#RPGaDAY2026: Day 14 Regard

 Vera is a character I keep seeing differently with regard to the world she is in.

Take Jackson, IL for instance. There you have Vera Rook as a rival; she is sharp and selfish, with a dangerous edge to her because she will do as she pleases. Yet Jackson allows for some development. When, in the future, she becomes Megan’s adoptive mother and uses the name Vera Connors, my view of her shifts. The bad girl act is gone in favor of someone who has made a choice for love and protection. But to become Vera Connors, divorced mother of two and now adoptive mother of Megan Connors, she had to be Vera Rook first.

Or did she?

We get a slightly different Vera Rook in Carbon Vale. Here, one thing was changed. Vera's mother left her father and traveled south to finish her degree, taking teenage Vera with her. This Vera Rook saw her mother stand up for something better than what she had. Instead of becoming bitter and sullen, this Vera became open to the idea that better things happen because you can make them happen. I am not sure of what her future holds, but it is likely she will not become Vera Connors in this world.

And in Yog, she is Veyra Shadowraven. You see her through the haze of sword and sorcery and the light of a dying world there. A darker figure with more shadow and a name to match. Where Vera in Jackson has to improve herself, Veyra in Yog is left to make of her legend what she will.  The ruling class of Yog calls her a terrorist and a subversive. An "evil witch." She agrees with all of those and keeps on doing what she has always done, working to improve the lot of witches everywhere in Yog.

That is the nature of regard in gaming. 

It puts a different light on the same girl under a different set of rules, altering the character while leaving the core intact.

Each Vera shard is real and as valid as the other. She is just shaped in regard to her world. 

West Haven/Yog NPC

Friday, Associates and Loving & Giving: 

Constance, no last name, is a West Haven caretaker who welcomes Yog refugees with soup, blankets, and no questions. She is a former Yogian slave and now refugee who escaped to West Haven. Katrina of West Haven removed her brand with powerful healing magic, and now she spends her days trying to show the same kindness to others.

Jackson Soundtrack

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Tales of Jackson, IL: Jenny, Jenny Who Can I Turn To?

 Today is Jenny Everywhere Day!

I make no excuses for it. I love Jenny Everywhere. 

I love the character, I love the concept, and I love how and why she was created, and just all of it really. Today is the day we celebrate Jenny in all her multitudes. And we celebrate by contributing to her lore.

First and foremost, I must include her license. I don't do this because I have too, I do because it is also part of what I love about her.

"The character of Jenny Everywhere is available for use by anyone, with only one condition. This paragraph must be included in any publication involving Jenny Everywhere, in order that others may use this property as they wish. All rights reversed."

I felt like it was also a great day to finally introduce Jenny, the Shifter, to NIGHT SHIFT. I mean, really. A multi-genre game system needs equally multi-genre NPCs. Jenny can be in every Night World, every Solar Frontier, and by both her own logic and the logic of the Dreaming Age, Jenny was found in the Wasted Lands.

Jenny in Jackson, IL

Jenny: "This town is so weird, and so much more dangerous than any of you know. Seriously, you should all move out, like, now. You are all absolutely bonkers for staying here. But I can’t help it. I love it here."

Larina: "That...is not very reassuring."

Of course, Jenny would end up here eventually. Her "eventually" and our "eventually" are not really the same thing at all, but that is fine. I imagine the characters see her reflection in the glass of Paula's Bookstore one day. She is waving at them, but they can't see her standing inside the store or behind them. She walks through the glass and stands out on the sidewalk. She knows the characters and some of their details, but they are also out of order. Some details are from the future; others may deal with other versions of the characters. So questions like "wow, when did you start wearing glasses?" to characters who have always worn glasses, and so on.

She will exclaim with much pride that today is her birthday and that she was born on this day in 2002. Or will be. Hard to keep timelines straight when you are a Shifter.

Here is how I am planning to use her. Jenny is not a fighter. She is not a harbinger. She is not a warning or even a cautionary tale. Jenny is just fun. Now that doesn't mean something weird isn't happening. But her appearance should feel like the first episode after Sweeps Week or a slightly silly Monster of the Week one. BUT she can be used to move the adventure forward or provide some clues.

For example. In Jackson, the "Big Bad" is the Hollow King. He is trying to absorb special items and then people to fill the emptiness, sorry, Emptiness, inside. His ultimate targets are Candy and Denise. Why? They are "mirror shards," and while they seem to be just two party girls, they actually have connections to all their alternate universe selves. Candy even says all the time, "I contain multitudes." She says it because she thinks it makes her sound cool and deep. But in reality? She could not be more correct. She and Denise have enough to make the Hollow King whole again. And that is bad. Not just "in bringing back a very powerful Necromancer" bad (where the most powerful witch right now is only 2nd level), but because two very sweet and mostly innocent girls would be dead.

Jenny: "Yeah, the data plan is great, but I have to wait 35 more years for decent 5G."

Jenny is like a shard as well. But Jenny is aware of all her "shards," and they are aware of her. The Hollow King could no more consume her than I could eat all of the food in Chicago right now. It would destroy him.  BUT Jenny knows the importance of Denise and Candy. She knows their other shards. 

Now...she might not know why they are important to what is going on in THIS Jackson right now. And she might not even know they are part of the larger seasonal arc; she just knows they are important.

Because of course they are.

Jenny Everywhere
The Shifter

4th level Sage, Human (mostly)

Background: Multiversal traveler. 

Base Abilities

Strength: 11 (+0)
Agility: 13 (+1) 
Toughness: 16 (+2) 
Intelligence: 17 (+2) A
Wits: 13 (+1) N
Persona: 16 (+2) N

Vit: 22 (1d6)
DV: 7 (leather jacket)
Fate Points: 1d6

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +3/+2/+0
Attack bonus (base): +0
Melee bonus: +0  Ranged bonus: +1

Languages: All
Skills: A little bit of everything

Saves: +3 to spells and magic-based saves

Sage Abilities
Survivor Skills, Mesmerize ("Fast Talk"), Lore, Languages, Spells

Survivor Skills
Open Locks: 25%
Bypass Traps: 20%
Sleight of Hand: 30%
Move Silently: 30%
Hide in Shadows: 20%

Read Languages: 20%

Spells*
First-level: Bless ("Motivation Speech"), Command
Second-level: Knock

*Note about spells: Jenny doesn't actually cast spells. Her 'magic' allows certain disruptions of the local reality. She can talk to give someone an emotional boost ("Bless") or get them to do something else ("Command"). She also has an affinity for locks...or more to the point, she has an affinity for getting into places she really shouldn't, and locked doors are not going to be an obstacle ("Knock"). 

Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
Height: 5'1"
Weight: 101 lbs

Archetype: The Shifter
Quote: "I’m not lost. I’m just taking the scenic route through reality."
Quirks: Travels the multiverse or "shifts" to different realities.
Theme song: She tells everyone it is "867-5309/Jenny" by Tommy Tutone, because she loves seeing people's reactions. (I have to admit I always think it is "Donna Everywhere" by Too Much Joy, but she doesn't fit the girl in the song at all.)

Heroic Touchstones
1st Level: Psychic Power: Tele-empathic link (to other selves) 
3rd Level: Aura Sense/Sight (Mirror Shard Awareness)

The Mirror Shard: Mirror Shard Awareness

Jenny Everywhere does not see the future. Not exactly. She sees versions.

She has made the acquaintance of people before they were born and after they were dead. She has been in worlds where they are famous and in ones where no one remembers them; worlds where they made every wrong move and, impossibly, where they got it right. Jenny does not always have the wherewithal to tell which version is from which reality or which of her memories will be of use. But she will remember a face, a name, and the particular shape a soul has when you run into it more than once.

Jenny calls it her sight. I call this Mirror Shard Awareness.

It is not mind-reading, nor is it prophecy. Call it a multiversal memory. When she comes across someone of consequence, she might well recognize another version of them. Some days this makes her helpful, some days funny, and on occasion it makes her exceedingly careful.

In the course of play, this awareness lets Jenny know things about a character that she ought not to. A nickname that has yet to be used. A scar this world has not put on him. A debt, a rescue, a funeral, or a betrayal that never took place here. Her asides will sound like jokes or mistakes, but there is nothing random about them.

Take Larina Nichols in Jackson. Jenny will notice the glasses first. Many Larinas don’t wear them, but the one in Jackson does. And the one for the Mage RPG does. Jenny puts two and two together: the ones with the glasses are usually the sort who have seen too much and found a way to live with it. The magic they see all the time is just too much.

Or when she calls Faye "Fey." The rest of the room won’t catch it, but Faye will. It will land wrong, or perhaps too right. Jenny isn’t mispronouncing Faye Thorne's name; she is recalling a version of her for whom the name was something older.

The immortal Valerie will get a smile and an inquiry as to where the ten dollars she owes her are, even though Valerie has no recollection of owing Jenny a thing.

"Not yet," Jenny will say, unbothered.

When she sees Candy and Denise are together, Jenny goes quiet. 

"Oh," she’ll say in a low voice. "There they are." She doesn't know why they are important, just that they are. 

That is the awareness at work. Jenny has known Jacksons without them. Jacksons where only one of the pair made it, or where they never met, and the town was all the colder for the absence of two ordinary, impossible girls. She knows their futures. The daughter Denise adopts. The Hope Center that Denise and Candy built/will build in the 2010s to help families in need. 

People's pasts and futures are in her head, but they do not always belong to this world. This is one of the reasons she can't be trusted as an oracle. She is telling the truth; the problem is you can never be sure which truth applies here. She isn't psychic (normally); she just has a lot of incomplete histories and futures.

Game Use

A scene may warrant a comment from Jenny about an important NPC or PC by way of Mirror Shard Awareness. Let the GM make of it what they will: a clue, a warning, an emotional complication, or a jest. It should hint at a possible truth without writing the character’s future for them.

Examples:

"Still here. Good. That matters."

"You wrote the song already? No? My mistake."

"Wait, the scar isn’t there yet? Good. You want to stay off the gym roof in November."

"You are so much harder to convince in this version."

The GM is free to decide if such remarks are true, partly true, true in another timeline or merely symbolic. Jenny is not lying. She is just carrying around too many maps.

Limit: Too Many Truths

Jenny has trouble separating one world’s truth from another. If the players put her on the spot for a straight answer on the future, the GM can rule one of three ways: it is true here, it is true in another world, or it is true only if the characters make it so. Jenny is aware of this and would rather be irritating than put words to a possibility and turn it into a cage.

Edited to Add: This past weekend, I ran a "Next Generation" game in Jackson to see if the setting works outside of the 1980s time frame. It does, but I like the 1980s vibe better. But it does give me a new idea for when I use Jenny later on.

Jenny: "Oh! And say hi to Taryn for me!
Larina: "Who is Taryn?"
Jenny: "Oh. Sorry. Spoilers. Say hi to her in 2012."

Special Limit: Larina's Mirror

You will not catch Jenny looking in Larina's mirror. Not safely. 

While she has passed through a train window, or a comic panel, even a particularly judgmental snow globe to cross universes, Larina’s mirror is different. It doesn’t just show you alternate worlds; it throws back too many shards of Larina Nichols at once: the Witch Queen, the librarian, the schoolgirl, the red-headed girl with the black fingernails and a notebook, the woman with blood on her hands, the psychic storm that still uses her name.

If forced to look, she must save vs. magic (or equivalent). Fail, and she is stunned for 1d6 rounds, unable to shift and unsure of which Jackson she is in. Succeed, and she still sees one impossible Larina with too much clarity and will have nothing more to do with it.

"Nope. Uhn-uh. Absolutely not. That is a Larina-shaped traffic accident across twelve dimensions."

And if she is feeling less flippant:

"That thing doesn’t show you who you are. It shows you who you might be mistaken for. All of them."

She will describe this as akin to multi-versal feedback. Jenny can already see more than most people; she avoids objects that allow others to do what she can do naturally.

Links

• Her page at Public Domain Super Heroes

HAPPY JENNY EVERYWHERE DAY!

#RPGaDAY2026: Day 13 Strain

Strain is what happens before something breaks.

In Jackson, IL, everyone is under some kind of strain. The students are trying to act normal. The parents who know less than they think, or the ones who know more than they let on. The teachers pretending the old building is just old. The witches holding wards, secrets, friendships, and bad dreams together with both hands.

It is good for horror gaming. Fear is the easy part to come by. Strain is more subdued. It is in the poor grades and the lack of sleep, the tremor in one’s hands or a hallway argument born of exhaustion and fear for which there is no ready explanation.

For a witch, this strain takes on a magical quality. There is a price to be paid for every spell, a demand for focus with each ritual. Hold onto a secret for too long, and it begins to weigh on the soul. A witch has her limits; one can bear much, but not indefinitely.

Eventually something has to give. In Jackson at least, it tends to happen at the worst possible moment.

In fact, "the worst possible moment" for the characters is often the best possible moment for the game.

I have an adventure outlined, but not developed yet. Something to get all the characters in the game to distrust each other to distract them from the problem of my big bad, The Hollow King, attacking Rowan. It's an old trope, but an effective one. I am ratcheting up the stress and strain. These are teens. Sturm und Drang. The idea is to have them confront their personal demons before confronting actual demons. 

Jackson, IL or Carbon Vale, IL NPC

Still in Associates Week, and today is Thursday Far to Go. 

Tessa Marr: A runaway from Jackson who keeps turning up in towns where witch trouble is about to start. She has traveled most of Southern Illinois and so far has avoided becoming a sad statistic. This is because of her uncanny ability to avoid trouble and be where she needs to be. 

Her older sister Selene, a woman with pre-cognitive gifts of her own, has been looking for her.

Jackson Soundtrack

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#RPGaDAY2026: Day 12 Loss

Another Witchcraft Wednesday. Let's talk about my favorite witch. 

In most versions of Larina, she has lost both of her parents.

I have used that for nearly forty years now, and honestly, I have come to realize it is a little lazy. Dead parents are easy character development. Too easy, sometimes. They explain the pain, clear the stage, and give the hero a wound without making the writer work too hard. And gives them a reason to be away from their homes. I mean it works, and everyone does it.

But loss has defined Larina for a long time.

So now I am experimenting with it. In Jackson, IL, Larina has lost her mother, but not both parents. In my Carbon Vale, Illinois setting, she still has both. The question becomes less "what did she lose?" and more "who is Larina when that loss changes?"

That is the useful part for gaming.

And since this is all about occult associations, there is another thing to consider. Jackson Larina, aka "Nix," and Carbon Vale Larina, aka "Creepy," communicate back and forth via notes slipped into a copy of "A Wrinkle in Time." And Nix warned Creepy what was going to happen. So Creepy stopped it from happening. There will be a debt to be paid here; I am not sure what, and I am not sure when or even who will need to pay it.  

But it will come due.

A character’s loss can be canon, variant, rumor, retcon, or alternate timeline. What matters is not whether every version has the same tragedy. What matters is what the loss taught her, what it cost her, and what she refuses to lose next.

Jackson, IL NPC

Still in Associates Week and Wednesday's Child is Full of Woe. 

Evan Harrow is a Jackson teen descended from a family everyone whispers about, but no one confronts. Evan is from a long-suspected witch family, which is true, but not for a generation or two. It is not something they are happy about, and they still get a lot of grief in Jackson, but no one quite remembers why.

Jackson Soundtrack

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#RPGaDAY2026: Day 11 Tact

Tact is not lying.

That is worth remembering in Jackson, IL, where everyone is keeping secrets, everyone knows more than they are saying, and half the adults in town have perfected the art of saying nothing with a pleasant smile.

But for a witch, the definition changes.

Tact is in the knowing; it is understanding when the truth is of service and when it will do nothing but wound. It means a character can inform someone their home is haunted without adding that their grandfather had it coming. Or put a friend on notice of some peril without having them feel like a fool for their fear.

Stephanie possesses this quality naturally. Larina has to work on it. Faye has heard something like it exsits, but has never had much use for it. Which is why they are all so well suited to each other.

A horror game can't always afford being blunt. The truth has a way of being unclean. There are real monsters and old curses and family histories that are thoroughly rotten, and the one asking for help may not be in a position to take it all in at once.

A witch will tell the truth, of course. She is only expected to know how sharp to make it.

Iriandor NPC

Today is Day 11, Tuesday, Associates + Full of Grace. Maelin Three-Strings is an Iriandor bard whose kindness opens doors faster than any lockpick. He is always welcome and tells stories of the heroes of the Last War.

Jackson Soundtrack

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#RPGaDAY2026: Day 10 Secret

Jackson, IL is full of secrets.

What small town doesn’t? There are the family, school, and church kind of secrets. The sort of things that are common knowledge yet never voiced, or at least put out of mind because to remember them would be to have to deal with them.

Then there are the older ones in Jackson.

They can be found in the high school or the library stacks, in old houses and derelict buildings, in hospital tunnels and church basements, even in a family Bible where some pages are best left unread. Some are buried or put under lock and key, others are handed down like an heirloom. And then you have the ones strolling about town with a pleasant smile for all to see, pretending to be harmless.

It is what makes Jackson ideal for horror gaming. One does not always need a fresh monster from out of town to provide the terror; more often than not, the horror is built into the place, woven into the stories told and those that are not. The secrets are part of the town's foundations and even lower than the foundations. 

For a witch, secrets are a particular danger.

She understands the worth of silence, that certain truths and names should remain unspoken and some doors closed. At the same time, she is aware of their weight; the longer a secret is concealed, the more power it accrues. 

This is what is so compelling about Jackson. A secret held for protection is one matter. One held for power is quite another. The trick is knowing which secrets to keep and which ones to uncover.

Jackson, IL NPC

New week and a new topic. This week is Associates, and it's Monday, so back to Fair of Face. 

Julie Ann Keene is a pretty, popular Jackson girl somehow connected to every rumor before anyone else hears it. Many of the occult-minded think she might be a witch or an empath, but the truth is Julie is just well connected, and she pays attention. If the PCs can discover this, then they have found a useful resource.

Jackson Soundtrack

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#RPGaDAY2026: Day 9 Privilege

There is a certain kind of privilege in Jackson, IL and it comes with a name.

Vale. Thompson. Morgan.

These are old families, respected families, the sort of names people recognize before the person attached to them has said a word. That matters in a small town. A name can open doors, smooth over questions, excuse bad behavior, or make adults listen when they might ignore someone else.

Stephanie Vale is aware of it, if she does not put it in those terms. Then there is Andy Thompson, who reaps the same advantage, but in a more decent, unassuming way. The Morgans have a different brand of it altogether, the kind born of money and property and age, and of secrets others are happy to shield for them. Even Roderick Morgan, who despises his name, reaps the benefits of it. 

But in a horror game, such social standing is more than background. It is armor. A blind spot as well.

Some characters are believed because of who they are. Others have to fight twice as hard to be heard at all. And in Jackson, where the monsters are often hidden behind good manners and old reputations, privilege can be the thing that saves you.

Or it could be what allows the horrors to continue. 

Jackson, IL NPC

This is the last day of Week 2, and the topic is Intellect. Since it is Sunday again, the topic is Blessed.

Brother Anselm Grey. A Jackson Jesuit monk-scholar who knows more about witches than he admits, and likes them better than he should. He has an appointment at MacAlister College as a visiting lecturer, but it is St. Michaels High School that brought him to Jackson. 

Brother Anselm lectures at MacAlister on the history of the witch trials and the "Burning Times." His students are generally surprised when his lectures take an extremely positive point of view on the "witches" and a dismal point of view on the religious authorities of the time. When asked, he only claims that they should have known better.

Jackson Soundtrack

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