• Derek Hiemforth ran “Challenge of the Super Friends,” a Hero System Role Playing Game he based on the classic 70s Saturday morning cartoon show. This event did not escape the eyes of over a dozen people, and all of them were there when the event started. Normally we would have turned away the majority of such a large crowd but Derek had a better idea. He let the overflow people participate by giving them his character sheets for his “Legion of Doom” NPCs and let them play the parts of the bad guys. Way to go Derek! We checked up on the event several times to make sure everything was going okay, and each time the WHOLE group was having more and more fun. We can only hope that Derek will bring his event back next year, and maybe we can even convince him to run it twice!
• Katy Biden ran a “Kobolds ate my baby” event and had lots of fun doing it. Katy was not only given a green GM’s pin for running an event at KublaCon 2004, she was also awarded a yellow winners pin for a very distinct honor. She just happens to live in South Africa and she traveled a very loooong ways just to come to KublaCon. We awarded her the pin for being the person who traveled the furthest to run a Role Playing Game, and saluted her for doing so. Katy, you are more than welcome to come back to KublaCon 2005 and collect another winners pin!
• Troll Lord Games wrote and published an exclusive world premier module that ran several times over the course of the weekend. It was titled “The Temple of Kubla Khan,” and even garnered the interest of our visiting mascot Kubla himself. He is quoted as saying “This is wonderful, as this will now bring more people to my Temple for me to slaughter. Bwua ha ha ha ha!!!” Steve Chanault (the head Troll himself) is all ready to work on next year’s module, and he has hinted it may have some cameos of prominent KublaCon staff members in it. (We can’t wait to see it, Steve!)
  
  

From the LARP Department:

Our Live Action Role Playing guy, David Oberholzer, reports that for the first year, every LARP got sufficient attendance to run (even the two coinciding Changeling games, despite his warnings and worries that it might not work). His favorite moments…

• The moment of realization the Storytellers of the OWbN game had at last developed greater subtlety than the vast majority of their players could appreciate. This realization came when it saw that the entire reason for the Conclave (a gathering of the powerful in vampiric society to deliver judgments on those above or untouchable by the authority of a single city) had nothing to do with the announced judgment of the Prince of San Francisco's disrespect to a Justicar and his Archon minions ... but about the Justicars setting the precedent of being able to ignore a Prince's power within His own Domain.
• Some very brilliant role-play in the Dune LARP that took place on Sunday night by a young noble who, by all appearance, was the victim of his despicable father's plotting and murderous tendencies. In a brilliant play, the young man collapsed before the Emperor, weeping and revealing these desperate acts as perpetrated by his sire, utterly torn by his duty to the honor of his house and the Right of Law, and his love for his father, who had nevertheless betrayed the family with his horrific activities. At least, until it was discovered that all such acts were those of the faithless son, who had been setting his father up for this fall all night.

Andrew “Prize Lord” Lockwood

Besides being one of the most popular guys at the convention (even rivaling Kulba himself), he is another rookie and doesn’t have a specific moment to relay but rather his experience at the convention…

• Being my first year as the Prize Lord I really did not know what to expect. I was very nervous about walking in on people's games and interrupting them, even though it was to give them prizes.
• On Saturday I would timidly approach a GM and sometimes stand there for ten minutes waiting patiently for him or her to acknowledge me before giving my spiel about prizes. When Sunday came a total change took place. I would walk into the room and whole tables would yell "Prize Lord!!" (Or various permutations ranging from Gift Genie to Prize God). People recognized me in the halls and even knew me by name and not title.
• It was so cool being in a city where I knew absolutely no one, and even just a few of the volunteers, but still having people shouting "Hey Andrew, how are you doing?" I cannot wait to come back next year and see all the happy faces that made my first time as Prize Lord so great.
  
  
  

Table Top Games

Julie Haehn and Heather Rawlins report in from Table Top Games for us. The TTG area was one of the busiest areas of the convention as they had almost 150 scheduled games. They felt great about the turnout! The TTG folks were constantly busy, very popular, and if there was ever a free table then there were pick-up games taking up those tables. The TTG folks thank all of the gamers who came by to play a game and for making Doug and Julie’s first year a great one, and Heather’s second year just as fabulous as the first.

• We have so many great memories of numerous interactions with people that made it such a great weekend. For those of you who may not have made it out this year, or just didn’t make it up to the Tree Rooms, here are some of the great events that we really enjoyed. Certainly one of the big moments that sticks out in our minds is the final game of the Settlers of Catan Regional Championship tournament. The tournament had over 60 people playing in the first round. The final game only took 35 minutes to complete, and the winner, Yalda, showed no mercy. She was the last to place in the set up of the game, and she took her time to consider where she was going to place her pieces, but after that, she was a force to be reckoned with. It was amazing to watch.
• Further, the Diplomacy players, who took over the Atrium Overlook for two days, all seemed to be having a great time. For that matter, so did the players in the Puffing Billy Tournament! We had a great turnout for Dwarven Dig!, and the Puerto Rico game that was scheduled as one game of five players, ballooned into five games of five players each. Which reminds us, thanks to everyone who helped with space issues, and everyone who was patient with us when we were suddenly scrounging for room! Finally, we had a great turnout for the Kniziathon on Sunday morning; there were at least 20 people there at 8 a.m. to start from the beginning, and over 60 people took part throughout the day. I think we ended up covering all the walls in the foyer to keep the scoring for the Kniziathon straight!
  
  
  

Young Players Room

Becky Thomas certainly had her hands full with running our newest thrill ride, the Young Players Room. With an ever increasing number of families coming to the convention, we decided that it would be nice for our younger attendees to have an area where they can play games with other players of a similar age at the convention. As you can see by Becky’s report below, it was a big hit, and it will definitely be included in KublaCon 2005.

• Wow! What a GREAT convention we had in the Young Player's Room. Thanks to all the great help from the various department heads, this year we went 'big'—scheduling a ton of events for the kids—and it paid off. We had over 64 official attendees in the YP room this year. They all had a fantastic time, playing everything from “Apples to Apples,” to “Warhammer 40K,” and everything in between. Not only the young players, but also their parents and other adults, enjoyed the activities of the room. We got a lot of great feedback from all of the players.
• The kids had the greatest time playing the Battle Cattle card game, where combat was fast moooving - milk bombs flying right and left, cattle prods prodding, and cattlepults . . . uh. . . pulting. . .
• One of the best moments was on Monday, when Kubla himself came to judge the coloring contest. The kids had colored up a bunch of photocopies of Kubla! Kubla said, "Ah, good use of color," (several times) and was frightened by the ghostly images of himself (uncolored). He finally decreed that all of the participants got a prize, as all the pictures were fantastic!
  
  
  

Collectable Card Games

Matt Hoskins is in charge of the bustle of activity that is the Collectible Games department at KublaCon. Here is what he had to say about this year’s events.
Plus, he’s already planning for next year!

• The CCG area boasted over 65 unique and fun card events in over 6,400 square feet of space, with events running throughout the days and nights. With events featuring Warlord, Shadowfist, .Hack//Enemy, Cyberpunk, Netrunner, and a healthy mix of Magic: TG, to name a few were enough to whet any card gamer’s appetite. Major tournaments included a DBZ regional, a Star Wars TCG Championship Qualifier, and there was … the Kotei. With over 200 enthusiastic players, the two-day California Kotei event was one of the world’s largest Kotei in 2004. There was nothing quite like the air of excitement in the Grand Ballroom while they screamed “Bonsai!” every hour. It was a huge success, which will only get better in ’05.
• CCGs will no doubt continue to grow in quality in ‘05 with the recent addition of another staff member, Paul Yale. He is an experienced certified DCI level 2 judge. Paul’s expertise will energize our Magic: TG events.
• We are also always looking for talented GMs to help run card games at Kublacon, for more information please e-mail ccgs@kublacon.com. We also welcome any input or suggestions on what card games you would like to see represented at Kublacon.
  
  
  

Miniatures

For Kublacon 2004, the miniatures team put together over 160 events. These events ranged from small miniature games of four players to monsters with over 30 players, from ancient warfare to combat in the far future, and from painting events to historical seminars. There certainly were enough events and variety to keep everyone busy and happy. Jon Caudill, our Miniatures Department Team Leader reports in:

• Kublacon 2004 featured our first Kublacon War College. The War College consisted of eight seminars with topics ranging from Alexander through Stalingrad. It was hosted by Dana Lombardy and Charles Sharp, both well known historians with ties to the gaming community. Among Dana's many accomplishments, he is the designer of the award winning board game Streets of Stalingrad and has appeared on the History Channel. Charles Sharp has consulted on many games and has researched and produced several OBs for the Soviets of World War II. We received nothing but great feedback about their series and look forward to their return for Kublacon 2005. We hope to expand the War College coverage for 2005 as well.
• One of my favorite moments was Friday night. A Warmachine event was scheduled to run on four tables. The GM came to me and asked if we had some extra space. Well, being it was Friday night, space was not too much of an issue so I asked him how much more space he would like. "Ten more tables," he replied. I as really taken aback by this, but with some reluctance, did find him the space. When I returned in about a half and hour, every table was FULL! This process was repeated on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday by the same group, but I didn't even flinch at their requests after Friday. Congratulations to Warmachine for their success.
  
  
  

Producer

I asked one of our illustrious producers (Anthony Gallela) to share his favorite moments of KublaCon 2004 with us, and here’s what he had to say …

• When David asked me to write something for the newsletter, I was paralyzed with choices.
• With the amazing staff, GMs, exhibitors, and attendees we had at KublaCon this year, I could not stop my head from spinning with the many great stories and events I saw and heard of. There was the auction and the flea market—both larger and better than they’ve ever been, there were several amazing tourneys—way too many to mention here, there was the War College with Dana Lombardy and Charles Sharp (Dana Lombardy and Charles Sharp!), and there were so many other cool guests—John Kovalic, James Ernest, Peter Adkison, Gavin Thorpe, Jervis Johnson, Guido Teuber, and Charlie Krank to name a few (okay, to name most).
• There were just so many cool things that trying to drill down to one or two was very difficult. In thinking about it, I found I kept coming back to the appearances of Kubla himself. I guess the reason I keep thinking of Kubla is that his visits were all over the con, and they make me think about how the whole con was so great.
• The one moment in Kubla’s travels that sticks out the most for me was the first time he went into the YP room. The kids had an awed look on their faces. “It’s … Kubla,” some of them whispered in disbelief. The whole scene almost brought a tear to my eye.
  
  
  
  
  

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