Witchcraft Wednesday Edition
Dungeons & Dragons, at its roots, is a game of tactics.
It grew out of wargaming. Miniatures on a battlefield. Movement rates. Ranges. Terrain. Planning your strike before the other side rolls initiative. That foundation still lingers, even in the wildest fantasy campaigns. Position matters. Choices matter. You can feel the wargame bones in every hit die and saving throw.
But today I want to talk about a different tactic.
And a very different kind of fight.
My current opponent doesn’t breathe fire or lurk in dungeons. It’s not a dragon, or a lich, or even one of those slippery players who always find a loophole in your spell descriptions.
It’s my Occult D&D project.
This thing has grown far beyond what I thought it would be. What started as an experiment, "What if I treated witches as seriously as clerics and magic-users, and they had been part of D&D from the start?" has turned into a full-blown system of spells, subclasses, traditions, monsters, mechanics, cosmology, and philosophy.
And the tactic I’ve used to wrestle it all into something cohesive?
Research. Years of it. I looked back at my first notes on this back in mid-July (they are sitting here now), and they are dated 2013. Not my first notes ever, just the first notes I began collecting for an AD&D book. I have notes still dating back to the 1980s. All carefully kept (much to my wife’s chagrin sometimes) in three-ring binders. I might be obsessive, but it works for me.
I’ve read historical witch trial records. I’ve gone deep into Margaret Murray, Jung, and Campbell. I’ve pulled from Golden Dawn rituals, folk magic, Wicca, Kabbalah, medieval grimoires, Victorian spiritualism, and pop culture from Dark Shadows to The VVitch. I’ve cross-referenced monster entries, spell levels, class XP charts, and Dragon Magazine articles like I was studying for an occult-themed Ph.D. dissertation.
And every time I thought I was close to done? Another thread appeared. Another tactic had to be employed. Another heretic idea needed a place on the page.
This project hasn’t just been about building something. It’s been about learning how to listen, to myth, to symbol, to rhythm, to the structure of D&D itself. And then figuring out where my work fits, and where it pushes back.
There’s tactical thinking in this, even if it doesn’t look like a battlefield.
- What does each Tradition offer?
- How do I balance the occult with the arcane and divine?
- Where does narrative shape the mechanics, and where do the mechanics open new story paths?
And yes, I am using the word “story” here. Why? Because that's what the player is going to do with this. I am fairly sure that the audience here is the ones that will look at the traditions, subclasses, and classes I have and say, “yes, these are different from each other.” They are the ones I want to reach.
It's not always straightforward. Sometimes it’s sitting at my desk, staring at a spell description for 20 minutes, trying to decide if it should be second or third level. Sometimes it’s rewriting a single monster power because it breaks one of the unwritten rules of AD&D logic, or it is too close to something already done, OR even because I need it to be closer to something already done.
But that’s the work. That’s the tactic. Slow, careful, deliberate construction.
I love a good battle map. I love clever flanking. I love using the environment to turn the tide.
But sometimes the most satisfying tactic isn’t found in the order of initiative.
It’s in building something that others can use.
And knowing that somewhere, someday, a new player’s character might light a candle, draw a circle, and say, “I cast an occult spell.”
Questions
Where. Confident. Accessory. Hmmm...Where am I confident I can get the latest accessory? Easy, my FLGS, Games Plus.
