Kickstart Your Weekend: Night Shift, Veterans of the Supernatural Wars

Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars RPG

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/294629699/night-shift-veterans-of-the-supernatural-wars-rpg?ref=theotherside

First the Kickstarter sales blurb from my co-author Jason Vey:

So folks, to coincide with Halloween, I will be Kickstarting the newest core RPG from Elf Lair Games this October! I'm still working out the exact details (getting quotes for printing costs in particular) so I know what to set my goal, but it's planned as a hardcover B&W release. Please spread the word and keep your eyes out! Here's some more about the game:

NIGHT SHIFT: VETERANS OF THE SUPERNATURAL WARS Debuting the new Elf Lair Games house system, O.G.R.E.S., Night Shift is an urban fantasy, horror, and dark modern supernatural game that uses a brand new system of old-school mechanics inspired by and derived from the original, basic, expert, and advanced versions of the World's Most Famous Role Playing Game. It allows you to mimic all the tropes of just about any film, TV series, or novels you like.

All of the following are possible with Night Shift:

• Cheerleaders that are chosen to slay vampires
• Sisters imbued with the power of chosen witches
• Worlds where Fae of all manner battle in the politics of light and dark
• The great-grandniece of a famous gunslinger inherits the legacy of the demon hunter.
• A world where two brothers armed with knowledge and weapons hunt the supernatural in their father's name
• And more!

Excited? I sure am!!

The Kickstarter is in full swing NOW.

My co-author Jason posted a bit on his blog about O.G.R.E.S. , the system that powers Night Shift.

O.G.R.E.S. stands for "Oldschool Generic Roleplaying Engine System." It's the new house system for Elf Lair Games, which will run alongside our current O.R.C.S. and Cd8 Systems. It's another step forward in presenting a new approach to a "unified system" for running just about any kind of game, using mechanics that will be instantly familiar to players of "old school" fantasy games, specifically those that powered the Original, Basic, Expert, and Advanced versions of the World's Most Famous Role Playing Game.

What O.G.R.E.S. does, however, is streamline and codify these mechanics, to remove what many view as arcane and confusing elements, and break the system down into a fast-playing, fun, easy-to-understand, and open presentation, adding a few modern design elements to improve the smooth play.

This also means that the majority of products which are compatible with any of these editions of the game, are also compatible with O.G.R.E.S.

So if you are reading this blog chances are really good you already know how to play NIGHT SHIFT and O.G.R.E.S., in fact, my own Eldritch Witchery, which uses the 2d6-based O.R.C.S. system is nearly 100% compatible with NIGHT SHIFT right now, but we are also including some easy conversion rules.

NIGHT SHIFT is old-school, but some new-school design principles are also being used.  We want a game that is easier to learn, quick to play and also has playability over several campaigns.

The system is class and level and I personally think it fits the genre very well. 
Think about your favorite modern supernatural heroes.   Mine would be Sam and Dean, Mulder and Scully, Willow and Tara, the Charmed Ones.  They also progress through levels and have easily quantifiable "classes".  I mean Season 1 Willow is very different from Season 5 Willow, same as Level 1 Willow vs. Level 5 Willow. 

Starting next week I am going to be posting some content for NIGHT SHIFT including some of my playtest notes, some monsters and maybe even some spells.

We are both pouring everything we know from the dozens of games we have worked on professionally over the last 20 years.  I am planning on this being my new system of choice for any and every modern game.  I hope you can too!

October Horror Movie Challenge: Inferno (1980)

Now here is one that has been on my list for some time.  It did not disapoint.

Inferno (1980)

This Dario Argento film is the second of his "Mothers" trilogy which began with Suspiria (1977).  This one lacks some of the visual power as Suspiria, but the horror and suspense are still there.

Without giving the plot away from the story deals with two siblings searching for more information on the book "The Three Mothers".  The book tells that like the three Fates, there three Sorrows. Mater Suspiriorum, Matter Tenebraum, and Matter Lachymarum.
The Mothers, appear as witches to many and as Death to others.
As they investigate the book and it's origin they, and others, begin to get killed in fairly horrible ways.

It has been years since I have seen Suspiria, so maybe I need to watch the 2018 remake. I'll also need to check out the often forgotten third film, Mother of Tears (2007).

The score is great and gives a very surreal vibe to the movie. Again, not up to the level of Suspiria, but very fun all the same.

I love the idea of a book, so dangerous, that everyone around it meets a grizzly fate. Yeah I know, that is like 80% of Lovecraft, but this has a different feel about.  In Lovecraft the horrors are uncaring. These horrors HATE us.

Plus I really like that poster.  It often starred back at me from the horror shelves of the local video store.


Watched: 3
New: 3

October Horror Movie Challenge: Night of the Demon (1980)

Last year I started with a bunch of movies from the early 80s but due to various reasons I was not able to complete my challenge.  Well, this year I plan too and I am picking up where I left off.
But if the rest of the movies are as bad as this...I might not make it.

Let's do it.

Night of the Demon (1980)
I am not sure what to say about this one.  The movie is a flashback with other flashbacks inside.  It's like a shitty Inception.  Professor Bill Nugent wakes up in a hospital bed and tells the most boring story ever about Bigfoot. Sorta.
He does wake up and tells the story of how he and his anthropology class go out to search for rumors of bigfoot. They have heard some stories, all told in gory flashbacks - even from the people that died and could not tell their stories, of people attacked and killed by a bigfoot.
There is a lot to do around Crazy Wanda and her father who was burned alive and a cult of bigfoot worshipers who treat him as some sort of rapey demon.
Anyway, Crazy Wanda had been raped by Bigfoot when she was 15 and her father later killed the half-bigfoot baby.  She burned him alive and while telling us all this under a hypnotic flashback Bigfoot comes back and kills the anthropology class.

The film is only notable because it was originally banned in the UK and they had to shave a minute or so off of it to be released.

The music is early 80s porn soundtrack and the acting is not much better.  While I liked the demon-worshipping/pagan aspects to the Bigfoot myths, it was sloppily done.

Oh well.  Better luck with the next one.

Watched: 1
New: 1

Kickstart Your Weekend: Night Shift

Ok a little self-promotion here, but I am pretty excited about this one.

Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars RPG

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/294629699/night-shift-veterans-of-the-supernatural-wars-rpg?ref=theotherside

First the Kickstarter sales blurb from my co-author Jason Vey:

So folks, to coincide with Halloween, I will be Kickstarting the newest core RPG from Elf Lair Games this October! I'm still working out the exact details (getting quotes for printing costs in particular) so I know what to set my goal, but it's planned as a hardcover B&W release. Please spread the word and keep your eyes out! Here's some more about the game:

NIGHT SHIFT: VETERANS OF THE SUPERNATURAL WARS Debuting the new Elf Lair Games house system, O.G.R.E.S., Night Shift is an urban fantasy, horror, and dark modern supernatural game that uses a brand new system of old-school mechanics inspired by and derived from the original, basic, expert, and advanced versions of the World's Most Famous Role Playing Game. It allows you to mimic all the tropes of just about any film, TV series, or novels you like.

All of the following are possible with Night Shift:

• Cheerleaders that are chosen to slay vampires
• Sisters imbued with the power of chosen witches
• Worlds where Fae of all manner battle in the politics of light and dark
• The great-grandniece of a famous gunslinger inherits the legacy of the demon hunter.
• A world where two brothers armed with knowledge and weapons hunt the supernatural in their father's name
• And more!

Excited? I sure am!!

This game came about through long collaboration with Jason and I.  We met while working at Eden Studios together.  Jason was doing a lot of work on All Flesh Must Be Eaten, the zombie horror game.  I worked on WitchCraft and Armageddon.  We both worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG.  Over the years we collaborated on other games.  He was a playtester and contributor to Ghosts of Albion.  I contributed to his AFMBE and later Amazing Adventures books.

We both hit the OSR scene at the same time in 2007 and he wrote Spellcraft & Swordplay.  I wrote my first Witch book and Eldritch Witchery for his Elf Lair Games label.

Night Shift combines a lot of different ideas we have had over the years. 

First, we are developing an advanced version of the in-house O.R.C.S. game system (O.G.R.E.S.) that captures the old-school rules we both love with some (minor) modern advances.  Though you can still play Night Shift with any OSR product with no issues.

Secondly, we are also bringing several different "Night Worlds" to your game play.  I don't want to give out any spoilers, but these "worlds" represent several decades worth of play.  I will spoil one or two.  One of my Night Worlds is "Ordinary World" which I have talked about here before and the other is "Generation HEX."   If you dig through my archives here you will also see mention of "Daughters of Death" that might come later.

Finally, I wanted to create something that in the eloquent words of my friend Robert Black called "filling a Buffy-shaped hole in my life".  I have worked on a LOT of really great games and properties over the last 25 years.  Some of that material I can use, most I can't.  But that is fine, I have had years to learn what I like and what I want in a Modern Supernatural Horror game. 

Over the years we have also shared our love for the Modern Supernatural genre in TV shows and books.  Obviously, we were both Buffy and X-Files fans. Jason turned me on to Lost Girl and the books of Kelley Armstrong.  I recommended the books of  Kim Harrison and the TV shows HƎX and Charmed.  Between the two of us, we have worked on several score horror games and played many more. We have a lot of opinions.

Night Shift is the result of all of that.

So expect some more posting on this all month.

Up next?  My sons are going to play two bothers (naturally!) who drive across the country stopping supernatural monsters with nothing but their wits and a trunk full of guns and rock salt.  If they choose the names "Sam" and "Dean"...well that is just a coincidence. ;)

Introducing Night Shift

I had something planned for today, but it will have to wait till later.  Busy day at work.  So here is something I have been working on.

So folks, to coincide with Halloween, I will be Kickstarting the newest core RPG from Elf Lair Games this October! I'm still working out the exact details (getting quotes for printing costs in particular) so I know what to set my goal, but it's planned as a hardcover B&W release. Please spread the word and keep your eyes out! Here's some more about the game:

NIGHT SHIFT: VETERANS OF THE SUPERNATURAL WARS Debuting the new Elf Lair Games house system, O.G.R.E.S., Night Shift is an urban fantasy, horror, and dark modern supernatural game that uses a brand new system of old-school mechanics inspired by and derived from the original, basic, expert, and advanced versions of the World's Most Famous Role Playing Game. It allows you to mimic all the tropes of just about any film, TV series, or novels you like.

All of the following are possible with Night Shift:

• Cheerleaders that are chosen to slay vampires
• Sisters imbued with the power of chosen witches
• Worlds where Fae of all manner battle in the politics of light and dark
• The great-grandniece of a famous gunslinger inherits the legacy of the demon hunter.
• A world where two brothers armed with knowledge and weapons hunt the supernatural in their father's name

And more!

Jason and I have been working together for years.  We worked on Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG together.  I playtested Jason's AFMBE games and his Amazing Adventures books, he playtested my Ghosts of Albion.  He published my first OSR Witch book.  We have over 80 years of game playing and nearly 50 years of professional game design combined.

This game is going to be so much fun.  And perfectly suited to the cinematic style games I love.

Hoping to get you all some previews and character write-ups throughout October.

#RPGaDAY2019: Scary

Today's topic is Scary.

It is said that everyone loves a good scare.  But I LOVE them.

Spend any amount of time here and you will learn that I love horror movies, horror RPGs and adding elements of horror to my otherwise non-horror games.

Horror was always my thing, even when I was really little.  My mom loved horror and used to tell us the way scary and certainly not appropriate for children stories when we were little and we loved them.   A lot of the horror-themed material you see here has there roots in some of those stories.

My current purely horror game is "Star Trek meets Cthulhu" game in Black Star.
Stephen King once said that horror needs to start with what you know.  To truly feel horror you have to begin in a place of safety and comfort.  For me that is Trek.  Then you add in the horrors.

Doing a proper horror game is not always easy.  Think about Gothic Horror for a moment.  The reason it is as effective as it is it that the hero, or most often, a heroine, is powerless against the forces that she is dealing with.  The same is true for Cosmic Horror, the forces against humanity are so vast and so powerful that we become insignificant in the scope of it all.

Trek represents humanity at their best, their most powerful, their peak. To turn that setting into horror I am going to need something very powerful.  So in a way, it is an experiment for me to see if I can merge two of my favorite things.

Hope to do some more here soon.

April TTRPG Maker, Day 16

Day 16: How does your environment inform your work?

I have talked about this one before.

I grew up in the midwest in the 70s and 80s.  My "adventures" were often road trips. My backgrounds included a love of horror movies, a mother who knew some of the most blood-chilling stories I have ever heard, and a fascination for mythology and the occult.

It was a heady brew that only the alchemy of the 70s and 80s could produce. 

In my books, I want to recapture the feel of finding some lost occult tome of the 70s.  Something a little subversive, a little dangerous and a little outside of the reach of the normal people out there.

Hammer Horror + Occult 70s + NWoBHM from the 80s gives you the environment I grew up in and what informs all my RPG creations.

BlackStar: Old School Black Holes

Today is a big day in astrophysics.  The first-ever image of a black hole has been released.
The black hole is 500 million trillion km away, or 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 km or 52,850,042 Light Years.

When that light left the black hole's event horizon the Earth looked like this:

Just some perspective, plus I love those maps.

Much like magic, black holes have "suffered" due to the expansion of science.  What do I mean by that?

For much of the 20th Century, the black hole of science fiction was monstrous, mysterious, even evil thing.  A star that ate everything that came to close including light and time.  It's not hard to see why there were some sci-fi authors who categorized them as monsters.
In fact, this one is a monster. It is 40 billion km across and has a mass 6.5 billion times that of the Sun. For reference, the Earth has a diameter of 12,756 km and the Sun has a diameter of  1.392 million km.  That dwarfs the Sun more than our sun dwarfs the Earth.

In fiction black holes lead to other universes, often evil ones. Or sending people to different parts of the universe in defiance of any laws of relativity.  Indeed they were the ultimate "MacGuffin" to break all sorts of laws of reality.

BlackStar, as a game concept, really owes a lot to these older ideas of black holes in more than just name.

In truth, the ideas for BlackStar got their very first start for me in the 1979 Disney movie The Black Hole.  I remember seeing this at the 67 Drive-In in my old home town.  The movie is full of ideas that characterize what I want BlackStar to do and be even before I add the Lovecraftian bits.  We have a crew exploring space. There is a psychic crew member. We have an evil mad scientist in his old castle spaceship surrounded by mindless servants and evil strongman; it's practically gothic horror.  Even the tag line is horror, "A Journey That Begins Where Everything Ends".



Another black hole sci-fi/horror movie that was a big, if not one of the biggest, influence on BlackStar is 1997's Event Horizon.

In Event Horizon, we have a black hole, in this case, an artificially created one (like what we see in the Romulan Warbirds) that power the ship.  The mystery, and horror, of the Event Horizon, is where was the ship the entire time it's been missing.  We learn that the black hole has taken the crew into a hellscape not dissimilar to what we saw at the end of The Black Hole.  Claire Weir's, Dr. Weir's (Sam Neill) dead wife, tells us "I have such wondrous things to show you" brings to mind Pinhead's "We have such sights to show you" from the Hellraiser movies.  Indeed they can be assumed to be the same sights.



In both cases breaking the laws of physics, in both cases trying to move faster than light, opens you up to the consequences of breaking the Laws of Creation. The black hole becomes the proverbial gate to Hell.  Abandon all Hope Ye Who Enter Here.

This is made even more explicit in the Doctor Who episodes "The Impossible Planet" and "The Satan Pit" from 2006.  In this, the scientific portrayal of black holes is contrasted with the classic sci-fi portrayals.  In Doctor Who black holes are a means of travel. Gallifrey and every TARDIS is powered by "The Eye of Harmony" a captured black hole created by the Timelord Stellar Engineer Omega. It has as much horror as the engine in a Tesla sedan. Neat yes, but not horrible.

The Satan Pit turns this on its head.  Here the black hole "just eats" according to the Doctor. The black hole is The Pit, the jail that the devil can't escape from.  It is the Christian Hell or the Abyss.
Consequently, the episodes have been compared to "Event Horizon" and "Alien" by critics.


So that leaves me at today.  What can black holes do to inspire horror?
Much like "anti-matter" gave way to "dark matter" in the minds of the creatives, black holes have been largerly replaced by "Wormholes".   But even a wormhole is still sci-fi shorthand for "short cuts in FTL travel".  Sure they can be like "gates" but the fear is diluted.

I think where I am going to go with all of this is take a page from Event Horizon and make the drive of the new Mystic class ships be the problem.  They were designed to move faster than light, the heralded Warp-13 drives, but the real purpose is to open rifts in space-time to allow these horrors to come through.  Both sci-fi horrors and cosmic horrors.

Black Holes, like the God of the Gaps, has had its mystical notions removed for the more appropriate scientific ones.  As someone that originally studied to be an astrophysicist, this is a great thing.  But as someone who loves horror and sci-fi adventure, I feel like I have lost something.

Maybe Dark Matter and Dark Energy can be my new mysterious thing! In any case it needs to be frightening.  They say "in space, no one can hear you scream", but I also want "in space, no one wants to hear you yawn".

And this song was on my mind while working on this post.

Kickstart Your Weekend: Gothic Horror, Supers, Zines and the 8.2M lb Gorilla

Lots of great Kickstarters today!  Let's have a look.

Leagues of Gothic Horror RPG Expansions

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1588759266/leagues-of-gothic-horror-rpg-expansions?ref=theotherside

Leagues of Gothic Horror is one of my favorite games and these three books are a must have in my opinion. Not much time left on this one.


Prowlers & Paragons Ultimate Edition

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1977703373/prowlers-and-paragons-ultimate-edition?ref=theotherside

I have been featuring P&P all week.  It is a fun game and character creation is a snap. Plenty of demo videoes out there to see game play as well.

The Way of Wicked Sin #ZineQuest

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1666739355/the-way-of-wicked-sin-zinequest?ref=theotherside

Three Zines about the evilest races in FRPGs.  A zine each for Orcs, Drow and the worst of all, Humans!  Stated for 5e, S&W, Pathfinder, and Runequest.
Don't want all three? No problem pick the ones you want.


And finally, let's address the 8.2 Million Pound Dollar gorilla in the room.

Critical Role: The Legend of Vox Machina Animated Special

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/criticalrole/critical-role-the-legend-of-vox-machina-animated-s?ref=theotherside

Critical Role has blown past its funding goal, all of its original stretch goals and its second batch of stretch goals.  With 20 days still to go it is sitting at $8.2 Million (right now, but it grew by $100,000 while I was writing this post). 

I am coming around to agreeing with the Diana Jones award for "Actual Play" in 2018.  This is a huge phenomenon and like it or not one that will shape what the RPG industry does in the future.

Black Star: The Conqueror Worm

"There is no evidence of avifaunal or crawling vermicular lifeforms on Jouret Four."
- Data, Star Trek the Next Generation, Best of Both Worlds, Part 1

I had a Black Star post ready to go today, but this one grabbed my imagination a lot more.  I am currently reading "The Door to Saturn: Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Book 2" in it is a story, “The Kingdom of the Worm”, about an ancient evil kingdom of the dead and the giant charnel worm that rules there.  This reminded me of another one of my favorite Clark Ashton Smith tales, "The Coming of the White Worm", which I need to re-read soon.

While reading I could not help but think of all sorts of worms and how they have been used to terrify us. Edgar Allen Poe's "The Conqueror Worm" comes to mind, which also leads me to the Stephen R. Donaldson short story (from "Daughter of Regals and Other Tales") of the same name, though that one is about a centipede. Which of course made me think of the Sand Worms of Dune and then the Sand Worms of Saturn from Beetlejuice and of course the Sathar of Star Frontiers.

It is that last one that gave me the idea explosion that this post is.

Black Star is if nothing else, about exploring the horror that is space. Space is dark, I am just adding Eldritch Dark to it.

It got me thinking that a great adventure would be to have our crew check in on a planet, much like TNGs Jouret 4, that the entire population is gone.  They discover that they have all been eaten by worm-like creatures, maybe even the Sathar.  Of course they are nothing compared to the towering monstrosity that is Mordiggian, the Charnel God.  I had used Mordiggian and his ghouls once before in a Buffy/WitchCraft/Willow & Tara game which also gave me the spell "Lend Me Your Fire" (to appear in a witch book someday!)

In this adventure, the colony (shades of  LV-426 to be sure) is wiped out by the millions and Starfleet is sent to investigate.  There is evidence that everyone died pretty close to each other in time and there is a lack of bodies.  The Sathar have been consuming the dead, which is not typical behavior, and they are worshipping Mordiggian as their God of Death.  The real big bad here is Mordiggian.

The horror aspects here are of course the death of millions and the natural squeamishness many people seem to have about worms, maggots, and other eaters of the dead.  "Wormfood" is an evocative image for a reason. Also, there is the notion that Mordiggian is here and maybe he is a god maybe he is not, but did he come to our notice now because of the use of the new Triberyllium Warp-13 drive has opened our dimension to that of the Cthulhoid mythos creatures.

For sci-fi this is my chance to square the circle of merging Star Frontiers' United Planetary Federation and Star Trek's United Federation of Planets.

SATHAR (for WhiteStar)
ARMOR CLASS: 6 [13]
HIT DICE: 2
HDE/XP: 3/75
SAVING THROW: 16
TOTAL HIT BONUS: +1
MOVEMENT: 12
SPECIAL: Keen Senses (vision, smell)
ATTACK: by weapon

Sathars are long, worm-like creatures. Their bodies are divided into segments, like an earthworm's. They do not have a skeleton. Instead, they support their bodies hydrostatically, by pumping liquid into the segments so they become hard. A shiny, clear slime coats their skin. Federation scientists believe they are warm-blooded, but no live specimen has ever been studied. Their eyes are placed near the sides of their heads and contain double pupils giving them extraordinary vision.  They smell through two pits in front of their eyes.

A Sathar moves by slithering across the ground with the first meter of its body raised. They also can coil like a snake, raising 1.5 meters of their bodies from the ground.
The color of Sathar skin varies from yellow to brown. The tentacles are the same as the body, but with a slight greenish tint. The underbelly is pale pink. A pattern of dots, speckles, and stripes decorates the back of the head. These patterns are natural on some Sathar, but are tattooed on others.

Some survivors of Sathar attacks have reported that Sathars are not effected by electrical shocks, phasers set to stun or stun grenades, but these reports have never been confirmed.

Sathars are highly intelligent and have a space-faring culture found on the Frontiers of Federation Space.  They are considered dangerous even if very little else is known about them

Source: http://starfrontiers.wikia.com/wiki/Sathar

So, Black Star: The Conqueror Worm (Star Trek + Star Frontiers + The Kingdom of the Worm + Aliens + Tremors + The Charnel God).

At the Planets of Madness

Throughout October and November, I have been rereading everything from H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith.  In particular, I have been focusing my attention on their "Cosmotism" and sci-fi stories.  All the while thinking about how I want to approach my own "Star Trek meets Cthulhu horror is Space" game, something I have been working on under the title of "Black Star".

Of course looking at Lovecraft through the lens of Sci-fi rather than horror gives the stories an extra dimension.  Once I got back to the "Dream of the Witch House" and the equations of Walter Gilman I knew there was something there.  I figured what if we took the Gilman equations and used those to power Warp drive?  It seemed like a great fit! Really, really great.  Too great. I had to go back to my shelves and sure enough, the idea is not my original one.

Eldritch Skies was published by Battlefield Press a few years back does exactly this.  I was a consultant on the original Cinematic Unisystem version, but now you can only get the Savage Worlds version.

Still, I am pressing on to use the Gilman drive in my own games.  The Gilman equations are added to normal warp drive to produce the Gilman-Cochrane drives.  I'll adapt Eldritch Skies as needed with plenty of Lovecraftian beasties to fill my CAS-style planets.  Hey, it makes as much sense as the Spore Drive.

Converting the stories to Sci-Fi/Horror adventures is easy.

After the first adventure which is Star Tre + Galaxy Quest + Alien + Lovecraft + Event Horizon I figure I can do these:

At the Planets of Madness.  The PCs find a planet that is older than the known Universe! To make matters worse there is evidence of an ancient civilization.  (At the Mountains of Madness + the Image of Fendahl)

Ghost Ship.  The PCs find a derelict adrift in space and it is full of the ghosts of the dead crew.  Originally this was going to be the Enterprise B when I ran it as a pure Trek game. (The Haunting of Hill House, Dreams of the Witch House, the Flying Dutchman)

The Color out of Hyperspace.  A slow moving wave is "eating" up parts of space and everything in its wake.  (Color out of Space)

Starcrash on Hyperborea.  A shuttlecraft with the PCs crashes on a primitive frozen planet.   (Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea + The Galileo Seven +  All Our Yesterdays)

At least that is what I have so far.  I want to use more of Clark Ashton Smith's planets, in particular, his planets around Polaris.  It is also giving me a chance to adapt some Tékumel material to White Star.  This page on Wikipedia, Stars and planetary systems in fiction,  has been invaluable for finding planets and star systems I can use.

Much like Lovecraft, I started out in life as an astronomer.  Also, like Lovecraft, I discovered I lack the skills in math to ever get very far.  Though in my defense my wall comes up around Calculus 2.  I did go on to get a degree in Statistics and Measurement.   But the idea of using some long unused parts of my brain are appealing to me.

I have posted a lot in the past about various worlds.  All of these can be used too.

• I Dream of Worlds
• The Return of Nibiru
• Playing with Earth
• Oh the Places You'll Go!
• Yamil Zacra: The Infernal Star

Time to boldly go where no one can hear you scream!

This post is part of my contribution to the RPG Blog Carnival for November 2018.
This month's topic is "All these Worlds..."
Looking forward to what my fellow RPG bloggers are doing this month and how many ideas I can use from them!

October Horror Movie Challenge: Don't Go to Sleep (1982)

Rhoda and McCloud have a murderous daughter in this 1982 made for TV Aaron Spelling movie that surprisingly holds up well.

The late 70s and early 80s were a great time for some really spooky made for TV movies. At least that is my memory of things.  Well if you grew up in the 80s and had brothers or sisters then this movie most certainly freaked you out.

Phillip and Laura just lost their daughter Jennifer and have moved to LA (because that is where Spelling is) with their remaining children Mary and Kevin.  Mary keeps hearing her dead sister but no one believes her.  That is till the killings start.

Now I watched this back in the day and at the time I loved the fact that the mystery could go one of two ways.  Either really a ghost or everything was a product of Mary's psychosis.  As a teen just discovering psychology I thought that was great.

Of course, now, the punch is a little less. Not just due to seeing it before but also time.  Though I was surprised by how well the movie holds up to now.  Re-film this in modern LA and not change a bit of dialog...ok there are some changes that would have to be done...but otherwise it would still work.


Watched: 10
New: 5

October Horror Movie Challenge: Burned at the Stake (1982)

If there were as many witches in "real" Salem as the Salem in movies and TV, the trials would STILL be going on.

Salem really was an important moment in American History Not the trial itself but as a test of this new country.  Personally, I think we would have ended up exactly where we are today, but we would lack some great stories.

Burned at the Stake, also known as "The Comming", covers the Salem trials in the same way a lot of movies do; as background with a lot of mistakes.  First off, no one was burned at the stake in Salem. They were either hung or in one case pressed to death and another died in prison.

Ok. That all aside. People died and we can get ghosts that way. Ghosts are what gives us this flick.

The plot is simple. Man from 1692 comes back in the 1980s to take revenge on the descendant of the one that accused his wife and daughter. 

I gotta admit despite the subject matter, I found the movie a bit dull.

Watched: 9
New: 5

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Incubus (1982)

Rapey demon goes on a rampage in TorontoGalen, MA.  This movie has ties to both Deadly Blessing (incubus as our monster) and Watcher in the Woods (directed by John Hough).  This movie was on my list a couple of years ago when I did "Movies I thought I had watched, but never did" for the challenge.

The acting is not bad. Not great mind you, but better than expected in many cases.

There is a twist in the end, and one that should have been expected to be honest, but still fun.  Though that is about all that is fun about the movie.  Though the movie is true the nature of the Incubus, so I can't fault them there.

Keep your eyes open, near the end Bruce Dickinson shows up (on film) with his then band Samson.  So that is fun.

Interestingly enough, both Incubi are depicted here as mostly incorporeal begins that can possess people. Typically succubi have a more physical manifestation.  I wonder why? (of course, we all know).


Watched: 8
New: 4

October Horror Movie Challenge: Forbidden World (1982)

Ah...not Forbidden Planet...but well you get the idea.
I was not going to do an 80's themed October Challenge without getting in a Roger Corman film.
Corman is up to his usual tricks here too, cheap sets, recycled footage, and beautiful women in various stages of undress.

The plot is one so old that even in 82 it felt old. Alien monster created by science gets loose in a lab and kills everyone.  But to Corman's credit, he still manages to make this old chestnut entertaining.
Our hero, Mike Colby, is a Federation Marshall sent to deal with the problem.  He manages to have sex with every woman on the base and still finds a way to allow everyone to get killed on the base.
Priorities I guess.

Still, if I ever get my Star Trek/White Star/Black Star game going again there will be a shape-shifting alien in the Jefferies Tubes killing people.

Forbidden World also features a Pre-V June Chadwick as Dr. Barbara Glaser, but she might be remembered best as David St. Hubbins' girlfriend Jeanine in "This is Spın̈al Tap".  Of course given that this a Corman flick the only way the two women on board can figure out how to communicate with the creature is during a scene where they shower together.

This movie has also been known as "Mutant".  The actual creature, as to be expected, looks nothing like the cover art.

Watched: 7
New: 3

October Horror Movie Challenge: Deadly Blessing (1981)

Ah,  Deadly Blessing. As kids my brothers and sisters LOVED this movie.  No kidding. The ads were so damn creepy.



A young Sharon Stone forced to eat a spider by an Incubus? Hell yeah! That's nightmare fuel for decades.   And a real spider was dropped into her mouth for this scene.  How's that for dedication?

Ok, where to start on this movie?  Well, it features a young Sharon Stone in one of her very first roles.  It also features Battlestar Galactica's Mara Jensen in her very last role before disappearing from public life.  Also appearing is 80s horror mainstay Michael Berryman, TV star Lisa Hartman, and the last film for Susan Buckner before she left public life as well.

The movie features a group of people called the "Hittites" (no relation to the ancient Mesopotamians) who are supposed to be some sort of ultra-Amish.
Our demon-de-hour is an Incubus, but one that decides to possess women.  I guess "incubus" sounds cooler than "succubus" in this case.

Anyway. Lots of creepy stuff. Murders happen. Mara Jensen takes a famous bath with a snake. And it a fashion that predicts A Nightmare on Elm Street, we think we have the murderer and everyone goes back home.  Except for Martha (Mara Jensen), who pulled into hell by the Incubus in his full demon form.

Ok. Let's be honest. The movie doesn't hold up.  In truth, it wasn't that good to start with, but my memories of it are tied up in watching it with my family.

Sharon Stone is great really.  You get a feeling for the sort of actress she will become later.  Maren Jensen is fine, but I think had she not be diagnosed with Epstein-Barr Syndrome she would have naturally left acting.  She was good, but didn't have a lot of range.

Maybe one of the most iconic horror movie posters of all time.  Well, at least in the top 10.

Watched: 6
New: 2

October Horror Movie Challenge: Sons of Satan (1981)

A bit under the weather here today and all weekend, but I watched to old favorites.
Working my way to 1981.

Fear No Evil (1981).  Loved this stupid little movie as a kid and even more on VHS when I got a copy.  Let's be honest, high school IS Hell.

I had that poster on my wall for years.

The Final Conflict (1981). Damien is back and this time he has his devilish eyes on nothing less than the office of the President!  Imagine that, a soulless son-of-a-bitch as the President.
Sam Neil was really fun in this movie.  The Omen trilogy itself is pretty bad, but this one was fun.

God might only have one son, but Satan's sons are all real underperformers.

Watched: 5
New: 2

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Watcher in the Woods (1980)

There was a time in the late 70s and early 80s when Disney was going through a slump. It roughly corresponds to the time when Walt and Roy Disney died and before the coming of Micheal Eisner.  This gave us some very different kinds of movies from the House of Mouse.  The Witch Mountain series on the onset and the Black Hole near the end typify of what I think of when I say Dark Disney.
We also got the thriller with multiple choice endings, The Watcher in the Woods.

Now I'll be honest, at age 10 this movie gave me a scare, but I was fascinated with it too.  It' doesn't quite hold up to today, but it was still a ton of fun to watch again.

I have to say Bette Davis left a mark on my psyche so deep that I think every old witch I have done is a bit of a reflection of her Mrs. Aylwood. Or maybe that and her role in Disney's earlier Return to Witch Mountain (1978).  Both films were directed by John Hough, so that might explain the similar vibe.

The Watcher in the Woods is also part of a string of movies, books, and other media popular at the time (and before) that took the point of view of "it's not supernatural, it's alien!" but never to the extent that Lovecraft took it.

Still, it is interesting to view this movie through the lenses of Lovecraftian cosmic horror.  Especially if you stick to the original ending of the movie the alien creature at the end (The Watcher) could very easily be a Mi-Go.



The ending is still a little too happy to be real Lovecraft.

I watched the less interesting Official version.

But it was still a blast to go back to this!


Watched: 3
New: 2

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Nightmare Never Ends / Cataclysm (1980)

Its Atheist vs Satanist is this 1980 Troma...er...classic.

The movie details the struggle between an atheist (Martin Richard Moll in a very early role), his wife a psychic and surgeon, a police detective and the immortal satanic Nazi they are all hunting.

Personally, I think they tried to cram too much into one movie and none of it fared well.  Plus it is Troma and while they are still a couple years from their Golden Age of Toxic Avenger, they have not yet found their sweet spot.  Though I do recall there were a couple of Troma movies from the early 80s that were fine.

Plus the woman playing Moll's wife, Faith Clift, is not very good.  Though my favorite part in this is she goes to see a psychiatrist friend and he suggests she go to the Disco to get rid of these nightmares she is having.  It comes off as so pandering that he made me laugh. (Psychologists will often suggest a vigorous physical activity to aid with night terrors.)

Maybe if they had split this into two movies, with the detective following the case from both and then had you know a good script.  I like the idea of evil, immortal satanic Nazis as bad guys.

Did I mention though our Nazi sucked too?  No? Wel,l he did.  IF he is the best that the Nazi's and Satan can collectively come up with then the army of evil is nothing.

The movie was released as "The Nightmare Never Ends" but at some point was renamed "Cataclysm". No idea why.  Also, the movie has two release dates; 1980 for the US and 1983 for West Germany.

Watched: 2
New: 2

October Horror Movie Challenge: Beyond Evil (1980)

It's Halloween everyone!  Or October. Same thing.
This year I want to focus on movies made in the 1980s.  I have done a lot 70s and 60s movies, but never a dedicated tour of the horror movies on the 1980s.  I also want to focus on the Occult and things that made people really nervous in the age of the Satanic Panic.

So let's get started.

Up first is John Saxon in Beyond Evil (1980).  It's slightly less Blaxploitation than say Live and Let Die,  but the vide it there.  in fact this movie feels very 70s to be honest. No surprise of course, but it will be interesting to see when the shift happens.

The movie is a "Scooby-Doo" plot where John Saxon and wife Lynda Day George get a house in the Caribean.  Of course, it is haunted by a woman who was murdered by husband.  So we get a lot of Lynda Day George acting all possessed and weird.  A lot of John Saxon not believing in black magic and then of course wackieness ensues.

The movie is not bad it an attempt to update the old haunted house trope by sticking it into someplace really nice. But in the end, the cast is better than their script.

Watched: 1
New: 1