Tales of Jackson, IL: Not-so Mystic Locales

 One of the things I really wanted when I began putting together Jackson was it to feel real. I wanted places these characters could hang out and locations that felt like something from the Midwest in the mid 1980s. 

So while I love my haunted houses, hidden underground tunnels, and everything else the "bad land" has to offer, there are far more "normal" places to visit that will come into play. 

Colleges

In addition to two High Schools (Jackson Public High and Saint Michael's Catholic), Jackson has two small four-year colleges offering full bachelor's degrees in a variety of subjects, along with technical degrees and, at MacAlister, a robust RN program and an RN-to-BSN program.

While the colleges have their ghosts and their own stories, they are to most people mundane institutions of higher learning. 

MacAlister College
The East Side College, "Mac"

Founded in the early 1830s, MacAlister College for Women broke ground before Talcott College did, but did not begin enrolling students until after Talcott was established. It began with a group of Scottish immigrants looking to provide a strong Presbyterian education for young women. Its School of Nursing began strongly in its first years and continues to provide one of the best medical educations outside of the University of Illinois. After struggling somewhat in the 1870s, Mac (as it is known) opened its doors to men and women, competing with the more successful Talcott College, which had begun offering degrees in accounting and chemistry. The chemistry classrooms became the first co-ed classrooms in the entire Midwest. 

Now more than 150 years old, MacAlister is showing its age, but is beloved by students, faculty, and alumni alike. Since the 1970s, enrollment has been declining, rarely reaching its cap of 900 students. 

Illinois Beecher College 
The West Side College, The Harvard of the Heartland

Founded in the mid-19th century, what is now Illinois Beecher College began as Talcott Collegiate Institute in 1856, an ambitious attempt to establish a center of higher learning on the Illinois frontier. Its founders were educators, reformers, and idealists, some with quiet but firm ties to abolitionist networks moving through the region. They came to Jackson with one goal in mind: to provide a world-class, Protestant education to the new frontier, and in particular, the "Thebes of the West," as Jackson had been called. They even went as far as to proclaim the new college as the "Harvard of the Heartland!" Indeed, for several decades, Talcott College produced several notable scholars, orators, and political figures who would shape the state through to the 20th century. 

Talcott was renamed Illinois Beecher College in 1918, during a period of reorganization backed by Chicago financiers, railroad money, and several prominent alumni families. Talcott Hall remained the main campus building until 1975, when the new Harriet Tubman Hall was built to house the college’s expanding computer lab and business programs. The name was not an attempt to curry favor with changing times, but a concrete statement acknowledging the college’s strong abolitionist sympathies dating back to its foundation.

Stores

Lots of places to spend money in town, but only a few are of interest to our characters, and some places are better than others to find some NPCs.

El Espejo Oscuro - Illinois Ave, near Illinois Beecher College

Owner and Propriator Sylvia Velasco. 

El Espejo Oscuro sits on Illinois Avenue, not far from Illinois Beecher College, though most students are careful to say they only go there "as a joke." The name means "The Dark Mirror," and the shop lives up to it: black-painted shelves, old mirrors, candles that smell too sweet, imported books, tarot decks, silver jewelry, saints’ medals, dried herbs, and occult titles that no one in Jackson admits to buying. The owner, Sylvia Velasco, claims to be from Spain, dresses like she stepped out of a perfume ad, and somehow affords a brand-new red Ferrari despite the fact that the store never seems to have any customers. El Espejo Oscuro is both a resource and a warning. People who need answers can find them there, but Sylvia never gives anything away for free, even when she is smiling.

This is also a good place to find Vera Rook and Renee Jäneläinen, though not usually at the same time.

Paula's Bookstore - Downtown Square

Paula’s Bookstore sits on the northwest side of the Square, with a faded sign, crowded front windows, and more books than the building has any reasonable right to hold. Paula Belakis sells new books, used paperbacks, magazines, comics, local histories, poetry, study guides, and the occasional odd volume that no one remembers ordering. Unlike Strawberry Fields, Paula’s is not trying to be cool, and unlike El Espejo Oscuro, it is not trying to be dangerous. It is just a bookstore, or at least that is what everyone says. Students from Jackson Public, Saint Michael’s, Beecher, and MacAlister drift in looking for paperbacks, textbooks, horror novels, fantasy trilogies, romance novels, GED guides, and a place to hide for twenty minutes. The store has a harmless ghost, or maybe a helpful one, depending on whom you ask, and Paula has learned not to question why certain books fall off certain shelves when certain customers walk in.

This is also where you will find Larina most Saturday mornings or Roderick Morgan on Friday nights.

Paula does not have a very high opinion of Sylvia Velasco. And the feeling is mutual. But they at least respect each other as women business owners, so they try not to make things difficult for each other and try to cater to different clientele. 

Strawberry Fields - Jackson Town Mall

Located on the near west side of town, on Morgan Street, Strawberry Fields is a cramped record/head shop selling records, tapes, incense, posters, tarot decks, used books, magazines, cheap occult novelties, and dull display weapons. Parents think it is dangerous. Teens think it is magic. PASS thinks it is proof of moral collapse. The rumor that it sells weed is false, but the rumor never dies. For years the rumor has been if you ask at the counter for "Mellow Yellow" they will sell you something made from "bannana peels." The owners, finding the rumor funny, will just tell them, "Sorry, we only have Mt. Dew." 

This is one of the places where the PCs can also find Faye Thorne. She works here to avoid, well, pretty much everyone, but mostly her two strict aunts. Faye knows a lot about music, but still thinks your choices suck.

Places to Eat

Jackson has its own collection of fast food staples, including McDonald's, Hardee's, IHOP, and one of the few remaining Burger Chefs. 

Salvatore's Pizzeria ("Sal's Pizza") - Near Downtown Square

Owner, Operator, head pizza chef, and sometimes waiter, Salvatore Vitale is full of old-school charm and work ethic, and he yells at anyone who doesn't share his desire to work 80 hours a week. This is THE pizza place in town, and with good reason. Sal's puts his heart into everything, and a lot of garlic. The place is usually packed every Friday night and Saturday all day. Forget getting a table during any homecoming weekend for any of the schools in town. Yes, the food is that good. You can't get deep-dish style pizza here, only thin crust, but no one ever complains.

This is also one of the places where the PCs can run into Denise. Largely because she is the only one who can deal with Sal. In truth, they actually like each other because they can deal with each other's yelling.

Sal: "You should fire you!"
Denise: "You can't fire me, no one else will work here!"
Sal: "Sei proprio una ragazza pigra!"
Denise: "Ugh! We are in America! Speak American!"

Later on, when Denise Carver wins recognition for her work as a social worker, Sal puts up a framed copy of the newspaper article about her in his restaurant, where he tells everyone that Denise was "the best waitress he ever had!"  

There are more places. Many I am leaving purposefully vague until I need them. Others are a little too haunted to deal with right now. Case in point, I have plans for the Court House and the old Governor's Mansion. I still have the hospitals to detail as well.

I have already talked about the Library as both a place of adventure and a Mystic Locale. I have already figured out that there is a copy of "A Wrinkle in Time" where Larina can leave a note, and her alternate universe self in the Dark Places & Demogorgons universe will find it in the copy in her library. One of the notes Jackson Larina "Nix" sends to Cabon Vale, IL, Larina "Creepy", is "watch out for Moria."

I might get a map of my old hometown and start putting "X"s on it, marking these locations. 

Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. The Familiar Is Not a Pet

Calling a witch’s familiar a pet is like calling a spellbook a notebook. It is technically close enough to be wrong.

In Advanced Witches & Warlocks, the familiar is one of the key things that separates the Witch from the Magic-User. A Magic-User might have a familiar as an arcane aid. A Witch’s familiar is a relationship. It is part ally, part omen, part witness, part magical bond, part eyes and ears of their patron, and sometimes part debt.

A magic-user has access to the Find Familiar spell at 1st level, but few in practice take it at 1st level. It uses up a spell that could have been Magic Missile or Sleep. And as someone with typically the lowest hit points in the party, the loss of a familiar is a dangerous prospect. Though for AD&D, the spell is a good choice. Wizards are associated with familiars, but not as much as witches are. 

In Jackson, IL, the familiar becomes even more personal. It is the cat that keeps showing up outside the school. The crow on the power line. The dog that growls at a teacher no one else distrusts. The thing under the porch that only one girl can understand. The familiar is proof that the witch is no longer alone, but also proof that something has noticed her.  In Jackson, having magic means you can see things, but things can also see you. 

I will be honest. I have not thought a lot about familiars for my Jackson, IL game. I suppose technically my three witch NPCs (and stand-ins for your characters) have familiars. Larina very often has her white cat "Cotton-ball" and I have jotted down some ideas for him, but that is really about it. NIGHT SHIFT does have familiar rules, and with the Arcane Bond power, I can make them really special, but I just haven't yet.

If I had Elowen in Jackson, she would have Mirepoix. But I have not added her, and I am not likely to, since in my mind she always plays the role of Larina's adopted daughter. That is fine, she plays a bigger role in my West Haven games anyway.

Like everything else I have been talking about here, familiars are a relationship.

The familiar is not just a cute (or weird) animal that sits on the witch’s shoulder while she casts spells. It is not an accessory. It is not a mascot. It is not there to make the character look more witchy.

The familiar is a sign that the supernatural world has seen the witch.

Familiars are an extension of their patron. In Advanced Witches & Warlocks, patrons are often active and known to the witch. They have traditions, they beseech their Patrons. In Jackson, though, they may not be known at all. In fact this is one of the features of the Jackson setting; witches are never 100% sure where their power comes from. A familiar is proof that the patrons are there, but not very forthcoming. 

OR

Maybe the familiar was already there waiting. That animal is always there where it shouldn't be. The one that shows up right before things get really, really strange. 

Of course, it isn't really an animal at all. Not really. It is a spirit wearing the shape of an animal. This is why it can't really be a pet. A pet loves you. A familiar knows who you are.  

A pet will sleep by the witch's bed. A familiar sleeps by her bed because it knows that the Night Hag visits every night at 3:33 am. 

In fantasy, the familiar is part of the witch’s mythic presentation. The black cat on the shoulder. The raven in the tree. The toad in the garden. The serpent in the sleeve. The owl watching from the rafters.

In Jackson, the familiar has to live in the ordinary world.

That makes it stranger.

A cat can enter a teenager’s bedroom in a way a demon never could. A crow can watch the school from the football field lights. A dog can follow the characters down a street and make everyone think nothing odd is happening. A mouse can live in the walls of the library. A spider can listen in the girls’ bathroom.

A demon or a monster in the school hallway changes what the adventure is about in a rather dramatic way. A cat? That is different, but which one is more "supernatural?" Which one is a larger portent of what is going on here?  A cat in the hallway changes nothing, until it turns to look at the witch and she hears it say, "Not that door."

Most of all familiars tell me two things.

First, while AW&W and Jackson, IL as projects feature witches (and in a couple of cases the same witch), they can take on very different tones and be very different sorts of witches.

Secondly, while I have a lot figured out, I still don't have it all figured out yet. Familiars are a perfect example. 

Mirror Shard: Cotton-ball, the Mirror-Cat

On the surface, Cotton-ball in Jackson is an unremarkable white cat. Which is as it should be; it is his finest defense. He is small and soft with bright eyes, and he has no objection to being underestimated. The characters will find him where he has no business being, or gone in an instant when the adults come looking for him. He has a way of putting himself to sleep on top of whatever book or hand mirror Larina (or your characters) needs at the moment.

The majority of folks are under the impression he is nothing more than a cat. Yeah. That is exactly what I want.

Cotton-ball is Larina’s familiar in Jackson, though whether she understands that at first is another matter. He begins as the cat that follows her home, waits outside the school, appears on the library steps, or watches her from the cemetery fence. He is not dramatic. He does not arrive in lightning. He arrives like a cat.

Cotton-ball has an affinity for mirrors. He knows which ones are ordinary and which ones are pretending. He will not look into some mirrors at all. Others he stares into for long minutes, tail twitching, as if something on the other side is talking to him. When a mirror is about to show more than a reflection, Cotton-ball is often already in the room. Waiting and watching.

When you are running a game in Jackson, make of him what you will: a guide, an omen, a little agent of the Veil. But don’t have him laying things out for you. He is a cat. Let him communicate by knocking something off a shelf, by the way he looks at you, or by refusing to go through a doorway. He will be there at the worst possible time.

He can put Larina on notice that magic is in the air. He has a nose for ghosts, hags, and other witches, and can put himself in places she has only seen in her dreams. 

There are things he doesn't like: church bells, wet shoes, cheap perfume, or anyone who has been making deals with the things under the town. Give him cream and warm laundry and moonlight and old books, and he will be happy enough, particularly if there are secrets being told and he can listen in.

In Advanced Witches & Warlocks, the Mirror-Cat can be used as a special familiar. It appears most often to witches with mirror magic, moon magic, spirit sight, or ties to other selves. A Mirror-Cat grants the witch an instinctive awareness of false reflections, glamours, scrying attempts, and spirits using reflective surfaces.

The Mirror-Cat cannot answer every question. It can tell the witch where to look. And that is usually enough. Or, more to the point, that is usually all you are going to get. 

Again. I still a lot more work to do on this idea. 

Witchcraft Wednesdays: It Takes Three to Make A Thing Go Right

 With all apologies to MC Rod Base and DJ EZ Rock (nobody rocked harder dressed like a pack of Newports, RIP), there is a reason you see covens of witches vs solitaries. 

I have said it here before, but witches are social. They see patterns in social dynamics and in social constructs. A cleric might ask why someone read a book on demonology. A wizard might ask why they read this particular book on demons. A witch will notice why the book is grouped with local maps and notes on when the graveyard was first used. They seek out the connections between people and each other; the living and the dead, people and the divine, and people and the arcane. 

And there is a reason that NIGHT SHIFT is called "Veterans of the Supernatural Wars."

People who fight the darkness rarely get to retire, and when they do, it is only to pass the fight down to the next generation. 

Today I want to talk a bit about Stephanie, Faye, and Larina in Jackson, or not really them specifically, what and who they are in the game. For me, they are the stand-ins for the PCs as I playtest and write. If and/or when I am able to move this from my computer and game table to yours, they might not even be there; your characters will. They will have their own organization and social dynamic, and they will have one, but more importantly, they will have a history. Not a backstory per se, but a history, things that went on before them. The people who fought this battle before they did. Some won. Most lost.

Let's look into how this plays out in my game.

So, before these witches walked the halls of Jackson,

Stephanie, Faye, and Larina (1986)

These witches did.

Lena, Alyssa, and Keely (1983)

Selene "Lena" Marquette, Alyssa Argent, and Keely "Q" Ellison were Jackson's witch protectors in the time before Larina got here and before Faye started paying attention. Lena was smart, popular, and already one foot out the door to study at MacAlister the summer of 83. Keely was popular, had a smile for everyone, and was on the cheerleading, dance, gymnastics teams, and the choir. Everyone loved her. Not liked, loved. And Alyssa. She wasn't the smartest girl in the room. She was the smartest person in the whole damn town. Brilliant, chaotic, she read theoretical physics for fun, translated languages in her spare time, and had a full-ride scholarship to pretty much every Ivy League school. 

And their story is tragic. I normally don't like to make characters fail, but sometimes they do, and that is the horror. In Jackson, horror is everywhere.

One night, when dealing with a monster, Lena and Keely never made it back. Alyssa did, but her mind was no longer intact. The official story is that Lena and Keely were coming back from school late at night and someone grabbed them. Upon hearing the story, Alyssa broke down. But the town's people knew something was not right. Lena and Keely were friends, but there was no reason for them both to be leaving the school that late at night and together. Alyssa had a nervous breakdown, which surprised no one, but it had been a long time coming, and whether it really had anything to do with the official events is anyone's guess.  Alyssa spent the next year at the Illinois State Mental Hospital in town. She didn't even get to go to the funeral of the two girls she called "sisters."

Last page of the Jackson PHS 1983 yearbook

One of the features I have with Jackson is that it is based on my real-life high school. One of those real Jacksonville things was that every year in high school, one or more students would die. Gruesome, right. Yeah, now imagine it is a small school of just over 1,500 students total. We used to say the school was cursed. I have no idea if it is still happening.

You can begin to see why I have so much material for this project.

It's not just that Lena and Q died. It's not even that they died because of Jackson's supernatural elements, or that it left the once-brilliant Alyssa a shell of her former self.

It's when Stephanie, Faye, and Larina (or YOUR characters) are walking the halls, the adults say things like "Oh, Larina, she is just like Alyssa," and then they go quiet. Or even "Stephanie Vale lights up a room, just like Keely used to."  But the worst part is the adults who never say anything at all. They watch the girls walk by laughing conspiratorially, and inside, they are thinking, "No. Please. Not again."

The fight in Jackson is old. It has been going on for a long time. And I want to impress upon the characters and the players that they are not the first here, they won't be the last. These are the Veterans of the Supernatural Wars. Kids that are not even old enough to drink (legally) or, in some cases, vote.

But Lena, Alyssa, and Q hold another lesson too.

You can't do this alone.

I am not sure of the details yet, but I do know this: they failed and died because they were not working together. Look. I don't want to blame them for their deaths. It was a horrible thing, and honestly? I have only had them for a couple of days, and I feel terrible. But they died because, as witches, they were not working together.

I love Stephanie, Faye, and Larina. I do. I want them to live happily ever after in the Jackson Game world for as long as I can. But I also know how I typically play these characters, and honestly, I am a little surprised that Jackson-Larina has not met the same fate as other Larinas on other worlds. 

In the past I have described Larina as "the girl who sets herself on fire to light the way for others," and yes, she has died. Many times on many worlds. I have a binder filled with her character sheets. But here in Jackson, her lesson (and the PC's lesson) is, you can't and should not do this alone. My own rule also says I can't raise her from the dead. Sorry, witches can't raise the dead, and this is an absolute rule in my games. So, Larina, as my iconic witch, cannot break that rule.

For witches and any character, these connections are important. I have not implemented coven casting rules in NIGHT SHIFT outside of the Arcane Bond power, but I really should. 

Coven casting is not just "three witches get together, and the spell gets bigger." That is wizard-thinking. That is math. Witches can do math, but that is not where the magic lives. 

The coven is the circuit for a witch. There is one to name the thing, one to hold the line, and another to mind the human toll. Put in different witches, and you have a different spell. Stephanie, Faye, and Larina are not some interchangeable cogs in a machine. Stephanie will be on to the lies people tell and the social fallout. Faye has her finger on the room’s emotional pulse. Larina spots the occult design. Put them together, and they can pull off things no one of them should be able to do by herself.

More to the point, they can survive it. Or at least they have a better chance.

I want to make that a rule in Jackson. Coven magic can give you an edge on a roll, but it should be more about sharing the danger, the cost, the insight. Let one witch absorb the psychic backlash while another steadies the ritual or makes sure the door does not shut. Or let one put her foot down and say "No, we’re done," and have it count for something in the mechanics. 

Lena, Alyssa, and Q lost that. Or perhaps they never really had it to begin with. I don't know, and niether will the players or characters.

Alyssa had power. Terrible power that made everyone stop and look. She was capable of more than Larina ever could be. But there is a difference between brilliance and wisdom, between power and the connection of a coven. On her own, a witch is a weapon, a flame, or a ghost story to be told in hushed tones in the hallways. A coven puts the humanity back in her. A coven gives that power a focus and meaning.

Jackson is full of monsters, of course. Haunted colleges, the bad land, old tragedies, and the odd book in the library where the Veil is thin. But it is also about the girl in the hallway beside you. The one who knows your real name and your worst ideas, and when you are lying or afraid. The one who will take your hand and tell you, "No, you are not alone."

That is witchcraft. I love my circles, candles, and athamés as much as the next person (ok, maybe more so than the next person), but this is more than spells or familiars. It is true connection made dangerous. Friendship with teeth. Love in a circle aimed at the dark.

I want Jackson to remember that. Lena, Alyssa, and Q are a reminder that the fight was here before your characters got to it. Stephanie, Faye, and Larina show us you don’t get to just assume you will make it. Your characters ought to feel the weight of all those names when they walk these halls.

The defeated and dead aren’t there to put a damper on the game. They are there to remind the living how to stand together.

Ravenloft: The Horrors Within

We are back in Ravenloft. Again.

And honestly, I am happy to be here.

I have talked about Ravenloft a lot over the years. A lot. I have covered the original I6 adventure, the 2nd Edition boxed sets, Realms of Terror, Domains of Dread, the 3rd Edition Ravenloft books, and into the 5th edition era with Curse of Strahd, Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft, and more. Ravenloft is one of those settings I keep coming back to, not because I have to, but because it keeps speaking my language.

That language is Gothic horror.

More specifically, it is Universal Monsters, Hammer Horror, Dracula, Dark Shadows, foggy roads, terrified villagers, cursed castles, and vampires who are more than just another entry in the Monster Manual. That has always been part of my Appendix N. So when I first encountered I6 Ravenloft, it was not just another AD&D adventure to me. It was D&D finally doing something I had always wanted it to do. It wasn't Tolkien. It wasn't Conan, or any of the other books and tales people assume we read before encountering D&D. It wasn't the usual dungeon crawl. 

It was a Hammer Horror film with dice. It is what I always wanted from D&D.

Count Strahd von Zarovich mattered because he was not just a vampire. D&D had vampires before Strahd (hello Belgos), but Strahd was different. He had a history. He had a motive. He had a personality. He had a castle, a village, a tragedy, and the sheer theatrical arrogance to make the whole thing work. He was intelligent, ruthless, and absolutely convinced that his own damnation was someone else’s fault.

That is Ravenloft. Or at least, that is the beginning of Ravenloft. 

The setting has changed many times since then. And really, if you have been reading this blog for any amount of time, you know all of this. But...It became a full AD&D 2nd Edition campaign world. It got its own boxed sets, its own domains, its own dark mythology, and eventually its two 3rd Edition and 3.5 Edition versions. It came back in 5e with Curse of Strahd, and then in 2021 with Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. Every edition has changed it, sometimes in ways I liked and sometimes in ways I had to think about for a while. But I have always believed that Ravenloft can survive reinterpretation. Horror does that. Dracula gets remade (and remade and remade). Frankenstein gets remade. Werewolves, ghosts, witches, haunted houses, and cursed families all get remade. Every generation gets a new set of horror classics to call their own. 

Ravenloft follows suit.

That brings me to Ravenloft: The Horrors Within, the new Ravenloft book for the revised 2024 Dungeons & Dragons rules. Or 5.5e. Or D&D 2024. Or whatever we are all calling it now.

This one is interesting because it is not really a replacement for Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. It is more like the book Van Richten’s Guide needed beside it.

Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft was a book of ideas. The Horrors Within is a book of things to use at the table.

That difference is everything.

I liked Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft. I still do. I know some people wanted it to be more like the old 2nd Edition setting, with the Core, political borders, domain histories, and more of the classic campaign setting structure. I understand that. I love those books too. But I also said at the time that Van Richten’s Guide was doing something useful. It was not trying to rebuild old Ravenloft exactly. It was treating the Domains of Dread as a horror toolkit for modern 5e.

That worked for me.

It gave us Gothic horror, folk horror, body horror, cosmic horror, dark fantasy, ghost stories, psychological horror, and all the other nightmare flavors Ravenloft can support. It gave us advice for building Domains of Dread and Darklords. It let Ravenloft become more than Barovia and a few neighboring spooky countries. It also gave me the tools to build my own Darklord and my own domain, which I did with Darlessa, my Vampire Queen.

But Van Richten’s Guide also had gaps.

The biggest one was obvious: almost no Darklord stat blocks.

I understood the design philosophy. A Darklord is not just a monster. A Darklord is the dark heart of a domain. They are not always meant to be fought. Sometimes defeating them means surviving them, understanding them, resisting them, or escaping the story they have built around themselves. That is all true.

But this is still Dungeons & Dragons. 

Eventually, someone will say, "I attack Strahd." 

And then you need rules. I mean...sure, why not, they are going to lose, but let's roll some dice.

That is where The Horrors Within makes its strongest case. The new book gives us 17 Darklord stat blocks. Strahd. Azalin Rex. Lord Soth. Hazlik. Viktra Mordenheim. Chakuna. Ebonbane. And yes, Cthulhu.

I will get to Cthulhu in a bit.

The inclusion of Darklord stat blocks immediately changes the usefulness of the book. It means the Darklords are no longer just concepts, villains, or tragic centers of gravity. They are table-ready. They have mechanics. They can face the party, haunt the party, hurt the party, and hopefully do all of that in a way that reflects their curse.

That last part matters. A Ravenloft stat block should not just tell me how hard the villain hits. It should tell me something about why they are damned.

• Strahd should not be just a vampire with a better cape. (Though it is a cool cape.)
• Azalin should not be just a Greyhawk lich with a Ravenloft address.
• Viktra Mordenheim should not be just a mad scientist NPC standing next to a flesh golem. 

A good Darklord stat block should say, mechanically, "this is what obsession looks like when the Mists have finished with it."

That is what I want from this book.

The structure also feels different from Van Richten’s Guide. The 2021 book gave us a broad survey of many domains. The Horrors Within focuses on 16 featured Domains of Dread. That means some domains from Van Richten’s Guide move to the margins, including Bluetspur, I’Cath, Richemulot, and The Carnival. That will disappoint some people. It disappoints me a little, especially with Bluetspur, since I liked seeing Ravenloft stretch into alien horror.

But I also understand the trade-off.

Ravenloft domains need space. They are not just countries. They are moral nightmares. A good domain needs a central sin, a Darklord, a curse, a population trapped in the consequences, and enough adventure material for the players to discover all of this the hard way. If focusing on fewer domains means those domains are more playable, then I can live with that.

And there are some interesting returns here. Sithicus and The Shadowlands bring back older Ravenloft material, including the sentient blade Ebonbane and that dark Arthurian fantasy mood that always sat well in Ravenloft’s broader horror geography. Darkon also gets more attention through Azalin Rex and Castle Avernus. That feels right. Azalin has always been one of Ravenloft’s most important figures, second only to Strahd in many ways, in my opinion. If Strahd is Gothic obsession, Azalin is intellectual arrogance, undeath, failed escape, and the refusal to admit that the cage may exist because of him.

That is Ravenloft, too.

The new player options are also very much part of the 2024 rules structure. We get seven subclasses: Reanimator Artificer, College of Spirits Bard, Grave Domain Cleric, Hollow Warden Ranger, Phantom Rogue, Shadow Sorcery Sorcerer, and Undead Patron Warlock. We get Dhampir, Hexblood, Lupin, and Reborn as species. We get backgrounds like Haunted One, Mist Wanderer, Investigator, and Spirit Medium. We get Dark Gifts rebuilt as feats.

The Reanimator Artificer also feels perfect for Lamordia. The Hollow Warden Ranger sounds like something that has spent too much time walking where the Mists are thickest. The Grave Cleric, Phantom Rogue, Shadow Sorcerer, College of Spirits Bard, and Undead Warlock all feel like they belong in this setting. Ravenloft player characters should feel like they have already been touched by something before the adventure begins.

That is where the Dark Gifts come in, and here is where I have my first real concern.

In Van Richten’s Guide, the Dark Gifts were strange, flavorful, and often story-heavy. They felt like bargains, curses, supernatural inheritances, or evidence that something had reached into the character’s life and left a mark. They were not always balanced perfectly, but that was part of their charm. Ravenloft should not always feel perfectly balanced. Sometimes the Mists give you exactly what you asked for and then make you regret the wording.

In The Horrors Within, Dark Gifts are rebuilt for the 2024 feat system. That makes them easier to understand, easier to balance, and easier to run. It also risks making them feel a little more like game widgets and a little less like curses. You know players will look to these as "rewards" and ignore the horror elements.

That is the trade-off of this book in miniature. It is more usable. It may also be a little less haunted.

The example that really sticks with me is the shift in how something like Symbiotic Being works. In older forms, that kind of gift depended on the relationship between the character and the entity inside them. The horror came from the story. What does it want? What does it whisper? What happens when you resist it? Now, by all accounts, the trigger is much cleaner and much more mechanical. Roll a 1 on a d20, and the thing stirs.

That is easier to run.

It is also less personal.

Now, I am not saying this is bad. New DMs need usable mechanics. Players need clarity. The 2024 rules have a design philosophy, and this book is clearly built to fit it. But Ravenloft is a setting where the messy parts matter. Horror is often found in the exception, the strange edge case, the thing that does not behave like the rules say it should.

So I will use these new Dark Gifts, but I already know I will be adding some of the old narrative teeth back in. Even if it means grabbing some older AD&D 2nd Ed material.

The Tarokka material, on the other hand, sounds like exactly the sort of thing I want. The Tarokka deck has been part of Ravenloft since the beginning. In I6, the Fortunes of Ravenloft gave the adventure replayability and mystery. In Curse of Strahd, the Tarokka reading became one of the defining ritual moments of the campaign. It is one of Ravenloft’s best props because it tells the players that fate is not abstract here. Fate has cards. Fate has a voice. Fate may be cheating.

The Horrors Within appears to give the Tarokka deck more mechanical weight in navigating the Mists and interacting with the domains. I like that a lot. That is exactly the kind of old Ravenloft idea that should be made more central, not less. If the Mists are the roads of Ravenloft, then the Tarokka should be one of the few maps that matters. 

Of course, in Ravenloft, even the map can betray you.

I also picked up the new Tarokka deck as well. I'll discuss that later on. 

The Haunted Bastions are another very 2024 idea that actually fits Ravenloft better than I expected. The 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide introduced Bastions as a form of player stronghold or home base. In a normal campaign, that can mean a tower, keep, workshop, temple, or guildhall. In Ravenloft, that same idea becomes much more interesting.

A home in Ravenloft should never feel completely safe.

A gothic manor, a lonely chapel, a cursed observatory, a half-reclaimed castle, a witch’s house at the edge of the woods, a laboratory in Lamordia, or a sanctuary surrounded by Mists: all of these work as Haunted Bastions. But they should also come with a question.

What does the house want?

That is the Ravenloft version of a Bastion. Not just a base. Not just a reward. A relationship with a place that remembers things you wish it did not. I have been thinking a lot of places lately and what sorts of "things" they remember; geography as occult memory. This is the Ravenloft version.

The adventures are also a major point in this book’s favor. The Horrors Within gives us one-shot adventures tied to the featured domains. This is exactly the sort of thing Van Richten’s Guide did not do enough of. That book made me want to run Ravenloft. This one seems designed to let me run Ravenloft with less prep. Well...not that I need much prep for Ravenloft these days.

But it still matters.

I know I am an old-school guy. I like weird maps, strange presentation choices, moody boxed sets, and books that feel like forbidden travel guides. But I am also a working DM. A working DM appreciates ready-to-use material. Give me the Darklord. Give me the domain. Give me the map. Give me the adventure seed. Give me the monster stats. Then I can do the rest.

The maps are part of that. Van Richten’s Guide had evocative, conceptual maps. They helped define mood. The Horrors Within leans harder into tactical, full-color, VTT-ready maps. That is not always my preferred style for Ravenloft, but it is useful. And usefulness counts.

This is also where I think the book resembles Domains of Dread in a modern way. Domains of Dread was a late 2nd Edition Ravenloft hardcover that gathered the setting into a more complete reference. It was not the beginning of Ravenloft. It was a summation. The Horrors Within feels a little like that for 5e and 5.5e. Curse of Strahd gave modern players Barovia. Van Richten’s Guide gave them the new conceptual framework. The Horrors Within gives them the operational version.

That is a good place for it to sit.

Now, about Cthulhu.

I am not opposed to cosmic horror in Ravenloft. Ravenloft has always been able to absorb different forms of horror. Gothic horror is the foundation, but the setting has room for mad science, ghost stories, mummy curses, slasher stories, folk horror, dark fantasy, witchcraft, haunted mansions, and yes, cosmic dread. Bluetspur already pushed Ravenloft toward alien horror. Lamordia has always had Frankenstein. Har’Akir has mummy horror. Sithicus has tragic dark fantasy. Ravenloft is not one horror story. It is a machine for making horror stories.

So, Innsmouth as a Domain of Dread? I can work with that. I think.

Elder Things, Mi-Go, Nightgaunts, and Shoggoths? Fine. Those are usable monsters, and I can absolutely see them crawling, flying, or oozing out of the Mists.

Cthulhu as a Darklord? That is where I pause.

Not because Cthulhu is too powerful. Power levels in D&D are always negotiable. The issue is conceptual. A Darklord is trapped by their own sin. The domain is a prison built around their desire, failure, crime, obsession, or refusal to change. That is intensely personal. Cosmic horror, at its best, is impersonal. The universe does not hate you. It simply does not care.

So if Cthulhu is a Darklord, then the book has to answer the Ravenloft question: what is the curse? What does Cthulhu want that the Mists deny? How does the domain torment him? What personal horror makes him fit the same metaphysical structure as Strahd, Azalin, Mordenheim, or Soth? We asked the same questions in the later 2nd Ed era, when Vecna ended up in Ravenloft. How can the Mists contain a God?

If the book answers these questions, well, I am interested.

If not, then I will use the monsters and leave Cthulhu where he belongs, dreaming in R’lyeh.

My oldest and I talked about this a lot since we picked up our copies. He is going to say this is just a Star Spawn of Cthulhu with delusions of godhood. I like that idea. I am still on the fence. 

Plus. Shouldn't it be Dagon? Dagon was the central mythos figure around Innsmouth.

This is the larger issue with importing cosmic horror into Ravenloft. It has to be translated. Ravenloft is not just a spooky multiverse junk drawer. At least it shouldn't be. It has its own moral and metaphysical logic. Evil leaves stains. Sin becomes geography. Desire becomes prison. The Dark Powers do not merely punish you. They arrange the world so that you can keep proving you deserve the punishment.

That is what makes Ravenloft different from other D&D horror. That is why the Darklords matter. That is why the domains matter. That is why the Mists matter.

There is also the broader production context. The Horrors Within arrives during D&D’s new "Season of Horror" approach, and it comes after a period of visible change at Wizards of the Coast, including the departures of long-time D&D figures Chris Perkins and Jeremy Crawford. I do not want to overstate that in a product review, but it is hard not to notice. This book feels like part of a new publishing rhythm: more programmatic, more integrated with D&D Beyond, more tied to digital tools, maps, accessories, and seasonal branding. The newer 5.5 books even look different. 

That is not inherently bad, but it is different.

Ravenloft used to feel like something that escaped from the shadows of D&D. Now it is a coordinated product line with digital bundles, map packs, accessories, and mechanical integration into the 2024 rules. That is the nature of the game now. The question is whether the horror survives the repackaging.

So far, I think it can. BUT, (and this is an all capital but) it has to be negotiated very carefully.  

There is one more rules issue worth mentioning, though perhaps more as a side note than as a central part of the review: the Hexblade problem. The 2017 Hexblade Warlock was famously front-loaded. It gave Warlocks, and multiclass Paladins and Sorcerers, a very strong reason to take a one-level dip. The 2024 rules absorbed much of that melee Warlock identity into the base Pact of the Blade. That left the Hexblade with an identity problem. If every Blade Pact Warlock can do the signature Hexblade thing, then what is the Hexblade now?

The answer seems to be to move the Hexblade closer to the idea of a sentient magic weapon and a curse-bound warrior. That is more Ravenloft-friendly in flavor, honestly. A cursed blade with its own will is exactly the sort of thing that belongs in the Domains of Dread. But it also shows the larger issue of adapting legacy 5e material to the 2024 framework. Some old mechanics no longer have the same niche. Some old subclasses need a new reason to exist.

That is not really a flaw in The Horrors Within, but it is part of the same design moment. The 2024 rules want cleaner baselines. Ravenloft wants strange exceptions. The tension between those two impulses is all over this book.

So, where does this leave Van Richten’s Guide to Ravenloft?

Still useful.

Very useful, in fact.

I would not tell anyone to throw it out. Van Richten’s Guide is still the better book for understanding the 5e conception of Ravenloft. It gives you the broad view. It gives you the horror genres. It gives you the domain-building advice. It gives you a sense of Ravenloft as a modular horror engine. It is the book I would hand someone who wanted to know what modern Ravenloft can be.

The Horrors Within is the book I would hand to someone who wanted to run it this weekend.

That is the cleanest comparison.

Van Richten’s Guide tells you why Ravenloft works. The Horrors Within tells you what to roll. Both are useful. And they work well together.

For my own games, I suspect I would use both, and then still pull from the Black Box, Domains of Dread, the 3rd Edition Ravenloft book, Curse of Strahd, and whatever else is sitting on my Ravenloft shelf. Ravenloft has never been one book for me. It has always been a shelf. A haunted, but well-traveled, shelf, naturally.

If you already own Van Richten’s Guide, do you need The Horrors Within?

• If you are running Ravenloft with the 2024 rules, probably yes.
• If you want Darklord stat blocks, yes.
• If you want ready-to-run domain adventures, yes.
• If you want VTT-friendly maps, updated player options, and more monsters, yes.

If you only want the broad setting lore and horror advice, then Van Richten’s Guide may still be enough.

For me, though, the appeal is obvious. I want the Darklords. I want the Haunted Bastions. I want the Tarokka to matter. I want to see what they do with Sithicus, The Shadowlands, Castle Avernus, and Innsmouth. I want to see whether the monsters feel like Ravenloft monsters, not just horror-themed stat blocks.

As I read this in detail, I want to see whether this book remembers the most important thing.

Ravenloft is not scary because the monsters have more hit points. Ravenloft is scary because the monster used to be a person, and somewhere deep down, maybe still is. That is the horror. That is the tragedy. 

And that is why we keep going back into the Mists.

A Note about the "New" Format for 5.5 Books

Hasbro/Wizards has made some slight changes to the format of their "setting" books. I saw it in the Forgotten Realms ones and see it here now in the Ravenloft one. It is actually pretty good. I like what they have been giving us concept-wise. Backgrounds, history, new sub-classes, some spells, monsters. It is like getting the 2nd Ed Boxed set experience without the product bloat that was one of the reasons for TSR's death. 

I am not saying the books are perfect, and sometimes I still disagree with some of the content choices (see Cthulhu above), but I can't fault the way these are put together.

WotC's publishing schedule has slowed, but I'd still love to see some Mystara content in this format. I think 5.5 and Mystara would work well together.

Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. The Public Library as Dungeon

 There is a very good reason my main witch character, Larina, is often cast as a librarian.

My introduction to “real” witches was in the library. Not the kind made of flesh and blood, but the ones you find in the pages of a book, in history, or in mythology. You could say libraries are where witches live, and I am not using that as some kind of metaphor all these years on. That is simply how it was for me.

The public library was among the first places where the world seemed to expand and grow stranger at once. You would come in off a perfectly ordinary Midwestern afternoon, make your way past the desk and the new books and whatever they had on display for the month, and then in the stacks you were liable to run across ghosts, demons, gods, vampires, lost cities, ancient rites, and other things your school teachers never thought to mention and certainly never on the "staff picks" section. 

There is a trick to a library. It is meant to be safe. Quiet, ordered, respectable. It has its rules and its due dates and its card catalogs. The librarians know where everything is. But this is precisely what makes for a fine dungeon.

Because a dungeon is more than a hole in the ground with monsters in it. It is a place of hidden knowledge, danger, and memory, with its maps, keys, locked doors, old names, and false leads. A good one will have treasures that alter the person who brings them out. An old public library has all of that.

Take my fictional Jackson, which is rooted in the real Jacksonville, Illinois. The Public Library there has the right bones for it. As a Carnegie library, built in 1902 and put to use in 1903, it has the sort of grand Classical Revival air about it that suggests books are of consequence, and perhaps a touch perilous if you give them any thought. It feels like it is holding secrets even before you start making any up. A building like this isn’t holding just ordinary books; it has something special. 

I don’t want the library in Jackson to be sinister, though. There is a difference between "evil" and being "important". It is not a haunted mansion in disguise. It is doing what it does: preserving, collecting, cataloging, remembering. There is enough danger in just that.  I mean, didn't the Satanic Panic try to teach us that books were dangerous?

A town or a local family can tell you lies, or what they want you to hear. A church can. A newspaper will be careful with what it puts in print. But the library keeps things. Not without fault; you will find things misfiled or stolen or damaged or just plain forgotten. But in a game, that is useful. A missing book means someone saw fit to put it away. A yearbook with a face marked out says more than the picture alone.

For the purposes of Advanced Witches & Warlocks, the library is the old occult archive. A Magic-user will be after his spellbooks and grimoires, a Cleric his demonologies and forbidden heresies. But a Witch? She sees relationships. The volume on local flora sitting beside one on funeral rites. A genealogy that seems to orbit the same three names over and over. Consider the old map with a road that curves for no reason. Well. No apparent reason. The church record is missing a winter. A travel diary, making note of a hill nobody goes to anymore. Or a trial transcript where they all seem to be talking around one particular fact.

This is what we call occult knowledge. It is not just about fireballs and lightning. It is the kind of thing you can see if you know how to read the shape of it, right in plain view.

Which explains the witch’s affinity for libraries. She is after more than spells; she wants to find the pattern that runs under the town, the detail everyone has overlooked because they haven’t asked the right question about it yet. In Jackson, IL, this is all the more pressing.

Take a teenage witch in 1986 like Larina. There is no internet to comb through at midnight, no way to put ten sources side by side in half a minute, or access some digital archive. If she wants to understand why the cemetery has an empty grave, or why a teacher’s name is in a yearbook from two decades back, or what happened to the old road’s name, she has to make the trip. She has to go down into the dungeon.

The public library provides something modern games are too quick to discard: a place for your information. And that is a big deal. If the answer is in the library, your characters have to be there. They have to put in the work to be seen, to ask for help, to charm the librarian or wait for the building to quiet down so the ghosts can move between the shelves. They have to get their hands on the old book.

It makes research physical. Gameable.

You can have encounters in a library. Not necessarily combat, but the real sort. The librarian who holds her tongue when she knows better. The classmate watching which book you check out. Some old man with his newspaper who puts you on the spot about your family. A child tells you there is a lady in the local history room, but you see nothing. You might come across a locked cabinet, a missing index card, a book out of place in the children’s section, or the smell of candle smoke by the microfilm.

Sometimes the library is of more use than a haunted house. One will give you a secret; the other gives you the town’s secrets, all sorted by subject. I put them in my own witch work for that reason. My Appendix O is littered with books on everything from vampires and monsters to Jung and the supernatural. Some were dubious (ok, more than some), some were serious, and some you would be a fool to call scholarship, but all are worth mining for a game.

A library does not just put facts in your head. It teaches you to wander. You start out for one title and end up with three. You put down a tome on mythology and pick up one on ghosts. You are looking into witchcraft, and before you know it, you are in demonology, then horror films, then local history, until you have found something that nags at you and becomes a character or a spell years down the line.

That is how you build a witch. Shelf by shelf. Book by book.

You won’t find much of an accident in Larina’s vocation as a librarian. If anything, it is one of the most honest things about her. She is meant to be with books because that is where you will find the doors; the doors to rooms in your mind. Some are opened with a sword, some with a spell, but a library card will open more than either of those if you have the patience and curiosity for it and are just a little reckless.

It is also where Jackson, IL, and Advanced Witches & Warlocks come together.

In Advanced Witches & Warlocks, the occult library is your hoard. Not of gold, but something better: names, maps, rituals, marginalia, correspondences, the weaknesses of monsters, forgotten gods, and that single bit of information which makes a hopeless fight a dangerous proposition. In Jackson, the public library is all that and then some, only with fluorescent lights, carpet, and summer reading posters. You won’t be in a ruined tower; you’ll be downtown. Your mother could drive by while you are in there, or your English teacher might be at the desk. Someone from school may well notice what you are holding.

There is a danger to a forbidden book in a fantasy dungeon, sure. It might call a demon. The same book in Jackson is dangerous because it can do that and get you grounded into the bargain. Both are problems you don’t want.

Then there is the matter of democracy. A wizard’s tower is his, for the cleric the temple is the god’s, and a witch has her house. The library claims to belong to the town. Anyone can put in an appearance and make a private discovery. The smart girl, the jock with nothing to do, the kid skulking from bullies, the would-be warlock after a shortcut, the old woman with her genealogy, the teacher who has put in too many hours. Even the monster in human skin who comes in on Thursdays to read the obituaries. For a horror game, it is hard to beat a public place like that. Harder still in 1986.

The card catalog has the feel of a summoning machine. You can tell who had a book before you by the checkout card in the front. The microfilm reader puts out a hum like some kind of artifact; the local paper archive is a time tunnel, and the yearbooks are grimoires of social magic with their dedications and signatures and people making an effort to look normal for posterity. The library holds these like a silent guardian of bygone truths. 

It keeps the version of the town that wants to be remembered and the one it couldn’t quite put away. That is where the witches fit in. She will spot the failure. The crack in the catalog, the year with an odd number of obituaries, a family name that vanishes and reappears under a different spelling. She will see the photograph was cut, not torn, and the map folded so often along one road the paper is thinning.

I don’t want a magic shop or a wizard school for the Jackson Public Library. I want a building with a long memory where you can walk in broad daylight and sense the dungeon beneath you. Where the ghosts are to be found under Local History. A place of better questions than answers. There is an occult section, not a big one, but you will somehow come across the very book you were dreading to put your hands on. For the Advanced Witches & Warlocks crowd, it is the same with the fantasy game. Any town that has a witch in it ought to have its library.

It could be a shelf in the priest’s study or a chest of scrolls under the wise woman’s bed. A ruined scriptorium. A set of bones with names carved in them. Or perhaps a ring of old women who commit nothing to paper and remember everything; I would call that the most dangerous library of all. The Witch doesn’t just read the book. She reads the silence about it, the hand that made the note in the margin, the missing page, the town trying to put it out of mind. In that sense the public library is a dungeon. The doors are open, the treasure is there for the taking and so are the monsters, who can read as well as anyone.

The Mirror Shard: The Locked History Room

Take the case of the Locked Local History Room. Every haunted town has one. It needn’t be locked in any literal sense. It may be behind the desk or in the basement. Maybe they only let you in during certain hours, which is its own kind of lock. Or maybe it is wide open, but no one under eighteen is to go in uninvited. That suffices.

Jackson uses this room for the things that don’t make the official tour: the old yearbooks, the church histories, the funeral cards and maps, the donated family papers and clippings. There are photographs in here no one bothered to label because at the time you knew who they were. And horror has a way of living in “at the time.”

In your game, this is the village archive, the temple record room, the witch’s cabinet of names. This is where you get the first true account of the curse, not the tavern version. In Jackson, IL, a young witch discovers that the town has been lying by omission.

The room is quiet in a way that feels wrong. It is not empty, it is listening. You can smell the dust and old print on the carpet. The file cabinets are stiff, and the table bears pencil marks from the long dead. On a shelf are yearbooks with cracked spines and an excess of smiling faces.

A good clue from this place should make the mystery personal, not put an end to it. A young witch comes across her own surname in a clipping from before she was born. A player spots his grandmother next to a man who was dead by 1935. They find a map of Mauvaisterre that someone has tried to rub out, or a yearbook with the words “You heard the bell too” scrawled in it.

There is usually a guardian to the room, though not always a monster. It could be the librarian, a retired teacher, a ghost, or a rule in red ink on an index card. He won’t tell you, “you can’t come in,” that is too simple. He will ask, “What are you looking for?” which is far worse. In a room like this, the wrong answer can still give you exactly what you are looking for. Just maybe not in the way you expect it should.

Happy Birthday to me!

 Yesterday (June 13) was my birthday! We went out to eat, I got some more parts for my various computer projects, including a new GPU for my main game computer. But I also got some other RPG-related gifts.

The new Star Trek Adventures Starter Set.

I am disappointed that Starfleet Academy was canceled and that Doctor Who is on an extended hiatus. So I am planning a Star Trek/Doctor Who crossover. And just to be "that guy" I want to set it during the Later Discovery/Starfleet Academy era after the Burn (32nd Century) and in the Ncuti Gatwa/Fifteenth Doctor era. I adore both Sylvia Tilly and Ruby Sunday.

In fact, I really like this idea. It also gives me a chance to do something that the Fifteenth Doctor never got the chance to do...fight some Daleks. 

And a REAL Trapper Keeper for all my Jackson, IL, notes and character sheets. 

So the birthday was good, and I still have Father's Day coming up.

RPG Retrospective: The Adventures of Indiana Jones RPG

 On this day in 1981, 45 years ago, I went to see the newest George Lucas/Steven Spielberg collab called "Raiders of the Lost Ark."  I went with my best friend Steven and it was a life changer for both of us. Steven watched it and wanted to become a big Hollywood director. I watched it and wanted to become a university professor. We both got to our dreams, more or less. Steven became an art director and is now fed up with Hollywood. I became a professor, but sold my soul to the dot-com world during the late 90s/early 2000s dot-com boom. I, too, had become a little burned out on academic life. 

But Raiders of the Lost Ark still remains a perfect movie in our minds. One we still talk about to this very day.

It is just too bad the RPG was so, well, terrible. At least that was my recollection of it. But is that true? 

Let's pull out my copy and have a deep dive into the game and what it has to offer.

Fortune and Glory, Kid

When TSR picked up the license for Indiana Jones, it looked like a slam dunk. After all, Raiders of the Lost Ark had been a massive success, Temple of Doom was hitting theaters, and TSR was flush with cash and ambition. Iron Crown had Middle-earth. Doctor Who and Star Trek had a home at FASA, and now Indy was coming to Lake Geneva. 

And let us not forget, this was TSR we were talking about, the very company responsible for Dungeons & Dragons, Gamma World, Top Secret, Boot Hill, and, by 1984, the excellent Marvel Super Heroes game.

What could possibly go wrong?

As it turns out… pretty much everything. 

TSR put out The Adventures of Indiana Jones Role-Playing Game in 1984. David "Zeb" Cook and John Byrne, the comic book writer, are credited with the design.  On the surface, it’s a boxed set with everything you'd expect: dice, minis (well, cardboard cutouts you had to assemble), a rulebook, character cards, and an introductory adventure. Inside, you get a chance to live out pulp adventures in the style of everyone’s favorite bullwhip-wielding archaeologist. Sounds great, right?

Except here’s the first problem: you had to play Indy. Or at best, one of a handful of established characters like Marion or Sallah. The rules didn’t include any way to make your own characters. That’s like handing a bunch of kids the Star Wars RPG and saying, "No, sorry, you can’t be smugglers or bounty hunters, you can only be Luke, Han, or Leia." Half the fun of role-playing is creating your own hero to drop into wild situations, and this game just locked the door on that entirely. It gives you some movie characters and tells you, "don't mess them up."

One could argue the later Indiana Jones Judge's Survival Pack made amends by introducing rules for original characters along with the kind of chases, ruins, and vehicles that ought to have been in the core box from day one. But that was the patch, if you will. TSR coming around to say "Oh, you wanted to role-play." But by then, the writing was on the wall. The original set had already conditioned people to think of this as the game where you couldn’t make your own character, and that is the way it was remembered.

The system itself is light, almost perfunctory. There’s some resolution mechanics, a few skill checks, and some chase and combat rules, but nothing that feels like it captures the frenetic energy of Indy punching Nazis or dodging rolling boulders. Instead, it feels like TSR wanted a quick "introductory RPG" to tie in with the movies without giving much thought to longevity or depth. The end result is that it plays more like a board game that forgot to include the board. Or, more on point, an RPG that forgot to include anything about role-playing.

There are percentile skill rolls versus Strength, Prowess, or Backbone, and the like. Nothing too difficult really.

There are rules for "danger" and some perfunctory chase rules (it is Indian Jones after all). So don’t think of it as mechanically useless. The bones are all there, you just have to look past some rather peculiar design decisions. 

But let's not pretend here. This is really not a good game. 

It is a shame, really. The ingredients for an outstanding Indiana Jones RPG were right there. You had the ancient ruins, the lost temples, secret cults, and their terrible artifacts. Nazis, gangsters, and the odd occult society. University politics and rival expeditions. Mummies, curses, ghosts, forbidden manuscripts, hidden cities, and desert tombs. Zeppelins and seaplanes, and a map with a red line across the ocean. You could build a campaign from all that without breaking a sweat.

Yet TSR produced an Indiana Jones game that was far too fixated on the man himself and not enough on his world. West End Games would get it right with Star Wars some years down the line. They grasped what was important: the player doesn’t want to be Luke or Han or Leia. He wants to inhabit the universe, with his own ship and his own Imperial entanglements and the kind of awful plan that somehow comes off.

Indiana Jones called for a World of Indiana Jones, as West End would call it later. All we got from TSR was the star when what we wanted was the stage.

The Problem with Being Indiana Jones

The system is just one problem. Take Indiana Jones: he lives because he is who he is. You don’t have to worry about him being put down by some guard in scene two or perishing in a truck chase. Even if he comes up short, it is in service of the plot. In a film, that is how it should be. But in a role-playing game it is another matter. The TSR version makes an effort to keep that sort of movie logic intact, but at the cost of any real peril. 

There is "Danger" but no real danger. 

Sure, Indy can have his moments, but the game will bend to accommodate him. Your heroes are not the run-of-the-mill pulp types putting their lives and limbs on the line; they are movie stars sporting a kind of narrative armor. I get why they went about it that way, but it doesn’t work for me.

What is the point of a pulp adventure if your character can’t come to grief? Maybe you shoot the swordsman, maybe you are the one who drops the gun. You could put your trust in the wrong guide or be unceremoniously thrown from the back of the truck. That is where the fun is. When the game goes to such lengths to shield the movie, it gets in the way of playing.

There is a contradiction at the heart of this RPG. It aspires to be an Indiana Jones movie when a good one ought to let you have an adventure in his style. They are not one and the same.

What It Gets Right

I wouldn’t want to be entirely unfair about it, though. There is much I like in this game.

To start with, it has the sense that Indiana Jones is a pulp character and makes no pretense of being a scholarly archaeological simulation. Good. What you get instead are your villains, your action, the clues and exotic locales, some perilous artifacts, and a kind of cliffhanger pacing. It puts Indy in his proper context, the same vein as Doc Savage or The Shadow, or one of those odd interwar stories from Republic serials and lost world fiction, where there is a blank spot on the map and someone is off on a secret expedition.

Then there is the speed of the thing. A slow, tactical affair would have been a disaster for an Indiana Jones game, so the fact that this is built for pace is important. Sure, it can be clunky at times, but it isn’t going to have you work out the tensile strength of your whip before you put it to use over a chasm. As it should be.

The Diana Jones Award and Nazi™

You could argue the afterlife of this game is nearly as good as the thing itself.

Game historians and fans know that TSR eventually had to pulp unsold copies of the boxed set after losing the license, which only adds to the mystique. One of the last copies to be burned was salvaged and became the Diana Jones Award. Which itself has been a focus of some gamer legend, with the original award now lost somewhere in the mail. 

There is a certain poetry to it, bordering on the mythic. The temple is destroyed but the artifact endures, you pull the relic from the ashes and it is handed down as a prize from one year to the next. In a way it has more of an Indiana Jones feel to it than the game did.

Then you have the old legend of the "Nazi™" figure that has been going around as long as anyone can remember. It is about as accurate as any gamer tale is, but then again, it is funnier for it. It has a ring of truth to it, the sort of thing a big 80s product with a name on it would get up to by mistake. The facts don’t have to be tidy for it to become part of the folklore.

Final Thoughts

There are some movies you can put on at any time, and they are just right; Raiders of the Lost Ark is still one of my perfect films. Put on that John Williams', score, and I am instantly 12 again, back in the Illinois Theater with my best friend. We were two kids looking at the same movie but seeing our own futures in it. He was watching the camera work, I was thinking of the classroom, yet we both saw the adventure.

You won’t get that from the TSR Indiana Jones RPG. It doesn’t come close to the feeling and perhaps never could. There is a fascination to its failure, though, in how instructive it is. It puts the distinction between adapting a story and a world in sharp relief. You see why player freedom has to be there, and that no license in the world is going to prop up a game if it loses sight of what players want to do when they sit down at the table.

They aren’t there to watch the hero. They want to be him. Or make their own kind of hero out of it, with his own hat and scars and bad decisions, and an impossible way out of a temple coming down around them.

For all that, The Adventures of Indiana Jones Role-Playing Game isn’t some lost classic. More of a lost opportunity. I don’t mind owning it for that reason. A failed artifact has its place in a museum, or on my game shelf at the very least.

Indiana Jones and the Cauldron of Hecate

Create a character for a game with no character creation rules? Of course, I can't resist a challenge like this. Yes, there were character creation rules introduced later on, as I mentioned, but it was too little too late, really. Plus, I don't have those rules, so I can check them out. 

I mentioned above that watching this movie made me want to be a University professor, which I did for many years. So it would seem natural for me to want to stat up Prof. Scott Elders, my erstwhile self-insert character. Really, he is perfect since I have a Call of Cthulhu version where he is at a University researching occult artifacts. 

He is almost too perfect, in fact. The name of the game is "Indiana Jones," and bringing along Dr. Elders would be about the same thing as inviting Solar Pons into a Sherlock Holmes RPG to solve a case with Sherlock. No, I need someone who can look up to Indy, ask questions like "What is that, Dr. Jones?" and stand on their own.

I have the perfect choice, and she is a lot on my mind lately. Enter graduate student of ancient religions, Larina Nichols, from the University of Chicago.

How would she work this into this adventure? Simple, Indy has discovered some sort of clue that leads to the mythical "Cauldron of Hecate."  In typical movie tradition, I am also going to blend the myths of Hecate with the Cauldron of Cerriweden, in that it can be used to bring forth an army of undead soldiers, so of course, the Nazis, excuse me, Nazis™, want it.  Indy heads back to his alma mater, the University of Chicago, to speak to Prof. Scot Elders, who was a grad student when he was there. Dr. Elders is not there, but his star grad student, Larina Nichols, is. She is able to translate the fragment and tells Indy she will tell him the rest of the translation when they get to Greece and Turkey! 

And off they go to Turkey, Greece, and wherever else, with Nazis hot on their tail and an army of the dead at the end. Plus, Indy, as far as I know, has never had to deal with a redhead before.

The best Indiana Jones adventures always have a few elements:

• A legendary artifact.
• A historical mystery.
• A rival faction.
• An expert who knows more than they admit.
• A supernatural truth hiding behind what everyone thinks is merely legend.

This has them all!

Larina Stephanie Nichols

Graduate student of Ancient Religions at the University of Chicago. 

Attributes (Normal/x2/½/¼)

Strength 46/92/23/11
Movement 52/104/26/13
Prowess 60/120/30/15
Backbone 76/152/38/19
Instinct 80/160/40/20
Appeal 92/184/46/23

Movement Rate (running): 20 squares (5 areas)/turn
Weapons: Knife
Money: $100
Languages: English, Greek, Latin, Turkish, Aramaic, Hittite
Irrational Fears: Fire
Notes:

I completely guessed at these. I figured she was slightly better at fighting than Willie (but only a little), a little under Indiy in intelligence, but she knows more languages. That is her "in" in this adventure; she speaks the languages Indy doesn't. Though I would say she is every bit as smart as Indy, if not smarter (that is her thing), but Indy is still the star of the show...er adventure. 

Since I have been going over her 1986 character sheet in detail recently, I am also bringing back her fear/fascination of fire here. 

She has a knife, likely a ritual blade she picked up somewhere, but this is a grad student with no training in weapons. She is not carrying a gun. 

In truth, I like this version a lot. I might try this version out as a 1930s Call of Cthulhu character one day. She needs her own theme music!