KublaCon Fall moved to Burlingame from Santa Clara. Attendance level doubled. No free parking across the street at the abandoned theater parking lot. But RPG GMs got an amazing door prize (instead of the normal KublaCon pin which I never really cared for). This beauty lists for about $50.
GMs also get to sign up for games early, just like the VIPs who pay extra for this same privilege.
Overall, a pretty good convention.
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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 great table and we laughed throughout the 5 hours. As per other runs, whoever picks Wild Thang kills it every time. So far, this run had the most non-stop laughs. Comedy is so much harder than horror. I think the table nailed it.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
After running this twice already, I've modified some things and added some stuff, and extended the scenario, thus the new 5 hr run time.
Some highlights:
When the alligator in the sewer attacked, Wild Thang who triggered the alligator just froze and became trash, so it went after another PC instead.
Wild Thang drinking sludge leaking out from the bottom of a dumpster.
Tinkerbell ankle bit and got the killing blow on a zombie, the cocaine bear, and Alf with her very, very weak bite.
KFC murdered RFK Jr and Trump with a letter opener.
Snoop Catt doing a magic trick by knocking salt and pepper shakers off a counter top. It's magic!
And the whole group, smashing a car through an underground garage gate. Then Byrd who was driving gets smacked in the face by the automatic airbag.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Nov 14, 2025 Friday 8pm-midnight (4 hrs, took 3 hrs)
Into the Odd
System: Into the Odd
GM: Sean Nittner
5 Players (2 empty seats):
Morgan Hua (as Benedict Jongler - The Axe).
Steven K (as Gizzard Wicherspin with faithful dog, Rags).
Max B-H (as Other Benedict - The Sneaky).
Pregens provided (actually characters created at table, but it was very, very quick).
A rules-light, flavour-heavy roleplaying game of industrial horror and cosmic strangeness.
Bastion is the only city that matters. In its industrial age, it sits as the smoke-shrouded hub of mankind, surrounded by a world of lurking horrors and cosmic interference. The Underground spreads beneath our feet and the stars loom above. You are an Explorer, braving places too far for maps and too old for records. Your expeditions touch the bizarre, wondrous, and horrific. You search for riches, but also Arcana, mysterious devices with unnatural powers.
This was actually the scenario in the book, but Sean started us at the bottom of the dungeon.
A great group of Players and we actually made it out in 3 hrs because we found an unlikely exit. I do want to say that the setting for Into the Odd is very cool and interesting because you have no idea as to what you're seeing and what things are, so everything is unsettling and bizarre. I really enjoyed this game.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
We start off with sliding down a chute, escaping the big bad guy, taking a talking skull with us. The skull has amnesia, but once we found one of it's missing memory rods and insert it, it knows more, which we did later; earlier on, it wasn't that helpful.
Our goal, escape which we know is up.
First thing, leave where we are, a butchery full of bodies. Next room, several boxes, since we don't have much we risk making noise and open three boxes and find a Corrosion Cannon (mine), a Coraline Bomb (Gizzard), and a Captain's Shredding Spear (Other Benedict).
We meet some mighty strange bio and bio-mechanical creatures doing their programmed jobs. But you know, it sometimes leads to violence as the Glass Mantis impales Gizzard and starts sucking his blood. Attacks just sends shards of glass at us, so we took cover from behind some chairs in the room.
Gizzard throws his bomb and it kills the Glass Mantis. This shatters the coral ceiling and exposes a ceiling vent. GM tells us that he thought when reading the scenario that no one would find this shaft in 1000 years as it's completely covered with overgrown coral. But hey, we found it.
A weird jellybean thing phases through a door and it merges with Other Benedict. It shows up like some weird tumor at his mid-section. We later learn that it's a Messenger Bean, from the skull.
We decide up is out. Gizzard had climbing gear, so after Gizzard failed a few times in throwing the grappling hook up, I give it a try and get it up there. Gizzard climbs up and finds another chamber. There's a ghostly figure that motions to him. He avoids it. Other Benedict goes 2nd and an arm tries to pull him into the wall, he fights it and falls down the shaft and takes some damage.
Spiders attack us. Other Benedict kills hooks his spear into one. The barbed spearhead starts opening up, tearing the spider apart. One spider wrestles me down, forces open my mouth and deposits an egg, and dies (very Alien-like). The other runs away as Gizzard nails it with a shotgun blast from the top of the shaft. Inside the dead spider is a glass rod. We insert it into the skull and it remembers more and becomes more useful.
Shinning a light up, we see it's a golden arm just sticking out of the wall into the shaft. So, Benedict (me) and Other Benedict squeeze up the shaft in tandem. I arm wrestle the thing and we get past it.
Through some more strange rooms with hints we're getting close to open water, and finally, we actually escape onto a beach.
GM tells me I have from a few hours to a day before the spider egg hatches and kills me. I tell the others, let's take the boat and if I show signs of distress, dump me off the boat into the water.
Other Benedict decides to do some ad hoc surgery. He uses the Messenger Bean to tell the Spear to seek the spider egg without killing me. The spear digs into my body, doing damage, requiring various save throws. It exposes the spider larvae and Other Benedict grabs it, taking spear damage, but can't pull it out. Gizzard helps to pull it out. They kill it. I miraculously make more save throws and live.
Damn! The party members went way above and beyond to save another.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Nov 15, 2025, Sat 9am-Noon (3 hrs)
Rustborn Bastards
System: Mörk Borg
GM: Dan Frederick
5 Players: Ty M, Chad R, Angelo S, Jacob S, Morgan Hua.
Pregens provided.
Mad Max at sea? Wasteland Degenerate + Cy_Borg at sea! 3 hour game run by designer / writer of Rustborn Bastards game.
The GM is the author of the system and is Kickstarting the game. The art is really good and like other Mörk Borg compatible games, the random tables are very imaginative.
I had fun. The GM brought minis, half-sunken rafts, sunk ships, whole ships, and other props. It was more or less a tactical combat game and we did 3 combats. The setting is sort of Water World.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
PCs start on a raft, low on water, low on food, low on ammo. We see the tip of a skyscraper peeking out of the water. There are water-zombies surrounding it and a crate. The water-zombies are bio-mechanical with metal claws; they're really dead flesh on a robotic body. We kill the zombies and claim the crate (new uniforms) and a hidden cask (narcotics). Beneath the crate is a trap door and stairs going down.
Also there's a capsized boat, mostly submerged nearby. One PC goes and investigates. The rest of us go down the stairs. Inside 3 feral Gillmen. We kill them.
Above, we notice a boat just cut it's engines (yeah, we all failed our notice roll earlier). Two PCs go up the stairs, the rest of us go out broken windows and swim towards the boat in strategic positions. The boat tells the PCs who show up to identify themselves, surrender their weapons, pay a tax, and everything will be ok. PC on the raft pretends to comply and accidentally knocks the cask into the water. A PC in the water does a head shot and kills one of the boat security and combat ensues. We murder the whole boat, about 6 security personale with some pretty good energy weapons. We lost only one PC.
One cool thing was I asked if I could hack the water-zombies with my cybernetics. GM said, there's no rules for that, but you can. I got a good die roll and was able to make a water-zombie attack another water-zombie which took two of them out of the action. Did this twice.
6 Players: Ojas T (left after 3 hrs), Lewis W (son), Nicholas W (father), Scott W, John B, Morgan Hua.
Pregens provided.
This educational opportunity will afford participants of English medieval history to accurately portray the grail quest given to Knights of the Heptagonal Table in 925 A.D. Characters provided. If you have your own set of CMRP random number generators, extra merits for you!
The GM also plays the HoLE (the show runner). When I read about this I wasn't sure about it, but playing it, it worked. Though I did find the game very random and not as funny as I had hoped. I didn't laugh that much, did smile here and there. There are demerits and they're not as bad as you'd think.
There's also some events where the PC is sent to "time-out" for 15 mins of real time via a timer where the Player just sits out of the game. I understand what that is for, but didn't like it. If it was a side skit for that one PC instead, I would have liked it more. I don't like game mechanisms where the Player is forced to do nothing. Even though it acts like penalty box, it's not labeled that and you do get bennies for sitting out. But if the tradeoff is missing 15 minutes of play for in-game bennies, I'd prefer to play.
I'm happy to have played this game as I was curious about it. My curiosity is now satisfied. This game wasn't for me.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The first HoLE was a penguin. I tried to brown nose the penguin and got a demerit. Later, we got demerits for not talking about fish or praising penguins. Finally Lewis had enough and filed a complaint letter. But before that, the penguin's head exploded and we got a replacement HoLE. The complaint letter got that new HoLE replaced, and we then got a Church Lady as the new HoLE.
God came down and gave us a quest to get the Holy Grail before Arthur gets it because God thought Arthur was a bit tiring.
One PC got chased by a house and eventually got eaten by it, but we had already fed a few followers and a dozen soldiers to it.
One PC was told that he had to leave the show for another skit. He agreed to it and GM told him it'll be for 15 minutes. The Party continued on the quest. There was a day of travel. So Player asked, that's more than 15 mins, right? GM said, "It's not time yet." Later, a timer went DING! So, it was 15 real time. GM then handed out some bennies and penalties to the PC who had the timeout. Yeah, I'm not a fan of this. I would have preferred that the PC actually had to do the skit.
Later, Lewis was given a choice of 15 mins in the confessional or to decline, he didn't want a time out, so he declined, had to roll for another random event, but instead of a d30, it was a d10. In this system, low is bad. He rolled, GM asked, which PCs are clerics, nuns, or religious. There was a Luck roll off. Who had the worst luck? Oh, you (Lewis got lucky and rolled high). How do you want to die? (I suggested giant foot). Player decided it was on theme. Squash.
At the cave of Aarrggh. We were given instructions that we had to individually face the challenges. There are three: Body, Mind, and Soul. I had the Knight with the Slay ability, so I went into the cave. GM asked me to make a Subtlety test. Knights don't have Subtlety. I die instantly, knight's head rolls out of the cave.
We ran out of back up characters before we finally slew the beast and gained the Holy Grail. About 6 heads had rolled out of that cave.
I found the game amusing, sometimes funny, but not laugh out loud funny. It really felt too random. The movie had more coherence than the game we played. There wasn't that much standout absurdity to remember. I wanted things akin to The Black Night, The Knights who say Ni, Dead Parrots, Coconuts, stupid riddles, philosophical musings, bringing out the dead, witch trials, vorpal bunnies, etc. Didn't get that, not at all.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Nov 16, 2025, Sat 10am-4pm (6 hrs, took 6 hrs)
Stowaway
System: Blade Runner RPG
GM: D D Blake
6 Players (1 empty seat): Travis M, Nick J, Jay M, Ric C, Morgan Hua (as Inspector Renaux)
Pregens provided.
SFO Spaceport security footage shows an unauthorized arrival sneaking off a ship from one of the off-world colonies. Some kind of animal, quadruped. So what? Why have you, an LAPD Blade Runner 340 miles away, been rousted from your comfy bed in the middle of the night? .... Beginners welcome, but please be familiar with at least one major IP source: Blade Runner, Blade Runner 2049, or Blade Runner: Black Lotus (the latter is usually free to stream on Amazon Prime).
GM decided we would make our own PCs. I had run Blade Runner before, but never generated a PC. The other Players were new to Blade Runner. I swore we took 2 hrs making the PCs. It didn't help that the newbies had questions about every step and there was a lot of table talk. GM spent a lot of time describing the world and nuances for our education which also took a lot of time. It was educational, but slowed down character generation.
Once we started the game, it was enjoyable. It was a good table of Players.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The PCs are 5 individual Blade Runners who know of each other, but aren't an existing team. We have my Inspector, an Analyst, a Fixer, a Skimmer (bad cop), and a Replicant Enforcer.
We're shown video of a wolf-like creature with glowing orange eyes getting off of an orbital shuttle at SFO. The problem is that we're in LA. It'll take hours to get there. And we're told to find it, get rid of it, make it disappear, make minimal waves. But we we're granted Alpha level clearance priority. We have 24 hrs to solve this. Another team will be sent if we don't resolve it.
The Inspector and Analyst go to the Esper room and start getting info about SFO, maps, satellite images, flights there, ownership, reports of animal sightings, unusual deaths, etc. The other 3 take their Spinners to SFO. Half an hour later, I'm taking my Spinner also. The Analyst decides to stay in the Esper room.
At the fueling station, the 3 PCs run into a problem. The fuel station is shutdown. Two civvie cars and one unmarked battle wagon is there. The PCs discover the battle wagon is from Wallace Corp. The 3 PCs solve the fuel problem by threatening the station attendant, but find out someone high up ordered it to be shutdown for the day. I arrive just in time to get my fuel.
We all go to SFO. We see men in hazmat suits on the tarmac. I turn on my lights and sirens and the hazmat teams get into their 3 respective vehicles (WY hazmat, Sable Bio van, and ambulance). Ambulance tells us the whole shuttle crew is unconscious and blind. WY hazmat and Sable Bio have no idea what the problem is. Sable Bio tells us there's an empty cage in the cargo hold. I get all their leader's contact info. We don't go into the shuttle. The Replicant figures out where the creature exited the craft and tracks it into tunnels. We pickup the Wallace kill team and bring them with us.
We follow an obvious path of unlocked doors to the bay. It crashed through a glass door. But no more trace of it is found. I spot a person on a rooftop watching us. We get her down and after some convincing, she tells us she spotted the creature and later, a cloaked figure following it with some sort of tracking device 1.5 hrs before we arrived and that person headed south. We get the number she calls when she sees something. Get our Analyst to call the number, I forgot what the result was, but it wasn't helpful.
Our Analyst starts gathering extra equipment: giant bottles of acid, more weapons, and a tracking dog and handler (as at one point we ran out of leads). All flights to SFO got canceled. I have him call the WY contact and LA contacts. The flight gets uncancelled.
Found the cloaked figure took a bus and got off at one or another station. Got the bus driver to tell us which stop (Replicant and I took the bus). Above us the others followed in their Spinners. Replicant got off the bus first, I get off at the next stop. In front is Sable Bio. Bingo. We all gather there.
Replicant spots someone climbing up Sable Bio's skyscraper. We force that person down and find she works for Wallace. We tell her we here to help. She tells us we need to get to floor 83. Wallace kill team watches the exits. Replicant and I go up the elevator. Fixer is in the air with a Spinner outside of floor 83. Skimmer takes the Wallace assassin to the roof, so they can go down.
On the way to the roof, the Skimmer cuts a deal with the Wallace assassin and takes her money. She locks him in his spinner and bricks it (not quite the deal he made) and then heads down the stairs.
The two going up the elevator meet Susan Greenrock, one of the owners of Sable Bio. She shows the creature to the PCs. It's behind glass, in a lab, in a cage. I give targeting info to the Fixer. Susan gets called away. I move away. Replicant readies grenades. Fixer opens up with guns and blows away the exterior wall, misses the creature. Then blows the creature away once the exterior glass is gone.
Susan escapes up to the roof, gets on a cloaked vehicle. Skimmer still can't get his spinner online. So, Fixer tries to shoot down Susan's vehicle (with a missile), but misses.
Inside, we find another creature (actually pointed out to us by the Wallace assassin), but it looks more human, no glowing eyes. Replicant kills that one too. We put LAPD police tape around everything and tell SFPD to go away. Later we learn that that one has Susan's husband's brain in it and that was done as punishment for an affair.
We find some cryptic clues and a sealed dewar of some sort. We don't open it.
Finally, Analyst arrives with our extra equipment and we drop the remains of all the creatures, evidence, and dewar into vats of acid. Mission accomplished.
=== SPOILER SECTION END ===
Nov 16, 2025, Sat 4-8pm (4 hrs, took 3 hrs)
The Celestial Algorithm
System: Star Trek Adventures 2e
GM: Michael M Kelly
6 Players:
Andrew F (as Cpt Pike)
April F (as Una - 2nd in command)
Yune L (as Lt Ortegas - Pilot)
Paul M (as Dr M'Benga - Chief Doc)
David M (as Spock - science officer)
Morgan Hua (as La'an - head of security)
Pregens provided.
Players will get to choose their favorite Starfleet crew: Captain Kirk and the Original Series characters, or Captain Pike and the Strange New Worlds bridge crew, as the USS Enterprise faces the challenges of this published introductory adventure. Second Edition rules will be taught. Beginners welcome!
This was the new Starter Set's scenario. It's pretty good. We had a good table of Players, all Trekkies, but I was the only one familiar with the system. I've run STA 1e. The GM was actually trying 2e out himself, but he knew the rules pretty well, he only had to look up what skill was needed for tractor beams.
GM had the whole SNW crew and TOS bridge crew. SNW crew was about 12 PCs, TOS 8 PCs. I voted for the SNW crew because there was more variety. One Player never saw the SNW series. So, he picked Spock as his PC. He did an excellent Spock.
STA 2e is more streamlined than 1e, but then we didn't do any combat, so I'm not sure how 2e works without the challenge dice (d6s for damage and special effects). I did feel the Momentum cycle (gaining and spending) almost got in the way of the storytelling. We were focused on the Momentum pool and just rolling dice vs doing Trek technobabble. Our group got good at the Momentum cycle. When I first played Modiphius 2d20 system, it took a while to get the hang of it. I did push the group to spend Momentum when they were reluctant to, so maybe that helped. During the game, we only failed one die roll which led to a major complication. But most drama came from rolling 20s. We didn't get any 20s early on, but near the end, we got several in a row which made it more exciting.
=== SPOILER SECTION START ===
The Enterprise gets sucked into a large ship. There's an Orion ship stuck with us too; it has radiation leaks, 4 life signs, all dangerously sick. Hailing it doesn't work. Transporters are sketchy, so we take a shuttle. We rescue the Orions (some diplomacy was required). Spock gets affected by the female Orion captain (pheromones). We tractor beam her ship behind us while an engineering team is onboard fixing it.
The inside of this ship is bigger on the inside than on the outside.
We're decode a message that tells us there's a series of tests we must pass to escape.
We meet some space whales that are sick and we cure them with the help of the Orion captain. She has some illegal drugs that can work to help cure the whales.
In all the STA games I've run, the PCs rarely get additional Determination. A bennie for playing against or in line with one of their Values. I actually triggered some Determination gain in this game.
I asked the Doctor to sedate all the Orions (during treatment) as I didn't trust them. Doctor refused even though one of his Values was anti-Orion. We both got Determination points for this roleplaying.
At another point, I asked the Captain if I could go over to the Orion ship and snoop around, get information on their weapons and tech. Captain denied my request and got a Determination point.
3 Determination points handed out. Well, I've never seen that before. And we actually used them.
Anyway, we pass all our tests. The ship is a machine intelligence. The tests are to prove that we are smart enough to help it. We agree to help it in exchange for whatever data it has hoovered up (from all the species it has trapped).
It says it has in stasis a foreign virus and needed our help to get rid of it. We find that the machine intelligence is pregnant. We convince it is ok (extended test) and its duty is to raise its child. We get our reward and are allowed to leave (with the Orions and space whales). Very Star Trek.
