This year for KublaCon, the games I played in and ran were:
This used the small-press Troika RPG, with a setting that the author explained as a dare for him to create a fantasy setting based on Candyland. The background was in some sense straight with gritty politics of warring tribes around a sole civilized city. However, all of the races and monsters were different kinds of candy, and the city was called "Starte" for the starting space of the game board. So there was a lot of absurdist humor. The players and their characters were:
My character was a genderless anthropomorphized peppermint candy, so I chose the name "Altoi" and described them as "curiously strong". I was obsessed with cleanliness and order, and focused on coin collecting (nuismatism) - which I played up. The adventure was fairly linear as we followed some thieves into cursed ruins in a part of the city, and then fought with mummies wrapped in evil candyfloss moth silk, awakened by a dangerous cult. The fun was in the absurd contrast of candy people in a horror-filled sword & sorcery adventure.
This was one of my first runs of a D&D 5E in the Incan-inspired setting, Land of New Horizons, that was invented by my son Milo and that we co-developed. This first run was a first-level murder mystery.
Introduction to Lara Croft's Tomb Raiders TTRPG. Your team of adventurers must find the Lost _____ of ______ before it is taken by your competitors. Make your own Tomb Raider and learn how to play!
Host: Matthew Gaston
Saturday 10AM
Game System: Lara Croft's Tomb Raiders
This was a playtest of a system in development for Lara Croft's Tomb Raiders. There were not pregenerated characters, but we created characters with certain required skills. I played a character with Boating as a required skill, that I cast as a Cajun guide named Bastien LeBlanc.
The adventure was very well prepared for certain aspects. There was a prepared puzzle made of LEGO, colored index cards for the river chase, and for the jungle exploration. However, there was also a lot of reading out from one copy of the rulebook which was a bit frustrating. In a playtest, there should be a bunch of play aids and copies of the key rules for players to read, rather than everyone having to wait for verbal explanation from the GM.
We started from a tomb site that was attacked and robbed, followed the robbers through a town in Eastern Africa, then headed up the river, camping along the way to sneak into and rob their ship. We then beat them to the site itself, and unlocked the secret before fighting them off at the climax.
The rules were tactically interesting, where each character had a pool of points for each of their seven attributes. Tracking when to spend from which pool was tricky and gave a game-like feel to play, but it also lent a very meta-game feel to the action. Playing out the adventure had a meta-game feel, with flipping over cards as we explored the river and the jungle, and themed traps within the final tomb site. I have not played the video game, but it did feel like a video game at times - in both a good way (plenty of content) and bad way (artificial).
A good point was the fun players, especially Tessa as the disgruntled military, and Jason as the seeming damsel-in-distress Mags who was constantly getting into trouble, but was actually quite skilled in getting out of trouble.
A Montaigne ship: the Ivory Toad, is sent to Ruckus Island off the Eisen coast to discuss new trade routes with the Vesten. Friendly negotiations make for good business, just make sure you can pay the price for it. A Team Volare' Production, adult themes, costumes encouraged, but not required.
Hosts: Bill Howard, Rob Allard
Saturday 6PM
Players: 24
This was the Saturday big larp. It had a number of new faces, and a large space which was useful. We had one large conference room as the upstairs, one as the downstairs, and the hall outside as the basement or outside of a manor house.
The plot was a classic factionalized larp - several sides had come to negotiate and trade at a manor on an island off the coast of Eisen (fantasy Germany).
The villagers of Primrose are experiencing a terrible curse. Loved ones are claiming to have their memories erased and reports of undead from nearby graveyards are on the rise. Even worse, doppelgängers are being seen in the street. The party must get to the bottom of this mystery.
Hosts: Michael Schatz
Sunday 6PM
Players: 6
Game System: D&D 5e, level 5
This was a D&D adventure with a number of humorous elements. It started when one of the pregenerated characters was a talking chihuahua who wielded a two-handed sword in her teeth.
The humor was really the key to the fun here. There was a bunch of delay in getting our character sheets, getting the miniatures and terrain set up, and then in starting the adventure. But the highlight was room for improvisation and jokes that kept things entertaining. We had a shopping segment where we could buy various items like a baseball bat with embedded teeth (a vampire bat), or "Scissors of Running" which increased running speed at the risk of damage, or "Finger-gun Ring" which gave limited magic missles.
I talked in a gravelly voice and introduced my character as "I know half-orcs are stereotyped as terrible wizards, and I intend to live up to this expectation." I would then periodically try a bunch of bad ideas.
The adventure itself was a simple investigative scenario which started in media res as we were attacked in the tavern, leading to investigations around the town, and ended with a fight with the big bad in a dungeon. The mystery aspect was silly because the clues only made sense if one knew the specific strange monster that was at the root. Still, it kept up entertaining, in part because of a good set of players.
The assignment system this year was new, and allowed pre-signup to the games online, on a first-come, first-served basis. However, this meant that there were no waiting lists, and it seemed like there were a large number of no-shows as people signed up over a week in advance.