FlatCon - Harrowed Halls

October
FlatCon 2006
Edition
www.HarrowedhallS.com
Volume 3 • Number 6 • 2006
From the desk oF
C hEvil
a o s Mike
Steve
Editor-in-Chief
”Evil” Mike McNeal
Assistant Editor
“Chaos” Steve Todd
Art Director
Lee Templeton
Web Site
www.HarrowedhallS.com
Editorial Office
Harrowed Halls
10370 Hillsborough Dr.
Fishers, IN 46037
was our first time
 his
to Flatcon, but it
won’t be our last! We had
a blast taking part in everything from pirate raids
to a Starship Trooper bug
stomp.
is a relatively
 latcon
small game conven-
huge Star Wars Hoth Battle
similar to what was run at
Origins, along with a 3D
tunneled Savage Starship
Troopers game that Evil
Mike and I played in.
can check out
 ou
the con’s web site
at www.flatcon.com. I’m
tion with about 450 gamers starting to sound a lot like
taking part in it, but that
an advertisement, so let’s
doesn’t mean it’s small on just skip to the games.
its event offerings. “Over
the Top Productions” ran a
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What’s Inside
FlatCon 2006
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Savage Pirate Raid
3
Savage Starship Troopers
4
Deadlands Reloaded: Vanderkook’s Infernal Device
5
Savage Worlds: Stick and Stones
6
Deadlands Reloaded: Passion, NE
7
Lord of the Rings Savage Showdown
8
1.2 Seconds of Fame
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2
FlatCon 2006
k, one more thing be fore
the games—and
this time it’s a plug for a
vender no less. Flatcon had
a lot of good vendors and
Evil Mike and I parted with a
lot of our cash buying miniatures and terrain. But one
vendor in particular caught
our attention, Ed Evans from
WarMadeFun (http://stores.
ebay.com/WarMadeFun-Terrain). He was selling terrain
that he made himself. Mike
asked him about tombstones
because one of his games
needed a cool graveyard. The
guy didn’t have tombstones
but said if Mike would give
him an idea of what he wanted, he’d make it and have it
ready by Saturday night when
Mike was running his game.
We thought that was pretty
cool. And sure enough come
Saturday night Mike had a
graveyard complete with
walls, a gate, and tombstones.
It was his first time at a game
convention and he told us
that he had learned a lot
about what kind of terrain
gamers were looking for just
from attending. Hopefully
we’ll see more great stuff
from this guy in the future.
 ow on to the games!
Savage Pirate Raid
GM: David Ross
had only met Dave
 ebriefly
at Gencon, so it was fun that
our first game was
one of his. We learned
two things about Dave
during the game: 1) he
knows how to setup a
great pirate raid and 2)
his primary objective is
for the players to have
fun and more fun. His
game was a 50 Fathoms
showdown pirate raid.
The pirates had heard
of a fabulous treasure
that was hidden inland,
past a small village.
Of course the Ugak sav-
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ages living there weren’t too
keen on losing their treasure
to pirates. Things really got
interesting when a ship of
undead appeared out of the
mist eager to take the spoils
for themselves.
game had a lot go his
ing on. First the two pi-
rate ships were battling it out
in the bay. Evil Mike handled
the regular pirate ship, while
Mark Margaff (left) and David Ross
our friend Mark Margarf ran
the undead one. On shore, a
group of pirates had already
grabbed the treasure and
were fleeing back through the
forest with it. Hot on their
trail were the enraged Ugaks.
At the shoreline, a group of
pirates were protecting the
docks from a landing party
of undead. Wow!
the ships traded shots,
 ssome
of the undead
jumped into the water and
began walking to the pirate
ship--Pirates of the Caribbean style. Evil Mike uncharacteristically helped me out
by firing a cannon shot into
the group of undead that my
pirates, on shore, were having trouble with. It decimated
them. I still lost all of my
pirates except for my Grael
leader. The pirates running
with the treasure were caught
by the Ugaks and took heavy
loses. Only more reinforcements stopped the pirates
from being totally destroyed.
In the end the pirates won.
(Yay!)
Savage Starship
Troopers
GM: Aaron Isaac
credit Aaron with
 ehaving
a lot to do
with getting us hooked on
Savage Worlds. Several years
ago Aaron ran Tour of Darkness demos at Gencon. Mike
and I were in one of those
demos. It was an absolute
blast and the terrain Aaron
had made was fantastic!
ToD is one of our favorite
settings* all due to Aaron’s
excellent demo game.
*
Uh, to be honest there is no
setting we don’t really like.
Starship Trooper
 isgame
used the Savage
Worlds card initiative with
the normal Starship Trooper
rules. Evil Mike was put in
charge of the troopers trying to get an old base up
and running, while I was in
charge of a group of bugs
trying to kill them—some
things never change. There
were eight players in total,
four for each side. The bat-
A peace loving bug hive - prior to being invaded!
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tlefield was made up of 3 areas; the base at one end, the
hive—a hollowed out mountain—in the center, and a
dropship with troopers at the
other end. Once again Aaron
did a tremendous job on the
terrain! Wow. Evil Mike and
I offered to ‘store’ part of it
for Aaron, but he saw right
through our request.
bugs’ objective was
 he
to destroy the base and
the troopers in it. The troopers’ objective was to destroy
our bug hatchery and our
brain bug within it. They also
had a second objective of
getting the generator working at the base, thus providing them with some more
defenses. Oh, and one more
thing, at the end of each turn
we got reinforcements based
upon how well we rolled on a
6-sider.
bugs really got their
 he
carapaces handed to
them on a silver platter in
this one. I for one couldn’t
roll a high number to save
my a…uh, bugs. I was begin-
Kooky’s train at the station getting ready to pull out
ning to wonder if the dice
even had fives and sixes on
them. In the end neither of
us could achieve our objective, but it was pretty clear
the troopers had the upper
hand.
Deadlands Reloaded: Vanderkook’s
Infernal Device
GM: Chaos Steve
is the game I’ll be
 his
running at Con on the
Cob in November. The eccentric inventor Dr. Ignatius
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Vanderkook--Evil Mike’s
character insisted on calling
him ‘Kooky’ or ‘Iggy’—was
off to field-test his latest invention, the Harpoon
Steam Wagon. The wagon
was specifically built to take
down the huge Mojave rattlers. The field test was going
to be in Utah’s salt flats. In
Utah the Rattlers are a mite
smaller and a mite faster.
The posse was a collection
of Vanderkook’s friends and
those hired to actually test
the infernal device.
wanting to give too
 otmuch
away, I’ll just say
There were no rulers, as in
measuring devices, and talkthe GM had a fun time and I ing hadn’t quite come into
think the player’s did too. We its own yet. Those caught
did find out what happens
talking were immediately
when a steam wagon hits a
assumed to be possessed
train—it’s not pretty.
by evil spirits and killed on
the spot. …or maybe just
Savage Worlds: Stick shunned, I forget which. So
during the game, there was
and Stones
no talking, but lots of gruntGM: Rob “Red Wizard” Lusk
ing and gesturing—in true
You’ll have to ask Dave Ross caveman fashion of course.
or Rob about the “Red Wiz- With no rulers, measureard”.
ments for the game were
broken down into the followf you want to know
ing lengths: hands, fingers,
how cavemen spent
their days, Rob Lusk has the
answer. He’s the author of
Sticks and Stones, a Savage
Worlds setting based waaay
back in the time of dinosaurs, cave orcs, beast masters, and cave nerds. What!?
Your teachers never told you
about cave nerds? Well you’ll
have to check out Sticks and
Stones for the real story. I’m
just here to wet your whistle…whatever that is.

hings were a lot dif ferent
way back then.
and knuckles. We suggested
other lengths, but Rob said
it was a family game. The
bennies were called shiny
rocks and Rob used dead
chickens for Shaken markers.
(We were starting to wonder
about Rob by this time.)
had the lesser dino
 ob
sapiens and cave orcs
attacking the humans (called
Ahs—Archaic Homo Sapiens.) I ran a group of cave
orcs and their shaman leader.
Evil Mike ran the flying Pteranodons carrying lesser dino
The Cave Orcs discover written language and send a message to any passers
by. (Terrain Note: Pretzels do make delicious tree logs.)
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riders. We got our thick and
scaly hides handed to us on
a shiny platter. (This was a
continuing theme for me
throughout the entire convention. Of course I blame
Evil Mike.) The battle also
had a giant slingshot, built by
cave nerds, flinging coconuts
filled with nasty surprises,
and a Cah-Puh. A Cah-Puh is
a Cave Orc Powered Roller.
Think Flintstones, but with a
cave orc engine. I discovered
that even tough, and apparently stupid, cave orcs have a
very small chance of taking
down a mammoth. (Ha! But
the mammoth got cave orc
goo between its formidable
toes!)
ed: Passion, NE
GM: Evil Mike
will be running
 ike
this one at Con on
the Cob (and at cons next
vil Mike set us up good year), so I can’t give out too
in this adventure of a
many details. I’ll tell you a
family returning to Passion,
couple of highlights though.
Nevada after being gone for We had a player who was a
a spell. See, the sheriff there longtime player of Deadlands
had a particular need for
classic and always enjoyed
vengeance against one of us playing a huckster. He loved
over a shooting. The family
how the huckster’s sanwas innocent, but not in the ity would slowly erode over
sheriff ’s eyes. We only retime. He played a huckster in
turned because we received a Evil Mike’s game too. Having
letter from a family member never played Savage Worlds,
in need.
he was interested in how
Deadlands Reloaded played.

we had a lot of
 ll-in-all
caveman-ish fun and
Rob did a grunting-good
job of running the game in
his silly caveman outfit. (We
stopped wondering about
Rob, and decided he’s just
plain crazy—in a fun and
savage sort of way.)
Deadlands Reload-
Mike’s cool cemetery. Chaos Steve hopes to put him there someday. (This is
the set made by the WarMadeFun guy.)
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I must say he was hooked
by the fast play of Savage
Worlds along with how Reloaded stays true to the classic Deadlands atmosphere.
I think his huckster went to
the backlash table about five
or six times during the game,
but he just smiled (kind of
insanely by then) and kept
casting his hexes.
was a simple request:
 tcapture
a lone hobbit
and return with him. We had
orcs, wolf riders, and ogres
aplenty. What trouble would
one hobbit be? Little did we
know what waited for us at
the hobbit’s humble burrow.
This was the setup for Dave
Ross’s LotR savage showdown game.
whose names escape me
(dang memory) handled the
forces of humans, dwarves,
elves, the Hobbit, and the
little known (or remembered)
Red Wizard. The game began
with the clash of charging
wolfriders and human (or
elfin) spearmen. The game
ended with the orcs being
nearly completely destroyed.
the climatic <edvil Mike, Mark, me,
ave, being a kind and
 uring


and Dave himself were
gentle orc leader, used
ited out> at the end,
I was playing a mad scientist
facing two tough foes with
only my flame thrower. I already had a wound and these
two where going to rip me
to shreds unless help came.
Help came in the form of
me rolling snake-eyes while
shooting my flamethrower
at them. Sure the ensuing
explosion had me bleeding
out and in line to be the next
six-million dollar man, but it
also sent those two straight
to hell…again, I think.
controlling the orc forces.
our side’s last benny to try to
Connor, Robert, and a couple save my orc shaman from a
Lord of the Rings
Savage Showdown
GM: David Ross
First there’s the charging and the battle cries, then there’s just the cries. This
is the ill-fated wolf riders charging the line of defenders.
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devastating ballista bolt. My
shaman died (pinned to the
ground forever.) My orc archers returned fire and even
though they weren’t very
good at killing humans, elves,
and dwarves, they were apparently very good at killing
orcs and wolves. (Darn innocent bystander rules!) One of
Dave’s last wolf riders went
down in a hail of orc arrows.
Of course had we had any
bennies left, Dave could have
saved him.
was obvious now that
 twe’d
never capture the
hobbit, and knowing how unforgiving our orcish master’s
would be, Orc leader
Dave yelled “The heck
with capturing him,
KILL THE HOBBIT!” We did our best
Lost: one cave N.E.R.D. If found,
to do just that but the
please give him a good home.
forces of evil, er good,
were just too strong
aries. It was next to a nice
that day.
story about Flatcon. Once
again I’ll point out that I’m
1.2 Seconds of not nearly as old, or as dead,
as Evil Mike says. Oh, and as
Fame
caveman Rob talked to the
photographer, we heard him
ark Margraf
and I talked to give her a fictitious name…
of one of the guys playing
a photographer durthe game. See? The man is
ing Rob’s Sticks and
crazy.
Stones game. I guess
that paid off because
hanks to Dave, Aaron,
our picture appeared in
Rob, and all the players
one of the area newsfor making Flatcon extremely
papers the next day.
fun for us! See ya next year.
No, not in the obitu-


Just three of the studdly guys you’ll find at
Flatcon. Hey girls, where are you going?
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