In Search Of...Ramal LaMarr

In Search Of… Ramal LaMarr

Every so often, I run into a name that feels less like a person and more like a half-remembered fever dream. Ramal LaMarr is one of those names.

I first encountered him the same way many gamers of a certain age did. Not through dance, and not through music stores, but through the pages of Dragon Magazine. Tucked away in the advertising margins of the mid-1980s, alongside mail orders for electronic dice, miniature ads, and fantasy figurines, was something unexpected.

A record advertisement.

Not a soundtrack.
Not a movie score.

Belly dance music.

Specifically, Omens, Oracles & Mysticisms of Dance and Empires of Dance by Ramal LaMarr.

At the time, it barely registered. Dragon was full of all sorts of strange things. But the name lingered. Years later, when I revisited Dragon #98 for my This Old Dragon series, the ad jumped out again, this time louder. It was no longer just a curiosity in the margins of a magazine. It felt like a clue.

Dragon Magazine

In Dragon Magazine #98 (June 1985), Ramal LaMarr’s albums were advertised explicitly as “MUSIC for Adventure Gaming!” The ad promoted two LPs: Omens, Oracles & Mysticisms of Dance and Empires of Dance. 

Both were available by mail order from Lotus Records, a small Milwaukee-based label. There was no game company logo or endorsement and no elaborate explanation. Just the quiet assumption that gamers would understand why this music belonged at the table.

And honestly, that assumption was probably correct.

The mid-1980s gaming scene was full of these cultural overlaps. Fantasy roleplaying, New Age mysticism, occult bookstores, exotica records, and mail-order catalogs all blended together in ways that feel very foreign now. If you wanted atmosphere for your game, you built it yourself. Candles, incense, weird records, whatever you could find.

Ramal LaMarr’s music promised atmosphere. I do not know a great deal about the genre, but I do know I plan to use this music when I finally run the Desert of Desolation trilogy, which appeared around the same time as these ads.  Tracks like "Cities of the Jinn," "Ritual Fire Music," and "Wand Dance of the Scarlet Sorceress" from Omens, Oracles & Mysticisms are practically custom-made for these adventures. Even one online catalog files Ramal LaMarr under "occult," so you know it has my attention.

Following the Music Outside the Dungeon

Step outside the pages of Dragon Magazine, and Ramal LaMarr stops being a gaming curiosity and becomes something else entirely.

His music was composed for belly dance performance, not fantasy gaming. His best-known album, Omens, Oracles & Mysticisms of Dance, was released in 1983, followed a year later by Empires of Dance, both on Lotus Records. There is a third album, Pleasure Gardens Of Dance (1987), which sounds a little different, and another in 1989, Exotica.  Neither of these later albums was advertised in Dragon Magazine. At least, not that I have seen. He would also appear on a compilation album, Dance Of Mystery, in 2015 with his song Dance Of Mystery.

The sound is unmistakably of its time. Synthesizers sit alongside electric guitar and bass, while traditional percussion instruments, such as African drums and the tabla, anchor the rhythm. Throw in some kanoon and mbira, and LaMarr goes from curiosity to multi-instrumentalist. The result is music that feels ritualistic, sensual, and deeply rooted in the early-1980s studio aesthetic.

This was not archival folk music attempting to reproduce traditional Middle Eastern styles. It was modern studio work designed to evoke an imagined ancient world. Mystery, sensuality, and atmosphere were clearly part of the goal.

The album's own liner notes describe the music as conveying "authentic rhythms and moods of the East with a wonderful quality that transcends time and geographical boundaries," promising to "inspire visions of mystic times past and dreams for future aspirations." 

Which, again, explains why it made perfect sense to advertise it to Dungeon Masters.

Over time, the albums slipped out of print. Copies became harder to find. What had once been a niche record slowly turned into a collector’s item. Belly dancers still search for the LPs. Vinyl collectors trade stories and digital transfers. Online threads periodically appear asking the same question.

Where did Ramal LaMarr go? 

Ramal LaMarr After Dragon Magazine

This is where the trail begins to fade.

There are no confirmed biographical details about Ramal LaMarr’s real name, musical training, nationality, or early life. No interviews have surfaced. No promotional biographies. Even Discogs, usually a good archive of production details, preserves only the album credits and publishing information.

One name does appear repeatedly: Chandrani.

She is referenced in track titles, most notably Raks Chandrani. Community recollections claim that Ramal and Chandrani lived in Germantown, WI, and that she was deeply involved in the dance world. One commenter even claims she later died of cancer. It is verified that on his albums, she played the Zills, or finger cymbals. It has been confirmed she was his wife and featured on the covers of his albums. I guess I really should say their albums. While Ramal played almost every instrument, she feels like a full contributor to the sound of these albums.

Germantown, Wisconsin, is outside my Illinois "Corridor" of gaming influence; it does sit in what many have been calling the Gaming Fertile Crescent. An area between Lake Geneva and the Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. But that is for another "In Search Of..."

These stories may be true, but they remain anecdotal. They belong more to the oral history of a small artistic community than to verifiable archival sources.

What we can say with confidence is that Ramal LaMarr recorded at least two albums, published through Lotus Records and its imprint Daughter of the Jinn Music, and that his work circulated widely enough to leave a long echo even after the records themselves disappeared.

One YouTube commenter suggested that Ramal was still alive as recently as five years ago, though attempts to contact his former label, Lotus Records, have yielded nothing.

Another possibility is that Lotus Records was not a traditional label at all. Many niche musicians in the early 1980s released records through private-press imprints, often little more than names created to manufacture and distribute their own albums. If that is the case here, then Lotus Records may simply have been Ramal LaMarr himself.

Anyone online who claims to have known Ramal and Chandrani describes them the same way: lovely, generous people.

What Happened Next?

That is the question that keeps coming up.

There is no reliable public information about Ramal LaMarr’s life after the mid-1980s. No additional albums have surfaced. No modern performances or teaching listings can be clearly connected to him. No official website exists, and there is no widely documented obituary.

In other words, Ramal LaMarr joins a long list of creators who burned brightly in a niche cultural space and then quietly stepped away. 

Why This Still Matters

Ramal LaMarr fascinates me because he represents a moment that no longer quite exists.

A time when a belly dance LP could be advertised in a role-playing game magazine without explanation. When a small regional label could produce something that quietly embedded itself in multiple subcultures. When mystery was not part of the marketing plan. It was simply the way things worked.

I discovered Ramal LaMarr in the pages of Dragon Magazine, but he clearly did not belong there alone. His music belonged to dancers, gamers, collectors, and anyone looking for sounds that felt a little different and a little magical.

Ramal Lamarr and Ronald E. Pillat, the Man Behind the Music

Research is a funny thing. As of right now, I have been working on this post for a little over a year. Digging up old details, reading local newspapers for mentions. But it was not until I decided to look up copyright details for "Daughter of Jinn Music."  That opened up a lot of information for me.

It seems as recently as 2011, a copyright application was filed for "Lands of Pleasure and Delight et al." Tucked away in the application was the best clue I have uncovered in a long time. 

Ramal LaMarr, pseud. of Ronald Pillat (author of pseudonymous work); Domicile: United States; Citizenship: United States. Authorship: Sound recording, performance, production, music and lyrics.

There is an address associated with the filing and it is in Germantown, WI. But that house now seems to be gone and new one has been built in its place with new owners (so please don't try to contact them).

So who is, or more to the point was, Ronald E. Pillat?

There are more copyright claims for all of the Ramal LaMarr albums, including notes indicating that Ramal LaMarr was the pseudonym for Pillat. 

Sadly, this is almost where the trail ends. It seems that Ronald E. Pillat, born May 24, 1951, passed away on  August 13, 2021.  This Ronald E. Pillat did live in the right area (North Prairie, Wisconsin) and was the age I would have suspected.  The 1951 date also tracks with information found in the pulbic records for the copyright for Omens, Oracles & Mysticisms of Dance.

I am disappointed, to be honest. I posted first about Ramal LaMarr in 2017. Had I done this research, I could have reached out to Ronald Pillat for more information.  I am happy, though I can finally put a name to Ramal LaMarr. I hope that others find this half as interesting as I did.

I am playing Omens, Oracles & Mysticisms of Dance while working on this. Is it D&D music?  It doesn't matter if I think it is or not, its connection to Dragon Magazine is enough. And if my own research has anything to say about it, enough gamers my age remember the ads fondly and that too is enough. But, if you really want my opinion? Yes. It is. I want to play this while running a desert-themed adventure.  Maybe even something for my Wasted Lands: The Dying Age campaign. Certanily there will be a Bard in my games named Ramal at some point.

Thank you Ramal LaMarr for such a wonderful research idea and your funky ads in Dragon Magazine. Thank you and Chandrani for your passion and wonderful album covers. And thank you, Ronald E. Pillat, for bringing all of this to life. I only wish I had had the chance to tell you all this myself.

Links

Copyright details for Ramal LaMarr / Ronald E. Pillat (1951 - )

Discogs: Ramal LaMarr artist page

• Omens, Oracles & Mysticisms of Dance
• Empires Of Dance
• Pleasure Gardens of Dance
• Exotica

YouTube Links

• Ramal LaMarr - Omens, Oracles & Mysticisms of Dance - Side One 
• Ramal LaMarr - Omens, Oracles & Mysticisms of Dance - Side Two
• Ramal LaMarr - Pleasure Gardens of Dance - Side One
• Ramal LaMarr - Pleasure Gardens of Dance - Side Two 
• Ramal LaMarr ‎ - "Princess of the Nile" from Empires of Dance
• Ramal LaMarr - "Golden Daughters of RA" from Empires of Dance
• Ramal LaMarr - "The Ancient Queendoms of Sheba" from Empires of Dance

DJ Farraginous blog, “Ramal LaMarr - Omens, Oracles & Mysticisms of Dance.”
https://djfarraginous.wordpress.com/2017/08/20/ramal-lamarr-omens-oracles-mysticisms-of-dance/

Hanttula Exotica archive: Omens, Oracles & Mysticisms of Dance
https://www.hanttula.com/exotica/omens-oracles-mysticisms-of-dance/

Instagram post of Omens, Oracles, and Mysticisms of Dance 
https://www.instagram.com/p/DMURiJyO6q4/?img_index=1

Reddit: “Ramal Lamarr - Where is he today?”
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bellydance/comments/smfdpi/ramal_lamarr_where_is_he_today/

Reddit: “Looking for out of print LPs by Ramal LaMarr”
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bellydance/comments/kezozh/looking_for_out_of_print_lps_by_ramal_lamarr/

This Old Dragon: Issue #60

 Time to crack open another old Dragon. This is another one sent in by Eric Harshbarger. While the cover has fallen off of this one and there is a slight musty smell, it is in rather good condition. We head back to April 1982. Joan Jett and the Blackhearts dominate the airwaves with "I Love Rock & Roll."  The teen sex comedy "Porky's" is in the theatres. And on tables and shelves everywhere is This Old Dragon #60.

Dean Morrissey gives us our cover for this month. Editor Kim Mohan tells us a story about a December 1981 Dragon that was supposed to go to Washington DC and instead ended up in Vienna Austria. 

In a move that pre-sages the feature issues of the later 1980s, we have a huge feature on Elves, All About Elves. I should point out that much of this information now feels very familiar. But at the time, this was great world-building. While the debt to Tolkien is acknowledged, there is more here that is not Tolkien and that is great for AD&D (later editions).

Roger E. Morre is up first with The Elven Point of View. A lot of this material was reused for the Unearthed Arcana and can even be seen in the various Demi-human books of the AD&D 2nd Ed era. 

Moore is back, with Georgia Moore, on The Gods of the Elves. While we are still a few years away from the Forgotten Realms, this material has become part of the cornerstones of Greenwood's world. The gods presented here, Hanali Celanil, Erevan Ilesere, Aerdrie Faenya, Labelas Enoreth, and Solonor Thelandria, are still used to this day. 

Sage Advice covers elf-related questions.

Roger Moore, our MVP of Elves, is up again with The Half-Elven Point of View. Honestly, you can practically hear the birth cries of Tanis in this article. 

By page 16 we are done with the elves. Which makes it a shorter "feature" but it punches way above it's weight class in terms of content. 

On page 16 we get our monthly From the Sorcerer's Scroll by Gary Gygax. This one covers more Cantrips. Timely for me because I am reworking my witch cantrips for my Advanced Witches & Warlocks: Occult Adventures. And he has a lot of them. 

A two-page ad for Asgard miniatures. 

Ed Greenwood is up with Firearms, a coverage of early guns. There is a nice history and a table of various types of guns used with AD&D stats. Again, as with most of Ed's material, it is really useful. 

Aside. The paper of this magazine is so thick. Not at all like the later ones and certainly not at all like magazines today.

Wear Wolf is our fiction piece by Joel Rosenberg. A modern werewolf tale of the "wolf skin" sort.

Mike Holthaus has a quiz for us. How Much Do You Know About Science in a Fantasy World? Some basic science applications to situations in a fantasy setting. Like, if you fall 3,000 ft, do you have enough time to cast a Fly spell?

Our centerfold game is Flight of Boodles. Comes complete with a fold-out game board. 

Lest we forget, this is the April issue. I hate sounding like an old humorless grouch here, but I find most of the April issues to be very un-funny. This one at least is tolerable. 

Roger Moore (again!) is up with the Jester class. Though this one is presented as an actual class option and not a joke class. Well...sort of jokey, but still very playable. 

There is a parody of their usual "Giants in the Earth" series, again by Roger E. Moore, featuring some small characters that are supposed to be humorous. 

Phil Foglio has a nice spread in Artist of the Month. Not a feature I remember very well, but there is a cool bit of art here. 

A woman warrior saving a male one from a monster? Since when has D&D been so woke! Kidding of course. But there are certain segments of the fandom who freak out if this art were used today. I admit the color-by-numbers is a nice touch.

The Dragon's Bestiary features the Valley Giant (Jolly Green giant), Donald Duck, Tasmanian Devil, Marvin the Martian, a werebeaver, and the Bad New Bugbears. I am a little surprised no one sued. 

Interesting ad for the short-lived Gen Con East in Chester, PA.

Gary is up with some Top Secret RPG material for Outfitting the New Agent. 

Glenn Rahman has some playtest notes from his game, Trojan War.

Ah, now here is something fun. Stats and background on the Irish Pooka by Michael Fountain.

We get another point of view on Alignment from John Lees. This time, we delve a little bit into psychology and the ethics of the individuals. It also introduces the concept of alignment gradients, but not the mechanics behind them. 

The notorious Spawn of Fashan gets a review from Lawrence Schick, where he advises us not to take the game very seriously. He is pretty much saying it is a parody and bad on purpose. Later on he admitted it wasn't a parody, but he still thought it was funny. I tried to play it once in college, around 1989 or so. Yeah, it is terrible.

Comics pages give us Wormy and What's New with Phil and Dixie! I don't think there were more than this, though my cover is detached; I think this was all the pages.

So this was great stuff for 1982. The big feature on Elves has appeared in many AD&D books over the years. Ed Greenwood's piece on guns is good if you want to bring them into your AD&D games. And the jester class is one of the better ones I have seen.

Thanks once again to Eric Harshbarger for sending me this issue!

In Search Of...The SIU Connection and the Illinois RPG Pipeline

“I am a Saluki, you fools. I am a Saluki, and I will destroy you.” 

- Bob Odenkirk, SIUC Grad 1984

Growing up in the Midwest in the 1980s was interesting. I was far away from both Chicago and St. Louis, the two largest cities, which I didn't get to very often, and stayed relatively stuck in my smallish town.  We had our own run-ins with the Satanic Panic, and generally speaking, I couldn't wait to get out, thinking that if I moved away, I could at least find better access to cool RPGs.

How little I actually knew back then.

I later learned that I actually lived near what I have started calling the Illinois RPG pipeline. Games would flow down from Lake Geneva via Chicago to universities in Champaign-Urbana (U of I), Bloomington-Normal (Illinois State), and Carbondale (Southern Illinois University, SIUC). Mostly via I57. Of course, SIUC was the Alma Mater of Tim Kask and, later, yours truly. 

Given the availability of material, I also assume that there was a pipeline that went through Springfield, IL as well. That route would have been Lake Geneva to Chicago, down I55 through Bloomington to Springfield, and then on to St. Louis and again, Carbondale. 

From the early 1970s through the 1990s, these contiguous corridors stretching from Lake Geneva through Chicago and central Illinois to Carbondale functioned as a sustained creative and distribution spine for tabletop role-playing games, linking publishers, university clubs, conventions, retailers, and designers into what can reasonably be called the Illinois RPG Pipeline.

The Illinois RPG Pipeline was not just a metaphorical flow of ideas, but a physical corridor of products and ideas.

Gen Con in particular was not just an event. It was the first distribution node. Designers, retailers, and university gamers attended in person and brought the product home. Its position in late summer was ideal for purchasing content and then packing it up to take back to school in a few weeks. 

What I once thought was isolation in southern Illinois was in fact proximity to one of the most important role-playing game corridors in the country: a 400-mile pipeline that carried ideas, designers, products, and play culture from Lake Geneva through Chicago and central Illinois to SIU, shaping the growth of tabletop gaming for decades.

Talking with Tim at Gary Con 2025, I learned even more. 

Tim Kask from Little Egypt

Before he was TSR’s first full-time employee and editor of The Dragon, Tim Kask was a married student at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. From there, he cold-called Gary Gygax, having found the Lake Geneva address in the back of Chainmail. Chainmail was popular with the Strategic Games Society then, as it was when I got there a decade later.  Kask got invited up, dropping his wife and daughter off in the Quad Cities, and the rest is history. Kask’s own reminiscences place that contact in late ’73/early ’74, while he was at SIUC. During this time, Kask would talk with Gygax about what a "mess" the rules were and how he taught the SGS how to play, but needed to figure them out himself first. This is key: the rules, given their state, lent themselves to being taught in play rather than being read to play. This became a viral campaign long before that term was coined and is still one of D&D's greatest strengths; people who watch it being played want to play more.

This area of the state in known as "Little Egypt." SIUC's school mascot is a Saluki, an Egyptian running dog. The school's daily newspaper is called "The Daily Egyptian." This dates back to the 1830s, when severe weather caused crop failures in Northern Illinois. The Southern Illinois area (today anything south of I-70) became very attractive to settlers due to the fertile land and rivers (the lower Mississippi and Ohio) that rarely froze. The richness of the soil there is so deeply ingrained that 150 years later, when I was there, people still talked about it.

Kask and I talked a lot about SIUC. Salukis never forget their erstwhile home. Tim lived in married housing while his brother lived in the dorms called "Triads," and he would go and visit him and play D&D. I also lived in the Triads. He was in Boomer Hall, and I was in Wright Hall, separated by about 13-14 years. Sadly, Boomer, Wright, and Allen halls, the Triads, were all demolished in 2012. I guess sometimes you can't go home again. 

But that time was influential in shaping how D&D grew beyond those three little rulebooks. 

Kask refereed the "Qualishar campaign," described in local coverage as the first Dungeons & Dragons campaign played at SIU and likely one of the first outside Lake Geneva. That’s a huge claim, but it’s coming from a contemporary profile built around Kask’s Carbondale years. Note the spelling drift you’ll see in fan histories: Qualishar in news pieces vs. Kwalishar in later forum posts and anecdotes.

Side Note: Kask has also said his first PC was named Kwalish, which fans often connect (informally) to the item name Apparatus of Kwalish. Treat that as apocrypha-but-plausible; it’s sourced to Kask comments preserved in community threads, not a primary TSR memo or publication.

The Strategic Games Society and The Egyptian Campaign

The Strategic Games Society was the gaming group that formed back in the early 1970s at SIU Carbondale. They would meet in the Student Center (3rd floor if I remember right) and play war games. At the time, prior to 1974 their membership was only about a dozen. Tim Kask and his brother were members 14 and 15, according to his recollections. 

Back then, SGS at SIUC was a wargaming RSO (registered student organization) that bridged the pre-D&D and early-D&D eras. Exact rosters are hard to pin down in print, but the through-line is clear: SIU had an organized strategy gaming scene in the early 1970s, and by the mid-to-late 1970s that group was already intersecting with the brand-new role-playing hobby. There’s an active SGS presence today; they still meet in the Student Center.

The Egyptian Campaign (1987–2007)

If you gamed around Carbondale, you probably remember The Egyptian Campaign, the local convention that ran from 1987 to 2007, peaking at around ~750 attendees. It was anchored at the SIU Student Center and, for years, was the spring gaming date on the regional calendar. Even recent DE coverage of successor shows calls out Egyptian Campaign’s footprint and dates.

I went to it in April of 1988. I missed the preregistration and was unable to get into any games.  It happened around the time of Spring Fest and Carbondale's famous "Cardboard Boat Regatta," so I often missed it. 

What the SGS was doing through the late '70s and into the '80s, as D&D exploded, is harder to document; rosters and meeting records from that era haven't surfaced publicly, but the convention scene that emerged in 1987 didn't spring from nothing. Conventions do not appear ex nihilo. A 750-attendee show requires a pre-existing culture.  One thing is certain: there was quite a bit of D&D being played there.  A side effect of this? Cheap D&D books at 2nd hand book stores. I picked up a near-mint looking Deities & Demigods with the Cthulhu and Melniboné mythos for just $18. And it was not the only one. 

An Aside: The Trampier Thread

Then there’s the Carbondale connection we can't escape: David A. Trampier (DAT) the AD&D 1st edition artist and creator of Wormy. After vanishing from the hobby in the late ’80s, he resurfaced in a 2002 Daily Egyptian ride-along story… as a Carbondale cab driver. He later died in Carbondale in 2014, just weeks before he was slated to surface at a local con (yes, Egypt Wars). If you’ve ever wondered why Carbondale keeps coming up in old-school circles, that story alone would do it. 

Back in the early to mid-90s, I walked by that Yellow Cab depot all the time. There was this bar that all the TAs went to as soon as we were done teaching. There were more than a couple of occasions I left the bar, walked by the Yellow Cab, and got on the Amtrak to see my girlfriend in Chicago. The cabbies all sat outside and smoked. I can't verify this at all, but I know I walked by Tramp more than once.

The Pipeline

From the mid-’70s through the ’90s, a contiguous corridor of publishers, conventions, and university clubs, TSR and Gen Con in southern Wisconsin; Chicago-area publishers and retailers; UIUC’s Winter War; Judges Guild in Decatur; and SIU’s convention scene and retailers in Carbondale, created a reliable Midwest supply chain for RPGs. That infrastructure, plus TSR’s 1979 Random House book-trade deal and later Midwest distributors like Chessex/Alliance, made new D&D material easier and faster to find along this route than in regions that lacked equivalent clusters.

I have no sales figures. I have no hard data. What I do have is the recollections of many gamers and some other anecdotal evidence. But here is what I do know.

Mayfair Games (Chill, Role Aids line) was founded in Spring 1981 by Darwin Bromley, his brother Peter Bromley, and friends, and Darwin Bromley himself had practiced law in Chicago from 1975 to 1981 before starting the company. It was named for the Chicago neighborhood in which it started.  Darwin Bromley was involved with the Chicago Wargaming Association and its CWAcon convention, where the first Role Aids fantasy adventures were debuted and run. Chicago had its own organized wargaming association running its own convention. That's not just a waypoint, that's an active gaming culture node.

FASA (founded in 1980 in Chicago) pumped out Traveller material early on, then Star Trek, Doctor Who, BattleTech, and Shadowrun. Further concentrating RPG/miniature culture (and distribution reps) in Chicagoland. Founder Jordan Weisman was first bitten by the gaming bug in the mid-'70s when he began playing D&D at a summer camp. The game followed him all the way to the Merchant Marine Academy and the University of Illinois at Chicago, where it ultimately pulled him away from his degree and led him to found FASA in 1980.  Weisman and Babcock sold those first Traveller adventures to a local Chicago store before sending them to nationwide distributors. 

FASA brought William H. Keith, Jr. and his brother J. Andrew Keith into the company from freelancing for Game Designers' Workshop. The downstate node was feeding back into the upstate one.

Games Plus (Mount Prospect, IL) has been serving the region since 1982, one of the Midwest’s longest-running RPG FLGS anchors. I would order minis from them and have them shipped to me when I was living downstate. 

Moving south.

Champaign-Urbana (UIUC) as the mid-corridor node. Winter War launched in January 1974 and is still running, often cited as the Midwest’s longest consecutively running independent gaming convention.  This is where Marc Miller tested out some of his classic Traveller adventures. Game Desinger's Workshop actively playtested here as well. My first connection with the Call of Cthulhu game was the summer a friend's older brother brought it back from Urbana. 

Bloomington-Normal, IL was the home of Game Designer's Workshop (1973) and Illinois State University. The GDW collection at the McLean County Museum in Normal, IL shows central Illinois as a parallel wargame/RPG publishing hub feeding the same stores and cons. 

Marc Miller, creator of Traveller, attended Illinois State University (in Normal), where he joined the ISU Game Club, created by future game designers Rich Banner and Frank Chadwick.  ISU is as important to the development of Traveller as SIU was to Dungeons & Dragons. GDW did not advertise locally but instead focused on conventions and word of mouth. 

Decatur, IL as the south-central publisher node. Judges Guild began publishing in 1976 and became the premier third-party for D&D in the late ’70s–early ’80s; TSR’s formal license lasted into the early ’80s. 

Bob Bledsaw was born and raised in Decatur, Illinois, and in 1975 began running a D&D campaign after friends asked for help after four failed attempts to run the game themselves. On July 4, 1976, Bledsaw and partner Bill Owen traveled to Lake Geneva to visit TSR, where they met with Dave Arneson and received verbal approval to produce play aids for D&D. At the time, TSR's general feeling was that no one would be interested in supplemental materials.

By 1980, Judges Guild had scaled to a 14,000-square-foot facility in Decatur with a staff of 42. At that time this central Illinois town was home to one of the world's largest RPG publishers.

Springfield, IL, White Oaks Mall (Center of the State) had two book sellers (Waldenbooks, B Dalton's) that kept a regular high stock of D&D/RPG items from the early 1980s on. This was due to the Random-House distribution deal that put D&D and other games into malls all over. Many other stores also carried D&D and Wargame titles within the city. At one point, a city of just 100,000 people had five sources of D&D books. 

I have talked to gamers from all over. Some had to hunt for books, drive long distances, or rely on mail order. Here, I had choices of a couple of locations in my own small hometown, and I could drive the short distance to Springfield to have even more choices. 

Carbondale, IL, Castle Perilous. Coming full circle, Castle Perilous opened up in Carbondale in 1990 by SIU alum Scott Thorne.  Steve Chenault of Troll Lord Games played games here while searching for Trampier.  

Continuous convention calendar along the route. Gen Con (WI), Winter War (UIUC), and the Egyptian Campaign (SIU) created a reliable annual circuit for retailers, designers, and GMs to move product, run events, and cross-pollinate.

Time Line

1968–1978: Gen Con grows in southern WI (Lake Geneva to UW-Parkside).
1973: GDW founded (Bloomington-Normal, IL).
1974: Winter War launches at UIUC (Champaign-Urbana, IL)
1974: Tim Kask attends first GenCon, begins playtesting D&D at SIUC
1976: TSR opens Dungeon Hobby Shop at 723 Williams St. in Lake Geneva.
1976–83: Judges Guild (Decatur) is a primary third-party D&D publisher under TSR license, then beyond.
1979: Random House distribution deal with TSR begins (book-trade availability).
1980: FASA was founded in Chicago.
1981: Mayfair Games was founded in the Chicago area (Role Aids 1982).
1982: Games Plus opens (Mount Prospect, IL).
1984: Pacesetter was founded in Delavan, WI (near Lake Geneva, WI).
1987–2007: Egyptian Campaign runs in Carbondale, peaking ~750 attendees.
1990: Castle Perilous opens in Carbondale. Second only to Games Plus in size and sales. Still open today!
1987–98: Chessex (Fort Wayne, IN) expands Midwest distribution; Alliance forms through a 1998 merger.

The PLATO Bonus

There was another, parallel pipeline. Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale wrote the first role-playing video game in the TUTOR programming language for the PLATO system between 1974 and 1975. Called dnd, it was named after Dungeons & Dragons and is notable for being the first interactive game to feature what would later be called "bosses." 

This makes Carbondale and SIUC part of the earliest lineage of digital RPGs. Dungeons & Dragons and computers go all the way back to their origins and are interlinked. While computers will be forever associated with "Silcon Valley," RPGs will forever be associated with the Midwest. 

The Midwest did not merely birth Dungeons & Dragons; Illinois sustained and propagated the hobby through a connected north-south corridor of publishers, universities, conventions, and retailers that formed a durable cultural infrastructure from Lake Geneva to Carbondale.

Selected Sources / Bibliography

Tim Kask Interview, Part I - Grognardia (2008) https://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/09/interview-tim-kask-part-i.html Kask's account of his SIUC years, the Chainmail cold call, GenCon '74, and his hire at TSR.

Tim Kask Interview, Part II - Grognardia (2008) https://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/09/interview-tim-kask-part-ii.html Kask on the development of Basic and Advanced D&D, viral spread of the game, and his role as "midwife" to AD&D.

Bill Owen on Bob Bledsaw - Goodman Games https://goodman-games.com/remembering-bob-bledsaw-sr/ Co-founder of Judges Guild's first-person account of the Decatur wargaming scene and the founding of the company. Essential primary source for the Decatur node.

Bill Owen's ICD/Judges Guild Precursor Blog https://wargamecampaign.wordpress.com/2017/06/10/icd-judges-guilds-precursors/ Owen's detailed account of the pre-Judges Guild wargaming club scene in Decatur and Springfield, including connections to other Illinois clubs.

Marc Miller Interview - The Escapist, "A Perpetual Traveller" https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/tabletop/columns/days-of-high-adventure/7023-A-Perpetual-Traveller-Marc-Miller Miller in his own words on returning to ISU on the GI Bill, founding the ISU Game Club, and how D&D instantly made sense to him because of prior political roleplaying at U of I.

Dragonsfoot Tim Kask Thread https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=92246
Primary community source for Kask's SIUC recollections and the Kwalish/Apparatus connection outside of my own conversations with him.

"An SIU Gaming Club Played an Integral Part in the Development of Dungeons & Dragons" - The Southern https://thesouthern.com/news/local/an-siu-gaming-club-played-an-integral-part-in-the-development-of-dungeons-dragons/article_a2c8bcd5-0d4c-5df3-a4cf-1f3a4225286d.html Local news coverage of the Strategic Games Society and Kask's Qualishar campaign at SIUC.

"Club Part of Dungeons & Dragons Creation" - Jacksonville Journal Courier https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Club-part-of-Dungeons-amp-Dragons-creation-14341261.php Additional local coverage of SIUC's role in D&D history.

"Exchange Club Played Part in Dungeons & Dragons Creation" - Daily Herald https://www.dailyherald.com/20190818/news/exchange-club-played-part-in-dungeons-dragons-creation/ Third regional news source documenting the SIUC pipeline connection.

Winter War - About Us (official site) https://www.winterwar.org/about Confirms 1974 founding by the Conflict Simulation Society on the UIUC campus.

"A Winter War for Gamers" - Smile Politely https://www.smilepolitely.com/culture/a_winter_war_for_gamers/ Detailed history of the Conflict Simulation Society's founding in 1969 and the birth of Winter War. Confirms the UIUC origin and the 1974 launch.

"Annual Winter War Gamers' Convention Returns to Champaign" - Herald-Review https://herald-review.com/entertainment/local/annual-winter-war-gamers-convention-returns-to-champaign/article_5f22fea4-2a5b-11e0-9c99-001cc4c03286.html Confirms Winter War as one of the oldest continuously operating wargaming conventions in the world, 38 years without a break.

Books

Gary Gygax, Empire of Imagination by Michael Witwer (Bloomsbury, 2015).

Ben Riggs, Slaying the Dragon (St. Martin’s Press, 2022).

Jon Peterson, Playing at the World (Unreason Press, 2012).

Jon Peterson, The Elusive Shift (MIT Press, 2020).

Shannon Appelcline, Designers & Dragons: The ’70s (2015)

Tim Kask (1949 - 2025)

Today, we lost Tim Kask, and it feels like one of the load-bearing pillars of this hobby has been removed. He was 76, just two weeks shy of 77.

Before he was TSR’s first full-time employee, before he edited The Dragon and helped turn a homebrew wargame into a living culture, Tim Kask was a married student at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale (SIUC). A Saluki. That detail matters more than it might seem. Well. At least to me.

From SIUC, Kask did something that sounds almost mythic now. He found an address for Gary Gygax in the back of Chainmail, picked up the phone, and cold-called Lake Geneva. Late '73 or early '74, depending on whose memory you trust. He got invited up, and the rest is history. Not destiny. Not inevitability. Just a guy deciding to make the call.

Tim and I talked a lot about SIUC. Salukis never really ever forget Carbondale, becomes part of our DNA. He told me about visiting his brother in the Triads, playing D&D there, making space for imagination in cinderblock dorm rooms. He lived in Boomer Hall, I lived in Wright Hall two of the three Triads. About thirteen or fourteen years apart, but close enough that the echoes line up. Same bricks. Same paths. Same sense that something strange and creative could happen there. 

I'd love to know how many games were played in those ugly damn dorms. And we all have Tim Kask to thank for this.

Kask refereed what local coverage described as the first Dungeons & Dragons campaign played at SIU, and likely one of the first outside Lake Geneva. The Qualishar campaign, or Kwalishar, depending on which source you read. The spelling drift alone tells you how early this was. This was before canon. Before anyone knew they were making history.

That Carbondale period mattered. It shaped how D&D escaped the gravitational pull of those three little brown books and became something people shared, argued about, wrote letters about, and eventually built communities around. Tim was there when the game stopped being just rules and became culture.

There is also that wonderful bit of apocrypha Tim himself shared over the years. His first player character was named Kwalish. Fans have long connected that, informally, to the Apparatus of Kwalish. Is it provable? No. Is it plausible? Absolutely. And that feels right for Tim. Part fact, part legend, part inside joke, all wrapped up in the living memory of the game.

Tim Kask was never just an editor. He was a bridge. Between Lake Geneva and the rest of the world. Between amateurs and professionals. Between "this is a fun idea" and "this is something worth taking seriously."

Rest well, Tim. The dice are still rolling because you helped get them out of the box. I'll roll some dice in your honor or use a Quatro's cup with some chits, or my SIU cup.

Monstrous Mondays: Return of the Demogorgon (Stranger Things)

 We have been rewatching Stranger Things in anticipation of the new, and final, season coming on Wednesday. I thought it might be fun to revisit their classic monster for the system that influenced the show so much.

Demogorgon (The Creature)
Interdimensional Predator

FREQUENCY: Very rare
NO. APPEARING: 1 (rarely 1–2)
ARMOR CLASS: 4
MOVE: 15"
HIT DICE: 8+8
% IN LAIR: Nil
TREASURE TYPE: Nil
NO. OF ATTACKS: 2 claws
DAMAGE/ATTACK: 4–9 / 4–9 (1d6+3) plus special (bite 1-8)
SPECIAL ATTACKS: Bite latch, dimensional scent, drag
SPECIAL DEFENSES: Regeneration, surprise, fire vulnerability
MAGIC RESISTANCE: Standard
INTELLIGENCE: Animal to Low (1–6)* high cunning
ALIGNMENT: Chaotic Evil
SIZE: M (7 feet tall, thin, humanoid)
PSIONIC ABILITY: Nil
LEVEL/XP VALUE: VIII / 1,650 + 12 per hp

A tall, gaunt humanoid creature with elongated limbs and a head that opens like a five-petaled flower. The interior of its "face" is ringed with rows of needle-like teeth. Its flesh is pale, hairless, and amphibian-like. Movement is unnaturally fluid and silent.

Demogorgons exist between worlds. They slip into Prime Material spaces only when the veils thin or when drawn through by psychic resonance or magical disruption.

Demogorgons fight with terrifying speed and ferocity. They prefer to stalk prey for several minutes, using their ability to sense blood, fear, or psychic emanations.

Claw Attacks: Each claw deals 1–6+3 damage. A natural 19 or 20 indicates the Demogorgon has seized the target, granting it a +2 to hit with its bite.

Bite Latch: Once latched, the creature bites for 1–8 damage per round automatically until the victim is freed. Strength checks or magical force are required to break free.

Dimensional Scent: Demogorgons can sense living creatures across thin planar boundaries. They detect invisible, ethereal, or phase-shifted beings within 6", ignoring illusions involving scent or blood.

This ability also allows them to track wounded prey with near-perfect accuracy.

Drag Into Shadow: If the Demogorgon is adjacent to a dimensional weak spot (DM’s discretion: portals, rifts, magical failures, etc.), it may drag a victim through with a successful hit roll followed by a Strength contest. The victim is taken into a dark parallel space similar to the Upside Down.

Regeneration: Demogorgons regenerate 1 hp per round unless damaged by fire or holy/radiant magical effects.

Surprise: Due to absolute silence and unnatural motion, Demogorgons surprise on a 1–3 in 6.

Fire Vulnerability: Demogorgons fear fire. Fire causes it to go last in the initiative round and causes +2 damage per successful hit. 

Demogorgons are apex predators of a hostile parallel ecology. They do not communicate in a conventional sense. They react aggressively to psychic disturbance, emotional trauma, and bloodshed. Some appear to be specifically drawn to magical or psionic children. 

They do not gather treasure, nor construct lairs, but they linger near dimensional bleed sites that link their realm to others. They live only to hunt.

--

Just under 60 hours to go!

This Old Dragon #100

 Today I have another Dragon from Eric Harshbarger , and honestly, it is one of my favorites. Dragon #100 was a special issue all around. Dragon had already celebrated 10 years and now this issue came with a thicker cover and an embossed "paper cut" dragon on the cover. While there was drama behind the scenes at TSR, many of us remained blissfully unaware and this issue celebrated Dragon, D&D, and all things TSR. It was a snapshot of the end of what many call the Golden Age of  Dungeons & Dragons.

In August 1985, I was getting ready to start my Junior Year in High School. I had just gotten my driver's license (late; I needed new glasses), and I had been playing AD&D all summer long. I had seen the movie "Back to the Future" at least a dozen times that summer, and "The Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News from the movie dominated the airwaves. And on tables everywhere was Issue #100 of This Old Dragon.

By this point, I had been buying Dragon magazine regularly for over a year. I couldn't rely on the other players in my group, so my DM and I split the duties; I'd buy one month, and he the next. But we both bought this one. 

Dennis Kauth is our cover artist for this issue, and it is a memorable one. It is a paper sculpture laid flat and photographed. The purple color of the faerie dragon was then added later. Why purple? Because they are the oldest and most powerful faerie dragons. This was his only Dragon Magazine cover, but he was also a key contributor to the BATTLESYSTEM game, building many of the 3D paper minis and cartography. 

Kim Mohan's Editorial is, as expected, reflective. Focusing on the his shared history with Dragon. 

Letters takes a different turn this month to answer some questions they often get. It is more of a Frequently Asked Questions feature. Questions like "why haven't you answered my letter?" to "how do you handle manuscript or art submissions?"

Score one for Sabratact, which covers the sport of the same name. Forest Baker is reporting on this form of sport combat, a bit like sparing but less LARPing than, say, SCA. Gary Gygax gives us an introduction. Essentially you wear armor and use blunt fencing like swords or other weapons. Your armor is affixed with discs with a paper surface. The goal is to take out your opponent's paper discs. Each disk has a different set of points and the first to score 10 points on their opponent wins. It is still being played and the official website even has pictures from this issue of Dragon.

Frank Mentzer is up with All About the Druid-Ranger. This article has some clarifications on the multiclass Druid-Ranger Gygax talked about in Issue #96. The controversy, of course, from the time Rangers could only be Good and Druids had to be true neutral. The solution is the obvious Neutral Good alignment, and the rest of the article is the rationale. We took this article as gospel. It was from the mind and hands of Gygax and Mentzer; how much more official could it be? 

Speaking of which, The Forum has discussions on the "legality" of altering the official AD&D system in game play. 

Ed Greenwood is next (wow, we are getting all the heavy hitters in this one) with Pages from the Mages V. There is less background fiction here, Elminster sitting in a canoe enjoying the summer night in Wisconsin, but the spells are just as fun. Many of these spells made their way into our big world-ending campaign of 1986. 

At Moonset Blackcat Comes is a tale about Gord the Rogue, the Cat Lord and Dragonchess from Gary Gygax. This is a bit of fiction to show the place of Dragonchess in Gary's world. While I thought the story was ok, it ignited my DM. There were two immediate impacts of this. The first was the increasing inclusion of the Catlord in our games. The second, well that is coming up.

Nice full-page ad for the Unearthed Arcana is next.

If Dungeons & Dragons is Gary's greatest feats as a game designer, then our next article should go down as one of his most overlooked feats. Dragonchess by Gary Gygax is an ambitious chess variant played on a 12 x 8 x 3 board. Yes, it is a 3D chess, with three levels. I won't go into detail here about how to play, there is a Wikipedia article for it, but I will get into how we played it.  I came over to Grenda's for our regular D&D session and he had built a Dragonchess set. Using plexiglass and long bolts he built the boards and marked out the grids with painter's tape. He used chess pieces from different sets and made the other pieces of random bits.  We played it...well. We tried to play it. We quickly saw that we kept forgetting about the other boards above and below. But, it was fun. 

I know there was some software out there that allowed you to play dragon chess. I am not sure if it still around. I have seen other people build their own boards and sets, and with 3D printing, making the pieces would be a lot easier (in fact, here they are). While I never played a full game of it, many half-attempts, I have very fond memories of this game. 

Our centerpiece, as if the Dragonchess wasn't enough, is one of my all time favorite Dragon Magazine adventures, The City Beyond the Gate by Robert Schroeck. This adventure takes your AD&D characters of at least 9th level and sends them through a gate to London of the 1980s!  I was already a huge Anglophile at this point. My favorite bands were Pink Floyd, The Police, The Who, Led Zeppelin, and still The Beatles. Doctor Who was my favorite television show. AND the adventure was about finding the Mace of St. Cuthbert. So this was custom-made for me, really. The adventure is a long one, 21 pages, and has maps and "tech item" flow charts as seen in Expedition to the Barrier Peaks. 

The adventure was a lot of fun, and I am thinking of getting my Dragon DC-ROM and printing it out for my kids to use. I think they would find it great. If I were to re-run today, I think I might set it in Victorian London of the 1890s. Though...there is a lot of fun to be had in London of the 1980s. 

And I do love any map of London.

Wow, we are already into the Ares section of this Dragon. The "cover" has the then Guardians of the Galaxy on it. 

Creative Conjuring from Eric Walker is a variant magic system for Marvel Superheroes. Dr. Strange is featured throughout and he was always one of my favorite Marvel characters. I remember trying to figure out if I could use any of this with AD&D, but I never got it to work how I wanted. BUT given the time period, I am sure some of those notes went into one of the drafts of my witch class or characters. 

Champions gets some love for our first non-TSR RPG covered in CHAMPIONS Plus! by Steven Maurer. This has new powers for CHAMPIONS heroes. Again, I am not 100% certain, but I think some ideas here went into my witches. The "Domination" and "Vertigo" powers feel too familiar to me. 

Nice big ad for Mentzer's Masters Set rules. I think at the time I saw the Master's rules and the Unearthed Arcana as being similar products, one for D&D and the other for AD&D. That is not really the case, but it did solidify my decision to keep with AD&D and drop D&D. It would have been interesting if I had gone the other route, but I don't regret my choices. 

Charisma Counts! by S.D. Anderson gives us a charisma stat for Villains & Vigilantes. 

Defenders of the Future by William Tracy gives us the 1985 version of the Guardians of the Galaxy. The only one recognizable by today's audiences would be Yondu, and even then his comic version is different than his film version. 

The proper Marvel-Phile by good friend Jeff Grubb covers the Defenders; Gargoyle, Cloud, and Valkyrie. I always kinda liked Gargoyle and Valkyrie in the comics. 

Doug Niles talks about the BATTLESYSTEM project in The Chance of a Lifetime. He reflects on it's design and how he sees it fitting into the AD&D rules. 

We get another ad from Ramal LaMarr! Keep it funky Ramal!

From First Draft to Last Gasp by Michael Dobson covers the initial idea and creation of the BATTLESYSTEM game to it's final post editor form. Dobson was the editor of this massive project and he shares his own insight to how it was created back when it was called "Bloodstone Pass."

COMPRESSOR by Michael D. Selinker is a crossword puzzle.

Convention Calendar covers the cons of late summer to early winter of 1985. Sadly, nothing local to me then.

Gamers' Guide has our small ads.

Wormy, Dragonmirth, and Snarf Quest follow. 

Ok. So that was a crazy good issue. 

There is a lot here, and what I consider a collectible issue. 

It would be great for Dragonchess or adventure alone. And you know an issue is good if Ed Greenwood's contribution doesn't even crack the top three articles! There are many good issues coming up as well. 

The OTHER Old School Gaming, Part 2

 Back in 2022 I kitbashed an old TRS-80/Tandy Color Computer 2 into a modern PC using a RaspberryPI 4. I had so much fun doing it, I immediately began my ideas for another Kitbash, this time using a TRS-80 Model 4 and trying to build something that would have been like the proposed Tandy Color Computer 4. 

I didn't quite do that, but I used the knowledge from my first Kitbash to build something new. But first I needed to figure out what to do. Well, that's not true, I pretty much knew what I wanted, I just had to do it. First I needed the case. Thankfully eBay comes through.

I scored a TRS-80 Model III case. Just the case, nothing inside. I wanted a Model 4 since they were a little bigger and white. It seemed fitting that a Model 4 case would be the start of my Color Computer 4 project.  But Model 4s were rarer than Model IIIs, but I could fix that.

Case ready to go I needed remove some internal pieces to fit a new keyboard.

Thankfully, I had gotten a Dremel for Christmas. 

Now came the longer part, finding a monitor and keyboard that would fit. I found some custom scientific equipment monitors that were even in HD and had a touch screen, but in the end I found a cheap ass monitor on Amazon.

It didn't look bad, and even had built-in sound.

I played around with a few keyboards, including a cheap one my wife and I found at a second-hand store we were dropping off old toys at. 

Not really liking that one, and it later died on me anyway, I spent some money to get a really nice keyboard. Nicer than the project dictated, but I could also redo the keys to make it look like the old TRS-80 keyboard.

I knew heat was going to be an issue, so I installed some fans. 

They worked out better than expected really!

Now came the time to get everything together. I scored a 5" monitor from my brother and added that to one of the drive bays, my youngest even designed and 3D printed some adapters for it fit in better.

I picked up a power strip with USB ports to power everything inside (thankful for those fans) and started putting it all together.

Tested everything and spent a few hours planning where to put all these cables and unplugging and plugging back in so I was not creating a fire hazard.

Till today.

It looks nice next to my other Kitbash.

The top bay is still empty, but I have a 3D file to print that will turn it into a 3.5 drivebay. The 3D filament currently loaded is glow-in-the-dark, since I am just going to paint it black, it seems like a waste. 

Well.

That was a blast. Now to load some old DOS games on it. That's the external hard drive in the middle. I have another monitor, I should put it up and use it for my Atari 600 and 2600 emulators. 

What should I do next I wonder.

October Horror Movie Challenge: Demons (1985)

Again, this October Horror Movie Challenge, I am going "themeless." Well, not entirely themeless, I am going to hit some movies I have been wanting to see for a while. I am going to hit some movies with a strong occult themes to help with my Occult D&D ideas. And a lot of movies that are random picks. 

Tonight's movie is a bit of all the above. It was on my list, so when flipping through Tubi (Tubi is a GOLD MINE of old horror!) I figure, let's give it a go. 

Demons (1985)

One of the things about my Occult D&D project that I keep coming back too is I want it to feel like a book I would have been able to by in 1986. So in addition to reading all the Appendix N books, I am filling my brain full of events from the mid-1980s and horror movies that would have had an enfluence on my writing. Demons for 1985 seems to fit the bill well.

Some movies are subtle. "Demons" is not one of them. This Italian splatterfest from Lamberto Bava (with Dario Argento producing) is pure, unfiltered 1980s horror excess: neon lights, heavy metal, gore by the bucket, and a “plot” that’s basically just a vehicle to get from one outrageous set-piece to another. And you know what? It’s great. I love it. 

The story is simple: a group of people are invited to a special screening at a mysterious Berlin movie theater. During the film, a cursed mask displayed in the lobby starts turning viewers into ravenous demons. Soon, the audience is fighting for their lives as the theater itself becomes a trap, sealing them in with the growing horde. From there, it’s a descent into chaos, blood sprays, limbs fly, and at least one person rides a motorcycle through the aisles swinging a samurai sword while a metal soundtrack blasts in the background. It’s that kind of movie.

Gods, I love the 80s.

What I love about Demons is how it feels like watching someone’s horror RPG campaign go entirely off the rails in the best way. You start with a spooky hook (a cursed mask, a haunted theater), then unleash wave after wave of enemies until the players stop caring about logic and just lean into survival mode. It’s less about character development and more about whether you’re going to get your head ripped off before the next guitar riff kicks in. It FEELS like the Nightlife RPG or the way I like playing NIGHT SHIFT.

The effects are gloriously practical. The transformations are gooey, gross, and wonderful, faces bulge, teeth sprout, and eyes ooze in ways that would make even David Cronenberg nod in approval. The demons themselves are nasty, feral things, closer to zombies than elegant vampires, but with enough supernatural menace to keep them distinct. 

Of course, none of this makes a bit of sense if you think too hard about it. Why is the theater cursed? Who set it up? How does the mask work? Don’t worry about it. Demons isn’t here to answer questions. It’s here to drench the screen in gore while Claudio Simonetti’s score and a soundtrack full of 80s metal make sure your head keeps banging as the blood keeps flowing.

It has been years since I have seen this and I admit I got it all mixed up in my memories with other, similar movies, from the time.  Still, it was nice to come back to this one after so long. 

NIGHT SHIFT

If I were to drop this into a NIGHT SHIFT game, the Metropol Theater would be a perfect one-shot dungeon: a closed environment with escalating waves of monsters, random NPC allies turning into enemies, and no real “solution” except trying to survive until dawn (or until you blow the place to pieces). It’s survival horror at its most distilled.

Occult D&D & NIGHT SHIFT

Demons is not high art. It is not even low art. But I do love the 1980s, Lamberto Bava, and Dario Argento movies. Argento gave me a lot with his Mothers Trilogy, so I am not looking for a lot here except for atmosphere. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
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