KublaCon 2011

         I attended KublaCon 2011 mostly as a game master. I went on Saturday afternoon with my son and we played various board games in the Young Players room and Open Gaming area. I then ran two games and played in one on Sunday. I had not attended KublaCon in a while due to other commitments on Memorial Day weekend, but it still seems very well organized and produced -- probably the best among the regional conventions that I have been to. The games I ran/played in were:

• Hellcats & Hockeysticks* (Sunday 9AM)
• KublaCon MegaDungeon Crawl (Sunday 1:30PM)
• Reunion Wishes* (Sunday 7PM)

Young Players Room

On Saturday, I spent some time with my son in the Young Players room and the open gaming area. KublaCon has an excellent and well-attended kids room. There were around 30 kids when I was there. Kids sign in & out, and there are plenty of ad-hoc as well as scheduled games. We played the board game Tsuro and the card game Hike in the kids room. We also played an ad-hoc game of Wrath of Ashardalon in the open gaming area. My son had gotten it for his birthday weeks earlier but had not played it yet.

"Hellcats & Hockeysticks"

This was a basic run of the H&H system, driven by player ideas. I provided sheets for the character archetypes/"cliques", but players allocated skills and made up details at the session. It went well, as the system usually has in my experience. I asked everyone to come up with a name, the names of 1 or 2 key figures to them, and what evil schemes they were up to right now. The players and their characters were:

• Sandra played Danielle, the Fixer. She had contacts Tre (a bar-owner and drug dealer) and Vito Lombardi (a mafia man), and was making money getting wealthy people into select school "parties".
• Damon played Lux Inferno, the Goth/Emo. She had a plan to raise all of the dead of the world, and her nemesis was the perky sweetheart Ginger Templeton - who turned out to be central.
• Travis played Racette, the Hockey Girl. She was a very laid-back type but was team captain, and had a rivalry with the new Japanese girl Yui. She excelled in Track & Field (stealth & dodging) slightly more than Team Sports (fighting).
• Richard played Tuppence/"Tuppy", the Prefect. She lead a group of first-year girls, teaching them Roman military tactics. Her top lackeys were Prudence and Constance.
• Erica played Erin St. Claire, the Scientist. She was working on explosives research, and had set up a lab in an abandoned wing of the school. Her rival was Victoria Gosset, whose explosives she sneered at as unstable.
• Patrick played Yui Ando, an Exchange Student from a samurai clan. She excelled in Team Sports, and was devoted to her family. She vowed to track down ninja at the school, and suffered much for her efforts.

The game started with Yui seeing a ninja sneaking into Erin's secret lab. She approached, but set off one of Erin's booby traps and was blown up. The explosion knocked her cold but exposed a secret stairwell. They at first worked separately to cover up the problem and blame it on Victoria. The PTSD-addled military games-mistress Miss Stanhouse featured, who was horrified by the attack on Yui ("Man down!") and began organizing the team to strike back. They then teamed up to sneak into the basement - where they ran into a sleeping teacher (religious studies Master Erasmus Worm), foot-long scorpions, and Master Worm's 10-foot-tall crocodile-headed brother. Yui had to face a phone call from her father, who expected her to offer to commit suicide(seppuku) for her failure, but narrowly declined the offer if she could prove herself.

The next day, they had a hockey match, where Racette took some bad knocks to the head before Lux's spell kicked in with critical success - making the opposing team's bones brittle and blinding the opposing captain and home team head cheerleader (Ginger). What followed was a horrific rout though probably no one died.

They eventually figured out that Ginger was planning on beating them to get the Book of the Dead - which she wanted to get as a present for Lux, so that Lux would love her forever and ever(!). By stealing Ginger's plans, they beat her to it. They then went for a showdown with Victoria, but Ginger showed up with Victoria tied up in a trunk - revealing Victoria as the ninja who had stolen Erin's explosives. Yui then took Victoria off to chop off her head (off-screen), while Ginger was infuriated by Lux still refusing to love her and tried to unload a revolver on her. Racette neatly dispatched Ginger, who collapsed into tears.

In all, a fun romp for all.

KublaCon MegaDungeon Crawl

This was only my second time of trying out 4th edition D&D, and the first was GMed by my 12-year-old nephew, so probably wasn't a very fair view. This was a featured game of the con, run by a key PathFinder developer. However, it mostly reinforced my picture of 4E as an almost entirely tactical system. The main feature of this was a giant setup of Dwarven Forge terrain. The map was thus fixed based on their terrain setup, but different GMs could write their own module to fit the map. The play was mildly interesting to me in a board-gamey sense, but it doesn't seem like it would work for me for long-term play.

Reunion Wishes

This was a larp inspired by "The School Trip" - a larp for Knutpunkt 2009 by Martin Svahn and Johan Nilsson. The big concept for this was that characters would have a chance to go back 10 years in time to change an event that happened to them their senior year of high school. There was a layer of fantasy over everything, but it was thinly draped over a drama over choices about how they lived their lives. I wanted the characters to have obvious archetypes, but still leave room for depth. I also made all the characters non-gender-specific, and left any romantic relations up to the players.

As a side note, I decided to turn away a player around 10 years old who had signed up for the event because she was too young. I should have been much clearer about when an event I have is appropriate for younger players. While there wasn't rape or other explicit stuff written in, I did feel that this was a game for older players - and I should have clearly said so in the description.

From left to right, the players were:

• Michael played Casey, the Bookworm. He was very thoughtful about his part, trying to talk the others into his view.
• Devon played Alexis, the Pot Dealer. He was very philosophical and spiritual about his part, playing the character in a more Christian direction.
• Erica played Merle, the Believer - filling in for a missing player. She was excellent at being guilt-ridden, and got general props at the end.
• Petra played Riley, the Bully. She had dressed up fancy for the reunion, and had matured from bully to quiet confidence.
• Amy played Jesse, the Clown - who she decided had forgotten about the reunion until the last minute and came in whatever clothes she threw on as she went out the door.
• Lauren played Taylor, the Skater. She was recruited at the last minute for a missing player and brought some fun to the part as still a wastrel.
• Brendan played Ping, the Hacker. She was the youngest player (in her early teens), and by twist of the plot got abused a lot. However, she got into it and was also recognized.
• Ammy played Chen, the Over-achiever. She was more quiet, but also seemed to have a lot of fun both in socializing and action.
• Barak played Cameron, the Looker. He was also fun as a less serious part, who had had flings with all the girls in his high school days (and even had an icky/weird kiss with his cousin Taylor).
• Erik played Nalo, the Rich Kid. He was very practical in his part, carefully testing and finding out what he could to his advantage.

I thought this went very well. We selected characters largely by general agreement based on their name and stereotype. They talked for a while getting back together, and I passed out notes about weird things different people noticed. Then came the event of going back in time, and there was more drama and action - as Ping was badly injured in a cave-in, and they had their supernatural encounter. Then we had a debrief of what happened as they went back forward in time, and wrapped up.