Con on the Cob - Harrowed Halls

NovembeR
on
the
www.HarrowedhallS.com
Volume 3 • Number 8 • 2006
From the desk oF
CoB
CoN
Evil Mike
know what I was
Edition
 don’t
expecting from Con on
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
the Cob. Certainly some wonderful wackiness from Andy
Hopp. Good times with some
friends old and new. And of
course a chance to chat about
gaming with the Pinnacle gang.
all that and more. At
 tthewasend,
I wept. I was al-
most inconsolable. Of course
I was very hung over and had
nightmares in the daytime from
seeing Sean Fannon get his
fanny signed. But I think it was
more than that. Probably, it
was knowing that it would be
eleven very loooong months
before the next Con on the
Cob. Very well done Andy,
very well done.
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What’s Inside
Con on the Cob 2006
Introduction
3
3
Vanderkook’s Infernal Machine
4
I Stink, Therefore I am
5
Thursday Night Hanging Out
6
Savage Worlds Breakfast Bonanza
6
The Rescue
6
Innana’s Kiss
7
Terrible New World
Martial Arts Mayhem
Shootout at Coffin Rock
Chaos Steve Goes to Jail
Dinner with PEG
A Hard Earned Vacation
Savage Saturday Night
Mike’s Place
Games and More Games
Low Life is an officially licensed Savage Worlds product produced by Andy Hopp, www.muthaoith.com
Rune Punk is an officially licensed Savage Worlds product produced by Reality Blurs, www.realityblurs.com
Shaintar is an officially licensed Savage Worlds product produced by Talisman Studios, Inc., www.shaintar.info
Innana’s Kiss is an officially licensed Savage Worlds product produced by 12 to Midnight, Inc., www.12toMidnight.com
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Con on the Cob 2006
hold on to the E-Zine and
your early retirement is aselcome to the Con on sured.
the Cob edition of
ow!!
the Harrowed Halls E-Zine.
Some of the art you see in
the E-Zine is from Andy
hat word about sums
Hopp’s private collection. He
up Andy Hopp’s Con
tells us it’s nearly priceless, so
Introduction



on the Cob this year. It was
an amazing time of rubbing
elbows with many of the
Savage Worlds authors: Andy
(of course), Sean Preston,
Sean Patrick Fannon, the
mythical Clint Black, Savage
Simon Lucas, and let us not
forget that guy called Shane
Hensley. In between all of
the elbow rubbing we even
got to game with them! How
cool is that! Our only regret
was that Wiggy wasn’t there
for us to meet. I’m sure he’ll
make it up to us savages by
writing a lot of cool Savage
Worlds stuff in the future.
of the first things
 ne
we did after getting
to the con was head to the
Savage Store. There we met
Clint Black and Joe Unger.
Joe is Pinnacle’s marketing
guy (I’ll tell you more about
him later.) Simon and Shane
came up to the booth and
we got to talk to them for a
bit. Our first game was my
Deadlands Reloaded game. I
3
already knew that Clint and
look forward to seeing at
his wife had signed up to play cons in the future.
in it. Was I nervous about
that? You bet I was.
Vanderkook’s
where everyone is boarding a
private train to take them to
the Utah Salt Flats where the
field test will take place.
more thing before I
 ne
start on the games we
were many fun
 here
moments in the game
played. For Mike and I this
was also kind of a gamer’s
reunion. A lot of the friends
we have made in the past
gaming at Origins and Gencon were at Con on the Cob.
This just made the entire con
that much more special for
us. We love gaming with you
guys! We also met a lot of
new savage friends that we’ll
Infernal Machine
Deadlands Reloaded
GM: Chaos Steve
posse was hired by
 he
Dr. Vanderkook to
help with the first field test
of his latest invention: the
harpoon steam wagon. The
wagon was specifically developed to take down the giant
rattlers that roam the weird
west. The adventure begins
at a Denver train station
(for me anyway.) My favorite was when Allen (TombThroat) accidentally shot
Clint in the back with his gatlin’ pistol. Another was when
Yuri’s wife, Kali, who was a
huckster was trying to decide
whether to use the joker in
her Deal with the Devil. The
manitou whispered in her
ear “Do it. Do it.” And that
manitou sounded an awful
lot like Clint. Poor Kali had
to go to the backlash table a
couple of times during the
game. And by-the-way, they
did get the rattler in the end.
what became of my
 onervousness
at having
Clint in my game? It vanished. Clint was nothing but
fun and helpful and he does a
mean imitation of a manitou.
“Use the Joker. Look at the
power it will give you!”
Clint and Jodi Black getting “Kooky” in Steve’s game
4
I Stink, Therefore I
am
Savage Worlds: Low Life
GM: Andy Hopp
can be no better
 here
GM for a game than
the game’s author or creator. That was certainly true
with Andy’s Low Life game.
Just to give you an idea of
the flavor of the game, I’ll
tell you about my character,
Cullio the Yoink. Collio is
a werm burgler. He and his
partner in crime, Swovv Zinkleman, recently snatched
some hocuspoked prosthetic
arms from the Cheesenasium
in Maankaas for our boss,
Dregzie the Schnoz (played
by evil mike.) Dregzie the
Schnoz looks like a giant
nose riding a twinkie—but
now he has arms. By the way,
my partner Swovv (played by
Chris Petersen) is the sexiest
thing since…well sexier than
any other of the inhabitants
of Mutha Oith. But enough
about them lets talk more
about me. Besides my bad
ass attitude and my love of
In a world of boogers and pooh, belly button lint doesn’t seem so bad
(From top left: Norm, Alan, Tom, Chris, Yuri, Kali, Shane, Evil Mike, Andy (center))
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thieving, filching, purloining,
& bargain shopping, I also
carried a wackinator—basically a stick with a brick tied
to it by a rope—very effective against Schnoodles and
Brocodiles I assure you. Lastly, my sign: “No Deliveries
After 4:00pm”
with a mohawk.” is said with
complete sincerity? Andy
Hopp is the most insanely
creative person I have ever
met (emphasis on insanely.)
I can honestly say I’ve never
laughed so hard during a
game. Thanks Andy. And
Mike says he still loves you.
(To understand that last part,
you’ll just have to read what
ow for a complete
Andy wrote in Mike’s Low
recap of the game.
Life book. If you’d rather not
Uh, ok…we uh…did some
stuff…and I laughed a lot… understand it, I completely
Heck, everyone laughed a lot. understand).
We said the word placenta
a few times, and the word
Thursday Night
booger…and…well…in the
Hanging Out
end we, uh. Heck, what do
(Some hung out more than others)
you expect in a game where
fter Andy’s game everythe sentence “We came here
looking for a candy corn
one stayed around and


Emporer Hensley holds court. More honey for the emporer!
(from left: Sean Fannon, Simon, Shane, and Clint)
6
hung out with all of the Savage Worlds authors. I think
enough beer was drunk to
take care of those brush fires
in California. I could tell you
some of things that happened there, but you probably wouldn’t believe me.
Savage Worlds
Breakfast Bonanza
morning was
 riday
the Savage Worlds
Breakfast Bonanza. That’s
where we ate donuts. Oh,
and Shane, Simon, and Joe
spoke about up and coming
releases, improvements to
the web sight, and just about
anything else you can think
of. Sean Patrick Fannon and
Sean Preston also talked
about what the future holds
for them as well. Next year
will be a pretty exciting year
for all of us savages with new
setting books being released,
more Deadlands related releases, and lots more cool
downloads. I would tell you
more, but I spent most of
time eating donuts instead of
taking notes.
The Rescue
Savage Worlds: Tour of Darkness
in Space
GM: Evil Mike
Mike is evil and
 vil.
this game proved it.
In a previous adventure our
captain had been captured
by the Government. In this
adventure we planned to get
him back. The game began
with Mike pointing to each
of us and saying, “You have
two bullets. You have four
bullets.” And so on. I of
course got no bullets. But we
weren’t to stay under supplied for long. Thanks to one
of our passengers, we took a
job getting rid of one “merchant’s” rival, Jackie Black.
This was to take place at a
meeting between Jackie Black
and some unknown party. We
got to keep whatever goods
were being traded. Things
might have gone badly if not
for our sniper, who made
every bullet count. It turned
out that the goods were a
stash of weapons, grenades,
and ammo. Woo hoo!
o we prepared to am bush
the Government
convoy as it brought our
captain from the spaceport
to the Government base on
the planet. Once the ambush
began things quickly turned
from bad to worse as we
discovered that the weapons
we were using were booby
trapped! That evil, evil Mike!
Again the sniper saved us
from TPK by not using the
new weapons and keeping
his trusty sniper rifle which
could use the ammo we
found—everyone’s else’s old
weapons couldn’t. We nearly
lost the sniper when our
demo guy fumbled a roll—
there was a benny well spent.
the end, one of us
 ndied
and several were so
badly wounded as to be completely useless. To make matters worse, our old captain
had been brain washed and
turn against us. We left him
behind and made our escape
to heal up and decide on who
the next captain would be.
Mike is just EVIL!
What do you mean I only have 2 bullets!!??
(from left: Paul, Craig, Dave, Alan and Mark)
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had to kill nearly everyone
12 to Midnight’s Modern Military to save ourselves, we find a
Horror adventure
cache of weapons and an
GM: Tom Wisniewski (Count Zero) ancient scimitar. Nearly all of
the heroes had the Doubting
om ran Evil Mike and I Thomas hindrance, which
through a con version meant that when the dead
of Innana’s Kiss. The Lore- villagers melted away right
master (Tim Hannon), Yuri
before our eyes most of us
and his wife Kali played too. discounted it as a phenomThe heroes (that’s us) start
enon from the heat.
out the adventure riding on a
Bradley approaching a village
ruined temple was near
in northern Iraq. We were
the village so we headed
looking for members of the up to investigate it. (If we’ve
Fedayeen and other terrorist learned anything from gamcells. After a weird encouning we know that nothing
ter in the village where we
good happens in a ruined
Innana’s Kiss


temple. We also know that
it’ll be a blast finding out
just what is going on—so we
went inside.) Yes things were
a blast…a blast of gunfire,
a blast from grenades going
off…a blast. In the end the
heroes were running, limping, and crawling their way
out of the temple and into
the light of day. As we caught
our breaths and looked
around, our hearts sank. Surrounding us on the horizon
were hundreds of villagers.
Many of which we recognized as the dead from the
village below. That’s when
Tom said, “And the camera
moves up and away from you
as the villagers converge on
your position.” I don’t think
we made it. Waay cool Tom!
Terrible New World
Savage Worlds: Solomon Kane
GM: Shane Hensley
begin to describe
 cannot
to you how much fun
Tom “I vanna kiss”. I mean he ran Innana’s Kiss
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this game was. Not only was
Shane running the game,
but we were playing with
Simon, Joe, Clint, Clint’s wife
Jodi, Sean Fannon and Sean
Preston. I played the Russian Cossack, Boris, and Evil
Mike played an Italian priest.
Evil Mike was hilarious with
his Father Guido Sarducci accent. Simon played an English constable and was teased
all night about his horrible
English accent. (Simon is
from the UK.) Sean Fannon’s
driven Spaniard was perfect.
Sean Preston’s pirate was a
fish out of water in this adventure, but still managed to
do some dashing heroics and
some plundering. Clint got to
play Serious Chapel and Jodi
played the beautiful and mys-
Cossack. He was besieged
by the huntsman’s pack
of highly trained dogs. He
fought bravely first shooting his musket at them and
hane had a great story then using it as a club. In
that led us to final
the end he went down under
confrontation at a Noble
the onslaught. As his broken
family’s crypt. The peasants
body lay in blood and mud,
were revolting, the soldiers
the final insult was when one
were fighting them off and
of the dogs lifted his leg and
we were trying to get to
pissed on the Cossack bethe bottom of it--all durfore bounding back into the
ing a cold and stormy night. night. (Shane actually lifted
Things got much worse when his leg for this.) I think Shane
a chance bolt of lightening
enjoyed retelling that part of
brought an ancient monster
the adventure during the rest
to life. Only one member of of the con. In the end I think
the group died—my poor
it was Clint’s Serious Chapel,
Sean’s Spaniard, and (heck,
I can’t remember who else)
that brought the monster
down and ended the battle. It
was now 4 am and time for
bed.
terious Esmeralda. Joe played
a German baron to a tee! His
German and Russia accents
are fantastic!

Martial Arts Mayhem
Savage Worlds Showdown
GM: Norm Hensley (No relation)
3 hours sleep Mike
 fter
and I made it to Norm’s
Norm’s mayhem game gets a lot of lookers for 8:00am!
(from left at table: Glen, Colen, Dave, Alan, Chris)
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(Boldfist) game at 8 am. He
had a full house of eight
players. Pretty unusual for an
8 am Saturday game, but then
we all knew this game was
going to be fun. I think there
may have been only one
or two players who hadn’t
played in this before. Norm
had eight sets of martial artists groups (ninjas, monks,
samurai, sumos, wizards, et
al.) All of us had a wild card
or two and a group of extras.
The idea is to pummel the
heck out of your opponents,
gaining points when you
kill them. You can also gain
points by controlling certain
areas at the end of the game.
The catch here is that you’re
not completely sure when
the game will end. Needless
to say we had a great time.
In the end, I believe Dave
McGuire (Grendel) won
the event. I’m hoping to get
Norm to run it next year at
Origins.
Shootout at Coffin
Rock
Deadlands Reloaded
GM: Shane “Kill ‘em All” Hensley
came up with a
 hane
killer scenario here--
wanted nasty critters. Unfortunately the critters were immune to the gas. Even more
unfortunate is that we were
not and we only have a short
time to live. Scattered around
the town are the dead bodies
of scientists. An antidote was
created and if we find it on
a scientist’s dead body, it will
save our hides.
hell breaks loose as we
 llscatter
to fight for the
limited amount of antidote.
literally. Three gangs of five Not only were we fightplayers are in the small town ing each other, but Shane
of Coffin Rock. We find out threw in Walking Dead and
that the Collegium has gassed Rattler Young ‘Uns just for
the town to remove some un- fun. Another evil twist was
Shane’s massive Coffin Rock game
10
that when the first few players died, they came back as
increasingly deadly foes. I
distinctly remember Cutter
coming back as an automaton because I spent the end
of the game unsuccessfully
dodging the bullets of his
twin gatlin’ rifles. Sean Fannon came back as Stone.
How cool is that! Shoot,
Dave McGuire came back
as a hanging judge! In the
end, I think about six of the
15 original players survived.
Two were chosen to play in a
special game with Shane later.
In that game, he promised
to kill them within 10 min-
utes…maybe less.
lieves I’m a heck of a salesman. And truth be told, I
Chaos Steve Goes to really enjoyed it.
Jail
not really jail,
 ell
more like solitary
confinement. That’s right;
I had to man the Savage
Store booth while Joe and
Simon played in game two
of Shane’s Shootout at Coffin Rock. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to talk
and make my time there very
enjoyable. And a big thanks
to those of you who bought
savage stuff. Simon now be-
Dinner with PEG
Mike and I got to
 vil
have dinner with all of
the Pinnacle savage folks including Simon’s lovely fiancé,
Kirsty, and Clint’s adorable
family. Yes, you can all writhe
in envy now. I almost did and
I was there. Oh, and Yuri and
his wife Kali were there too.
In true Savage fashion Clint’s
daughter, whom Evil Mike
was sitting next to, kept stealing our noses and brains and
switching them with other
people. I of course act the
same with or without a brain,
right Mike?
A Hard Earned
Vacation
Savage Worlds: Necessary Evil
GM: Evil Mike
if I was nervous
 ow
having Clint in my
Shane about to be devoured by Clint’s newly zombified daughters.
11
game, Mike should have been
really nervous. Clint was in
his game and Clint is one of
the authors of Necessary
Evil (a super-villain setting).
(Amazingly I had forgotten to mention to Mike just
how nice a player Clint is. Oh
well.) Mike’s game was great!
At least that’s what they tell
me. I don’t really remember
much. Mike and I had both
only had three hours of sleep
the previous night. Sure Mike
should be tired too, but I’m
1000 years older than Mike.
I just can’t stay awake like I
used to. Fortunately my super
villain was 91 years old, so
my nodding off was in character. (Brilliant!) I do remember one scene though…
whole gang is on a
 he
plane heading to Ar-
gentina for a vacation and
to deliver a box for Dr. Destruction. Brainiac (Simon)
and October Star (Joe) are in
the cargo hold when we discover bombs on the wings of
the plane. Brainiac, knowing
October Star can fly, throws
October Star out through an
open hatch. What Brianiac
didn’t know was just how fast
October Star could fly—certainly not as fast as the plane.
So as the plane left October
Star behind, I think we heard
him singing a rousing Russian
drinking song. Hours later
he re-joined us on an island!
thanks to Simon
 big
and Clint. I was sit-
ting in between these guys
and I wouldn’t have made it
through the game without
their friendly nudging, followed by “Steve, play that
card.” Or “Steve, roll your
Spirit.” Or “Steve, we’re out
of drinks.” At 91, my character was pretty feeble.
Savage Saturday
Night
Patrick Fannon
 ean
threw a party at his
suite for any and all who
wanted to come (I heard
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the Klingon party moved to
Sean’s suite too). The party
started sometime during
Mike’s NE game, so we got
there late. We missed the
to-die-for hot dogs that the
Buffalo boys (Tim and Tom)
brought. But we didn’t miss
a good time. Sean regaled
us with jokes and we partied like a bunch of savages
should. Everyone was there.
At about 1:30am I had to go
find sleep. Evil Mike stayed
and partied ‘till dawn…that
young pup.
Mike’s Place
planet-sized platters of food
on the inside. I think some
savages ate every meal there.
Games and More
Games
Place.
’ve got to mention some
 eNoatenotat Mike’s

Evil Mike’s
of the other Savage
Place, but a really, really cool Worlds games that were run
restaurant in Kent that has an at the con…and this is only a
X-wing parked outside and
partial list!
Don’t ask me who that guy giving Shane the rabbit ears is...nope...never saw him before in my life.
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Preston ran
 ean
several Runepunk
Cutter ran
 athew
games in his cool
Spirits of ’86 savage setting.
(I coveted the pyramid terrain he used.)
games and had copies of
the pre-production book for
Runepunk on sale. Mike and
hris Kucsera ran a very
I snatched two up before the
cool Savage Bug Hunt
ink had dried. Ack! We forgot
scenario. His terrain was aweto have him sign them!
some!
ean Patrick Fannon
could go on and on…so
ran several Shaintar
I will. What!? We’re
games and continued his
almost out of space? Aw
massive scenario Hell Road
shucks! A big savage thanks
with the next installment,
Return to Hell Road.
to all those GMs who ran
games at Con on the Cob.
ndy Hopp ran a lot of
You guys are our unspoken
Low Life games. How
heroes.
he found time, I’ll never
know.
astly I’d like to thank
all of the friends that
hane of course ran
we gamed with, talked to, and
lots of games in both ate with. You guys make a
Deadlands and the Solomon great con even better. I’d love
Kane setting.
to name every one of you…
and I will. What!? That’s it!?
oe Unger ran games
No more space!? But I was
in his cool Red Rising
just getting started!
setting. What is Red Rising?
Check out his description in Chaos Steve
the sidebar.
Chronicler of the







Harrowed Halls
14
Red Rising
Red Rising is a shot of
icy Vodka in the depths
of space. The setting is
centered in a near-future
solar system dominated by the Soviet Union.
Players get a first hand
experience from within
the Communist “Utopia”
policing, mining and exploring space aboard
mile-long nuclear rockets. Most of all, players
learn they can not trust
anyone. With codified
“hidden agendas” that
reward players self-preservation over that of their
team, note passing and
secret alliances are a
way of life. Just try and
tell your table mates you
are following Jim to get
another bowl of Borsht.
In Red Rising, space is
cold and life is cheap.