Kublacon Report 2017.

KublaCon 2017

     Another year and another Kublacon under our collective belt.  I say collective since most of my friends and family that plays games goes to this con.  I had long time friend and his family come down from Portland to spend the weekend with us at Kublacon.  It was a fantastic con.  This year they broke their attendance records and had 3,338 attendees.  That is about 400 more than last year but it still did not seem as crowded as it felt last year.

     One reason for that un-crowded feeling was the hotel re-modeled their convention space. Out was the dark and dingy sports bar which was replaced with hundreds of square feet of convention space.  That space was dedicated to CCGs during the day but in the evening it became open gaming. The result was that you didn't have to wander for an hour looking for an available table to play.

  

     On the RPG front I ran two games in the "Teen" room due to being asked by the person in charge of the kids and teen rooms.  I used to run a couple games for kids when my son was younger but for the past couple years I had fallen away from running an rpg in the kids room.  My son when he turned 11 didn't want to go into the kids room.  

     So I ran two games in the Teen room the first being a Fate Core inspired Monterey Dresden game.  Based in the Dresden Files world written by Jim Butcher but instead of his setting in Chicago I decided to run my game in Monterey California.  A sleepy, or not so sleepy tourist town in northern California.  

     The game ran on Saturday afternoon with a 2pm start time.  I had a full table of six players of which most had never played a Fate game, which was fine by me because I don't really run a by the book Fate Core game.  They were quick in tracking down the clues and in figuring out what was "really" going on but they did a lot of discussing.  I ran this game before and it was done in 3 1/2 hours, this one went over by 45 minutes.  Still it was a blast to run and everyone that played said they had a good time.  

    The other game was a Star Trek Adventures rpg game of a soon to be published rules.  I again had a full table at 10am on Sunday morning.  I had some very enthusiastic players.  One was a serious Star Trek fan and another player that had never played in an RPG before.

     Now I am a pretty easy going person and not the nervous type but I get anxious before every game I have ever run.  And con games are even more so.  I guess its much like stage fright.  I consider myself responsible for players having fun and for me that is a big deal, and a responsibility that I do not take lightly.  

   And now I had a Trekkie and a brand new rpg player in my game of which I had been playtesting but would not consider myself an expert.  Well my nervousness melted away, as it usually does, rather quickly as the players really started getting into their characters.

    The system ran without any hangups and didn't get in the way of the players having fun.  They were very task orientated and quickly went through the adventure and finished about 45 minutes early.  I felt kinda bad about the short game but they all clapped at the end and were exuberantly thanking me for a great game.  I was very humbled by how much they said they liked the game.  

     The rest of the Con was filled with boardgames with my family and friends.

    My friend's wife playing a rpg with her daughter in the kid's room.

  I did play in a short adventure of Conan Rpg which was a lot of fun.  Lots of combat and fighting, heck it was CONAN!!!  One of the players was wearing a Conan T-shirt!  Another player was a fan of the Barbarian Brothers who had made a Conan ripoff movie back in the 80's.  The GM had pictures of those two actors for his character portraits for two characters.  That player went crazy talking about that movie talking about deliciously bad that movie was.  He was a great player that helped us get into the barbarian mood.
     All in all it was a great con as usual.  Again I can't wait til next year!!!