Sunday, December 03, 2023

Morgan's Illusion Horror Con 2023 Adventures


I got unlucky and didn't get into any games through the shuffler, but was able to get into A Chill in Abishiri through the waitlist and A Dish Best Served Cold through an announced opening on Discord.

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



12/2 Sat, 10am-2pm (game took 3.5 hrs)

A Dish Best Served Cold
System: Kult: Divinity Lost
GM: Cameron Smith (cameronthetall)
3 Players: Yashtruna (Aiden Burnham - assassin), Automeris_io (Dean Lithian - hacker), Morgan Hua (General T - soldier)

In-game character creation.
Content Warnings: Violence, language, drug abuse, mental illness, possible child harm
No VTT - Theater of the Mind only.

You awaken in darkness sprawled out on a cold, plastic floor. As you push yourself onto your knees, you see red text on a terminal. “Emergency alert! Multiple system failure. Power and life support at critical levels. Shield systems down. Radiation will reach lethal limits in 30 minutes.” This improv-heavy scenario is set up by initial choices made by the players, with conversation driving the development of the characters and the story that unfolds.

I wanted to try Kult because I had watched some of the videos on it by Seth Skorkowsky and he was really positive on it. I also just bought a few Kult books from Mödiphius during the Black Friday sale a few weeks ago. But the default Kult setting is modern urban.

1-1/4 hrs character creation. The scenario took 2-1/4 hrs.

Kult's system is PbtA, but uses 2d10 instead of 2d6. In our game, as a quick generation method, we were given a +3 and -1 in two Attributes and a +1 in all remaining Attributes. Setting these Attributes took 10 seconds. I noticed that a +1 on 2d10 really didn't move the needle that much compared to 2d6. A 15+ is needed for a success. 10-14 a partial success with generally a minor set back. 9- a failure with a major setback. I spoke to someone afterwards and he told me that Kult's philosophy is really fail forward and set backs is how the GM adds intrusions and tension. Ok, this makes more sense then.

I thought the scenario was ok, but we spent a lot of time making the characters for a short one-shot. The Players were asked a lot of questions to flesh out our characters' backstories. The GM took our answers and wove it into the scenario.




12/3 Sun, 10am-2pm (4 hrs)

A Chill in Abashiri - A 1920s Taisho-Era Japan Scenario
System: CoC 7e
GM: Michael Reid (mjrrpg)
4 Players: 
Will - sirponcenby377 (Gen Kiyoshi - Tokko - Special Police),
Andy - RandomAnswer (Yoshioka Masao - Doctor of Medicine),
Fab - sweet_fhtagns (Kitamura Chiyoko - Journalist),
Morgan Hua (Ishihara Aiko - Zaibatsu Exec).

Pregens Provided.
Content Warnings: Political/Colonial Oppression

December 1922, Abashiri, Northern Japan. Abashiri Prison, located on the northern shore of Hokkaido, houses ‘dangerous’ criminals and political dissidents, and is no stranger to death and cold. But when a guard dies under suspicious circumstances, and amidst an unprecedented cold snap, a team of mixed professionals is sent to investigate the facility and its occupants, both staff and imprisoned. Amidst the Taisho-era empire’s political maelstrom, the investigators must navigate suspicious guards and uncooperative prisoners to uncover a plot that threatens not just Abashiri Prison, but the future of their changing nation.

At MRCon, I played in Unseasonal Blooming and Minuet run by Michael and I knew this would be a good game and it was. Michael GMed the scenario he wrote and we also had a fantastic table of Players.

I highly recommend the scenario (and GM).




No comments: