It might be fairly obvious now, but I am not doing any adventure here in order. Some are playtests; others are fully thought-out ideas...in my head, if not on paper. And some start out as one thing and then become something very, very different at some point.
Such is the case with Larina's birthday on October 25, 1986.
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| Aaron and Larina share chips in her VW Bug. |
The Edge of Seventeen
"Sometimes the ghost doesn't want to haunt you or scare you. Sometimes it just wants to share a bag of chips or for you to hold your hand before they move on."
One of the things I have been working on for my Jackson, Illinois setting is making sure that not every adventure follows the same formula. Yes, Jackson is a town filled with witches, ghosts, demons, monsters, and all sorts of supernatural trouble. And yes, the teenagers living there seem to have an uncanny ability to find themselves in the middle of it. But not every encounter with the supernatural needs to end in a fight. Not every ghost needs to be busted, every demon defeated, or every mystery solved.
Sometimes the supernatural is simply part of life in Jackson. Sometimes it can even give someone something wonderful, if only for a little while.
That is the idea behind my Season 2 adventure, "Edge of Seventeen."
Honestly, I was always going to do this adventure.
A Birthday Near Halloween
The adventure takes place between October 19 and November 1, 1986, during the 1986–87 school year. Larina Nichols, our resident teenage witch, is about to turn seventeen. Her birthday falls on Saturday, October 25, just six days before Halloween.
Of course, she is just a stand-in for your characters, but it works well if their birthday is near Halloween.
For most teenagers, having a birthday that close to Halloween might mean a costume party, some scary movies, and plenty of candy. For a witch living in Jackson, Illinois, it means something else entirely.
The Veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is exceptionally thin around Halloween. Spirits can cross over more easily, strange things happen in places that are normally quite ordinary, and the dead sometimes walk among the living.
Naturally, a character would like to have a birthday party without anything supernatural getting involved.
Naturally, that isn't going to happen.
In my game, Larina is a 16-year-old senior at Jackson Public High School who has been advanced academically, and she also attends advanced Greek classes at St. Michael's Catholic School. One afternoon, while eating lunch alone in her purple Volkswagen Beetle, she is approached by a handsome young man wearing a St. Michael's school uniform.
His name is Aaron Michaels. He's seventeen, with blond hair, green eyes, and a friendly smile. He sees Larina sitting alone and asks if she would like some company. Soon they are sitting in her Beetle, sharing a bag of potato chips and talking. It's a perfectly ordinary meeting between two teenagers.
My players immediately distrusted him, calling him "Witch Bait."
And for Larina, who spends an extraordinary amount of her time dealing with extraordinary things, that's rather nice.
The Boy Who Wasn't There
Aaron and Larina hit it off almost immediately. He's intelligent, funny, thoughtful, and genuinely interested in her. They start spending time together, going on dates, listening to music, and doing all the things teenagers do when they discover they really like each other.
For once, Larina has a boyfriend who isn't intimidated by her intelligence, doesn't expect her to solve some supernatural crisis, and doesn't seem to have any ulterior motives.
So yeah. Aaron has a secret. Aaron Michaels is dead.
He was the son of Professor Michaels, a chemistry teacher at MacAlister College and attended St. Michael's Catholic School. He died in a chemistry laboratory accident while saving two children who snuck in from exposure to chlorine gas. Aaron wasn't a criminal, a villain, or someone whose death was the consequence of some terrible supernatural bargain. He was a good kid who saw two children in danger and did what he could to save them.
Now, with Jackson's already thin Veil growing thinner as Halloween approaches, Aaron has somehow returned.
And this is where I want the adventure to depart from the usual ghost story.
Aaron isn't trying to haunt anybody. He isn't seeking revenge. He isn't possessing someone or attempting to drain the life out of Larina. For approximately two weeks, he is, for all practical purposes, alive again. He can eat, laugh, feel the autumn cold, hold Larina's hand, and experience the ordinary pleasures of life.
When he's with Larina, he even sometimes forgets that he's dead.
Is that because of Larina's magic? Is it because the Veil is particularly thin? Or is it because the two of them have formed a genuine emotional connection?
I don't know.
More importantly, I don't think I want to know. Some mysteries are better left unanswered. Besides, all the other characters spend their time trying to figure it out. That is when they are not trying to plan a birthday party.
That is my design hook here. I have split the party. I have one character away (the Birthday girl) and the others planning the party and noticing this new guy who is taking all her time. Which is convenient since they use the distraction to get the party planning done.
Happy Seventeenth Birthday, Larina
Larina doesn't discover Aaron's secret until her seventeenth birthday party on October 25.
By this point, she has been dating him for almost a week and has developed genuine feelings for him. Aaron has become someone important to her, and suddenly she discovers that the boy she's falling for has been dead for years.
Naturally, Larina didn't take the news particularly well. Though better than I expected.
She is hurt that Aaron kept the truth from her, confused about what is happening, and more than a little frustrated that the first decent boyfriend she's found in a while turns out to be a ghost.
Her friends, of course, have opinions. But here is the important part of the adventure. Larina doesn't reject Aaron because he's a ghost.
After they talk about it, she decides she still wants to be with him. She likes Aaron for who he is, not whether his name appears on a list of the living.
For the next week, they continue dating. Aaron even gets to give Larina a birthday present, a silver pentagram necklace that shows how much he respects her beliefs, despite his Catholic school upbringing.
They spend time together knowing that the approaching end of the Halloween season will separate them.
And that knowledge changes their relationship. They no longer need to pretend that everything is normal, but they also don't need to spend every moment worrying about what comes next.
Sometimes they just want to sit in her car, listen to the radio, and share another bag of chips.
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| Happy Birthday Larina! |
The Ghost Who Doesn't Need Busting
Originally, Aaron wasn't supposed to be the main story of Edge of Seventeen.
My first idea involved a ghost girl who had died before her seventeenth birthday. With Larina's birthday approaching, the girl's spirit would return, threatening to steal the life or future she had been denied. That would provide the supernatural mystery and danger, while Aaron would serve as the romantic B-plot.
It was a perfectly serviceable supernatural horror adventure. There would be a mystery to investigate, a dangerous spirit to confront, and some sort of climax at Larina's birthday party.
But the more I developed Aaron, the more interesting his plot became. The more I had him show up, the more the players wanted to know more about him.
I found myself spending more time thinking about the boy who had died saving two children than the ghost girl who was supposed to be the antagonist. Aaron didn't have an evil agenda or a sinister secret beyond the fact that he was dead. He was just a good kid who had been given an unexpected opportunity to experience some of the life he had lost.
And Larina was giving him that opportunity without even realizing it.
Eventually, I decided to drop the ghost girl entirely.
Aaron was promoted from the "B plot" to the "main plot", and Edge of Seventeen became a very different adventure.
There is no evil ghost to defeat. No demonic mastermind is manipulating events. No sinister ritual is required to send Aaron back to the grave.
Instead, the adventure is about two teenagers who find each other under impossible circumstances and decide to make the most of the time they have.
That doesn't mean there isn't a mystery. The characters can investigate Aaron's death, explore the circumstances of his return, and try to understand what happens when Halloween ends. There are opportunities for the other characters to become involved, particularly when Larina learns the truth.
But solving the mystery isn't the point.
The point is just two teens getting to be regular teens for a little bit. It doesn't matter that one is a ghost and the other is a witch. It is the type of adventure you can have in Jackson and nowhere else.
Everyone Needs a Hand to Hold On To
On November 1, the Veil begins returning to normal, and Aaron can no longer remain in the world of the living.
Larina cannot prevent this. Despite her considerable magical abilities, she cannot simply make Aaron alive again. Nor should she have to. There is no mystery to solve here, but I don't need the players to know that right away.
One of the lessons I want Edge of Seventeen to explore is that magic cannot, and perhaps should not, solve every problem.
Aaron isn't asking Larina to resurrect him (she couldn't anyway). He isn't demanding that she find some way to keep him in Jackson forever. He just wants to spend what time he has with her.
And when that time ends, he wants someone to hold his hand. Neither wants to say goodbye, but they both know they have to.
And then Aaron is gone.
No explosion of supernatural energy. No terrible curse. No triumphant spellcasting.
Just a girl standing alone on an autumn evening, missing a boy she loved for a little while.
I don't plan to bring Aaron back in a future adventure. His story has an ending, and I think it should remain that way. Not every character needs to return, and not every loss needs to be reversed.
Sometimes that is simply how life works.
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| Aaron says goodbye |
What I Want from Edge of Seventeen
I want this adventure to demonstrate something important about Jackson and about the kinds of stories I want to tell with NIGHT SHIFT.
This likely reads more like a Monsterhearts game than an OSR-adjacent NIGHT SHIFT game, but that is the point.
Not every supernatural encounter needs to be a combat encounter. Not every ghost is evil. Not every mystery must be solved, and not every adventure needs a villain.
There are plenty of monsters in Jackson. The teenagers will have more than enough opportunities to fight vampires, confront demons, break curses, and save the town from terrible things.
But sometimes the supernatural gives us an opportunity to tell a different kind of story.
A story about kindness, first love, friendship, loss, and growing up.
For Aaron Michaels, the extraordinary event isn't coming back from the dead. It's getting to experience things he thought were gone forever. A first date. A birthday party. A girl who really likes him. The simple pleasure of being seventeen.
For Larina, the adventure is about learning that something doesn't have to last forever to matter, and that loving someone sometimes means accepting that you cannot keep them.
And for the players, I hope it becomes a reminder that the characters in Jackson are teenagers first and supernatural investigators second. Their friendships, romances, heartbreaks, and ordinary lives deserve just as much attention as the monsters lurking beyond the Veil.
Because sometimes the ghost doesn't need to be busted.
Sometimes it just needs someone to share a bag of chips with, and a hand to hold before moving on.
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