Morgan's GenCon 2018 Excellent Adventures

A number of people I play online with were going to GenCon, so I decided to go too. They had rented a house (which fell through, one week before the convention) and we wound up in a 3 bedroom/1 bath house for 8 people. Arrgh. VRBO sucked big time. They even said they would put their emergency team on our issue and they never came through. One day before GenCon they told us to find something on Expedia, but no hotels were available by then. Luckily we found a small house that cost us an additional $1000 to book on AirBnB. The rent for 4 days was probably 3 months worth of rent for the place we were in, but beggars can't be choosers. The house was about 4 miles from the convention center.

GenCon is a zoo. Inside the convention center is packed with people. Hallways, dealer room, bathrooms, etc. Do not go if you have issues with crowds. Outside the convention center is hot (+85℉) and humid.

What I found unusual was that various vendors actually gave discounts off their MSRP or offerred freebies if you buy stuff. I heard if you go to the dealer room on Sunday near closing, you can sometimes get free product as the vendors don't want to spend money shipping product home.

When you sign up for games at GenCon (which sell out in the first day or two when online sign ups open up), you have to pay for each event (about $1-$2/hr) in addition to the GenCon pass ($121 + $10 shipping). The games are not in private rooms, but in massive shared rooms. My games were held in a room with 10 round tables. The noise level is atrocious. At least the seminars/talks were free.

For me it was a Delta Green all the time convention. I ran 4 Delta Green games, played in a Delta Green LARP, and played in a private Delta Green game run by Shane Ivey.

Delta Green also won 6 ENnie Awards (3 gold, 3 silver).

Overall, I had fun. I met Mike Mason (Chaosium), Cat Tobin (Pelgrane Press), Chris Spivey (Darker Hue Studios), Shane Ivey (Arc Dream Publishing), Dennis Detwiller (Arc Dream Publishing), Greg Stolze (Arc Dream Publishing) and saw in seminars Sandy Petersen (Petersen Games), Monte Cook (Monte Cook Games), and Greg Stafford (Chaosium).

Would I go again? Only if I need to do some business there. The cost of housing, plane tickets, convention pass, paying for events (events here in SF Bay Area are free), make it an expensive trip.

If I went again, I would definitely go to more NSDM lectures and get a hotel within walking distance of the convention center.

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

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Thursday (8/2/2018), 11am-1pm

Protect Yourself! Why Game Designers Need To Know Patents, Copyrights, & Trademarks
Presenters: Wood, Herron & Evans LLP

Tailored for game designers! Learn about patents, copyrights, & trademarks with 2 game aficionados & IP professionals who've educated on these topics at GenCon for over 5 years. Q&A included.

Interesting lecture about the difference between patents, copyrights ©, and trademarks™.
Copyrights are cheap and are good for life of author + 70 years, patents (including design patents) are expensive and are good for 15 years, trademarks cost is between copyrights and patents and need to be renewed every few years.

As examples, they went over the looks and design of Magic: The Gathering™ cards and their trademark. And what rights you have if you've registered your product/trademark. e.g. you get to sue infringers of your rights and recover not only damages, but court costs (which you don't get if you're not registered), and the right to have products seized at ports and destroyed.

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Thursday (8/2/2018), 1-5pm & 7-11pm

Last Things Last
System: Delta Green
GM: Morgan Hua, Arc Dream Publishing
Players: 6/6 & 4/6 (2 no shows for 7pm game)
Ticket Cost: $4

Clyde Baughman was an active Delta Green agent from 1967 to 1970. 4 days ago he died in his apartment. The nearest available Agents conduct a sweep of his apartment.

First group did everything right, did research and preparation, and we had an exciting end with no deaths.

Second group. Research? What's that? Can we get some C4? In the end one PC went insane, opened fire with an automatic weapon, missed the creature and killed another PC. Then the creature killed the PC after two of his weapons jammed by rolling 88 twice in a row. One PC survived by running away. He called in for help with his burner phone. Classic DG ending.

One player came up with a great short description of Delta Green. Delta Green is as if Mulder and Scully worked for the Smoking Man.

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Friday (8/3/2018), 10-11am

The Cold War: A Concise Overview: NSDM
Presenter: Dr. Craig Greathouse, National Security Decision Making Game, Inc.

Short Description:This lecture provides a quick overview of the Cold War period in terms of themes, influences, & significant events. It provides a background into the competition between the U.S. and USSR.

The Cold War was a period of change in the international system. Highlighted by competition between the US and USSR along ideological, economic and military lines, other events and influences affecting the current international system emerged from the Cold War. International and Supranational Organizations emerged: UN, IMF, World Bank, WTO (formerly GATT), EU. Decolonization and externalities emerging from breakdown of European empires set the stage for current ethnic and religious violence. Lastly, the period provided foundations for modern globalization: technological linkages between people and development of transportation systems reduced spatial distances, setting up potential for conflicts within the system. Presenter: Dr. Craig Greathouse, Professor of Political Science specializing in the EU, International Relations Theory and Security and Defense Policy, now on the NSDMG staff.

Wow, NSDM are a quality group of lecturers. Worthwhile. Too bad I missed the other two lectures I had signed up for, but due to scheduling and unable to get to the location early enough, due to late nights, I missed the morning lectures on Alien First Contact and Global Hotspots which I had tickets for.

The cold war was basically USSR wanting to take over the world with their brand of communism and the US trying to contain the USSR. The lecture covered lots of history and insights on why things happened.

Afterwards, I stayed for about 10 minutes to listen to the next lecture on why a submarine sunk, then I left to attend a lecture on poisons.

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Friday (8/3/2018), 11am-12pm

Poisons in Gaming/Literature: Primitive toxins
Presenter: Michael Beuhler, Doctor Beuhler Events

A new, system-neutral presentation on select real primitive toxins with historical & speculative uses. Suggestions to incorporate them into your world by a physician toxicologist. 3rd GenCon year.

Fascinating lecture on poisons that primitive people can use and how unlikely you'd find an antidote. Lots of handouts with toxin info and game stats for them.

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Friday (8/3/2018), 12-1pm

Making Better RPG Characters
Presenters: Geekspective

Short Description:If your tabletop RPG seems dull, one problem could be the characters. Learn how to create more vibrant characters with more personality. We will help you put the ‘role’ back into role-playing!

At geekspective.com, we firmly believe that role-playing characters are more than stats on a character sheet. Early RPGs didn’t encourage personality, favoring maps and equipment lists. The latest generation of RPGs, however, encourage storytelling and social role-play. If you aren’t sure how to adapt to a new system that requires more role-play, or just love the idea of more vivid and interesting characters, this is the discussion for you! We make actual play podcasts which requires us to create voices for our characters. That helps, but adding personality traits, interesting possessions, and personality quirks in addition to those voices, your characters will become much more fun and your RPG sessions will too.

Picked up a few tidbits, but this panel was light on content.

1. Beliefs should be actionable. e.g. "Love Children" isn't good enough, but "Love Children, must protect them" is. "Trust other PC" isn't good enough, but "Trust other PC, believe everything he says" is. And beliefs can change based on what happens during play. e.g. the PC you trusted had sold you down the river, so now that belief can be modified.

2. PCs should have instincts such as "Always dive during gun fire."

3. NPC should be a foil to the PC's beliefs. e.g. "Love Children, must protect them" PC should run into the "Worst child in the world" or an NPC who abuses children.

4. Ask players about the NPC to define the NPC if GM has no idea. e.g. some random faceless NPC can be defined with your player's help.

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Friday (8/3/2018), 1-5pm & 7-11pm

Observer Effect
System: Delta Green
GM: Morgan Hua, Arc Dream Publishing
Players: 6/6 & 6/6
Ticket Cost: $4

A power surge takes the Olympian Holobeam Array offline, but the engineers say everything is fine. Agents are sent undercover as Dept of Energy inspectors,will they unravel the true nature of reality?

When I play tested this game, the players failed to solve the mystery.

First group got frustrated at one point, but did solve the mystery with 3 of the PCs killing each other after killing all the NPCs. Three PCs survived.

Second group effectively solved the mystery and all of them survived, but they killed all the NPCs.

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Saturday (8/4/2018), 11am-12pm

Creating a Horror RPG Scenario the Sandy Petersen Way
Presenter: Sandy Petersen, Petersen Games

Sandy Petersen shows you how he assembles Call of Cthulhu/Cthulhu Mythos adventures quickly & effectively.

Sandy gave his 3 rules for M.R. James's ghost stories:
1. It is malign. (no kind ghosts)
2. Place it where the players can imagine themselves. (it can be in a beat up rusty spaceship, but not the unrealistic white cleanliness of Star Trek)
3. No jargon. (describe the horror and frightfulness before asking for die rolls and system based mechanical effects, jargon meaning system centric jargon such as SAN check and SAN loss).

3 rules for generating a scenario:
1. Pick a eventful scene from a movie.
2. Pick a location.
3. Pick a monster.

Then figure out the purpose of the bad guy.

Creepy stuff rule: 3 chances to survive.
1. Hint of danger, lots of smell or weird events.
2. Solid evidence, like a body missing a head.
3. The Monster shows up.
When you follow the creepy stuff rule, the players will blame themselves for their death. They were forewarned.

During this workshop, we actually came up with a pretty good scenario. Completed scenario in spoiler section below.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

In our example we picked via answers from random audience members:
1. Burning the rabbit in Velvetine Rabbit
2. Hot springs resort
3. Undead ancestor

In Iceland, PCs are called to a retreat from abroad. It's an extended family gathering at a Hot Springs resort. The creature needs a descendant to transfer his spirit into every few years as the hot spring wears down his current body. Over the years, all his direct descendants have been sacrificed, so he must get descendants from abroad, thus the special invite of foreigners.

Once the PCs arrive (not all are direct descendants, some are related through marriage or are significant others) they are given a piece of scrimshaw as a souvenir. This is done early so the PCs will forget later in the game. The scrimshaw is an expensive gift and hidden inside holds a piece of the undead ancestor. This is done to create some sort of connection between the PCs and the creature.

The workers at the resort are all cultists and so are various workers in the town.

During their stay, give hints of danger such as bad smells and vague sightings of the creature. (creepy stuff rule 1).

After the end of the retreat, the creature would have picked one of the PCs as the new vessel. When the PCs try to leave Iceland, something happens to their flight (cultists involvement) and they must return to the retreat as they wait for their new flight.

The picked PC is kidnapped and taken down to a lower level of hot springs that the PCs have never visited before. PC is chained down. In the lower level of the hot springs are pieces of bodies (creepy stuff rule 2), the previously discarded vessels of the undead ancestor.

PCs discover the chosen PC has been kidnapped. They can find the hidden level of the hot springs as they search for their missing comrade.

The creature comes out of the lava from the deepest level of the hot springs (creepy stuff rule 3). The PCs must race back to the hotel and recover the scrimshaw and throw it into the lava, to destroy the link, before the creature possesses the chosen PC.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

Here's the full video of the event: Writing a Horror Scenario the Sandy Petersen Way

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Saturday (8/4/2018), 12-1pm

Why Did TSR Fail?
Presenter: Ben Riggs

How did a $40 million company that started the tabletop RPG industry go belly up? Ben Riggs has conducted dozens of interviews with TSR alumni to discover the surprising truth of what happened to TSR.

A fascinating story. TSR almost failed until it was purchased by the family that owned Buck Rogers. Then TSR was saved, but due to a crazy contract with Random House, where TSR got paid for every unit of product shipped (not sold). Initially TSR did sell every copy that was printed, but as sales grew, they over printed copies of books deliberately. They were in effect printing money. They also didn't pay their printing house and eventually had to hand over the deed to their building to the printing company as payment. What did TSR do with their money? They wanted to get into comics and movies, so they poured their money into those areas with their west coast branch of TSR run by one of the Buck Rogers family members. They pissed off DC comics, one of their partners, when they started to print their own comic books, so DC comics killed their contract. They pissed off their best selling authors by paying them way less than normal, so their book authors left TSR. They pissed off Random House by threatening to go to other publishers and refusing to pay for over printed product that was sitting in warehouse space. Finally, TSR was sold to The Wizards of the Coast to cover their debt to Random House and the printing house (who still wasn't being paid and who refused to print any more product until they were).

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Saturday (8/4/2018), 12-1pm

How to Have the Best RPG Session Ever

Presenters: Monte Cook, Monte Cook Games, LLC

Join members of Team MCG to get tips on having the best RPG session ever. There will be GM tips, player tips, & game stories with a positive spin.

This was basically a round table with Monte Cook and his crew basically selling their KickStarter. I felt the session was mostly content free and more of a sell job than anything else.

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Saturday (8/4/2018), 1-2pm

Quickly Creating Interesting Characters to Roleplay

Presenter: Learn Larp, LLC

Short Description:Creating interesting characters that are both playable & meaningful takes more than just rolling stats. Learn how to make a robust character in less than 15 mins & enjoy the character arcs to come.

Offers a series of must-haves to create a dynamic and realistic character and a set of questions to ask and answer when making a new character. Taught by a writing professor and game designer, this presentation showcases shortcut creative writing techniques that can be used individually and in pairs or small groups to improve your character’s backstory, motivations, conflicts, quirks, and other traits that make them more playable, intense, meaningful, and dynamic. Includes samples of arcs you can have your character follow over short and long-term play.

This was a great lecture by an author. Loads of content vs some panels consisting of podcasters or LARPers just telling anecdotes.

Here are some tidbits:
1. Good characters contradict themselves.
They get tired, frustrated, make mistakes, they're never perfect all the time.
2. They have a past, present, and goal for the future.
3. They have a secret they want to protect, but bits and pieces must come out during play.
4. They must have a motivation. e.g. This is for my grandson.
5. They must have a goal. e.g. Live in a house by the seashore.
6. Must have a family structure. How were they raised?
7. They must have a weakness.  e.g. Misty eyed seeing the stars, it keeps them off their A game. But this is NOT a flaw, it just makes them vulnerable, but not destroy them.
8. Have a quirk. e.g. physical traits such as twirling or twisting their hair, won't use silverware, etc.
9. What makes them happy, angry, afraid, fall in love?
    What are their desires? (happy)
    What pokes or peeves them? (angry)
    What keeps them up at night or holds them back? (afraid)
    What would someone do to gain your approval? (love)
10. What just happened? Where are they going?

Character arcs:
1. Corruption: good to bad
2. Redemption: bad to good
3. Destruction: destroy themselves or their enemy
4. Resurrection and rebirth: rebirth and redemption
5. Fortification: strengthening arc.

Put the answers on a sheet of paper and then have player interview each other.
Have the interviewer ask questions about the character.
Examples:
  What are they proud about?
  How do they talk? Quietly, stutter, repeat themselves?
  How do they sit?
  How do they walk?
  How do they laugh?

External conflicts mirror internal conflicts.
And vice versa.

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LARP was held in a National Landmark

Saturday (8/4/2018), 4-9pm

Redefining Pi
System: Delta Green LARP
GM: Aaron Vanek, Arc Dream Publishing
Players: 46/50
Ticket Cost: $46

You have been invited to a technological symposium at the Indiana Medical History Museum. Wonders, terrors, & betrayal await. Characters & transportation to & from the museum provided.

After given our characters and black light devices, we were Lyft'ed to the Indiana Medical History Museum. The museum decor was considered off limits, but 5 obvious props were seeded throughout the museum that we could interact with.

Part of the LARP included a reception (free snack food) and a lecture that didn't go as planned.

Lecture Hall

The location was amazing and the props were cool, but only one prop would have been instrumental in the mystery at hand. It would have been better if the props would somehow tie-in together.

In the end, we ran out of time and the building got surrounded by men in hazmat suits and automatic weapons and we were led out one-by-one to be "debriefed." That was the end of our time in the museum and we were gathered outside to be Lyft'ed back to GenCon.

I had fun, but overall, as a game, plot-wise, it wasn't very satisfying.

As a side note, I played a Delta Green agent and was leery of the various props. My partner and I watched as newbies poked and prodded the props. In retrospect, it would have been fun to stick my hand into the egg sac, but as an experienced DG agent, that would have been stupid.

Looking at some clues with black light.

One of the crazy gross props, an egg sac.

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Saturday (8/4/2018), 9:45pm-3am

Schemata
System: Delta Green
GM: Shane Ivey, a private game for GMs who ran 4 or more games at GenCon for Arc Dream Publishing
Players: 5 (Jason F, Jason J, Thad S, Morgan Hua, Greg Stolze)

First draft of “Schemata,” a scenario that was funded by the KickStarter for Delta Green: The Labyrinth.

My DG LARP got me back on time, so I found the hotel that the private game was being held at and found that you needed a hotel room card key to activate the elevator. A successful Persuade skill check got me up to the room. I got to hangout with Shane and Greg (and one more person who's name I forgot, my apologies) for about 30 mins until the other 3 players messaged us that they were stuck downstairs at the Starbucks.

This was a great game. I had a lot of fun and the players were great too. I guess when you have experienced GMs as players you get a good crew of players. Though I know that not all great players are great GMs and not all great GMs are great players.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

Our party got split up and my character and another wound up pretending to be a wealthy donor (other PC) and his chauffeur/bodyguard (my PC). The other three PCs got permission to perform an autopsy on a woman who had screamed about having the children taken away before dying horribly.

My group failed to convince the creepy commune to accept us due to really bad die rolls. We did notice the commune consisted of only adult women, male children, and the one adult male patriarch.

The other group also failed to get a proper autopsy done as key members of the town were under the influence of the cult. But the team through hook and crook got some tissue samples.

Undeterred, my group decided to press further on and made friends with the child of the dead woman, a creepy kid that seemed very mature. The creepy kid also seemed to have some sort of psychic connection with the commune's elder.

Finally, the creepy kid led our characters into a spiral of standing stones (other PC messaged the other group to come rescue us) and into another dimension where cult members were in the midst of a ceremony. One cool thing was Shane asked if the PC was going for accuracy or stealth and he said stealth, so he was asked to do a die roll on accuracy and failed, so the other team got a garbled text message. The other PC tried to shoot the cult elder, but failed. I shot the kid holding my hand and grazed him (1 pt damage). A round later (after various save throws), I shot the kid again and got a critical 01% hit and blew his head off (more SAN saves as I realized the kid had reverted to normal after my grazing shot). The other PC got possessed.

The other group finally arrived and spotted us. I yelled at them to kill the seeds, kill the kids. One PC shot a child and went insane and fled. The other hardened PC used a flamethrower on the women and children coming out of the spiral. The possessed PC tried to shoot Mr Flamethrower and missed. Mr Flamethrower kills the possessed PC. We wind up killing all the women and children, then staging the bodies to make it look like murder suicides. And we set the buildings on fire. In the woods, there were decomposing bodies of female children.

So, we completed our mission, with only one PC death.

The game was sufficiently creepy and at various points, I definitely felt the jeopardy that we were in. Shane did a great job keeping the tension high.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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Sunday (8/5/2018), 11am-12pm

Pendragon Round Table
Presenters: Greg Stafford, Chaosium Inc

Join legendary game designer Greg Stafford (founder and chair of the board for Chaosium) & his guests for a "round table" discussion about the latest for the King Arthur Pendragon RPG.

Interesting panel about new developments for King Arthur Pendragon RPG. There's a new line editor and a few new products, so they'll be interested in submissions for publication.

Here's the full audio of the event: Gen_Con_2018_Pendragon_Round_Table_Panel.mp3

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Sunday (8/5/2018)

KV's typewriter

For a Kurt Vonnegut fan, this was a very cool, small museum of 3 rooms. $8 admission with a short 10 minute tour explaining the various artifacts in the museum. www.vonnegutlibrary.org

Replica of his study where you can sit and pretend to write.

Rejection letter for KV.

Look! I'm a writer. 😎

The letter 'A' wasn't working on the typewriter.

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Sunday (8/5/2018)

Soldiers and Sailors Monument

I climbed 331 steps up to the observation level and the view was meh. Several high rises were starting to block the view. Soldiers and Sailors Monument.

Next time, I should visit the Indiana War Memorial Museum, only several blocks from the Kurt Vonnegut Museum.

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Monday (8/6/2018)

Hook's Drug Store Museum

I couldn't get a flight out of Indiana until Tues, so I went to the Indiana State Fair. Inside was Hook's Drug Store Museum.

Inside Hook's

Leeches anyone?

Award winning cows

Why does this goat have a star on its forehead?

Massive Farm Equipment

More Farm Equipment

Need a tractor?

Morgan's RPG Lexicon

Armor Stoppage: In some games, armor reduces the damage that is done instead of making it harder to be hit. In D&D, better armor makes it harder to be hit. In other games, better armor soaks damage from an attack instead.

Bennie, Fate Point: Some systems hand out a chip that when turned in to the GM can either give rerolls or change the narrative of a game. These chips are generally earned through good role play.

Boss Monster: In the hierarchy of bad guys, Boss Monsters is the top of the food chain and are as powerful or more powerful than Player Characters. Generally, when the Boss Monster is taken care of, the game is over.

Cherries: Some games, if you roll pairs, something special happens. In Delta Green, if you succeed and roll a pair such as 11, you get a critical success; if you fail and roll a pair such as 88, you get a critical failure. In other games, Cherries refer to special skills a PC may call upon due to their skill level. An example is Night's Black Agents, if you have 8+ in a skill, you get extra benefits. Not to be confused with a slot machine where a row of cherries come up or the phrase, a cherry on top, but probably derived from those things.

Cinematic: Some games defy real physics and logic and are more pulpier and play like an action movie.

CoC: Call of Cthulhu. 7th Edition is my favorite game. I like it due to the investigative aspect of the game.

Created at Table: Most RPGs require PCs and some games require Players to generate their PCs at the table and is part of the game. The interdependencies between characters are part of the game. So, PCs are created at the table in a collaborative effort for a richer experience.

D&D: Dungeons and Dragons. My introduction to role playing. I don't play this anymore. I dislike the Hobo Murder aspects of the game.

Dice Pool: Some games use a large large number of dice based on your skills and you allocate how many dice you need to roll for specific actions. Thus a pool of dice, instead of a single die (1d20), you have a handful (20d6).

Dick: Dicks get bored and like to f*ck with things just because they're bored. Or they just have a mind of their own and would like to f*ck things up for fun. Dicks like to hog all the screen time. Dicks like to create PvP situations during non-PvP games. This ruins the fun of others. Don't Be a Dick.

Exploding Dice: In some games, if you roll the maximum possible, you are allowed to roll another die and if you roll a maximum with that die, you get another die, ad infinitum. Thus exploding dice. Not to be confused with Ninja weapons filled with gunpowder.

Fail Forward: The concept that even if the PC fails in a task, he will still succeed with a consequence or get closer to succeeding, but with a consequence. This concept was invented when various games ground to a halt when PCs failed a die roll and failed to find a key clue and there were no other clue trails or avenue to continue the game without that key clue.

Funnel: A game where PCs die often and only the best survive and level up. A whole lot of PCs enter a funnel and only a few come out the other end. See Killer GM.

GM: Game Master. In most role playing games, someone runs the table. If a game was like a movie, the Game Master is the director/producer of the movie.

Hobo Murder: Some games are characterized as Hobo-Murdering. Not that you murder hobos, but you wander from town to town, like a hobo looking for work, killing monsters and taking their treasure. So, the game becomes focused on killing things and taking their stuff. This is generally used in a derogatory manner.

Indie Game: Independant publisher game. The major games are from a handful of publishers, publishing games like D&D, Pathfinder, Star Wars, and CoC. Games not from these publishers are considered independent and different. Most of these games have a more storytelling aspect to them compared to D&D.

Killer GM: A GM that runs a game by the book and builds encounters that are very deadly. Some players like this style because they feel like they've accomplished something if they survived.

LARP: Live Action Role Playing. A role playing game where you actually play your character as if you were in a live theater.

Leveling Up: As PCs adventure, they get more experienced and more competent in their skills. One method of modeling this is Leveling Up a character. As a character Levels Up, they get better at what they do and may learn new skills. For example, in D&D, a new character is 1st level. A more powerful character would be 10th level.

Lieutenants: In the hierarchy of bad guys, Lieutenants are first level management and middle level management. They take more than one hit to take them down and may have special powers.

Mooks: In the hierarchy of bad guys, Mooks are the lowest minions available. They come in large numbers and any hit will take them down. If a game was like a movie, these are the faceless extras that populate the screen and are mowed down like grass by the good guys.

Moves: In Powered by the Apocalypse games, each Character Template has various unique Moves, skills that only they can attempt. There are various base Moves that every Character can do also.

One-Shot: A game designed to be run in one session. Most convention games are one-shot.

Party: A group of PCs that may or may not act together for a common goal. Not to be confused with a group of people having food, drink, and socializing.

PC: Player Character. If a game was like a movie, Player Characters are the parts the Players play via improv.

Play to Find Out: Is short for "Play to find out what happens." This generally means that there's some giant reveal that the GM doesn't want to spoil or the game is ad hoc and the GM can't describe what the game is because the GM doesn't know.

Player Agency: Allowing the player to make a real choice that affects game play. The opposite is Railroading.

Point Buy: Character generation generally requires the purchase of skills and abilities. Various skills have a point cost value associated with them. During character generation, a set number of points are given to the Player to spend on point buys.

Pregens: Pre-Generated Characters. Most RPGs require PCs and most published scenarios provide pre-generated characters that are ready to play reducing the time necessary to play a game.

Preset Encounter: The GM has decided that the Party will encounter a specific monster or obstacle in order to either further the storyline, or for a game effect such as destabilizing a Dread Jenga tower before a major encounter or just reducing a party's resources before a major encounter.

Prize Table: Some gaming conventions give out prizes for best role playing or for coming in first, second, or third in a board game. Generally, the prizes are in script and must be exchanged at the Prize Table for real prizes.

PvP: Player vs Player. In most games, the Player Characters belong to a team and work together. In PvP, Player Characters distrust each other and may actually actively try to undermine or kill each other.

Railroading: When no matter what the player chooses to do, they either automatically wind up where the GM wants them to go next or gets blocked and must go the direction the GM wants. Thus the game is on rails and every scene is a set destination on the route.

Random Encounter: In some games, there are random lists of monster where the GM can roll and decide that the Party encounters some random monster or obstacle. Not to be confused with hooking up with someone at a bar.

RPG: Role Playing Game. When mentioned to non-gamers, sexual connotations come to mind such as dressing up as the opposite sex or master-slave role playing (the word "dungeon" if overheard with the phrase "role playing" sometimes gets misinterpreted as BDSM). To gamers, a Role Playing Game is a collaborative storytelling game, like an improv play where the GM is the director and the Players are the improv performers taking the role of various characters.

Screen Time: If a game was like a movie, various characters get different amounts of time on the screen. The amount of time a player gets to be in front of the camera and the director (GM), is screen time. To be fair, if a game was 6 hours long and there were 6 Players, each PC should have 1 hour of screen time.

Session 0: Generally, the first session of play is Session 1. Session 0 is when the world or PCs are generated with feedback from the other Players and sometimes the GM.

Shuffler: In some gaming conventions, there is a system for randomly determining who gets into which game. To make it fair, there is a weight component, so if you were denied getting into a game or if you were a GM, you get a higher chance of getting into a game. People mainly complain about the Shuffler when they get into very few or no games.

Skill Tree: In some games, PC skill advancement require prerequisites where some basic skills must be obtained before more advanced skills can be learned.

Table Control: How well does the GM control the Players at the table. Is there chaos where people argue with each other and talk over each other? Do Players question the GM? Good Table Control means that the table is orderly and there's no chaos.

Tabletop RPG: A role playing game that is played around a table generally with pencils, paper, and dice. If the table, pencils and dice are missing, it's probably a LARP.

Templates: Character Templates or Archetypes are shortcuts for character generation. They represent often used roles / stereotypes for PCs with a pre-generated list of skills and abilities, offered as a quicker way to generate a PC.

Weapon Porn, Chart Master: In some games, there are endless lists and charts. AD&D is famous for a whole chart of different polearms with various nuances which nobody cares about. These phrases are generally used in a derogatory manner. Not to be confused with BDSM.

X-Card: At some conventions, subject matter may stray towards content that may be hot buttons for participants. An X-Card can be raised to steer the game away from such content. Similar to a safe word in BDSM.

Morgan's KublaCon 2018 Excellent Adventures

The shuffler gods were kind to me this year. My first 3 games were my #1 choices and then of course, I got into nothing for Sunday afternoon and evening, but Todd Furler came to the rescue and I got to try out the new edition of TORG Eternity. I probably would have gotten into something on Monday. When I woke up on Sunday, I was tired and I decided I would be completely a vegetable on Monday and cancelled all my shuffler choices for Monday and get some needed rest.

Most of the games I was in were of the highest quality - one of the reasons KublaCon is one of my favorite RPG conventions.

KublaCon switched from a prize table to giving out $5 gift certificates to various vendors in the Dealers Room. I picked up some neat tokens from Dapper Devil LLC, War of Ashes from Zombie Smith, and dice from Chessex.

Dapper Devil LLC tokens

Zombie Smith also makes miniatures for this RPG.

This time, I think the players at KublaCon elevated the games that I was in and raised the bar of excellence for already superb games.

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

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Friday, 5/25/2018, 6pm

The Wraith of Loch Tay
System: One-Roll Engine/Nemesis
GM: Dovi Anderson
6 Players: Morgan H, William L, Matt S, Gil T, Morgan R, Ryan R
Duration: 8 hrs.
Characters: Iron Age Smallholders.
Description:

Loch Tay, Central Scotland, 450 BCE.

The burning of the druid’s Sacred Grove has wrought a fierce and deadly winter, and the rains of ash have returned. You must hold fast within the timbered walls and thatched roof of your family’s stilted crannog.

Dovi visited Scotland and was inspired to run a horror period game. This game was the result of that visit, not to imply that Scotland is a horrible place or horror inspiring. 😀 Let's just say it's inspiring.

We got the deluxe 8 hour edition of Dovi's game; The game was run at Dead of Winter for 6 hrs. Normally, Matt S turns into a pumpkin by midnight and this game ran til 2am. We joked that we would force a TPK, so Matt could get some sleep, but we were totally engaged and wide awake at 2am. A wonderful start to KublaCon. And my favorite game of the convention. Dovi set a high bar.

Our table was full of experienced GMs and we totally bought into the setting and mood. We also built our narratives on each other's character stories, enriching the improv that naturally came with play. When one of the characters finally died, there was a touching moment a natural reaction, but what was incredible was that there were many touching moments that felt right and weren't forced throughout the game. Excellent character choices by the players and great storytelling by Dovi.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

We started the game with 4 members of a household at a crannog run by a matriarch. Dovi went over the setting in depth which I appreciated. Who could forget bog-cheese? The two other PCs start off camera. One is a dead member of the family, sacrificed to the river gods, and the other is the brother-in-law to the matriarch, returning from years-long Druid training.

Part of the horror is a white ash falling from the sky, endangering the community, threatening to infect the inhabitants and killing the crops and chattel. Starvation becomes a looming threat. As the family tries to save their animals, grain, and fish, other external factors such as raiders, hostility and suspicion from surrounding neighbors, and supernatural occurrences increase the pressure and the likelihood of survival drops.

Do you help your starving neighbors who think you're the cause of this calamity? Do you let them die? Do you pay your tithe to your Chieftain? Answers to these questions affect your chances of survival.

I played the matriarch and she is suspected of burning down the sacred island in the middle of the river. Her husband has been missing for over a year. The blacksmith, the neighbor, saw him naked on the sacred island before the burning. After he disappeared, the island burned down a month later along with the female druid that lived on the island. One of her daughters also sacrificed herself to the Gods in order to save her brother.

What do you do when white ash falls from the sky instead of snow and your dead daughter returns?

The Chieftain asks for a tithe of food to be dumped into the river. Food is already scarce. Do you do it?

During the ritual, the blacksmith who you used to have good relations with, blames you for the blight and refuses to give tithe. What do you do?

A supernatural creature takes down one of the boats during the annual sacrifice. We are all on boats. But the ritual hasn't been completed. What do you do?

At night raiders come to take your livestock away, your family is missing the patriarch, do you fight? Luckily, the matriarch is a determined killer. We killed four of the raiders and recovered some of our livestock. She then put their heads on spikes to warn other raiders away.

We go to make bog-cheese, but run into the blacksmith's family. They're starving and tell you someone stole their bog-cheese. What do you do? I gave them some of our food. You then hide your current harvest of cheese in the bog to preserve it, but find your old stash has been stolen too.

The old druid is missing since the burning of her island, but the current druid is drunk and sends you to the sacred island to "make things right" suggesting that you sacrifice one of your sons. What do you do?

In the end, the daughter who returned (actually an escaped slave who pretended to be my daughter) and our dog died, but we got rid of the evil plaguing our village.

And the ash started to abate. Though out of game, Dovi told us the ash was really from a volcanic eruption and it was coincidental to the supernatural events.

This was a very, very good game. Dark and toothsome.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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Saturday 5/26/2018, 10am

My Little Sister Wants You To Suffer
System: Call of Cthulhu, 6th Ed.
GM: Steven Drouin
6 Players: Ezra D, Morgan H, Shannan M, Scott M, Anna P, Vernon P
Duration: 5 hrs.
Description:

Lost and onboard a doomed spaceship, a disparate group of investigators must try to remember who they are and why they are here... As players slowly recover their memory, they begin to learn what has happened to them, how they are connected to their peers, who they can trust, and what fate has in store for them.

This game is an excellent introduction to the Call of Cthulhu gaming system, but is also "different enough" that seasoned investigators will enjoy their own spiral into madness and desperation.

I do not run pulp-y Cthulhu games. You are sacks of hair, meat, and bone, thrust into an increasingly incomprehensible situations, with relatively little hope of surviving whole. As such, emphasis is placed on uncovering the mystery at hand, while interacting with your fellow investigators. So, if cooperating with and at times against 5 other lost souls in such a desperate situation sounds like a great way to spend your holiday weekend, then sign up!

An excellent scenario written by Paul Fricker, known for writing two other classic CoC scenarios: "Dockside Dogs" and "Gatsby and the Great Race." I tried to get into a ToC game by Steven last year, but even being first crasher, I was denied. This year, I got into this game.

I've never played in a game run by Steven, but I'll definitely look for future games run by him. The start of the game was a bit chaotic with cross talk, but people settled in and the game took off.

This game has potential for PvP action, this is not a spoiler as the game description heavy hints at this.

This was another table mostly full of GMs. What was nice was that at some points due to the party being split into several groups, the players were cognizant of giving other players their due screen time and letting various scenes play out before taking their turns without interrupting.

Even though the characters had memory problems and given very slim backstories due to the amnesia, the players were excellent at picking up various hints and portraying their characters amazingly well and they didn't shy away from conflict.

Steven had great props and preparation and even though the game ended early and ran in about 4 hours, the pacing was excellent and I felt we got through an amazing amount of story in that short time period. I had a blast.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

First, Steven showed us pins for surviving, dying, and going insane. So, he was prepared us to think that going insane or dying wasn't such a bad thing, that if we did PvP, there was still a reward. This was a very subtle trick because he didn't explicitly say this. Magicians never show their hand. 😎

Character selection was by looking under our chairs. Steven had taped a small paragraph with our character description and a small bit of memory under each chair. This was very clever.

Then we left the room and as each pod in the spaceship awoke each passenger (in random order), they entered the gaming room. I was #3. By the time I entered, I found that Shannon had taken stuff already (a gun and taser I could have used), but I was still able to get some other supplies. By the time the last person entered, we were short a jumpsuit and that guy had to go around naked. The cabinet with stuff was represented by an envelope and you had to open the envelope and take out cards that represented what was in the cabinet. Sometimes, Steven also gave us props once we took a card with an item printed on it.

During play, Steven would tell us to open envelopes on the table with more memories. Memories gave us negative and positive associations with the other characters and also more back story.

As we opened other cabinets and things, Steven had other envelopes. That was very cool.

We, of course, explored the spaceship and fought aliens.

In the end, there were only 4 available escape pods for 6 PCs. Two PCs escaped. Then one PC found that one pod was broken and as he and I fought over the last remaining escape pod, I got sliced in half by the closing pod door, and then the winner discovered that the pod we fought over was also inoperative and got slaughtered by aliens.

The two surviving PCs found that it was all a reality TV show and we were all on death row, our memories wiped and that if we looked, we would have seen cameras, inconsistencies, and other clues what we weren't in a spaceship, but a TV set. The winners get pardoned and a request/wish granted. This was a very cool reveal and done very well by Steven.

So, massive good stuff in this game.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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Saturday, 5/26/2018, 5pm

Assault on Singularity Base

System: Cypher System
7 GMs: Matt Steele, Ezra Denney, Jack Young, Shannon Mac, Morgan Hua, Andy Hull, Sean Phelan
Players: 36 (too many to list)
Duration: 6 hrs.
Description:

An amazing multi-group gaming experience!

The Empress Tahali V, leader of the Grand Imperium, controls the galaxy with her countless legions of Imperium troopers clad in glistening silver armor marked with her griffon symbol. But a ragtag band of Rebels fights against the Imperium, their determination, bravery, and skill making up for their lack of numbers and supplies.

The Rebels have recently discovered that the Grand Imperium is creating a superweapon that can destroy an entire star system. Rebel spies have tracked a prototype of this superweapon to an Imperium base—called Singularity Base— on a remote swamp world. Your group is one of six Rebel teams attacking in a coordinated but desperate assault. Each team has its own objective, contributing toward the common goal of eliminating the superweapon prototype.

Assault on Singularity Base is a unique adventure that pits not one, but six groups of PCs against the Imperium forces, run as a mega-event with 36 players and seven GMs. This adventure debuted as the official GenCon 2016 Cypher System event. It plays similar to the last act of Rogue 1, using the Cypher System's Rebel Galaxy setting. 

Matt needed co-GMs for this game, so a number of us were recruited. We had a sample play through of one of the missions with the GMs taking turns at the helm. Then we had a full blown play test at Game Kastle with 35 players (one person didn't show up) before the big event at KublaCon.

We learned a lot from the play test, so we adjusted our games and added a final polish.

The game was written for GenCon as an introduction to the Cypher System, so each part of the game is necessarily simplistic, but it's the interactions and coordination between GMs that can cause issues.

I had an amazing table of players and they definitely elevated a very simple scenario into a very fun filled game.

I think some people are wary of a massive game and think it's some giant LARP with nothing for side characters to do or it's a giant cluster f*ck, but this game is well done and rarely can you get 43 people (36 players + 7 GMs) together to play a game, unless you're at a convention. Only Werewolf comes to mind, but that's a much simpler game.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

This game isn't run in one massive room. It's actually 6 tables, each with a team of 6 PCs each with a separate mission.

Blue team: Free and Rescue Prisoners held captive.
Green team: Diversion.
Orange team: Disable Power Grid.
Red team: Destroy Superweapon.
Silver team: Capture or Kill General running the Base.
Yellow team: Disable Fighter Craft in Hanger Bay.

Depending on what the other teams do, various alarms and events may affect the other teams.

We found out through the play test that the other teams really wanted to know what the other teams were doing, so when things happened, they can guess that the other teams were making progress. So, we expanded our introductory brief and added an after game debrief.

The play test also showed that having teams meet up was a nightmare as too many people at a table wasn't manageable and having extra teams crash your GM table messed up the other GM's pacing and storyline. So, we decided the teams can't meet.

I ran the Blue team which was supposed to rescue 3 specific prisoners unharmed.

The written scenario for Blue team is only 3 pages long, including maps and in depth biographies of the three prisoners. So, there's not much to it, so I created 6 other occupants for the other cells and added several encounters.

One thing we learned was that the base Trooper (level 2) were no match for the PCs. You needed swarms of them or upgraded ones to hurt the PCs.

Even with this, my play test at Game Kastle ran short, so I had to add even more stuff.

In both games (Game Kastle and KublaCon), the Blue team set off the base alarms first. And in both games, nobody really cared about the prisoners' stories. So the 3 pages of content is really just 1.

What got play from the module was the poor janitor mopping up a flooded hallway and the Sargent reading a magazine with his feet on the control console.

The fun bits I added were the 4 surprised Troopers in the elevator. They're the first GM intrusion and I hand out 1 XP to each PC. The 6 PCs always squeeze into the elevator, but when they rescue the prisoners, they always have to split the party and make a second trip. That is the best time for an ambush, when they take the elevator back up.

I have a Wizard Knight sleeping off a drunken binge in one of the cells. He's not in the prisoner database because he's not really a prisoner. He always shows up and winds up fighting the PC Wizard Knight with his lazer sword.

There's always a Warbot down in the prison block too.

In the play test, the Warbot by itself was too easy, so this time, I had the Wizard Knight hiding behind it and when the Warbot attacked, the Wizard Knight did a somersault over the Warbot to engage the PC's Wizard Knight.

In another cell, is an Imperium Interrogator with a high value rebel general, but not one of the 3 prisoners they're supposed  to save. The Interrogator always tries to hold the rebel general hostage and use him as a bargaining chip. At Game Kastle, the PCs was able to distract the Interrogator and then shoot him, saving the general. At KublaCon, the PCs looked at their orders and decided the rebel general was expendable. 😂

The best one came from a suggestion by Andy. "I have the death sentence in 13 systems."
So the serial killer is in one of the cells. He's a fan favorite.
At Game Kastle, the PCs hacked the computer system and just decided to leave him there. When they found the Troopers upstairs, they let him loose.
At KublaCon, they freed all the prisoners without figuring out who was who, so the killer not knowing why the rebels were there pretended to be one of the scientists, hoping to get an advantage. Once the rebels figured out who the real scientist was, the killer grabs the scientist and puts a shiv against his neck and tries to negotiate. After they talked him down, they then smack talked him about his death sentences. He tells them he's in for genocide and the PCs don't believe him. "Have you heard of those blue little flying creatures with wings?" he asks. The PCs shake their heads. The killer then points a finger at them like a gun barrel and winks. The PCs give him more shit, so he shivs one of the Trooper hostages and kills him. Melee ensues and they finally kill him. I then offer XP as a GM intrusion and they take it. The killer goes terminator and gets back up and shivs a PC. They put him down again and I offer XP again and they take it, and the terminator gets up again and shivs a PC again. This goes on for 4 times until the Wizard Knight finally turns down the XP, hands me one of his XPs (Cypher System rule), and disassembles the terminator. And it cost them XP (for rerolls) to kill the terminator, so they weren't actually gaining XP by killing him.

In the end, the Orange team was finally able to cut the power, so I started flooding the corridors as water pumps failed. And I added one final encounter with some native creatures that swarm the PCs as they're being fired upon by two Warbots. After a pretty good battle, the PCs prevail and escape to their exfiltration shuttle.

KublaCon's Blue team's favorite Imperium Trooper was Steve (named by the players). They had convinced him to shoot one of his own in the elevator and got him to join Blue team. During combat he always got in a good hit whereas the other Troopers just sucked. No magic dice, no extra level, nothing, he was just a level 2 Trooper just like the other ones, but when the Face/Leader character rolled for him, he hit most of the time. When he died from a Warbot blast, the PCs actually tried to save him with Asset cards, but none were directly applicable. Then when they got another Trooper prisoner, they asked him if his name was Steve. The answer, "It could be, if that's what you want it to be." So, long live Steve.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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Sunday, 5/27/2018, 10am

Red Markets
System: Red Markets
GM: Hannah Gravius

Duration: 4 hrs.

6 Players: Josh C, Morgan H, William L, Aaron R, Conor S, Gil T

Description:

“Everyone east of the Mississippi thinks we’re dead, or worse, we’ve all got the Blight and become the undead. But we’re still here, and so’s the bottom line.” 

Red Markets uses the traditional zombie genre to tell a story about surviving on the wrong end of the economy.

In Red Markets, you must risk your life trading between the massive quarantine zones containing a zombie outbreak and the remains of civilization.

You are one of many Takers: mercenary entrepreneurs unwilling to accept their abandonment. Bound together into competing crews, each Taker group seeks to profit from mankind’s near-extinction before it claims them.  

Takers must hustle, scheme, and scam as hard as they fight if they hope to survive the competing factions and undead hordes the GM throws at them.

This game was in a shared room and the other table was very noisy, luckily I sat near the GM and could hear what she was saying. Gil looked like he was half dead and was about to fall asleep, but he perked up later. I'm running a few games at GenCon this year, my first, and I hear they're all massive shared rooms, so that's going to be a horror in itself.

I heard about Red Markets and wanted to try it out. Hannah didn't have a good handle on the negotiation rules, but I got the flavor of it. The general rules are simple and I can see a lot of promise for this game. Most post-apocalyptic zombie games are mostly kill zombies and other survivors and take their stuff. But this game is more of a how do you rebuild your society while dealing with zombies and other people.

We played the quickstart game. Quickstart at DriveThruRPG - it's a pay what you want PDF, so try it out for free then either pay them something later or buy the full product.

The system uses 2d10 of two different colors (one red, one black). The red die is your difficulty die, the black die is your success die. You add your skill level to the black die. If you roll natural pairs, no matter what your skill is, you either get a critical failure or critical success. A pair of natural evens (2s, 4s, 6s, 8s, 10s) is an auto crit success. A pair of natural odds (1s, 3s, 5s, 7s, 9s) is an auto crit failure. If it's not a crit, then your black die total must beat the red die roll to succeed, otherwise you fail. If you tie, "tie goes to the house," you fail. A very simple system.

The world assume there are various strongholds with survivors and the PCs is a team of Takers (a crew) who are looking for jobs. The game is broken down into various phases:

1. Locate a job
2. Negotiate job payment and terms with a client
3. Travel to jobsite
4. Do the Job
5. Get paid and upgrade your lifestyle and equipment

Locate the job: we skipped this part, but this is where the PCs can investigate rumors and about jobs and whether they are dangerous, a scam, etc. There are also job boards. You do due diligence and then pick a job.

Negotiate: this is an interesting mini game. The Face character (your best talker) negotiates with the client, but PCs can do individual flashbacks to get information that can help the Face make a better deal. There's a negotiation track and various successes or failures in the flashback affects the negotiation track. My only issue is that this seems like the Face player gets more screen time than the other players, but I guess in some other situations, you can have multiple PCs negotiate or even sometimes not have the Face negotiate due to external circumstances like the client already being hostile to your Face character. Payment is in Bounty, an abstract unit.

Travel: dice are rolled and this determines how many Legs (mini-scenes, each Leg is an abstract unit) are required to reach the job site. Each Leg of the trip uses up a ration. Each Leg has an event that's a scene that needs to be played out. There is opportunity for combat and scavenging during your journey. If you run into Cs (casualties or Zs in our popular vernacular), they are a number of Shambles (an abstract unit) away. Each round, the Cs can move up and reduce the distance by one Shamble. Combat goes in initiative order, 1d10 + mods, and uses the same 2d10 (red and black) for combat, but it is a close cousin to ORE. If you hit, black total > red die, then your black die determines damage amount and red die determines hit location. Like ORE, there's a body diagram with boxes to mark based on the amount of damage. Each point of damage marks off a box until that body part is filled with damage.

The Job: this is a full blown dramatic scene or scenes which is what is common in most RPGs. You return with your Haul, abstract units of loot.

Getting paid: returning home is anti-climatic and it is skipped. You get Bounty for completing your job and you pay for upgrades. If you have enough Bounty saved up, you can retire.

Overall, I really liked the system and the emphasis of storytelling. In our game, we saved a NPC who we tried to screw over (and kill), so that NPC crew now has mixed feelings towards us. Very unusual for a short one-shot scenario. So, I see a lot of promise for this game. Check it out.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

The mission was pretty simple, go down the hill, go to a mall where the DMV was and pick up some laminators. The trip was 3 legs long. In the first leg, we found a toll bridge where we spotted snipers and negotiated a discounted rate after getting the drop on the snipers. In the 2nd leg, we found a shortcut through a medical camp and did some scavenging. In the 3rd leg, we encountered some Cs attacking a horse drawn caravan and we killed some Cs and then we ran away as our gun fire drew more Cs.

At the mall, we arrived before our competitors (3 brothers) and decided to steal their truck when they arrive. We got there early due to the shortcut, so we set up some observation points and headed to the DMV and found our loot, but our competition showed up right after that.

At the mall, we started a stampede of Cs that killed one of the brothers and another brother begged to be let into the DMV, we finally relented and let him in and saved him. After making a deal with him and his sniper brother who was still outside, we Hauled our loot back home. So, that brother is now a frienemy. The sniper brother just hates our guts.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===

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Sunday, 5/27/2018, 4:30pm

You Oughta be in Pictures
System: TORG Eternity
GM: Todd Furler
Duration: 5 hrs.
6 Players

I was really tired by the end of Red Markets and didn't get into anymore games for the day, but I didn't want to go home yet. I was considering trying my luck in crashing a game, but...

Lo and behold, I ran into Todd Furler and he was nice enough to run a pick up game.

This was a very fun gonzo game.

The system was a bit weird in that you rolled dice, added bonuses and decided to add more dice, then that determined your overall bonus to be added to your skill level and that determined levels of success which determined whether you rolled more dice or gained various bennies. The system was a bit clunky. A game NOT for the math challenged.

The good thing was if you got a high enough number, you got to narrate some really crazy cinematic results.

Several players really got into the spirit and there were a good number of excellent moments. The game was a lot of fun and I was extremely pumped up and all that tiredness was gone during the game. I only felt how tired I was when I headed home.

Thanks Todd for a great game and a great note to end KublaCon on.

=== SPOILER SECTION START ===

Our mission was to destroy a weapon a movie director was making. Apparently, it could bring monsters out from a movie into our world.

We get into his movie studio and we found out that the weapon actually does something different. It throws us into a movie. This happened to our team and we wound up in a Toon world. Think Tex Avery.

We ran into the Big Bad Wolf and his three trusty pigs. Found a mad scientist and his castle. And finally returned back to Core Earth in order to stop the Big Bad Wolf from sending the audience at the Hollywood Bowl into the Night of the Living Dead.

We always had a minimum of 3 Possibility Points at the beginning of each scene, so we were always able to spend them and get very cinematic successes. Possibility Points gave us an extra 1d20 to add to our die roll.

The highlights of the game were the Toonie-ness of what we did. For example, we did the Road Runner gag of painting a tunnel exit and pulling it up like a shade, got the Big Bad Wolf to do a wolf whistle by having a PC seduce him, and crammed everyone into a small safe (similar to stuffing people into a phone booth except something much smaller).

Todd really got the style and tone of a Toon world based on Tex Avery cartoons. It was a lot of fun.

=== SPOILER SECTION END ===