Kublacon 2006

I just came back from my birthday gift - err, my 3-day excursion to the biggest northern cal game convention, that being Kublacon. I was very excited to be able to go with the specific purpose in mind of geeking out for 60 hours or so. Following a request from a couple of friends, here is a report of my gaming activities while at the con.

I got to the Hyatt in Burlingame around 10AM on Friday morning. Went straight to the desk to find out about the parking situation, only to also find out that because of last minute cancellations, they had a few rooms available. Well, I could no longer cancel my friday reservation at Howard Johnson's, but I did book a room for saturday night and shortened my HJ stay to one night.

Con had a problem with the event software, which meant that a number of events showed up as starting at 9AM friday. This proved to be incorrect, and so I took off to get checked in at the HJ. Stopped at Safeway on the way back and loaded up on lunch and snack items - much cheaper than on site at the Hyatt.

Got back in around 11:15, and went to the lobby area. I was waiting for the giant Formula DE to start, but ended up sitting down next to a couple of people and had Ra in my bag (I brought a full trunk of about 40 games with me to the con), which we played. Well, the Formula DE guys were late to arrive and set up, but I still had to play the last Ra round quickly and bid all my suns out so I can leave the table and go join the DE group. The other two finished the game and scored it, I was informed that I finished second.

DE was fun for a very little while... we had like 12 cars racing and traffic jams galore. I ended up crashing on turn two after rolling really badly for two rounds and eating through my brakes. Still, I enjoyed even that much, I love F-DE and wish I could get to play it more often.

Well, ending DE before 2PM was unplanned, so I decided I'd try something RPGish and new (to me), and went to an Exalted game. GM was so-so, trying to explain rules (silly) instead of focusing on getting the story in, and the group indulged which made it a bit of a drag. In a con like this, I expect not to be dealing with rules (except maybe "ever played a whitewolf game"? they all use the same mechanics anyway), but rather get to ROLE PLAY. Still, there was one other guy, JD, who was a good role player and between us we got the mood going anyway, so it ended up being alright. We shared the winner's spot for best role player, and split the prize - he got 10 kublabucks and the pin, I got 5 kublabucks and a set of "Exalted dice" (10 D10's). The kublabucks I sold later for real cash to someone who needed them to complete a purchase of his own. Also notice I did not get a winner's pin - this (and ties) will become a recurring theme for me.

Exalted was done around 6:30, and JD and I went to dinner at Sizzler's across the street. Came back to find I got my LARP pick for the night, Lockdown. Starting at 8PM, this seemed interesting enough, but it would mean I couldn't go to the 11PM flea market. I went in there, and asked the organizers if I could take a break at 11 to go to the market, but they said no. Well, I weighed the options and decided to stay.

Best decision I'd made - it was my most enjoyable event at the con by far. The setting was Asimov-like, which was a bit foreign to me (I'd never actually read the robot series), and they gave me the role everyone told me later was the toughest - the highest ranking military officer in a military bunker in a severe emergency. In other words, the leader of the group perforce. Still I set to with gusto, and had the best time ever essentially doing improv, which is my biggest hidden passion and one I indulge whenever I very rarely can.

Game ended around 1PM, and with the post mortem went to about 2PM. I was surprisingly nominated and elected as one of the two player's favorites - best role players, event winners if you will - and again got a prize but no pin. The guy who nominated me was a truly fun person to role play with and a great guy to boot. I found out later he was Christopher Allen, of Arkham Horror fame. He deserves all the success he gets, really terrific person.

Went to the HJ, fell asleep around 2:30PM. Wake up call at 7:30AM did very little to get me out of bed, but eventually I got up groggily around 8:15 or so. Breakfast, shower, check out, drive, check in at the Hyatt, go play. No, wait a second. Couldn't actually check in at the Hyatt, but I did find out the guy from the day before put me in with three other people in the same room, since apparently everyone shares a room at the con. Well, got that sorted out and was asked to come back around noon. When I eventually came back to check in I was then told my reservation was for two nights instead of one, and they would charge me a $50 cancellation fee for staying only one night, only I only ever made the reservation for the one night... oh well, staying at the Hyatt was the right thing to do and they were very, very busy and quite nice about it once I've explained things.

But back to the gaming narrative. Tried to find people for Amun Re, but after sitting like an idiot in the open gaming area with the game all set up for 20 minutes with no one showing up made me get up around 10:30AM and look for other stuff to do. Walked around and got sucked into learning and playing a bit of Diplomacy, which passed the time till lunch. Went up to my room at the Hyatt for that, aiming to get right back down, but fell asleep and woke up around 2:30PM.

Went down to the open gaming area and joined a game of Arkham Horror. While the game is good, there is just too much downtime between turns, and I've been spoiled by euros to the point that I don't handle that well anymore. I'm taking the game off my "wanted" list.

I then got a couple of the Arkham players to stay around and learn Amun Re, and together with another "open game room wonderer" we played a game. Everyone grasped the game quickly and it was a very enjoyable affair, ending with a very tight 31-31-30-30 scoreline (I was one of the 31's but lost on the tie breaker). Low scores were on account of the big farming provinces not coming into play. It was time for dinner, but I had met David from Wrecking Crew earlier and he invited me to join them in the Vampire game they were running (even though I wasn't registered for it) and I had to go find them as it was almost 8PM. Unfortunately their game was not listed so I ended up going through all the game suites on the 2nd floor until I found them. We ended up ordering pizza for the group of 15 people in the room and delved right in.

While I still think David is one of the best DMs I've played under, running this group was beyond anyone's capabilities, including his. With 15 players it just gets too crazy, and also suffers from a downtime problem which, following the earlier Arkham experience, was a bit too much. I tried my best to role play and had some good moments, but overall it was a bit disappointing. Next time I get to chance to play David as the GM I'll make sure it's a smaller group.

Well, it was almost 3AM again and I was dead tired. Went up to the room and didn't wake up until a couple of phone calls around 8:30AM. I was all bleary eyed when I came down sunday around 10AM to look for games. I decided I'd lay off the role playing and concentrate on boardgames for the day.

Went down to the kniziathon hoping to find some people for Traumfabrik. While I didn't get that, I did find a few to play a 5-player Amun Re, which ended up with a 42 tie for first. Yes, I do mean a tie - after all the tie breakers, it was still tied, so we shared the victory. You guessed it - I didn't get the pin.

Went down to the open gaming area, got lunch and played Doom. I bought the game a while ago but had never had the chance to play it. I was pleasantly surprised at a smooth-flowing game that was light on strategy, medium on tactics, and heavy on fun. At this point I can't wait to play it again.

Back up to the boardgaming area, I joined 3 others for a quick game of Medici. This one's a real gem; takes 30 minutes to play, has very simple rules, but is just so delightfully devilish in its nuances. I absolutely enjoyed playing it, and was a little surprised to have won by a huge margin - then again, it's the kind of game I naturally do well in.

I then went to find my last game for the con, which was Goa. I've had it on my want list and have been wanting to play this for ages. Well, 19 other individuals wanted the same. Lucky I was the first on the sign-in sheet, right?

The GM comes in with the sheet, and starts reading off names of those who make the cut. His first sentence? "first name is... wait, I can't make out what it says and it doesn't have a wristband number, so I'll just ignore it". I was so stumped I remained silent until he'd gone through like 12 names, and only then did I physically wrest the sheet from his hands and pointed out that I was the first name, and that it didn't have my number because I had signed in before they opened con registration!

Anyhow, had a good laugh about that with a very nice couple (Sonja & David, I think) and eventually we did play. The GM did a poor job of explaining the game, jumping straight into rules minutia without ever going into overall goals, theme, and how to win, but we still managed to figure things out, and he was really nice and stayed around to answer questions throughout the game.

I never felt like I really had a handle on things, so I just shot in the dark and hoped for the best. It almost worked - the game ended with the winner, Sonja, with 44 points, me second with 38. I was actually quite proud of having figured things out reasonably well despite the way the game was explained! Still, Goa is off my list as well now, as it just seems like a slighlty more convoluted, less streamlined version of Puerto Rico, and to be honest, I don't even play PR that much anymore as it's become a bit dry for my tastes. Goa gave me an even stronger sense of pasted on theme, and didn't even have the advantage of being as elegant as PR.

Anyway, that was that. Around 6PM on Sunday I left the con and headed home. It was very enjoyable and I hope to do it again next year. And maybe, just maybe, I'll get to Gencon one of these days. Who knows?