Charmed (1998 - 2006, 2018-2022)
Charmed was about witches. But this was a different take than other witches on TV. We had Samantha in Bewitched and Sabrina in her own show, which showed that a witch can work well, if comedically, in modern times. Charmed had more to do with the 1996 movie The Craft, including using Love Spit Love's cover of The Smiths' "How Soon Is Now?"
The witches of Charmed were not old hags or evil sorceresses. Nor were they suburban housewives dealing with the magical and mundane worlds. They were three estranged sisters who discovered they were not just witches, but a powerful kind of witch known as The Charmed Ones. Their job was to protect innocents from supernatural threats like warlocks, monsters, and, in particular, demons, all while trying to hold down regular jobs, maintain relationships, and find a way to mend the broken pieces of their own pasts. It was a very different, and honestly a more mature take on how to deal with otherworldly weirdness in a normal world than, say, what Buffy was doing on a different day.
The show began with three sisters: Prue (Shannen Doherty), Piper (Holly Marie Combs), and Phoebe Halliwell (Alyssa Milano). Later on, when Prue is killed, Rose McGowan joined as a younger half-sister, Paige Matthews. The Halliwells lived in San Francisco in a house owned by their Grandmother, Penny "Grams" (Jennifer Rhodes). When Grams dies, their magic comes back. Their mother, Patty (Finola Hughes), had died years before, fighting a demon.
Charmed was not perfect by any stretch. There were some continuity issues. Some of the episodes were goofy. Some were not great. Some were just an excuse to dress the stars in costumes. But the show had heart. I felt that the first three seasons at least tried to be consistent in their world-building, particularly in their magic. For example, the police detective and love interest to Prue, Andy Trudeau (T.W. King) knows about cults and recognizes witchcraft items like an athame (and pronounces it correctly) among other items. As the show moved on, other new ideas were added, like Whitelighters and other types of sabbats. But Charmed was never supposed to be a documentary on Witchcraft.
I knew Charmed would work as a game world back in 2012 at Gen Con.
I signed up to play in a Buffy RPG game that was a Buffy-Charmed-Supernatural crossover. I had played a lot of Buffy by then (naturally), but I was looking forward to playing a witch. So I picked Piper. Let me tell you, that was a freaking blast. One of the best times I had playing at Gen Con where I was a player and not the GM.
I had also already done my own crossover prior to that.
So when work began on NIGHT SHIFT, I already knew what I wanted.
Charmed and NIGHT SHIFT
Charmed has been with NIGHT SHIFT from the very start. During playtesting, for instance, I used the Charmed Ones as playtest characters. They served a purpose because they were more than just three people who happened to have magic. Each sister brings her own mix of strengths, weaknesses, and personality to the table, yet in combination they are something else entirely. That is what I was after for NIGHT SHIFT.
From this (and many other ideas) came the concept of Arcane Bonds. Power is not always an isolated thing; it can be drawn from the ties between characters, family, friendship, love, or even shared trauma. The Power of Three is the obvious case in point with Charmed, but I was less interested in replicating that particular mechanic than in the wider principle. I wanted a game where a character’s connections made them stronger, rather than just another spell or level-up. It suited my way of writing witches at the time. You can even see the development of the idea in my previous writings.
The Halliwells were formidable, but their magic was inextricably linked to their family history and obligations. Their enemies were often the result of events predating their birth. Their connection to magic and their ancestors were all part of the equation. To me, that is a far better model than a mere spellcaster with a different repertoire.
In NIGHT SHIFT, the structure is similar. The characters lead ordinary lives until the supernatural intrudes, whether they seek it out or it comes through the front door. One has to deal with both.
More than anything, Charmed offered me a new perspective on witches as protagonists. They were not types who stood apart from the world and peered in; they had families and jobs and bills like everyone else, along with the attendant problems. The supernatural was there to complicate those realities, not to put them aside. I would come to value that notion highly. The first setting I dealt with all of this was my "Ordinary World," Night World. Here, supernatural types all have to try to get along to maintain the appearance of normality, lest the "mundanes" find out.
Charmed and Jackson
With Jackson the influence is perhaps deeper, but not as overt.
Larina, Stephanie, and Faye are not Halliwell imitations; their world is darker, the town is not San Francisco, and their magic is of a different sort. But Charmed gave me license to pursue what I already held to be true for a very long time: that witches can be heroes. Not the kind you have to sanitize, but the ones with their rituals, old books, and unsettling family secrets. There is no need for any of that to make them the villain. Stephanie's family comes from old money and not all of that was "clean money." Larina learns she has some demonic blood in her going back generations. And Faye. Poor girl is being raised by hags, and bits of her soul are being bartered out for more magic. But each one is trying to make the world better than it was before. All while dealing with normal things.
It is right at the heart of Jackson. Larina might spend her day concerned over school or whether Stephanie is mad at her, and then face down whatever has emerged from the Bad Land by nightfall. The two coexist. No. More than that. They are inseparable.
I was also reminded of the role of family history. The Halliwells not only inherit power but also unfinished business. You will find plenty of that in Jackson. Larina’s abilities are bound to things that transpired long before she was here, and so is the town. Faye's Thorne and Voss heritages come with some serious magical debts. There are old crimes, monsters, and promises in its past. Sometimes the young ones have to put right what their grandparents or some long-dead soul left behind.
Places have a way of mattering too, much like the Halliwell manor. A library can be a repository of dangerous knowledge, a house can be more than four walls, and a town’s history will not always lie buried. Those Devil Chairs in the cemeteries have to mean something. Magical Mystery Lane leads somewhere.
Charmed did not put these ideas in my head, but it demonstrated how well they function in a sustained narrative. Witchcraft does not have to be an escape from life. It can be a part of it.
The Second Charmed
The second Charmed series taught me something different.
When the reboot premiered in 2018, it understandably wanted to inherit many of the things people associated with the original show. There were three sisters (Macy, Mel, and Maggie), the Power of Three, Whitelighters, demons, a Book of Shadows, and all the other pieces we immediately recognized as Charmed.
But having the pieces is not the same thing as building the thing.
Too often, I felt the second series wanted the benefits of the original Charmed without doing all the work that had made those ideas matter in the first place. The Halliwells had years of history, relationships, losses, mistakes, and accumulated mythology behind them. You could not simply reproduce the visible parts and expect the same emotional investment.
Interestingly, I thought the newer Charmed worked best when it stopped trying so hard to be the old Charmed and started becoming its own show. When it developed its own mythology, its own relationships, and its own answers to what witches and magic were, it became much more interesting to me.
That lesson has been extremely useful while developing Jackson.
I cannot just take three witches, drop them into a fictionalized Jacksonville, Illinois, and expect Charmed to happen.
Nor would I want it to.
Jackson has to grow out of Jackson. Its witches need their own histories, relationships, families, enemies, mistakes, and reasons for being there. The supernatural world has to emerge from the place's history and character rather than be imported wholesale from elsewhere.
Influence is useful. Inspiration is essential. But imitation is not world-building.
The things I learned from Charmed can help me understand what makes Larina and her friends work. They cannot tell me who Larina and her friends are. They can't tell me who YOUR characters are.
That part has to come from Jackson.
And that is the part I think is useful for anyone building their own game setting. You can absolutely start with the things you love. Take the family dynamics from one show, the occult atmosphere from another, the monster hunting from somewhere else, and the small-town weirdness from something completely different. But eventually those influences have to become yours.
If I can take all these influences and use them to build Larina, Jackson, Carbon Vale, and Sunny Valley into something with its own identity, then you can do the same with your characters and your world.
The goal is not to recreate the thing that inspired you.
The goal is to discover what it inspires you to create.
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NIGHT SHIFT® is a Registered Trademark of Elf Lair, LLC. Used by Permission.
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