped into the river. Food is already scarce. Do you do it?

During the ritual, the blacksmith who you used to have good relations with, blames you for the blight and refuses to give tithe. What do you do?

A supernatural creature takes down one of the boats during the annual sacrifice. We are all on boats. But the ritual hasn't been completed. What do you do?

At night raiders come to take your livestock away, your family is missing the patriarch, do you fight? Luckily, the matriarch is a determined killer. We killed four of the raiders and recovered some of our livestock. She then put their heads on spikes to warn other raiders away.

We go to make bog-cheese, but run into the blacksmith's family. They're starving and tell you someone stole their bog-cheese. What do you do? I gave them some of our food. You then hide your current harvest of cheese in the bog to preserve it, but find your old stash has been stolen too.

The old druid is missing since the burning of her island, but the current druid is drunk and sends you to the sacred island to "make things right" suggesting that you sacrifice one of your sons. What do you do?

In the end, the daughter who returned (actually an escaped slave who pretended to be my daughter) and our dog died, but we got rid of the evil plaguing our village.

And the ash started to abate. Though out of game, Dovi told us the ash was really from a volcanic eruption and it was coincidental to the supernatural events.

This was a very, very good game. Dark and toothsome.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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Saturday 5/26/2018, 10am

My Little Sister Wants You To Suffer
System: Call of Cthulhu, 6th Ed.
GM: Steven Drouin
6 Players: Ezra D, Morgan H, Shannan M, Scott M, Anna P, Vernon P
Duration: 5 hrs.
Description:

Lost and onboard a doomed spaceship, a disparate group of investigators must try to remember who they are and why they are here... As players slowly recover their memory, they begin to learn what has happened to them, how they are connected to their peers, who they can trust, and what fate has in store for them.

This game is an excellent introduction to the Call of Cthulhu gaming system, but is also "different enough" that seasoned investigators will enjoy their own spiral into madness and desperation.

I do not run pulp-y Cthulhu games. You are sacks of hair, meat, and bone, thrust into an increasingly incomprehensible situations, with relatively little hope of surviving whole. As such, emphasis is placed on uncovering the mystery at hand, while interacting with your fellow investigators. So, if cooperating with and at times against 5 other lost souls in such a desperate situation sounds like a great way to spend your holiday weekend, then sign up!

An excellent scenario written by Paul Fricker, known for writing two other classic CoC scenarios: "Dockside Dogs" and "Gatsby and the Great Race." I tried to get into a ToC game by Steven last year, but even being first crasher, I was denied. This year, I got into this game.

I've never played in a game run by Steven, but I'll definitely look for future games run by him. The start of the game was a bit chaotic with cross talk, but people settled in and the game took off.

This game has potential for PvP action, this is not a spoiler as the game description heavy hints at this.

This was another table mostly full of GMs. What was nice was that at some points due to the party being split into several groups, the players were cognizant of giving other players their due screen time and letting various scenes play out before taking their turns without interrupting.

Even though the characters had memory problems and given very slim backstories due to the amnesia, the players were excellent at picking up various hints and portraying their characters amazingly well and they didn't shy away from conflict.

Steven had great props and preparation and even though the game ended early and ran in about 4 hours, the pacing was excellent and I felt we got through an amazing amount of story in that short time period. I had a blast.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

First, Steven showed us pins for surviving, dying, and going insane. So, he was prepared us to think that going insane or dying wasn't such a bad thing, that if we did PvP, there was still a reward. This was a very subtle trick because he didn't explicitly say this. Magicians never show their hand. 😎

Character selection was by looking under our chairs. Steven had taped a small paragraph with our character description and a small bit of memory under each chair. This was very clever.

Then we left the room and as each pod in the spaceship awoke each passenger (in random order), they entered the gaming room. I was #3. By the time I entered, I found that Shannon had taken stuff already (a gun and taser I could have used), but I was still able to get some other supplies. By the time the last person entered, we were short a jumpsuit and that guy had to go around naked. The cabinet with stuff was represented by an envelope and you had to open the envelope and take out cards that represented what was in the cabinet. Sometimes, Steven also gave us props once we took a card with an item printed on it.

During play, Steven would tell us to open envelopes on the table with more memories. Memories gave us negative and positive associations with the other characters and also more back story.

As we opened other cabinets and things, Steven had other envelopes. That was very cool.

We, of course, explored the spaceship and fought aliens.

In the end, there were only 4 available escape pods for 6 PCs. Two PCs escaped. Then one PC found that one pod was broken and as he and I fought over the last remaining escape pod, I got sliced in half by the closing pod door, and then the winner discovered that the pod we fought over was also inoperative and got slaughtered by aliens.

The two surviving PCs found that it was all a reality TV show and we were all on death row, our memories wiped and that if we looked, we would have seen cameras, inconsistencies, and other clues what we weren't in a spaceship, but a TV set. The winners get pardoned and a request/wish granted. This was a very cool reveal and done very well by Steven.

So, massive good stuff in this game.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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Saturday, 5/26/2018, 5pm

Assault on Singularity Base

System: Cypher System
7 GMs: Matt Steele, Ezra Denney, Jack Young, Shannon Mac, Morgan Hua, Andy Hull, Sean Phelan
Players: 36 (too many to list)
Duration: 6 hrs.
Description:

An amazing multi-group gaming experience!

The Empress Tahali V, leader of the Grand Imperium, controls the galaxy with her countless legions of Imperium troopers clad in glistening silver armor marked with her griffon symbol. But a ragtag band of Rebels fights against the Imperium, their determination, bravery, and skill making up for their lack of numbers and supplies.

The Rebels have recently discovered that the Grand Imperium is creating a superweapon that can destroy an entire star system. Rebel spies have tracked a prototype of this superweapon to an Imperium base—called Singularity Base— on a remote swamp world. Your group is one of six Rebel teams attacking in a coordinated but desperate assault. Each team has its own objective, contributing toward the common goal of eliminating the superweapon prototype.

Assault on Singularity Base is a unique adventure that pits not one, but six groups of PCs against the Imperium forces, run as a mega-event with 36 players and seven GMs. This adventure debuted as the official GenCon 2016 Cypher System event. It plays similar to the last act of Rogue 1, using the Cypher System's Rebel Galaxy setting. 

Matt needed co-GMs for this game, so a number of us were recruited. We had a sample play through of one of the missions with the GMs taking turns at the helm. Then we had a full blown play test at Game Kastle with 35 players (one person didn't show up) before the big event at KublaCon.

We learned a lot from the play test, so we adjusted our games and added a final polish.

The game was written for GenCon as an introduction to the Cypher System, so each part of the game is necessarily simplistic, but it's the interactions and coordination between GMs that can cause issues.

I had an amazing table of players and they definitely elevated a very simple scenario into a very fun filled game.

I think some people are wary of a massive game and think it's some giant LARP with nothing for side characters to do or it's a giant cluster f*ck, but this game is well done and rarely can you get 43 people (36 players + 7 GMs) together to play a game, unless you're at a convention. Only Werewolf comes to mind, but that's a much simpler game.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

This game isn't run in one massive room. It's actually 6 tables, each with a team of 6 PCs each with a separate mission.

Blue team: Free and Rescue Prisoners held captive.
Green team: Diversion.
Orange team: Disable Power Grid.
Red team: Destroy Superweapon.
Silver team: Capture or Kill General running the Base.
Yellow team: Disable Fighter Craft in Hanger Bay.

Depending on what the other teams do, various alarms and events may affect the other teams.

We found out through the play test that the other teams really wanted to know what the other teams were doing, so when things happened, they can guess that the other teams were making progress. So, we expanded our introductory brief and added an after game debrief.

The play test also showed that having teams meet up was a nightmare as too many people at a table wasn't manageable and having extra teams crash your GM table messed up the other GM's pacing and storyline. So, we decided the teams can't meet.

I ran the Blue team which was supposed to rescue 3 specific prisoners unharmed.

The written scenario for Blue team is only 3 pages long, including maps and in depth biographies of the three prisoners. So, there's not much to it, so I created 6 other occupants for the other cells and added several encounters.

One thing we learned was that the base Trooper (level 2) were no match for the PCs. You needed swarms of them or upgraded ones to hurt the PCs.

Even with this, my play test at Game Kastle ran short, so I had to add even more stuff.

In both games (Game Kastle and KublaCon), the Blue team set off the base alarms first. And in both games, nobody really cared about the prisoners' stories. So the 3 pages of content is really just 1.

What got play from the module was the poor janitor mopping up a flooded hallway and the Sargent reading a magazine with his feet on the control console.

The fun bits I added were the 4 surprised Troopers in the elevator. They're the first GM intrusion and I hand out 1 XP to each PC. The 6 PCs always squeeze into the elevator, but when they rescue the prisoners, they always have to split the party and make a second trip. That is the best time for an ambush, when they take the elevator back up.

I have a Wizard Knight sleeping off a drunken binge in one of the cells. He's not in the prisoner database because he's not really a prisoner. He always shows up and winds up fighting the PC Wizard Knight with his lazer sword.

There's always a Warbot down in the prison block too.

In the play test, the Warbot by itself was too easy, so this time, I had the Wizard Knight hiding behind it and when the Warbot attacked, the Wizard Knight did a somersault over the Warbot to engage the PC's Wizard Knight.

In another cell, is an Imperium Interrogator with a high value rebel general, but not one of the 3 prisoners they're supposed  to save. The Interrogator always tries to hold the rebel general hostage and use him as a bargaining chip. At Game Kastle, the PCs was able to distract the Interrogator and then shoot him, saving the general. At KublaCon, the PCs looked at their orders and decided the rebel general was expendable. 😂

The best one came from a suggestion by Andy. "I have the death sentence in 13 systems."
So the serial killer is in one of the cells. He's a fan favorite.
At Game Kastle, the PCs hacked the computer system and just decided to leave him there. When they found the Troopers upstairs, they let him loose.
At KublaCon, they freed all the prisoners without figuring out who was who, so the killer not knowing why the rebels were there pretended to be one of the scientists, hoping to get an advantage. Once the rebels figured out who the real scientist was, the killer grabs the scientist and puts a shiv against his neck and tries to negotiate. After they talked him down, they then smack talked him about his death sentences. He tells them he's in for genocide and the PCs don't believe him. "Have you heard of those blue little flying creatures with wings?" he asks. The PCs shake their heads. The killer then points a finger at them like a gun barrel and winks. The PCs give him more shit, so he shivs one of the Trooper hostages and kills him. Melee ensues and they finally kill him. I then offer XP as a GM intrusion and they take it. The killer goes terminator and gets back up and shivs a PC. They put him down again and I offer XP again and they take it, and the terminator gets up again and shivs a PC again. This goes on for 4 times until the Wizard Knight finally turns down the XP, hands me one of his XPs (Cypher System rule), and disassembles the terminator. And it cost them XP (for rerolls) to kill the terminator, so they weren't actually gaining XP by killing him.

In the end, the Orange team was finally able to cut the power, so I started flooding the corridors as water pumps failed. And I added one final encounter with some native creatures that swarm the PCs as they're being fired upon by two Warbots. After a pretty good battle, the PCs prevail and escape to their exfiltration shuttle.

KublaCon's Blue team's favorite Imperium Trooper was Steve (named by the players). They had convinced him to shoot one of his own in the elevator and got him to join Blue team. During combat he always got in a good hit whereas the other Troopers just sucked. No magic dice, no extra level, nothing, he was just a level 2 Trooper just like the other ones, but when the Face/Leader character rolled for him, he hit most of the time. When he died from a Warbot blast, the PCs actually tried to save him with Asset cards, but none were directly applicable. Then when they got another Trooper prisoner, they asked him if his name was Steve. The answer, "It could be, if that's what you want it to be." So, long live Steve.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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Sunday, 5/27/2018, 10am

Red Markets
System: Red Markets
GM: Hannah Gravius

Duration: 4 hrs.

6 Players: Josh C, Morgan H, William L, Aaron R, Conor S, Gil T

Description:

“Everyone east of the Mississippi thinks we’re dead, or worse, we’ve all got the Blight and become the undead. But we’re still here, and so’s the bottom line.” 

Red Markets uses the traditional zombie genre to tell a story about surviving on the wrong end of the economy.

In Red Markets, you must risk your life trading between the massive quarantine zones containing a zombie outbreak and the remains of civilization.

You are one of many Takers: mercenary entrepreneurs unwilling to accept their abandonment. Bound together into competing crews, each Taker group seeks to profit from mankind’s near-extinction before it claims them.  

Takers must hustle, scheme, and scam as hard as they fight if they hope to survive the competing factions and undead hordes the GM throws at them.

This game was in a shared room and the other table was very noisy, luckily I sat near the GM and could hear what she was saying. Gil looked like he was half dead and was about to fall asleep, but he perked up later. I'm running a few games at GenCon this year, my first, and I hear they're all massive shared rooms, so that's going to be a horror in itself.

I heard about Red Markets and wanted to try it out. Hannah didn't have a good handle on the negotiation rules, but I got the flavor of it. The general rules are simple and I can see a lot of promise for this game. Most post-apocalyptic zombie games are mostly kill zombies and other survivors and take their stuff. But this game is more of a how do you rebuild your society while dealing with zombies and other people.

We played the quickstart game. Quickstart at DriveThruRPG - it's a pay what you want PDF, so try it out for free then either pay them something later or buy the full product.

The system uses 2d10 of two different colors (one red, one black). The red die is your difficulty die, the black die is your success die. You add your skill level to the black die. If you roll natural pairs, no matter what your skill is, you either get a critical failure or critical success. A pair of natural evens (2s, 4s, 6s, 8s, 10s) is an auto crit success. A pair of natural odds (1s, 3s, 5s, 7s, 9s) is an auto crit failure. If it's not a crit, then your black die total must beat the red die roll to succeed, otherwise you fail. If you tie, "tie goes to the house," you fail. A very simple system.

The world assume there are various strongholds with survivors and the PCs is a team of Takers (a crew) who are looking for jobs. The game is broken down into various phases:

1. Locate a job
2. Negotiate job payment and terms with a client
3. Travel to jobsite
4. Do the Job
5. Get paid and upgrade your lifestyle and equipment

Locate the job: we skipped this part, but this is where the PCs can investigate rumors and about jobs and whether they are dangerous, a scam, etc. There are also job boards. You do due diligence and then pick a job.

Negotiate: this is an interesting mini game. The Face character (your best talker) negotiates with the client, but PCs can do individual flashbacks to get information that can help the Face make a better deal. There's a negotiation track and various successes or failures in the flashback affects the negotiation track. My only issue is that this seems like the Face player gets more screen time than the other players, but I guess in some other situations, you can have multiple PCs negotiate or even sometimes not have the Face negotiate due to external circumstances like the client already being hostile to your Face character. Payment is in Bounty, an abstract unit.

Travel: dice are rolled and this determines how many Legs (mini-scenes, each Leg is an abstract unit) are required to reach the job site. Each Leg of the trip uses up a ration. Each Leg has an event that's a scene that needs to be played out. There is opportunity for combat and scavenging during your journey. If you run into Cs (casualties or Zs in our popular vernacular), they are a number of Shambles (an abstract unit) away. Each round, the Cs can move up and reduce the distance by one Shamble. Combat goes in initiative order, 1d10 + mods, and uses the same 2d10 (red and black) for combat, but it is a close cousin to ORE. If you hit, black total > red die, then your black die determines damage amount and red die determines hit location. Like ORE, there's a body diagram with boxes to mark based on the amount of damage. Each point of damage marks off a box until that body part is filled with damage.

The Job: this is a full blown dramatic scene or scenes which is what is common in most RPGs. You return with your Haul, abstract units of loot.

Getting paid: returning home is anti-climatic and it is skipped. You get Bounty for completing your job and you pay for upgrades. If you have enough Bounty saved up, you can retire.

Overall, I really liked the system and the emphasis of storytelling. In our game, we saved a NPC who we tried to screw over (and kill), so that NPC crew now has mixed feelings towards us. Very unusual for a short one-shot scenario. So, I see a lot of promise for this game. Check it out.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

The mission was pretty simple, go down the hill, go to a mall where the DMV was and pick up some laminators. The trip was 3 legs long. In the first leg, we found a toll bridge where we spotted snipers and negotiated a discounted rate after getting the drop on the snipers. In the 2nd leg, we found a shortcut through a medical camp and did some scavenging. In the 3rd leg, we encountered some Cs attacking a horse drawn caravan and we killed some Cs and then we ran away as our gun fire drew more Cs.

At the mall, we arrived before our competitors (3 brothers) and decided to steal their truck when they arrive. We got there early due to the shortcut, so we set up some observation points and headed to the DMV and found our loot, but our competition showed up right after that.

At the mall, we started a stampede of Cs that killed one of the brothers and another brother begged to be let into the DMV, we finally relented and let him in and saved him. After making a deal with him and his sniper brother who was still outside, we Hauled our loot back home. So, that brother is now a frienemy. The sniper brother just hates our guts.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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Sunday, 5/27/2018, 4:30pm

You Oughta be in Pictures
System: TORG Eternity
GM: Todd Furler
Duration: 5 hrs.
6 Players

I was really tired by the end of Red Markets and didn't get into anymore games for the day, but I didn't want to go home yet. I was considering trying my luck in crashing a game, but...

Lo and behold, I ran into Todd Furler and he was nice enough to run a pick up game.

This was a very fun gonzo game.

The system was a bit weird in that you rolled dice, added bonuses and decided to add more dice, then that determined your overall bonus to be added to your skill level and that determined levels of success which determined whether you rolled more dice or gained various bennies. The system was a bit clunky. A game NOT for the math challenged.

The good thing was if you got a high enough number, you got to narrate some really crazy cinematic results.

Several players really got into the spirit and there were a good number of excellent moments. The game was a lot of fun and I was extremely pumped up and all that tiredness was gone during the game. I only felt how tired I was when I headed home.

Thanks Todd for a great game and a great note to end KublaCon on.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

Our mission was to destroy a weapon a movie director was making. Apparently, it could bring monsters out from a movie into our world.

We get into his movie studio and we found out that the weapon actually does something different. It throws us into a movie. This happened to our team and we wound up in a Toon world. Think Tex Avery.

We ran into the Big Bad Wolf and his three trusty pigs. Found a mad scientist and his castle. And finally returned back to Core Earth in order to stop the Big Bad Wolf from sending the audience at the Hollywood Bowl into the Night of the Living Dead.

We always had a minimum of 3 Possibility Points at the beginning of each scene, so we were always able to spend them and get very cinematic successes. Possibility Points gave us an extra 1d20 to add to our die roll.

The highlights of the game were the Toonie-ness of what we did. For example, we did the Road Runner gag of painting a tunnel exit and pulling it up like a shade, got the Big Bad Wolf to do a wolf whistle by having a PC seduce him, and crammed everyone into a small safe (similar to stuffing people into a phone booth except something much smaller).

Todd really got the style and tone of a Toon world based on Tex Avery cartoons. It was a lot of fun.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===