21st Century Philosopher: Morgan's KublaCon Prime 2026 Excellent Adventures

There's now two KublaCons, KublaCon Prime during Memorial Day weekend and KublaCon Fall during Veteran's Day weekend.

As a GM, you get to sign up games one week ahead of the general ticket holders. This is a great perk. The VIP ticket holders get this same perk, but they pay extra and get other bennies such as a welcome dinner and some door prizes. Sign ups are first-come first-served, no more bad shuffler. It's almost an all-you-can-eat buffet of games. I love this.

Before, I'd get into two official games and then you try to crash into other games hoping for an empty seat. I was able to fill my Fri-Sun schedule without having to crash games.

All the games I was in had good GMs and Players. The Paranoia and Star Wars games were my favorite.

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5/22/26 Fri 9am-1pm (4 hrs)

Ignorance is Mandatory

System: Paranoia, Mongoose Red Clearance Edition 2017

GM: Charles Walters

5 Players: Mark W (Hygiene), Madhav S (Equipment), Adrian R (Happiness Officer), Kimberly C (Loyalty Officer), Tom M (Team Lead), Morgan Hua (as Fe-R-eL - Tactical Officer)

Troubleshooter! Friend Computer has tasked you with apprehending an arch-traitor and bringing them to the scaffold. But watch out! This arch-traitor's crimes are so treasonous that even knowing about them could put you up on the scaffold with them! Communists, mutants, and traitors lurk around every corner, so be careful Troubleshooter! Trust no one, and always keep your laser handy!

We played the 2017 KS edition. I really enjoyed this version. I looked this up after the game and found that there's the Red Clearance Edition and an updated Perfect Edition. But what I loved was the cards with your Mutant Power and Secret Society that gets shuffled and handed out. Make sure the core starter set includes the cards.

The first thing I loved was character creation. There's 16 skills. Players sit in a circle. Player A picks one skill to be +1, the Player to the left, Player B, sets that same skill to -1, Player B picks a skill to +1, and Player C sets the same skill to -1, and this continues until the last Player picks a skill to be +1, and Player A sets that skill to -1. Then Player A picks a skill to set at +2, and this repeats until +5 is done. Skills without values are set to 0. If you do happen to pick a skill the Player to the left had already set, then it doesn't get modified.

Then the GM tells us that there are 0 to 6 Mutants and deals out Mutant Cards to us. He tells us there are 0 to 6 Secret Society cards and deals them out to us. The cards explain our mutant powers and our secret societies.

This was a great game. We got into hijinks pretty quickly. At the end, I was on clone #5, so were several others.

5/22/26 Fri 4pm-midnight (8 hrs)

The Last Stop

System: Call of Cthulhu

GM: Badger McInnes

6 Players (+1 crasher): Kevin S (Patrol Officer), Renata C (Waitress), Mark J (Trucker), Joseph R (Mechanic), Sean P (ATF), Brian S (FBI), Morgan Hua (as Donald Spencer)

Nebraska, 1999. Somewhere on a desolate highway, a lone truck stop shines a weak light in the rainy night. Within it, six people hunker down and wait for the weather to pass. But on this night, something lurking in the torrential dark may not let them survive to see the sunrise. Terror, paranoia, and death loom, ever present. Ever waiting.

The Last Stop is a modern day Call of Cthulhu scenario that contains intense situations, violence, and gore. Mature players only.

I tried to get into this game several years ago, but wasn't able to. Finally, Badger was running it again and I got a seat. We had a good table of Players too. Badger posted afterwards that this was the 3rd run and the highest body count so far.

A good game. We took all 8 hrs. I actually think we ended the game past midnight.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

PCs are a mix of DG agents (ATF, FBI), a Highway Patrol Officer, a Bounty Hunter (me), and employees in the Truck Stop (Waitress, Mechanic). My job was to apprehend the truck stop owner's wife as she's skipped bail and is on the run for murder (or murders).

In private conference right after character selection, I immediately told the GM that most Skip Tracers / Bounty Hunters notify local PD that a warrant would be served, so there wouldn't be any misunderstandings, but I was told my PC was too confident in his abilities to do that. Well, I tried. Of course, I got into trouble when I tried to arrest my target. I wound up in cuffs and my target was still free. Didn't help that I tasered her husband when he got in my way, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The game starts in the Truck Stop's diner near midnight with a heavy rainstorm. All hell breaks loose. A big rig smashes through our cars, shatters the front glass windows of the diner, and runs over the gas station pumps, and then smashes into another big rig. The majority of the PCs (mostly law enforcement) rush to the scene of the accident and other PCs (employees of the Truck Stop) rush to put out the fire and shut off the gas pumps. With the diner mostly empty, I make my move to arrest my target. Her husband gets in the way, so I taser him and my target screams, so the other PCs return to the diner and I get handcuffed.

The other PCs discover the runaway big rig was run by remote control with no driver. We soon find that no emergency services are arriving, that PD dispatch is unresponsive.

Chaos happens: kids go missing (and are found), a guy gets attacked in the bathroom by some creature (in dropped down from the false ceiling, and returned there), Waitress and Mechanic try to fix up a truck to flee (but run back in panic after being attacked), lights go out, a woman and her kid almost die by hypothermia in the beer cave, etc.

We learn the creatures infect anybody that's hurt. Turning them into rage monsters after 20 mins.

Deaths:

The bathroom guy turns violent and chows down on the waitress's husband. I taser him to no effect, fire a shot and missed, then blew his head off with the second shot. (I had lockpicked my handcuffs earlier and recovered all my weapons during all the chaos).
Waitress's husband turns violent, but we used the handcuffs to chain him to a diner stool, just in case. The FBI agent kills him.
The Mechanic feels he's turning, the Trucker attacks him, FBI shoots him, but Waitress brings him back from edge of death (he's her boyfriend). They handcuff him to a diner stool (those turn out pretty useful). He tries to fight the infection, but fails, so the Waitress stabs him to death.
On the escape from the Truck Stop to the big rig cargo container, the FBI gets a wound. PCs turtle in the container, FBI feels she's turning, leaves the container and commits suicide.

In the morning, gov't guys in armor and automatic weapons (MJ-12) show up and haul us away to a secret facility.

In the end, we're offered $1M each to keep quiet and to not have contact with each other. Almost all the PCs take the deal. The Patrol Officer had a crush on the Waitress and refused. The ATF got 20 years in prison (for being DG), but got released after 4 years. Trucker got nothing as he worked for MJ-12. I took the deal, released the contract I had to arrest the Truck Stop owner's wife, and took a long vacation in Tahiti and vowed to never set foot in Nebraska again.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

5/23/26 Sat 11am-3pm (4 hrs)

The Great Bank of San Rafael Heist

System: Call of Cthulhu

GM: Steven Drouin

4 Players: Shannon M (as Chair Smith and Karl - little kid and chicken), Christine H (as Charles Finny - Priest), Sean P (as Olive Oatman - rescued Indian captive), Morgan Hua (as Sally Deno - Deputy Marshal)

San Rafael, Texas: 1869. Join a team of downtrodden outcasts seeking salvation by means of the heist of the ages, before heading off into the sunset. The target is none other than the jewel of Texas, the Great Bank of San Rafael. This Call of Cthulhu mystery horror adventure is for one night only.

Steven, the GM, always builds great games. Lots of pictures of period people and places for our entertainment.

We had a good table of Players, we all knew each other. And it was a good game.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

We start off in media res with Jim Owens carving a sigil on a saloon's table and tell us we're going to do this job right. His played out mine exposed a tunnel underneath the San Rafael Bank. We're to get Jack L Canine, a retired safe cracker to join our enterprise. Case out the bank. Then rob the bank via the tunnel.

Various colorful people inhabit the town and odd occurrences led my PC to conclude that there are signs and portents a plenty: a talking horse, piles of bison skulls, a murder of ravens flying off in a V, a ghost run over by black horses.

Later we learn that both Charles and Olive have books with mysterious writing in em that have drawings of these signs and portents. Though it was odd that when I brought that up, the Priest poo-pooed my comments as hog wash.

So, Olive drugged the banker's food, so he and his dog had sweet dreams. Inside the tunnel, there was an odd section with strange archways. My PC, Sally, was totally freaked out and fled the first time she saw them. I said they looked like the gates of Hell, with a capital H. The others said it was hog wash.

The heist actually happened without a hitch other than a posse pounded on the bank doors as we skedaddled. Odd, inside the safe was a ginger colored scalp, we left that behind. As we travelled through the tunnel back to the mine entrance, smoke filled the tunnels. Jim had earlier smacked the hornets nest and pissed off his neighbor. They had set things aflame outside.

It was a sore task to get out of the mine. Only Chair (and his chicken) and I made it out, to split the loot. Charles and Olive didn't make it out.

Inside the tunnel, Olive activated one of the gates and went through. Charles also close to passing out followed her. Both appear in a saloon, just as Jim carves a sigil on the table and says, "This time, we're going to do this right." The End.

After the game, we learned the Priest was an imposter, actually a drug addict. Out of game, we learned that Olive yearned to return to her Indian husband. Olive is the girl rescued by John Wayne in The Searchers.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

5/23/26 Sat 4pm-midnight (8 hrs, took 7 hrs)

Chariot of the Gods

System: Alien 1e

GM: Morgan Hua

5 Players: Ben V (Davis - Pilot), Mark W (Cham - Roughneck), Andy C (Wilson - Company Man), Sam S (Captain Miller - Officer), Sveta B (Rye - Techie).

Starfreighter USCSS Montero receives a distress call from the USCSS Cronus. W-Y policy is to render aid especially to other W-Y assets, failure to render aid will lead to forfeiture of all bonus pay. The crew is taken out of cold sleep to investigate the derelict.

This is the full 3 Act cinematic scenario from the Alien 1e RPG Starter Set. Will be using the Alien 1e ruleset.

I had a good table of Players. I've run this twice before online, using the PDF. This time, I used the printed pamphlet. OMG, the hardcopy was different from the updated PDF. I was looking for rules that I knew were in the scenario and couldn't find them, and when I did, it was different than what I had remembered.

Anyway, we had a good time. I did feel after 6 hrs, table energy was fading. It didn't help at one point, there was a NPC fighting a Xeno and I was rolling dice against myself which took too long. I'll need to do a quick resolution in the future. Also this was when the original PCs were dying and being replaced by backup PCs. In the end, out of the starting PCs, only Davis made it home.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

The rule I was missing was the infection and vaccine die rolls. One spot seemed to indicate that I should just hand out the infection agenda card to the first surviving PC who got the vaccine. I did a search on the PDF and found the exact rule (p.34) and looked for the corresponding text in the hardcopy (p.32). They were different. PDF had a save throw. Hardcopy said only if the GM wanted to be nice.

Again, I didn't have to bring in the Space Pirates. The scenario has this option if the PCs needed more backup characters or to extend the scenario. Close to the 7 hr mark, the PCs had killed all the Xenos, so I asked if they wanted optional Space Pirates or to end the scenario. Table agreed to end the game, so I wrapped up and we stopped near 11am. I figured that would have been their answer, but this was posted as an 8 hr game, I felt obligated to ask.

Online, someone created Banter Cards for each PC. I put them on the back of the character portraits, so the Players had a bit of roleplaying as they rehydrated from cryosleep at the dinner table. The talking points replaces the block text that's read at the beginning of the game. It makes it more interactive.

I found an audio file which is the 10 minute self-destruct countdown. After 5 mins, the override fails. I used that to great effect. Rye, the only PC on the Montero failed to turn off the self-destruct, and decided to pilot the Montero away from the Cronus. He got into a life pod and jettisoned before the Montero exploded. Somewhere out there is Rye in cryosleep. The PCs never picked him up.

The PCs hated Wilson (great , the Company Man. But when a Xeno ripped his arm off, they did save his life, but still hated him.

Capt Miller at one point turtled in the Cronus command center. He was injured and took the vaccine. Unknown to the others, he had turned (Act 3 infection card). When the PCs entered the command center to talk to him, he launched himself at Wilson. Wilson swapped places (Personal Safety talent) with the Cronus's Company Woman who swapped places (Personal Safety talent) with the Cronus's Captain who got hit. Eventually, Miller killed Wilson before he himself was taken down.

Cham went outside to repair the engines, but got killed by a Xeno. Davis found some armored environmental suits and swapped as his Mk.50 was running out of air. A replacement PC put on the other suit and they both went outside and killed the Xeno, repaired the engines and comms array.

By then, the air scrubbers were also working, so Davis kept wearing the environmental suit, and recharged the air until it was time to go into cryosleep.

PCs decided to return to a WY space station. As the credits roll, days later, the infection had jumped from their ship to the space station and Xenos chase people in the space station.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

5/24/26 Sun 9am-1pm (4 hrs)

Takeover at Whisper Base

System: Star Wars - Age of Rebellion

GM: Zachary Paul

4 Players: David K (Cael - gunner), Demian V K (Tendar - engineer), Kimberly R (Zal - pilot), Morgan Hua (as Vendri - spy)

War rages across the galaxy. Both the brutal Galactic Empire and the desperate Rebel Alliance reel in the face of terrible losses. Though Rebel forces managed to destroy the superweapon called the DEATH STAR, their victory did not come in time to save the world of ALDERAAN. Fear and uncertainty swell in the galactic community.

Now, one small battle begins on the verdant world of ONDERON. Deep in the jungle, Rebel intelligence has discovered a listening post built by MOFF DARDANO to spy on his rival, ADMIRAL CORLEN. The Rebel Alliance has sent a crack team of infiltrators to take the secret listening post and turn it into a forward Rebel base in the Japrael system. After hours of slogging through the dense jungle, with its poisonous foliage and oppressive heat, the heroes have reached their destination: Whisper Base. Compared to staying in the jungle, the prospect of ambushing an Imperial patrol and breaking into a heavily guarded base seems almost pleasant....

I tried this system twice and had a mediocre experience, but I wanted to try this again properly. The system uses special dice with unique symbols on them. I had problems reading the dice and relied on the GM to interpret them. It's like you're throwing down some cattle bones marked with runes and the priestess is the only one who can tell you what it foretells. This is the scenario from the Starter Set where they ease you into the system without a big rules dump.

I really enjoyed this and at the end, I could read the dice properly.

I'm entertaining the thought of getting a copy of the game.

I asked the GM as to which starter set to get. There are three: Age of the Rebellion, Edge of the Empire, and Force and Destiny. He told me Age of Rebellion is simple good vs evil and the PCs are good guys, the Rebels. Edge of Empire is more grey, you're like Han Solo doing questionable jobs. Force and Destiny is for people who like Jedi.

He did run a Force and Destiny campaign where everyone wanted to play a Jedi. When you have 6 Jedi, they just murder everything they run into. They were hard to stop. He did say you can have Force sensitive PCs and other classes, but I mean if you're going to play Force and Destiny, why wouldn't you play a Jedi?

His warning about Age of Rebellion is to NOT have a Pilot PC, but to give them a NPC Pilot. Otherwise, that PC would have nothing to do.

The system works for two types of Players: one who rolls the dice and uses the result for colorful narration, and one who rolls the dice and don't care about narration. Interesting.

Anyway, the GM was great. Had a great grasp on how to interpret the dice in very colorful ways.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

We're told to trek through a jungle, infiltrate the base, disable the comms link, prevent the commander from leaving the planet (there's a shuttle at the top of the base), prevent the commander from alerting any outside forces.

We sneak in the base garage and cut the giant comms cable. Step one done. Some troopers show up, so we stun them. I start closing the garage doors. Then we disable all the speedsters and one of the two AT-STs in the base garage. Just then a Janitorial-bot (a reprogrammed combat unit) shows up. I remove the restraining bolt and after some tinkering, restore it to Murder-bot mode.

After some fire fights, we get to the shuttle and rig it to blow up if someone engages the engines to take off.

Then we search the base for the commander. Attack the comms center and take it, but learn that he's taken a secret tunnel to the garage. In the garage, we find he's taken one of the AT-STs. We re-enable the disabled AT-ST and one of the speeders and go after him.

In the distance is another communication tower with some auto-cannons. We chase after the commander, and a returning patrol of speedsters come up behind us. The PCs in the AT-ST takes care of the speedsters. I go after the commander, he has to push his AT-ST past its operational parameters. I lose it in the jungle. I head to the tower. The auto-cannons open fire, but shoots at the commander's AT-ST instead (horribly bad die roll), so he shuts down the auto-cannons. His AT-ST breaks down. Our AT-ST makes it to the communication tower first and take out the building after two shots. I search and find the commander. Before I can ask him to surrender, a jungle creature eats him.

Credits roll. End credit scenes happen (epilogues).

My PC and the Murder-bot (dressed as Imperial Janitors) are pouring poisonous insects from janitorial buckets into air vents. Once done, we slam closed the vent covers and smile. During play, we learned the Murder-bot hated being a janitor and loved killing Imperials.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

5/24/2026 Sun 2-8pm (6 hrs)

Festival and Fire

System: Call of Cthulhu 7e

GM: Colin Dimock

5 Players: Brent M (Adam Davis - fire fighter), CRO magnon (Rachael Kelly - forestry), Max B-H (Benjamin Barry - young politician), Scott M (Tanya Brewerton - cop), Morgan Hua (as Noah Sullivan- high school gym and history teacher)

The small town volunteer fire department of Evenstone South Carolina has been asked to investigate a series of potential arson fires for the neighboring community of Darby, which is too small to have a fire department of its own. Concerns are high as October has come, and Darby hosts the “Scariest Corn Maze in the USA” which attracts enough tourists to account for a sizable portion of Darby’s annual budget. While Darby has been modernizing since the main road was paved, there is still an older insular element that distrusts outsiders, so you have been asked to ‘be respectful’ while conducting your investigation.

I will be running this in Call of Cthulhu 7th edition without luck points. Characters provided.

I had a good time and the scenario was sufficiently complex.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

An interesting scenario, mostly a no-win scenario.

Funny, we never went into the corn maze.

There is an escalating series of arson, all on the edge of a forest. There's the old town bordering the forest run by a controlling minister. The mayor of the newer town asked us to look into the arson.

We went to the latest arson site and found two bodies. Rachael and I tracked boot prints into the forest and found that they lead to another one of the crime scenes. Also I found abnormal prints of large goats, claws, and a large slithering thing. Separately, I create a blind in a tree to watch for cryptids. Rachael decides to camp out. We wind up near each other. At night, Rachael gets attacked by a mutated goat-thing and is infected. I get a blurry photo of the cryptid (which I now call the goat-duck-en).

Tanya, Ben, and Adam talk to the minister. Tanya almost pisses him off with her overbearing demeanor and threats, but Ben saved the day.

Eventually, we figure out the arson is committed by the gas station owner. He's been hunting the monsters. He tells us annually, there's a ritual that brings forth a whole bunch of monsters on an island (done a few months ago), and after the corn maze festival is over, a child is caged in the middle of the maze for a week which draws all the monsters into the maze. Then the maze is set on fire.

He tells us the minister's daughter might help us. We hunt her down and try to talk to her. Ben fails with a pushed roll. She panics and tries to cast a spell on us and it backfires and she dies horribly. On her body is a diary telling us that there's a ritual to free the mother spirit in a tree on the island. The ritual is in a spell book in her father's house. We steal it.

We get to the island. Tanya casts the spell with our help, but fail. This kills Ben and my character. In order to retry, Tanya must sacrifice a life and takes Adam's. The spell succeeds and Shub-Niggurath is freed and makes Tanya and Rachael her priestesses.

Shub-Niggurath furious at the minister for imprisoning her destroys him and the town.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

21st Century Philosopher

Thursday, May 28, 2026

Morgan's KublaCon Prime 2026 Excellent Adventures

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