Your Character Was There. You Weren’t. But That's OK.

I am participating in Prismatic Wasteland's "Blogwagon" on Player Advice. 

I had some ideas after reading the other responses so far (and you should read them too; linked below), but I scrapped that post in favor of this one based on this last weekend's NIGHT SHIFT game.

The discussion came up about computers. It went a little like this (paraphrasing to get to the point).

Andy (character): "I send Larina the file."
Me (GM): "Ok. How?"
Andy (laughing): "Oh shit, how did you do it in the 80s?"
Me: "On disk. Assuming you have one of those."
Andy: "Well. Andy's family is rich. He certainly has one."
Me: "Yes, we can say that Andy has a floppy drive on his computer."
Andy: "Great. I put the file I found on my disk, and I drive over to Larina's house."
Me: "No problem. You put it on your 5¼ disk. Get into your Camaro (I mean "your Bitchin Camaro!") and drive over. Larina answers the door. Looks at your disk and asks you 'what the hell am I supposed to do with that?' You have a state of the art IBM-PC 5170-339*. Larina has the much cheaper Mac 512Ke her dad could afford because he is a teacher."

This turned into a discussion about how computers weren't compatible with each other in 1986, the Internet wasn't even a sparkle in Al Gore's eye, and dial-up was 1200 baud on a good day. Then everyone wanted to figure out what their computers were back then. With me showing off my vintage computer collection.

Needless to say...there is a bit of a gap between the players (mid-20-somethings living in the Chicago suburbs) and the characters (high school kids in the mid 1980s in downstate Illinois).

Your Character Was There. You Weren’t. (But That's OK.)

The guy playing Anderson Thompson in my 1980s Jackson game has very little in common with his character. Anderson is a rich African American kid who plays on the football team, is in the marching band, and whose girlfriend, Rowan, is the town's mystical protector. The player is...not. He’s a guy in his mid-twenties playing someone whose circumstances are very different from his own, in a time he never experienced. Andy would have been 30 when his player was born.

But they both love Asia’s "Heat of the Moment."

So that was where I started.

There is a lot the player doesn’t know about Anderson’s world. There is also something he understands immediately: this song makes him feel something. That gives us somewhere to begin.

Start With a Song

So in the theme of this Blogwagon, I want to address the players out there directly. 

Hello Player.

Playing someone different from yourself can sound like an assignment. Research the period. Understand the social context. Learn what people wore, what things cost, and which expressions haven’t been invented yet. Then, somehow, become a person. Oh, and figure out the tech, the trends, and if you pull out a hundred bucks for lunch, are you going to get looked at?

I am suggesting starting smaller.

Find something you and your character can both care about. For Andy and his player, that's a song. Once you have that connection, ask questions.

Where does Anderson listen to it? In his car (the "Bitchin' Camaro")? With friends? Alone? Does he turn it up when it comes on, or does he pretend he’s tired of it because someone else thinks it’s overplayed? Has he attached it to a particular person?

Andy, as it turns out, loves to play it on his trumpet.

We haven’t answered all those questions. They’re possibilities. Each answer could tell us something about Anderson that "rich kid" or "football player" doesn’t.

Two people can love the same song for different reasons. Discovering Anderson’s reason is part of playing him.

Ask What Your Character Would Know

Your character has lived in this world for years. You’ve been hearing about it for a few sessions.

That gap is going to show up.

You won’t always know what counts as expensive (the dropping $100 for lunch in 1986), which places welcome you (well, its Andy, so everywhere), how to get hold of someone, or whether a particular situation should make you nervous. Your character may know all of those things without thinking about them.

Ask.

• "Would this seem strange to Andy?"
• "Would someone like him have been here before?"
• "What am I taking for granted that he wouldn’t?"
• "What does Andy take for granted that I don't?"

Those are useful contributions to play. They help establish the situation before you make a decision. You can describe your intention, too: "I want to find somewhere we can talk privately. What would Anderson think of?"

You don’t need to supply every piece of local knowledge yourself to make a choice that belongs to your character.  Andy's player doesn't need to know how a payphone works (he didn't) just that a payphone was needed.

Let the Differences Matter

Finding common ground gets you started. Eventually, you need to follow the character somewhere you wouldn’t go yourself.

Anderson's money, race, and experience on a football team could all affect how he sees a situation. None of them supplies an automatic answer. Does Andy experience racism? Yes, it is still 1985 Midwest small town. Is it the same as Kyra's experiences? No. Andy's family owns most of the downtown Square and they have a ton of money. Kyra is a lower-middle-class preacher's kid.

Having money might make him generous, careless about costs, protective of his possessions, or embarrassed when his friends have less. We need to discover which, and under what circumstances.

His experience on a team might shape how he responds to pressure or obligation. But "played football" doesn’t tell us whether he loved the camaraderie, hated the expectations, or mostly enjoyed being good at something.

Ask a specific question, then let the answer affect a decision.

Who does Andy call when he needs help? What does he assume his family can fix? Whose disappointment would actually hurt him?

How does he interact with Valentino, his best friend; Rowan, his girlfriend; or Stephanie, the girl from the rival family in town?

Those answers give you something to play with.

Take His Present Seriously

It’s easy to treat a past decade as a collection of things we recognize: songs, clothes, cars, movies. Or, as I have said, a foreign country.

But your character has to live there. They wake up every day, and at least till December 31st it is still 1986.

He doesn't know what will become nostalgic. He has immediate concerns, incomplete information, and expectations about the future that might turn out to be completely wrong. 

Give him something he wants next week. Give him someone he wants to impress. Let something that looks trivial from our side of history matter to him. What is he getting his dad for his birthday? What is he getting Rowan? What are he and Val going to do after practice? 

That helps the period become a place where things are happening.

Bring Something Small

Here’s my player advice: bring one detail, ask one question, and let the answer change what you do.

You can start with a song you love. Ask what place it has in your character's life. Follow whatever that reveals. When did Andy first hear Asia? 8th grade art class. Ok great!  The player didn't do that, but he was in 8th grade; he remembers hearing this song for the first time. Put those two together.

You won’t understand everything about someone whose life is different from yours. You can stay curious, accept correction, and keep making more specific choices.

Anderson’s player knows what it feels like to want to turn that song up. So does Andy.

I can work with that.

What happened with the song?

Andy's player decided that was the song that let him know when he was in love with Rowan. Back when he was still a spoiled rich kid, and she was just the awkward "horse girl." That's not who they are now, but it was as good a place to start. 

*Andy has the IBM AT 5170-339, which would have cost his dad about $6,000 in 1986 dollars. Larina's dad is just a college professor at MacAlister, so her Macintosh 512k E retailed at about $2000, he got it for a little over $1600.00. Still a chunk of change in 1986.

After spending a few minutes trying to figure out 5.25" vs 3.5" disks, Andy decided to just tell Larina what was on the file.

Links

• Prismatic Wastedland's Blogwagon
• B/X Blackrazor: Being a Good Player
• Luck Roll: Zoning Out
• 52 Monsters: Elementary School Soccer, and How It Helps Us Be Better Players
• Sparse Glades, Saphire Sky: Why should I care?

Working the NIGHT SHIFT: Supernatural, The Night the Horror Came Home

 November 2, 1983 was the date Mary Winchester was killed in a fire in her home caused by a demon. Thus, the events of the series Supernatural were set into motion. The series ran on The WB and then The CW for 15 seasons and 327 episodes. It followed the exploits of "hunters" Sam and Dean Winchester and their circle of family and friends as they traveled the highways of the United States hunting monsters. Or as the series put it, "Saving people, hunting things, the family business."

The formula in the beginning was very simple. Sam and Dean would drive around in their black 1967 Chevrolet Impala (which became a character in it's own right), following leads on strange deaths or disappearances, which usually led to some sort of monster, ghost, or other urban legend coming to life (or unlife), killing said creature and moving on to the next one, all while listening to a great 80s soundtrack ("Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole"). 

In other words, nearly every Chill game I ever played in.

What made the show successful, and why it managed to run for as many seasons as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed combined, had a great deal to do with the dedication of an extremely loyal, predominantly female fanbase. This might seem surprising at first glance. It was a show about two brothers driving around America in a late-1960s muscle car, listening to classic rock, drinking beer, and killing monsters. On the surface, it looked like something designed specifically for a male audience. But the show had something else going on, something that its fans recognized almost immediately.

At its heart, Supernatural was about family. 

More specifically, it was about two brothers who loved each other so much that they would literally go to Hell and back for each other. And they did. Repeatedly. The monsters were fun, the car was cool, and the music was great, but the emotional relationships were what kept people coming back. The Winchesters were not simply action heroes. They were damaged people trying to do the right thing in a world that seemed determined to punish them for it.

And then there was their found family of Bobby, Castiel, Charlie, and later on Jack. Even evil characters like Crowley and Rowena were part of the family. 

Fans responded in ways that went well beyond simply watching television. Supernatural developed an enormous online community, with fan fiction, fan art, conventions, and discussions about nearly every aspect of the show. The cast embraced this community, and the community embraced them right back. The phrase "SPNFamily" became more than a clever marketing bit. Fans organized charitable activities, supported mental health initiatives, and built relationships with fans worldwide. Jared Padalecki's "Always Keep Fighting" campaign and Misha Collins' Random Acts charity are especially good examples of this relationship between the performers and their audience. 

Supernatural took their fans seriously and never forgot they had a job because of them.

The show itself understood all this. Episodes like "The Monster at the End of This Book," "The French Mistake," and the 200th episode, "Fan Fiction," showed that the writers understood the fandom and were happy to have fun with it. I can't think of many other shows that made their own fans part of the mythology quite like Supernatural did.

Of course, fifteen seasons also meant that the show changed quite a bit. What started out as two brothers hunting urban legends eventually became a sprawling mythology involving angels, demons, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and even God himself. I will admit that I often preferred the earlier monster-of-the-week episodes. There was something appealing about the idea that Sam and Dean could pull into some little town, discover something terrible was happening, research the local legends, and put a stop to it. Sometimes the simplest stories were the best ones. 

But the show could also be genuinely frightening, surprisingly funny, and occasionally heartbreaking (my youngest cried when Charlie was killed). It understood that horror worked best when the characters had something to lose. Even as the mythology grew increasingly complex, the emotional center remained Sam and Dean. As long as those two were in the Impala, there was still a story worth telling.

Supernatural and NIGHT SHIFT

It shouldn't surprise anyone that Supernatural influenced NIGHT SHIFT: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars in as much as the same sorts of stories and experiences influenced both NIGHT SHIFT and Supernatural. I remember EXACTLY where I was when I first heard about Bloody Mary, or Lilith, or Crossroads, or when I first heard "Carry on Wayward Son."

The idea of ordinary people who encounter the supernatural, survive, and then dedicate themselves to fighting it is fundamental to both. 

The early seasons of Supernatural could practically serve as a model for a NIGHT SHIFT campaign. The characters investigate strange occurrences, interview witnesses, research forgotten folklore, identify what they are dealing with, and figure out how to stop it. Sometimes that means a fight. Other times it means performing a ritual, finding the right weapon, or simply understanding what is really happening. Knowledge and preparation matter as much as being able to hit something.

The show also offered a particularly good example of what we wanted the Veteran character class to represent. Sam and Dean were not traditional fantasy fighters. They knew how to fight, certainly, but they also knew how to research, investigate, improvise, and survive. Their greatest advantage was their experience. They had seen things that most people would never believe, and they had learned how to deal with them.

There is a more personal connection here, too. When we were playtesting NIGHT SHIFT, the two Veteran characters were, for all practical purposes, Sam and Dean Winchester. My two kids played them, and they'd grown up watching Supernatural with us as a family. It was, along with Doctor Who, one of the shows we all watched together. Our enjoyment of the television show and the game influenced each other in completely natural ways. We all understood the characters, the sorts of stories they belonged in, and what they should be able to do. When everyone made their own characters for better testing, they already knew what they wanted.

And that, I think, is one of the more important lessons Supernatural reinforced for me as a game designer. You don't always need an elaborate explanation for why characters are working together. Sometimes they are family. Sometimes they share an experience no one else could possibly understand. Sometimes they are simply the only people who know what is really going on.

I also appreciated the way the show treated folklore and urban legends as material for new stories. Ghosts, vampires, werewolves, demons, witches, and all manner of strange creatures appeared throughout the series. Some were familiar, others much less so. The writers were willing to reinterpret old legends to fit the show's mythology. That is something I have been doing in my own games for decades.

One thing I wanted in NIGHT SHIFT was a game where stories like these felt natural. You could have an adventure involving a haunted house one week, a demonic possession the next, and an ancient conspiracy after that. You could play experienced hunters like Sam and Dean, or people encountering the supernatural for the first time. The game didn't need to be tied to one particular monster or one particular kind of horror.

The other lesson was that characters needed to be more than collections of abilities. Sam and Dean were competent hunters, but their relationships, flaws, fears, and loyalties were what made them memorable. The best role-playing characters work the same way. The monsters give them something to fight. Their relationships give them something worth fighting for.

Supernatural and My Games

Supernatural also has a natural connection to the sorts of stories I have been developing for Jackson, Illinois. The earliest episodes, especially, have that same small-town American horror atmosphere that I enjoy so much. Strange deaths, forgotten histories, local legends, and ordinary people who don't realize that something terrible is living right next door. Those are all things that would fit perfectly into a Tales of Jackson adventure.

In fact, the Winchesters would have no trouble finding work in Jackson. With its haunted places, strange creatures, thin boundaries between worlds, and more than a few people hiding supernatural secrets, the town would probably keep them busy for quite some time. Though I suspect some of my witches might have a few things to say about two hunters arriving in town and deciding that everything supernatural needed to be killed. Yeah, but lets be honest here. Dean and Stephanie would be terrible for each other in the best possible way, and Sam should wear a T-shirt saying "Larina bait."

That is another difference worth considering. In Supernatural, the protagonists are hunters, and much of the early mythology centers on identifying and eliminating threats. In NIGHT SHIFT, I wanted the supernatural to be more complicated than that. Not every monster is evil, not every witch is dangerous, and not every human being is innocent. Sometimes the real challenge is deciding what should be done rather than simply figuring out how to kill something.

Still, there is something wonderfully appealing about that black Impala rolling into town, two brothers stepping out, and the knowledge that whatever evil is lurking nearby is about to have a very bad day.

Horror Comes Home

Another important connection between Supernatural, NIGHT SHIFT, and my own Tales of Jackson is something I have been exploring for years, especially during my October Horror Movie Challenge. I call it "Horror Comes Home." The idea is simple enough. Horror becomes more immediate, more personal, and often more frightening when it happens somewhere familiar. The haunted house isn't an ancient castle in Transylvania. It is the old house down the street. The monster isn't lurking in some distant wilderness. It is hiding in the woods outside of town. The demon isn't waiting in Hell. It is living next door.

Supernatural understood this from the beginning. Sam and Dean spent much of their time traveling through an America that looked familiar to anyone who had ever taken a road trip through the Midwest. Small towns, roadside diners, cheap motels, empty highways, and forgotten places were all potential settings for a horror story. The show drew on American folklore and urban legends, turning familiar places into something strange and dangerous. In many ways, it was doing on television what I had been doing at the gaming table for years.

That same idea is central to Jackson, Illinois. My fictional town is filled with familiar places, schools, hospitals, libraries, shopping malls, and neighborhoods that could exist in almost any Midwestern community in 1986. What makes Jackson different is the supernatural world hiding just out of sight. The horror works because the town itself feels real. The people who live there have ordinary lives, ordinary problems, and ordinary relationships. Then something impossible happens, and those familiar places become frightening.

This theme also runs through many of the movies I watch for my October Horror Movie Challenge. I am particularly drawn to horror films that bring the supernatural into everyday life, where ordinary people discover the world they thought they knew isn't nearly as safe or predictable as they believed. Supernatural took that basic premise and turned it into fifteen seasons of television. It demonstrated that you don't need to travel to another country, continent, or world to find horror. Sometimes you only need to look a little more closely at your own.

Carry On

Fifteen seasons is an extraordinary achievement for any television series, especially one that began as a relatively modest horror show about two brothers chasing urban legends. Supernatural endured because it made its audience care about the people in the story as much as the monsters they fought. Its fans took that connection and built something lasting out of it.

For me, the show will always mean something more. We watched it together as a family. Every episode, every season. My wife, my kids, and me, and it eventually found its way into the games we played together. When I think about Supernatural and its influence on NIGHT SHIFT, that is what stands out the most. 

Saving people. Hunting things. The family business. We didn't have an Impala, but we had dice.

Carry on, my wayward sons.

Halloween Hangover 2026

 This Halloween was a blur. On top of my aggressive posting schedule, I was working a lot, too.

So let's see what I accomplished this past month.

October Horror Movie Marathon

My theme this month was "Small town horror," focusing on movies between 1985 and 1986. I expanded it to 1983 to 1987 to cover my high school years, and again to cover 1980 to 1989. The theme I discovered was "Horror Comes Home." I dealt with movies where the horror was largely local. You no longer went to some strange land to see horror; it came home to you, or, more often, it was already there waiting for you.

The main takeaway for me is that small towns make good horror settings because they feel familiar and safe, yet that same familiarity carries a history of secrets and old grudges, stories everyone knows but few take seriously. 

Jackson, Sunny Valley, and Carbon Vale for NIGHT SHIFT are set in just such territory. The supernatural is at its most effective when it is paired with the everyday, where one can have a Friday night football game and school on Monday while something impossible is going on three streets over.

I was also reminded of how willing 1980s horror was to be weird. These movies mixed horror with comedy, science fiction, heavy metal, teen drama, fantasy, and whatever else they could get away with. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it absolutely did not. But even the failures could be fun. That willingness to experiment is part of what made this month enjoyable, and apparently, forty years later, I am still not done exploring it.

I am torn on my next theme. I kinda want to do a Chicago-based one, but also I want to do one where I just cover movies I have already seen and talk about here but have never given a proper October Horror Movie Marathon presence. 

ETA: I started building a list of all the horror movies I have seen that I have not reviewed here, and I am already at 50+, and I am barely out of the 1970s. 

Follow Timothy's board October Horror Movie Challenge on Pinterest.

Mirror Mondays

I wrapped up the Mirror Mondays series I started earlier this year. I am pretty pleased with the themes I explored, and the playing that took place to get to the place to explore them.

Now comes the harder part. Putting it all together into my two big projects.

Coven 13

Having put four issues of Coven 13 behind me, I would say what I like best is not any particular story or author or piece of occult lore. Rather, I like the magazine’s readiness to put all of that in one world. Witches and ghosts, werewolves and vampires, old gods, folk magic, demons, sorcerers, science fiction and Sword & Sorcery are allowed to rub shoulders here with no one making a fuss over which shelf they should be on. 

In a historical sense it puts Coven 13 in an interesting position. One has Weird Tales, Unknown Worlds, Robert E. Howard and the older pulp traditions Landis so plainly respected in its history. Before it lies the occult revival of the 70s, modern supernatural horror, and, a few years later, Dungeons & Dragons. I will not go so far as to say Coven 13 had an influence on D&D; there is no evidence for it. What these four issues make plain is that a good many of the ingredients we link to fantasy gaming were already being mixed in the same cultural stew.

Coven 13 may not have influenced D&D, but plenty suggests both were part of the same cultural zeitgeist. 

What matters more to me is that Landis returns time and again to the idea that the supernatural has a place in the modern world. The old magic did not vanish with the construction of highways, office buildings, universities and subdivisions. A ghost can take up residence in a suburban home. Your neighbor may be a witch. An old god is still under the ground. And the grimoire works even when the crossroads it refers to is now occupied by a gas station.

I suppose that is why so much of this was right away useful for Jackson and Sunny Valley. I have no desire for the supernatural to be walled off in another world. It should exist beside this one and from time to time intrude upon it. Let there be a mundane map, and one the witches know. Family stories ought to be true and folk remedies effective for reasons long forgotten. Monsters should have a history, not just Hit Dice.

Four issues is hardly a run, but they sufficed.

Coven 13 had a good idea of the supernatural world it wanted: strange and messy, modern and old, frightening and funny, and unwilling to stay in its assigned genre.

Yeah. I can use that.

When I get around to rounding up the rest of the Witchcraft & Sorcery issues, we shall see where that current leads.

• Coven 13, Issue #1
• Coven 13, Issue #2
• Coven 13, Issue #3
• Coven 13, Issue #4

Fantasy Fridays

Again this year I did "Urban Fantasy Fridays" and investigated how my Jackson kids look like in other games. I had such a blast with it, and learned a lot about the characters and the setting that I want to keep it going. I might expand it to "Universal" games like GURPS or BRP. Plus I have few more that would have fit if October had been 7-8 weeks.

So that's it for my October!

See you all here next year!

October Horror Movie Challenge: Prime Evil (1988)

Here we are at the end of it all. 

Prime Evil (1988)

Prime Evil is directed by Roberta Findlay and concerns an ancient sect of Satan-worshipping monks who have survived into modern-day New York through a bargain involving human sacrifice. There is an undercover nun, an upcoming sacrifice, a lot of talk about Satan, and enough low-budget occult weirdness to make sure nobody mistakes this for subtle horror.

The plot details don't hold my interest as much as the movie’s place in the decade. It is as near to pure late-1980s Satanic Panic horror as one can get. The Devil is no metaphor here, and the cultists are not some misunderstood lot of occultists; they are in fact worshipping Satan and putting into practice centuries-old traditions of sacrifice. And yet this ancient evil is at work in contemporary New York. In that respect, Prime Evil is one more instance of the theme I have been coming across all month: horror comes home. Sure, NYC is not a small town, but it is someone's hometown; in fact, 8.6 million someones.

That is probably my biggest takeaway from this year's October marathon. I set out to find some small-town horror from 1985 to 1986 and found something of a wider scope. Time and again the horror has come home, making its way into the houses, schools, malls, hospitals, and neighborhoods. At times it has been there for generations; at other times it was let in by accident. Or, as in Prime Evil, an age-old evil has just taken root in the modern world.

I also appreciate how completely sincere movies like this could be about their supernatural premises. There is no point in trying to offer a psychological reading of Satanism or make of the cult a complex social metaphor. The monks made a deal with the Devil, and that is the end of it.

Is Prime Evil any good? Not really. It is cheap and uneven and at times confusing without being as wild as you might expect from the premise. The pacing, the performances and the story have drawn their share of criticism in reviews both then and now. But it has a certain 1980s low-budget earnestness I have grown to like in the course of this marathon. Someone had a tale of immortal Satanic monks in New York and thought that was reason enough to put a film together.

And really, that is part of what I have enjoyed about revisiting this decade.

The 1980s were not afraid to be ridiculous.

They were not afraid to mix old folklore, religious horror, slashers, science fiction, teenage drama, heavy metal, and whatever else happened to be lying around.

Sometimes the results were classics, some were terrible, and some, many in fact, were pure 80s fun.

Either way, I had a lot of fun.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 47
First Time Views: 33

October Horror Movie Challenge: Witch Story (1989)

I am getting to the end of this, and I am running out of movies for my theme.

Witch Story (1989)

Witch Story, aka Streghe, is a 1989 Italian horror movie directed by Alessandro Capone, but most of it was shot in Florida. That combination actually fits the movie pretty well because the basic story feels much more European than American.  

A brother and sister have come into possession of an old farmhouse and with some friends in tow they find that the place is haunted by Helena, a woman put to the torch as a witch half a century ago. One will also find demons, possession, a priest with a past and no end of bloody supernatural retribution.

I like the premise. An inherited piece of family land with a buried history, a curse that has made its way to the present and some witchcraft is my kind of thing. The setup is nearly Gothic despite the location. But the film does not hold up in the middle; it drags, and the characters are not great, nor are the actors. Ian Bannen carries some of the weight as Father Matthew, the most familiar face in the cast.

The lead is listed as Amy Adams in the role of Susan. She is not the one you would see in Enchanted or Arrival, but a credit like that makes you double-check. None of the actors here went on to much more. This is not atypical of horror movies.

NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson Connections

As for my 1980s "Horror Comes Home" theme, this is right up my alley. There is no quest for a far-off castle here. The terror is in the house you have been left with, in an old family tale, and in what the locals did decades back. The past has been biding its time for someone to return.

It fits well with Sunny Valley and its older history, though there is nothing here I couldn't do in any of my three settings. I can always use the "50 years ago" idea from this movie, but 1939 is already a crowded year in Jackson!

It has a good premise and some entertaining supernatural mayhem. Only too much dead space in the center. I would have liked it better.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 46
First Time Views: 32

Urban Fantasy Fridays: NightLife (1990)

 NightLife is a game I have had on and off for a number of years. I only ever owned the core rules and the Magic book. I never got a chance to play it, but it is a game we talk about every so often in our Elf Lair Games meetings. The game is quintessentially early 90s. It's filled with blood, dark, and dirty streets, and where you get to play the monster. Vampire: The Masquerade may have done it better, but NightLife gave it its all a year earlier.

NightLife is set in New York. A strange New York that is sandwiched between the movie Warriors and the First World Trade Center bombing.  A city that is hot and perpetually at night. Something like Dark City meets Nightbreed.

NightLife

by Bradley K. McDevitt, L. Lee Cerny, Walter H. Mytczynskyj
1990, 1992 Stellar Games, 256 pages.

Much like Beyond the Supernatural, NightLife is wonderfully crunchy.  Character creation is a prime example. Roll 4d10 for the eight attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Fitness, Intellect, Will, Perception, Attractiveness, and Luck. Then there are another twenty d10s to put toward your skills. And there is a lot of them. It is very much an RPG of its time in that having a skill for something matters, and you will find them for everything from firearms and martial arts to pharmacology, manuscript illumination, seduction, and even skateboarding. Honestly, it already feels like the heart of this game is a cyberpunk game gone horror, splatterpunk. This will not be the last time I feel this while going over the rules.

The underlying system is simple enough. Your attributes and skills yield a percentage, and you roll under on percentile dice. A 20 in a given skill denotes you are competent at the everyday task without needing to make a roll; it is only when things get difficult, or you are under pressure, that the dice come out. Character generation can be a bit of a time sink, but once you are in the game, the central mechanic is not hard to grasp. 

The art is very early 1990s punk style. Cool for the time, but looks a bit dated by today's standards. To be fair, one of the creators, Bradley K. McDevitt, has his own stock-art service, and his stuff is great. I have used his art many, many times in my own work. So, to me, despite its age, the art is very much a "draft" of what I consider "urban horror art." Later on, the artists for Vampire: The Masquerade and WitchCraft RPG would help define this style in my mind. But credit where credit is due for starting here. 

The Kin

What sets this apart is that you do not go after the monsters. You are the monster. Like I mentioned above, it covers similar ground to Vampire: The Masquerade, but the tone here is less Anne Rice. 

The supernatural types refer to themselves as the Kin, leaving ordinary people with the rather condescending title of "the Herd." The book has seven varieties of Kin: Vampyres, Werewolves, Ghosts, Daemons, Wyghts, Inuits, and Animates. They all have their Edges, or powers, and the traditional Flaws of being a monster. The Magic sourcebook also adds Witches to the mix.

Vampyres are of the old school. Give them sunlight, garlic, a wooden stake, running water, or holy objects, and they will be stopped. They turn into bats, mist, and wolves. These vampyres are more akin to Dracula than Lestat, but his DNA is in there as well. Werewolves change shape. Ghosts are the dead with unfinished business. Animates are your Frankenstein’s monsters and golems. Daemons are extradimensional and have been magically put here. And Wyghts are unpleasant undead affairs that siphon the youth from their victims.

Then we have the Inuits.

Well, yes. This is where the game’s age shows, and not in an endearing way. The handling of Indigenous spirits under that moniker is something I would either not use or rewrite. 

Edges, Flaws, and Humanity

You have Edges, the supernatural side of things. Some are common, some are for a particular Kin. Claws, telepathy, weather control, possession, invisibility, speed, and armor are among the options. But the cleverness lies in the price.

That price is Humanity.

Humanity is not merely a morality stat on the sheet for the GM to levy punishment with. It is a resource to be spent. 

Your monster can do some very cool things, but they are the very things that erode what is human about him. That is a fine mechanic. There is a built-in temptation in the rules. You can have more power, but how much of yourself are you prepared to put on the line?

It goes both ways. High Humanity can make you functionally human. Let it drop, and the character becomes more visibly monstrous, his weaknesses more pronounced. Lose too much Humanity, and now your character has become a true monster and an NPC. I like this idea. The World of Darkness games made this idea their central thesis; other games have a form of this as well. NightLife wasn't the first to do this, but they did do it well.

The City at Night

An urban fantasy needs somewhere for its denizens to put down roots, and NightLife gets that. Not just a crypt or a haunted house. We are talking clubs and bars, record stores, and warehouses. Back rooms and street corners. The sort of places for showing off, making bad decisions, and hearing what is going on. You could say nightclubs are the heart of the game's culture. Style is everything, as is the right music and the right clothes. The book is so preoccupied with fashion that a modern retrospective put it best: in NightLife, a gun can sometimes look like the more economical option than a proper wardrobe.

Then there are the particular modifiers for a fight on the dance floor. That's about as much of a NightLife rule as you will find. I can't think of another game that does that.

Do not mistake this for Gothic horror moved to an urban environment. This is urban horror. The monsters are of the city; they have their neighborhoods and their enemies three blocks away; they have favorite clubs, and they listen to the music. It is easy to see why the comparison to The Warriors holds up.

New York is as much of a character here as it is a setting.

The supernatural is divided into factions and gangs with differing views on humanity. You have the Commune, which is content to let Kin and humans coexist, or the Complex, which would rather control and make use of them. The Morningstar Corporation will undermine society with its wealth and politics, while Red Moonrise is far less subtle and has no qualms about terror and slaughter. And if one wants to be hunted, there are human outfits like the Van Helsing Society and Target Alpha who know the Kin are out there. In short, there is always someone to have a go at. NightLife anticipates as much.

There is some wonderful worldbuilding here that sadly went unnoticed at the time.

Putting the Splatter Back in Splatterpunk

This is no subtle affair. The rulebook will tell you exactly how big a wound is from the damage taken. A Kin can take some horrific injury and come back for more unless put down in a certain way. That kind of durability is what lets the game live up to its splatterpunk side.

Shadow of the Vampire

One cannot help but compare this to Vampire: The Masquerade. NightLife came first in 1990 with Vampire behind it in 1991. They share the d10s, the Humanity stat, the urban backdrop and the same sort of player characters. Yet the tone is worlds apart. NightLife is punk where Vampire is Gothic. It is all about the leather jackets and the loud music, the blood on the wall, and the monsters having it out in the alley behind the club. There is plenty of angst to be had, but also a motorcycle chain and a switchblade.

In NightLife, everyone is Clan Brujah or Tremere.

What do I get out of NightLife? More than one might expect.

I am fond of the way it treats Humanity. It is not a passive number for the GM to judge by. Your very existence as a supernatural puts your connection to humanity at risk. I can make a lot of use of that.

I also appreciate the Kin being a single culture. Vampires and werewolves do not need to be in separate societies that never cross paths; they can be in the same faction and have the same enemies. Very fitting for an urban setting. They can still hate each other. Fight in gang wars or even have an uneasy alliance. Same with the other types here. 

The factions are fine, though I would not use them verbatim. What interests me is the concept: supernatural beings at odds over how to deal with ordinary people, and those differences turning political or violent.

But the thing NightLife offers above all is a sense of place. The supernatural has to be somewhere on a Friday night. It may sound foolish, but a community is only convincing when there is a bar they all know, a record store open till two in the morning, a diner where the night staff won’t remark on odd patrons, and an alley to settle scores. I put that to work in NIGHT SHIFT.

For example, in my 1990s sequel to Jackson set in Chicago, Faye Thorne, now calling herself Fiona Voss, runs a record store called Muse. Muse is where people (and not-people) congregate and hear things. Even those who would not normally work together can be found across from each other because they both know it is safe ground. 

And that is what NightLife does best. It is not a matter of monsters hiding in the city, but of them having a life in it. The distinction is important. The vampire has a band he likes. The daemon has a drink with an old friend. The ghost knows her way in. The werewolf has friends and enemies and the clothes and the neighborhood to prove it. The supernatural is not in town for a visit. It lives here.

And regardless of the Kin, they all need somewhere to buy the new Inkubus Sukkubus album. 

My Jackson Kids: Chicago 1992

This campaign does not have a name yet. Nor is it even very well defined. I just know this. Like my real kids, my Jackson, IL kids will grow up and move out at some point. Some end up in Chicago in the 1990s. Why Chicago? Why not! I LOVE Chicago. 

Among the PCs/NPCs I'll work with, there will be Larina, Faye/Fiona, Roderick Morgan, and Moria Zachary. There will be new characters too, but the players will create those. 

Fiona, Larina, and Moria, Chicago 1992

And...that is about all I have for that campaign! Really. I have some other idea involving the Maxwell Street Market and other things I loved about Chicago in the 1990s, but this notion is in it's infancy. 

So I am trying out a lot of different ideas. Namely, this campaign is an attempt to move from Modern Horror (Jackson, Sunny Valley) into Urban Fantasy. The horror is still there, but it isn't the same sort of thing.

So, for NightLife, I started with the core book and create a character who fits. I considered turning one of my Jackson kids into a ghost, but in truth I just couldn't bring myself to do that. So instead, I am using a character and keeping her more or less as is. Then I grabbed a copy of the magic book and created twom more characters.

Edited to Add: In my online research, I see that there is a book for NightLife called "America After Dark." I didn't really have the time to buy a copy. Though maybe I will grab it later on since it covers the time period when I was living downtown. In truth I should assemble all the RPGs and supplements that cover Chicago sometime. Especially if I get this Chicago game off the ground.

Moria Lucille Zachary

Race/Kin: Daemon
Age: 21

Abilities
Strength (STR) 23
Dexterity (DEX) 34
Fitness (FIT) 27
Intellect (INT) 26
Will 21
Perception (PER) 27
Attractiveness (ATT) 27
Luck 19
Magic Ability (MA) -

Base Hand-to-Hand (HTH) damage 4
Max Humanity 80
Humanity 36 (40)
Survival Points 46

Edges and Flaws
All Kin
Armor 5, Aura Sight 27, Claws 27, Danger Sense 27, Drain 27 (diet: Human or Animal Life Force), Speed 34

Kin Specific Edges
Alter Form 21, Body Control 27, Flight 27 (true form only), Telepathy 26, Travel 21

Flaws
Substance Vulnerability: Flint, Holy Relics, Fire (double damage), Command: Majestic Daemonic

Skills
Combat Skills
Pistol 41, Streetfighting 52

Archaic Skills
Kin Lore 37

General Skills
Alertness 34, City Knowledge (Chicago) 32, Disguise 30, Language (English) 30, Persuasion 31, Psychology 33, Seduction 31, Stealth 57, Streetwise 42, Theology (Catholic) 32

Occult Skills
Occult Knowledge 34

Connections
Bar Bouncer, Bartender, Police Detective

Money: $13,000.

Moria is great for this. Plus, we haven't seen her in Jackson for a while, so it has a nice "what the hell are you doing here?" vibe. I also like the idea that the girl who was considered dangerous in Jackson is just mildly threatening here in Chicago. 

Larina Stephanie Nichols

Race/Kin: Human, Witch
Age: 22

Abilities
Strength (STR) 15
Dexterity (DEX) 28
Fitness (FIT) 25
Intellect (INT) 35
Will 34
Perception (PER) 34
Attractiveness (ATT) 30
Luck 21
Magic Ability (MA) 30

Base Hand-to-Hand (HTH) damage 5
Max Humanity 100
Humanity 48 (50)
Survival Points 46

Edges and Flaws
All Kin
None

Kin Specific Edges
None

Flaws
None

Magic
Shadow Paths, Deflection, Escape, Magic Sight, Vibes, Word, EMT, Lighter, Open

Skills
Combat Skills
Knife 31, Pistol 27, Martial Arts (Judo) 42

Archaic Skills
none

General Skills
Alertness 39, City Knowledge (Chicago) 38, Driving 31, First Aid 34, Language (English) 35, Language (Greek) 35, Language (Latin) 35, Persuasion 37, Psychology 43, Research 48, Streetwise 31

Occult Skills
Library Research (Magic) 48, Talismanic Magic 40, Herbal Magic 40, Occult Knowledge 44

Connections
Bar Bouncer, Bartender, Police Detective, Elder Kin

Money: $8,000.

Larina only lives here during her undergraduate and Master's degrees, from fall of 1987 to Spring/summer of 1993. I have her going on other adventures in 1993 that correspond to her Chill 2nd edition period and flowing into her WitchCraft RPG time. Whether those games involve the same "mirror shard" of Larina or not, I don't know yet. But for now, this is Larina in 1992.

Fiona Voss

Race/Kin: Human, Sorceress (near Kin)
Age: 22

Abilities
Strength (STR) 20
Dexterity (DEX) 24
Fitness (FIT) 28
Intellect (INT) 34
Will 46
Perception (PER) 30
Attractiveness (ATT) 34
Luck 20
Magic Ability (MA) 35

Base Hand-to-Hand (HTH) damage 4
Max Humanity 80
Humanity 30 (Soul Burn)
Survival Points 48 (36 in stored spells)

Edges and Flaws
All Kin
Drain 28 (Fiona "recharges" herself by going out)

Kin Specific Edges
None

Flaws
Substance Vulnerability: Metorite iron, salt (she makes up for it with hot peppers)

Magic
Black out, Shadow Paths, Deflection, Escape, Hotwire. EMT (white), Dispel Magic (white), boombox (white), Binding (black)

Skills
Combat Skills
Pistol 28, Streetfighting 32

Archaic Skills
Kin Lore 40

General Skills
Administration 42, Alertness 36, Business 44, City Knowledge (Chicago) 42, Dancing 29, Driving 28, Fashion Sense 34, First Aid 38, Intimidation 50, Leadership 54, Musical Style (Goth/Alternative) 46, Profession (Record Store Manager) 46, Research 38, Security Systems 39, Stealth 29, Streetwise 56

Occult Skills
Occult Knowledge 42

In many ways, Fiona has become my standout NPC in my Chicago games. 

Larina is a human witch; Fiona is a near-kin Sorceress. I opted to go in this direction so I could see the differences between the two magic types in the Magic book. Fiona is still recovering from her near Hag-conversion. So her magic feels more like a Kin than Larina's coven magic does. 

So, I want to talk about the differences between Jackson-era Faye and Chicago-Fiona. Same girl, different experiences. In some ways, Fiona becomes more Fiona in NightLife. Faye hated high school, and she hated (hates) Jackson. She flees first to UIUC and then to UIC, but it isn't college or university academics that give her life. It is Chicago. Here is a giant city filled with strange new people, and she LOVES it. 

I get it. I remember leaving class one summer night and looking out at the city from a Blue Line L station and just being in awe of how beautiful it was. In my mind, Faye saw the same sight, but where I was in awe, she fell in love. Faye embraced Chicago in such a fundamentally deep way. From that moment on, she was never, ever going to leave.

NightLife also gave some great ideas for Faye/Fiona regardless of what game system I might use. She works till close at Muse (before she owned it) and then goes out to clubs that would have been too dangerous for a girl in her 20s to go to by herself, but she is a powerful sorceress/witch. She dances until 3 am, eats Thai food or whatever is still open (lots of places), and turns around and goes back to work the next day. 

While all of this is wonderful for Fiona, it is the start of Fiona and Larina growing apart. They still remain close; you can't erase that. But they are setting their sights now in different directions. 

Jackson to Chicago

I did not set out to create another campaign this month. I certainly don't need another campaign. But somewhere along the way I followed these kids out of Jackson and into Chicago. By 1992 they are no longer kids, and the supernatural isn't something hiding beneath their hometown anymore. It has neighborhoods, jobs, stores, clubs, politics, and a social life. I don't know what I am going to do with that yet. For now I am calling it Chicago 92. I suspect I will be coming back to it. 

Jackson was about discovering the supernatural. Chicago is starting to look like it will be about living with it.

Final Word

NightLife will not replace NIGHT SHIFT on my table. NIGHT SHIFT is just a far better fit for what I want out of a horror RPG. But I would not have NIGHT SHIFT in my hands now if it hadn't been for the nightclubs and streets of NightLife. 

I intended to explore how a single campaign idea could be viewed through the lens of different games; I ended up with much more than that. I got so much out of these games that I think I'll do a proper retrospective later. Likely next month. 

October Horror Movie Challenge: Vicious Lips (1986)

Vicious Lips is not a great movie, nor does it fit well with my theme this month, but I had fun with it.

Vicious Lips (1986)

Directed by Albert Pyun, the premise follows an all-female rock band traveling across space for an important gig. In the course of their journey, they crash on a desert planet and have to deal with a killer alien, while spending much of their time in neon-lit sets looking as though MTV has exploded on them. 

It is an all-female Streets of Fire, but with a Heavy Metal sequence, then run through the mid-1980s MTV filter. I like that description better than the movie itself, but it explains why I enjoyed it. 

Style is what does the heavy lifting here. The hair is enormous, the wardrobes are louder than the music, and the sets are awash in a neon glow; it is as if someone set about making a science-fiction universe from a nightclub, a music video and the left-overs of the Empire Pictures warehouse. The band's new lead singer is called Judy Jetson. Subtlety was never on the agenda.

It gets off to an energetic start but once the band has crash-landed the film loses much of its steam. The middle section is overlong with the band tramping around the ship and the desert when I would have preferred more of the space-rock craziness. There is a Venusian beast and other ghoulish oddities, but the film could have used more aliens. 

A lot more.

There is no call for restraint when making a picture of a glam-rock girl band going intergalactic. That is the lesson. If you are going to go full speed, go warp 9.9.

The 1980s Were Not Afraid to Mix Things Up

In watching these movies all month long, I am reminded of how open the 1980s were to mashing genres. Vicious Lips is at once science fiction, horror, rock musical, comedy, creature feature, and music video. It does not seem to care whether the parts fit. They are put on screen, and the audience is expected to follow along.

They do not always fit. Which is part of the appeal.

You have your killer creature and spaceships, your rock concerts and futuristic nightclubs, some horror imagery and scenes that seem to have come from another production altogether. Pyun pushes the visuals even when the story isn't moving and, as some have pointed out, the neon and editing are far more memorable than the plot.

I miss that kind of genre mixing. Modern films are boxed in before the cameras roll. Horror is horror, sci-fi is sci-fi. 

The 80s would ask "What if the girl band has a spaceship?" or "What if there is a serial killer on board? An alien monster too?" and just go with it. Then throw in some sexy, half-naked sand sirens and call it a wrap.

That doesn't necessarily make for a good movie; Vicious Lips shows us that. The acting is inconsistent, the story gets lost, and the pacing falls apart at times. At times, the movie seems to forget its purpose. Where were they going? I forgot at points.

But it is never shy about being strange. And that is worth something.

Final Thoughts

This doesn't really fit my hometown-horror theme for the month, but it does fit what I have been rediscovering about the 1980s. These filmmakers were willing to take a chance. Some of it was great. Some of it was Vicious Lips.

I had my fun with it.

Give me the neon and the big hair, a girl band in space and a killer alien, a film that thinks *Streets of Fire*, *Heavy Metal* and MTV can exist in the same world.

Only put in a few more aliens next time.

NIGHT SHIFT, Jackson, and Thirteen Parsecs

No. I am not about to send my Jackson kids into space à la "Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space."  Certainly, I should remember that unrelenting horror is just torture without some fun. 

This could work as a crazy "Space Truckers" adventure. Instead of hauling space-beer to the outer colonies, you are hauling the latest girl band. Trouble is there is a price on their head!

Or something. 

If we learn anything from Vicious Lips, it is that don't be afraid to mix it up a bit.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
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