The Other Side blog: 80s

Showing posts with label 80s. Show all posts

Thursday, May 7, 2026

Running NIGHT SHIFT and Dark Places & Demogorgons: What I've Learned from Two 80s Campaigns

I’ve explored the world of 1980s supernatural gaming before.

I have done it with two OSR-adjacent rule systems, NIGHT SHIFT: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars and SURVIVE THIS!! Dark Places & Demogorgons. This is not a post about which game is better than the other; I am not doing that. Both games are fantastic, and live very happily next to each other on my shelves and my gaming table.

This is about what I learned from running two similar-style campaigns using rule systems drawn from the same ecology.

And what you can learn from all of that.

NIGHT SHIFT: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars and SURVIVE THIS!! Dark Places & Demogorgons

Road to Nowhere: From Sunny Valley to Jackson

A few years ago, I played SURVIVE THIS!! Dark Places & Demogorgons from Bloat Games to revisit my love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but with a twist. Instead of Sunnydale, California in the late 1990s, I set the story in Sunny Valley, Ohio, in 1984. The characters were still Buffy, Willow, Tara, Faith, vampires, high school drama, and a Hellmouth. But the setting felt different; colder, more Midwestern, and even more 1980s. It was like a 'kids on bikes' story, except one kid had a stake and an epic destiny.

That experiment worked out really great. Dark Places & Demogorgons was the perfect game for this idea. It’s designed for stories about kids in the 1980s facing strange things that adults ignore or don’t believe. In Sunny Valley, the supernatural crept into childhood and early adolescence. The game was all about weekly monsters, school rumors, odd teachers, creepy houses, bad weather, and that feeling of being young and sensing something is wrong, even if you can’t explain it yet.

In short, it did exactly what I wanted.

Once in a Lifetime

Now I’m working on something similar, but it’s not the same.

Jackson, IL, is another retro-80s supernatural setting. It’s a small Midwestern town with teenagers, high school drama, monsters, ghosts, witches, and things hiding just out of sight. At first glance, you might think, “Oh, this is just like Sunny Valley.”

But it’s not.

Sunny Valley was my way of taking the Buffy mythos and setting and shifting it into a different decade, state, and game system. It was a familiar story in an alternate reality. Jackson is different. It’s not just Sunnydale with a new name, or a copy of Jeffersontown from Dark Places & Demogorgons. Still, I’ll admit Jeffersontown ("J-town" to locals) reminded me of my hometown, Jacksonville ("J-ville" to locals), which inspired me to create Jackson.

Jackson feels more personal to me.

With Jackson, I’m trying to blend the emotional feel of a real place, Central Illinois folklore, memories of growing up in the 1980s, and the supernatural style of NIGHT SHIFT: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars. I want it to feel like it’s always belonged there.

Don’t You (Forget About Me)

There is also a difference in what the systems want from the characters.

Dark Places & Demogorgons is about kids. That is one of its greatest strengths (if not its greatest strength). It understands the fears and freedoms of being young. The characters are not adults with jobs, mortgages, failed marriages, regrets, and long histories of supernatural trauma. They are kids trying to survive school, family, bullies, monsters, and the creeping suspicion that the world is stranger than anyone told them.

That made it perfect for Sunny Valley.

In that campaign, Buffy and her friends were younger. They were not the characters from the television show yet. They were versions of those characters caught earlier, rawer, and in some ways more vulnerable. Sunny Valley did not need the full emotional architecture of adulthood. It needed bicycles, lockers, cemeteries, malls, high school rivalries, and the occasional vampire getting dusted behind the gym.

I used those characters because there was very obvious "Buffy-DNA" in DP&D. I just let it come to the surface a little bit more.

NIGHT SHIFT, on the other hand, lets me broaden the frame.

Yes, Jackson has teenagers. In fact, teenagers are central to what I am doing with it. But Jackson also has adults who know things. Adults who failed. Adults who lied. Adults who fought the dark before and lost something. Adults trying to keep kids safe, even when they cannot tell them the truth.

That is important.

Jackson is not just a place where kids discover the supernatural. It is a place where the supernatural has always been and has a history. The Veil is thin here. The Bad Land, Mauvaisterre, is not just a monster factory. It is part of the town’s buried geography. The ghosts, witches, hags, psychics, cryptids, old families, school legends, and haunted buildings all connect to something deeper.

It feels like some of the adults are veterans of previous wars and can't do anything to stop the next one.

That feels like NIGHT SHIFT to me.

Jackson, IL, is "Veterans of the Supernatural Wars" as a thesis statement.

And all to the music of John Mellencamp's "Scarecrow."

Three witches. Just doing the best that they can.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World

This is also why I do not see Dark Places & Demogorgons and NIGHT SHIFT as competing games.

Very much the opposite.

Dark Places & Demogorgons is created by Bloat Games, and I am happy to call them friends. I buy their books. They buy our NIGHT SHIFT books. We talk at the cons we are both at. We cheer on each other's successes. That is how this hobby should work. The world has plenty of room for both of us.

I have said before that a rising tide raises all ships, and I honestly believe that. Other designers are not my competition. They are my colleagues. They are my peers. Playing their games makes my games better. Reading their work makes me think harder about my own. Seeing how someone else handles 1980s supernatural horror gives me a better sense of what I want to do, what I want to avoid, and what I want to emphasize. What I want to do different.

Dark Places & Demogorgons helped me think through Sunny Valley.

NIGHT SHIFT is helping me build Jackson.

Those are related acts of design, but not identical ones.

I Was Born in a Small Town

Sunny Valley was a Buffy-shaped experiment. It asked, "What if Buffy had happened in Ohio in 1984?" A simple question with a very satisfying answer.

Jackson asks something else.

Jackson asks, "What if the town itself was haunted? What if the supernatural was not an interruption, but a pressure? What if every generation had its own monsters, its own secrets, and its own kids who had to deal with what the adults left behind?"

That is a different kind of game.

In Sunny Valley, the Hellmouth was there, but it was more indistinct. The characters knew something was wrong, but the exact nature of it was part of the joke and part of the mystery. Sunny Valley was ironic. Of course, the place called Sunny Valley was cold, rainy, and full of vampires. Ohio vampires, no less.

Jackson is not ironic in the same way.

Jackson is a nice town. A real town, at least emotionally. It has high schools, colleges, pizza places, bookstores, old houses, churches, back roads, local legends, old money, bad memories, and teenagers who think they are the first generation to discover everything. It has a public face and a hidden one. That makes it ideal for NIGHT SHIFT, because NIGHT SHIFT is very good at letting the ordinary and the supernatural occupy the same space.

The horror in Jackson is not just "there is a monster."

The horror is "there always has been a monster, and someone knew."

That is a different tone altogether.

Home Sweet Home

The other major difference is ownership.

Sunny Valley was fun because it was a remix. I was taking characters and ideas I already loved and moving them into a different system (that I also loved) and a different decade (that I ... ok, you get it now). It was a creative exercise, and a very useful one. It let me explore Buffy, Willow, Tara, Faith, and the others through a different lens.

Jackson is worldbuilding from the ground up.

It owes something to Jacksonville, Illinois. It owes something to Jeffersontown. It owes something to every small Midwestern town with a haunted school, a local ghost story, a weird patch of woods, and one bookstore owner who knows more than they should.

But Jackson is becoming its own thing. Sunny Valley allowed me to do a lot of cheating. Jackson is less forgiving. I don't get to crib notes from someone else's creative efforts; I have to do it all on my own.

That matters because Jackson needs to support more than a single campaign idea. It needs to hold high school drama, occult mystery, monster hunting, local history, family secrets, psychic phenomena, witchcraft, cryptids, and the strange gravity of a place where the Veil is too thin.

That is bigger than Sunny Valley.

Not better. Bigger.

Sunny Valley was a great place to run a specific kind of game.

Jackson is a full-on Night World.

You are now entering Jackson, IL home of the Cougars!

We Built This City

Looking back, I can see a clear line from one project to the other.

Sunny Valley taught me that moving supernatural horror into the 1980s immediately changes the feel. No cell phones. No internet as we know it. Rumors move through notes in lockers, landlines, malls, classrooms, diners, and late-night phone calls. Research means libraries, newspapers, yearbooks, microfilm, local cranks, and that one teacher who knows too much.

Jackson takes all of that and pushes it further.

In Jackson, the 1980s are not just aesthetic. It is the structure. The period limits what characters can know, how quickly they can know it, and who they have to trust. The town becomes a network of secrets, and the kids are moving through it without a map. And it will be 15-20 years before anyone has GPS.

That is where the two projects really meet.

Sunny Valley was about taking a known supernatural teen drama and asking what it looked like through the lens of Dark Places & Demogorgons.

Jackson is about taking everything I know about 1980s horror, small towns, witches, ghosts, high school, and the supernatural, and asking what it looks like as a NIGHT SHIFT setting.

I guess a natural question is, could I play in Jackson, IL, using Dark Places & Demogorgons? Of course you could! I think if my "Plays Well with Others" posts (many linked below) are any indication, then yes, you could. Maybe I'll try it out one day. I already know Larina works well for both. But for now, I want to stick with NIGHT SHIFT since I have built so much more for it.

The Final Countdown

So no, Jackson is not Sunny Valley. But Sunny Valley helped make Jackson possible.

It gave me a place to test some ideas. It reminded me how well the 1980s work for supernatural gaming. It showed me how much fun there is in moving familiar horror tropes into Midwestern spaces. It also reminded me that the right system matters. Dark Places & Demogorgons served Sunny Valley well because it was about kids in the 1980s facing strange dangers.

NIGHT SHIFT serves Jackson because Jackson is about more than the kids.

It is about the town.

It is about the adults who remember too much, the teens who are just beginning to see, the monsters that never really left, and the old powers under the streets and fields. It is about what happens when the supernatural is not a visitor, but a resident.

Sunny Valley had a Hellmouth. Jackson has history.

That is the difference that makes each campaign unique.

Links

Plays Well With Others

Dark Places & Demogorgons

Sunny Valley, OH

NIGHT SHIFT Veterans of the Supernatural Wars

Thursday, April 30, 2026

This Old Dragon: Issue #93

I am opting to take this one first for a few reasons. One, I really wanted to go through all the Dragons from 1985-86 for my personal enjoyment. I also wanted to cover this one since I pulled it out for the cover when I talked about Jack Williamson's contributions to the Witches of Appendix N. This also gave me my third reason. This issue is falling apart, and what remains is mildewed and water-damaged. So I figure I'd better do it before it kills me with my allergies. So for this review, I'll take some pictures, but mostly I'll stick with my Dragon Magazine CD-ROM collection.

As I mentioned already, I want to do a deep dive into all the Dragons from 1985 to 1986, with some choice ones from 1984 and 1987. This one is a great place to start with the January 1985 issue.

I also mentioned Jeff Busch's cover yesterday. Just one in a series of were-tigresses, but this is one of the best.

Letters cover previous Dragon entries on the Height & Weight and the Crystalbrittle spell.

Gygax is up asking us if we would see a Dungeons & Dragons movie. I think we know the answer to that one. If it has Jeremy Irons, then no, if it has Chris Pine, then yes. Keep in mind that Chris Pine was 4 (4 and a half if you asked him) at the time this issue came out.

Our first substantial article is from no less than Gary Gygax himself, titled Life Beyond 15th Level. New Rules for Druids with Nowhere to Go. Covers the hierophant druid we will later see in the Unearthed Arcana.

Gygax is up again in a rebuttal to the fundamentalists out there raging against D&D in Thinking for Yourself. I can't think of many Dragon readers who would be swayed by fundies. But this is Gygax's soapbox, and he can tell people what he wants. I am not sure about the timing, but the infamous 60 Minutes segment will run in September. Likely, it was not filmed yet, but there was plenty going on. Egbert had died in 1980. Mazes and Monsters had hit TV in 1982.

Arthur Collins has his "The Making of a Milieu. How to Start a World and Keep it Turning" about building a fantasy world. This is largely material we all do now, start small, build up, reject what doesn't work. He recommends building history into the world through layered maps and letting place names, borders, and institutions arise organically from that history. I am not sure about the NPC "mentor" per se, but guiding NPCs is a good idea. Something Ed Greenwood has done to great effect.

Speaking Ed, he is up with an Ecology of article, The Ecology of the Eye of the Deep. Now these never get old for me, really. In fact, I tend to enjoy them more now than I ever used to. They are also, for the most part, still useful regardless of what edition you are playing.

Short Hops and Big Drops: Here's How Far and How High Characters Can Jump by Stephen Inniss is another good one really. It's not a bad system and again, looks like something that would work for any system, not just D&D.

Another article that still gets mentions today is Frank Mentzer's Ay pronunseeAYshun gyd: An Informal Index of the Right Things to Say. This one comes up every so often and is the "go to" guide for pronunciations for all sorts of D&D-related entries.

Merle Rasmussen is up with another Top Secret article, Agencies and Alignments. The varied groups of the TOP SECRET Game. The article catalogs the various intelligence agencies, criminal organizations, and terrorist groups that player characters might work for or against. Each organization is described through a standardized set of categories, including headquarters, founding date, activities, objectives, and allies. The article also introduces an alignment system that measures agents' political, change-oriented, and economic beliefs on a spectrum, which can affect how well agents from different organizations cooperate during missions. The groups range from legitimate Western intelligence bodies like The Agency and HEARTS, to criminal syndicates like Hydra and The Cartel, to radical terrorist organizations like Red Dawn. I remember this article well. I thought these might be good for Chill, a game I was really getting into at the time, and was looking for agencies like S.A.V.E.

Lots of full-page ads for the new Twilight: 2000 RPG.

The Gypsy Train. A Moving Scenario for AD&D Game Play. Designed be Richard Fichera and artwork by Bob Marus. This is great adventure with a great hook. My son is running a Ravenloft campaign now, and this is rather perfect. There are even cut-outs of the various wagons to use! The NPCs are not all designed to be enemies to the PCs or evil, and are presented with a variety of motivations and things they can do. Fairly detailed for a Dragon adventure.

Eira is our short fiction by Josepha Sherman.

Big ad for the Dungeons & Dragons 10th Anniversary pack. I wish I had grabbed one of these. According to Frank Mentzer, a lot of these ended up in a Lake Geneva landfill.

Up now our Ares sci-fi section.

Friend of the Other Side, Jeff Grubb, is up with the Marvel Phile with more Avengers. In this issue, Mockingbird and Shroud, who feels like an occult Batman.

Space Opera gets some love with New Ships for Old from Stefan Jones. Or how to update your old starships. I remember trying to use this with Star Frontiers.

Peter C. Zelinski has New Brotherhoods minor cryptic alliances for Gamma World. I used this in conjunction with the Top Secret article for some Chill groups. I remember writing all of them out and trying to find a common format I could use. Don't recall how far I got. Not all worked, but there was a lot of ideas here.

Speaking of which, nice ad for Chill.

Star Frontiers gets a nice feature on farming. Rare Wines and Ready Cash. Agricultural Trade in the Frontier by Tony Watson is actually a pretty useful article. We think of starships and space battles, but an army and colonists move on their stomachs, and food needs to be grown.

Gamers' Guide as our small ads. Not a lot in this issue.

The Convention Calendar is also pretty small. No shock, really, it was January.

Four full-color pages of Wormy. A page of Dragonmirth. And three pages of Snarf Quest.

I managed to get through this one without Benadryl, which is a win. The issue is a good one, lots of great and memorable material.

While hindsight tells me this was the beginning of the end of the Gygax-era of D&D/TSR there is nothing here to make me think that we knew this was coming back then. Are there signs? Yeah, if you know what you are looking for OR maybe that is just confirmation bias.

But I can say this, we are entering into an era of Dragon that over the next 4 to 5 years will produce some of the best content for long-time gamers. People might call that time the Silver Age, but there is nothing "Second Best" about the content of Dragon in the issues to come.

Monday, April 27, 2026

Monstrous Mondays: MoChem the Morgan Chemical Monster

Going back today to Jackson, IL, my current NIGHT SHIFT^® campaign and my all-consuming obsession.

Today I have a monster that I have been trying to bring into a game for the better part of 47 years. Not that this guy is a hard monster to figure out, it's just that his history is so tied up in my hometown that he didn't really fit into any other game I have done before.

This particular monster was created by me one afternoon in the summer of 1979 when I was 10. I had been reading a lot of Daniel Cohen's "monster books" thanks to our town's well-stocked Carnegie grant library.

I lamented that our town didn't have their own local monster (the word "cryptid" was not in my vocabulary yet) though this was way before the internet and before I discovered microfiche to discover my hometown did indeed have it's own history of monsters, ghosts, and other things.

I figured my creation was as "real" as anything I had been reading (age 10 was the start of my real exploration into skepticism, which led me to the conclusion that the supernatural was all bullshit). While I still enjoyed reading it all, I thought it was as real as, say, "Star Wars."

So in a fit of childhood bravado and creativity that I subject you all too every day, I made a monster.

Outside of town was a chemical plant. Now, I am not sharing the name because my blog gets hit by bots I have found material I have written here for games passed off as "truth." Details about the Hex Girls and Astral Spiders, just to name two. So there is no reason to drag a real company with real employees into something invented by a 10-year-old. But I am keeping the monster's name.

So let's switch over to the fictional Jackson, IL and it's resident mutant.

The Story of MoChem and the MoChem Monster

Just east of town, the Mauvaisterre splits into various creeks and smaller bodies of water. One of these runs by the now-closed Morgan Chemical plant. Morgan Chemical came to Jackson in the late 1800s, and was founded by Jacobi Morgan and Sons. Morgan Chemical produced fertilizer, pesticides, and other agricultural chemicals needed by the growing farming boom in Central Illinois post-Civil War economy. The plant was well-run, provided hundreds of jobs for locals, and brought money into the local economy. So successful was the plant that the road on which the plant was located was renamed Morgan Ave, and businesses began to pop up all along the east-west corridor. So much so that it eventually took businesses away from the North-South Main Street.

Jacobi Mogan was very typical of many of the entrepreneurs who had settled in the area at the time. "Work Hard. Tend to Family. Fear God" was his motto. In all fairness, he was, for the time, a good boss. His employees did work hard, and he paid them a fair wage. The company grew on his solid Presbyterian-Protestant work ethic and the belief that anything is possible with faith and hard work. He was an early benefactor to MacAlister College and helped build one of Jackson's famous Gothic-revival style churches.

His sons, however, were not so charitably minded. When the sons took control of the company in the early 1900s, they saw ways to increase profits by cutting some safety standards. They also got involved in the Great War, providing "fuel additives," but it was well known they had taken a side contract in weapons research. When World War II came around, Morgan Chemical provided gas masks, and rumor says the chemicals the gas masks protected against.

With each generation, the Morgan family motto (metaphorically speaking) lost another word until, in practice, only “Work Hard” remained. By the 1960s, under the fourth generation of Morgans, the plant had become notorious among workers for failing safety standards, careless disposal practices, and toxic leaks. Waste seeped into the groundwater and into the channels that fed the Mauvaisterre. Cattle downstream sickened or died. Children born to workers were whispered about in hushed voices. Whatever prosperity the company had once brought to Jackson now came at a terrible cost.

It was in this poisoned environment that MoChem first came to be known.

No one agrees on what MoChem truly is. Some claim it was born in the tainted water itself, shaped by chemical waste and bad earth. Others whisper that it was once a deformed child, discarded by frightened parents after the plant poisoned too many families. Another tale says it had been a worker who fell into a vat and came back wrong. The most popular story holds that MoChem was an undercover reporter from St. Louis or Chicago who came to expose Morgan Chemical, got too close to the truth, and was murdered and dumped in the waste.

What is known for certain is that in 1973 Morgan Chemical was fined, shuttered, and abandoned. Cleanup was promised. Very little was ever done.

Soon after that, sightings began.

MoChem (AD&D 1st Edition)

Frequency: Very rare
No. Appearing: 1 (Unique)
Armor Class: 5
Move: 9”
Hit Dice: 4+4
% in Lair: 55%
Treasure Type: Nil
No. of Attacks: 2 or 1
Damage/Attack: 1-6/1-6 or special
Special Attacks: Blood drain, engulf small prey
Special Defenses: Semi-liquid form, surprise
Magic Resistance: Standard
Intelligence: Low to Semi-
Alignment: Neutral (Evil)
Size: M
Psionic Ability: Nil
Attack/Defense Modes: Nil
Level/X.P. Value: IV / 240 + 5 per hit point

MoChem (NIGHT SHIFT)

No. Appearing: 1 (Unique)
DV: 6
Move: 45 ft.; may flow through narrow gaps at 30 ft.
Vitality Dice: 4
Attacks: 2 slams/claws
Damage: 1d6/1d6
Special: Semi-liquid form, blood drain, engulf, surprise, light sensitivity, sunlight damage, double damage from fire
XP Value: 140

MoChem is a malformed humanoid horror spawned from decades of illegal chemical dumping. Roughly man-sized but squat and thick-bodied, it has overlong arms, short, powerful legs, a single milky eye in its upper torso, and a flexible feeding maw below. Its body is coated in a red oily secretion often mistaken for blood.

Combat: MoChem attacks with two heavy slams or claws for 1-6 points of damage each. It may instead attempt to batter, grapple with, or press itself against prey to feed. It is cunning only in an animal way, preferring darkness, ambush, narrow spaces, and prey that are alone or already frightened.

Special Abilities

Blood Drain: Whenever MoChem scores a critical hit, it opens feeding pores or its maw against exposed flesh, draining 1-4 additional hit points of blood and vital fluids. This is in addition to normal damage. A drained victim may appear pale, weak, and chemically burned around the wound. This is not a vampiric or magical effect.

Semi-Liquid Form: MoChem may compress itself into a half-fluid shape, allowing it to pass through bars, storm drains, culverts, wide cracks, broken windows, pipe openings, or any aperture large enough for a cat or small dog. In this form, it cannot attack normally, but it may move through spaces inaccessible to most man-sized creatures. It may resume its full shape in the following round. Because of this ability, it cannot be held by ordinary ropes or manacles, and non-magical grappling attacks against it suffer a -2 penalty.

Engulf Small Prey: Creatures of small build, as well as animals the size of dogs or smaller, may be engulfed if MoChem successfully hits with both attacks in a single round. The victim must save vs. petrification or be pinned within its semi-fluid mass. Thereafter, the victim suffers 1-4 hit points of damage per round until freed or dead. Small animals may simply be swallowed whole at the DM’s discretion.

Surprise: In darkness, sewers, culverts, abandoned industrial works, or wet ground near polluted runoff, MoChem surprises on 1-4 on 1d6.

Light Aversion: Bright light causes MoChem pain and disorientation. A strong lantern beam, continual light spell, or similar bright illumination forces it to attack at -2. If trapped in such light for more than 3 consecutive rounds, it will retreat if possible. A light spell cast directly upon or very near it inflicts 1-4 hit points of damage.

Sunlight: Direct natural sunlight inflicts 1-6 hit points of damage per round and prevents use of its semi-liquid form. MoChem avoids daylit areas whenever possible.

Vulnerability to Fire: All fire-based attacks inflict double damage.

MoChem is not undead, nor is it a true elemental or demon. It is a pollution-born predator, a toxic life form awakened in bad ground and abandoned waste. It lairs in culverts, runoff tunnels, chemical pits, and flooded industrial ruins.

MoChem possesses a rudimentary intelligence. Enough to know it despises its own existence, but not enough to know how to end it. It fears light and the sun and avoids both at all costs. According to scholars on local BBS sites, if you could lure it into direct sunlight, it would dry up and die. Others speculate that such a death would not be permanent unless the creature was also burned.

I kinda wish 10-year-old me could see this!

Night Shift^® is a registered trademark of Elf Lair, LLC.

Thursday, April 23, 2026

Tales of Jackson, IL: Hot for Teacher

I had something scheduled for today, but got my dates wrong, so today's post will be in one week instead. This one was supposed to be next week's post.

One of my good friends has been helping me with ideas for this game. He has expertise here since he is a high school football coach and works security at a large suburban high school. Valerie Beaumont is one of his characters that I use as an NPC often. I have been helping him a little with his current Star Trek game, so I figure he can help me with some more teachers for my Jackson, IL game.

Today, two coaches and their friendly rivalry.

Dr. Kiera "Keri" Moreau

Dr. Kiera Moreau could have gone anywhere. Former Olympian (Montreal, 1976), she retired, returned to school, and got her Ph.D. in Classical Studies. She was on her way to an interview for a job at MacAlister College when she crossed paths with Valerie Beaumont. They knew each other from years before and convinced her to come and teach at Jackson Public School. They also know each other's secrets. Vallerie is immortal, and Kiera is Fae, in particular, a sea nymph, or rather, the daughter of one. She isn't immortal, but she is long-lived.

She opted to stay. She teaches Latin I and II, and an elective in Classical Mythology. Larina is in her class and is annoyingly excited about it. She is also the girls' swim team coach.

In truth, Keri really kinda outclasses everyone here. I really like her and want to do more with her, and I know the characters can learn a lot from her. But. She has it all. Beauty. Brains. Strength and power. Why is she slumming it here? She knows something is going on.

She has seen these patterns repeated throughout history, and this time she has decided that she won't just sit by. Valerie stays away because her connection to others hurts. Keri stays because life without that connection hurts more. This is a point of contention between the two. Val thinks Keri gets too involved, Keri thinks that Val doesn't get involved enough.

And if she can give the cast something to aspire to be? Well then, "fortes fortuna adiuvat."

Dr. Kiera Moreau
7th Level Psychic (Empath), Half-fey (Sea Nymph)

Base Abilities
Strength: 12 (0)
Agility: 16 (+2) n
Toughness: 14 (+1)
Intelligence: 18 (+3)
Wits: 18 (+3) n
Persona: 20 (+4) A

Vit: 43 (7d6)
DV: 9
Fate Points: 1d8

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +4/+2/+1
Attack bonus (base): +2
Melee bonus: +0 Ranged bonus: +2

Languages: English, Latin, French, Greek
Skills: History (Int), Swim (Agl), Occult Knowledge (Int)

Saves: +3 to Persona-based saves

Psychic Abilities
Body Control, Empathy, Hydrokinesis

Fey Abilities
Glamour, Breathe underwater (1 hour), Harmed by cold iron and shadow steel (double normal damage), Long-lived

Hair: Black
Eyes: Gold
Height: 5'10"

Archetype: The Teacher with a mysterious past
Quote: "Fortes fortuna adiuvat." Fortune favors the brave!
Quirks: Arrives at school super early to swim.
Theme song: "Rio" - Duran Duran

Coach Kurt Zimmerman

Coach Zimmerman here is as much Greg's character as he is mine. Nearly all his background came from Greg.

Kurt Zimmerman, and he was born in Wisconsin in 1950. Went to college for math and was drafted into the Vietnam War in 1969. Did one tour of duty, where he rose to the rank of corporal. Was there at the Fall of Saigon and nearly missed his ride out. He was delirious but was rescued by Valerie Beaumont, whom he only sort of remembers.

He was awarded medals that he felt he didn't deserve. He used the GI Bill to return to college and ended up at the University of Illinois, where he followed the Illini as a religion. Got his teaching degree in math and a coaching certification. Kurt likes the orderliness of math. Finding proofs and working on problems were his solace while overseas.

He graduated and took a job teaching honors-level math (a job that Warren Evans wanted) and is the school's sponsor of the National Honor Society. He was raised on the idea that anything worth doing is worth doing correctly. This extends to his coaching and to his Calculus class.

He has a friendly rivalry with Keri over who will have more of their athletes on the Honor Roll. The winner gets to choose where they eat dinner, and the loser has to pay. Though they almost always end up at Sal's Pizza, where Keri orders her pizzas with green olives and extra anchovies.

Kurt has seen the supernatural and fought it before. But he reasons that he left all that behind in Saigon. Now he is not so sure. He doesn't suspect that Keri or Valerie are anything other than they appear. Though he can't help but think he has seen Valerie somewhere else.

Kurt Zimmerman
6th Level Veteran, Human

Base Abilities
Strength: 16 (+2) A
Agility: 15 (+1) n
Toughness: 14 (+1)
Intelligence: 16 (+2) n
Wits: 14 (+1)
Persona: 12 (+0)

Vit: 38 (6d8)
DV: 8
Fate Points: 1d8

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +4/+2/+1
Attack bonus (base): +3
Melee bonus: +2 Ranged bonus: +1

Languages: English, Latin, Spanish
Skills: Math (Int), Running (Agl)

Saves: +2 to all saves

Veteran Abilities
Melee combat, Ranged combat, Increased damage, Combat expertise, Improved defense, Supernatural attacks, Tracking

Hair: Brown, usually cut close to his scalp
Eyes: Green/Blue
Height: 5'11"

Archetype: The Coach
Quote: "Hello, class, my name is Coach Zimmerman. No, you can't call me Coach Z. Yes, I was in Vietnam. No, I will not tell you if I killed anyone."
Quirks: Flies a crop-duster plane over the summers and fall. Says he nevers takes late homework, but always does. Hates the sound of chalk on a chalkboard, one of the only teachers who has a whiteboard.
Theme song: "Fortunate Son" - Creedence Clearwater Revival

Coach Zimmerman is one of those guys who could have come back bitter from the war, but instead threw himself into his chosen vocation. He could have gone on and maybe even gotten his Ph.D. in math, but he wanted to teach so he could be a positive influence. He is kinda based on my high school calc teacher who was also a coach.

As of now, Kurt is the only Veteran in the group. I kept the Veteran class out of the players' hands because I couldn't justify it. I suppose if someone had come to me and said that their character was a hunter, then maybe. I mean, I knew kids like that in high school, so it's not that odd. But these players grew up in the suburbs. That never dawned on them.

He gets a bit flustered around women, especially Keri, but she makes conversation easy, and they have a lot of common ground.

Their Quarterly wager is well known throughout the school, just as it is also known that they will end up at Sal's Pizzeria. The only thing more certain is the constant shouting match between the waitress, Denise, and the owner, Sal.

Kurt and Keri's date, while Denise wants to be anywhere else.

"I swear, why do I bother writing this down? You two order the same stupid thing each time: a large pizza, green olives and extra anchovies, and two Budweisers. Gross." - Denise.

I think I'll have to detail Sal's Pizzeria along with some other locations.

Night Shift^® is a registered trademark of Elf Lair, LLC.

Wednesday, April 22, 2026

Tales from Jackson, IL: Witchy (Wednesday) Woman, Sylvia Velasco

No game for me this past weekend. My wife was sick, so I had dinner prep all on my own (we usually work together on the big game-day meals), but even then, I think it came out looking good.

Ham, homemade Mac & Cheese, caramelized sweet corn.

It also gave me some time to work on adventures, monsters, and an NPC.

"Hey, maybe if we get lucky, someone will drop a house on her." - Valerie Beaumont on Sylvia.

Getting ready for this coming weekend's game, and I thought I'd introduce the campaign's resident evil witch. She is not going to be a big bad or anything like that, and I might have to go after the theosophist. If there had been a witch PC in the group, that theat character would have been the target. But this character is a background threat. Like a yard with a loud dog. Sure, they look dangerous and are noisy, but as long as you don't try to get into their yard, you can ignore them.

While deciding on my witch of choice, and I have so many to choose from, one became obvious to me right away. Sylvia Velasco. Though you all know her better as Skylla.

Sylvia Velasco

Sylvia Velasco is one of the few adults the cast of characters will interact with who are not teachers or parents. She runs an occult bookstore, El Espejo Oscuro ("The Dark Mirror"), and claims to be from Spain. While her shop never seems to have customers (and most people are afraid of the place), she dresses immaculately and drives a brand-new (1985) Ferrari 308 GTS (red, of course).

Everything about Sylvia screams style, class, elegance, and danger.

Her accent is exotic without being off-putting. She is attractive without being threatening. She is older than the characters without coming off like a stereotypical evil witch.

Trouble is, of course, she *IS* the stereotypical evil witch.

My original plan was to have her go after any witch characters in the cast to prey on their power. But we don't have a PC witch. I might set her after the psychic and/or theosophist. I want to establish her as evil and a real witch, making her a threat (but not THE threat). Later, she is going to the target of the local mob in my "Satanic Panic" adventure. She and her shop will also serve as a resource for PCs and NPCs alike.

Sylvia Velasco
6th Level Witch, Human

*Background: Sorcerous

Base Abilities
Strength: 9 (0)
Agility: 11 (0)
Toughness: 14 (+1)
Intelligence: 12 (0) N
Wits: 15 (+1) N
Persona: 17 (+2) A

Fate Points: 1d8
Defense Value: 5
Vitality: 28

**Degeneracy: 0
Corruption: 0

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +4/+2/+1
Melee Bonus: +1 (base)
Ranged Bonus: +1 (base)
Spell Attack: +3
Saves: +3 to Spells and Magical effects (Witch) +2 to Intelligence saves (Sorcerous background).

Witch Abilities
Arcana, Arcane Powers (2): Innate Magic: Arcane Dart, Beguile Person

Witch Spells
First Level: Arcane Dart, Glamour, Gout of Flame
Second Level: Beguile Person, Magic Lock, Paralyze Person
Third Level: Dark Lightning, Dispel Magic

Heroic Touchstones
2nd Level: First Level Spell: Mystic Senses

Archetype: The "Evil" Witch
Quote: "I'll never make you do anything you don't want, and I will never lie to you." All of which is technically true.
Quirks: Looks AMAZING. Never so much as one perfect silver hair is out of place.
Theme song: "Abracadabra" - Steve Miller Band

Ok, a couple of things here.

I am going to start using the Backgrounds introduced in Wasted Lands. Though the backgrounds I am going to use are "Jock," "Band Kid," "Nerd," and other high school archetypes. since Sylvia is the first I am just using the stock "Sorcerous." Right now, my high school background will only provide a bonus of +1 in either a skill type or a save.

I am also bringing in Corruption, though it is not as dangerous as what Wasted Lands has. In my Jackson game, it is called "Soul Burn." The first sign of soul burn, literally burning away pieces of their soul, is white hair. This helps explain why Sylvia and Faye Thorne both have white hair. Sylvia has done hers on purpose; Faye was subjected to it by her evil aunts.

As I mentioned previously, I am also experimenting with adding various Heroic Touchstones. But since want this to be a more "realistic" game, or at least on the more realistic side of cinematic, I am going to pretty judicious in adding these.

Looks like witch-bait to me.

And it can hardly be the 1980s without a great soundtrack!

Night Shift^® is a registered trademark of Elf Lair, LLC.

Thursday, April 16, 2026

This Old Dragon: Issue #85

I am not completely sure why I have never done this one before now. Was I saving it for something special? I think I was, but I can't recall. What I do know is this: Dragon #85 is the first Dragon I ever bought for myself from Belobrajdic's Bookstores. Sure, I had borrowed a lot of Dragons, and I have even been given some. But this is the first one I bought because of the content. I'll get to that in a bit.

It is the spring of 1984. I am a Freshman in high school. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is the #1 movie. Newly inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Phil Collins "Against All Odds" is our #1 song and on shelves everywhere, and certainly my game table is This Old Dragon #85.

Ok, the art for this issue is quite striking and it immediately drew me in. "The Innocent Power" by Susan Collins was one of the best I had seen on Dragon. It is what drew me in, but not what sold me.

This issue is memory-rich for me. I went over every word and image in this issue. Case in point, the Ral Partha ad on the opposite side of the cover. It features "The Black Prince's Chariot of Fear" pulled by freaking Balrogs! Wait! Can you do that?? Yeah, I had seen many minis before, but this was different. This was me looking at this image in my own bedroom or out on my front porch (where I often worked on "D&D stuff" during the summer). Either way, 40 years later, it is still cool.

Kim Mohan is our Editor-in-Chief here, and he discusses two different electronic dice tools. I always wanted one of those, but could never justify the cost. What I did was program my calculator to be a dice roller. This was before I learned about pseudo-random numbers. The next part of the Editorial covers the "feature" of this issue, and why I bought it; it is all about Clerics. At the time, I played a lot of Clerics as Undead and Vampire hunters, not necessarily as healers.

The Letters section is known as Out On A Limb at this point. Letters include a guy asking about copyrights on the various published D&D materials. Sure, use as you want, but don't try to resell anything. Some comments on typos. And more.

Ad for Gen Con 17. I am wearing my Gen 52 shirt as I am writing this.

The Forum covers deeper opinions and reflections. I like the Forum, but this one bugged me at first. Every entry dealt with something from a previous issue so it made it hard to know what was being talked about. As I went on this discussion held more value to me. Interestingly enough, one of the contributors in Katherine Kerr talking about one of her own articles.

Ad for Grenadier models. I bought one of the Fantasy Lords sets and then proceeded to try to paint them with Testor's paints. Yeah. I did that.

The Cleric Collection is the feature of this issue, and I ate it up.

Kim Mohan is up first with Here's To Your Health. This covers more first aid in AD&D. There is a nice overview of curing magic, including healing vs curing magic.

Special Skills, Special Thrills from Roger E. Moore expands on an idea introduced by Gary Gygax in his World of Greyhawk setting. This expands, granting Clerics new powers based on their god, as detailed in Deities & Demigods. This includes not just powers but also the taboos they must follow. There are enough examples here to apply to any god. This all basically became part of the rules in AD&D 2nd Ed and later editions. But back in 1984? This was great stuff, and I locked on to it. My Sun Priest, Necromancer, Healer, and yes, the Witch began here in their earliest forms.

Nice ad for Powers & Perils. I had no idea before this that there were so many games. Yes, I knew about all the big names, but Powers & Perils was not one of those. The game still has an active presence online.

In our non-Editor entry, Fraser Sherman gives us a good companion piece to Moore's article. In Clerics Must be Deity-Bound he talks about the behavior clerics follow to earn those spells, turning, and even special powers. The example dialog between a Cleric of Thor, Tyr, Diancecht, and Aphrodite, and how each would deal with a couple of dozen guards. Let's ignore the logistics of how or why the four are in the same party and focus on the message. Clerics need to be different than each other. Again, this article is the model from which the later Faiths & Avatars books for the Forgotten Realms and AD&D 2nd edition game would take their ultimate form.

Ad for the Traveller book. Also called the Blue Book in my gaming circles, I think I ordered it that very summer along with Chill.

Michael Gray is up with PBM: Problems by Mail, a discussion on the various issues currently bothering play-by-mail gamers.

I did not know it at the time, who did really, but the next article would set a tone for yet again, AD&D 2nd Edition and the Forgotten Realms. The Ecology of the Ixitxachitl by Dragon MVP Ed Greenwood. Here I learned about their worship of Demogorgon and even the rare vampire Ixitxachitl.

Susan Shwatz has our fiction with Valkyrie Settlement. I am sure I read it at some point, but skimming it over, I can't recall much of it.

What can be considered the first hero of English epics, Beowulf, is up but three different versions from three different authors, Robert Cook, Roger E. Moore, and Kyle Gray in Three Cheers for Beowulf.

For the price at the time, $3.00, I felt Dragon was a good deal, but when it added some like a mini-adventure like The Twofold Talisman, Adventure Two: The Ebon Stone by Roger Moore, Philip Tatercyznski, Douglas Niles, & Georgia Moore. I always wanted to get Part One, which I eventually got, but I ran this one a few times. There is some silly bits here, the Halfling D.V. for example. Still, it is fun and I might be giving it a little more latitude because I was not expecting to get an adventure in my issue of Dragon.

Speaking of adventures, Modules: What We're Hunting For, covers some guidelines on what sort of things the editors of Dragon are looking for. We are still a little bit away from Dungeon magazine, but I can't help but think this is related to that effort.

Dragonlance is still brand new and has not yet caught the gaming world by storm. But it will. A Stone's Throw Away by Roger E. Moore is the second short story set in the Dragonlance world to appear in Dragon. I won't go as far as to say I was/am a huge Dragonlance fan, but I did enjoy the novels, and I liked reading the adventures, but even then, I knew they were railroady and set to serve the needs of the main characters. One day, I would like to run them, but I would need to significantly rewrite them.

Oh. Witch Hunt. An ad for this game hits on page 58, and I had to have it. I never found a copy 'til much later, but I still have it.

Ken Rolston is up with more game reviews. In Advanced Hack-and-Slash, he covers four new games that all have heavy combat focuses. Up first is Warhammer. It looks fun, I wonder if it will catch on? Rolston likes it and thinks it is a good entry into the mass combat fantasy rules category. REAPER: Fantasy Wargame Rules is next along with a scenario, Attack of the Fungoid Trolls. It was created in 1981 with 2/3rds of the designers of Warhammer. Rolston points out that criticisms of the game are unnecessary since most of the glaring errors and missteps have been corrected by Warhammer, but he has it here as a historical perspective. Next is the celebrated Lost Worlds playbooks from Nova Game Designs and designed by Ace of Aces' Alfred Leonardi. These books fascinated me because I always wanted to see how they worked. No one near me played it, and I never saw it in my local stores. Rolston likes the game and concept, but finds it expensive; each character needs a playbook at $6 per, and replayability is very low. Finally, Cry Havoc is not a Fantasy Wargame, but "a lovely model of what a perfect FRP combat wargame should look like." It is a medieval skirmish game that is easy to learn and play and is "superb in every way."

Providing the counterpoint, Katharine Kerr has her review of Warhammer in Warhammer FRP System Falls Flat. No. She is not a fan.

We now come to the Ares section. Now I knew nothing about SPI or Ares prior to this, so I thought this was *just* the Sci-fi offering in a normally Fantasy magazine. But it did feel different. The Federation Guide to Luna is a great kick-off by Dale L. Kemper. I learn that it is part of a series detailing the Moon in different sci-fi settings. If this sounds a little like my notion of West Haven, then you would be correct. This is for the FASA Star Trek game.

John M. Maxstadt is up with Gamma Hazards, New Mutants for the GAMMA WORLD Game. These include some fungimals and the humbug.

Roger E. Moore is more than pulling his weight this issue with some advice for Traveller players.

Lions, Tigers, & Superheroes covers animals for the Champions game by Leonard Carpenter.

Starquestions is our "sage advice" for Star Frontiers.

Gamer's Guide has our small ads. This includes one of the previously alluded to dice rollers. A module for "the most popular fantasy roleplaying game." And The Game Master program on cassette for the Vic-20 and Timex-Sinclair and compatible with Dungeons & Dragons.

The Convention Calendar is next for what is going on in the Summer of 1984.

Wormy is next with some weirf mutants. Dragon mirth has our comics, including the short-lived Talanalan by Kurt Erichsen.

We wrap it up with Elmore's Snarf Quest.

All in all, a fantastic issue. Though my perception may be colored by nostalgia. You never forget your first...Dragon really. The copy I have here is not my first. That one is long, long gone, but I hold on to this one as if it were some sort of sacred text. Yes, it is technically no different than Dragon #84 or #86, and they do not get the same sort of reverence out of me.

Thursday, April 2, 2026

Tales of Jackson, IL: For Whom the Bell Tolls

It's April and I want to kick off a semi-regular feature on my Jackson, IL game for the NIGHT SHIFT^® RPG.

I want to talk about the characters and the adventures from my "Tales of Jackson, IL" game.

The NIGHT SHIFT^® Character Keeper!
The MUST-HAVE school supply for the 1986-87 school year!

For Whom the Bell Tolls

This first adventure, For Whom the Bell Tolls (all adventures will be named for songs from the 1980s) begins over the Fall of 1985. The large school bell, which hasn't worked since 1935, begins to ring. The problem is that only people and creatures of supernatural backgrounds could hear it. So PCs and some NPCs do. So do all the monsters in the nearby area, and they are all coming to Jackson. If that sounds uncomfortably like a "diner bell," then you would be right.

The antagonist of this adventure is/was "The Bell Ringer." His job is to announce the arrival of an even bigger bad guy later on. I have not hinted this yet, but this Big Bad is known as The Hollow King. He was pretty easy to deal with once found, but he had already done his damage.

I'll detail some of the player characters in future posts. One of the characters that was here for this adventure did not make it to later ones. No character death, just new characters. But I wanted to make this so that characters can come and go as needed.

For levers, this is a Cinematic game, with Cinematic violence and healing.

Look, I am wearing my influences here on my sleeve. This is Stranger Things meets Charmed meets Buffy meets Supernatural meets The Craft. But also a little bit of Dark, since I do pick up these characters many years later.

Welcome to Jackson, IL!

The Cheerleader, The Outsider, and The New Girl

Jackson, Illinois, seems like the kind of town that blends in with a hundred others in the mid-west, at least until night falls. On the surface, it is all Friday night football, crowded school hallways, two local colleges that give the town just enough polish to feel more important than it is, and grown-ups going through the motions as if nothing is wrong.

It is the 1980s in full neon color, with mixtapes, faded denim, old trucks, pay phones, greasy diners open too late, and gossip that never stays quiet for long. But under the steady pulse of small-town life, something far older and far stranger is waking up. Forces beyond understanding are creeping into the edges of everyday life, and the kids of Jackson are about to learn that coming of age can be just as frightening as anything lurking in the dark.

At the center of the story is a close-knit group of friends and families: outsiders, golden boys, first loves, brainy overachievers, and kids who have already seen too much. Each of them carries private wounds and hidden truths into the shadows. Some have never left Jackson. Some have only just arrived. Some already know that the town is not what it pretends to be. Together, they become the emotional core of the campaign, a web of teenagers and adults bound together by fear, loyalty, and survival in one deeply haunted American town at the tail end of the Reagan years.

What I want to do with this series, at least, is present some of the games we have played and the NPCs. The NPCs were where I started here because I wanted these halls to feel like they were filled with people, not archetypes like "The Jock." "The Wierd Girl," "The Cheerleader." I wanted them to have names and motivations. So I started building them based on characters I have posted here before, which gave me instant personalities and buy-in. But not every character I have is a good fit. Grýlka and Doireann, for example, are a lot of fun, but to fit them into this game, I'd have to take so many liberties with the characters that I might as well have started from scratch. So I used mine, and since I had a pack of Pathfinder minis sitting on my desk here, I started adding them as well.

I also very specifically did not want to do a modern version of West Haven. West Haven does appear in the NIGHT SHIFT^® rules, but that is the future (or rather the present day). I wanted something smaller. Plus, I already have a NIGHT SHIFT^® version of West Haven going with Elowen. But that is not an ongoing game at the moment.

I have teased some characters, but again, I want this place to feel alive. I think I owe that to the players.

The Witches

I knew from the start I wanted three witches who look like they come from three different walks of life. I knew Larina was going to be one of them; in fact, I wanted to use the date I first created her, July 1986, as the time when this game starts. But I needed at least one summer break, so I pushed it back to 1985. Why are you so specific about the dates? One big reason. Music. Music was a big deal in your 1980s high school. So I wanted to build authentic playlists.

1985
1986
Tales from Jackson, IL (Campaign playlist)

Of course, with three witches, they all can't be "the weird one," so I split that up a bit. Since Pathfinder was at hand, I adopted Feiya and Seoni as Faye and Stephanie, respectively.

Everyone starts out at 1st level, but the girls here are just a notch higher in case they need to rescue anyone.

Larina "Nix" Nichols

2nd-level Witch, Human

Strength: 9 (0)
Agility: 10 (0)
Toughness: 11 (0)
*Intelligence: 18 (+3) P
Wits: 17 (+2) s
Persona: 17 (+2) s

Vit: 3 (1d6)
DV: 9
Fate Points: 1d6

Check Bonus (P/S/T): +2/+1/+0
Melee bonus: +0 Ranged bonus: +0
Saves: +3 to spells and magical effects

Special Abilities: Arcana, Casting 60%, Enhanced Senses, Arcane Bond (Steph and Faye)

Skills: Research (Int)

Languages: English, Latin, German, Greek

Spells
1: Magic Missile
2: Continual Flame

This is not witch queen Larina, or even really powerful Larina. This is "new girl in town" Larina. Normally, she is the "weird one," but here I am opting to make her "the smart one." She is the one with the research books and systematized knowledge. So if the PCs need help they can go to her.

Hair: Red
Eyes: Blue

Archetype: The New Girl
Quote: "I am sure I just read that somewhere..."
Quirks: Right-handed, wears her watch on her right hand.
Theme song: "Night Bird" - Stevie Nicks

Family: Her father, Lars Nichols, is a professor at MacAlister College. Mother died 18 months ago.

Faye Thorne

2nd-level Witch, Human

Strength: 10 (0)
Agility: 12 (0)
Toughness: 14 (+1) s
Intelligence: 18 (+3)
*Wits: 18 (+3) P
Persona: 17 (+2) s

Vit: 4 (1d6)
DV: 7 (leather jacket)
Fate Points: 1d6

Check Bonus (P/S/T): +2/+1/+0
Melee bonus: +0 Ranged bonus: +0
Saves: +3 to spells and magical effects

Special Abilities: Arcana, Casting 60%, Enhanced Senses, Arcane Bond (Steph and Larina)

Skills: Intimidate (Cha)

Languages: English, German

Spells
1: Chill Ray
2: Cause Fear

Fiona Voss, or as she is known now, Faye Thorne, is the creepy goth girl outsider. She lives with her two very strict and terrifying aunties (really hags in disguise), and hides under headphones, a leather jacket, and enough sarcasm to power a small city. She and Steph used to be best friends until their falling out a couple of years ago. Unlike Larina, Faye has learned all about witchcraft by doing it.

Hair: White
Eyes: Gray

Archetype: The Outsider
Quote: "Wow. You really think your opinion matters to me."
Quirks: Always wears headphones and a pentagram necklace. Loves super spicy food, scary spicy.
Theme song: "A Forest" - The Cure

Family: Her parents, the Vosses, died in a car crash when she was a toddler. She was raised by her aunties, who changed her name. Her aunties are really disguised hags hoping to use her natural magic.

Stephanie "Steph" Vale

2nd-level Witch, Human

Strength: 12 (0)
Agility: 14 (+1) s
Toughness: 13 (+1)
Intelligence: 13 (+1) s
Wits: 10 (0)
*Persona: 18 (+3) P

Vit: 4 (1d6)
DV: 9
Fate Points: 1d6

Check Bonus (P/S/T): +2/+1/+0
Melee bonus: +0 Ranged bonus: +0
Saves: +3 to spells and magical effects

Special Abilities: Arcana, Casting 60%, Enhanced Senses, Arcane Bond (Larina and Faye)

Skills: Drive (Agl), Gymnastics (Agl)

Languages: English, French

Spells
1: Charm Person
2: ESP

To the outside world, Stephanie Vale is a ray of sunshine, but on the inside...yeah, she is pretty much the same. Stephanie is a nice girl who moves in and out of social situations with the skill of an adult twice her age. She just broke up with her long-time boyfriend, Val, and her mother and father wish she would start dating Andy Thompson. But Andy is so deeply in love with Rowan that Hallmark follows them around for ideas. She is captain of the Cheer team, but now she is involved with new girl Larina and Faye Thorne, of all people.

Like many things, witchcraft comes naturally to Steph.

Hair: Blonde
Eyes: Blue

Archetype: The Cheerleader
Quote: "Alright, everyone! Teamwork makes the dream work!"
Quirks: Positive attitude hides a crippling desire to please everyone.
Theme song: "We Got the Beat" - The Go Go's

Family: Second-richest family in town (behind the town founders, the Thompsons). Father Arthur is a lawyer, and Mother Beatrice is a stay-at-home mom. She has an older brother in college, whom she thinks is the best ever, and a younger sister who spends a lot of time on a computer.

My NPCs are coming along. I will likely talk about the "nice" ones, since they are most likely to help the PCs. By halfway through the first quarter, watching Stephanie, Faye, and Larina always hang out together will be the stuff of talk and darker gossip.

I will say this. These characters have been a blast to use, and I am so pleased with them.

Because I like to think of these things, I also have plans for everyone some years later. Just have not nailed all that down at all yet.

Steph, Faye, and Larina at breakfast. Why is Larina wearing sunglasses? Photogray lenses? Maybe she is hungover.

Night Shift^® is a registered trademark of Elf Lair, LLC.

Thursday, March 26, 2026

This Old Dragon: Issue #124

Let's go back to a transitional time for me personally. August 1987. I was starting my first year at university, and pretty much everything in my life was changing. I had moved to a town that would be my home for the next 7 years and 2.5 degrees. I was about to meet the woman I was going to marry, though we never actually dated in college. Just hung around each other like 24 hours a day for five years. And in gaming, I was getting ready to move over to the "new" 2nd edition of the game that had been part of my life for 10 years or so. Stakeout was the number one movie. U2 and Madonna filled the airwaves, and on tables and shelves everywhere was This Old Dragon #124.

I will admit, I don't recall this one very well. I don't think I actually owned it.

The cover by Teanna Byerts is good, but I am not sure I recognize her name at all. Like many of the Dragon of this time frame, it is a themed issue, this time on "Aerial Adventuring."

Also, my copy is in pretty terrible shape. There are a lot of pages falling out, and it is missing the Forgotten Realms map, much to my disappointment. Though given that it is nearly 40 years old, this is hardly a shock.

Letters cover some of the changes in Dragon and some of the ones coming up. 1986-88 was a big transitional time at TSR as we all know now and there is evidence everywhere.

Roger E. Moore asks in the Editorial what other changes do people want, including a dedicated BBS (bulletin board system). Kudos for the forward thinking. I got onto a lot of BBS back in the day and TSR one would have been fun.

Checking my PDF it looks like I am missing the Forum page.

Ken Rolston is up first with Role-playing Reviews. He covers two books from the Warhammer Fantasy line, though he spends a lot of time talking about the merits of various other Fantasy RPGs including AD&D/D&D, GURPS Fantasy, RuneQuest and Harnmaster among others. When we get to warhammer he likes the character creation and combat, but doesn't seem to care for the magic system. Though he loves the races and monsters. The review is long, but not so long as to be overpowering. Given the impact that Warhammer will soon have on the hobby, it is likely the right size.

Sage Advice covers the Frank Mentzer-edited D&D Expert set.

Ah, page 17, we get into our feature articles.

Ed Greenwood is up first with Sailors on the Sea of Air, detailing the skyships of the Forgotten Realms. Since these pages were already falling out, I just took them and stuck them into my 1987 "Gray" Forgotten Realms boxed set. These are not Spelljammer ships, at least not yet, but they are a nice fantastical piece that separates what makes the Realms the Realms and not Greyhawk. Does Greyhawk have flying ships? Maybe, but they seem to work well here. Ed, of course, is dropping names here that will soon become minor D&D celebrities in their own right.

On a Wing and a Prayer is next from L. Gregory Smith and covers gliders for AD&D. Not quite as fantastical as flying ships. It seems to be complete. When were gliders first used? 1880s it seems.

Thomas Kane is back with Flying the Friendly (?) Skies, or a guide to aerial adventuring in the AD&D game. This covers mounts of various types and spells. He also gives us weather effects and altitude adjustments.

The Wings of Eagles by J. E. Keeping details the aarakocra as a PC and NPC race choice. I don't recall ever seeing anyone ever play one back then, so not sure if this article had much traction. Of course, today they are ubiquitous enough to be a character and a plot point in the last Dungeons & Dragons movie. Again my copy was falling out, so I just punched some holes into it and stuck it into my Monstrous Compendium for AD&D 2nd ed. There is even a god of aarakocra, Krocaa, listed.

This ends the feature.

Buy quirk of layout, Sage advice continues here on the same page with the updated Beastmaster XP tables. Now I kinda want to make an aarakocra beastmaster.

Joseph R. Ravitts is next with Kicks and Sticks, Introducing escrima to Oriental Adventures. A system of escrima martial arts as well as a class to use it, the Escrimador. It *seems* fine, but feels like a solution in search of a problem. Honestly, I never used Oriental Adventures much and got into their martial arts sections even less.

Rich Stump is up with Front-End Alignments about "Quasi-alignments" of gamers like "Chaotic Everywhere" and "Lawful Bored." Not really my thing, but I'm sure someone was amused. Feels like filler to me.

Far more useful is Rich Baldwin's Arcane Lore: The Secrets of Odeen the Arch-Mage. This details the known background of the Arch-Mage Odeen and, more importantly, the discovered spells of the Arch-Mage. There are five new spells here, nothing earth-breaking, but fun ones. Perfect for a quest to uncover this lost book.

Stuck in the middle of this issue is this AD&D Game 2d Edition Questionnaire. It is pretty comprehensive. The mail in reply card is still attached, but sadly I think I missed the window to send in my responses.

What is most interesting to me is what is here that made it into the game and what didn't.

Packing It All Away by Ian Chapman offers tips on what to pack for a wilderness adventure. Most of the people I gamed with were at the time or had been Boy Scouts, present company included (yes, I was a Boy Scout, no, I didn't stick with it because they didn't like Atheists then, still don't I think.). So this material was a bit of a repeat. We all had access to various Boy Scout manuals. Still this is a useful list of items and advice. Not sure if the GP values translate to other systems, though.

Ah, now here is a fun one. Ed Greenwood is back with The Ecology of the Gelatinous Cube. A monster that, by all accounts, was created just so Gary could mess with his players gets the full Ecology treatment. Here the deadliest of the all the Jello-O flavors gets situated into the dungeons of the Undermountain. Ed even manages to make these things make sense. They even get a proper name, Athcoids. Since this was already falling out, I punched holes in this one too and put it in my Monstrous Compendium binder. Blasphemy? Eh. The magazine is falling apart anyway, and this at least allows me to keep the best parts.

Michael Dobson give us some sneak peaks of AD&D 2nd Edition in The Game Wizards. I know that at the time I was excited to get this new AD&D. Despite starting in 1979 I always felt I was on my back foot when it came to AD&D 1st ed. I began with Holmes Basic and then on to Moldvay Basic before getting into AD&D proper. This of course is silly for me to think, since the Holmes Basic I was playing then was a combination of that and the AD&D Monster Manual. So I was only two years late for the start of AD&D. But still, I felt AD&D 2nd Ed would be "mine" the one I could invest into. This article covers the new AD&D, but also other offerings from TSR. I didn't fully comprehend then what was happening with TSR and Gygax even if I new the broad strokes. Still, it felt like a change, and I was already in the middle of my own changes that this felt custom-made for me. College and AD&D, 2nd ed., would be forever linked in my mind.

Peter R. Jahn has some rules for guns for various systems in Blasters & Blunderbusses. Really, I should say it is more system-agnostic.

Following on that is A Shot in the Arm, or a new damage system for Star Frontiers by Jason Pamental and David Packard. I enjoyed SF back in the day, but by 1987 I had moved on to other sci-fi games in my search to find the perfect sch-fi game for me. Eventually, I just had to write my own.

Thomas Kane is up again with The Most Secret of Secrets, real world secret tech for Top Secret and Top Secret/SI games. This includes such things as the Stealth Bomber and Stealth Fighter. I had a high-school buddy who became an engineer and was WAY into stealth tech. Then later on in college I had a roomate that bought all the flight simulators for the stealth fighters when they came out in the early 1990s. I liked this article for the coverage of the nearly forgotten Soviet "space plane," their answer to our space Shuttle.

Friend of the Other Side, Jeff Grubb is up with his Marvel-Phile discussing The Hulk and the Hulkbusters.

The Lessers are back with The Role of Computers, detailing what was high tech in the Summer of 1987. They cover the games Black Magic and Realms of Darkness as well some clues for other games. The DNA that all computer games share with D&D is always a little more obvious in these early games.

Small ads are next with the Gamer's Guide. Always a ton of great stuff here. Avil Enterprises still has its ad for illustrating your character. An ad for "Christian Adventure Novels," "Discipleship Games," and a few more.

Order form for back issues of Dragon. You can get issues as far back as #80 and all five volumes of "Best of Dragon." Minimum $15 for credit card orders, please.

The Convention Calendar covers all the best cons for late summer/early fall 1987, including Gen Con 20 in Milwaukee, WI, on August 20-23. I see the Midwest still dominates the Con scene, followed by the West Coast.

Dragonmirth, Snarf Quest, and Wormy provide us with our comics this issue.

All said and told, not a bad issue at all. Part of the transitional time of Dragon, D&D, and TSR. Some of those transitions were pretty obvious, others we only see in retrospect.

While some people claim that the best days of Dragon were behind it, as part of the Golden Age of TSR/D&D, I would argue that Dragon gained more focus and direction in these years, between the height of AD&D 1st edition and the beginning of AD&D 2nd edition. We are seeing the direction AD&D is about to go (again, this is retrospective), and honestly, I thought and still think it looked pretty good. I was not so creator-focused back then that the news of Gygax's, Mohan's, and then later Mentzer's departure affected me much. I suspected then that AD&D/D&D would go on. It did in fact.

Had I been more "creator-focused" I should have noticed more the rise of Ed Greenwood. It was not a meteroic rise, but a gradual one built up over years of steady and reliable output. Maybe I would have given the Realms more of a chance back then. But it would not be until the 2000s that I really looked into it all and not till much later that I would be playing in the Realms.

Still. One of the big reasons to keep doing these "This Old Dragons" is to appreciate what we had, how it has shaped the game and the gamers, and what we can still learn from it all today.

Speaking of which. I have been periodically buying large collections of Dragon magazines. I am now just about out. I'll have to check, but I might not have many of these left.