Urban Fantasy Fridays: Witch Girls Adventures 2nd Edition

A special Urban Fantasy Fridays today. This would have been great for October, but I didn't get it in time to squeeze in a game for October. My October was already packed anyway.

I have a long history with Witch Girls Adventures.

I first reviewed the original game back in 2009 and called it one of my new favorite systems. At the time, I said it was a great mix of modern occult, anime, fantasy, and high-school drama, and that the magic system alone was worth the price of admission. I followed that up with a bunch of character conversions, including Willow and Tara, Zatanna, Elizabeth Bathory, Prince Mamuwalde, and more. I even used Witch Girls Adventures as the basis for other settings, like School Bites.

In 2014, I reviewed Witch Girls Adventures: The Director's Cut, which I more or less considered a 1.5 edition. I still liked the game, but I had two wishes. I wanted the promised second edition, and I really wanted the game to get another editing pass.

You can read those reviews here:

• Witch Girls Adventures, 1st edition
• Witch Girls Adventures: The Director's Cut

I am coming back to Witch Girls after a long break. I finally got my 2nd Edition in the mail recently (previously known as Witch Girls Adventures: Book of Shadows) and figured I'd give it another spin.

This new edition is still aimed primarily at new players, and girls in particular. Indeed, I would say Harris's main point is to introduce younger players to role-playing games. Witch Girls Adventures is the entry point, and then there is the rest of his Relentless Fiction line, including his Modern Mythology Supers RPG.

Honestly. It is a fine business model, and having followed him online a bit, I think he's seen some success with it. While I will very likely visit his Modern Mythology line in the future, today I want to back to Witch Girls and the Willow-Mistt School, or as one of my characters kept saying, Willow-Misty.

Witch Girls Adventures 2nd Edition

2009-2010 (Channel M), 2022 (Relentless Fiction) by Malcolm Harris.
175 pages, +12 pages for the comics (187 pages)

For this review, I am considering my print copy (Amazon) and PDF (DriveThruRPG).

The basic premise remains wonderfully simple. You play young witches growing up in a world where magic, monsters, supernatural societies, and magical schools are all real. The rest of the world might not know all that (The Mundanes, the same term used in the WitchCraft RPG), but they are there. 

I want to be upfront: there aren't many substantive changes between editions of Witch Girls Adventures. This is both a positive and negative thing for me. On the plus side, all the previous books I bought and character builds I made still work with this newer edition. Getting back up to speed was pretty quick, too.

On the downside, I expected more updates and bigger changes. I guess don't mess with what works, and yeah, Witch Girls Adventures still works.

Chapter 1. The book opens with 10 pages of the Witch Girls Adventures comic to set the game's tone and mood. This is the same as previous editions. My advice here comes from my previous review: "Take it as it is, not as you want it to be, and you will have fun too."

The book continues with a typical introduction to what a roleplaying game is, written for a young or teen girl audience. The intro continues with some terms used for both the game and RPGs.

It makes an odd left turn to give us optional rules (we haven't had any rules yet for these to be optional to) about how to run a "Harry Potter" like game with this. Eh. Nice, but this should have come last, not first. I still think this would have worked better as an appendix. Rereading Willow-Mistt in the later chapters also has very, very important feature. Willow-Mistt makes more sense than Hogwarts. I once enjoyed the Harry Potter books and movies. But it begins to collapse under the weight of its own absurdity after a bit. Willow-Mistt? The "absurdity" is baked in and for that reason it feels different. Below I compare more favorably to Mutant's & Masterminds' Claremont Academy than. Punch list for the next edition: move the "Larry Spotter" stuff to an appendix or drop it altogether. That text space can be used to give us more Willow-Mistt and thats why I am here.

Chapter 2 gives us "Cliques." In another game, these would be "Factions" or "Classes" or even "Traditions" or "Associations" or "Backgrounds", but given the Middle-school/High-school this is perfect. Cliques basically give your starting dice and what skills you are likely to have. The system is very easy. The dice system (The Drama Dice system as it is called) quickly reminds one of Classic Cortex or Savage Worlds. Attributes are scored d2 to d12 for most types. The spread even looks the same as Cortex and Savage Worlds. Not surprisingly, after all, it is a logical progression. You have six attributes: Body (which combines strength, agility, and stamina), Mind (intelligence), Senses, Will, Social, and Magic. Right away, you see there is only one body type attribute but four mental ones. This is the way it should be really, WGA is not about beating people up, it is about the social aspects of the game and about magic, our last attribute. Some secondary attributes are derived. Rolls are made depending on the dice vs a difficulty table very similar to d20 or Unisystems' success levels. Cliques are detailed and they are your basic magical girl stereotypes (the Goth, the insider, the outsider…). Plenty here to work with, and if you are so inclined, create your own (which is what the "Larry Spotter" bit tries to do).

I like the Cliques. I have been using "Cliques" (the more generic 1980s version) in my own games for years. An Insider moves comfortably between magical and mundane society. An Outsider has only recently discovered the magical world. A Rustic comes from an isolated place and often has connections to nature or spirits. A Gothique has embraced the popular image of witchcraft, whether or not that image has much to do with actual Witch culture.

Selling point for this as an introductory game: You get to roll different kinds of dice for anything that is attribute-based. Rolling a d6 for everything is dull. But rolling a d6 for one thing and a d10 or d8 for another? That kind of engagement keeps D&D popular. It works well for Savage Worlds, and honestly it works better here. 

Chapter 3 moves on to skills. Each chapter has some fiction to introduce you to the Witch Girls world. It seems like a mix of Charmed, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Buffy, and The Craft, blended with anime magical girls. Skills. Unlike Classic Cortex or Savage Worlds, skills have a + score, like Unisystem or d20. Roll the die associated with the attribute (each skill is connected to an attribute like d20) add the bonus the skill provides, check your success, or roll greater. There are 34 mundane skills and 10 magical skills. They cover most areas you would expect. I don't need a lot here. Skills work exactly as you expect. This is another selling point for this as an introductory game. The math is easy and, more importantly, it is fast and makes sense. 

Chapter 4 covers Traits, which are like Edges or Qualities. They are broken up into Talents (which you can get later in life) and Heritages (which are inborn and never change). Heritages have both positive and negative aspects. Typical ones include "Beautiful," and others are unique to this game, like "Drama Queen" and "Hags Syndrome."

Chapters 2, 3, and 4 are all well detailed and very straightforward.

Chapter 5 is Magic. Magic was my favorite part of the original game. It still is.

This chapter explains a lot more about what magic is and what it means to a witch. You can spend points on different types of magic (Alteration, Conjuration, Curse, Cybermancy, Divination, Elementalism, Healing, Illusion, Mentalism, Necromancy, Offense, Protection, and Time and Space) to improve your rank. This can provide a lot of variance between witches. Think of it as somewhere between Harry Potter's classes and Mage's spheres. As GM (a Director in WGA), I might limit some of these to NPCs (Guest Stars), not PCs (Stars). Spellcasting is broken down into a lot of detail. More than a seasoned gamer might need, but for the audience, it might be about right. Effects are broken out into Magic Type Rank (MTR), and the overall feel is like a table you might see in Mage or Mutants & Masterminds with what MTR (read as Power level) you need to achieve a certain effect. Want to cast that spell across the world? Better have an MTR of 9.

Spellcasting uses the Casting skill against a difficulty or the target's Resist Magic. Spells cost Zap, with more powerful magic requiring more energy. Wands can reduce that cost, and every Witch can choose a Signature Spell that is easier and cheaper for her to cast. That is, take less Zap (read: Mana, Essence), choose only one, and from the "School" with your highest MTR (which makes sense, really). 

This is followed by 20+ pages of spells, and these are by no means all of them. Since your cast member (Star, remember) isn't going to buy swords, guns, or anything else characters spend money or points on, this is a good thing.

Chapter 6. Your Star gets an allowance, letting her buy things like magical computers, flying Vespas, and more brooms than Home Depot has. There are familiars, clothes, wings, and all sorts of magical equipment here, too. You could build an adventure around just shopping for these things, because I am sure getting them isn't as easy as going to the mall. Lots of neat wands, and I have to say the books for young witches are pretty funny ("Samantha's Guide to Merry Mortals," yeah, that made me laugh). And a bunch of mundane stuff like DVD players and skateboards. The allowance system is nice; I like it better than the Modern d20 purchase DCs, and it's easier than tracking cash.

Chapter 7 is a bit of odds and ends. It includes a character questionnaire (nice) and a filled-out character sheet (also nice). It explains what things mean, and if you are new to RPGs, it is good to read over.

Chapter 8 is for Directors, so it covers all the game rules. The system, some combat rules (yes this is the FIRST game I have seen where the rules for shopping are longer than the rules for combat. ;) )

Some nice background fluff and some ideas for different types of stories; basically, you can do Buffy, Good vs. Evil, Charmed, and Magic School. The experience system is "interesting" (Voodollars), but it looks like it works.

Chapter 9 is the world background. Now this one is kind of neat. It details the various races (witches are a different race), and they are not alone. 

We get Witch history, culture, magical government, the Witches' World Council, laws governing how Witches interact with Mundanes, supernatural organizations, magical schools, creatures, NPCs, adventure ideas, and quite a bit more. Even how the mundane world reacts to all of this. 

I particularly like the other schools section. I had hoped to see more about these in later books, but it hasn't really happened.

Chapter 10 presents some creatures. But if the art is any indication, most of these are not for combat purposes, but potential dates (well, there is only one witch kissing a vampire…). Nearly every kind of creature is covered, from fairies to Cthulhu-like horrors. But no demons. Seems a bit odd, given it all. Some notable NPCs (Guest Stars) are also mentioned.

Chapter 11 details the Willow-Mistt School. Willow-Mistt School of Magic is located in Willow-Brook, Maine. It has only forty-five students, which makes it feel more like a strange magical boarding school where everyone knows everyone else than some enormous fantasy academy. The school has its own rules, dormitories, classes, grounds, teachers, students, magical secrets, and nearby town. It is an immediately usable campaign setting.

Willow Mistt is not Hogwarts, but it is easy to make the comparisons. I actually found it closer to Claremont Academy from Mutants & Masterminds, a lot easier to get a grasp on what student life is really like. 

We close with a sample Episode, some plot ideas, a lexicon, and a list of Witch names; see how many you recognize!

Ok. Here we are a decade later with a new version, and what do we have?

Well. Harris obviously has a love for this genre, and it shows. The rules are well crafted, and while nothing here is earth-shaking, they are familiar mechanics done up in a very nice way. The point of view works well. This is anti-Grim-Dark. It's not all unicorns, princesses and kittens (though it does have all that), it's a fun game. The art is not Modern D&D, but it is good and more to the point very appropriate for this game.

For new players, this is a great little game. More experienced players may want more, but that is not due to the game itself, but rather expectations. Do not expect this to be "WitchCraft: The Junior High Years" (though you can do that).

I mention this because it needs to be addressed. But Malcolm. Please. Hire an editor and someone to help with layout. There is a comprehensive index, which is great, but it doesn't always have the right page numbers. Spend the money. 

The introductory terminology, for example, lists the basic attributes as Body, Mind, Senses, Social, and Zap. The actual rules correctly use Body, Mind, Senses, Will, Social, and Magic. This is likely a holdover from a previous draft or a simple typo. But this is the third printing/edition of the game. 

The Oracle Heritage says that increasing a d6 Mind by one die type raises it to d4, which is obviously going in the wrong direction.

The optional rules for teenage Interns say to "Raise Will and either Will or Social Die by one." I can interpret that literally as one Will increase followed by another increase to either Will or Social, but the wording leaves room for doubt. Can I raise Will twice? Or Will and something else?

Even the Magic Types list leaves out Illusion, despite the book containing an entire Illusion spell section and NPCs with ranks in Illusion.

None of these problems make the game unplayable. But they matter. I can gloss over them in character gen or play.  

They matter especially because Witch Girls Adventures presents itself as a game that can introduce new players to roleplaying. Experienced gamers can look at the Oracle entry and immediately recognize what it was meant to be. A twelve-year-old making her first RPG character should not have to reverse-engineer the rules.

Hell. I have made characters for "The World of Synnibarr"; a stray typo isn't going to phase me. But a new player might be frustrated, and that is worse than someone hating on the game because they don't like witches. A frustrated player never plays again. 

I write a lot. I make spelling mistakes. I make grammar mistakes. I occasionally write a sentence that makes perfect sense to me because I know what I meant, only to discover later that nobody else could possibly have known what I meant. I do this far more often that I care to admit or like. 

So I use tools.

Some of those tools are free. Some I pay professional licensing fees for. I use them because they catch what I miss, and because the finished product is better after going through another set of eyes, even if some of those "eyes" happen to be software.

The good people at Relentless Fiction should do the same.

What makes this frustrating is that the underlying material deserves better.

The mechanics are fun. The setting has personality. Oh, there is so much personality here! The magic system remains one of my favorite parts of the game. The characters are memorable. Willow-Mistt is immediately usable.

Another serious editing pass would not change what Witch Girls Adventures is.

It would make it much easier to see how good it already is.

Summer Enrichment Program at Willow-Mistt

In the Summer of 1981, I went on what was called a "Summer Enrichment Program" at MacMurray College. This will become important for future posts, but the spoiler is I had a chance to buy a copy of the Holmes Basic D&D set then, and I didn't because I already had a battered photocopied copy. Instead, I bought some Smurfs toys. In my defense, I was 10.

But that program for kids entering Jr. High introduced us to college courses. I had my first real chemistry course there, my first real computer course, and it gave me free access to all of MacMurray College's Campus. If I write anything at all about MacAlister College, chances are good it has a root in the early summer of 1981.

I figure my Jackson girls should have the same experience. 

Now I am not taking them back to 1981. Stephanie and Faye are friends, yeah, but they are about to have a big falling out. Stephanie and Vera HATE each other. Faye has her own problems with her abusive aunts. And Larina? Well, she is 200 miles away at this point. So 1981 won't work. But 1986 does! The girls all get invited to travel to Willow-Mistt (or Willow-Misty, Vera assures everyone) for what looks like "College Prep," but the truth is they have garnered the attention of the Witch Ruling Council (I'll get to that works...or not), and they are being offered two weeks of instruction in magic and to be observed.

They, along with their faculty sponser/chaperone Valerie Beaumont (who works AMAZING under WGA's Immortal rules), head to Willow-Misty, sorry, Willow-Mistt, for the two weeks from Monday, June 2, to Friday, June 13, 1986. Poor Stephanie has to spend her 17th birthday on the plane home.

Why Do This?

The first reason is that it is fun. And honestly, that is all the reason I need. But I was looking back over all my notes on Witch Girls Adventures, and the very, very beginning of what would become my Sunny Valley, OH campaign began in those notes. 

Plus, I wanted to see how modeling MY witch girls in this system would work.

Jackson, though, is 1980s modern hometown horror. Witch Girls is more urban fantasy meets Magic Girls meets supernatural fantasy. They share the same elements, but baked at different temperatures and with different results.

Also. I am still exploring game systems for Carbon Vale and need to find its identity other than "not Jackson."

And honestly, I don't get tired of exploring who these characters are. So, like my Jackson kids, let's get on a plane, fly out to Maine, and spend two weeks in June learning magic, Witch Girls Style.

For me, the best part of this exercise is picking out what Cliques and Magical Heritages they all have. NIGHT SHIFT has one witch class; Witch Girls Adventures provides a lot of customization. 

Stephanie Wren Vale

Age: 16 (turns 17 on June 14!)
DOB: June 14, 1969
Rank: Intern
Clique: Insider
Concept: Cheerleader, social bridge, naturally gifted witch

Attributes
Body D8+1
Mind D6
Senses D4
Will D8
Social D10
Magic D10

Secondary Attributes
Life Points 16
Reflex 10
Resist Magic 14
Zap Points 25

Talents: Friendly, Jock
Heritage: Attuned

Mundane Skills
Acrobatics +4
Athletics +4
Dancing +3
Drive +2
Leader +2
Mundane Etiquette +2
Bargain +1
Singing +1, Insider bonus

Magic Skills
Casting +5
Magical Etiquette +3, Insider bonus
Broom Riding +3
Focus +2
Mysticism +2
Enchantment +2
Potions +1

Magic
Mentalism 4
Protection 3
Offense 3
Divination 2
Alteration 2

Signature Spell: Telepathy

Faye Rose "Thornie" Thorne

Age: 17
DOB: Septemeber 1, 1969
Rank: Intern
Clique: Gothique
Concept: Occult rebel, practical dark witch

Attributes
Body D6
Mind D8
Senses D8
Will D10
Social D4
Magic D10

Secondary Attributes
Life Points 12
Reflex 9
Resist Magic 13
Zap Points 20

Talents: Creepy, Mysterious
Heritage: Hexer

Mundane Skills
Basics +3
Hear +3
Look +3
Pop Culture +3 (Music +4)
Streetwise +3
Mythology +2
Scare +1

Magic Skills
Casting +5
Mysticism +4
Focus +3
Herbalism +2
Cryptozoology +2
Spell Breaker +2

Magic
Curse 4
Necromancy 3
Mentalism 3
Offense 3
Divination 2
Protection 2

Signature Spell: Jinx

Larina Stephanie "Nix" Nichols

Age: 16
DOB: 10/25/1969
Rank: Intern
Clique: Rustic
Concept: Occult scholar, small-town witch, compulsive investigator

Attributes
Body D4
Mind D10+1
Senses D8
Will D8
Social D4
Magic D8

Secondary Attributes
Life Points 8
Reflex 7
Resist Magic 11
Zap Points 16

Talents: Brainiac, Geek
Heritage: Oracle

Mundane Skills
Basics +4
Mythology +3
Look +2
Hear +1
Science +1
Games +1 (Chess +2)

Magic Skills
Casting +4
Mysticism +4
Herbalism +2
Focus +1
Spell Breaker +1

Magic
Divination 4
Conjuration 2
Elementalism 2
Offense 2
Protection 2
Alteration 1

Signature Spell: Find
Common Spell: Zap

Vera Diane "Raven" Rook

Age: 17
DOB: 11/13/1968 (missed the school cut-off age, but never fails to remind everyone she is the oldest).
Rank: Intern
Clique: Outsider (she is a member of a magic family that has turned its back on magic)
Concept: Reluctant ally who discovers she enjoys all of this far too much

Attributes
Body D6
Mind D8
Senses D8+1
Will D8
Social D8
Magic D10

Secondary Attributes
Life Points 12
Reflex 10
Resist Magic 13
Zap Points 20

Talents: Busy Body, Brave
Heritage: The Sight

Mundane Skills
Basics +3
Drive +3
Hear +3
Look +3
Gossip +2
Mythology +2
Plucky +2
Scare +2
Mundane Etiquette +1, Outsider free skill
Streetwise +1, Outsider free skill

Magic Skills
Casting +5
Mysticism +4
Cryptozoology +3
Focus +2
Spell Breaker +2

Magic
Divination 4 (free rank due to Sight)
Mentalism 3
Protection 3
Curse 2
Time and Space 2
Illusion 2

Signature Spell: Scry
Common Spell: Glamour

Some of these are so good it makes me laugh. Vera the busybody always poked her nose in until finally Steph, Faye, and Larina just gave up trying to exclude her. Larina is not the most magically potent one here, but she is the smartest; this has always been her role. 

This also helped me solidify some of their birthdays.

So I really don't know what will happen at Willow-Mistt for the girls. I also don't know if the "Stars" are there. It would be a shame NOT to have them there. Besides, the chance for Stephanie and Princess Lucinda to draw swords, magically speaking, at each other? I mean, how can I say no?

Stephanie: "You might be a Princess, but I'm the fucking Queen!"
Vera: "Uh...Vale, do you know what that sounds like?"
Stephanie: "Don't start with me, Rook!"

So the rules support them very well. Very, very well in fact. And I can see having the same sorts of adventures with them in WGA as I do in NIGHT SHIFT. But Witch Girls Adventures is a very different sort of game than the world I have built. They are similar, to be sure; Malcolm and I read the same books, watch the same TV shows and movies, and I think we are about the same age. So this is all natural. But while a Summer Enrichment Program is nice, none of my characters are moving to Willow-Brook, Maine, anytime soon. 

I love the council of Witches, and let me tell you, I have IDEAS. But they are not something that works in my world. The world Jackson is in. Maybe my girls not only went to Maine, but a slightly different universe? I mean I can see this council wanting to look at these girls after the events of the Hollow King. Great for Witch Girls Adventures, less so for NIGHT SHIFT.

Given that this is the first big trip away from home on their own for the four of them (I mean Valerie as a chaperone?? "Ok, if you need it, I know 57 ways to get blood out of clothes. First one, 'always wear black.'"). Here is the song I can see all four of them singing together in their dorm.

They graduate and go off in different directions in just a year.

But if I went into this looking to understand these characters better, then it was a huge success.

Still. I am reminded of how much fun this game really is. 

I am looking forward to checking Modern Mythology now.

Building Jackson: Religion in Jackson

This is going to be part of a semi-recurring series set in Jackson, IL. While my other series, Mirror Mondays, focused on Jackson and Advanced Witches & Warlocks as mirrors of each other, viewed through the lens of 1986, this one will be more game-design-specific.

There will be mostly world-building items, things the setting has that other NIGHT SHIFT settings don't, plus some game mechanics. There is always a chance that another project will leak into this as well. There are things I have developed for Jackson that, on reflection, didn't work there, but worked great in, say, my Sunny Valley, OH setting or my Valhala, AL setting.

So let's start big. With God and Religion.

Dear God: Religion in Jackson

One of the things I have been exploring lately while developing my fictional Jackson, Illinois, is religion. Not just witchcraft and Wicca, though those are certainly important, but religion in general and the role it plays in the lives of the people who live there. Jackson is based on the real-life Jacksonville, Illinois, a town with a long religious history. Religion has also played an important role in education, community life, and local history almost since its founding. 

Now you might wonder why a self-professed and fairly vocal atheist like myself would concern himself with religion, let alone make it the inaugural post of this new series. Well, I hope that will become obvious. 

Jacksonville was established in 1825, and religious communities were among its earliest institutions. Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, and other denominations all established congregations during the town's early years. The founding of Illinois College (the real-world "Illinois Beecher College" in Jackson) in 1829 was closely connected to Presbyterian and Congregationalist religious movements, and the town's abolitionist history was influenced by religious convictions as well. Jacksonville even became known for an intersection where churches from four different denominations stood on the four corners.

The Four Corners

One of Jacksonville's more interesting religious landmarks is the famous Four Corners, the intersection of West State Street and Church Street where four different churches once stood. By 1986, only two of those original churches remained. First Baptist had burned in 1966, and State Street Presbyterian had been demolished in 1968. But that didn't erase the intersection's history or the influence those congregations had on the town. The buildings might be gone, but their legacy remained. So much so that I heard about it my entire life growing up. I certainly lived in the "after" era of those churches, but the mark they left on the town's psyche was deep and profound. 

It is not difficult to imagine how this history would carry over into my fictional Jackson. Churches would be among the oldest and most recognizable buildings in town. Generations of families would have attended the same congregations, and the churches would be connected to schools, charities, social clubs, and the everyday lives of the people who lived there.  I like that idea for Jackson, where so much of the past still influences the present, often in ways younger residents don't fully understand.  

But religion in Jackson is about more than buildings and institutions. It is about people and what they believe, or sometimes what they don't believe.

These churches also have more going on, as you'd expect in a horror game. While the real-world history of Jacksonville, with four major religious denominations all at the same intersection, is fascinating enough, Jackson has more to it. 

That research was enough to merit its own post later on. 

Religion in Jackson, 1986

As I have been developing the NPCs of Jackson, I have been thinking more about their religious backgrounds. I assume every character has some sort of religious background, even if they no longer practice, have rejected their childhood beliefs, or simply don't think much about religion at all. In a small Midwestern town in 1986, religion could be an important part of your family's identity whether you wanted it to be or not. This was absolutely true for mid-80s Jacksonville, and true for my Jackson.

Take the Vale family, for example. Stephanie, her older brother Grant, and family are all Lutherans, with connections to one of Jackson's older and more established congregations. The Vales are wealthy, and their family has been prominent in town for generations. They attend church because that is what is expected of them. Church attendance is as much a matter of social standing and appearances as it is personal faith. Stephanie knows the services, the hymns, and all the appropriate traditions, but that doesn't necessarily mean she believes everything she hears. Stephanie is also a witch, so she has a different relationship with the supernatural than her co-congregants. 

The Thompson family is different. Anderson Thompson's family has an Episcopal background, but they don't go to church except for Christmas and Easter. They aren't necessarily opposed to religion. It simply isn't part of their regular lives. Rowan McGowan, Andy's girlfriend, comes from a strong Presbyterian family, and I see her taking her faith more seriously. That sense of duty, responsibility, and doing what is right will become especially interesting as Rowan develops into a Spirit Rider. Rowan certainly has a cross necklace she will wear when the mood strikes her, but avoids wearing while working in the stables. 

Valentino Moreno is Catholic, as are Roderick Morgan and Moria Zachary. Catholicism also provides the background for the Moretti family and, of course, Sister Lucille, a mysterious nun who plays an important role in my Broken Wings adventure. In Lucille's case, her faith is particularly interesting because she is a succubus who has chosen a path very different from what her demonic nature might suggest. Her religious convictions are sincere, and she genuinely tries to live by them. The Moreno's and the Moretti's are what I like to think of as "Old World" Catholics. They have a very serious devotion that has shapped how their families live.

Candy Mercer and Denise Carver come from Christian backgrounds, though neither is especially active in religion. Both might wear a cross necklace when they feel like it, more out of habit than anything else. 

Kyra Bellamy is another matter entirely. Kyra is Baptist and attends the Old Landmark Baptist Church, my fictional counterpart to Jacksonville's historic Mount Emory Baptist Church. Her faith is important to her, and she always wears a cross. For Kyra, religion isn't just something she inherited from her family. It is a genuine part of how she understands the world and her place in it. Kyra is one of those kids who loves her church and everyone in it, and she is one of those rare people for whom religion makes her a better person. 

Vera Rook is Jewish, which gives her a different religious and cultural background from many of her classmates. Vera also wears a pentagram, but that does not mean she is Wiccan. Her fascination with the occult and her Jewish heritage are separate parts of her identity. Likewise, Faye Thorne wears a pentagram, but her relationship with witchcraft, religion, and her own identity is very different from either Vera's or Larina's. Faye's religion is what I like to call the "Keyser Söze" point of view. She doesn't know if there is a God or not, but she knows the Devil is real. 

Kyra and Vera are prime examples of what I am working on here. Both girls identify with their religion on a deep, personal level. They both have disagreements (of a different sort) with their fathers, but both also deeply love their respective congregations. Kyra loves her Church, and she feels alive there. Vera could spend all night Friday drinking and partying, and she would still get to her synagogue on Saturday. She might sit in the way back and wear sunglasses the entire time, but she will be there. 

And then there is Larina Nichols.

The Ghost of Morris

Larina (reading): "Hic locus mortuorum est."
Vera: "Is that some Christian thing I don't get because I am Jewish?"
Larina: "No, it's Latin. And I am not Christian either; I'm Wiccan."
Vera: "There is hope for you yet, Nichols."
Laria: "It says, 'This place belongs to the dead.'"
Vera: "Ok. Less hopeful now."

Larina is Wiccan. More specifically, she follows a form of eclectic Wicca that she developed herself over several years. Her religion predates her arrival in Jackson and, importantly, predates her association with Stephanie and Faye.

Beginning when she was thirteen, Larina spent a great deal of time at Morris Library at Southern Illinois University in Carbon Vale (the mirror of real-life Carbondale), where her father was a professor. She was this little redheaded goth girl who would quietly slip into the library and disappear among the books on witchcraft, mythology, and religion. She tried not to attract attention, though the librarians knew perfectly well she was there. They thought she was cute and eventually nicknamed her "the Ghost of Morris Library."

The Ghost of Morris Library

Larina read everything she could get her hands on. Gerald Gardner, Doreen Valiente, Margot Adler, Margaret Murray, Raymond Buckland, and academic works on religion and folklore all contributed to her developing understanding of Wicca. She compared traditions, questioned what she read, and gradually put together a religious practice that made sense to her. Her Wicca was influenced by Gardnerian practices, feminist Goddess spirituality, and her growing interest in Celtic mythology, but she didn't belong to any formally established tradition.

At some point before moving to Jackson, Larina performed her own solitary Wiccan initiation. This wasn't an initiation into an established Gardnerian or Alexandrian lineage. It was a personal religious commitment, something she had researched, planned, and undertaken herself.

So when Larina tells Vera Rook in 1986, "I'm Wiccan," she isn't experimenting with an identity or trying to shock anyone. She knows exactly what she means. She has already spent years exploring her beliefs and practicing her religion.

When Raymond Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft, the famous "Big Blue Book," appears in 1986, Larina reads through it with considerable interest and, I am certain, plenty of opinions. She appreciates the organized approach to learning witchcraft and its accessibility to solitary practitioners, but she has already developed her own practices. Buckland isn't introducing her to Wicca. He is providing her with another perspective to consider, agree with, or argue against.

And knowing Larina, I suspect her copy would soon be filled with notes in the margins.

Something else is important here. Being a witch and being Wiccan are not the same thing. This is a distinction I have maintained in my AD&D witch material, and it carries over into NIGHT SHIFT. Being a witch concerns what Larina is, what she can do, and her understanding and practice of occult magic. Being Wiccan concerns what she believes, her relationship with the divine, and how she chooses to live her life. They are separate things, but for Larina they are deeply related and connected.

Not every witch in Jackson is Wiccan, and not every Wiccan in Jackson has supernatural powers. Larina is the case where she is both. 

As Larina gets older, she becomes even more deeply connected to her faith. In 1986, she is still establishing and expressing her religious identity. She wears a triple moon Goddess necklace with a pentagram in the center of the full moon, celebrates the Sabbats, and is quite willing to explain or defend her beliefs. Decades later, her Wicca is less about outward declarations and more about lived experience. Her faith informs how she treats others, understands the natural world, and deals with life, death, and the supernatural.

She doesn't become less Wiccan as she gets older. She becomes more deeply Wiccan. Just less vocal about it.

Her experience is not made up whole cloth. It mirrors my own experiences in creating a witch class.

An Outsider Looking In

My own experience with religion has largely been that of an outsider looking in. I grew up as an atheist in an extremely religious town, one well known for its churches. Religion was everywhere, from the buildings and institutions to the people I knew and the everyday rhythms of community life. It was something I understood as part of the world around me, even though I didn't personally believe in it. I have often joked I was kicked out of the Boy Scouts for being an atheist, but the truth was that my points of view and beliefs were not compatible with the Boy Scouts of America past the age of 10.

Oddly enough, or maybe not so oddly, I frequently played religious characters in Dungeons & Dragons. Clerics, paladins, and, of course, witches. I enjoyed exploring characters whose faith was important to them, even when that faith was very different from what I believed. Religion could inform their worldview, their relationships, their sense of morality, and the choices they made. It was part of what made them interesting characters.

That same curiosity followed me into my research on witches. When I started working on a witch character class for AD&D, I spent a lot of time sitting in libraries reading everything I could find about witchcraft, mythology, folklore, and religion. I wasn't searching for a religion of my own. I was trying to understand these traditions well enough to create a witch class that was something more than a magic-user with a different spell list.

I read about historical witchcraft, the witch trials, pre-Christian religious practices, and modern Wicca. I compared what different authors had to say, looked for common elements, and tried to decide what would translate into the rules and assumptions of AD&D. I wanted my witches to feel like witches, drawing from folklore and religious traditions rather than simply being another variety of spellcaster.

Years later, when I began developing Larina's history, I gave her this similar experience.

There we were, both sitting in libraries, reading many of the same books about witchcraft and religion, trying to construct something from what we had learned. But we were pursuing very different goals. I was trying to create a witch class for AD&D. Larina was trying to construct her own Wiccan faith.

Where I was looking at religion from the outside, Larina was finding her way into it. I was trying to understand witchcraft well enough to write about it, while Larina was trying to understand Wicca well enough to live it.

My original witch class has changed considerably over the decades, eventually becoming part of Advanced Witches & Warlocks. Larina's understanding of her faith has also grown and changed. Neither of us abandoned what we began in those libraries. We continued to learn, reconsider our assumptions, and deepen our understanding.

Faith in a World Where Monsters Are Real

Religion takes on another dimension in Jackson because the supernatural is real.

Demons exist. Ghosts exist. Witches possess actual magical powers. Ancient beings people have worshipped as gods still exist. But knowing these things doesn't automatically answer religion's larger questions. The existence of a demon doesn't prove every religious teaching about demons, and meeting something that claims to be a god doesn't necessarily mean that being deserves worship.

Or as Faye Thorne might remind us, just because there is something out there claiming to be the devil doesn't mean there is a God.

For some characters, encounters with the supernatural challenge their religious convictions. For others, those encounters deepen them. Roderick Morgan's Catholicism, for example, provides one framework for understanding demons and possession, but he also approaches supernatural events through investigation and scholarship. Ghosts are not the spirits of the dead to him, they are psychic manifestations that are no more the original person than a reflection or photograph is.

Coach Kiera Moreau, with her ancient supernatural heritage, has a religious outlook rooted in a world far older than modern Christianity. The Blackthorne Hags practice a form of old Paganism that is very different from Larina's modern eclectic Wicca. Sylvia Velasco and Natasha Wilcox have complicated relationships with religion, magic, and the supernatural, shaped by experiences most ordinary people could scarcely imagine.

Then there is the relationship between Larina Nichols and Kyra Bellamy.

In 1985-6, Kyra is genuinely afraid of Larina. She has been raised in a Baptist church, and much of what she has been taught about witchcraft gives her reason to fear, or at least distrust, someone like Larina. Larina, meanwhile, knows that her own religion is widely misunderstood, and she doesn't particularly enjoy being treated as something evil simply because she is a witch. This was important to me since ANY NPC in the game can be an ally or enemy, or something in between. 

If your characters befriend Kyra first (and why not! She is a super nice kid), Larina is going to be that "new kid who brought evil witchcraft to town." If your characters befriend Valentino first, then Larina is "that scary girl," and Kyra is that "goody two-shoes preacher's kid." This is why I have so many NPCs and spend so much detailing them.

But years later (in the "Class Reunion" adventure I am planning), the two women develop a much better understanding of one another. Kyra sees Larina repeatedly demonstrate compassion, courage, and a willingness to help people regardless of who they are. Larina sees those same qualities in Kyra, whose Christian faith inspires her to live a life of service and kindness.

Neither woman converts to the other's religion. Neither has to abandon her beliefs or pretend that their theological differences don't exist. Instead, they come to recognize one another as positive representatives of their respective faiths.

Kyra still wears her cross. Larina still wears her triple moon and pentagram. Neither has changed what she believes, but both have changed how they understand the woman wearing the other symbol.

And I think that is important.

Religion and Character

I don't want religion in Jackson to be a simple matter of deciding which characters go to church and which ones don't. Nor do I want religious affiliation to serve as shorthand for whether someone is good or evil. I also certainly don't want it to be a line on the character sheet that needs filling out. Well. Not just a line. I want it to mean somthing to that charcter even if it just says "None."

Some of my characters are deeply religious, some are only nominally so, and others have beliefs that would be considered strange or even frightening by their neighbors. The Vales attend church because society expects it. The Thompsons don't attend because they don't feel they need to. Kyra's Baptist faith is deeply important to her, and she would never be anywhere else on Sunday. Vera's Jewish heritage is part of her identity, even as she explores occult ideas. Larina is a witch whose Wiccan faith grows more important as she gets older.

They are all different, and those differences matter.

Religion in Jackson influences how people see themselves, how they understand the world, and how they respond when confronted with things that challenge their beliefs. It can be a source of comfort, conflict, courage, community, or fear. Sometimes it brings people together, and sometimes it drives them apart.

And that is true whether the monsters are real or not.

When I think back to my younger self sitting in the Jacksonville Public Library trying to figure out how to write witches for AD&D, and then imagine thirteen-year-old Larina Nichols sitting in Morris Library trying to figure out what it meant to be Wiccan, I see the same curiosity reflected in both of us. We wanted to understand something that fascinated us, even though we were approaching it from very different perspectives.

I didn't have to become Wiccan to write Larina as someone whose Wiccan faith is genuine and important. I don't have to be Baptist to understand why Kyra's Christianity matters to her, or Catholic to appreciate the significance of Sister Lucille's devotion or Val's lived-in faith. I just have to take their beliefs seriously and allow those beliefs to shape who they are.

Because ultimately, that is what makes these characters real to me, and hopefully real to you.

You don't have to believe what your characters believe. You have to believe that they believe it.

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
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