There is a familiarity to Jackson, IL, and for good reason. The town is rooted in the reality of Jacksonville, Illinois.
I have not made an exact copy of it; my version of Jackson is fictional, put through the wringer and bent toward horror. But the underlying structure is genuine. You will find the same old buildings, the streets and parks and schools, the small-town cadence and the way folks know one another all too well. The names have been changed, but sometimes only just enough.
Such details are what make or break a game.
I put that to the test at EGG Con with my Jackson game. What struck people was how much the town seemed lived-in. It was one of the best compliments I could have gotten, really. Jackson ought not to come across as mere scenery. It has to be a place where lives were started and ended, where love and terrible errors and unfinished business have taken their course.
Horror needs that kind of weight.
Give me a haunted castle, and I am all for it. Yet there is something more unsettling about a haunted library or school, or a haunted house just three blocks from your friend’s. That is what gets under the skin.
Jackson is effective because it could be somewhere you have been.
It is somewhere I have been, if only in my nightmares at first, but now at my game table.
Yog/West Haven NPC
It's Tuesday, so today is Emotion and Full of Grace.
Satha of the White Veil, a former temple attendant from Yog who moves with impossible gentleness, even after escaping the Priest-Kings, and can soothe panic with a touch. She attends to the spiritual needs of the Yogian refugees; she is a cleric and not a witch, though she really isn't that anymore either since losing faith in her gods and the Priest-Kings. Someone or something is still answering her prayers.
Jackson Soundtrack
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