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.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

Buckaroo Banzai (BB) is missing. Go find him. Basically we went from location to location following breadcrumbs until we rescue BB.

I don't remember why, but we take a titan rocket and attached a space plane to the nose cone and fly it into an alien space station. Since Clyde who drives a Pink Cadillac, is the only PC with the Drive skill, he gets to pilot the rocket. We all suit up in space suits (see Escape from the Planet of the Apes).

The alien tells us if we retrieve the head of a dead bad guy, he'd help us. We take an alien craft down to where we are told the head is, some secret government research facility on earth. We break in, fight a giant mutated spider, and get the head and give it to the aliens. The aliens tells us that BB went through an interdimensional gateway and is lost. There are gateways opening up all over the world. There is a gateway opening up in Egypt.

PCs go there. Find the pyramid was beaming energy to power up the gate. PCs enter the pyramid and kill ninjas who attack us. Confront and beat a gloating villain. 

Repeat at another gate location in an Asian tropical jungle island nation with rebels. Clyde drives the hippie tour bus. We make friends with commie rebels, give them a concert and ride. Beat up ninjas in an Asian pyramid.

Take individual gyro-packs and fly to a gate where ninjas are getting ready to shoot at whatever is coming through the gate. Surrounding them are weird snake/lizard people. We kill the ninjas. BB comes through the gate. We save him. Yay!

Highlights: Maxwell Haus using heated metal coffee pots as brass knuckles. Lazer Keys using his keytar to fire lasers (as a weapon and as a light show) and play music. Clyde saving Hammer Time who was falling by swinging on a rope like Tarzan. Clyde driving and piloting every vehicle. Nothing odd about that.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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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.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

The start is exactly as other Escape from New York movies. An explosive tracker is injected into us. We're given a tracking device to find the President. A timer is set that'll blow up our tracker, killing us, if we don't retrieve the President before our time runs out (Todd started a real timer that counted down from our remaining time).

We're given a glider to infiltrate the prison. We aimed for the Matterhorn, but didn't make it.

Todd had an electric train that ran around the map of Disneyland. He blindfolded himself and randomly stopped the train to find out where we landed. We landed in the Jungle Cruise. Fought an animatronic croc and followed singing to the Tiki Room where there's some Lost Boy and Girls. Princess convinced them that we were harmless and they agreed to take us to the Ancient Ones.

On the way there, the Toymaker decides to steal a toy from a vendor stall, gets caught, and we wind up being captured and sold to the Ancient Ones, Pirates. We escape and wind up in the Log Ride. Attacked by bees, Briar Rabbit, and we confront Pooh Bear.

Pooh Bear has the President on the River Boat prow. We distract Pooh Bear while others free the President. I shoot Pooh Bear with my low damage Derringer and through luck (multiple exploding dice), did a crap ton of damage, so GM had to use 2 GM bennies to save Pooh who continued to chase us.

We finally get on the Train, but before we could get to the Disneyland walls, our time ran out, the capsules in our necks blew up. TPK.

Afterwards, Rowan tells us he has an Uzi. Like, WTF? Here we are throwing rocks (Ollie used a sling shot) at Pooh Bear and I use a crappy Derringer (I only had 2 bullets, the second shot, a last ditch effort, did nothing).

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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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.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

KFC's archnemesis (invented by the Player) was Michael Jackson's Chimp, Bubbles. KFC's signature move was the Nut Chopper.

Wild Thang had a thing for dumpster diving and wearing leftover spaghetti.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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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.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

Lady Bebek and Emillian return from a less than fruitful business trip. Lady Bebek's business contacts proved almost useless. Lady Bebek's daughter, Helene, is betrothed to Emillian. She used to be Florian's childhood sweetheart, but Emillian's family is wealthier.

Upon return, we learn that Helene is missing. Also a young girl, Mira, was missing days earlier. The town is looking high and low for both, but suspect the castle. 

Someone tells us they saw Helene in a coach heading up to Dracul's castle.

The townsfolk are carrying pitchforks and torches and want to go to the castle. Florian and Emillian want to go to the castle too. But Lady Bebek urges caution. The town has lived under the shadow of the castle and the cycle of missing people come and go over the generations. Previous generations that had tried to set fire to the castle have paid a horrible price with even more deaths.

We decide to go to the castle, but in a more cautious manner. We take about 12 townsfolk with us.

On the way up to the castle, we found the body of Mira with her head torn off.

It was pretty funny because Joseph wanted to bring maximum firepower on Dracul's castle. He wanted to recruit troops and have a show of force. I explained that's not how things work in RPGs. NPCs are ablative armor and they're mostly ineffective. The PCs must solve the problem. Once that was explained, Lady Bebek and Emillian decided to ring the bell on the front gate of Dracul's castle with only a few villagers with us.

Meanwhile, Florian, Daciana, and Dr Henric sneak around trying to find another entrance to the grounds. They climb the rear 8' wall.

Lady Bebek and Emaillian face Renfield, the butler at the front gate. After some discussion they get invited in.

After a comedy of errors, all the PCs are invited to dinner. This was actually pretty funny, as the other PCs trickle in and Lady Bebek makes excuses for each one as they show up and settings are added to the dinner table. Renfield rolls his eyes.

The PCs find out that Helene is now the new bride of the new count of the castle. She is now a countess. The Count shows up for dinner, but not his new bride. Dr Henric is an old acquaintance of the Count.

Dr Henric breaks some sort of spell on the Count, who falls ill, and a yellow mist starts filtering in from upstairs. Renfield retrieves the Count and takes him upstairs. The PCs follow. Upstairs, the PCs find a ritual to close a gate. The PCs find the gate and on the other side is Helene who is feeding the yellow mist. Lady Bebek and Florian rescue Helene. Dr Henric and Daciana close the gate, which requires sacrificing the Count's life (with his permission). Meanwhile, Emillian is outside having the townsfolk pile wood around the castle, ready to burn it down to the ground if the others fail.

The PCs emerge from the castle with Helene. Emillian sets fire to the castle anyway. We were already running over time, otherwise Emillian would have had to defeat Renfield and his daughter who would protect the castle.

Emillian had already given up marrying Helene because in his mind, she was just a social climber and the business connections from her mother was useless. Afterwards, the GM did confirm that Helene really loved no one.

What was funny was that Florian kept on espousing his love for Helene, even in front of Emillian. Like WTF, dude? It was only after the game we realized that the Player had shown up after we picked PCs and didn't hear that Emillian was Helene's fiancé. Pretty funny.

The castle had lots of creepy stuff. The paintings. And the priest who married the Count to Helene kept on running his hand over his head and long stringy hairs would fall out. Ick.

What was cool was that we didn't know who the real villain was, etc. It was the Count, but not in the way we thought. And there was a vampire somewhere, but we didn't find it.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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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.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

I think the problem is that we're expecting Alien and this really wasn't it. The space station was new, the crew were competent and experts in their field (some were Nobel laureates). The PCs were competent and experts too.

Apparently, someone had activated the emergency beacon by jury rigging a mechanical device to trip the alarm. CCTV footage was erased.

There were over 20 NPCs to investigate and interview. The planet the space station / lab orbited was rich in biology (very rare and valuable). Later we found out there were ancient ruins too.

After a few interviews, we realized the NPCs were all under high stress and very paranoid. We ruled out chemical and biological contamination. That left radiation and psychic manipulation. Torrez discovered a spike of low level radiation (not dangerous) when a shuttle returned from the surface. He created a portable radiation detector. Dr Iian inquired on who was taking what medication and found most of the NPCs were on sedatives and tranqs. Using that, narrowed down who to do full medical exams. He found the NPC who stopped taking anti-anxiety drugs first was physically different. Much healthier and didn't match his baseline.

We realized someone had brought back an alien artifact. We mapped out who was affected and discovered ground zero. Breaking into that PC's berth, we didn't find the item, but found a loose ventilation shaft cover. Using mapping-bots, we found a foreign item in the ventilation shaft in the shuttle bay where a NPC was murdered by someone with incredible strength.

While Dr Iian was escorting our patient zero to the cryopods, the prisoner killed one guard and maimed another. Then the station was being emergency vented into space.

PCs in the shuttle bay suited up. Keswick put the alien artifact in an isolation container. Then the self-destruct countdown started. Kara an Calyx-9 went to try to stop the self-destruct, but found the 4 affected crew members were barricaded inside the command center. The remaining station crew took one of the shuttles and abandoned ship. The PCs waited in the shuttle bay for Kara and Calyx-9 to return.

Mitchell took the artifact from Keswick, stated that he was taking responsibility and he can be fired afterwards, and ejected it into space. Before the space station blew up, the artifact went past it's effective range and the crew inside the command center regained control of themselves and deactivated the self-destruct.

Damn. We saved the station, saved most of the crew, understood the threat, figured out who set off the emergency beacon (the NPC confessed during one of the interviews), and retained the planet for W-Y.

Time to talk about the bonus situation!

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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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.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

The game starts off with our metal coffins doing hard landings in Paris. We pop out and murder some Nazis. We start off with 0 blood and are hungry.

Intelligence has told us Hitler is in the Zeppelin moored at the top of the Eiffel Tower. We head there.

We're given choices as to our route. We go to a Nazi funeral, the German Tech Pavilion, the Museum of European Warfare, the Jardin de Fee. Encounter Nazis and a few Übermenschen (high level lieutenants).

We finally get to the base of the Eiffel Tower, kill Nazis gathered there, drive up the side of the tower and land on the platform. Assault the Zeppelin, lots of marble and gold inside, beat the last Übermenschen and drink Hitler's blood.

The END.

The only odd thing is that I thought we'd get a big boss battle against Hitler, so I had my inventory saved up. We just ate him after beating the last Übermenschen, so that was a bit anti-climatic.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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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. 

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

Matt started with a recording of Timothy Dunn, telling us of his demise. This is played to us. Unfortunately, we had to move twice and finally to outside the pavilion, before we could properly hear the recording. It was a 10 min recording. We had to crouch near the speaker to hear it.

I tried to do some research. The answer was you get nothing.

So, we finally went to farm house. There was toolshed and rusty car outside. There was nothing in the car. Raaj and Sumi went to investigate the toolshed. I was Raaj's protector and asked if I should go with him or the others going into the house. Raaj said, go with the others.

Inside the toolshed were large rusty circular disks, stepping on the loose floor board launched them at Sumi, it rolled over her toes. Raaj went to help, a disk rolled over his toes, and a mutated possum bit into his leg.

I found it funny that without his protector, he got hurt.

Meanwhile outside, Alice found the books mentioned in the recording.

At the house, Buddy tried the front door and it was blocked by a big cabinet, so he entered the back of the house. The carpet was squishy and there was a foul smell. He went to the front of the house, moved the cabinet, to open the front door and air out the place. The others investigated.

Billy used dowsing rods and kept circling the kitchen. Alice pulled up the soggy carpet and found a trap door, the entrance to the cellar. Billy, Buddy, and Sumi went into the cellar. Billy found a box and Buddy took it upstairs to the porch, to unlock and open. Billy continued to search and when she went upstairs, the stairs collapsed and rats fell out of the walls. Billy was slightly injured. Sumi pulled Billy out of the cellar.

Inside the box was a will, house insurance, deed to the house. Raaj noticed that the will was missing burial instructions for Timothy's grandfather.

In one of the side rooms, they found Timothy's body. Sumi examined the remains and took pictures and samples. Whatever dissolved Timothy ate only the organic material, leaving plastics and metal behind. PCs tag, bag, and box the evidence. Only taking a small sample of the goo that remained of Timothy.

There was nothing upstairs.

PCs decide to find the shack Timothy saw when he got injured. They find it and inside were bones strung up to make an alarm system. In the back of the hut was a hole and a tunnel. Raaj and Alice stay up on top. The rest go into the tunnel which led to a cave. Inside is the old man Timothy talked about. Eventually, Victor got him to talk. He tells them he's looking for a book which will protect him against The Sculptor. Inside the cave is a trove of occult books. Buddy notices a bible near the entrance. Victor uses magic to freeze the old man in place. He tells everyone to run. Buddy takes the bible. Up top, Raaj and Alice spot some horrible creature spying on them, The Sculptor.

Written in the bible is instructions to "bury me on top of the hill overlooking the farm."

PCs go to the top of the hill, find the grave and dig up the body and find the book. The Sculptor chases the PCs. We all get into the car and barely escape.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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