Can I Use NIGHT SHIFT for an SCP Tabletop RPG?

Crossposted to the Elf Lair Games blog.

My kids got me into SCP.

Or, more accurately, they told me all about it, pointed me toward the Wiki, and then left me standing there staring at what appears to be several lifetimes’ worth of lore.

I am very new to SCP. The sheer amount of material is honestly a little overwhelming, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

But I am a horror RPG designer.

So once I started reading, one thought kept coming back to me: Can I run this with NIGHT SHIFT?

That answer is absolutely yes.

Running this with NIGHT SHIFT: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars?

I would say yes. In fact, the more I look it over, the more I am convinced NIGHT SHIFT is already a near-perfect fit for an SCP-style campaign.

Now, I do not mean in the sense of replicating every scrap of SCP lore or re-creating each Foundation department and classification. The old hands at SCP know that side of things far better than I do. What I have in mind is the game's fundamental structure.

You have your secret organizations and the impossible creatures they house. Haunted objects. Beings from other dimensions. Government installations where some entity has been walled off behind six feet of reinforced concrete simply because no one has yet come up with a way to put it down.

NIGHT SHIFT can handle all of that without much alteration.

An SCP game is not about playing the SCPs; it is about the ones who must deal with them. And that is where NIGHT SHIFT excels. Your characters are the researchers, the security detail, the occult experts, the field agents, and the medics. Or the poor saps you send into the basement when something starts to make noise. In the parlance of NIGHT SHIFT, they are Veterans. People who have run up against the supernatural and lived to tell of it. But they are also the Sages and Survivors, and maybe even the odd Psychic. 

It could be their first day with the organization or their twentieth. Then again, perhaps they were recruited precisely because they survived something that ought to have finished them off. There is something very NIGHT SHIFT about that.

The Foundation as the Night World

There is a basic tenet to NIGHT SHIFT: the supernatural is there, coexisting with the normal world but kept out of sight. From what I have read, SCP operates on much the same premise.

The distinction is in the organization. In a typical NIGHT SHIFT affair, your characters might come across the paranormal of their own accord. Not in an SCP vein. Here, someone is already aware of the monsters. They have the files, the labs, the protocols, and likely a number for the beast in question.

This does not have to be the SCP Foundation proper. For my own table, I would probably make up something else. A federal agency, an international body, or a private concern dating back to the Second World War or longer. It does not matter so long as someone is quietly putting the Night World in order. They have learned the hard way that some things are not to be destroyed, only put away.

Secure

Consider the investigation.

A case comes in. People have vanished. An antique mirror is showing people the future. There is an extra room in a house where there was none before. Every soul in town has had the same dream. Or a children’s program shows up on tape for no reason anyone can recall.

The characters are on the scene to find out why. You will have them talking to witnesses, poring over records and folklore, and the odd door-kicking exercise. Classic stuff. But they are not after a permanent fix right now. They need to understand what they are up against in order to get through it.

Contain

Here is where the SCP element puts its stamp on the adventure.

In a conventional monster hunt, the objective is plain: find it, kill it, head home. Containment is another matter. You try to put the creature down, and it comes back, or makes matters worse, or defies being killed altogether. That is very often the case.

So you have to think of something else. Bind it. Relocate it. Seal off the entrance. Put the artifact in saltwater. See to it that two copies of the photograph are never in the same place. Do whatever is necessary.

It turns the session into as much a puzzle as an action piece. The players stop asking how to defeat it and start wondering what the rules are. To me, that is the appeal of SCP as an RPG. The horror lies not just in the monster but in the way reality has fallen apart around it.

Protect

Then there is this part. I think I have the most fun with it. Who is being protected? I think about this one a lot.

The public, of course. The organization would have you believe the common man is not equipped to know what is really out there. But then the characters are likely to find that "Protect" is a word with many definitions.

It could mean shielding civilians from the supernatural or the other way around. It might be about keeping the organization itself from being found out, or even the preservation of reality. And on some days it means protecting an anomalous creature from the very people whose job it is to look after everyone else. That last scenario in particular makes for fine NIGHT SHIFT material.

Think of it: you go in and find the thing in containment is intelligent. Or innocent. A child. The last of its kind. What do you do? In that moment, the game is no longer a matter of monster hunting; it is something far more compelling.

From Classes to Roles

There is no need for an "SCP Agent" class in NIGHT SHIFT. I would make use of the ones on hand and view them as the sort of personnel the organization puts on its rolls.

A Survivor is your field operative or security. A Veteran is the containment agent who has seen enough. You keep a Chosen One on staff because anomalies have a way of behaving differently in their presence. A Psychic is your specialist for research and investigation. As for a Witch, put her in the Occult Research Division and let the rest of the department avoid her. No end to where an Inventor can go.

The organization is not concerned with what is written on your character sheet. They want to know if you can go into Room 17, have a word with the occupant, and return. With the same headcount you had when you left, ideally.

Anomalies, Not Monsters

I like this part best. Call it an anomaly and give it a designation rather than a monster label. Put together a containment protocol and a file on what the organization thinks it knows.

Take a vampire, for example.

Designation: NS-017

Containment: Sealed chamber with remote UV lighting. No personnel with exposed blood allowed inside.

Known Properties: Photosensitivity, rapid healing, nocturnal.

Very clinical. Until someone realizes that the ultraviolet is having no effect at all. The vampire has been putting on a show. Suddenly, you have an adventure on your hands.

Let Them Be in the Dark

One does not want to turn the supernatural into a textbook. The organization can catalog, experiment, and write reams of documentation, but understanding is another matter entirely. The best SCP-style game will highlight the chasm between the two.

The file says the entity will not cross running water. Why? Nobody can say. It goes dormant if you sing to it. Again, why? The file says there are seven of them. There are eight. That discrepancy will prove to be of some consequence. The Night World has no duty to conform to the order the organization is trying to impose.

Making Containment Procedures Work for You

This provides the Game Master with a ready-made structure. Begin with a procedure, then ensure it is broken.

CONTAINMENT BREACH

The players will be aware that something has gone wrong, though they may not have the full picture. Was the creature let out on purpose? Did it escape? Or was the procedure never doing any containing at all, and whatever was actually holding it back has just made off?

That is an adventure in the making.

On the Matter of Sanity

I would not insist on it. You can bring in mechanics for fear or trauma if the campaign calls for it, but an SCP game does not automatically require them. These are Veterans of the Supernatural Wars, not some ordinary folk having their first run-in with the impossible. They are the ones called in after the impossible has already made a meal of three guards.

The horror is in the realization that your training and your fine three-inch binder of CONTAINMENT PROCEDURES may not cut it. Because things have changed. And the thing on the other side of the door has taken note.

NIGHT SHIFT: Secure, Contain, Protect

One can certainly make NIGHT SHIFT work for an SCP-style game if one puts the mind to it.

Retain the classes and the monsters. Let the supernatural Night World remain as a presence under the surface of normal reality. Then put in place an organization whose job is to investigate anomalies and see that they do not come to light.

Assign the monsters some clinical nomenclature. Have containment procedures for odd phenomena. Leave the players with files that lack detail.

After that, simply go against one assumption.

That is all that is required. Or so I would have it after my initial foray into the SCP rabbit hole.

I am sure any veteran of SCP will be able to point out the complications and aspects of the setting I have yet to encounter. I would be interested in hearing about them. But as a game designer, what has caught my attention is this: the monsters have always been there; someone has just begun to record them.

Links

• SCP Foundation Wiki
• About The SCP Foundation
• Guide For Newcomers
• Essay and Resource Hub
• FAQ

Mirror Mondays: Jackson as a Mirror

 I just got back from a long trip to visit my in-laws, and I got to go to Jackson. Not Jackson, IL, but Jackson, OH. The real town. 

We were driving south to see my in-laws, and this was along the way. Of course, I had to stop. The town was just like I thought it would be...just not for Jackson, IL 

For Sunny Valley, OH.

It is the right size, in the right location, and certainly has the right feel. It is set near enough to the Appalachian Mountains to get the right feel.

Driving through the Appalachians also gave me many ideas for both of my fictional towns for NIGHT SHIFT.

Jackson, OH, and Jacksonville, IL

These two towns are about 760 miles apart and don't have a lot in common.  

My fictional Jackson, IL, owes a debt to the real Jacksonville, Illinois. It is not a copy of it. Yet it provides the sense of place that I need. From Jacksonville, I get a Midwestern town of the proper proportions and the right kind of civic life: the streets, the neighborhoods, the schools, the churches, and businesses that serve as my point of reference. Jackson, IL and Jacksonville, IL are not exactly the same, but but walking around either during the daylight hours should feel the same.

With a population of 20,000 or so, Jackson is a small but substantial town. There are enough people for characters to lose themselves in the crowd now and then, and one does not know everyone. You have your different social circles, your hospital, your clubs and rivalries, and local institutions. Still, it is small enough to be recognized.

Sunny Valley is another matter. With only about 5,000 residents, the difference is considerable. Here, people will tell you where you were last night.

There may be a single high school and a grocery store that everyone patronizes. A modest downtown with a diner where certain families have been coming for generations, a few churches, a funeral home, a clinic, a library, and perhaps a hardware store older than anyone’s memory. And then the town just stops. The streetlights run out, and the houses give way to trees.

That is how Jackson, Ohio, began to make an impression on me. It had less to do with the town and more with the drive through the Appalachian hills of southeastern Ohio. Mile upon mile of ridges and valleys, of roads that wind into the woods where visibility is poor.

I found myself thinking that something could be out there. Not in the flippant sense of "the monster lives here," but because the landscape made it seem entirely plausible. The forest can put things out of sight; the hills have their secrets. In that moment, it occurred to me what Sunny Valley had been lacking.

Sunny Valley 1.0

Sunny Valley came before Jackson.

In the beginning, Sunny Valley was an exercise in putting together a supernatural teen milieu of the early 80s. I put it most simply by asking: what would Buffy be like if she were in Ohio in 1983-4?

It was a sound approach, and I had a blast with it. You had your share of kids and monsters, oddities in the woods, the kind of supernatural conundrums that make for a good teenage horror game. There was even a Hellmouth-ish sort of thing in Sunny Valley.

But when I put my mind to Jackson, things changed.

Jackson took on a life of its own. It put down roots in the form of history and old families, adults with more to say than they let on, and teachers looking out for their students. Witches, ghosts, conspiracies, and long-held grudges all came to the fore, building a whole community of the supernatural on top of the ordinary one.

Jackson was no longer just a venue for an adventure; it was a place.

I was of the mind for some time that Sunny Valley had run its course. It had provided the 80s campaign I needed to figure out what Jackson should be.

Until I made the trip to Jackson, Ohio, and drove through the Appalachian Mountains. 

Sunny Valley 2.0

I used to say Sunny Valley had a Hellmouth and Jackson had history. But I have come to see that as not entirely true.

Jackson has the history, certainly. Sunny Valley is defined by its geology.

It is a minor distinction, yet one that means everything to me. There is no need for a magical hole in the ground to account for the awful things that go on in Sunny Valley; the mountains will do just fine.

Take the Appalachians. Their story reaches back hundreds of millions of years, through mountain-building events older than anything in human experience. The Rockies were still in their infancy when these ranges were already ancient. They have been eroded and reformed over eons that put our recorded history to shame. 

The people of Sunny Valley like to think of themselves as an old town. The mountains have other ideas.

Sure, you can find a house or two in the valley that is close on two hundred years, or a family name from the first settlers, an abandoned mine, some pre-Civil War churches and old cemeteries. But to the mountains, all of that is from this morning, geologically speaking.

And with that, the nature of the horror is altered.

In Jackson, the supernatural is steeped in history. In Sunny Valley, it is prehistory.

Jackson asks: What if the weird kids were right?

Sunny Valley asks: What if your grandparents were right when they told you not to go up there?

That is the difference in a nutshell. Or perhaps there is an even more straightforward way to tell them apart: look at which way the characters are running. In Jackson, they tend to run to the trouble. In Sunny Valley, those with any sense put distance between themselves and it.

When you drive for a few hours in the mountains, you get a lot of ideas.

Sunny Valley 2.0 is not scarier because the monsters have more hit points. It is scarier because some things were never meant to be fought in the first place.

Two Different Kinds of Horror

Jackson is dangerous, but Jackson allows heroism.

That is the town where Rowan can ride Tempest into the final battle against the Hollow King while Andy announces her arrival by playing an 80s hair-metal song on his trumpet.

It is ridiculous. It is glorious. And it belongs in Jackson.

Jackson is a place where the kids eventually discover that they are not alone. Teachers protect them. Older witches know things. Friends show up. People choose sides. The supernatural can be terrible, but it can also be opposed.

Sunny Valley should not work that way.

If someone tried that sort of heroic entrance against one of the older things in the mountains, it might not even understand what the child was trying to accomplish.

At best, it might say, "Hush, child."

That is the kind of horror I have in mind for Sunny Valley. I am not after stronger monsters, but older ones. The sort who do not hate us because, to them, we are not worth hating. They predate the town and its first settlers, and likely predate any name we have given these mountains. Most should predate the concept of names.

You will find the folk stories here are less by way of explanation than survival instructions: don’t whistle in the dark; don’t answer a call from the woods if you can’t put a face to it; avoid the old road over the ridge once the snow comes; if there is knocking under the floor, you leave. Nobody can tell you why. They will only point out which families were the ones who didn’t heed the rules.

Sunny Valley is no longer "Buffy in Ohio." It is edging toward an Appalachian cosmic horror.

The numbers make a difference. Jackson is a place of 20,000 people with its layers; it has the critical mass for a supernatural community. Sunny Valley has 5,000 souls and an expanse of empty land around it.

There is a distinction here. Jackson is home to its share of old monsters, some of which predate the human race. Yet for all that they are comprehensible to humans in some measure, they have a history and motives, hungers and grudges, names and bargains. Even demons are tied to us in some way. They can hate us. Tempt us. Love us. Hunt us. Make deals with us. We matter to them.

Sunny Valley is not like that.

What one finds in the Appalachians is something else entirely. Those are things that were old in the time of the dinosaurs. To call them demons, gods, or ghosts is to apply a word humans have invented. They are of an older order.

Where Jackson’s monsters have a past, Sunny Valley’s have geology. And that makes for a different kind of coexistence. The town’s founders did not so much subdue the wilderness as come to terms with what was already there, learning the rules necessary to put down roots. Or it could be said the humans were merely put up with.

Jackson's oldest monsters remember humanity.

Sunny Valley's oldest monsters remember a world without us.

The Mirrors

Then there is the matter of the real towns in the mirror. I have no desire for my fictional Jackson or Sunny Valley to be stand-ins for Jacksonville, Illinois, or Jackson, Ohio. They are mirrors.

Jacksonville provides the texture and scale for my Midwestern setting. But Jackson, Ohio offered something else entirely to my Sunny Valley. Not in population, but geologically. One can walk those small-town streets and then drive out to the wooded hills and get a sense of the other half of the picture.

In a way I didn’t foresee, the process has come full circle. 

Sunny Valley was instrumental in making Jackson, and Jackson has shown me that a town must be more than scenery. Now a real Jackson has sent me back to Sunny Valley. Not to make it more like Jackson, but less so.

Take the places outside Sunny Valley that are well known, yet not in the manner of a tourist spot or a famous haunts. The old mine road, the logging trail abandoned for thirty years, the hollow where no house has been built, the fire tower visible from town but unclimbed by memory. A grandfather won’t bother with explanations about bad roads or bears, as an adult might to a teenager. He will be direct: "Don’t go up there." In Jackson, that is an open door to adventure. In Sunny Valley, it is sound counsel.

I think this covers the four comparisons without the need for separate essays.

Jacksonville to Jackson, IL is inspiration made into a community. Jackson, OH to Sunny Valley is inspiration turned to atmosphere. The evolution from Sunny Valley 1.0 to 2.0 is the shift from fighting the supernatural to surviving something very, very old. And between Jackson and Sunny Valley lies the question of what each can sustain as a horror story.

There is a line I want to keep: "Jacksonville helped me imagine where people live. Jackson, Ohio made me wonder what lives beyond them." 

Witchcraft Wednesday: The Three Laws of Witchcraft

 "Let it be remembered that witches shall keep the hearth for cats, and cats shall keep watch where witches sleep. Neither shall betray the other to hunter, priest, or king. What was agreed before shall endure one hundred years more."

- A portion of The First Accord, as renewed between witches and the Lords of Cats

Power has a price.

Magic has laws.

Not in the sense of laws in the way a king puts his seal on a decree, or even in the manner of wizards who have devoted their existence to the study of how spells are wont to behave. These are far older than that. They exist because powerful beings agreed that certain things would be done in certain ways.

The Three Great Laws of Witchcraft

For witches and warlocks, there are three such arrangements that hold sway over all others.

There is the Pact of Baba Yaga, or what some refer to as the First Pact, which dictates the duties one witch owes to another. The First Accord governs the ties between witches and the Lords of the Animals, and concerns the use of familiars. And finally, the Concordat of Mephistopheles, setting out the terms by which supernatural Powers can endow a mortal with their strength and make a warlock of him.

In truth, none of these are fully known. You will not find an original, authenticated copy in the hands of any mortal scholar. Witches are quick to dispute the finer points of the First Pact. An Animal Lord may recall some part of the First Accord that has been lost to the witches’ memory. A warlock might come to the unpleasant realization that his patron left out a clause or two in the Concordat in their verbal agreements.

But for all that, they are real enough.

The Pact of Baba Yaga

Witches will tell you the Pact of Baba Yaga is the oldest of their accords, so old, in fact, that they call it the First Pact.

Tradition says Baba Yaga had no hand in making witches. They were here before the Pact was drawn up, as was magic, long before anyone put words to what it was. What she put in place was of far greater importance: she set the rules for how witches would have to deal with each other.

The Pact is an acknowledgment of the witch as an independent creature. She might be in service to a Goddess or a demon, to the elements or some ancestral spirit, or to no divine power one can name. She can be part of a coven or a solitary figure; kind or cruel, lawful or capricious, and either respected or feared. Yet she is a witch all the same.

And the First Pact lays down obligations that transcend covenants, nations, religions, and alignments. It is the source of ancient expectations regarding hospitality, sanctuary, debts, secrets, and the resolution of magical disputes.

None of this means a witch has to like her sister. The Pact does not even preclude enmity. Two witches can be at each other’s throats and still be bound by it. That is the point. The Pact of Baba Yaga is no declaration of universal peace or sisterhood; it is a recognition that there are things a witch does not do to another without consequence.

What precisely those things are is open to debate. One tradition will have its own take on the Pact, another its own. Some tenets are made plain to an apprentice, others are not spoken of until after coven initiation, and some are said to be the province of the very old. Baba Yaga, it is thought, remembers them all.

One should not expect a bolt from the blue every time a witch is dishonest with another. Breaking the First Pact rarely brings about such immediate retribution. The aftermath is often worse. A transgressor may find herself shunned: no one will trade spells with her, put her under their roof, honor her claims, or come to her aid. Then there are the tales of those who overstepped and found Baba Yaga taking a personal interest in the affair. Most witches find that prospect enough to ensure they behave.

Which is why a witch being styled a Granddaughter of Baba Yaga is more than a matter of prestige. It is a sign that she has personally taken note of the witch. And it is a reminder to all that the witch is bound by the First Pact. There are benefits, but there are also obligations.

The First Accord

The First Accord is older than most surviving witch traditions, although whether it predates the Pact of Baba Yaga is a question witches and occult scholars have argued about for centuries. The Animal Lords are not inclined to settle the argument.

The Accord concerns familiars.

Witches have always had their associations with animals. They have been friends to them, compelled them with magic, or used them as tools and vessels. But the Lords of the Animals eventually took notice.

The Lords of the Animals go by many names: Beast Lords, Totem Kings, First Beasts. They are not gods as one would understand them, nor simply animals of great power. They are something older, the embodiment of the creatures in their keeping. The Cat Lord is not just a cat; in a deep magical way, she is Cat. The same holds for the Bear King, the Wolf Lord, the Crow Queen, and the rest of the courts at the fringes of the mortal world.

Under the terms of the First Accord, a witch may have a familiar, but the Accord makes clear that the animal is not property. The bond is a relationship in the eyes of the Lords, not one of ownership. The familiar may guard, advise, or teach, but it gives something, and the witch must give in return.

Some are companions for life, others are inherited, and some come and go with little explanation. But any proper arrangement between a witch and her familiar falls under the protection of the Accord. When a witch is unkind to her familiar, she is in danger of more than just being without a handy magical companion. She risks the displeasure of powers that have an entire kingdom of animals to answer for.

The First Accord has its own history, though the details are not entirely clear. The earliest records we have put it down to negotiations between witches and some of the more formidable Animal Lords; later on, tradition speaks of further meetings to clarify or renew those terms. In the time since, certain witches have made their living as intermediaries between the two worlds.

One might be called a Bearer of the First Accord, a mark of recognition from the Lords of the Animals and an acknowledgment of the obligations she has been given. Then there is the rarer title of She Who May Approach. To a mortal ear, it is unassuming, even unimpressive, but the Animal Lords would disagree. A mortal who may approach has been recognized. She may enter places where other mortals would be intruders. She may speak before powers that would otherwise ignore her, or worse, see her as prey.

It does not make her safe; the Bear King is still the Bear King, but at least she will be heard.

There is also the Peace Talker, for those who have habitually stood between the witches and the Animal Lords. These are privileges of a sort, yet like most occult designations, they come with strings attached. A Bearer of the First Accord cannot flout the rules and then claim the title. A Peace Talker is expected to make conversation before making threats.

Every title grants something.

Every title also takes something away.

The Concordat of Mephistopheles

Warlocks are a different matter altogether. While a witch’s power comes from study, initiation, and the good graces of her Patron, a warlock bargains. For the origins of that, you have to look to the Concordat of Mephistopheles.

Do not believe the clerics' claims that all warlocks are in service to Mephistopheles. Most have never uttered his name, and some of the Powers that make warlocks would count him an enemy. Mephistopheles did not lay claim to them all; he simply set the terms of the bargain.

Before the Concordat, there was no dependable way for a supernatural Power to put some of its strength into a mortal on a permanent basis. You had your miracles from the gods, your possessed mediums, your demons teaching sorcery, but it was an unstable business. Mephistopheles put an end to that. He created a metaphysical framework that allowed a Power to bestow ongoing abilities in return for whatever consideration was deemed fit: allegiance, sacrifice, or obedience. And so the warlock was born.

It hardly matters what the Power is. An archdevil or demon prince can make a warlock, as can an ancient dragon, an archfey, an elemental sovereign, or something from beyond the stars for which our scholars have no name. The Concordat is the mechanism; the pact itself sets the terms. That is why you will find no two pacts alike. One may give up her soul, another seven years of her life, another must see to it that a lost relic is found. Some of these deals seem quite generous. They are not safe for all that.

Warlocks come to understand the central tenet of the Concordat in short order: power given is power owed.

What the original text of the Concordat says is anyone’s guess. There are plenty of forgeries in circulation among the occult set. Demonologists will tell you Mephistopheles put out contradictory versions on purpose, while infernal types say the true copy is in Hell. Warlocks have been known to put their hands on fragments in languages older than any mortal tongue. But the principles are plain enough. A Power must deliver on its word, and a mortal must put something on the table. Both are held to the letter of the agreement, not to intent. And there is always a price.

This accounts for the precise way warlock patrons talk. Devils are well known for it, but Faerie Powers can be worse given how differently they view a promise. It is also what makes a witch deeply suspicious of a warlock. Her Patron can do as he pleases, teach, punish, or leave her to her own devices. A warlock’s Power has entered into a deal.

An outsider might not see much in the way of a distinction. For witches, however, it is everything.

Three Agreements, Three Relationships

Taken together, these three ancient agreements describe much of the hidden structure underlying witches and warlocks.

There is the Pact of Baba Yaga, which puts to rest the question of how witches are to conduct themselves with one another. The First Accord is there to determine the terms between a witch and her familiars, as well as the Powers that give voice to them. Then the Concordat of Mephistopheles to settle what price a Power will exact from a mortal for bestowing its supernatural gifts.

In short, the First Pact is about community, the First Accord is about relationship, and the Concordat is a transaction. But running under all of them is an age-old tenet of magic: no power is ever given without some obligation attached.

Power is never free.

Zothique, the Dying Earth, and Yog

 Last week I talked about the Dying Earth. Since this is last Monday before I get back to my Mirror Mondays, I do want to hold up another mirror, even if it is at an oblique angle.

So I find myself thinking of Yog again. More to the point, the Wasted Lands of Yog. Using the Wasted Lands RPG.

In a way, Yog is my own take on the Dying Earth setting, but I am not drawing from a single well. I have no desire for Yog to be just another Dying Earth or some other swords-and-sorcery affair with a red sun hanging over it all. Those are fun, of course, but we have a lot of games for that.

I want to convey to Yog an age that is almost impossible to put into words. The people who make their home now are walking atop entire civilizations that have come and gone. You will find kingdoms built on the ruins of older ones, by builders who could not have told you who put those ruins in place. The magic is as old as it is perilous, and one gets the impression it was better known to those who perished millennia ago than to the ones making use of it today.

History here does not run in a straight line; it is a matter of layers. Some of those layers get turned over, others have a way of waking up. I would say that is Vance’s influence.

But The Dying Earth is not what Yog is. Not exactly, anyway. 

Look at the gaming DNA, and you will also see plenty of Hyperborea. Jeffrey Talanian has put together an RPG that is part old-school D&D, part weird science-fantasy, and part swords & sorcery. He takes his cues from Howard, Lovecraft, and above all Clark Ashton Smith, yet he never loses sight of the fact that it has to function as a game. That is something I value.

Yog can have its share of dying-world philosophy, but at the end of the day I need my characters to be out there breaking down doors, sifting through ruins for ancient magic and the like, or putting an end to monsters. They will uncover things best left in the ground. Hyperborea allows for that sort of thing, with its mix of horror and the odd bit of impossible science.

Then you have Zothique.

For the mood of Yog, Clark Ashton Smith’s work is perhaps the most significant. I have talked a lot about Zothique in the past. It is the final continent of an Earth in the far future. The lands we know have been under the sea for eons while others have made their appearance and sunk again in the vastness of time. The sun is old, the world is in its last age, and much of history and science is a memory. Magic is back.

Smith was at it in the 1930s, well before Vance put pen to paper for The Dying Earth in 1950. And if Vance can be dangerous, Zothique is consumed by death.

You will find necromancers everywhere. It is not confined to the fellow in black robes in the tower on the edge of town. Sorcerers are raising kingdoms from corpses, lovers won’t stay in their graves, and tombs hold things with ambitions of their own. One could be in a city and feel as though it were a monument to a civilization that has already had its funeral.

In tales like "The Empire of the Necromancers" or "The Charnel God" (two of my favorites), death is not an interruption. It is the landscape. In some places, you might not be able to tell where life leaves off and death takes over.

That is very much how I see Yog. In a sense, Zothique is as decadent as I would have it be for Yog. You will find your share of kings and princes, merchants and priests, sorcerers and torturers, not to mention thieves and wanderers. Yet one gets the impression that very few are concerned with making tomorrow any better.

Then again, why put in the effort? There is little tomorrow to be had.

Kingdoms may come and go, but no one has much faith that they will endure. Religions make their way, though their deities are likely just old ghosts from a bygone era. And while cities hold on to life, the deserts are there to swallow them up, kingdom by kingdom. It all has a temporary quality about it, even civilization itself. That is what I am after on Yog.

Vance provides the ancient world, the oddity of magic and knowledge long since put aside, and the absurdity of folk carrying on with their small-time schemes under a waning sun. Hyperborea offers the gameable swords & sorcery structure; on its map a barbarian or a witch can rub shoulders with a weird monster or some relic of ancient tech, and no one needs to make an issue of it.

But from Zothique, I take the death.

Not in the sense of a high body count, but as entropy. The end of empires and languages and gods. A city left to rot. A tradition of magic is vanishing because the last adept who knew it is gone and taught no one. Whole ways of seeing the world are being buried in the sand.

I want to put that into Yog. I want ruins whose names are no one’s recollection. Gods known only by what was chiseled into a tomb. Spells so old that the question of whether their maker was human is a matter of debate. Dead civilizations layered on top of other dead ones. The people of Yog don’t live amid the detritus of a single past, but of many. That makes a difference.

It goes some way to explaining the necromancy on Yog. The living are a minority compared to the dead, and the weight of those ages is upon us. To a necromancer, it is less a transgression than tapping into the world’s greatest resource: its history.

There are some ways in which I part company with both Vance and Smith.

As mentioned previously, I am also taking influence from other sources. Raven, Swordsmistress of Chaos is not great, but fun. I did my playtesting of Wasted Lands using Raven, and it was a lot of fun. The world fits. I am also mining Gor. Gor is not great, nor is it fun. BUT it does give me some great antagonists to fight against. Something that Vance and Smith do not really do. 

There are things about Gor that are useful to me.

The city-states. The strange cultures. The decadent courts. The merchants, warriors, priests, assassins, and thieves. A world that can feel ancient and brutal even when remnants of advanced technology are hiding behind the curtains. And, of course, the Priest-Kings.

I am even using that name on Yog, though my Priest-Kings are not Norman's alien rulers. Mine are human. Painfully, disappointingly human.  They rule the city-states of Yog through religion, tradition, violence, and fear.

And then there is slavery. You can't really talk about Gor without talking about slavery, particularly the sexual slavery of women. It is not some incidental bit of background decoration in those books. It becomes fundamental to Norman's vision of the world and, eventually, to the philosophy he is trying to sell.

That is where Yog takes a very different road. I don't want to recreate Gor, vis-à-vis a Dying Earth lens. 

I want to burn Gor to the fucking ground. 

Or, more to the point, I want the player characters to be able to do it. 

I want that fantasy woman on the cover of the sleazy 70s and 80s paperback to be the one saying to the oppressors, "Everything dies. But you are dying first."

Yog is a world at the end of things, to be sure. But I don’t see everyone there as ready to make peace with it. Let the sun die if it must. Let the empire become another stratum for someone to walk on. Those still drawing breath now are going to put up a fight for it. They will face down monsters and slavers and Priest-Kings and any king or sorcerer who thinks a dying world is a license to ruin the rest of your days. 

And quite a few of the people doing the fighting are going to be witches.

Perhaps that is the line between the two. The Dying Earth says "we are all going to die." Yog wants to know what you intend to do about it first.

#RPGaDAY2026: Day 31 Edge

The witch lives on the edge. 

You will find it to be the case in Jackson, IL. There, teenage witches separate the town’s older, darker undercurrents from the everyday business of school, football, the local diner, and homework with friends. They are still girls, yet they are the ones who know where the monsters can be found. And they are the ones to stop them. 

The same holds for Advanced Witches & Warlocks. A witch is never a simple thing; she occupies the space between the arcane and the divine, as much a scholar or village healer as a priestess or an object of fear. That is the whole point.

In Yog, the edge is all the more pronounced. Here the witch is positioned between survival and rebellion, the old gods and a world on its last legs, between being put to the hunt and turning into something the tyrants would dread in the dark. Yog has no use for comfort; it gives the witch fire and blood and will, and makes her choose.

That is why “Edge” feels like the right place to end RPGaDay.

The witch is invariably at the boundary, be it between mercy and vengeance or the world as it is and what it could be, between girl and monster. It is up to her to decide what gets across.

And what doesn't get back up.

Multiversal NPC

It is Monday, so a new week, but the only one of this week. Ability and Fair of Face. And since this is the last one, lets have someone from all the worlds. 

Selene Marr. A beautiful, unsettling witch-adjacent woman who appears in Jackson as the new Instructor at Beecher College everyone notices, in Carbon Vale as a folklore department assistant who knows too much for her age, and in Yog as a veiled oracle whose "ability" is seeing the version of you that survives. In Iriandor, she is a temple witch in the first year of her temple administration. She can see the best in everyone. 

In every world, she knows something about the PCs and sometimes something about one of their Shards. She is also looking for her younger sister Tessa.

Jackson Soundtrack

Really, for Jackson there is only one song for Edge.

--

And that’s a wrap on another #RPGaDAY! Huge thanks to David F. Chapman (Autocratik) and Anthony Boyd (Casting Shadows Blog) for keeping this tradition going year after year. It’s been a great excuse to reflect, reconnect, and rediscover why I love this hobby so much. Whether you joined in with every prompt or just caught a few along the way, I hope you found something that inspired you.

It has been a great year talking about my various campaigns from West Haven to Jackson and Carbon Vale to Yog and Iriandor. All these worlds are a lot of fun, and I hope to keep bringing you more.

I hope you all enjoyed the soundtrack as well. I have been playing it while I work on all of these posts.

https://www.autocratik.com/ • https://www.castingshadowsblog.com/

#RPGaDAY2026: Day 30 Pride

 Today is Pride.

I am proud of Jackson, West Haven, Yog, and Advanced Witches & Warlocks. But for this prompt, Pride means something more specific.

With Jackson and Carbon Vale I draw heavily on Monsterhearts. Not so much the mechanics as the emotional core of it. Teenagers are a mess. So is desire. So is figuring out who you are. The horror and the magic lie in who you love and want, who makes you afraid, and who is watching you become something new.

Take Larina in Jackson: she is bisexual in this version and not particularly fazed by this. She has made out with Grant, Stephanie’s older brother, and with Candy. Faye is a lesbian, but there is more confusion and conflict about it; after all, it is 1985-6 in the Midwest. Candy and Denise are probably what we would call poly now, but that still does not quite explain them (and let's be honest, what DOES explain them??). But Denise does not like anyone touching her, and yet she and Candy are in love in ways that are both platonic and romantic. They do figure it out, after a couple of failed marriages, spectacularly bad divorces, and some ex-husbands they no longer talk to. They finally get married to each other when they are 50. But they belonged to each other long before that.

Vera Rook is what you could term "hetero-flexible," simply because Vera does as she wants and is happy to put someone on edge if the occasion calls for it. Roderick Morgan appears to have little interest in anyone. Andy and Rowan are soulmates, and the model Jackson Public High Couple. They are also an interracial couple, not a big deal today, but in 1985 small-town Midwest, this was still rare.  

You find a supporting cast all over the spectrum around them, just like you would in real life. And they all are not confined to the student body.

Teacher Thomas Avery knows the perils of a rumor in a small-town high school in the mid-80s. He is cautious, and he listens for what is left unsaid. Elaine Bellweather is no front-line warrior; she teaches her music and keeps an open eye, allowing the students some space to breathe.

It is important.

You do not have to be swinging a sword or working a spell to be heroic in a horror game. There is heroism in making sure a kid has a room where he is safe for five minutes.

Queer characters in horror should not be reduced to subtext, a joke, or some kind of cautionary tale. Yes. That is exactly what often happened in horror movies in the 1980s but I can do better. They can be witches, scholars, jerks, saints, monsters, parents, teachers and everything in between. In short, people. And in a game of witches, those on the fringes of society are exactly where they ought to be: in the middle of the action.

Jackson NPC

We are at Day 30, Sunday, Emotion and Blessed. 

Andrea Thompson is Andy and Rowan’s future daughter, blessed because Andy and Rowan never thought they would be able to have children after so many failed attempts. Why am I talking about her even though she isn't born until the 2000s? She makes an appearance in my games where she is also Jackson's Spirit Rider. In a town where everyone says they want Andy and Rowan to succeed but wishes they would fail behind their backs, Andrea was wonderful proof that they make it and do well. 

Jackson Soundtrack

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#RPGaDAY2026: Day 29 Labor

Magic is labor.

One can be forgiven for forgetting that magic is work. In many games, a spell goes off simply because the character sheet has a box for it. Yet for a witch it ought to be felt as labor, as work. The genuine article, with all the time and attention and repetition it entails, not to mention the sweat and the errors and the practice.

Consider what a witch does. She is copying spells, mixing oils, gathering herbs and learning names. There is cleaning of ritual tools and study of the moon. She prepares charms, sits with those who are ill, makes tea, and keeps her notes. If something does not go to plan, she starts over. She will listen to the dead or watch a candle burn itself out.

For Advanced Witches & Warlocks, this is significant.

A witch is more than a pointy hat and a list of spells. She is one who puts in the work. It may be mystical or emotional in nature, but there is also the physical side to it. Carrying books, hauling water, digging where others would not, or just staying up when one wants to sleep.

In Jackson, IL, such labor could mean a bit of research at the library, a dark walk home, or seeing to a friend. Or perhaps dragging someone from an abandoned building before whatever is in the basement has a chance to wake up. Or it could be bartering bits of your soul for knowledge so dangerous that there is no other way.

Again, it is Saturday, and Zatanna is still a good example. In the comics, she speaks backward, and the magic happens. But as an example, try reading this sentence backward...while you are getting someone to try to hit you. Not that easy now. She puts in the work to practice this. 

Magic is built on the labor.

People tend to notice the magic. But it is the labor that makes it possible.

Jackson and Carbon Vale NPC

Today is Day 29, Saturday, Emotion and Works Hard. And I have the perfect NPC.

Lars Nichols: Larina's father, trying to hold a family together while pretending he does not see all the impossible things. Trying to be both father and mother to a teenage girl is hard enough; trying to do that for a teenage witch? While still grieving your recently passed wife? One would be forgiven for thinking I hate Lars.

Jackson Soundtrack

https://www.autocratik.com/ • https://www.castingshadowsblog.com/