I will be honest I have never given it much of a thought.
I did think it was cool that Vin Disel plays, and not only plays but knows things about the Silmarillion that only a true fan would know.
But I will be honest and say that I have recently become a fan of Felicia Day. She seems to have been the model for the word "adorkable". Plus I loved her on Supernatural. No, I have not seen Season 10 yet.
I also have not seen "The Guild" yet either. But I do at least know about it.
I have mentioned earlier this summer about my love for Spider-Gwen and more times than I care to think about about my love for Batgirl.
Well here they are together. Personally I would like to think that super-smart Barbara and super-smart Gwen Stacy would be BFFs, if in a sort of rival-ly way. So here they are together.
I have always had this reoccurring nightmare of haunted house.
I love horror of course but this dream was quite the horror story.
Over the years I come to call it my "Very Haunted House".
Of course I had to turn it into adventure. So I am running it for the first time tomorrow!
Here are some musical inspiration for the adventure. No. I am not going to play Ghostbusters or Thriller.
I have mentioned many times about how much I enjoy the music of Eric Burdon and the Animals. "House of the Rising Sun" is top of my list of not just Animals songs, but all songs. I have featured it many times in many adventures.
Back in High School and College Genesis was a big deal. Not the Peter Gabriel version, but the later pop friendly Phil Collins version. "Home By the Sea" is about a house full of ghosts. It maid it's way into "Ghosts of Albion: Blight" and now in my new adventure too.
Growing up in the midwest in the 80s it was not possible to turn on the radio and not hear the Eagles. "Hotel California" is not their best song. It's not even a great song. But it is ubiquitous and it is evocative of Hell. Thus it always stuck with me.
Too Much Joy was the ultimate College band when I was in Grad School. They are fun, they sing about things that college guys like, namely drinking, girls, drugs and girls. "Sort of Haunted House" is not a song about a real haunted house. It's about a breakup, but when I was having this nightmare this was the song that was always on. BTW I am sure the nightmare was stress related due to defending my thesis, breaking up with my crazy ex girl friend, moving up with my new girlfriend. So in a way it fits. Plus like my haunted house this one has a "ghost in every room". One of many great hits of the critically ignored Munity.
I don't have a lot to say about Rockwell. His "Somebody's Watching Me" makes for a crazy paranoid one hit wonder. Notable because Michael Jackson sang backup on the track. But the video is properly creepy and that's a plus.
"Shadows of the Night" by Pat Benatar from her wildly popular Get Nervous album is not about ghosts. But don't tell that to my 12 year old self listening to it while rereading the Cook/Marsh Expert book. Shadows of the night were real shadows, as in the monster that could be turned in AD&D but not in D&D. For years I have always wanted to use this song. So this adventure reintroduces a similar monster, the Memento Mori.
Another song that featured prominently in Ghosts of Albion: Blight is the ethereal voice of Loreena McKennitt. "The Old Ways" features a woman and her evening spent with a ghost, or maybe it was an old druid. Either way a gulf of time separates them. From the haunting The Visit.
I mentioned previously Dark Albion and Fantastic Heroes & Witchery by their very natures are compatible with a wide variety of games and game supplements. So doing a "Plays Well With Others" sort of post seems a bit redundant. But that doesn't mean I can't try something a little more different.
One thing I always wanted to do was run a dark age WitchCraft RPG game. Set in the 1600s it would deal with rival factions of the Gifted fighting each other while Europe descends into the Burning Times. It struck me how close that idea was some things I was also planning in my War of the Witch Queens adventures.
Reading over Dark Albion I kept thinking that while the Rose War is cool and all but later periods are much more fun. Setting it in the later later ages, say the Elizabethan or even during the time of King James I, gives another backdrop. During Elizabeth England was very stable, but during James that is gone.
Take some of the ideas from Dark Albion but advance them to 1580 or so during the reign of King James. This is also the height of the witch craze in Europe. This allows me to use William Shakespeare and John Dee. I might make Dee an Occultist. Seems right. Plus I can take the occultist class and make it into a passable Occult Poet.
