The Other Side blog

Thursday, May 7, 2026

Running NIGHT SHIFT and Dark Places & Demogorgons: What I've Learned from Two 80s Campaigns

I’ve explored the world of 1980s supernatural gaming before.

I have done it with two OSR-adjacent rule systems, NIGHT SHIFT: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars and SURVIVE THIS!! Dark Places & Demogorgons. This is not a post about which game is better than the other; I am not doing that. Both games are fantastic, and live very happily next to each other on my shelves and my gaming table.

This is about what I learned from running two similar-style campaigns using rule systems drawn from the same ecology.

And what you can learn from all of that.

NIGHT SHIFT: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars and SURVIVE THIS!! Dark Places & Demogorgons

Road to Nowhere: From Sunny Valley to Jackson

A few years ago, I played SURVIVE THIS!! Dark Places & Demogorgons from Bloat Games to revisit my love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but with a twist. Instead of Sunnydale, California in the late 1990s, I set the story in Sunny Valley, Ohio, in 1984. The characters were still Buffy, Willow, Tara, Faith, vampires, high school drama, and a Hellmouth. But the setting felt different; colder, more Midwestern, and even more 1980s. It was like a 'kids on bikes' story, except one kid had a stake and an epic destiny.

That experiment worked out really great. Dark Places & Demogorgons was the perfect game for this idea. It’s designed for stories about kids in the 1980s facing strange things that adults ignore or don’t believe. In Sunny Valley, the supernatural crept into childhood and early adolescence. The game was all about weekly monsters, school rumors, odd teachers, creepy houses, bad weather, and that feeling of being young and sensing something is wrong, even if you can’t explain it yet.

In short, it did exactly what I wanted.

Once in a Lifetime

Now I’m working on something similar, but it’s not the same.

Jackson, IL, is another retro-80s supernatural setting. It’s a small Midwestern town with teenagers, high school drama, monsters, ghosts, witches, and things hiding just out of sight. At first glance, you might think, “Oh, this is just like Sunny Valley.”

But it’s not.

Sunny Valley was my way of taking the Buffy mythos and setting and shifting it into a different decade, state, and game system. It was a familiar story in an alternate reality. Jackson is different. It’s not just Sunnydale with a new name, or a copy of Jeffersontown from Dark Places & Demogorgons. Still, I’ll admit Jeffersontown ("J-town" to locals) reminded me of my hometown, Jacksonville ("J-ville" to locals), which inspired me to create Jackson.

Jackson feels more personal to me.

With Jackson, I’m trying to blend the emotional feel of a real place, Central Illinois folklore, memories of growing up in the 1980s, and the supernatural style of NIGHT SHIFT: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars. I want it to feel like it’s always belonged there.

Don’t You (Forget About Me)

There is also a difference in what the systems want from the characters.

Dark Places & Demogorgons is about kids. That is one of its greatest strengths (if not its greatest strength). It understands the fears and freedoms of being young. The characters are not adults with jobs, mortgages, failed marriages, regrets, and long histories of supernatural trauma. They are kids trying to survive school, family, bullies, monsters, and the creeping suspicion that the world is stranger than anyone told them.

That made it perfect for Sunny Valley.

In that campaign, Buffy and her friends were younger. They were not the characters from the television show yet. They were versions of those characters caught earlier, rawer, and in some ways more vulnerable. Sunny Valley did not need the full emotional architecture of adulthood. It needed bicycles, lockers, cemeteries, malls, high school rivalries, and the occasional vampire getting dusted behind the gym.

I used those characters because there was very obvious "Buffy-DNA" in DP&D. I just let it come to the surface a little bit more.

NIGHT SHIFT, on the other hand, lets me broaden the frame.

Yes, Jackson has teenagers. In fact, teenagers are central to what I am doing with it. But Jackson also has adults who know things. Adults who failed. Adults who lied. Adults who fought the dark before and lost something. Adults trying to keep kids safe, even when they cannot tell them the truth.

That is important.

Jackson is not just a place where kids discover the supernatural. It is a place where the supernatural has always been and has a history. The Veil is thin here. The Bad Land, Mauvaisterre, is not just a monster factory. It is part of the town’s buried geography. The ghosts, witches, hags, psychics, cryptids, old families, school legends, and haunted buildings all connect to something deeper.

It feels like some of the adults are veterans of previous wars and can't do anything to stop the next one.

That feels like NIGHT SHIFT to me.

Jackson, IL, is "Veterans of the Supernatural Wars" as a thesis statement.

And all to the music of John Mellencamp's "Scarecrow."

Three witches. Just doing the best that they can.

Everybody Wants to Rule the World

This is also why I do not see Dark Places & Demogorgons and NIGHT SHIFT as competing games.

Very much the opposite.

Dark Places & Demogorgons is created by Bloat Games, and I am happy to call them friends. I buy their books. They buy our NIGHT SHIFT books. We talk at the cons we are both at. We cheer on each other's successes. That is how this hobby should work. The world has plenty of room for both of us.

I have said before that a rising tide raises all ships, and I honestly believe that. Other designers are not my competition. They are my colleagues. They are my peers. Playing their games makes my games better. Reading their work makes me think harder about my own. Seeing how someone else handles 1980s supernatural horror gives me a better sense of what I want to do, what I want to avoid, and what I want to emphasize. What I want to do different.

Dark Places & Demogorgons helped me think through Sunny Valley.

NIGHT SHIFT is helping me build Jackson.

Those are related acts of design, but not identical ones.

I Was Born in a Small Town

Sunny Valley was a Buffy-shaped experiment. It asked, "What if Buffy had happened in Ohio in 1984?" A simple question with a very satisfying answer.

Jackson asks something else.

Jackson asks, "What if the town itself was haunted? What if the supernatural was not an interruption, but a pressure? What if every generation had its own monsters, its own secrets, and its own kids who had to deal with what the adults left behind?"

That is a different kind of game.

In Sunny Valley, the Hellmouth was there, but it was more indistinct. The characters knew something was wrong, but the exact nature of it was part of the joke and part of the mystery. Sunny Valley was ironic. Of course, the place called Sunny Valley was cold, rainy, and full of vampires. Ohio vampires, no less.

Jackson is not ironic in the same way.

Jackson is a nice town. A real town, at least emotionally. It has high schools, colleges, pizza places, bookstores, old houses, churches, back roads, local legends, old money, bad memories, and teenagers who think they are the first generation to discover everything. It has a public face and a hidden one. That makes it ideal for NIGHT SHIFT, because NIGHT SHIFT is very good at letting the ordinary and the supernatural occupy the same space.

The horror in Jackson is not just "there is a monster."

The horror is "there always has been a monster, and someone knew."

That is a different tone altogether.

Home Sweet Home

The other major difference is ownership.

Sunny Valley was fun because it was a remix. I was taking characters and ideas I already loved and moving them into a different system (that I also loved) and a different decade (that I ... ok, you get it now). It was a creative exercise, and a very useful one. It let me explore Buffy, Willow, Tara, Faith, and the others through a different lens.

Jackson is worldbuilding from the ground up.

It owes something to Jacksonville, Illinois. It owes something to Jeffersontown. It owes something to every small Midwestern town with a haunted school, a local ghost story, a weird patch of woods, and one bookstore owner who knows more than they should.

But Jackson is becoming its own thing. Sunny Valley allowed me to do a lot of cheating. Jackson is less forgiving. I don't get to crib notes from someone else's creative efforts; I have to do it all on my own.

That matters because Jackson needs to support more than a single campaign idea. It needs to hold high school drama, occult mystery, monster hunting, local history, family secrets, psychic phenomena, witchcraft, cryptids, and the strange gravity of a place where the Veil is too thin.

That is bigger than Sunny Valley.

Not better. Bigger.

Sunny Valley was a great place to run a specific kind of game.

Jackson is a full-on Night World.

You are now entering Jackson, IL home of the Cougars!

We Built This City

Looking back, I can see a clear line from one project to the other.

Sunny Valley taught me that moving supernatural horror into the 1980s immediately changes the feel. No cell phones. No internet as we know it. Rumors move through notes in lockers, landlines, malls, classrooms, diners, and late-night phone calls. Research means libraries, newspapers, yearbooks, microfilm, local cranks, and that one teacher who knows too much.

Jackson takes all of that and pushes it further.

In Jackson, the 1980s are not just aesthetic. It is the structure. The period limits what characters can know, how quickly they can know it, and who they have to trust. The town becomes a network of secrets, and the kids are moving through it without a map. And it will be 15-20 years before anyone has GPS.

That is where the two projects really meet.

Sunny Valley was about taking a known supernatural teen drama and asking what it looked like through the lens of Dark Places & Demogorgons.

Jackson is about taking everything I know about 1980s horror, small towns, witches, ghosts, high school, and the supernatural, and asking what it looks like as a NIGHT SHIFT setting.

I guess a natural question is, could I play in Jackson, IL, using Dark Places & Demogorgons? Of course you could! I think if my "Plays Well with Others" posts (many linked below) are any indication, then yes, you could. Maybe I'll try it out one day. I already know Larina works well for both. But for now, I want to stick with NIGHT SHIFT since I have built so much more for it.

The Final Countdown

So no, Jackson is not Sunny Valley. But Sunny Valley helped make Jackson possible.

It gave me a place to test some ideas. It reminded me how well the 1980s work for supernatural gaming. It showed me how much fun there is in moving familiar horror tropes into Midwestern spaces. It also reminded me that the right system matters. Dark Places & Demogorgons served Sunny Valley well because it was about kids in the 1980s facing strange dangers.

NIGHT SHIFT serves Jackson because Jackson is about more than the kids.

It is about the town.

It is about the adults who remember too much, the teens who are just beginning to see, the monsters that never really left, and the old powers under the streets and fields. It is about what happens when the supernatural is not a visitor, but a resident.

Sunny Valley had a Hellmouth. Jackson has history.

That is the difference that makes each campaign unique.

Links

Plays Well With Others

Dark Places & Demogorgons

Sunny Valley, OH

NIGHT SHIFT Veterans of the Supernatural Wars

Wednesday, May 6, 2026

OSE Demon Month: Codex Qliphothica and More!

Old-School Essentials Demon month begins now! I am participating in Gavin Norman's Demon Month for Old-School Essentials. He is releasing his long-awaited Demon book for OSE (I have seen it, and it is great). And he is being joined by several other creators, including yours truly, to do a massive launch of our own demon titles all for OSE.

Codex Qliphothica

I didn't talk about this one as much as I wanted, but I am very pleased with it so far. I want a new category of demons. Something that put the horror back into them, other than "oh look, another Type III." Sure I DO have that here, and I also talk about how the Occult Scholars who think like this are often the first ones to get eaten.

Codex Qliphothica Cover Art by Dean Spenser

The Qliphoth are old. Older than the worlds mortals inhabit. Older than demons. Older even than the gods. Their taint has so far been contained. But they have been noticed, and they have seen us.

Probably because of all these new demon books out!

Interior art by Earl Geier

You can pledge for this book, PDF or Print, here:

https://www.backerkit.com/c/projects/the-other-side/codex-qliphothica-demons-of-the-other-side-for-ose

The text is written. The art has been purchased. Editing is happening now, and the layout. I am targeting 80-pages, but it will likely run over. I won't change the pricing, though, if it does.

There will be the Qliphoth demons, their home plane of Sitra Achra, known as the Other Side, corrupted monsters, occult magic, and new classes, The Occult Scholar, The Exorcist, and the Demonologist.

BUT I am not alone!

OSE Demon Month has more than just my evil little beasties. There are more demonic pleasures for you to have just for the mere price of your soul...or a few bucks, whatever fits on your Visa card.

You can see all the projects here: https://www.backerkit.com/c/collections/ose-month/projects

Certainly there is something here for every table!

Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Codex Qliphothica Launches Tomorrow

Tomorrow, Codex Qliphothica: Demons of the Other Side launches its crowdfunding campaign for Old-School Essentials.

Codex Qliphothica is my new book on demonology and planar horror for Old-School Essentials. In it, you'll encounter the Qliphoth, beings that are almost like demons, almost like undead, and almost like other-planar horrors, but none of these. They are the garbage of creation. The empty husks that were left behind after the first divine powers attempted to discard their imperfections and transcend beyond them.

Those imperfections never died.

They gathered beneath creation, becoming hunger, rage, greed, despair, hubris, and ruin, devoid of a divine soul to restrain them. They became the Qliphoth.

Codex Qliphothica deals with Sitra Achra, the Other Side, a nightmare realm made up of oceans of ash, dead forests, shattered moons, broken heavens, and impossible realities. Not Hell, not Abyss, and certainly not a plane of punishment or temptation. It is where creation abandoned what it no longer needed or wanted.

But the discarded things have come back looking for an entrance.

Codex Qliphothica is created for Old-School Essentials, but even if your system of choice isn't, it could still make for some dark, unsettling fun at the table. Codex Qliphothica includes new Qliphothic horrors, corrupt creatures, cults of the Hollow Shell, planar hazards, spells, artifacts, and even forbidden classes: Occult Scholar, Demonologist, and Exorcist.

This book is about the monsters that dwell on the far side of ordered reality. About the horrors the gods themselves cannot control. About the scar beneath creation.

My aim with Codex Qliphothica is to provide Game Masters with something that is ready to use at the table immediately. Something that offers not only lore and background but also monsters eager to bite adventurers, planes they dare enter and wish they hadn't, weird occult rituals, cults, encounters, hazards, and consequences.

The Qliphoth are very rare. They should feel few and far between. Whenever one shows its face, the world itself should feel different. The light seems off. Sounds disappear into nothingness. Sanctified spaces should quake with holy displeasure. Nightmares should infect waking thoughts. These aren't just monsters. These are the signs that an Other Side creature has found its way to our realm.

The pre-launch page is online. The entire OSE Demon Month crowdfunding campaign begins tomorrow.

https://www.backerkit.com/call_to_action/1e652f79-0c20-487c-a524-d5566025fbb3/landing

If this sounds like a gamebook you'd like at your own table, then please share the link, help me reach even more people interested in Old-School Horror, and follow the project.

The Other Side awaits tomorrow.

Tales from Jackson, IL: Bring on the Dancing Horses

It is just before Christmas break in Jackson, but the supernatural does not rest. The Jackson Public School Football team is headed to the playoffs. Star players and the team co-Captains (despite only being Juniors), Andy Thompson and Valentino "Val" Moreno, promise to take the team all the way to state. But a freak snow storm, and even freakier hoof prints spell more than trouble; they are an old curse coming home.

I have been waiting for a good adventure to feature my "it" couple, Andy and Rowan. I have talked a little bit about them already, and they have been in the background. Andy Thompson is the son of the "first family" of Jackson. His father owns the local stables and horse track, where horse racing is held every weekend over the summer. Andy's father worked to bring betting to the track and turned his already rich family even richer. Rowan is the sweet horse girl who was all awkward knees and elbows and braces in Junior High and came back gorgeous in High School.

Yes. I am embracing every cliché I can. But only the ones that serve the game.

Andy and Rowan are important to me and to these adventures. And I wanted to introduce them the right way.

Rowan and Andy, the "It couple" of Jackson Public Highschool

Andy and Rowan

Larina: "Who are those two?"
Faye: "Oh. Andy and Rowan. They were born dating."
Stephanie: "I hear Hallmark follows them around for ideas."
Faye: "They came out of their mother's wombs and were holding hands when they left the hospital."
Stephanie: "Yeah, I have seen the pictures."

Andy and Rowan began as The Couple. You know, they were always together, never apart, only had eyes for each other. If this were a John Cougar song, they would be "Jack and Diane." But for me, I wanted a couple that had staying power, ones you could actually see growing old together. Why? Because with all the crazy shit going on in the game, I wanted them to be true. Trouble is, Rowan is a Spirit Rider, and Andy...well, Andy changed on me, and he became a better version of himself.

Rowan and Andy (and Tempest). Aren't they adorable?

Rowan McGowan

"Some people learn magic. Some people are chosen by it. And a very few… belong to a place so completely that the place answers back. We call those people 'guardians' or 'protectors.' The old name is 'maor fearainna,' but folks also call them Spirit Rider."

- Malcolm "Mac" McGowan

Rowan in my games is many things. Witch. Protector. Guardian. Witch Knight. And I have worked her up in many different ways:

Here in Jackson, she is not quite all of that. At least not yet. Here, she is just a sweet "horse girl" who loves her grandpa Mac, doesn't remember her mom or dad (who both died when she was a baby), loves her horse "Tempest" (even if he hates everyone else but her), loves getting up before dawn to feed the horses, but most of all, she loves Anderson Thompson.

She has no idea that she is secretly Jackson, IL's Spirit Rider, and it is because of her love for everything that she has unconsciously built a supernatural wall to keep everything else out. Until the night of the Bell. Now the Hollow King is doing everything he can to erode her will so he can finally break through to Jackson and feed. Even if she knows what is happening, she doesn't yet know how to fight it. So she is not the protector right now; she is the one who needs protecting. She needs the PCs' help. That is, until she accepts her power.

Which is saying something, because she is up before sunrise to get all her work done so she can enjoy her coffee in peace before school. The PCs have their work cut out for them.

Rowan Abigail McGowan
1st level Spirit Rider, Human

Background: Farm Kid

Base Abilities

Strength: 14 (+1)
Agility: 13 (+1)
Toughness: 14 (+1) n
Intelligence: 13 (+1)
Wits: 16 (+2) V
Persona: 15 (+4) n

Vit: 5 (1d4)
DV: 9
Fate Points: 1d6

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +2/+1/+0
Attack bonus (base): +0
Melee bonus: +0 Ranged bonus: +0

Languages: English, Spanish
Skills: Horse Riding, Animal Handling (Farm kid)

Saves: +1 to Wits and Persona-based saves, +1 to Tougness-based (Farm Kid)

Spirit Rider Abilities
Innate Magic, Arcana, Arcane Powers, Commune with Spirit of the Land, Power Limitation (100 miles) Magic Battery

Innate Magic & Arcane Powers
Innate: Speak with Animals
Arcane: Precognition, Empathy

Hair: Red
Eyes: Green
Height: 5'5"

Archetype: The "Horse Girl" / The Protector
Quote: "I trust horses more than most people."
Quirks: Dresses for comfort and work. Drinks coffee so strong that even Faye is impressed.
Theme song: "Wildfire" - Michael Martin Murphey. She is a country girl at heart.

Her "Farm Kid" background gives her an "Animal Handling" skill and +1 on Toughness-based saves. All that clean living I guess. Technically, she doesn't live on a farm; she lives on a small ranch near stables, which are still within the city limits. But like I said, that is a technicality. Rowan is a farm girl deep in her bones.

One thing I have decided about this NPC. She never swears. She will say "shoot" and "gosh darn it." Or maybe when she is really, really mad, she will let a "Hell" escape her lips. But never anything worse. She isn't religious, and this has nothing to do with blasphemy or anything like that. She had been taught that a "lady doesn't use those words." Rowan gets up before dawn so she can feed and water the horses, muck out the stalls, lift bales of hay that weigh 100lbs, and do all of this before her classmates even wake up. She doesn't think of herself as a "lady." She just thinks those words are impolite.

Trust me. That is the hardest part about playing her!

Anderson "Andy" Thompson

I had different plans for Andy. But while sitting there working on his backstory for the game, I discovered a few things. Andy and Valentino have been best friends since they were 4 years old, when Val brought a Nerf football to preschool. That image of these two little guys running up and down the playground with that blue-and-orange foam-rubber football was so vivid that all my original plans for Andy were scrapped.

See, originally Andy was the son of Arawn, the God of Death (and played in my mind by Giancarlo Esposito, because the man was born to play the God of Death!). Rowan was supposed to die in the car crash that killed her parents, and Arawn had been looking for her, but she was protected by her grandfather Mac, a Witch Knight/Spirit Rider. Andy was supposed to collect her soul, but fell in love instead.

I kept the only parts that mattered. Malcolm "Mac" McGowan stayed a witch knight, her parents were still dead, and Andy and Rowan were still in love. And that little kid playing football and pretending to be in the Chicago Bears with the other little kid became his brother in all but blood. I mean, I just couldn't see either of those little guys as evil.

So now Andy 2.0 is still the star football player, but now he is also just this really nice guy. I wanted to at least avoid the 80s stereotype that the football player meant "dumb jerk."

Andy moves through the school with ease. He knows everyone's name; an artifact from his "Son of the God of Death" origin, now just because he pays attention (Sage's Lore ability). He asks them about their family, and if they have a game, science fair, band competition, or anything like that, he is the first and loudest to wish the best of luck. He will high-five the baseball team while still giving them grief about their last game, and then he will fist-bump the debate team on their way to state. He is just a good kid.

During halftime of the football games, he runs out onto the field to join the marching band on trumpet. Coach Zimmerman always complains that his captain is out "being a cheerleader," but he knows nothing gets the crowd going more, and a loud crowd works wonders on the players. And the Coach actually thinks it's kind of fun. Andy will be the first to admit he's not the best trumpet player, but everyone loves seeing him out there to enegize the crowd.

Yeah, his dad can still be a jerk, but he is no longer the God of Death. They are still super rich and owns the stables and track. And most of the buildings are on the growing west end of town.

It was working one summer on the track (his dad called it character building) when Andy first really saw Rowan. The awkward, somewhat geeky "horse girl" was out riding, and Andy's heart stopped. He saw past all his teen nonsense to the woman she would become underneath all braids, braces, acne, and too-thick glasses. Rowan did not trust, or even like, Andy at first, but he spent the summer proving himself to her and to her Grandfather. They began "dating" their freshman year, and no one got it. When they came back their sophomore year, Rowan had grown into herself and was gorgeous.

When the others finally saw her, Andy just asked, "What took you all so long?"

I also wanted a super stable couple. Because why not?

The next problem became Andy's class. As the son of the God of the Dead, I had some flexibility. But now he is just a regular human kid. He is well-liked, offers an encouraging word to everyone, and is the model student-athlete.

What he is is a Bard. Not the horny kind (well...), but he does play a horn. He really is the "face" character, the one who talks to the adults and convinces them that 10-ft tall monster was really just part of an elaborate prank they are playing on the St. Michaels Catholic High School on the East side of town. Of course, they believe him. He is a Thompson after all.

Sages can cover Bards well and even get some skills to help round him out. I do want to make his Aspect (or Primary) stat to be Persona rather than Intelligence.

Anderson "Andy" Thompson
2nd level Bard (Sage), Human

Background: Jock

Base Abilities

Strength: 16 (+2)
Agility: 17 (+2) n
Toughness: 16 (+2)
Intelligence: 14 (+1) n
Wits: 15 (+1)
Persona: 18 (+3) A

Vit: 8 (1d6)
DV: 9
Fate Points: 1d6

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +2/+1/+0
Attack bonus (base): +0
Melee bonus: +0 Ranged bonus: +1

Languages: English, Spanish, French
Skills: Read Music, Play instruments (trumpet, trombone, saxophone)

Saves: +3 to spells and magic-based saves, +1 to Strength and Toughness-based (Jock)

Sage Abilities
Survivor Skills, Mesmerize ("Fast Talk"), Lore, Languages, Spells

Survivor Skills
Open Locks: 15%
Bypass Traps: 10%
Sleight of Hand: 20%
Move Silently: 20%
Hide in Shadows: 10%

Spells
First-level: Bless ("Rally")

Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
Height: 5'11"

Archetype: The Popular Kid
Quote: "I’m just saying, maybe let’s not make the worst possible decision first." or "Ok! Let's Go! We can do this!" (in about every situation.)
Quirks: Remembers everyone's name and something about them. Wants to be liked for being a good person, not for his family's money.
Theme song: "Boys of Summer" - Don Henley. But during the "Season Finale" against the Hollow King, Andy will be belting out "The Final Countdown" on his trumpet.

The thing to remember about Andy is that he is a good kid deep down. He is the guy cheering you on, telling you that you can do it because he believes you can. And you end up believing him as well.

Neither characters are powerhouses. They have low Vitality (hit points) and not a lot in the way of powers. In fact, they don't think what they do is magic at all. Andy's "Bless" spell is just his natural enthusiasm for everything. People *do* better with around because they think he is in their corner. And they are right. Rowan calls her empathy and precognition "just good old 'horse sense'." She calls her ability to speak to animals just knowing how to listen. They are the least pretentious non-player characters in the entire game.

I have an adventure that features them coming up. A headless horseman tied to Rowan's past, but we did not get to it this past weekend, so all I did was introduce them.

Spoilers

Rowan and Andy get married right out of high school. His father is mad and threatens to disown him, but his grandmother intervenes. Instead of U of I, he goes to Illinois Beecher College in town, plays on the football team, and gets his degree in Education to return to JPHS to teach and coach, eventually replacing the retiring Coach Zimmerman. Rowan, now the Spirit Rider of Jackson, runs the stables (Andy bought them from his dad with his college savings) and has turned part of them into a hippotherapy center for children. Rowan also attended Illinois Beecher College and earned her degree in psychology and occupational therapy.

Adult Rowan's wards around Jackson are described by witches as "formidable" and by supernatural threats as...well, they don't describe them at all; Rowan usually dispatches them long before they ever get the chance. Rowan would rather calm a frightened horse or help a child learn to ride, but when it comes to defending Jackson, she is brutal and efficient. It is just another chore to be done, like mucking out a stall.

In truth, I love these two and wish them a ton of happiness.

Night Shift^® is a registered trademark of Elf Lair, LLC.

Monday, May 4, 2026

Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. Two Books, One Spell

Monday has often been Monstrous Monday here at The Other Side for a very long time. A mirror into what I am working on at any given point in time. But for the next few months, I am turning the mirror in a manner of speaking. And the mirror is an apt metaphor for what I am doing.

The monsters will still be present; they always are. This time, though, I'm focusing on the witches who confront them, call them into being, control them, get rid of them, or even turn into them. I want to think of 1986 not just as a date, but as a breeding ground for imagination.

For me, 1986 isn't about warm, fuzzy nostalgia. It is a lens to focus my attention.

It's the hardback Advanced Dungeons & Dragons books on the table, odd paperbacks found in used bookstores, heavy metal music, scary films, late-night TV, school libraries, local stories, and that feeling of books your parents wouldn't let you read. It's the year when fantasy games, talk of the occult, and being a teenager all felt crammed into one shadowy room, with a general sense of fear from the Satanic Panic and a sense that something…more existed.

That's where two things I'm working on intersect.

One is Advanced Witches & Warlocks, my take on a retro witch book, as if the AD&D witch finally got the attention she deserved around 1986. It's aiming for release around Halloween 2026, which feels fitting. Witches should appear in October.

The other is Jackson, IL, a modern supernatural setting in the Midwest, centered on odd towns in the middle of the country, teenage witches, haunted schools, local monsters, hidden family histories, and the strangeness of growing up in 1986. This one is different; it doesn't have a release date. It might not even be published in a typical way. It's going to be about 80,000 words before I can even say it's a book, and it isn't there yet, but it’s progressing.

However, these two projects are constantly influencing each other.

They aren't the same book, or even the same style of book. Advanced Witches & Warlocks is all about fantasy gaming, character classes, occult magic, witch lore, warlock groups, magical spells, animal helpers (familiars), and what the witch should be like alongside the Cleric, Magic-User, Druid and Illusionist.

Jackson, IL, is small-town horror. It’s the high school hall, the library, the old graveyard, the pizza place, the road leading past the cornfields, the local university, the occult store in town, and the house that everyone knows about but nobody discusses. It's about teenage witches in a world where adults have carefully constructed their lives to act as if the supernatural isn't genuine.

One is the witch as a character in AD&D.

One is the witch as the girl in homeroom who understands the mirror is showing a false image.

And the central question for both of them is the same:

When 1986 is the focus of the imagination lens, what does a witch actually look like?

In a fantasy setting inspired by 1986, a witch is much more than just someone on a broom who casts spells; her origins lie in folklore, fairy tales, frightening tales, hidden knowledge, the books Appendix N lists, and the stranger parts of fantasy. She’s part of a group of witches, follows certain customs and has powerful figures she answers to, observes forbidden practices, performs ceremonies under the moon, and taps into ancient powers that aren't easily contained in spellbooks or churches.

She isn't a Cleric. Clerics have a church, a god, and openly stated beliefs. And she isn't a Magic-User, because Magic-Users study, have specific formulas, and believe the universe can be written down completely.

A Witch has something much older and more personal; she has connections. Connections to spirits, the land, her ancestors, the moon, old gods, and, really, to be honest, things that are best left unmentioned. She understands magic isn't only something you learn, but something you receive from family, get through deals, endure, and occasionally live through.

And that’s how it is in fantasy.

But in 1986, in the real world, the witch is a bit different, although not as different as you'd think.

She’s the new student who seems to know a lot, the quiet one who hears things in empty rooms, the head cheerleader who keeps everyone protected but won't admit to how afraid she is, the outsider with the family that's been around forever, or the girl who happens to find the right (or wrong) book at the library…and it’s as if the book was waiting for her.

She exists amongst lockers, telephone landlines, cassette tapes, school bells, what everyone in town is saying, and teachers who might not be entirely human. The school after hours is her dungeon, the roads leading out of town are her wilderness, and her temple is the bedroom floor late at night, with candles, a notebook, and a mirror that shows more than it should.

Both of these witches are liminal, in-between people.

And that’s the essential point.

A witch is on the boundary. The edge of town, the edge of social groups, the edge of the church, the edge of family, the edge of becoming an adult, the edge of the map. She knows where the lines are because she's crossed them, and sometimes she chose to, other times she was forced.

That’s why witches work so well in old-fashioned gaming. Dungeons & Dragons always liked boundaries: dungeons and the wild, law and chaos, the village and the ruins, human and monster, the living and the divine. A witch belongs in that boundary zone.

And that’s also why they suit teenage horror. Being a teenager is a boundary zone. You aren't a child, but you're not an adult yet, and everyone is misleading you about both. You’re expected to follow rules you didn't create, you're given a future you might not even want, you're observed, evaluated, underestimated, and told to stay away from doors that someone else has already opened.

That’s where a witch finds her place.

The Midwest is important here as well.

These aren't Salem witches, not exactly, and not the glamorous witches of Hollywood. The witch of the Midwest lives amongst brick school buildings, university towns, country roads, old cemeteries, the changeable prairie weather, church potlucks, basement playrooms, and libraries with surprisingly good collections of occult books.

She knows the local ghost stories. She knows which road to avoid in the dark. She knows who lived in that house before the current family changed the name. She understands that not all monsters come from Transylvania or from Hell; some are created by the cursed land surrounding the old town, in the drainage ditch, beneath the old bridge, or in the quiet that exists between what everyone says and what nobody will talk about.

That’s where Jackson, IL is.

And that's where Advanced Witches & Warlocks is also finding a new foundation.

The fantasy witch and the teenage witch aren't separated in my mind; they are each other’s reflections. One wears a purple dress and a black cloak, the other wears jeans, boots, and an excessive amount of eyeliner for a Monday. One has a familiar and a Book of Shadows, the other has a cat that isn't quite a cat and a notebook hidden under her mattress.

Both of them understand the same truth.

People who are respectable act as if magic isn't real, because acknowledging it would change everything.

This series, Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986, is where I’m going to look at that reflection.

Some weeks I’ll be more focused on Advanced Witches & Warlocks; talking about witch types, magical practices, familiars, traditions, warlocks, spells, monsters, and creating a witch's book that feels as if it could have existed in the AD&D period without just copying old texts.

Other weeks I’ll focus on Jackson, Illinois; teenage witches, haunted schools, folklore from the Midwest, local monsters, bad roads, strange teachers, shops with occult items, and why 1986 is the perfect year for supernatural horror.

Most weeks will be somewhere in the middle.

That's the unusual intersection where both projects come together.

The mirror is now open.

Mirror Shards: The Mirror Between Larina Nichols and Larina Nix

Not every magical object starts as something valuable.

Some begin as a simple question.

A witch looks in the mirror and sees herself...but not the person standing in the room. She sees another life, another world, another version of the same soul. One that is older, stronger, stranger, and maybe even more dangerous.

For Advanced Witches & Warlocks, this mirror might be an ancient magical object, a way to see into the future or a risky way for witches to get in touch with alternate selves, echoes of their mentors or their future selves.

But for Jackson, Illinois, it's more personal. A teenage witch sees the woman she could become, or the woman she was somewhere else, or the woman who is protecting her from a fantasy world that shouldn't be real.

The mirror doesn't question in a straightforward way. That would be too simple.

It shows what could be.

It shows a warning.

It shows power.

And sometimes, when the room is dark and the house is quiet, the image in the mirror moves first.

I am focusing on this witch in particular because she has a pedigree. She was created as an AD&D character in 1986. She is my window into this liminal and reflected world. She was a playtest character for every version of the witch class I ever wrote, including AD&D and NIGHT SHIFT.

I have another post I am picking at, "What I Learned Playing the Same Character for 40 Years," and some of that insight feeds into this and vice versa. She is the test bed, as I have said before, my "Drosophila melanogaster" of these tests. When playing a game, I ask, "What would Larina do here?" When designing one, I ask, "How can I do Larina here?" Both questions have served me well over the last 4 decades.

There are a handful of witches, both characters and personalities, as well as more simple archetypes, that I use when testing any game I play and any game I write. Larina is the most forward-facing of these witches. She isn't the only one. Elowen still gets a lot of play, as does Moria, Amaranth, and others. But Larina has a lot of history, both in games and in the real world.

A Mirror Shard in both games is a means to communicate with other versions of yourself. Or other versions of others. It is a sneaky little device I have thrown into my games when I want to try out one version of a character in another's universe. Valerie Beaumont is a regular abuser of these mirror shards. She isn't even my character, and she keeps crashing into my games.

Which brings up an interesting point.

In Advanced Witches & Warlocks, the "mirror shards" are the magic items connected to the magical mirrors.

In Jackson, IL, "mirror shards" are the people you see in the mirror that are not you.

Both developed from the same fundamental idea and then took on different meanings in my writing. I don't really feel the need to reconcile these differences. Different games. Different universes. But there is something fairly evocative about calling these characters mirror shards.

Larina is a mirror shard. Valerie is a mirror shard. Even someone like Jenny Everywhere is a mirror shard.

Three mirror shards meet in a bar in Soho.

Greg: "I feel sorry for the guy who tries to buy them a drink!"

Candy and Denise in Jackson, IL, are mirror shards of Candella and Duchess in Glantri. Or is that the other way around?

It is because they are "mirror shards" that they heard the Bell in Jackson, IL, when only supernatural creatures heard it. They are not supernatural, but they are special.

An out-of-game idea for one is giving me an in-game solution for another.

I have quite a lot more to say on all of this.

Friday, May 1, 2026

Flashback Friday: Color Computer fun

I just picked up a new Color Computer hardware emulator to go along with my various software emulators. As seen here:

This new one only does Color Computer programs since it is hardware emulation.

So far, it is pretty great.

Currently copying over files, including my BARD AD&D Combat Emulator. And I even have some characters ready to go.

Yes, that is Larina and Johan up there. Larina is a 5th-level witch/1st-level wizard in 1991.

I can't help but think she looks like this.

Which means a Jackson, IL video game would look like this!

You can almost hear the 8-bit music for them as they walk!

Any of those images takes up more memory than the Color Computer 3 originally had! 128k out of the box, 512k upgradable and 2meg with after market upgrades.

Thinking of gutting my other CoCo Pi 4 and putting this little machine in as its new brain. I don't really need another Linux-running Pi machine when I have my TRS-80 Pi. Plus I can put some of the hardware into my TRS-80. I'll have to 3D print some new things for them both, and get some different hardware bits, but it could be fun. A Color Computer case that runs a hardware-emulated Color Computer 3.

I should start writing ALL my Jackson, IL posts on it!

Thursday, April 30, 2026

This Old Dragon: Issue #93

I am opting to take this one first for a few reasons. One, I really wanted to go through all the Dragons from 1985-86 for my personal enjoyment. I also wanted to cover this one since I pulled it out for the cover when I talked about Jack Williamson's contributions to the Witches of Appendix N. This also gave me my third reason. This issue is falling apart, and what remains is mildewed and water-damaged. So I figure I'd better do it before it kills me with my allergies. So for this review, I'll take some pictures, but mostly I'll stick with my Dragon Magazine CD-ROM collection.

As I mentioned already, I want to do a deep dive into all the Dragons from 1985 to 1986, with some choice ones from 1984 and 1987. This one is a great place to start with the January 1985 issue.

I also mentioned Jeff Busch's cover yesterday. Just one in a series of were-tigresses, but this is one of the best.

Letters cover previous Dragon entries on the Height & Weight and the Crystalbrittle spell.

Gygax is up asking us if we would see a Dungeons & Dragons movie. I think we know the answer to that one. If it has Jeremy Irons, then no, if it has Chris Pine, then yes. Keep in mind that Chris Pine was 4 (4 and a half if you asked him) at the time this issue came out.

Our first substantial article is from no less than Gary Gygax himself, titled Life Beyond 15th Level. New Rules for Druids with Nowhere to Go. Covers the hierophant druid we will later see in the Unearthed Arcana.

Gygax is up again in a rebuttal to the fundamentalists out there raging against D&D in Thinking for Yourself. I can't think of many Dragon readers who would be swayed by fundies. But this is Gygax's soapbox, and he can tell people what he wants. I am not sure about the timing, but the infamous 60 Minutes segment will run in September. Likely, it was not filmed yet, but there was plenty going on. Egbert had died in 1980. Mazes and Monsters had hit TV in 1982.

Arthur Collins has his "The Making of a Milieu. How to Start a World and Keep it Turning" about building a fantasy world. This is largely material we all do now, start small, build up, reject what doesn't work. He recommends building history into the world through layered maps and letting place names, borders, and institutions arise organically from that history. I am not sure about the NPC "mentor" per se, but guiding NPCs is a good idea. Something Ed Greenwood has done to great effect.

Speaking Ed, he is up with an Ecology of article, The Ecology of the Eye of the Deep. Now these never get old for me, really. In fact, I tend to enjoy them more now than I ever used to. They are also, for the most part, still useful regardless of what edition you are playing.

Short Hops and Big Drops: Here's How Far and How High Characters Can Jump by Stephen Inniss is another good one really. It's not a bad system and again, looks like something that would work for any system, not just D&D.

Another article that still gets mentions today is Frank Mentzer's Ay pronunseeAYshun gyd: An Informal Index of the Right Things to Say. This one comes up every so often and is the "go to" guide for pronunciations for all sorts of D&D-related entries.

Merle Rasmussen is up with another Top Secret article, Agencies and Alignments. The varied groups of the TOP SECRET Game. The article catalogs the various intelligence agencies, criminal organizations, and terrorist groups that player characters might work for or against. Each organization is described through a standardized set of categories, including headquarters, founding date, activities, objectives, and allies. The article also introduces an alignment system that measures agents' political, change-oriented, and economic beliefs on a spectrum, which can affect how well agents from different organizations cooperate during missions. The groups range from legitimate Western intelligence bodies like The Agency and HEARTS, to criminal syndicates like Hydra and The Cartel, to radical terrorist organizations like Red Dawn. I remember this article well. I thought these might be good for Chill, a game I was really getting into at the time, and was looking for agencies like S.A.V.E.

Lots of full-page ads for the new Twilight: 2000 RPG.

The Gypsy Train. A Moving Scenario for AD&D Game Play. Designed be Richard Fichera and artwork by Bob Marus. This is great adventure with a great hook. My son is running a Ravenloft campaign now, and this is rather perfect. There are even cut-outs of the various wagons to use! The NPCs are not all designed to be enemies to the PCs or evil, and are presented with a variety of motivations and things they can do. Fairly detailed for a Dragon adventure.

Eira is our short fiction by Josepha Sherman.

Big ad for the Dungeons & Dragons 10th Anniversary pack. I wish I had grabbed one of these. According to Frank Mentzer, a lot of these ended up in a Lake Geneva landfill.

Up now our Ares sci-fi section.

Friend of the Other Side, Jeff Grubb, is up with the Marvel Phile with more Avengers. In this issue, Mockingbird and Shroud, who feels like an occult Batman.

Space Opera gets some love with New Ships for Old from Stefan Jones. Or how to update your old starships. I remember trying to use this with Star Frontiers.

Peter C. Zelinski has New Brotherhoods minor cryptic alliances for Gamma World. I used this in conjunction with the Top Secret article for some Chill groups. I remember writing all of them out and trying to find a common format I could use. Don't recall how far I got. Not all worked, but there was a lot of ideas here.

Speaking of which, nice ad for Chill.

Star Frontiers gets a nice feature on farming. Rare Wines and Ready Cash. Agricultural Trade in the Frontier by Tony Watson is actually a pretty useful article. We think of starships and space battles, but an army and colonists move on their stomachs, and food needs to be grown.

Gamers' Guide as our small ads. Not a lot in this issue.

The Convention Calendar is also pretty small. No shock, really, it was January.

Four full-color pages of Wormy. A page of Dragonmirth. And three pages of Snarf Quest.

I managed to get through this one without Benadryl, which is a win. The issue is a good one, lots of great and memorable material.

While hindsight tells me this was the beginning of the end of the Gygax-era of D&D/TSR there is nothing here to make me think that we knew this was coming back then. Are there signs? Yeah, if you know what you are looking for OR maybe that is just confirmation bias.

But I can say this, we are entering into an era of Dragon that over the next 4 to 5 years will produce some of the best content for long-time gamers. People might call that time the Silver Age, but there is nothing "Second Best" about the content of Dragon in the issues to come.