Fri 12:45 pm – We meant to be leaving for the con in an hour or so. Two of our jobs got cancelled and replaced with a single job that probably won’t start until 3 or 4. We will hopefully make it in time to buy our badges tonight.

Fri 4:11 pm – Finally on the way to the bay! We have an extra hour delay, though, on account of needing to borrow my sister-in-law’s laptop for podcasting. Still, at least we’re on the road.

Fri 8:30 pm – Finally got checked in and registered. As always, getting badges, was painless. Parking not so much. The con filled up the garage, so we had to valet park. Of course, I left my wallet in the car, which means getting it bedore tomorrow will be a pain.

Sat 9:30 am – Not exactly live, but last night we were able to get into a Changeling: The Dreaming game run by Dave Martin of The Wrecking crew. It was fun, but I was incredibly tired, and started getting grumpy near the end.

Sat 1:00 pm – just got back from lunch with Sean from Narrative Control and some other folks. Had a great time. Hopefully, we’ll be able to convince some folks to do some pickup gaming between the scheduled games.

Sun 4:30 pm – Just finished playtesting Justin’s Schaurmarchen game for GOCon. Anybody playing in that one is going to have a great time with it.
Last night we got a chance to demo Geist: The Sin-Eaters. The premise is good, but the demo needs a little bit of work. Can’t say too much, but it should be worth getting when it comes out.
We also recorded an interview with Dave Martin last night, and an episode of Narrative Control with Justin and Sean. Both of those had some really great content, although NC I thought went better than the interview.

Sun 10:30 am – Just about conned out. I’m currently sitting in on a Dogs in the Vineyard game as an observer, and reading through Shock: Social Science Fiction.
That last one was a total impulse buy. I went down to get Dominion and 3:16, and Shock: was just kind of there. Judging by the opening fiction, it looks like it might have been a good buy.
Last night’s plan was to play Dread, but it was midnight before people were going to be out of their games, and we were all exhausted, so it just never happened. Which was fine, really. I only wish that we’d decided not to play prior to 2 am, since we’re going to be exhausted for the trip home.
Still, Kubla was a good con, as usual. Next year, though, I think I’m going to fill up my schedule, even if I have to add games that I don’t actually want to play. I figure that will get me into more games overall, while still giving me time for pickup games and whatnot.

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All in all, I feel pretty good about how it went. Only one characte died, which is a little disappointing. Not because I particularly like killing characters in RPGs, but Dread is a little special. Dying can be pretty awesome in this game. In any case, things went well. My players gave some really good feedback, and managed to stay in the game pretty much the whole time. I’m going to go back and edit the scenario again, keeping their feedback in mind. I don’t usually run the same game multiple times, but I think that the Ghost Hunters scenario works well enough as a con game.

There were a couple of things that I changed for con play. First, I dumped one of the ghosts. I felt that, in the original draft, there was too much going on, and it distracted from the story. Also, there was a rape in the original scenario. While I haven’t removed it from the scenario entirely, I decided to omit it for the con. If I ran this at KublaCon, I would probably leave it in, since each game has its own private room. At Endgame, there were a great deal of people around (hell, a game of 3:16 was going on immediately behind me), so I figured that a murder/rape, even when described through the filter of a FLIR camera, might not be appropriate for all audiences. It didn’t take much away from the game, anyway.

I’m very strongly considering running this scenario, with some more edits, at KublaCon next year. I don’t think that Dread gets enough love, and it’s such a fun game. That being said, I’d like to thank The Game Master Show for introducing it to me.

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As a side note, I did get to meet Rym and Scott briefly at round two of the Omegathon, which was cool. I’m looking forward to their panel tomorrow evening.

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