October Horror Movie Challenge 2016

Once again I am going to participate in the October Horror Movie Challenge.
31 days, 31 movies.  20 have to be new to me.

I am going to try to relate this to gaming as much as possible. Even if it is a weak, "yeah I am going to do this".  I see a lot of this happening for my War of the Witch Queens campaign idea.

The challenge was started (near as I know) by Krell Labs.  It has moved over to Facebook now.

Go there. Sign-up and watch some scary movies. Or not so scary ones as the case might be.

This year my youngest son will join me for some of these movies. I'll post what he thinks along with my own opinions.

+Justin Isaac over at Halls of the Nephilim will be joinig me in this.  It should be a blast!

Who You Gonna Call in 2016?

So last night I was inspired to crack open my long forgotten Ghostbuster RPG books.  I will go into this system in some detail later (I have some D6 stuff planned) but for now I want to represent the new cast with the classic 1986 rules.
The 1986 version of the Ghostbusters RPG uses a proto-version of their later to be the wildly famous D6 system.

The nice thing about this version of the system is it so damn easy to use that I could recreate the characters in a very, very short time.

The system has you build your characters on a 12-point economy.  Well, I took some cues from the cast as presented in the books and went with a 13-point economy on points. Maybe a little less for Kevin.  One of the features (it's not a bug) of the Ghostbuster movies and cartoons is the characters are all pretty much characters.  Look, I don't care how much you love the first movie. I love it more and Venkman is pretty one dimensional.  Two-dimensional at best.  Egon? The same.  Ray has a bit more going on I think and so does Dana.  Louis Tulley? No.  BUT that is fine!  It works for this game really, really well.  So representing this cast with only 2 hours to get to know them is not a big deal.

So here they are, the class of 2016!  I am presenting them in the style of the Ghostbuster ID Cards (dropping "telex" and putting in email).

Dr. Abby Yates (Melissa McCarthy)
TRAITS (Talents)
Brains 5 (Paranormal research)
Muscles 3 (Brawl)
Moves 3 (Throw things)
Cool 3 (convince)

Brownie Points: 20
Goal: Prove Ghosts are real
email: DrAbby@gbi.net

Dr. Erin Gilberts (Kristen Wiig)
TRAITS (Talents)
Brains 6 (Physics)
Muscles 2 (Run)
Moves 2 (see)
Cool 3 (orate)

Brownie Points: 20
Goal: Pure Science
email: egilberts@gbi.net

Dr. Jillian Holtzmann (Kate McKinnon)
TRAITS (Talents)
Brains 6 (Engineering)
Muscles 1 (Brawl)
Moves 2 (fire weapon)
Cool 4 (charm)

Brownie Points: 20
Goal: Build cool stuff
email: SciBabe@gbi.net

Patty Tolan (Leslie Jones)
TRAITS (Talents)
Brains 3 (Local NYC knowledge)
Muscles 3 (Break Things)
Moves 3 (Drive)
Cool 4 (Charm or Fast Talk)

Brownie Points: 20
Goal: To protect her friends and city
email: pattyNYC@gbi.net

Kevin (Chris Hemsworth)
TRAITS (Talents)
Brains 1 (Basic life skills)
Muscles 4 (Lift)
Moves 3 (Attract Attention)
Cool 3 (Bluff)

Brownie Points: 20
Goal: To be a Ghostbuster, and maybe figure out the phone
email: yournamehere@gbi.net

I like it. They fit well.
I'll need to delve deeper into this system in the future.

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I am up for an Ennie this year for Best Blog!
Please click on the link and vote "1" under "The Other Side".

Review: Chill Quickstart - Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

Chill Quickstart: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors

I am woefully behind on all my reviews.  None am I more late on than reviewing what should have been something I jumped on right away, Chill 3rd Edition.

I was very disapointed when I saw that Chill was not up for a ENnie for Best Game this year.  The consolation though is that the rather excellent Quickstart for Chill is up for Best Free Product.

This is good since you can experience Chill for the price of a couple of clicks.

Now my love for Chill is WELL documented here on this blog. When everyone else was playing Call of Cthulhu (and watching their characters go mad or die) I was playing Chill (and watching my characters die).  Or more to the point I was creating elaborate scenarios involving SAVE.   I loved Pacesetter Chill and even drove out to the old Mayfair Games warehouse to score a brandnew hardcover a few years back.  I own pretty much everything for Chill and even Rotworld/Cryptworld/Majus.

On to the product as hand.
Chill: Good Fences Make Good Neighbors is a 46 page "Quickstart".  It has everything you need to play the game now except for people, dice and some tokens.  Don't have 10-sided dice?  Fine, get a deck of cards, remove the royals, put all the black suits in one deck and all the red in another.  Shuffle them.  When you need to roll choose a black card and a red card.  Count tens as "0" and aces as "1".   Save the face cards, the royals, for your tokens.

With this Quickstart author +Matthew McFarland has distilled Chill down to it's essence. It's a game about fighting the Unknown.  There are a couple of pages devoted to the mechanics of the game; find a target number, roll that or under. Avoid botches (doubles over) but hope for a Colossal Success (roll doubles and under).  Tokens are also covered.

An overview of the character sheet comes next breaking down the Attributes, Skills, Edges, Drawbacks and where you record damage.  There is also a spot for The Art, or some magical/psychic abilities.  This edition seems to focus a bit more on this than the previous, normal-human-centric point of view of the previous, but that will wait for a full reveiw.

This makes up the first half-dozen or so pages.  The next dozen covers Combat and The Art. Combat is just another type of test/roll and The Art are "fancy" skills.  The nice thing is when one system is learned the rest are easily picked up.

The rest of the book is the adventure.  I don't want to give out any spoilers for potential players, but the adventure is a classic one for Chill.  What kind of adventures are good for Chill? Well anything you might see on "Supernatural", "Grimm", "Kolchak" or "The X-Files" would make for a great Chill game, but also the stories you told as kids about the haunted house, or the mean old neighbor lady or the monster in the sewers.

The quickstart includes some characters to get you up and running fast. There are maps, artifacts and investigation sheet to make this feel like a real investigation into the paranormal, or what Chill calls The Unknown.  Enough background is given on SAVE to make it interesting and to make you want to know more.

For the price you can't beat it. If you ever told a scary story to others with a flashlight under your chin, dared a friend to go into a "haunted house" or watched a Hammer Horror film then this is a great game for you.   An ENnie win for it would let others know that too.



---
I am up for an ENnie this year for Best Blog!
Please click on the link and vote "1" under "The Other Side".

Review: Curse of Strahd (D&D 5e)

Quick question. Who played Dracula?

Your answer might depend on a lot of thing from when you first saw Dracula in a movie to your age to what your cultural background is.  I also bet that the choice of actor might also say something about your gaming choices, but I am not getting into that today.
Like Dracula, who keeps coming back from the grave to scare or charm a new generation, Strahd the Vampire and his home in Ravenloft keep coming back for each version of the D&D game.

You can easily buy a Ravenloft product to fit any version of D&D you like.  There have been subtle changes with each round of designers and editors.  To extend the Dracula movie metaphor more, I6 Ravenloft is "Hammer Horror" (Christopher Lee).  2e Ravenloft Domains of Dread (boxed sets and books) were "Bram Stoker's Dracula" (Gary Oldman).  3rd Edition was split between Wizards own Expedition to Castle Ravenloft ("Dracula 2000," Gerard Butler) and the Ravenloft setting from White Wolf/Arthaus (Lestat movies).  4e's board game, Undead books and Shadowfell books were different enough that these are more like the NBC TV series Dracula (Jonathan Rhys Meyers).
This new book is "Dracula Untold" (Luke Evans).

I have converted Strahd to a couple of different systems myself.  I have been playing in Ravenloft, the castle and the land, since the original module came out in 1983.  I played it when it first came out and it is one of maybe three adventures I have run under every version of D&D I have ever played.  Ravenloft has history both in game and in the real world.  It was my world of choice in the AD&D 2e years and the effect it has had on adventure design can't be overstated.   To call it a sea change is not hyperbole.

So the new 5e Ravenloft has a lot to live up too.

I mentioned here back in the Summer that I was going to run the original I6 Ravenloft adventure for my family at Gen Con 2015.  I spent most of July prepping for that, working out Strahd's 5e stats, converting the major magic items, filling in some details.  None of it was hard work really. Again I *know* this adventure like few others.  The hardest part was balancing out what has become the de rigueur method of handling a D&D 5 encounter with the more plot-driven nature of the Ravenloft adventure.   Having this new Curse of Strahd book then would have helped me out a lot.

The new book is a retelling of the same I6 Ravenloft adventure from 1983. On the down side there is not much about the "Demi-Plane of Dread" as we knew it back in 2e.  This is more 4e Shadowfell.  Including it as part of the Shadowfell actually gives the DM more flexibility to be honest.   So that is good.  I did not notice much from the disappointing 3e Expedition to Castle Ravenloft here. So that is also a plus.

The book itself is hardcover, full color, 256 pages. Suitable for levels 1 to 10 for D&D 5.  The "Castle Ravenloft" adventure itself has been upgraded to level 9.

The first 90 pages or so are some introductions, some background and the updates Castle Ravenloft adventure.   There is an introduction and forward here too. The subtle snark directed at the likes of Twilight in Tracy Hickman's forward can't be missed.  There is a page on how to run a horror-themed game. It's nice, but nothing new and by no means complete.   If you really want to run a horror game find a copy of +Kenneth Hite's "Nightmares of Mine" or Spooky: The Definitive Guide To Horror Gaming.

The book is basically a sandbox, with Castle Ravenloft (the place and the adventure) in the "middle".  It is designed for adventurers from 1st to 10th level.  There are a few really interesting "side treks" including the low level "Death House", the medium level "Argynostholt" and the high level "The Amber Temple".  Death House is available for free from WotC.  So I would grab that first if you are on the fence about this.

Souls vs. Shells
One of the new "features" of this book is the idea that not everyone in Barovia has a soul.  Now if you were playing this as a horror game then this would be a truly frightening concept. The scenarios that are implicit in this are numerous.  Hapless villagers moving through their lives in drudgery, unfeeling save for a pervasive dread.  Or worse yet the same said villagers coming to the PCs begging them to find their lost souls.  Or PCs born in Barovia discovering they are among the "Soulless Shells".   Sadly though as a D&D game I see this only working as an excuse for PCs to murder bystanders.

There are some interesting character options, like the new Haunted One character background.  The iconic magic items like the Sunsword and the Holy Symbol of Ravenkind are here too.  As well as the Tome of Strahd.   The Gothic Trinkets are a really nice touch to be honest.
There are some new monsters too.  The is a fantastic full color tear out map of Castle Ravenloft (roughly 32" by 24") on one side and Barovia on the next.

I think in the end I was hoping for more.  Maybe not so much as a repeat of the 2e Ravenloft Domains of Dread campaign world, but something...more.

There will be a Tarokka deck you can buy later.
http://dnd.wizards.com/products/tabletop-games/rpg-products/tarokka-deck
I think I still have my 2e one around somewhere, but I prefer to use Tarot cards myself.

You can read the table of contents here.
http://tribality.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/01_CoS_TableofContents_4s09.pdf
I got excited when I saw that "Barovian Witch" listed under NPCs and had hoped to see an update to the 2nd Ed "Witches of Hala" but sadly this was not the case.  But it has given me some ideas.

I know. This is Pathfinder, but this is what a witch in Ravenloft could look like.

Ok bottom line time.  Who should buy this and who should avoid it?

Buy this if...
You are a fan of Ravenloft and want to have a complete collection.
You are a fan D&D 5e and want to have a complete collection.
A fan of adventure design and want to see how a 1st ed to 5th ed conversion can be done.
If you are planning to ever run Ravenloft under 5e.
Like the idea of playing in the Barovian sandbox.  This is actually a big one to be honest.

Avoid if...
You are not planning on running the classic Ravenloft adventure.
You are not playing D&D 5e.
Want to do your own conversion of one of the many options out there for taking on Strahd in his castle.

There are no new classes or races.  Not even rules for playing a Vistani.
There are no new spells or rituals either.  This seems like a bigger miss to me.

In the end you have to decide for yourself.  I am certainly not someone that needs tips on playing horror game, nor am I going to run Ravenloft (the adventure) under 5e (already did it) and don't need help converting.  There isn't anything here I could not have done on my or haven;t already done on my own.  But I got it anyway.  Hopefully there will be a sequel for levels 11-20.

Just like Dracula, Strahd can (and will) come back.  There are even details in the book about how it happens.  So maybe a sequel is already in the works?

Now that would be fun!

Link Roundup

Lots of things going on today. So here are a list of links I have been reading or need to read in detail still.  Thought I'd share.

Curse of Strahd is coming.  Ravenloft was my all time favorite module to play and run. The Demiplane of Ravenloft was my world of choice during the 2nd Edition days.  So I am finding it hard to wait till this new book comes out.  Thankfully my FLGS is a Wizard's Premier store, so I should be picking up my copy this weekend.  But until then here are some things to keep us all busy.

• Character Background, Haunted One
• Introductory Adventure, Death House

Looks great so far!

The Witch is out. The movie that is. I have been following this film for months, so I hope it lives up to the hype.  So far I pleased with everything I read, though I am not trying to read to much to be honest.  Some of my fellow bloggers have already seen it.

• From the Sorcerer's Scroll, The Historicity of The Witch
• The Junto, Guest Post: Discovering Witches
• Krell Laboratories, Bothered and Bewitched
• NY Public Library, The Witch: A Reading and Resource List
• Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque , So, You Saw The Witch...

I need to see this movie.

Once a again a tip o' the hat to my good friend +Calvin Heighton at Calvin's Canadian Cave of Cool for this one.
It's a "Dragon Wagon" with a surprisingly familiar font.

Is this the conveyance of some mad wizard?  A collector from the future? A Gamma World/D&D crossover?  No idea, but damn if I don't want to do something with this.
Here are some more links of information/pictures.

• Calvin's Canadian Cave of Coo, Tuesdays From The Toybox
• Tom Daniel's Dragon Wagon
• Just a Car Guy, The Dragon Wagon 1/24th scale model by Monogram

Need to learn a new language?  Well there is a Chrome add-in that simulates language immersion by swapping out words you read with those of the chosen language.  Which language?  Any language in Google Translate's database.  Trying it out now.

Finally the same folks that brought us the Harry Potter fan film The Greater Good just finished their newest fan film, Severus Snape and the Marauders.  I do love a good fan film!



I have to say the casting of this is spot on.

Old Loves

I have been blogging here for a while.  Mostly about D&D and related clones, but some other games too.  I was reading over some rule books for games I have not played yet or haven't played in a long while and I was thinking.
I really miss the modern supernatural genre.  I have lost track of all the games I have played over the years since the early days of Chill and Call of Cthulhu. I have lost track of all the books I have read in this genre as well; has to be in the hundreds by now.  But I also enjoy the over the top heroics of D&D and supers games too.

So imagine my surprise when I saw Eden Studios was finally publishing the long, long, long, awaited Beyond Human.

Years, a life time ago it seems, I helped with this book.  I contributed quite a bit to the magic chapter.  The magic system is based on my Ghosts of Albion game, which is based in turn on C.J. Carella's own magic systems in Buffy the Vampire Slayer (another game I worked on) and on the WitchCraft game.

I really would love to get something new for these games going again.   Ideas are plentiful, time really isn't.

One day I'll return to this world.

Friday Night Videos: Supernatural Soundtrack, take 2

Been meaning to do tthis for my kids for a while now.

This is an expansion of a similar FNV I did a while back.


I have taken some liberties with the song selections, but the spirit is there.

This is a long play-list. 25 songs, about an hour and half long.

Dear Harry, It's Not You, it's Me...

No. Actually. It's You.

I LOVE modern supernatural and horror games.  Just love them.  Even ones I don't get to play often I still enjoy reading.  Heck I have not played Mage in close to 10 years and I still want that giant Mage 20th anniversary book.

So why can't I get myself to love, or even like, The Dresden Files?

I am talking about the Fate-powered RPG, but I'll talk a bit about the books too.

I got these books for Christmas after they first came out in 2010.  Dresden Files (the books) were all the rage and that Summer my group had been playing a Chicago-based Ghosts of Albion/Angel/WitchCraft game.  It had some Dresden-esque elements, but mostly it was White Wolf's World of Darkness' Mage, Vampire and Werewolf as the backdrop.
I had started reading the books that September. I was commuting to work everyday for about an hour in and hour back not to mention doing a lot of flying, so I had plenty of time for audiobooks.   I devoured them.  It was especially fun when I was driving around Chicago hearing about Harry driving around Chicago.  Though I have to admit it is always amusing hearing/reading a non-Chicago native talk about the city in ways no native ever would. It's the Kennedy, not the JFK, and no one can get from the Loop to O'Hare in a few minutes. Ever. Jim Butcher has gotten better with this.

Around about the middle of the series I felt it was getting stale, but then it picked up with the new "Outsider" threat.  I will admit I have not read the last one yet and I have not been itching to do so.

The game on the other hand surprised me with it's production values and how nice it looked.  I loved the "hunter's notebook" feel to it.  Though to be 100% fair other games had done that long before.

But I never really ever got Fate.

Sure I had played around with Fudge in the past and I enjoyed the free-form it gave me.  I have even played around with Fate and many good starts.  But in the end the system falls flat for me.  Maybe. Maybe there is something good there I could use, but it's been 5 years, or 6+ if you count my experimentations with Fudge.

The Dresden Files RPG is the most complicated "simple" game I have ever read or played.  Seriously, 407 pages for a "simple" ruleset?  I know the Fate Core books are much smaller so a lot of this is setting and world-specific rules, but I can't help but feel it is overwrought.

It's not the mechanics. Mechanics are easy and in Fate ridiculously so.
It's not the aspects.  Though how the aspects could be used is certainly an issue for me.  Let's take Wolverine for example. He could easily have an aspect "Best at What I Do".  Will he get a re-roll or a +1 for "everything"?  No. I know this, but in the hands of a less deft game master this becomes little more than a ruleless game of pretend.

I know to people in the in-crowds of Fate I will be completely dismissed as an "old-school gamer" but the truth is I play a lot of games. Hell, Castle Falkenstein is one of my favorite games and it is hard to go more free-form than that.  I could also just as easily dismiss them for their smugness, but that does not make either of us correct.

Sitting net to my desk at home is a folder. It is full of character sheets for various systems.  I try them out, pick at them and sometimes those efforts show up here.  So far I have never been happy with my creations for Fate.  I picked up the new 3rd Edition of Chill and had characters in minutes. Fate is more of a collective role-playing experience.  That is great, if you want that or have a stable group.  I have a stable group, but I want "organic" characters.  Characters that feel and act like individuals, not part of a collective.

Fate tries to model a story. Either a book, movie or what have you.  Where the larger outcome is usually known.  I am not done reading this book but I am sure the protagonist survives.   Role-playing games are not books Their story telling techniques are different.

I think Fate works with the right groups, but it does require a degree of "playing well with others" that I don't often see in games.   I like the idea, I dislike the execution.  Which is interesting, because some of the die hard Fate players I have met at Cons are such ass-hats. Sorry if that is over generalization, but it has been remarkably and painfully consistent for me over the last 5 years. Yet in the same period of time I have played dozens of other games with various groups that have been great.

There are also pragmatic concerns for me.  Not to invoke the "douche" rule, but really what can I do with Fate that I can't do with Unisystem?  What can I do with the Dresden Files that I haven't already done with Ghosts of Albion?   Hell. I remember Fred Hicks back in the day on the old Eden boards talking about the Dresden Files and how WitchCraft 95% of what he wanted to do with it.  I'll contend that the other 5% can be found in Cinematic Unisystem.

I want to give Dresden Files one more chance, but in truth I know it is over.  We are done.
Don't know if I am going to sell off my Dresden Files game yet. I have one other "last fling" to do with it, but my Fate books are now gone.

Not looking for a reason to keep it, I am pretty sure it will end up on the auction block in the spring.
Better luck in your next home Harry.

Friday Night Videos: Scary Songs

And now some scary songs/videos with a strong Halloween theme!


So here are 13 Scary songs and videos to keep you going till Halloween. Presented without comentary for your enjoyment.
Play at your hHalloween Party!


Not scary, but part of the season.




































And what I consider the first goth song.

October Movie Challenge: 1970s Collection

Women, Warlocks and Weirdos...

Here are few I have seen over the last week that I have not had the time to review properly yet.
All are 1970s flicks (with one exception) and most have to do with Satanism or the Occult.  All of these have been on my "too watch" list for sometime.

La plus longue nuit du diable (1971)
Also known as "The Devil Walks at Midnight" and "The Succubus".  A cursed woman returns to her father's home and proceeds to kill everyone seven deadly sins style long before "Se7en".  She is described as a Succubus, but she seems to be a cursed woman.  I saw this one originally on VHS many, many years ago. Right around the same time I first saw "Vampyres", so it had to be mid 80s. Been looking for it for years.

Status: Seen

A Virgin Among the Living Dead (1973)
NOT part of the "Living Dead" movie franchise nor really about zombies.  In truth it would not be Halloween if I didn't watch a Jesús Franco movie.  He even appears in the cast as a weird servant that can only utter gibberish.  I have to admit I enjoyed that.  This movie actually has a little in common with my next two movies.  A woman arrives at a castle in England after her father has died only to be drawn into her weird uncle's family of living dead.  Like some of Franco's work it is surreal at times, but this was still a fun movie with some nice surprises.

Status: First Time View

Evil Heritage (1976)
Also know as "Satan's Slave".  This time, the girl comes to her uncle's home and they are Satanists instead of the living dead. Yes her parents are both dead in this one too.  This one features Micheal Gough as the evil uncle and a young Barbara Kellerman who will later play the White Witch of Narnia on the BBC.  This one also has a nice twist on the ending.

Status: First Time View

Black Candles (1982)
Ok, not the 70s, but it does have that late 70s feel to it, though the hair and clothes are very much 1980.  Stop me if you have heard this one before.  A girl travels to England on the death of her...brother this time.  Here she met by her sister-in-law who also happens to be the high priestess of a Satanic coven.  Her boyfriend gets pulled in and well, wackiness ensues.  I liked the ending of this movie the least.  I am a little surprised what they got away with in this movie. Depictions of incest, bestiality...it makes the ritual killings look so passe.

Status: First Time View

Moral of the story here?  If a family member dies and leaves you a castle...just sell it and keep the money instead.

Stats
26 Watched / 20 New

October Movie Challenge: Oculus (2013).

Mirrors are scary.

Think about it for a bit. Vampires avoid them.  Many cultures cover them or turn them around during funerals.  Witches use them to communicate or even pass through.  Then there is whole Bloody Mary thing.  So Oculus capitalizes on this fear with a scary mirror, two siblings and a warped sense of time with murders.
Karen Gillian drops her normal Scotish accent in favor of an American one in this thriller.  She and her brother witnessed something horrible 11 years ago.  So bad that we are not told at first, only that her brother, now 21, is just getting out of a mental facility.
Over the course of the movie we learn that their mom went crazy, their dad did too, shot their mother and then tried to kill the kids.  Tim, the brother, believes it was because their father was having an affair and their mother caught them.  Kaylie believes it is the mirror the family once owned and it is possessed.   She runs down the list of all the previous owners and the deaths and tragedies that befell them.  Kaylie also has elaborate systems put into place to watch the mirror and keep them safe.
But you know that will all fail.

It was fun seeing Karen Gillian in something very, very removed from Amy Pond.
The movie had a good creep factor to it and the "monster" looked really cool.  I was not totally thrilled with the end, but it was also not a surprise to be honest.

It gave me some ideas to use for mirrors in an adventure I am working on.

Stats
22 Watched / 17 New

October Movie Challenge: Wicked Lake (2008)

I am not sure if I have ever said "everything is better when you add witches."  It certainly sounds like something I might say. Wicked Lake tests that assumption...and I am not sure it got it right.

Ok I knew I was getting into a third or fourth rate "I Spit On Your Grave" here.  But it is no where near as brutal as that movie.  There are four women in this one and two different groups of men.  Really it is confusing mess.
Here is the basic gist.  Women get attacked, the moon rises and they turn the tables on the men and slaughter them all.
The sun comes up and they all swim in the lake naked and have a happy ending.

It amused me in the sense that it was so cheesy and it the formula was so obviously "hey lets add witches and plenty of naked girls to this".  There is almost a sincerity in it.

I wonder what other movies could be improved if the women in the film were in fact witches?
Thelma and Louise? Silence of the Lambs? A League of Their Own?

Well the thought amuses me at least.

Stats
19 Watched / 14 New

Class Struggles: The Necromancer

Very, very few classes or class concepts have been gone over more than the Necromancer.  For a class that was never part of the original game, and never actually a proper class in it's own right, a lot of ink and pixels have been spent on this class.  So much that I am sure to miss things and might even need a part 2.  Where do we start?

Well to begin with what exactly is a necromancer and what is it that appears in so many games?
Taken from the Greek a necromancer is someone that communes with the dead. So spells like Speak to Dead are a good example.  Historical necromancers, like for example John Dee, spoke to the dead to get advice. or foretell the future.   In modern parlance and certainly in games (maybe one caused the other) necromancy has come to mean a wizard that controls or manipulates the forces of death and unlife.

The easiest Necromancer is simple.  Play a Wizard/Magic-User and then only choose necromancy spells.  Wear a lot of black and hang out with undead.  This is also a very satisfying necromancer since all the trappings have to be role-played.  Alternately one could play a cleric of a god of death, take only reversed necromancy spells and command instead of turn undead.
I think though as time wore on people wanted something that wa little bit of both.

The first, or at least one of the first was from White Dwarf Magazine #22 from December 1980/January 1981.  Lew Pulsipher gives us an article about evil priests, the "Black Priests".  While these are more cultist, there is a lot of necromancy being thrown around.  This is followed by a true necromancer class also by Pulsipher in issue #35 from November 1982.  Either of these classes is fine and represent the design philosophy of the times.  Namely take and rearrange already familiar elements.  The Black Priest and this Necromancer have the same shortcomings though; a reliance of human sacrifice.

The Necromancer is turned up to 11 with the publication of Dragon #76 in August 1983 and Len Lakofka's death master class.  Designed to be an "NPC Class only" I remember seeing it first in the pages of Best of Dragon Magazine Vol. 3.  I admit, I rolled up a death master right away.  He became a major antagonist in my games for many years to come.

In AD&D1 the example of the Illusionist gave birth to the speciality wizards of 2nd Ed.  One of those speciality wizards was the Necromancer.  This continues in practice to the most current version.  Though unlike the Illusionist, the Transmuter or even the Evoker, the Necromancer got it's own book.  The Complete Book of Necromancers was one of those books that everyone seemed to want.  I remember picking it up back when it was first published. I paid $15 for it.  Later the cover price jumped to $18 and soon it became very rare. No idea why.  The aftermarket price jumped considerably and I ended up selling mine on eBay back in 2000 for $81. Not a bad deal really.   I recently picked up a copy at Half-Price Books for $9.  The PDF just about the same price.  Though the book is crammed full of necromancer goodies. Spells, magic items, undead familiars.

Moving out into the world of Fantasy Heartbreakers there is the near-compatible Quest of the Ancients.  This necromancer reads like the Death Master, but has some interesting spells and some powers.  The Arcanum/Bard Games also has a necromancer class.

3.x had, at the last time I looked, at least 3 different kinds of official Necromancer classes.  The two best are from Libris Mortis: The Book of Undead and Heroes of Horror.  Heroes of Horror featured the rather popular Dread Necromancer class.  There is also the Death Master class from Dragon updated to 3.0e.  The Crypt Lord from the aptly named Necromancer Games. Not to mention dozens of others from other third party publishers.  Most take the same elements and reorganize them, but every so often something new is produced.

4e had necromancers as well. It was a type of wizard (much like the witch was) and was introduced in the Player's Option: Heroes of Shadow book.  It had some rather neat features to it as well.

For the OSR things are really no different, dozens of different types and sorts of necromancers. I am only going to talk about a few.

One of the simplest also belongs to one of the simplest OSR games.  Basic Fantasy has a necromancer class on their downloads page for free.  It has a lot of spells and weighs in at an appropriate 13 pages.

I would have to say one of my favorites, at least in terms of style, is the one from Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.  The necromancer here is cut from the "evil cultist" mold like their warlock and has a lot of great spells and powers.

Magical Theorems & Dark Pacts also has a great necromancer and the big feature of this class (and this book) is the number of spells.  While this book as more spells, the AS&SH class is slightly better in terms of what I want. Right along with that is the necromancer from the great Theorems & Thaumaturgy. A basic class, but some really nice spells.

Another really cool one in terms of how the necromancer is presented is the one from Adventures Dark & Deep.  Darker Paths 1: The Necromancer is certainly in the vein of the "this is an evil class" but +Joseph Bloch makes no bones about the fact that players will be playing these as evil characters.  It's sort of the point of his "Darker Paths" series. In that respect this is a good one to pick up just to get some ideas on how to play an evil character.  Plus it has some unique spells.

Back at home I have most of these printed out and put into a folder.  I also have a number of character sheets of all the different types of necromancers.  Basically I have six characters with two sheets each; a 3.x sheet and an OSR compatible one (the five above and an old fashioned MU with necromancy spells).  This gives me 12 different sorts of necromancers for 6 characters.  I call them the Order of Six based on a group I introduced in my Buffy games.  I am planning on using them as my bad guys in my games, but right now I am only playing 5e! So I can't really judge how well they all work.  Similar to what I did with the Witch's Nest.  Sounds like a plan to me.

By the way. My son has a 5e game he is in charge of.  He has a 15th level necromancer in that game and it is wicked.

I feel like there is alot more to say but I have only scratched the surface.

What is your favorite necromancer class?

Review: The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence

Continuing my week of +Venger Satanis posts here is his next big one.

The Islands of Purple-Haunted Putrescence
Described as weird fantasy/sci-fi/gonzo, I also wondered if it was a subtle jab at "The Big Purple".
Let's start of with the easy stuff.  Yeah, some people are likely to get offended by this adventure.  That's not a bug, but a feature, as we say.  Typically anything done either to purely offend or go out of it's way to push an agenda is going to suck.  I get the feeling here that this is the sort of game he plays all the time.  The art is still more "Heavy Metal" than it is "Hustler" and there is a solid 80s vibe to reading it all.  Please keep in mind this aesthetic when reading; it is a guiding principle that fits the art and the game design.   I think in someone else's hand it would have come off as crass or even as complete shit, but VS owns this. There is an honesty here that can be respected.

This book is a campaign book/hexcrawl/sandbox.  The PDF is 110 pages and packed.  It would make for a gorgeous looking book and it would sit nicely on my shelf with my other books circa 1983.

VSd6: This is a new mechanic introduced for skill checks/ability checks.  He mentioned it has been influenced by 100s of other d6 based mechanics and you can see that here.   It is an interesting system and provides some nice dramatic elements to the game, but not something I am planning on using myself.

Darker Secrets: This book also brings over the "Dark Secrets" idea/tables from Demon Slayer.  So in some respects you can use this book as a means to "beef up" the Demon Slayer adventure, although you don't really need too.   Though adding in the changes to magic that this book does might be fun.

The Monk: This campaign guide also features a Monk class.  It is not too far from the AD&D1 standard, though not as much detail is given.

We get into the islands proper and are given some background; 20,000 years of background to be precise, but only in a couple of pages.  The interesting bits happened in the more recent past including turning the "Purple Islands" into a penal colony.  Yeah, no jabs here at all...

There is a lot going on with these islands and the worship of the Great Old ones is just a small part of it.  The wording of the monsters, settings and even location is basic or even vague enough to allow you to put this anywhere.  It feels kitchen-sinky enough to fit into places like Mystara (which has a little bit of everything anyway) but focused enough to give you hints that is part of a much larger world.   Though I do like the appearance of the Shiny Demon and a preview of "Alpha Blue".

There are pop-culture references galore here, and it is very obvious that VS pulled out every bit of fantasy, sci-fi, euro-sleaze horror and 70s metal he had at his disposal and threw it into a blender with plenty of purple dye.  It could have turned out to be a horrible mess, but it doesn't.  Instead we get a ton of options spread over three islands.

I have to point out, don't play this as a single adventure.  The purpose here really is not to clean out the island, but to explore it.  It's a great place to strand some PCs after an ocean-going adventure.

At the end of the book we are given new spells and new magic items.

In the Afterword VS mentions that this product should not be used in isolation.  I agree, again I think that this would make for a great semi-tropical island in Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea. The mythos are similar enough, or at least enough to fit together.  The only thing that would make it more perfect is if this book could be printed in 7.0" x 8.5" format to fit in my AS&SH box.

Not sure where or how I want to use this yet, but I know I really want to.

A Week with Venger Satanis: Liberation of the Demon Slayer

It's the month of Halloween!  Though I understand many people still call it "October".  Fine. Whatever.

I thought this month I would spend some quality time with products that fit the theme of Halloween.  While putting together my list I realized I had a bunch of products from Kortthalis Publishing and +Venger Satanis.  I thought, what the hell, lets make a week of it.

Venger has had an interesting time in the RPG biz.  I remember talking to him shortly after he was banned from RPG.net and we discussed our respective horror games.  He has had a nice rise recently as an OSR publisher and has a few nice titles under his belt.

Lately he has been promoting something he calls O5R, which I have to admit it very clever, or products that can be played with either old-school games and their clones or with the newest 5th edition game.  It is a solid strategy really.  I have demonstrated time and again to myself at least that you can freely mix the two in terms of adventures.  I would imagine that goes even further.

Today though I want to start with one of his first OSR books.

Liberation of the Demon Slayer
I first picked this up near when it was released.  Since then I have considered it a potential entry in my War of the Witch Queens adventure path.

The adventure is six levels and 70 pages.  VS suggests using 3 0-level characters per player and let everything work out, or a large party of 1st level characters.   Nothing is mentioned on how many players, but I am guessing 6 to 8.

There is some background given about the world this adventure lives in.  They are all optional, but it does set the mood for the rest of the book.   I found the bits about Snake-men and elves to be interesting.  The adventure is steeped in a lot of Lovecraftian tropes and we are introduced to some of the "Old Ones" here, albeit with different names.

If you, like me, love eldritch abominations and dark magic then this the adventure for you. The adventure itself "sounds" simple enough. Retrieve a demon killing sword from the caves to stop the demons attack your village. Easy peasy. Trouble is that the author grew up when dungeons-as-meat-grinders were a thing and everyone was afraid the big bad devil was going to get you. This adventure though is closer in tone and danger to the Hanging Coffins of the Vampire Queen than it is to most Lamentations of the Flame Princess products. With the right DM this could be a great and dangerous adventure where the party could live. Sure they could all easily die too. One can read this and imagine that all of the author's games are a bit like it.

Actually I have known the author for a number of years and yeah this is exactly the kind of things I expect in his games. I think the difference here with this adventure and some of his earlier material is there is a maturity here to accept the absurd. This adventure can be played straight or with a dash of dark humor. Think of it as a horror movie, even the scariest have a touch of humor to them; it sets you up for the bigger punch later down the road.

The adventure proper gets going about page 17.  We are treated to rumors, some background, wandering monsters and some maps of the first level.  The maps have been drawn by +Dyson Logos , so you know that these will be interesting.  The feel of the first 4-5 pages of the adventure is really one of pure old-school nostalgia.   The first level is a bit of meat grinder, by design, and there are a lot things going on here that would make the hard-core Gygazian adventure fan happy.  Going back a bit it becomes obvious that the "optional" information above is still rather important since it colors the actions of many of the inhabitants in this dungeon.

As you descend into the dungeon things get weirder and more deadly.  I mean really, really deadly.  Devil lords, liches, vampires, freaking lasers and a nuclear warhead.  Yeah, VS really cut his teeth on the 70s and 80s era gaming.

I want to take a moment to talk about the art. Yes there is a lot gore, nudity and phantasmagorical horror here.   It comes off though more as "Heavy Metal" than say "Hustler".  All I can really say is that it fits the aesthetic of the book.   In truth I had more of an issue with the sci-fi elements (even though there were very good reasons for them to be there) than I had with the nudity.

The demon-slaying sword Kalthalax is an interesting weapon. One that would have a good home in my regular games to be honest and one that is enough of a hook to make me want to find a way to work this adventure in.   Maybe I can make Clavenus a witch instead of a wizard.

In any case there is a lot of fun to be had with this adventure; if you don't mind the occasional casualty.  I think what helps here is while the adventure is a meat grinder, it is done just to rid the party of the weak.  They are expected to survive and tell people the tales of their great adventure.

While VS takes the care to make sure this works with nearly any old-school game (and in the future he fits 5e into that as well), I can't help but think how well this would work with Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea.  The background is similar and the elves in Demon Slayer would be a nice addition to AS&SH, which does not have any elves.  Indeed, elves would seem like souless, demon-like monsters compared to humans. At least to humans that have never seen an elf before.   There is a mix of demons, devils and Lovecraftian beasts/gods that somehow feels right for that world. Mixing in AS&SH to this would give you something very, very close to playing akin to Michael Moorcock's world.

Curiously enough in my own games I do have an epic weapon for killing demons. In my current world state this sword is lost and a quest is needed to recover it. Maybe this is what I need. If so then the value of this adventure just increased ten-fold for me. I am going to have to spend some quality time with it and a pencil to see if it can be recrafted into something that fits my world a little better.

However YOU decided to use this adventure I am sure it will be fun.  Maybe deadly fun, but certainly fun.

What Will the Great Pumpkin Bring You?

Still buried in projects include my day job.

But I always get myself something gaming related for Halloween.  Not sure what I am getting myself this year, I got a lot of really cool books at Gen Con that I have barely cracked open.

One thing that has me interested in The Demonolater from +Joseph Bloch.
http://greyhawkgrognard.blogspot.com/2015/10/31-days-of-halloween-dark-offering.html

His Darker Paths books for the Witch and the Necromancer were a lot of fun and I expect this to be the same.

What are you looking forward to?

Friday Night Videos: Haunted House

I have always had this reoccurring nightmare of haunted house.
I love horror of course but this dream was quite the horror story.

Over the years I come to call it my "Very Haunted House".

Of course I had to turn it into adventure.  So I am running it for the first time tomorrow!

Here are some musical inspiration for the adventure.  No. I am not going to play Ghostbusters or Thriller.

I have mentioned many times about how much I enjoy the music of Eric Burdon and the Animals.  "House of the Rising Sun" is top of my list of not just Animals songs, but all songs.  I have featured it many times in many adventures.




Back in High School and College Genesis was a big deal.  Not the Peter Gabriel version, but the later pop friendly Phil Collins version.  "Home By the Sea" is about a house full of ghosts.  It maid it's way into "Ghosts of Albion: Blight" and now in my new adventure too.




Growing up in the midwest in the 80s it was not possible to turn on the radio and not hear the Eagles.  "Hotel California" is not their best song. It's not even a great song. But it is ubiquitous and it is evocative of Hell.  Thus it always stuck with me.




Too Much Joy was the ultimate College band when I was in Grad School.  They are fun, they sing about things that college guys like, namely drinking, girls, drugs and girls.  "Sort of Haunted House" is not a song about a real haunted house. It's about a breakup, but when I was having this nightmare this was the song that was always on.  BTW I am sure the nightmare was stress related due to defending my thesis, breaking up with my crazy ex girl friend, moving up with my new girlfriend.  So in a way it fits.  Plus like my haunted house this one has a "ghost in every room".  One of many great hits of the critically ignored Munity.




I don't have a lot to say about Rockwell.  His "Somebody's Watching Me" makes for a crazy paranoid one hit wonder.  Notable because Michael Jackson sang backup on the track.  But the video is properly creepy and that's a plus.




"Shadows of the Night" by Pat Benatar from her wildly popular Get Nervous album is not about ghosts.  But don't tell that to my 12 year old self listening to it while rereading the Cook/Marsh Expert book.  Shadows of the night were real shadows, as in the monster that could be turned in AD&D but not in D&D.  For years I have always wanted to use this song.  So this adventure reintroduces a similar monster, the Memento Mori.




Another song that featured prominently in Ghosts of Albion: Blight is the ethereal voice of Loreena McKennitt.  "The Old Ways" features a woman and her evening spent with a ghost, or maybe it was an old druid.  Either way a gulf of time separates them.  From the haunting The Visit.




Happy Hauntings.

RPG a Day 2015, Day 28

Day 28: Favorite Game You No Longer Play

There are actually a few.

I would have to say Mage: The Ascension.

I didn't play a lot of it, but what I did I really enjoyed.  Have not had the chance to play it the last 10 or so years.

RPG a Day 2015, Day 26

Day 26: Favorite Inspiration for Your Game

I have said it before, but I am heavily influenced by music.  What ever album, CD or playlist I am listening to has the next adventure idea for me.

Also I have been undoing influenced by Hammer Horror, B-grade horror movies, 70 Euro-trash horror and 80s slasher flicks.

New Movie: The Witch

Oh.   This looks good.



From the press release:

In this exquisitely-made and terrifying new horror film, the age-old concepts of witchcraft, black magic and possession are innovatively brought together to tell the intimate and riveting story of one family’s frightful unraveling.

Set in New England circa 1630, The Witch follows a farmer who get cast out of his colonial plantation and is forced to move his family to a remote plot of land on the edge of an ominous forest rumored to be controlled by witches. Almost immediately, strange and unsettling things begin to happen-the animals turn violent, the crops fail, and one of the children disappears, only to return seemingly possessed by an evil spirit. As suspicion and paranoia mount, everyone begins to point the finger at teenage daughter Thomasin. They accuse her of witchcraft, which she adamantly denies…but as circumstances become more and more treacherous, each family member’s faith, loyalty, and love will be tested in shocking and unforgettable ways.

Writer/director Robert Eggers’ debut feature, which premiered to great acclaim at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival (and won the Best Director Prize in the U.S. Narrative Competition), painstakingly recreates a God-fearing New England decades before the 1692 Salem witch trials, in which religious convictions and pagan folklore famously clashed. Told through the eyes of the adolescent Thomasin – in a star-making turn by newcomer Anya Taylor-Joy – and supported by mesmerizing camera work and a powerful musical score, THE WITCH is a chilling and groundbreaking new take on the genre.

Yeah. This is going to be fun.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Witch_(2015_film)
http://thewitch-movie.com/