Friday, July 22, 2022

100 Days of Halloween: Day 0

Today is my wedding anniversary! I have been married 27 years now and it has been fantastic.

But that is not why I am posting today.  

Today is DAY 0 of my "100 Days of Halloween."  Tomorrow is Day 1 and I will start it promptly at Midnight.  Every day from now until Halloween I will review witch-related RPG material.

100 Days of Halloween

I am going to lean heavily into D&D and its variants; the OSR, Pathfinder, and closely related games, but I am also giving myself the freedom to venture outside of the D&D realm.

Many of these will be DriveThruRPG products, others will be on other platforms and some will even be print only.

Some days will have one product, other days may have multiple related products. 

Given I am going to be reviewing other people's work about or around witches I need to establish some rules for myself.

The Rules

I normally feel a little bad when reviewing someone else’s witch material.  Not to be too blunt, but there is just no way they have been writing about this as long as I have. So I can’t knock them down for missing something that is obvious to me, but maybe not to someone else.

Also, I have to remember that these publications run from the professional to the amateur. I can’t expect high levels of layout, art, or design in most of these.  Yes, there are some absolutely stunning pdfs there in terms of production values and art.  But most of these are not going to be at that level; most of the books there are not at that level period.

The price point also seems to be an issue.  My mental comparison on price here is going to be about ¢10 per page. 

I want to give each product a fair shot, given that I know that many of these could be the first effort of the author/designers.

Some products I’ll be reviewing here are quite small. Others are linked to other products.  Some others still are naturally paired with other products.  In any case, I have bought and downloaded enough to cover the entire month.

I am going to leave this page like this with the rules and what I am doing so I can link back to it with each review.

With each book/pdf/product I am going to be looking for the following:

  • Is it playable/usable in my games?
  • What new things does it offer?
  • How “Witchy” is it?
  • Are there any new powers, feats, or spells?
Also, I want to consider:

  • Can I use this with my own Witch classes/material?
  • Can I make it part of my War of the Witch Queens?

These last two are obviously personal choices for me and should not detract from the product if they are not met.  They can though add to the appeal for me. 

My goal is to find something to recommend for each product and not to unfairly compare it to others.

I might also make a distinction between a "witch" and a "Witch" or class that can act like a witch vs a class named Witch.  This is a distinction that might only matter to me, but hey, this is my blog.

So come with me on this journey of 100 days.  Yes, it is summer outside right now, but let's turn our thoughts to fall and chilly nights! Halloween will be here before you know it!

3 comments:

Dick McGee said...

This sounds like a fun project, I wonder if I could come up with something witchy for a whole month to play along. Probably run out of inspiration too soo, but maybe I'll give it a shot, my fantasy blog's been fallow for a while.

While I mull it over, here's a link to an older post with a witchy theme, Grandmother being my campaigns' take on the Baba Yaga meta-myth.

https://sanctumreconditesage.blogspot.com/2020/11/grandmothers-hexing-tooth.html

JB said...


Congrats on your anniversary, Tim. Did you select it to be 100 days prior to Halloween? Or did things just work out like that?

[curious]

Timothy S. Brannan said...

@JB, No. It was the Saturday while we were in Jamaica. Just worked out that way.