Wednesday, May 28, 2025

Morgan's KublaCon 2025 Excellent Adventures



This year, KublaCon changed the signup system for games. The shuffler and weighting system is now gone. If you're a GM (or VIP by paying extra money), you get to sign up for games early. 25% of the seats are reserved for signups when the convention is running, otherwise all the games would be filled before the convention starts; this lets people who buy tickets at the door to have a chance of getting a seat.

The good news is you'll know your schedule and as a GM, you get to sign up for as many games as you like. Previously, I'd get into 2 or 3 games and I'd had to crash to get into another game or so. This year, I got into 6 games.

All the GMs and most of the Players were excellent. In most games with random Players, there's always that ONE guy, the problem player, but I only noticed one ONE guy.

I do want to say, after trying Nugget and Eat the Reich, and playing in some very system lite dice pool systems, I'm becoming a fan of lite systems for pulp games.

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Fri 1pm - 7pm (6 hrs, we finished at least 1 hr early)

Buckaroo Banzai: Find the Jet Car, the President said!
System: Nugget
GM: Mike Silverling
6 Players (+1 crasher): Morgan Hua (Clyde - Orangutan Driver), Jill S (Loco Ojos - Cowboy), Todd E (Maxwell Haus - Coffee Brawler), Badger M (Tokyo Jane - Ninja), Gil T (Lazer Keys - Musician), Ren C (Kawaii Kate), Ted A (Hammer Time - Gun-toting Mechanic).
Characters created at the table.

Buckaroo is in trouble! Can the newest Interns of the Banzai Institute save the day?

Nugget is a simple system. It's two pages. Dice pool of d6s. Count successes. 4+ on a d6 is a success. 

A fun scenario with lots of references to Buckaroo Banzai lore. Loads of pictures and pulp adventure. We had a great table doing crazy stuff.



Fri 8pm - 12 (4 hrs)

Escape from Disneyland
System: Savage Worlds
GM: Todd Evans
6 Players: Morgan Hua (Ember - Spiritualist), Bill L (Ollie - VIP Tour Guide), Jim M (Toymaker - Gadgeteer), Greg M (Rowan - Weapons), Gil T (Princess - Animal Friend), Christine H (Lenny - Mute Scavenger)
Level: Novice
Pregens provided.

1988. The crime rate in the US raises 400 percent. The once great amusement park, Disneyland, becomes the one maximum security prison for the entire country. A 100-foot containment "berm" has been built around the perimeter of the park. All streets and waterways around the park have been mined. The United States Police Force, like an army, is encamped around the "Happiest Place on Earth." There are no guards inside the prison, only the prisoners, and the "worlds" they have made. The rules are simple, once you go in, you don't come out. 1998. NOW. Air Force One has been hijacked and has crashed into one of the themed lands inside Disneyland. The president has been taken hostage by a group of inmates. In exchange for their freedom, a team of six notorious inmates are given 24 hours to rescue the President of the United States and Escape From Disneyland!

Another great table. Gil killed it as Princess. We TPKed, but we had fun and it didn't matter. If we had 15 more minutes we probably would have made it out with the President. We were that close.



Sat 9am-3pm (6 hrs, finished about 1.5 hrs early)

A-Paw-Calypse Meow
System: Year Zero Engine
GM: Morgan Hua
5 Players: Todd E (Wild Thang), Christine H (Snoop Catt), Daniel K (KFC), Jesse H (Byrd), Joe O (Tinkerbell)
Level: Pets of Rich and Famous People, Animals can talk to each other.
Pregens provided.

You play Jackie Chan's Squirrel, Samuel Jackson's Parrot, Snoop Dogg's Cat, Paris Hilton's Chihuahua, and Gary Busey's Dog. Your human is at some charity event and they abandon you at the hospitality suite. As the world spirals into collapse, you must work together to survive and travel to your wormiest heart of darkness. Tone: Darkly Humorous (Dale & Tucker vs Evil, Evil Dead 2, Shaun of the Dead, Animal Farm) Content Tags: Horror Tropes, Apocalyptic, Cannibalism, Harm to Animals, Drug Use (light), Political Satire (definite), Fowl Language (possibly)

I had a fun table. Todd killed it as Wild Thang, kept us laughing throughout. I'm not sure why, but whoever picks Wild Thang really kills it. Maybe its that Gary Busey energy.



Sat 5-11pm (6 hrs, went over about 1 hr)

Bride of Dracula
System: Year Zero Engine
GM: Kevin Shrapnell
5 Players: Morgan Hua (Emillian - Betrothed of Helene), Renata C (Daciana - Hunter), Andrew W (Dr Henric - Historian), Joseph R (Lady Bebek - Mother of Helene), Emily H (Florian - Ex-boyfriend of Helene)
Pregens provided.

A gothic, Hammer Horror inspired melodrama with a cosmic twist.

A mother sobs, a daughter missing. A village in fear, the third this year. Anger in the eyes of the gathered crowd. Pitchforks gripped in callused hands. Nervous eyes glance to the distant mountaintop castle. The Mayor's inspiring speech. Torches lit. Blood hounds baying. An angry mob released.

TONE: Gothic melodrama. Role play heavy. TAGS: Hammer Horror. Pitchforks & Christopher Lee. GAME SYSTEM: Year Zero variant SETTING: 19th Century Eastern Europe

From the description, I thought this would be a straight forward mystery. Kevin kept us guessing. A really good scenario and another good table of Players.



Sun 9am-1pm (4 hrs)

Alien the RPG
System: Alien RPG
GM: Bill Huet
6 Players: Morgan Hua (Elaine Keswick - Company Agent), Alex Z (Calyx-9 - Science / Synthetic), Gregory B (Dr Iian Harrow - Medic), Jerry M (Leo Torrez - Engineer), David B (Kara Brandt - Security), Michelle (Mitchell Brandt - Team Lead)
Pregens provided.

Fortitude Station is a research facility orbiting Delta Epsilon III, a promising candidate for terraforming. A day ago something triggered their emergency beacon. Initial attempts to contact the station were met with silence but after a little more than an hour later the beacon was turned off. Next the station manager radioed that the beacon was accidentally activated and that everything is nominal. Those reassuring words notwithstanding, Company policy is clear: all activations of emergency beacons must be investigated, no exceptions. Your team is tasked with checking things out and while you hope everything is okay, you can’t escape the nagging feeling that you are heading into great danger if not certain death…

Completely not what I expected. This turned out to be 90% investigative which surprised me. I enjoyed it for what it was, but if you were looking for action-horror, you'd be disappointed.

GM handed out the wrong characters sheets and we didn't find out until we tried to sign the W-Y NDA and discovered our names weren't on the signature page. Other people found contradictory info on their character sheets (Kara was wife and sister to Mitchell, sister-wife wound up being a table joke).

Alex killed it as the quirky annoying Synthetic. Michelle kept us from falling into chaos as an excellent team lead and her action at the end saved our butts. Most people who play the leader always messes up bigly as it's like herding cats (PCs never do what you want).

Another great table of Players. Dice was rolled only twice and not in combat.



Sun 1-7pm (6 hrs, finished about 1 hr early)

Eat the Reich
System: Eat the Reich
GM: Peter Hymel
6 Players: Morgan Hua (Astrid), Elizabeth R (Flint), Dave L (Iryna), Jacob (Nicole), Brandon D (Chuck), Nick L (Cosgrove)
Levels: Absurdly Violent Vampire Commandos
Pregens provided.

The Year is 1943. You are a crack team of Vampire commandos coffin-dropped into occupied Paris with one mission: Drink ALL of Adolf Hitler's blood!

Live out the fantasy of tearing your way through hundreds of Nazis, using instruments of violence in increasingly absurd ways in this simple d6 pool system. Beginners welcome, characters provided.

I had heard about this game and wanted to try it. Who doesn't want to be kickass vampires killing and eating Nazis on the way to kill Hitler? There is a bit of mental adjustment to play the PCs. My PC didn't have high Shoot and we kept on finding firearms, so there's a mental trick to figure out how to use another skill with firearms. My highest skill was Terrorize. But I still wanted to kill Nazis and drink their blood, not just scare them to death.

System is simple, d6 dice pool. Count successes. 4+ on d6 is a success. 6 on d6 is either a double success or activation of a Special Ability. You can narrate and use as many items as you want. Each item adds a d6, but if you can qualify the use conditions for the item, you get additional dice. And if the item has more than one use, the last use doubles the number of added dice. The successes can be used to negate damage, kill Nazis, help reach an objective, or drink blood.

One small issue I saw with the system is that if you narrate the usage of all your items, then roll dice, but if you rolled badly, the die result won't be as epic as the story you just told. Let's say you used 12d6 and only got 2 successes and only used the 2 successes to reduce damage to you. Then this doesn't match your story of throwing grenades, firing machine guns, and drinking lots of Nazi blood. A few times, people re-narrated what happened as they spent their successes.

Even though there's an incentive to try to always use all your items, the narration can drag on too long. So, I think you want to use a fair amount of items, but only go all-in sparingly. You still have to get a good feel for the table because if everybody goes all-in, the scene might end early, then others won't get a chance to tell their story.

Another good table. Elizabeth killed it as Flint, the Nosferatu-ish Giant Vampire Bat. I've never played with this GM before, he was excellent.



Sun 7pm-12 midnight (5 hrs, finished about 1 hr early)

Liquify - A Cypher Sunday Event
System: Magnus Archives (Cypher System)
GM: Matt Steele
5 Players (+1 extra crasher seat): Morgan Hua (Buddy - Protector), Elizabeth R (Alice - Obsessive Occultist), Raaj - Investigator, Victor - Eloqutionist, Alexis G (Billy - Occultist), Sumi - Scholarly Investigator
Power Level: 1st Tier
Pregens provided.

As employees of the Magnus Institute, you head out into the English countryside to investigate the deathbed statement of a young man, Timothy Dunn. In fact he gave his statement using the dictation software on his smartphone while he was dying. Statement begins...

The Magus Archves RPG is based on the horror podcast of the same name. This adventure includes the following Content Warnings: Human Remains, Extreme Gore, Body Horror

This adventure is part of Cypher Sunday, a collection of adventures built on Monte Cook Games' Cypher System.

I was curious as to how Monte Cook built a system for Magnus Archives. I had listened to the first series and loved it. I tried the newer series, Magnus Protocol, and gave up after 10 episodes.

Magnus Archives added Horror Mode. It's a bit odd, but it works. At some point, the GM declares Horror Mode, GM intrusions happen on 1 or 2 (on skill checks on a d20), instead of just a 1. As tension ramps up, the number increases. Only when the PCs aren't in a dangerous situation, the Horror Mode is turned off. Mechanically this works, but I found it strange that it is declared openly, it sort of breaks immersion.

A Stress mechanic was also added, every 3 pts of Stress increases your difficulty level by 1 (every 3 Stress points increases your target number by 3 on a d20).

A good number of the PCs had occult skills which surprised me.

Liquify is the scenario in the core book. The scenario did feel like an episode of the Magnus Archives. Matt's descriptions were sufficiently creepy. I enjoyed the game. Also another good table of Players.

I understand why Cypher Sunday is in the poolside pavilion, so there's a whole room of people playing Cypher to show the Cypher rep that it was a grand event. My issue was even though I knew the room would get cold, I brought a jacket, but by 10pm, my legs and feet were freezing. Also, the noise level was very high. I sat in the seat farthest away from Matt and I missed chunks of what was happening. 



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Friday, May 09, 2025

Deathmatch Island - Review


This game was offered a few times for online play and then it disappeared. I'm a fan of the movie Battle Royale and thought this would be cool. So, I decided to try this out as a GM. I watched an actual play run by the writer/designer and found the GM used a lot more material that wasn't included in the game (videos, sound effects, images). I actually had to screen grab images of NPC cards for my own online game.

THEME: The whole idea is that the PCs with a whole cast of NPCs are on an island and they'll have to kill each other. The sole survivor will gain fame and fortune. This is a combination of Battle Royale, Squid Game, Hunger Games, Survivor, and LOST. Initially, the PCs are part of a team and they'll need to depend on each other to beat the other teams, but in the end, they'll have to turn on each other.

First off, the writer is also a graphic designer/illustrator, so the book is amazing to look at and shows the full vision of the writer/designer. There's a fair number of random tables and illustrations of branded generic items which is a highlight of the book.

SYSTEM: The system is fairly simple. You get a variety of dice based on: Name (starts at d6), Occupation (starts at d6), Capability (Social game, Snake mode, Challenge beast, Deathmatch, REDACTED, starts at d6), Advantages (varies, usually d10), and Acquisitions (d4s). You roll all the dice, but since Acquisitions are all d4s, you can easily pick them out. You sum the two highest dice (non-Acquisitions) + highest Acquisition die for your Result. All rolls are opposed rolls. 

Some Acquisitions are a single d4, some are multiple d4s, depending on how powerful the item is (knife vs rocket launcher). You can use multiple Acquisitions, but you only pick the highest die roll, so at some point it's diminishing returns as the most you'll get is +4, and the Acquisition is used up.

For the GM (called Production), the GM rolls 3 dice (2 Traits + 1 Advantage), picks the highest die roll and adds the current Danger level (starts at 4). Generally, the Traits dice are higher than the PCs (d8+). The GM rolls first, then the Players decide what to roll once they know the target number.

OVERVIEW: How the game works is that the PCs arrive on the island with their Player maps (there are REDACTED areas not on their maps). Each location has a name and key as to what the PCs might expect when they arrive. Depending on where they go, they meet various tests. Roll dice, then depending on their results, either overcome their test and gain goodies (generally Acquisitions) or get nothing. Players narrate what their PCs did after the die roll. After visiting a few locations, the Battle Royale starts and they'll have to start killing NPCs, and at some point, each other.

There is a progression of different islands with each island having fewer and fewer survivors until there's a sole survivor (unless REDACTED happens).

LESSIONS:

1. Acquisitions are always used up (this isn't noted anywhere). Even if you pick up an Assault Rifle, it has limited ammo and it will be used up. You can't keep on using it on every test, even if you say, "I'll shoot a few bullets." It will run out of ammo after the test. Your knife will break or get stuck in an NPC's body. You will find or acquire more weapons (or ammo) at new locations. At some locations there are multiple handguns; the GM can decide it's only one handgun with multiple reloads.

2. Players should narrate what happens based on what Capabilities, Advantages, and Acquisitions that they used when they rolled their dice. If you used a knife, a hand grenade, cigarettes, rope, and camping gear on the die roll, add this to your narration.

3. Players need to be imaginative. If the Players just roll their dice to determine if they beat the test or not, that's boring and pretty mechanical. You need Players good at improv and storytelling.

4. The core book has limited replayability. There's only one set of islands. There are 4 sets of Casts (various groups of NPCs). Each pregenerated Cast list has various adversarial groups that the PCs will meet and either fight or make friends with. There's supposed to be a progression when you replay, but that's REDACTED. The Casts lists various names and stats, but no pictures of the NPCs and no org chart. This was a drawback in that as a GM, I needed to do lots of extra work to flesh out the adversarial groups. When I watched an actual play, the GM showed cards of NPCs themed to match the game design. No template for cards were included nor were they available online. I contacted the publisher who said he'd ask the designer, but I didn't hear back.

5. There's a supplement, New Horizons, which has 9 additional islands that can be used to replace individual islands to help replayability. Each island is written by a different set of authors and none of them were the original author. There are no new Casts. I have not looked closely at the new islands, so I don't know if they're any good.

6. For those used to procedural RPGs, where the Player says, "I'll do x" and then rolls dice to see the outcome, or wants to roll combat dice as they mow through competitors, this game is a stretch. You roll dice and then narrate everything that happens to your PC at a location. That's it. It can be satisfying if the Player is good with improv and storytelling, but if the Player isn't, it'll be dull for everyone.

OPINION: I ran three sessions of this with 3 Players. The consensus was it was fun, but let's only play this once a year. It's not for long term play.

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Saturday, May 03, 2025

Morgan's Illusion Horror Community Con 2025 Excellent Adventures


I guess attendees of Illusion Horror Con think waiting a whole year is too long, so they got together and put together an impromptu online convention mid-year.

I signed up for several games and only got into two. But both games were excellent.

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Fri 4-8pm (4 hrs)

The Salvation of Honest Jakob
System: Legends of the Khurst Riders
GM: Jerod Leupold (JerodLeupold)
6 PCs (3 signed up): Robert (rocinante_on_focus as Kid Wekeyo), Leslie (ImaginationAscendent as Tennessee Azir), Morgan Hua as Shen Black
New Players Welcome
Pre-game discussion, X-Card, Lines and Veils
Pre-generated characters will be provided
Content Warnings: Demonic Possession, Saloon of Ill Repute, Squirmy Body Horror
No VTT - Theater of the Mind only.

One of the workers at Paradise South, the finest saloon of finest entertainments, has come down with something a little more serious than the morbs. The Baroness would love to get a favor from the owner. If Madame Lili can’t handle it, it must be something not right.

Each of the Riders is sworn 1 soul if they figure out what is infecting Gail Toussant and stop it from spreading. Bring your iron, gird your beliefs, the soul you save may be your own.

Interesting system. Roll a dice pool of d6s. Each 6 = +Legend pt; each 1 = +doom pt (for the GM, much like Modiphius 2d20 system). Pick two dice out of your dice pool (generally the two highest) and sum them. Success requires a 9. But you can spend Legend pts to add dice from your dice pool to your die roll (one for one). For combat, it's an opposed roll, same rule applies. For example if you rolled 4d6 (6, 4, 3, 2) = 10, but if you spend the Legend pt gained in the roll, it'll be 13; and if you spend a banked Legend pt, it'll be 15.

PCs have only 3 Attributes (Brawns, Brains, Belief) each with their dice pools, and 6 Skills (Bully'n, Charm'n, Fight'n, Find'n, Fix'n, Weasel'n) each with their dice pools. Add Attribute + Skill = dice pool. My PC's dice pools ranged from 3 to 7. Attributes were used for save throws.

My PC's dice pools

PCs had special talents that let you break the rules, gain or spend Legend points. PCs started with 1 Legend pt.

Overall, we had a good table of players and a good scenario. Also an excellent GM.



Sat 10am-2pm (4 hrs)

Winter Drums
System: Vaesen
GM: David Whitworth (dr_haegldagz)
5 PCs: Martin (penny676  as Chauncy 'Brick' Morgan - pugilist), SaccharineChokingHazard as Sergiusz Szymanski - soldier, Arbor (ItsArborDay as William Gidwin - writer), Joel (WanderingWonderer as Dagmar - vagabond),  Morgan Hua as Johann Ludwig - doctor
New Players Welcome, Beginner Friendly
Pre-game discussion, X-Card, Lines and Veils
Pre-generated characters will be provided
Content Warnings: Lost love, death, war
No VTT - Theater of the Mind only.

A young boy appears to be under some form of spell and has taken to wondering around the frozen Norfolk Broads at night. His father is worried about him and has sent a letter to the Society to ask for help. As members of the Order of Artemis you travel to the Victorian town of Potter Heigham to investigate the strange goings on and delve into the history of lost loves, a changing environment and the perils of war. This is the second of a series of Vaesen scenarios I am working on based in the East Anglian country side and the myths and legends from this haunted land.

GM based the game on the folklore from his local area, East Anglian in the UK.

We had a good smart table, but maybe too many Players. I did like this scenario more than the other game I played in because this was a little bit less straight forward as we tried to understand what was going on.

Excellent GM and good atmospheric effects.



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