This past weekend was Pinnacle‘s second iteration of their online convention, Hollerween. As Halloween weekend is a bit of a major event in Salem, MA, I only attended two events. The first, on Friday night, was a playthrough of the Jumpstart for Boomstick from Just Insert Imagination, run by creator Eric Lamoureux. Eric is also one of the creators of Wiseguys, the Savage Worlds toolkit for organized crime, and he and I had collaborated on the crossover adventure with Legion of Liberty, Bootleggers of 1792.

The game was extremely fun – I don’t often get to be a player instead of a GM, so being able to riff off of the other players and Eric and come up with over-the-top ridiculous improv was a blast. Boomstick is a mashup of Evil Dead and This is Spinal Tap, and the players are a heavy metal band fighting interdimensional demons. I played The Beat, the drummer for the band, and named him Rick Lars. Rick’s backstory was that this was his 17th band, he desperately wanted it to succeed, and the bad luck of all of his previous bands had made him paranoid. He was also a martial artist and cross-fitter, which came in handy at a few points in the game. I don’t want to spoil the adventure, but I will say that an interlude about our favorite performance was probably my favorite moment.

Saturday morning I ran Bootleggers of 1792. This was my first time running the scenario at the con, and I ran it on Foundry VTT. We had a bit of technical troubles up front as the users weren’t familiar with Foundry, but once we got rolling, they group had a great game. My favorite moment in this game was when the stretchy bootlegger snatched Lara Rowe off her horse and used her to knock Mark Morgan, the Plymouth Rock Man, off the wagon carrying their moonshine. As is traditional for con games, the players came up with a scenario I hadn’t envisioned, in which the party was split between two floors for the boss fight, but it worked out well.

I enjoyed Hollerween quite a bit, and hope they continue it for next year.


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