Chill 3.0

Long time readers of my site and/or my posts online know of my love for the classic Horror RPG Chill. To many role-players around my age their first introduction to Horror roleplaying was the venerable “Call of Cthulhu”, but not me. Mine was Chill.

I got started in the 1st Edition Pacesetter days (early 80s) and “Chill: Vampires” was and is one of my favorite books for any game. The 90’s came around and I picked up the 2nd Edition, Mayfair, version. It was slicker and had some minor rule changes, but it was a great addition to my ideas for my 2nd Ed AD&D Ravenloft game. The Mayfair version is of course superior, but it lacks some of the feel I associated with the game. Maybe it was the lack of the Jim Holloway art or the darker tone. Picking up a copy of the Mayfair version now I get the impression (true or not) that the makers of Kult saw it and thought, “yes this is good, but what if the world was much, much worse?”

I liked Chill also because it had Midwest sensibilities. Pacesetter was from Wisconsin; Mayfair was/is in Niles/Skokie, a suburb of Chicago than is not too far from where I live (and has one of my favorite pizza places). It was while playing Chill that learned that the best horror was horror close to home. I don’t know, or much care really, what Hollywood thinks is horror. How can a place that gets like 350 days of sunshine know what is horror? On the other hand East Coast horror (Lovecraft) has a completely different flavor. It’s almost alien. Chill may have had a global scope, but the horror is home grown. Chill remembers that there is simple horror in the haunted house, or the strange creature from the Unknown. It is not about the bigger-badder-more horror of some games, where every game has to up the ante on the last game.

I had lots of ideas for Chill, but never got to use them since I couldn’t find anyone that wanted to play it. No worries, most of my Chill ideas were resurrected for my WitchCraft RPG games. In fact there is nice continuity in my horror game world of supernatural occurrences increasing over the years that track nicely to the power levels of my games (Chill -> WitchCraft RPG -> Buffy/Ghosts of Albion).
So needless to say I was stoked when I heard Chill 3.0 was coming out. I joined the playtest, gave my stuff and……that was it for a very long time.

Well now Other World Productions is producing Chill 3.0, but they need the cash (and interest) to do it.

You can find all the information here:
http://www.chillrpg.com/

And their Fundable account here: http://www.fundable.com/groupactions/groupaction.2009-05-13.8365429432

Now I would love to see a new version of Chill, but I am not sure I should be getting my hopes up here.

Design Blog, #2

Eldritch Witchery Updates

Well I was originally going to include a bunch of demons and devils in this book, sort of a "everything that everyone thought D&D was about but really isn't" would be here. I survived the "Satanic Panic!" of the 80's, have been accused of being a Satanists on more than one occasion and of course it isn't true (a perverse slave is still a slave). But I wanted to have my fun too. Well reality often gets in the way and the reality is that EW is going to be a bit larger than I thought so something has to go.

At the moment I have the Witch and Warlock classes, a section on Traditions, some information on covens, and of course plenty of new spells and magic items. There will be some monsters of course. I want to include Hags and of course I need to have my Druthers in it.

Normally here I suppose one would post their notes on design, but most of mine are from previous versions of this class, so my notes are really more on how I plan to implement them. Right now I am looking for any documentaries or movies about witchcraft that were filmed in the 70s. That is feel I want, something very “Rosemarie’s Baby” like or even better, the original “The Initiation of Sarah”. Not so much for the story, but more for the feel of the times. Or maybe some of the funky old books that my old hometown library used to have. Or some Hammer Horror, like “To the Devil a Daughter”. In any case this project is going to force me (allow me) to watch some really crappy 70s horror. That is almost worth it in and of itself!
In the meantime, I have been re-watching a lot of Charmed. I’d still love to do a Charmed RPG, just don’t see it taking off now after the show went off the air. Though I understand the books sell well enough.

The Dragon and the Phoenix: No Other Troy

Here is the cover for the series of adventures I did for the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG. This is the season finale, Episode 12: No Other Troy. It was a lot of fun and I am posting this here as a big test.


Episode 12 No Other Troy by ~WebWarlock on deviantART

Character Sheets

Ok, I added two character sheets for the BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SPLAYER RPG or the GHOSTS OF ALBION RPG. They are, of course, Willow and Tara. The game takes place in what I am calling "Willow and Tara the Seires". The season long arc is "Season of the Witch" and this represents the girls at the start of the arc in 2006. Yes Tara is alive, like she should have been all along.
You can find them on my DeviantArt page here:
Willow, http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/54124696/
Tara, http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/54124550/
Anyway, just a bit of photo manip. If you play either of these games and want a blank sheet, go to RPGSheets.com. I made one and posted it there, http://www.rpgsheets.com/cgi-bin/arcdb.cgi?action=dl&id=3562