DMSGuild Witch Project: The Witch from Greg Baxter

Today I want to focus on a Witch class proper.  I grabbed this one a bit ago and it has been languishing on my harddrive ever since.

Again, here are my rules for these reviews of this series. 

A lot of pdfs on DMSGuild are named "The Witch" and I guess I am not really any better on DriveThruRPG, so to distinguish them I am going to include the author's name in the titles.

The Witch from Greg Baxter

This is an eleven-page PDF (8 pages of content, 1 cover, 1 title, 1 legal) that sells for $1.33 on DMSGuild (PWYW, suggested). So just a little over that 10 cents per page rule of thumb.

This product covers an entire witch base class.

These witches are very tied in with Hags and have the first witches as human women that have broken free from their transformation into hags. 

The main ability of these witches is Intelligence. 

The subclasses for this witch are Haglore Scholar, Athame Witch, and Rune Witch.  They have a lot of flavor, to be honest, and would be fun to try out.

No new spells, but the spell lists are rather extensive covering the Player's Handbook and many of the other sourcebooks.

The art is minimal, but at least there are credits to the artists. 

All in all there are some fun options here and I'd give them a try

October Horror Movie Challenge: Byleth: The Demon of Incest (1972)

This is another one from last year.  The Blu-Ray was not available till November, so here we are. This is another one of those notorious movies of the 70s Euro-sleaze horror. One I had been looking for a while mostly because I never thought I'd find it.

Byleth: The Demon of Incest is a little Italian gem that features murders, gratuitous nudity and enough brother/sister incest for an episode of Game of Thrones.

Let's get right to the point. It's not good. It is slow and the lead Mark Damon as Duke Lionello is not great.

The movie revolves around Duke Lionello, his sister Barbara and Barbara's new husband Giordano.  This is a problem of course since Lionello and Barbara have been having an incestuous affair.   An affair that Lionello is loathed to give up.

The movie does make use of the demon Beleth, which is expected.  At one point Barbara asks her brother, Lionello, if he still has his white horse.  They later talk about "Byleth" on his white horse.

Of course, you are never sure if Lionello is possessed by Byleth or just crazy.  I like to think possessed because that is what I do here.

The Severin Blu-Ray version is really good.  There are some color issues from the original negative, but otherwise, it looks great.  Too bad the movie could not live up to the hype.

Watched: 5
New: 5

NIGHT SHIFT Content

Come back tomorrow night for my ideas on this one!

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Sonata (2018)

This was a fun one.  It reminds me a bit of "The Mephisto Waltz" and a little bit of the "Music of Erich Zahn", only in reverse.

Rose Fisher (Freya Tingley) is a world-class violinist and she learns that her estranged father, and brilliant strange composer,  Richard Marlowe (Rutger Hauer) is dead.
She inherits his home and all his belongings including a very strange violin sonata.  Her agent Simon Abkarian (Charles Vernais) investigates and learns that the sonata was part of a work linking it to a cult of Satan worshipers in France and it appears to have been written just for Rose.

The movie is more of a thriller, but there is the summoning of the antichrist and the ghosts of the children sacrificed by Marlow in the process of composing his masterpiece sonata.

The movie was rather good.  Frey Tingley is great as Rose and I wanted more Rutger Hauer.

The end was a nice little twist so I enjoyed that.

I am a sucker for any story that mixes music with magic.


Watched: 4
New: 4

NIGHT SHIFT Content

Frankly, I would lift this plot wholesale to use as a NIGHT SHIFT adventure. Investigate the scary mansion of a composer that commits suicide. Horrible tapes found in the basement. All sorts of great things here.  Though stopping it would require an active antagonist. 

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Witch Who Came from the Sea (1976)

Another "leftover" from a previous challenge.

This might be the most "1976" movie I have seen in a long time.  Lots of drugs, naked hot tubbing, and a busted up Volkswagen Karmann Ghia.

The main character, our "Witch", Molly is fairly insane.  She tries to repress the abuse she suffered at the hands of her father while lusting after all these different men.
She also seems to be killing men but not remembering it.
 Molly is not just deranged, she is also very simple like she is still stuck somehow back at being a child.

Molly keeps spiraling deeper into madness and the police are quickly on to her.

In some of her flashbacks, it's hard to tell what was real and what is only her delusional state.  So she either killed a few men or a lot of them.

What I don't get is how in the hell did she get up and kill people with all those drugs and alcohol in her system.

IMDB said this movie had witchcraft in it, but not really.
There is horror here, but not of the conventional sort.

Watched: 3
New: 3

NIGHT SHIFT content

Not every supernatural occurrence is a bad one as I have tried to show in Ordinary World. Some times the supernatural occurrence is not even really supernatural.  In the case of this movie, there is a supposed "witch" but really it is just a mentally disturbed woman that kills men.  A ruse like this only works once to be honest so use it sparingly.  Too much and you turn your "Supernatural Horror" into "Scooby-Doo."

Friday Night Videos: The Hex Girls

It's Friday! It's October! Let's start some Friday Night Videos!

Since I am also doing my October Horror Movie Marathon posts I am writing these posts early to autopost.

So let's get started.

Tonight I have the music of my favorite all-girl, eco-goth band of witches, the Hex Girls!  Not just the songs from their Scooby-Doo episodes but some clever coplayers and cover bands.

And all the Hex Girls songs in one place.

Happy Halloween!

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Horrible Sexy Vampire (1970, 1971)

Well.  One of the words in the title is a lie, but one is spot on.

Also known as "El Vampiro De La Autopista" this is a movie that never really knows what it wants to do.  Both titles tell us this is a Vampire film, but it is often treated (right up to the end in fact) as a mundane murder mystery.   They make a big deal of the murders happening every 28 years, but the ending does nothing to explain that.

Not to spoil it, but the movie is kind of dull, the police detective pins the murders on an escaped mental patient.  One we don't even hear about till the very end.  This is despite the fact that the murders have an obvious supernatural element to them.  How obvious?  Well, the killer is invisible.

Now under other circumstances, this might be interesting, but here it is just cheesy.

Sadly some interesting ideas lost in this Spanish "Hammer-envy" movie.


Watched: 2
New: 2

Night Shift Content

Well.  The best thing to do with this one really is to have a serial killer in your games. Everyone thinks it is a vampire, but it really just a human psychopath.  This works well in Ordinary World if all the characters are supernatural and they are worried that one of their own is going to get them exposed.

Kickstart Your Weekend: Bitchin Chimera and the Jaquays' Archive

Quite the collection today!

Lost Tomb of the Bitchin' Chimera - Dead Milkmen RPG Module

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/justinsirois/lost-tomb-of-the-bitchin-chimera-dead-milkmen-rpg-module?ref=theotherside

The Dead Milkmen are releasing a D&D adventure about a "Bitchin Chimera." Do I really need to tell you more than that? No idea if Tony Orlando and Dawn, Beelze-bubba, Mojo Nixon, or a Punk Rock Girl will appear. 

Judges Guild Deluxe: Dark Tower, Caverns of Thracia, & More

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1409961192/judges-guild-deluxe-dark-tower-caverns-of-thracia-and-more?ref=theotherside

Ok, first and foremost this Kickstarter will not benefit any of the current racist owners of the Judges Guild.  This collects some of the best material of the early days of JG and all written by Jennell Jaquays. Some very, very solid stuff here, and Goodman Games puts out a solid product.

and finally one more look at this one now that it has made it's funding goal.

Hellbringers: The Sacred Heart

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hellbringers/hellbringers-the-sacred-heart?ref=theotherside

All are ending soon!