This was the eighth year of this Bay Area gaming convention, organized by Sean Nittner. I had missed a year, and had limited notes on this year's games - but still had a lot of fun.
Date/Time:
Format: LARP
GM: Rebeka Trubowitch
System: Custom
Players: 5
Game Length: ? hours
Characters: Pregenerated
Description:
In an abandoned warehouse, five individuals awake to chaos. “Who am I?” Who are you?” So many questions, but one thing is clear; something bad has happened. And judging by the state of disrepair the place and its inhabitants are in, you’ll have to figure out what it was and who to trust, fast. But who can you trust when you can’t even trust yourself? ~~~~~~ Players will begin with no knowledge of anything (including themselves) and have to work together to figure out what happened and how to survive this. But there are enemies, past scores to settle, and memories can be fickle things. How much would you trust another stranger? Will it be too much or too little to ensure your safety?
Date/Time:
Format: LARP
GM: John Kim and Milo Kim
System: Custom
Players: 5
Game Length: ? hours
Characters: Pregenerated
Description:
Set in 2049, two generations from Harry Potter’s day, this is a time of hope and a time of turmoil at Hogwarts. The wizarding world has been shaken up, and the new Hogwarts students are stranger than ever — mixing not just muggle-borns and purebloods, but also half-giants, goblins, and even house elves.
This is a character-based larp about difficult adjustments, with various Harry Potter references and a dollop of magic.
Date/Time:
Format: RPG
GM: Alex Roberts, Karen Twelves, Steve Segedy, and James D'Amato
Description:
Space Station Fobolex is an interstellar waypoint, a crossroads of weird aliens with even weirder cultures. Aboard Space Station Fobolex, a dedicated crew works hard to keep the lights on and the inevitable conflicts to a minimum. As a major trade hub, the station sees its share of shady figures, from corporate raiders to dubious freighter captains to actual space pirates. And as a place that’s as far from home as you can get, no matter where you call home, it is a haven for iconoclasts, rebels, and the heartbroken.
But into this maelstrom,a new force will arise – a force perhaps unfamiliar to the hardscrabble crew and visitors to Space Station Fobolex.
A force called … love.
Come play Star Crossed in the most spectacular conglomeration of awkward, beautiful, tragic romances ever seen in this sector! Ten couples who really should know better will try to thread the needle between their heart’s desire and disaster. Each will get a public epilogue that will shape the destiny of Space Station Fobolex forever!
This was a group of two-player games in the same room. I played with Roman, with him as the Leader / Intimate Janitor, and myself as the Follower / Scientist.
Date/Time:
Format: RPG
GM: John Kim
Description:
For ages, the Temple of the Elements has been in near ruins, with the few poor souls trying to keep alive this once-great spiritual center. But now the temple is threatened by the gathering forces of evil lurking in nearby camps and strongholds. As adventurous new visitors to the temple, you are recruited to push back the encroaching evil.
This is a classic D&D game of sorts using 5th edition, but playing so-called monsters defending their underground homes and places of worship.
This was my first time running a reversed fantasy, where the humanoid races like orcs are truly good, and humans and demi-humans are actually evil. The PCs go to dungeons to rest and socialize, then go into human/demi-human towns to fight their evil. I had four players, and they picked the Gnoll Ranger, Hobgoblin Fighter, Orc Paladin, and Yuan-Ti Cleric. Everyone had fun and liked it a lot, I think. The four players were all reasonably experienced D&D5 players.
Based on the character selection, I paired them up - so the hobgoblin was a soldier stationed at a goblinoid fortress on the edge of civilization, where the gnoll was an irregular scout / native guide they traded with. I pulled from The Red Hand of Doom and made it Vraath Keep. The hobgoblin was an officer in the troops there, and the gnoll was a temporarily employed scout. Meanwhile, the yuan-ti had found ancient scrolls in his own temple that pieced together where the Temple of the Elements was. He knew of the orc paladin, and they went together to find it.
I played out the yuan-ti and orc arriving at the keep and being greeted by the goblin guards, who were silly and teased them with a lot of jokes. The keep commander was then very apologetic to the holy men who were visiting, and welcomed them in. Since they didn't know for sure where they were, the commander offered his best officer to accompany them, and the scout volunteered.
They followed the yuan-ti's notes, searching through the wilderness for two weeks, and at one point in the camp were attacked by human bandits. We played out the fight, and some bandits escaped - but they captured one. He told them about the human lairs at Hommlet and at Nulb, but didn't know anything about the temple. The gnoll ranger eventually became protective of the prisoner, but the orc paladin was always outraged by his misdeeds and hit him a few times, and was the bad cop to the yuan-ti's good cop.
They went on to eventually find the temple deep in what is now wilderness. There were only a few refugee kobolds there maintaining the temple, at least on the surface, and they talked to them. Their leader informed the party that they were planning to start evacuating the temple, because it was only a matter of time before humans and other evil races came to destroy it. They told the story that there was a remote commune that the temple was in communication with. They had been lured in by a human named Lareth who promised peace with them, but they were betrayed and almost all were killed and captured by the warlord Rufus of Hommlet. The temple kobolds felt it was only a matter of time before one of the prisoners was forced to tell of the temple and its location, and then the evil races would come and destroy them for good.
However, their human prisoner Ramos told them that while Rufus was fearsome, he was isolated and had no army. If he were silenced and the prisoners freed, then the temple might remain a secret from the wider tribes of humans and others. So they scouted out Hommlet, and prepared an assault on Rufus' tower. First they went to the slave pens and freed a bunch of them. The freed slaves made a distraction that drew most of the troops out of the tower, then they burst in and finally took out Rufus and Burne.
At that point, we were out of time, and I thanked them. I had some good role-playing at the keep and at the temple, two setpiece fights (the bandit attack and the tower assault), and some partly hand-waved exploration like the scouting of Hommlet, planning the attack, and freeing the slaves. I thought it did pretty well what I was setting out for, being a classic D&D role-playing and action that was more interesting and fresh (for us, at least) for the change of setting.
Date/Time:
Format: RPG
GM: Aser Tolentino
Description:
Just before sharing proof of alien life with the world, a team of astronomers goes silent, and Delta Green must scramble agents to find out what’s happened at their mountaintop observatory.
A modern day Delta Green scenario, dealing with contact at a remote observatory. The PCs were a mix of different new-ish Delta Green agents with different backgrounds, where the players gave them names and a few details.
I played a member of the Oregon Air National Guard that was the only survivor of a mid-air plane collision, who walked away with no injuries -- with motivations "Fitness, Flying, Getting PhD". My background added some color to the experience, but it didn't factor into the scenario.
We were inserted by the observatory main building, and had to deal with zombie-like creatures spawned from the scientists who had been there. We found a bunch of changes including something growing over the main power lines. This was followed by a harrowing drive up the mountain to the telescope itself -- attacked by flying creatures -- and a fight within the telescope building. In short, it was a fun violent romp as one expects of Call of Cthulhu.