Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. Why 1986?

So, one has to ask: why 1986?

It is a legitimate question and one that lingers under both Jackson, IL, and Advanced Witches & Warlocks.

I am not talking about the 1980s as a whole, or nostalgia for its own sake. You will find your share of cassette tapes and denim jackets here, horror paperbacks and D&D books with well-worn corners; they are part of the ambiance and atmosphere. I mean this year in particular. Why 1986?

State of the Art for AD&D 1986

For Advanced Witches & Warlocks, it is a strange and handy vantage point. If you go back to the 1974 boxed set, Dungeons & Dragons was almost thirteen years old by then. It was no longer a child. It had acquired a history, some scars, a few good arguments, and traditions. It was a teenager now. At times awkward, at times brilliant, occasionally too sure of itself, and sometimes hard to put a name to, but full of potential. In other words, a bit contradictory. A Witch book from this time should also be like that.

The first flush of the D&D/AD&D gold rush was done with. The game was a culture in its own right, having made its way from college clubs and basements into hobby shops, school lunchrooms, news stories, and even church warnings. With the Monster Manual, the Player’s Handbook, and the Dungeon Master's Guide, AD&D had a core identity and dictated how you were to think about fantasy adventure.

And yet it was in flux. Ravenloft was already on the scene, making a theatrical and tragic impression with its brand of gothic horror. Dragonlance had happened that placed more emphasis on charcaters as characters than previously. Note: Both Ravenloft and Dragonlance became part of what has been called the Hickman Revolution, and often the start of the Silver Age of D&D. The Forgotten Realms were coming, destined to be one of the big shared campaign worlds. So yes, 1986 has a liminal quality to it. AD&D was past its rawest beginnings but not yet the highly branded ecosystem it would turn into. Things were changing. 

That is exactly where the Witch belongs. In the space between the little brown books and the grand campaign worlds, between a dungeon crawl and some gothic melodrama. Between the wargame heritage and the kind of character play we were doing, even if the rules didn’t quite say so. That is what I am are after with Advanced Witches & Warlocks. Not some modern witch retrofitted for AD&D, nor a twenty-first-century class in old-school dress. I want a witch who could have been there, one you might have found on the same shelf as the old hardbacks in a used bookstore, in an era when parents got nervous seeing their kids sketch pentagrams in their notebooks.

She was always in AD&D waiting to be written down, but 1986 is when I can see her most clearly.

As for Jackson, IL, 1986 is important for another reason. It is one of the last moments before "the world wakes up from history."  You get the sense of it from "Right Here, Right Now" by Jesus Jones, though that song is from the early 90s, after the walls came down and things were moving too fast to keep up. 1986 is still on the other side of the mirror. The world was not yet as small as the internet would make it. You couldn’t check a fact in five seconds flat or send off a text to all your friends from the cemetery. From the comfort of your bedroom, you were not going to put your hands on a satellite map, or some scanned newspaper archive, or find what you needed on a message board. Information was something you had to go and get. It had a place.

So you went to the library to check the archives. You hopped on your bike and made the trip across town. You put in a call to someone’s home with the hope their parents would not be the ones to pick up. You made notes, copied down an address, and then you waited. The world was bigger like that, which is why it was so easy for shadows to take hold.

Horror needs that.

In Jackson, secrets have a way of surviving because the town is local enough for them to. Rumor has speed, but it is not even. There are things the adults know that the teenagers do not, and vice versa. And while there are records, they are sitting in a file cabinet, a yearbook, the church basement, or a box in some attic. A haunted town requires some friction. 1986 provides it.

But one must be careful with 1986; it is not as innocent as it seems. That is the trap when you write about the eighties. You can make the decade into set dressing with its neon and synthesizers, its malls and hairspray and horror films. I am fond of all that, but it does not cut it. If the year is to have any meaning, it must also have horror and pain; it has to hurt a little.

January 28, 1986, hurt.

When the Space Shuttle Challenger came apart 73 seconds into its flight, all seven on board were lost. NASA will tell you it was the STS-51L mission, and with Christa McAuliffe involved, many a schoolchild was tuned in. It was supposed to be routine. Easy. For my generation, it was one of the first times we saw a public tragedy in real time.

On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl Reactor 4 suffered a catastrophic meltdown. All our fears about nuclear power played out for us on our TVs. The great specter of nuclear meltdown was now on our evening news, delivered by Tom Brokaw.

We had known the world was not safe, but this was different. It came into the classroom and put an end to the promise we had been fed. Space was our future, the shuttle was routine, the teachers were going up there, and the adults were in charge. Then the sky opened up, and you could see the horror on the faces of the very same adults.

That is what I want in Jackson. Not as a plot device to be used up, but as atmosphere. A fracture in the adult world. A teenage witch in 1986 is surrounded by grown-ups who will tell you they have everything under control despite the evidence to the contrary. You come to realize there are no paladins or wizards; they do not have the spell memorized, and sometimes they built the machine without heeding the warning that it might break. Once you see that, the world is a different place. It is more than innocence lost. It is the thin veil of lies about innocence. 

I talk about it a lot here, but even the Satanic Panic has its part to play in both projects. With Advanced Witches & Warlocks, it is the cultural Zeitgeist that makes D&D seem perilous to those who cannot fathom it, lumping in heavy metal, the occult, and a teenager’s imagination as one great threat. It was stupidity, but stupidity has a way of shaping a culture. Just watch the news today.

In Jackson, IL, it is more than useful. A moral panic lets the respectable sort act on old fears. The girl was always a bit odd; the house was already off-limits, and the symbols in the notebook were being noticed. The Santic Panic just gave them leave to do something about it.

You don’t need the Satanic Panic to make a witch. What it makes is an excuse for one to be hunted, feared, and reviled. And that is the more frightening part.

Then there was the music. By 1986, you could still hear the early synth-pop and New Romanticism of the decade’s opening, but the center had moved. The hair metal era was on its way to taking over the landscape, though not yet in full force. 1986 is the space between those things. It is not one note. That is significant.

It is a year of transition. You can feel the afterglow of Live Aid from ’85, and Farm Aid had only just been held back in September out of concern for American family farmers. I put some weight on that because Farm Aid was in Champaign, Illinois, and that puts you in Jackson’s orbit, in the Midwest.

The music wasn’t merely an escape. It was making an effort, if a bit awkward at times, to be something more: political, useful, global. A mix-tape was your confessional, a message for when words would not do. Put in a request at the local station and hope someone heard it. It had the power of a spell.

Take Paul Simon’s Graceland in ’86, with all its complicated influence, as he brought South African sounds to the American mainstream. Or Peter Gabriel’s So, which managed to be art-rock and pop at once, and the end of his cult following days. Run-DMC put out Raising Hell that year, too, a necessary step for hip-hop to be seen by the rest of us.

I don’t see this as mere soundtrack trivia. It tells me what sort of year we are in. The old categories are dissolving, and the voices that were left out are being heard. Parents have their worries, the kids are tuning in regardless, and the culture is at odds over who has the right to speak and what is deemed dangerous.

The whole Parental Advisory row comes of this time. The Parents Music Resource Center was founded in 1985, aiming to label anything with objectionable lyrics. Much like the Satanic Panic, it made youth culture a battleground of fear and control.

Witches find that handy.

A witch is someone who will be labeled. Dangerous, immoral, corrupting, or unnatural. Too loud or too quiet. Too independent, too well read, too strange to be put in a box. You will find it in a fantasy village or a modern high school, in any small town where they think virtue is the same as conformity.

So 1986 puts pressure on me from both sides.

For Advanced Witches & Warlocks, it is an AD&D moment; the Witch has her place in a game that is between phases. The old stuff still counts but the new is coming, and horror has already made its way into the castle. For my purposes in Jackson, IL, it is a modern setting where a teenage witch can be left to her own devices, misread and watched, and have to go about things the old way. You could say the world is in a state of flux, but it is not yet all one piece. There are still secrets a town can hold. A girl can come across something in a library drawer and have no simple means of telling whether another soul has ever laid eyes on it.

Then there is 1986. It presents me with a culture that is afraid of its children. In some ways, that is the point of it.

Take the D&D crowd, the metalheads, the kids into horror or punk or goth. The queer kids, the smart ones, the strange boys and girls with their notebooks of symbols, the ones who read too much and ask questions they should not. They do not fit the narrative adults have put together for them.

The Witch is to be found there, at the fringes of what is approved. She is not the trouble. She is merely the one to see that the trouble was there to begin with.

That is why 1986 works. Do not mistake it for being simpler or better; it was neither. But it sat on a threshold. You had AD&D old enough for its own mythology yet young enough to leave some rooms empty. The modern world was tied in enough to feel global change but not so much as to put an end to local mystery. The whole culture was loud and nervous and moralizing, creative and frightened and very much alive.

A good year for witches. For mirrors. For secrets.

Mirror Shard: 1d12 Things Found in a 1986 Witch’s Room

This will work for Jackson, IL, or any modern supernatural game you want to set before the internet made doing your research too convenient. A teenage witch does not have a wizard’s tower. Her room is more perilous than that. Private, half-hidden, temporary, and only a knock from her parents away from being found out.

Make a d12 roll or pick and choose.

1. A spiral notebook with dream fragments and song lyrics, plus a page of symbols she cannot recall putting there.
2. An overdue library book on folklore, three months past due. The checkout card has the same name on it every eleven years.
3. Cassette tapes in a shoebox. Put in the unmarked one, and you will hear a voice going through the names in the town cemetery.
4. A hand mirror with a crack in it, wrapped up in a scarf. Works fine until after midnight.
5. A black cat charm on a broken chain. You can tell when spirits are close by how warm it feels.
6. A Polaroid of four of her friends in front of the school. If you look between them, there is a fifth shadow.
7. An old coffee mug with a candle stub in it. Lies in the room, and it will burn blue.
8. A note from class. Open it up, and the handwriting is different each time.
9. Some clipping from the paper on a death half a century back. She keeps it, though she has no reason to.
10. A flower pressed from the cemetery fence. Picked months ago, and yet it has not dried.
11. An old mixtape that says "DO NOT PLAY SIDE B." There is no music on side B, just breathing and a bell tolling in the distance.
12. A character sheet for a red-haired witch in purple and black for D&D. The player will tell you she never created her; she created herself.

Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. Teenage Witches and the Haunted Midwest

Last week, I examined the witch in AD&D. As a class and a monster in a game of spell lists, curses, familiars, old women living at the edge of villages, mysterious maps, and a host of others. Advanced Witches & Warlocks is a project that aims to give her proper due among the iconic elements of classic fantasy RPGs.

But there is another mirror.

If the Advanced Witches & Warlocks is interested in exploring the witch as an element of a fantasy game in 1986, then the Jackson, IL project is a consideration of how the witch would fit in the modern horror world of 1986.

By the "modern," I don't mean contemporary times. I mean an era of landlines, lockers, cassette tapes, libraries, horror movies at midnight, school rumors, and parents who believe they can keep secrets from teens

These are very different takes on witches.

In the world of AD&D, the witch is always on the edge of the village. By the old road, the swamp, the shrine in ruins, or the sinister forest. In the Jackson, IL setting, she is on the edge of town, near the cemetery, an abandoned structure, the stream, the college, a different neighborhood, or a lonely road.

The map is different, but the location itself is not.

Jackson, IL, is where my imagination has found its new home. This place isn't Salem, nor New Orleans, nor some gothic European village under the full moon, despite my affection for those locations. No, Jackson is in the Midwest. It is a small town in central Illinois. A town with brick school buildings, college halls, county roads, corn fields, old graveyards, tiny churches, pizza shops, book stores, hardware stores, Friday night football games, Friday night dances, and houses where three generations have kept the same secret.

In Jackson, the supernatural does not require thunderous declarations or Latin incantations to reveal itself. Instead, it is rather subtler.

Perhaps it is the teacher who hasn't aged since 1569. Perhaps a door in the library, locked for no apparent reason. Perhaps a statue at the cemetery changing directions at midnight. Perhaps the name of a creek that no one remembers where the name came from. Or perhaps it is the mirror reflecting something other than yourself.

This is the haunting of the Midwest. It is not empty. It is a place filled with ghosts.

Every town in the Midwest has its stories: the house that has never been sold, the road where headlights disappear, the creepy old lady that kids are told not to approach, the rail road tracks where strange things occur, the auditorium in the school where lights flicker even with the power shut off, and the place outside town known only by its ominous name of "the Bad Land."

These are stories that form the Jackson, IL environment. Not simply the background, but the actual foundation on which the Veil between what is "Real" and what is considered "Supernatural" is constructed.

Most people in the town interact with the supernatural indirectly, in fleeting moments. A shadow. A whisper. A dream. A cold sensation down the spine. A name spoken out of nowhere. And they explain it away, because that is what humans do. It is simpler to believe that everything is ordinary than to accept that ancient tales still speak truth.

Teenagers are not good at keeping their thoughts and opinions to themselves. That is why a teenager is perfect in a game about supernatural activity.

Adults follow routines, have reputations, jobs, mortgages, church groups, seats on the school board, and myriad reasons to preserve the "official" story. Teenagers care about other things. Why does that room stay locked? Why are they avoiding that particular teacher? Why did Mom go silent when I mentioned that name? Why does the school bell ring differently to me? And why do I see the woman in the black cloak and purple dress in the mirror?

Thus, the teenage witch belongs in this place.

Not only is she a character living between two worlds. At least partly, but not entirely. She is not a kid anymore, but she is not yet an adult. People look at her, underestimate her, boss her around, dismiss her, and correct her, all before she even knows who she truly is.

And then comes the magic.

She begins having dreams. Strange marks appear on her skin. She finds books at the library with strange titles. A stray cat starts following her wherever she goes and never leaves. Her reflection starts speaking to her. And perhaps she discovers that the story about the dead girl haunting the bathrooms at school was not just a story.

That is the importance of their first experiences.

Whereas in the world of AD&D, the witch appears with powers, spells, and a clear-cut purpose, here she is noticed. The world recognizes something in her, and she recognizes it back.

This can be terrifying, but also terribly tempting.

I played this scenario with Larina. There is a young girl named Larina. Some kids call her "Creepy." She has visions and talks to ghosts, but she tries to hide her magical abilities because she knows that using them attracts attention from things in the darkness.

This scenario is perfectly designed for Jackson, IL. But I also realized there was a lot more I could do with it. That starting with powers is one type of game, but developing them as the game progresses is something else. 

Being magical in the Jackson environment means revealing oneself. Every casting of a spell is an exposure to the darkness seeking light. Every magical act draws eyes. 

Jackson, IL, is still a modern reflection of the AD&D-inspired fantasy world in Advanced Witches & Warlocks. The witch concept remains the same, but the clothes are different.

The group of friends is the coven. After hours in school are the dungeons. Rumors around town turn into gossip in hallways. The wise woman standing at the edge of the village is now someone's aunt, a school teacher, a local shop owner, or someone who has waited patiently for the right girl to ask the right questions.

The familiar becomes a pet that manages to enter the school for reasons that no one understands. A notebook under the bed takes the place of the spell book. The place beyond the fence at the cemetery is the ruined shrine. An ancient deity is a name scrawled in pencil at the abandoned classroom.

But Jackson, IL, cannot merely be a simple adaptation of fantasy RPGs. 

Not only would it be uninteresting, but it would lack necessary depth. It would be uninspired. 

Modern horror has to have its own logic.

While in a fantasy game, the main heroes are expected to take up swords and bravely venture into the dungeons, their counterparts in the modern horror world still have homework to do.

They have to attend classes, deal with parents, curfews, training, work after school, live up to peer expectations, compete with rival schools, maintain reputations, deal with their younger brothers and sisters, and people who would certainly notice if they were gone for three days straight.

This makes a big difference.

A teenage witch cannot just leave town on adventures, and she has to find a way to come back, to cover the stains on her jacket, to explain why her homework was done in the library, why she is late for algebra after having seen something crawling out of the drain at night. And yet, this is not a restriction; it is the essence of the game.

The ordinary world, which is often a barrier in games of the supernatural, is, in fact, what makes them scary.

An isolated haunted school becomes frightening precisely because it is her school. A cursed road is terrifying precisely because her best friend lives on the other side of it. The monster at the cemetery terrifies her, because Grandma is buried there, while the witch's mark makes her fear going to gym class. The ordinary makes the scary parts scarier. 

This is where the theme of the Satanic Panic emerges as well, but in the background.

Not as a simple decoration, but as the very core of the game, because the town uses that panic as a vehicle to express existing fears that otherwise remain untapped. The odd girl has always been creepy, the abandoned house - terrifying, the mysterious books at the library – suspicious. While the rumor makes the witch, it provides a ready-made justification for the search. This is horror, not because of accusations, but because of the town's desperation to believe that it has reason.

Since the community is already scared of her dark clothes, her books, her music, her art, and the woods she loves, the Satanic Panic gives this fear permission. It transforms gossip into social concern, suspicion into righteousness, and parents into monstrous beings, not changing their appearances in the slightest.

Because this is Jackson, IL, the choice of setting is critical. Where in a grand gothic landscape, the supernatural would sprawl. Here it is concentrated in the small-town Midwest. Everyone knows someone; everyone is related to someone; there are always witnesses to secrets; and there are always connections between the town monster and this place, even if no one has figured them out yet.

The ghost is not just a ghost. She used to be someone's sister, student, patient, or an innocent victim of a horrible event. The hag is not a creature that came here to terrorize. She may be an aunt, a landlord, a neighbor at church, the one whose home everyone avoids because of some terrible sin, or the very reason that three generations of women in one family never drink tea after dark. Local legends are not just myths. They are a necessity. People share their tales with such inaccuracy because the truth demands too much action.

Here is the haunted Midwest I imagine for Jackson: the place familiar enough to evoke a sense of security, and unfamiliar enough to hint at inherent dangers.

It is the time that makes the adventure unique as well. 1986 is not chosen by coincidence, although the brand recognition factor cannot be denied. It represents not nostalgia, but distance in time. No smartphones, GPS systems, online investigations, instant messaging apps, or fast transportation are available for the characters. If something terrible happened at night, they needed a phone line, a bicycle, a car, a payphone, or the guts to go to see it.

Rumors spread quickly, but not evenly. Information is stored in filing cabinets, yearbooks, church hallways, newspaper archives, and the library collection.

Which means that all the investigations are hands-on. The characters have to move from place to place, talk to people, and expose themselves. Which is important because in Jackson, IL, knowledge is bound to a place. The public library is important not because it is there, but because it has archived newspapers. The occult shop is valuable not for supplies but for the chance of someone seeing a teenager there. The school is necessary because almost everyone in town once studied there and left something behind. And the cemetery is crucial, because names are inscribed in stone, but not necessarily in the right manner.

As you remember, the power of the witch in Advanced Witches & Warlocks is bound to fantasy conventions and expectations. It is associated with danger, complexity, and power. Magic comes at a price. It creates bonds and produces unexpected results. In Jackson, IL, everything is different because the flow of magical powers has changed. 

This is the reason why these two projects complement each other.

While the Advanced Witches & Warlocks focuses on how witches look in a classic AD&D fantasy world, Jackson explores how a sixteen-year-old witch attending a class on Tuesday morning realizes that her destiny is tied to something far older than the town.

I am not yet sure whether this second project will eventually lead to a full-fledged book. And it may take quite a bit of writing and effort, probably surpassing 80,000 words before I finally figure out the full vision, there is one thing that I am sure about.

Jackson, IL, is a perfect reflection. While the witch at the edge of the ancient village is the witch wearing the black cloak on the old road in Advanced Witches & Warlocks, the witch sitting quietly at the high school is the girl on the bus looking at the old road with fascination.

Because the fantasy witch and the teenage witch are not different.

They are reflections of one another through the glass.

Prof. Lars Nichols with his daughter, Larina

Mirror Shard: Larina, the New Girl Witch

Every good haunted school needs a new girl.

It is one of the staples in teen horror literature and movies, and yet it works so well because it is not a gimmick. From Buffy Summers arriving at Sunnydale High to start a new life to Sarah Bailey transferring to a new school to become the missing fourth link in a teenage coven. The new girl arrives in the adventure exactly when it is born in the audience member's mind. The new girl does not yet understand the rules of the game, so we get to learn with her.

This is important in a horror RPG.

The long-time local heroine already knows what is better to remain unsaid. She knows the forbidden hallways, the names of the families whose conversation must be cut abruptly, and the teachers whom one has to joke with and not argue. She was taught by experience. While she may not fully believe in the town tales, she knows what they are about or at least what to avoid.

The new girl doesn't know anything. Not yet, at least.

• She wants to know why the third-floor room is locked all the time.
• She is curious why no one ever swims in the creek downstream.
• She wonders why there is a gap in the school's trophy case.
• She would like to understand why the librarian keeps local histories in the drawers rather than on the shelves.
• She would like to know why people fall silent whenever someone mentions "Mauvaisterre" or "Blackthorne."

This makes her useful. This also makes her dangerous.

The character of Larina fits the concept perfectly because she is known and unknown. We know where she can evolve into. The Witch Queen. The occult historian. The redhead witch, who wears black and purple clothing and stands in the way of the bad things trying to get into our world. 

But this is not the case in Jackson, IL.

Larina might have just moved into town because of her father's transfer to the college. She might be a newcomer attempting to blend into normality, failing to do so by noon. She might already be aware that ghosts exist in her town, but she has yet to comprehend their meaning. The other students might consider her creepy before she even introduces herself.

This is useful at the table.

The role of Larina as a New Girl Witch is not to figure out the details for players but to expose the mysteries by noticing things that everyone else failed to see or has learned to ignore.

I use Larina here because she is a great character for me. She is a stand-in, though, for any character the players bring to the table. 

• She observes the reflection's weird movement.
• She listens to a ringing of the bell that no one else can hear.
• She realizes that a stray cat hanging around the school has come there with a specific purpose.
• She discovers that the dead girl haunting the school bathrooms knows her name.
• Her first lesson of magic is not about casting a spell.
• It is about revealing her to the supernatural world.
• The ghosts can see her.
• The entity residing beneath the railroad tracks sees her.
• The teacher who has not aged since 1769 sees her.
• So do students who needed reasons to regard her as creepy.

So use the New Girl Witch when you want to start your campaign with a supernatural revelation. She can be a player character, NPC, rival, friend, or a stranger whom the other characters need to trust or not.

And just like the PCs, she does not have to know everything.

She just has to know enough to be scared.

Jackson, IL: Am I Evil? NPCs of the Satanic Panic

Last week, I talked about running two different 80s-style teenage horror campaigns. My Sunny Valley, OH game with Dark Places & Demogorgons and my current Jackson, IL one with NIGHT SHIFT. 

I had such a good time talking about it that I wanted to explore these two games together some more. But the trick was finding a good pivot point for both of them. I started thinking, what do these two games have in common that I can really exploit for the 1980s? I came up with too many ideas to be honest, so I started thinking about characters. I decided my frame was going to be the Satanic Panic.

My Mother was a Witch

I recalled that the Dark Places & Demogorgons had a "Black Witch" class. In all my past witches for Sunny Valley, I used the White White class, naturally; all my witches tend to be "good." But I wanted to try something new. So I went to the Dark Places & Demogorgons Players Options & GM's Guide, and checked out their magic classes. I also looked into the Dark Places & Demogorgons Players Ultimate Edition for the Mystic Class. Both are great, really, the mystic is closer to the Mystic found in other Bloat Games products. I tried both, but to jump to the end of this, I went with the Black Witch.

On the O.G.R.E.S. side of things, I pretty much knew I wanted to try out the Sorcerer class from Wasted Lands, not that the class is all that different from the witch class; I did want to use some of the Heroic Touchstones from the Wasted Lands game. Again, long story short, I went with the witch and the sorcerer, but I could have stuck with the witch alone.  I did give them an Heroic Touchstone each, migth end up giving them some others later on. Both NPCs are more powerful than anyone character, that is by design. It also fits their backgrounds better.

I ended up with two NPCs and four character sheets. 

These two are going to be central in my Satanic Panic adventure that is going to pop up later on. How later? Well, game-wise, it is going to be Spring 1986, whenever I get to that. Currently, it is just before the 1985 Christmas break. One NPC is a central cause, the other will be a catalyst.

For these, I wanted to try and get each version as close to the other as I could so it felt like playing the same character in each game. 

Moria Elizabeth Zachary

Moria looks like a good girl. She attends the "other" school in town, St. Michael's Catholic High School. She will interact with the PCs either because she comes to take classes at Jackson Public High School (typically something like Calculus or another math class) or because one or more of the PCs have to go to her school (to take advanced Latin or Greek). This actually happened a few times in my own hometown. 

Moria is unassuming and very pleasant. She stands all of 5'1" and looks like the textbook definition of "harmless."

Trouble is, Moria Zachary is really a half-demon. Her mother was a witch from Sunny Valley, OH, and she moved here. Her father, well, he is not a local. Not to anywhere. He is a demon. Moria has moved her with her "Hellhond larva" dog and wants to stir up trouble now in Jackson. OR if you are using her in DP&D, then she is from Jackson and has moved to Jefferson Town.

Moria Zachary is a "mirror shard" of my own Moria Zami, who in my AD&D game is half-devil. Her job here is not to convince the characters to do evil, but to convince them that tools of "Good" are never going to be enough to stop what is coming, and they will need to "color outside the lines" in order to get things done. Moria doesn't care (and maybe doesn't even know) about the Hollow King. She wants the characters to commit evil acts to fight other evil creatures. In either case, Moria gets what she wants, and this is more evil. Her particular favorite is to corrupt other witches and turn them to evil. Failing that, any psychic class or sage is good. She avoids trying to convert theosophists and spirit riders if she can. Not that they are difficult, but they are no fun.

Moria Zachary (NIGHT SHIFT)
3rd Level Witch, Infernal

*Background: Infernal (half-infernal)

Base Abilities
Strength: 14 (+1) 
Agility: 15 (+1) 
Toughness: 16 (+2) N
Intelligence: 14 (+1) N
Wits: 12 (+0) 
Persona: 20 (+4) A

Fate Points: 1d6
Defense Value: 9
Vitality: 19

Degeneracy: 1
Corruption: 0

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +3/+1/+0
Melee Bonus: +0 (base) 
Ranged Bonus: +0 (base)
Spell Attack: +2
Saves: +3 to Spells and Magical effects (Witch) +3 to Wits saves (Infernal background).

Feed (Infernal): Must get witches to cast "evil" rituals

Witch Abilities
Arcana, Arcane Powers (1): Innate Magic: Glamour

Witch Spells
First Level: Black Flames, Magic Missile
Second Level: Defile

Heroic Touchstones
2nd Level: Mystic Senses (Sense Witches)

Archetype: The Half Demon, false friend, witch rival
Quote: "I’m not trying to make you like me. I’m trying to make you stop hating the part of yourself that already does."
Quirks: Looks harmless, sweet, and innocent.
Theme song: "Am I Evil?" - Metallica

Familiar: "Mephisto Fleas"

---

Moria Zachary (Dark Places & Demogorgons)

Class: Black Witch
Level: 3
Alignment: Evil 
Languages: English, Latin, Greek, Infernal
Age: 15

Attributes
STR: 14 +1
INT: 14 +1
WIS: 12 +0
DEX: 15 +1
CON: 16 +2
CHA: 20 +4
SUR: 18 +3

AC: 10     HP: 23    Attack Bonus +1

Courage: 4
Critical: 3
Death: 5
Mental: 5
Poison: 3

Background
Parents are cultists

Class Abilities
+1 to saves involving magic

Skills
Art +3, Math +4, Science +4, Knowledge (Magic) +5, Paranormal +4, Botany +3

Possessions
Rosary with inverted pentagram, Hellhound Larva "Mephisto Fleas."

Money: $50

Spells
Minor (3), Major (1)
Glammerd Appearance, Magical Insight, Burning Ash hands,

Darren "The Sorcerer" Vale

Darren is different. He is a second cousin to one of my witch NPCs, Stephanie Vale. His family has money, but not as much as Stephanie's. Darren is also a little creep. I'll admit I wanted to make him out every negative stereotype of an 80s gamer I could. Because, let's be honest, we all knew/know someone like Darren growing up. That guy who would say something so profoundly stupid, sexist, or racist that you couldn't believe he was at the same table as you. 

Darren is also interested in witches, but not like Moria is. Darren will say stupid shit like "you know, witches are supposed to love guys named 'Darren'" and then laugh at his own cleverness. 

So in the world of Jackson, IL, "Dungeons & Dragons" was not the Greatest Fantasy RPG in the world. No, everyone plays Spellcraft & Swordplay. That is, except for Darren now. He has just been kicked out of the Jackson Public High School S&S Club for making other players uncomfortable, especially group members Paul, Amy Jo, and Kevin. All four used to get together to play on Friday nights, where discussions would drift into typical gamer talk of "Excalibur" the movie vs "Mists of Avalon" the novel, and how they could replicate the feel in a game. Paul, Amy Jo, and Kevin would want to have a fun but serious discussion; Darren always made it weird. 

Darren is one of those guys who got moved up a grade early on and never really caught up emotionally with his peers. He also became one of those kids who felt intelligence equaled superiority, and because he was a little smarter, he thought that made him better than everyone else. He is jealous of everyone in his school. It is not until he notices the supernatural (or maybe the Supernatural notices him as easy prey) that his jealousy really flares. In particular, why does his cousin Stephanie have power? Or why does a loner like Faye? Or fellow "gifted kid" Larina? He has something in common with all three of them, but he has no power of his own. He dismisses them as flukes and makes excuses for his own lack of power by saying he could have it if he tried. Well, something in the dark answers him.

Darren goes from a 0-level human to a 4th-level Sorcerer/Black Witch almost overnight. Something is granting him power. 

Yeah, maybe I should have called him "The Warlock" but the Stevie Nicks song "Sorcerer" was a big enfluence on this character, and *my* nickname was "Web Warlock" for a long time. And to quote that great hunter of the supernatural, "I'm not with this asshole."

Darren Vale (NIGHT SHIFT)
4th Level Witch, human

Background: Nerd

Base Abilities
Strength: 9 (+0) 
Agility: 9 (+0) 
Toughness: 10 (+0) 
Intelligence: 18 (+3) A
Wits: 12 (+0) N
Persona: 11 (+0) N

Fate Points: 1d6
Defense Value: 9
Vitality: 15

Degeneracy: 3
Corruption: 0

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +3/+2/+0
Melee Bonus: +0 (base) 
Ranged Bonus: +0 (base)
Spell Attack: +3
Saves: +4 to Spells and Magical effects (Witch) +2 to Int saves (Nerd background).

Witch Abilities
Arcana, Arcane Powers (2): Innate Magic: Glamour, Innate Magic: ESP

Witch Spells
First Level: Magic Missile, Protection From Good, Chill Ray
Second Level: Invoke Fear, Beguile Person

Heroic Touchstones
2nd Level: Mystic Senses (Sense Witches)

Archetype: The Misanthrope
Quote: "You can't begin to comprehend my power!"
Quirks: Dresses in nice, expensive clothes but is ill-kempt and generally unhygienic.
Theme song: "Sorcerer" - Stevie Nicks

---

Darren Vale (Dark Places & Demogorgons)

Class: Black Witch
Level: 4
Alignment: Evil 
Languages: English, Latin, Greek
Age: 16

Attributes
STR: 9 +0
INT: 18 +3
WIS: 12 +0
DEX: 9 +0
CON: 10 +0
CHA: 11 +0
SUR: 15 +1

AC: 10     HP: 20    Attack Bonus +0

Courage: 3
Critical: 4
Death: 4
Mental: 6
Poison: 4

Background
Obsessed with Magic and the Occult

Class Abilities
+1 to saves involving magic

Skills
Computers +3, Art +1, Math +4, Science +4, Knowledge (Magic) +4, Paranormal +4, Electronics +2

Possessions
Well-thumbed copy of The Necronomicon with notes and penciled-in "corrections."

Money: $150

Spells
Minor (5)
Blind, Charm, Dark Blast, Pain Touch, Read Minds

Darren is not supposed to be a nice guy; in fact, he is dangerous. He will use his "blind" magic on Amy Jo, and likely his "pain touch" on Kevin or Paul.  BUT I am not sure if the characters should kill him. So, in any case, his demonic (or whatever it is) will abandon him in the end, leaving him dead or insane.

His parents never really paid him any attention before, but after this, his mother will go on a crusade against the evils of RPGs, creating the group P.A.S.S. or Parents Against Spellcraft & Swordplay.

The Satanic Panic

Both of these characters will stir up trouble in my upcoming Satanic Panic adventure. At some point, Moria will go missing, and the students will blame the occult (which is kind of true, in a way). Darren will end up either dead or insane, and his mom will blame Spellcraft & Swordplay (sorry, Jason!). Things will escalate when Darren's mom confronts Sylvia Velasco at El Espejo Oscuro. Sylvia refuses to stay silent. "I sell candles to fools every day. I do not sell knives to children. And I sure as hell did not sell real magic to that pendejo. Your son wanted girls without their consent and power without discipline. That did not come from my shop." Because of this, the mob ends up burning down El Espejo Oscuro.

I haven't worked out all the details for that adventure yet, except that Sylvia will be the obvious target and it will take place after the Hollow King arc. There's still time. I wanted to introduce these two now so both the players and their characters get to know them early. That way, it won't feel like a random new NPC shows up and is automatically innocent.

I want to make it clear that Moria and Darren aren't supposed to be surprise villains who suddenly appear out of nowhere. I want my players to meet Moria ahead of time, maybe seeing her smiling in the hallway at St. Michael's. Darren might be seen hanging around El Espejo Oscuro, making people uncomfortable and acting like it's just a coincidence.

To put it simply, Darren helps me show what NIGHT SHIFT characters are like in Jackson. In RPG terms, it might be easy to just label Darren as 'Evil' and move on. But that wouldn't create the atmosphere I'm aiming for. Darren is dangerous, not because he plays fantasy games or is interested in the occult or magic. Paul, Amy Jo, and Kevin do those things too, and they're good kids. Darren is different because he wants power over others, and he thinks magic will help him get it. At least, that's his plan.

This difference is at the heart of my Satanic Panic adventure.

Even though the Satanic Panic is always driven by hysteria, my adventure will have some real reasons behind the chaos. Something bad will happen and people will get hurt. Maybe Darren will die, or maybe he'll survive but end up in the State Hospital. Moria's disappearance could set off a chain reaction, spreading trouble through the neighborhood. The main point is that scared adults will look for easy answers, blaming games, books, music, occult shops, and any teenagers who seem different. This will eventually lead to the real fire at El Espejo Oscuro.

I don't have everything figured out just yet, but it is going to be a blast. Moria and Darren are going to help me out.

Crossover?

I am considering a crossover between my Jackson, IL, game and my Sunny Valley, OH, game, but I have not figured out how that will work just yet. They are about 420 miles apart. I DO have a pivot point, my witch Larina is an NPC in both games, she could use magic IF I think these games are in parallel universes. But that feels a little like cheating if I am being honest. 

Night Shift Larina "Nix" meets Dark Places & Demogorgons Larina "Creepy."

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Conjuring (2013) - The Conjuring Series

The centerpiece of the Conjuring Universe, the one that started it all.

The Conjuring (2013) - Conjuring Timeline 1968-1971 

Ok. There is lot going on here. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga star as real-life couple and demonic investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. The Warrens' investigations also gave us the Amityville Horror story and film franchises. Maybe I should have included them in this. Nah.  Lorraine Warren even makes a cameo appearance in this movie, before her passing in 2019. 

First off, Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga are both fantastic. I have enjoyed everything they have been in even when the surrounding movie was terrible.  This movie is not terrible. 

And honestly, the whole cast is fantastic.  Ron Livingston and Lili Taylor as the Perron parents, and Joey King as one of their daughters. All also based on real people. 

The Annabelle sub-plot is only the prologue to the main tale. 

By 2013, the haunted house genre seemed played out, but this movie really revived it. Revived isn't right, it brought back to life. And there are a lot of great scares here. The demon grabbing Christine's leg is certainly going to give someone nightmares. 

We learn the house is cursed by an accused satanic witch who killed her baby and herself in a satanic ritual at 3:07 am, when all the clocks stop. 

What makes The Conjuring stand out is the execution. James Wan stages his scares with precision. Long takes, creeping camera movement, and subtle sound design build tension until it’s unbearable and then the hammer drops. The clapping game in the cellar remains one of the best set pieces in modern horror, not because of gore or CGI, but because of its timing and restraint. 

When things happen, they happen all at once. 

Turns out the place is full of ghosts and demonic forces. 

There are a lot of parallels between this and Steven Spielberg's Poltergeist. You would be excused if you thought  they were based on the same story and told from very different points of view. 

NIGHT SHIFT & Occult D&D

There is no end of material for either my Occult D&D and NIGHT SHIFT. I mean, this is a NIGHT SHIFT campaign right here. Ed and Lorriane are by the rulebook occult scholars and a psychic. The scene where the occult investigators come into the house is fantastic and feels like found footage.  Not to mention, there are more secret rooms in this house than in a Gygax dungeon.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 8
First Time Views: 6

October Horror Movie Challenge: Annabelle (2014) - The Conjuring Series

Now we come to the first proper sequel, or prequel to the Conjuring universe, 2014's Annabelle. 

Annabelle (2014) - Conjuring Timeline 1968-1970

Ok, now we are in the 1970s, the start of the modern Satanic Panic. 

There is an attempt here to connect this all to the Manson Family murders, which I understand was an inspiration for some part of this series.

John and Mia Form (Ward Horton and Annabelle Wallis) are a new couple and Mia is very pregnant. John gives her a gift of the Annabelle doll. 

We are treated to a scene later, Mia's point of view of the adopted Janice, aka Annabell, from Annabelle: Creation, killing her adoptive parents. The killers come next door and attack Mia and John. One of the killers kills herself, holding the Annabelle doll.  We do learn that the killer was Janice/Annabell. Is the doll the same one as in A:C? No idea, but we do know they were all made by Samuel Mullins.

The predictable spookiness starts. BTW, this series does a lot to make rocking chairs scary. The sewing machine was stressing me out, too. My mom was a seamstress, and she used to run needles through her fingers all the time. The TV going out was too much like Poltergeist. 

The actors are not great, save for Alfre Woodard and Tony Amendola, who are both always great. To be fair, Ward Horton and Annabelle Wallis are not given a lot to work with. 

I had heard that this was the weakest link in the series, and I can see that. It is certainly not as good as Annabelle: Creation. The movie is slow, unnecessarily so, really. Annabelle: Creation really redeems this series so far. 

NIGHT SHIFT & Occult D&D

You know I love 1970s occult horror, and there are plenty of ideas here, even if the movie itself didn't fully take advantage. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 7
First Time Views: 6

October Horror Movie Challenge: Late Night with the Devil (2023)

 Oh. Now this one was so good. I had been waiting to do this one for a bit, and it did not disappoint. 

Late Night with the Devil (2023)

Late Night with the Devil (2023) is one of those movies that grabs you from the very start and doesn't let you go until the very end. It takes the form of a “lost” late-night talk show broadcast from Halloween night, 1977, and gradually descends into chaos, possession, and live-on-air damnation. It is rather great to be honest.

The always amazing David Dastmalchian gives the performance of his career (so far) as Jack Delroy, a talk show host desperate for ratings. He is part Carson and part Jerry Springer. His Halloween special promises seances, psychics, skeptics, and, of course, Lilly D'Abo, the young survivor of a Satanic cult. Played with equal amounts of innocence and horror by newcomer Ingrid Torelli. As the broadcast unfolds, things start to go very wrong. The brilliance of the film lies in its commitment to the format: the cheesy set, the awkward banter, and the canned applause, all slowly giving way to dread as the occult elements seep through the cracks. The cinematography is an art of its own. The on-set show, the backstage, the unfolding horror, all seen via a different lens.

What makes it work is the restraint. For most of its runtime, the horror is suggestive: a flicker on a monitor, a sound from offstage, a psychic’s nervous glance. Then, when the supernatural finally takes the stage, the gloves come off. By the finale, we’ve left the safety of “TV land" and "Standards and Practices” and plunged into something raw and terrifying.

Thematically, it hits a sweet spot. It’s about the start of the 70s Satanic Panic, the exploitation of trauma for entertainment, and the cost of ambition. But it never feels preachy, it’s too busy building atmosphere and keeping you glued to the screen. Dastmalchian is excellent, walking that fine line between smarmy showman and desperate man circling the drain.

There is no way this movie would have been as good as it was without the talents of David Dastmalchian. Though even then it would have been good. This one is my favorite movie of the challenge so far. 

NIGHT SHIFT

Found footage is a great tool. We saw this in "The Blair Witch" and now in "Late Night." Found footage of, well, anything, is a great hook. Found footage of demonic possession? That's a golden hook.

Occult D&D

This movie is the Occult era gift wrapped. It is the start of the modern occult era, so to speak, and everything I want to try to capture here. I love it.

 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2025
Viewed: 4
First Time Views: 3 

Witchcraft Wednesday: Deborah "Elf Star" and Mistress Frost for the Left Hand Path Witch

 Last week I re-introduced two NPC Witches from my Left Hand Path Witch & Warlock book; Rhiannon and Briana Highstar.  Today I want to feature two more. Warlocks I think many of you already know. Deborah "Elf Star" and Mistress Frost.

Deborah “Elf Star”

"I used the Mind Bondage spell on my father!"

Warlock Level 8
Patron: Akelarre
Alignment: Chaos (Chaotic Evil)

STR: 10 +0
INT: 13 +1
WIS: 14 +1
DEX: 15 +2
CON: 15 +2
CHA: 16 +2 (+10% XP)

Death/Poison: 11
Petrification/Polymorph: 11
Rod, Staff, Wands, or Device: 12
Breath Weapon: 14
Spells: 13
Single Save: 13

AC: 7
HP: 30
To Hit AC 0: 18 (Descending AC)
To Hit Bonus: +2 (Ascending AC)

Weapon: Dagger
Armor: None

Invocations

Arcane Blast, Beast Speech, Bewitching Whispers, Eldritch Sight, Sign of Ill Omen

Spells

First Level: Allure, Charm Person, Hypnotism
Second Level: Blur, Dark Whispers, Mind Obscure
Third Level: Dark Omen, Fly
Fourth Level: Mind Bondage

Deborah was a young student of Mistress Frost’s school. Frost saw potential in Deborah above and beyond her classmates. She introduced Deborah, now renamed Elf Star, to her Warlock lodge, where they honored the Demon Lord Akelarre.

Akelarre has rewarded Elf Star with power, particularly power over others in the form of charms and mind control. 

Elf Star plans to grow in power and control all the people who wronged her in her young life.

Mistress Frost

"Don't be stupid, Debbie!"

Warlock Level 18
Patron: Akelarre
Alignment: Chaos (Chaotic Evil)

STR: 11 +0

INT: 16 +2

WIS: 14 +2

DEX: 15 +2

CON: 15 +2

CHA: 18 +3 (+10% XP)

Death/Poison: 11

Petrification/Polymorph: 11

Rod, Staff, Wands, or Device: 12

Breath Weapon: 14

Spells: 13

Single Save: 13

AC: 7

HP: 30

To Hit AC 0: 18 (Descending AC)

To Hit Bonus: +2 (Ascending AC)

Weapon: Dagger

Armor: None

Invocations

Arcane Blast, Beast Speech, Bewitching Whispers, Eldritch Sight, Eye of Algol, Minion of Chaos, Sign of Ill Omen, Threefold Curse, Unholy Regeneration

Spells

First Level: Allure, Charm Person, Command, Hypnotism, Make Poppet, Vigor

Second Level: Agony, Cackle, Cause Light Wounds, Dark Whispers, Mind Obscure

Third Level: Aura Sight, Cauldron of Rage, Chaotic Mind, Dark Omen, Undetectable Lie

Fourth Level: Abjure, Cause Serious Wounds, Mind Bondage, Witch's Cradle
Fifth Level: Break Enchantment, Enslave, Mind Fog, Steal Youth

Mistress Frost is in charge of recruiting new members to the worship of the Demon Lord Akelarre. To secure Deborah's involvement and attachment to the cult she had already sacrificed her friend Black Leaf to ensure Deborah had no other attachments. 

Mistress Frost's ultimate plan is to give Elf Star to Akelarre as a bride to secure even more power for herself. 

--

I am not sure old Jack would approve, but I like them!

Coming next week, Walpurgis Night.

*OGL Section 15: COPYRIGHT NOTICE

Character Clip Art & Color Customizing Studio Copyright 2002, Elmore Productions, Inc.; Authors Larry Elmore and Ken Whitman, Art and illustrations by Larry Elmore.

Witchcraft Wednesday: The Left Hand Path

 It's been a bit since I last did this. So, let's get it going. I have a NEW Witch book coming out!

What can I say about this one?

Well, I think this will be my last "Basic-era" witch book. Yeah, I have said that before. 

You can see on the cover that the "banner" is for "Basic-Era Compatible," so not specifically Labyrinth Lord, Blueholme, Old-School Essentials, or ShadowDark. But rather a Basic system that can support them all (most of all) including a BECMI game I have been playing off and on for a bit.

All my witch books have a ruleset focus, as well as what I call a playstyle focus. This one is for all Basic rules, and the playstyle is how I was playing in 1985-86.  A time when the games I ran still had a bit of Basic & Expert in them, but I using AD&D.  This one is written from a point of view that we got that B/X Companion rules we had been promised. In the 1980s I wasn't playing BECMI yet.

I am also writing this from the perspective of the two major outbreaks of the Satanic Panic. The First was obviously the Witch Craze in Europe from the 15th century to the 18th. Witches in this book engage in activities that people believed witches did back then. I am also using notions from the 20th century Satanic Panic. D&D and Witches have always had a lot in common. 

And this one is huge. Here is a breakdown of the monsters and spells.

One of the reasons this has so many monsters in it is the notion that where there are witches, there are demons and devils. Additionally, I have many demons that I've posted here on The Other Side; this was an opportunity to collect them. Yes, I still want to complete my Basic Bestiaries; I just lack enough artwork.

As far as demons and devils go, I'll say I have the Usual Suspects here and lots of my own.

"The Usual Suspects" Demon Line-up JE Shields art

I am certainly going to be talking about this one a bit over the next month.

My target release date in Walpurgis Night, April 30, which is five weeks from right now. Yikes!

All the writing is done. I am in heavy edit mode now.

I am on "pink" pages now

Did I mention that this thing is huge? No idea on total page count yet. That will change a lot between now and then, but this is crazy. 

I really hope you enjoy this one. I have had a blast working on it. 

The Satanic Panic: 1969 - 1999

 A little project I am working on. This is an overview/timeline of the Satanic Panic in the last 30 years of the 20th Century and how our little hobby is connected.

Click to access my H5P site and interact with this timeline (technically an "accordion.")

Enjoy a little (emphasis on little) history lesson.

#AtoZChallenge2024: S is for Satanic Panic

Click to get your own!

 Now, this is always a fun topic.  It would be difficult to talk about the history of Dungeons & Dragons and not talk about the 1980s moral panic known as The Satanic Panic.

Note: I will liberally use outside links in this one because I want to cite my sources and educate. 

Background

Let me set the stage first. It is the start of the 1980s. Regan is in office riding a wave of conservatism and backed by "The Moral Majority." The 1970s were a time when there was a great Occult Revival (mentioned many times here) and this was the natural reaction.

In addition to flamboyant fashion choices, some really excellent music, and questionable hairspray techniques, we also got a strange moral panic in the form of everyday people accusing their neighbors of being secret practicing Satanists.

While there are a lot of triggers for this panic, the one that almost everyone agrees on is the publication of a book called Michelle Remembers, a lurid tale of repressed memories of Satanic Ritual abuse. Now, reading this there are just a lot of things that don't add up. At all. A recent Skeptical Inquirer article goes into more detail, but suffice to say that despite no tangible proof, this was the spark that lit the flames and the model that all so-called Satanic Experts would follow. This book leads to the tragic travesty of the criminal court system in the McMartin preschool trial. People lost their careers, their homes, and their lives, all for nothing but a panic. It was The Crucible all over again. This is not the last time I will use a witch analogy.  While that was going on other forms of media were not immune. Rock and Roll music took a hard hit, and it led to the creation of the PMRC. Movies had had their troubles before with the Hays Code, and comics had the Comics Code Authority, which had kept both mediums very conservative. But what didn't have those was the brand new pass time of mostly young high school and college age kids with higher than average IQs and a penchant for not conforming. That pass time was Dungeons & Dragons.

How does the Satanic Panic lead to Dungeons & Dragons?  Well, there is a great summary of the Satanic Panic and how D&D was involved from Goddless Panther.

I LOVE that he used my Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of the cover of Dark Dungeons track.  It is too bad that no more of this series was produced.  I also got a kick out some of the picture of old D&D stuff.  He had another series on his older account. https://www.youtube.com/user/Godlesspanther/videos

The first one is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPMtVjg636E (the production values are a bit low). There is a playlist by another user of all these videos, warning there is a lot of crazy here.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPMtVjg636E&list=PL641BF52EF9FA5963

Dungeon & Dragons & Devils

Going back to 1980 to 1985, the most popular version of the Dungeons & Dragons game was the 1st Edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules.  While all the above insanity is going on D&D is about to take a hit.  That hit comes in the form of James Dallas Egbert III and private investigator William Dear. James was a smart but depressed kid who had gone missing from his Michigan State University dorm room in 1979. He had played D&D and listened to some Metal music, but had suicidal thoughts. Mostly around him coming to terms with his own homosexuality (the 1980s were shit for many kids). He went down into the steam tunnels under the University (where it was rumored that people would play D&D) and had planned on killing himself with some quaaludes. He was not successful and went to hide out with some friends, and then he traveled around.

Enter William Dear. Egbert's mother hired Dear to locate him after what she perceived as the authorities' inaction. Dear went to Egbert's dorm, saw his D&D books, and came up with this notion of a cult conspiracy whole-cloth. This was substantiated in his mind when reports came out that he had been spotted at the Gen Con game fair in nearby Wisconsin. 

Egbert was a troubled kid. I don't want to make light of that. He did finally kill himself and it is sad. He needed therapy, and at that time, he would not have gotten it, and he certainly didn't get the support. 

No. This sad tale was made worse by the utter incompetence and attention seeking of Dear. He recounted his investigation in the book The Dungeon Master.  You can read more about it in this article in two parts by Shaun Hately, The Disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III, Part I and Part II.  The events would be fictionalized in Rona Jaffe's novel Mazes and Monsters, and the movie of the same name starring a very young Tom Hanks. Every gamer I know hated it, and every mother in 1982 had to ask me about it.

Then 60 Minutes happened.

D&D's 60-Minutes of Fame

D&D's popularity made the target of some sketchy reporting back in the day. Watching some of the videos from back then are always entertaining; at least now they are with the distance of time. 

• Bothered about Dungeons & Dragons in 1985, CBC
• How DUNGEONS & DRAGONS cast its spell 1983, BBC
• The great 1980s Dungeons & Dragons panic 2014, BBC News
• Dungeons & Dragons: Satanic Panic Retro Report 2016, New York Times

CBS, the station that not only aired the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon on Saturday mornings and the rather terrible Mazes and Monsters made for TV movie also was, more famously, the home of the weekly TV news magazine 60 Minutes. Ed Bradley presented what was supposed to be a balanced view on the game with interviews by D&D creator Gary Gygax and someone who we (the gamers that is) had not heard of, but would soon know all too well, Patricia Pulling of B.A.D.D. or "Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons." She would team up with former Dr. (he lost his license) and convicted sex criminal Thomas Radecki to try and discredit the game. 

Here is the clip below. If it looks like a bad VHS copy...well it is.

Reports from many credible sources and even Gygax himself (in the pages of Dragon magazine) was livid and called the whole thing a "Witch hunt." However, one thing is certain. After the 60 Minutes clip aired there was a rash of D&D book burnings. If there is ever a side that is burning books your best place is to be on the side they are not on. Ben Riggs, in his Slaying the Dragon, comments on how anytime the staff at TSR saw a book burning advertised, they would increase the number of books going to that town's retailers because they knew they would sell out. 

Pulling, Radecki, and BADD would be around to bother D&D players for a while. Pulling had started B.A.D.D. due to the suicide of her son Irving. I get she had pain and grief and a need to lash out. But her target was all wrong. Long story short, while Pulling, Radecki, and Dear would all get pulled into high-profile cases, which all seemed to involve the same secret cabal of D&D Playing Cultists (weird, I never got a call from them for the meetings), eventually, they were shown to be the frauds they were.

One of the biggest blows to Pulling and B.A.D.D. was from game designer Michael A. Stackpole who piece by piece dismantled Pulling and all her arguments in his Game Hysteria and the Truth. I would read this later when he re-published it as The Pulling Report.

You could not believe the elation I felt when I had discovered that on the internet. Everything I had heard for YEARS from "concerned people" and all the shit I got from ignorant fucks. Stackpole destroyed them all. Every single argument. I am still friends with Michael today.

Eventually, they would fall into disrepute.

The FBI would also release a report that essentially said that there is no evidence of any sort of systemic Satanic ritual abuse in the United States. The New York Times followed up with an article saying something similar.

Too late for some who were destroyed by this bullshit.

What happened to D&D?

Soon after the 60 Minutes piece, Gary was out of TSR for unrelated reasons. The specter of the Satanic Panic still held over them, though. When AD&D 2nd Edition was released, demons, devils, and overt signs of evil had all been removed in an enforced morality. 

And like the pendulum that swang to make things more conservative, it swang back the other way. I can recall a LOT of books, both in stores and online, in the early days of the Internet, that were like, "Oh, you think D&D is evil? I give you fucking evil!" I am not blameless in that, either. 

My Life with the Satanic Cult

Now, I am not a Satanist. I am an atheist. But growing up in a small mid-Western town, the average person on the street doesn't know, or even care to know, the difference. Add in my D&D playing in the 1980s? Yeah. 

There was this time, I think around 1985-1986 or so, that "someone" had found a "satanic altar" in the cornfield just south of my High School. The panic that shot through the school was amazing to watch. I was equally fascinated and horrified. Fascinated by how much it affected everyone and horrified by how quickly it ripped through the school and what it did. The next day, people were wearing their "satan busters" armbands. These were homemade armbands with an inverted cross in a red "busters" circle with a slash through it. 

The "Satan Busters." Yes, this is what they wore.

The assistant principal, who was always a pretty good guy, came to me and some of my other gamer friends and basically said until this stupid shit blows over, we should keep our D&D books at home. I chaffed under the notion that something *I* wanted to read had to be dictated by a mob of scared idiots. It pissed me off, but the guy had a point. Plus, he was a 6'2" guy who would regularly bench press 350+ lbs, and I was an asthmatic 15-16-year-old who weighed 125 soaking wet. I wasn't going to argue. Plus, over the next few days, shit got really weird.  I think my love of psychology was certainly strengthened then. As was my love for witches. I felt I understood them a little better after that. Not that anyone was trying to burn me (far from it), but they were trying to burn the things they feared. There were at least two or three book burnings in my town by people on the conservative religious side. Which was, in truth, the vast majority of the town.

As the panic spread, the stories got crazier and crazier. One involved one of the few openly gay kids in my glass, which sucks, really, but sadly all too predictable. Rumors that "they" were going to sacrifice a cheerleader. I remember seeing girls crying. And more. People were going to have prayer vigils to keep the cultists back, and some were going to bring weapons (mostly knives).  

It all began to sound like a pretty cool D&D adventure. The characters would have been the ones fighting evil. But it also had about as much to do with reality as a D&D game.

It blew over, of course, and a few days later, the whole thing looked rather silly. I never really knew if someone had found something and thought it was an altar or if it was all made up whole cloth. Hard to say. I never really got over how insane everyone was. 

I have to admit my own (at the time) anti-theism influenced my early D&D games. So, there were lots of undead, demons, and (you guessed it) witches. An immature reaction? Yeah, of course! But I was a teen at the time, so by definition, I was immature.

Present Day

I would love to say that this happened in the past, and then we woke up. But that is never the case, is it? Yeah, Dungeons & Dragons has largely been fine for the last few years and is gaining incredible support from high-profile players like Stephen Colbert, Vin Diesel, Joe Manganiello (who I just missed at Gary Con), Deborah Ann Woll, Anderson Cooper, and the entire cast of Critical Role. 

D&D is largely safe these days, but the Satanic Panic still rears its ugly head. Pizzagate is just one recent and really stupid example.  Another making the rounds is the "fact" that Taylor Swift is the daughter of (or a clone of) Zeena Schreck nee Lavey. Even better, she is the daughter of Zeena and Zeena's own father, Anton Lavey, the founder of the Church of Satan. So Anton is her father AND grandfather.  

Taylor Swift & Zeena Lavey. Not related. Or clones.

Seriously. I wouldn't put this into a game because my players would never believe it. 

So, put on some Ozzy or Iron Maiden, grab some dice, and let's play some D&D! It's 2024, all of those critics have been shown to be frauds, and none of the rumors about D&D from 40+ years ago ever came close to coming true.

Remember, "If Dungeons and Dragons is Satan's game, then Satan is a giant nerd."

Tomorrow is T Day, and I am going with the company that started it all, TSR.