Back in May, when I put out the first of my Mirror Monday pieces, I was preoccupied with two projects: Advanced Witches & Warlocks and Jackson, IL. I called that first post "Two Books, One Spell," and it was highly appropriate. I still think it is a pretty good description of what I was doing. One book was about what the Witch should look like in AD&D. The other was about what it would actually be like to be a witch, particularly a teenage witch, in 1986.
I made the case then that the two were informing each other. If anything, the case is stronger today.
The fundamental question for each remains unchanged: what does a witch look like through a 1986 lens? With Advanced Witches & Warlocks, I am after the kind of Witch class and occult mechanics that would have been at home with the AD&D books I was running back then. With Jackson, I take Larina, Stephanie, Faye, and company, and consider their type of witchcraft: the old school building is your dungeon, the road out of town is the wilderness, and a curious volume from the library is all the occult knowledge you have.
Those sound like very different questions and lines of inquiry. They are not.
Two Books, One Spell, Again
My job on Advanced Witches & Warlocks is to put on my old-school game designer hat. What sets the Witch apart from a Druid or an Illusionist? What are her spells and her limitations? How do you handle covens, pacts, rituals, and familiars? AD&D demands answers, if not always perfectly drawn ones. But *I* need to be able to say how something works or why the witch can’t do it. The distinction between her magic and the Arcane or Divine must be more than just something in my notes.
Jackson allows for some ambiguity, which is often preferable in horror. Larina has no use for the percentage odds of a ritual’s success. There is no spell list on Stephanie’s character sheet when she steps in front of a friend to shield them from danger. And Faye doesn’t care to know which page of the rulebook details what the Blackthorne Hags have done to her soul.
But I do need to know. Or have some idea of it, at any rate.
In that respect, Advanced Witches & Warlocks has been of great service to me in writing Jackson. It compels me to get under the hood of the supernatural. Where is the power coming from? Why can one witch do what another can't? Is it inherited or given? What are the terms of a bargain with something beyond her? Jackson can let the characters wonder about such things while the other project makes me think about what is going on behind the curtain.
Then again, the dynamic is not one way.
What Jackson Has Taught My Witches
This has been a big one. I am not sure I can adequately capture what I have learned over the last few months.
I have been at this long enough to have written witches for most of my life, longer than some of my readers have been around. Over the years, I have put pen to paper (or, more to the point, fingers to keyboards) for Basic-era games, AD&D, d20, Unisystem, NIGHT SHIFT, and many others in between. In the course of that work, I have produced Witch classes, traditions, spells, and monsters; I have written Witch Queens and more than my share of demons, enough to last a few lifetimes.
Jackson keeps reminding me that witches are people.
It is a painfully obvious statement, but one game design has a habit of making you overlook. It is all too simple to view a Witch as a collection of class abilities: at this level she has this spell, at that one she has those restrictions on her magic items, and so on. When I am crafting an AD&D-compatible class, these details are vital, yet they say little about who she is.
Jackson makes me deal with the questions in a different order.
Who was her teacher? Who can she trust? And when things go horribly wrong, who does she call? What does she make of her own magic? What is her friends' reaction when they are afraid of what she is capable of, or, worse, how does she handle being afraid of it herself?
I have let some of those considerations seep back into Advanced Witches & Warlocks. A coven is no longer just an organization bestowing abilities; I think about what it means for a witch to have a place to belong. Pacts have real consequences rather than simply being a way to "gain power X." And a familiar is a relationship, not a list of bonuses with fur.
Jackson has been adept at getting me to consider why a Witch would act a certain way, not merely if the rules permit it. The reverse is true as well. Putting together the AD&D Witch has made me examine Jackson with a critical eye. Larina, Stephanie and the rest cannot do as they please because "witchcraft" demands it. If anything can happen at any moment, magic ceases to be magical and is little more than an excuse. There is value in limits and costs; they give weight to a choice.
The two projects end up correcting one another.
And so to Land of Confusion.
Welcome to the Land of Confusion
I have mentioned the Land of Confusion adventure before; if somewhat obliquely. The basic idea is exactly the sort of thing that happens when I am left unsupervised with my own characters for too long. With my villain Darren's help, the folks from Jackson have been transplanted into a proper Dungeons & Dragons world.
Yes. As in "Hey, look, A Dungeons & Dragons ride!"
Not some D&D-ified version of Jackson with orcs out by Sal’s Pizza. An actual fantasy world.
In that sense, Land of Confusion is the most straightforward crossover I have done between Jackson and Advanced Witches & Warlocks. I have taken people built to confront supernatural horror in 1986 small-town Illinois and put them where the assumptions of AD&D are fact.
This creates a problem I find absolutely irresistible.
Strip away Jackson Public High School, Paula’s Book Store, Strawberry Fields, the telephones, and the cassette tapes, and what is left of Larina Nichols? Or Stephanie, for that matter? Rowan? Vera? Candy?
The easy answer is to convert their character sheets. I mean, many of these characters began as D&D characters. Give them classes, assign some ability scores, figure out their equipment, and move on. I am doing all of that, naturally. I am a game designer. Stat blocks are one of the ways I amuse myself. But the easy answer is not the interesting one.
What I want to know is what makes the journey through the mirror.
When the Reality of Magic Is Common Knowledge
I find there is a certain distinction that is worth noting. In Jackson, magic is kept under wraps. You could say it is not the best-kept secret in some quarters, but for the most part people live their lives with the firm belief that witches and demons and the like are figments of the imagination. Should something odd occur, social mores will see to it that an alternative explanation is found. It is, in every sense of the word, Occult.
This is what gives Jackson its character; the inhabitants are privy to truths the rest of the world is not.
Put those same characters in an AD&D setting and the dynamic changes. Everyone is aware of magic. The fellow at the tavern table next to you could be a bona fide Magic-User. The priest in his temple has the power to heal with a touch. An old woman on the edge of the village might curse you if she is so inclined. There are monsters in the woods, and the local lord would have no qualms about publically putting a price on their heads for any adventurer willing to do the job.
Which raises the question: what is it that makes Larina stand out?
It is a good question, and one that brings to mind Advanced Witches & Warlocks. If my Witch is just another spellcaster she will be indistinguishable in a fantasy world teeming with them. She needs to be different, not more potent, not more knowledgeable, but certainly different. One finds that in the pacts, the rituals, the traditions, and the kind of old magic that does not belong in a Cleric’s church or a Magic-User’s tome.
In Jackson, these things set her apart from the common world. In D&D, they set her apart from her peers.
The witch is the same, only the mirror is different.
Consequently, Land of Confusion is evolving into something of a stress test for both endeavors, rather than simply an opportunity to put fantasy versions of my Jackson NPCs. I have to be able to explain what makes her a Witch in an AD&D context, as well as in Jackson. Or if an ability in Advanced Witches & Warlocks works on paper but is not something Larina would ever put to use, then I need to re-examine it. The rules put the characters to the test and vice versa.
1986 Through the Looking Glass
Somehow this always leads me back to 1986.
There was a reason for choosing that year for both projects. It is an interesting juncture in D&D history and in my own. AD&D was well established yet in flux. Rules were being added. Some of the original designers were out. Locally, we call the post-Unearthed Arcana era AD&D 1.5 (note: Not then, but now). I was busy playing the game and making up characters, devouring any horror or fantasy I could find, taking in the movies and the music and all manner of ideas without any inkling which ones would be with me forty years down the line.
Larina herself is a product of that time. A character made for AD&D in the eighties (July 1986) became the teenage witch of Jackson, Illinois in 1986. Now I am sending that girl back into a D&D world. I could not have planned that in 1986 if I had tried.
Then again, Land of Confusion is not an exercise in determining which Larina is real. I have long since let go of such concerns. The one in AD&D and the one in Jackson are both Larina, shards of the same concept fashioned by different games and even different versions of myself. My characters were always a bit of a psychological experiment.
Placing the Jackson version in a D&D world does not make her the AD&D character. It doesn't even make her the younger version of that character. That would be too simple. I want to see what happens when the girl from Jackson is forced to be an adventurer. That is where the fun is.
With all these "looking glass" metaphors, I can't help but think I need a character named Alice. Or Brandy. ETA: I figured out who Alice and Brandy are.
The Mirror Opens
Mirror Mondays began with the mirror as a metaphor. On one side was Advanced Witches & Warlocks, on the other Jackson. I could look at the Witch in one and see something of value reflected from the other.
Over the last few months, that has become less metaphorical than I expected.
My work on Jackson has altered how I view the witches in Advanced Witches & Warlocks, while the latter has provided a way to understand the behind-the-scenes workings of Jackson. Answer a question for one project, and I seem to spawn two for the other.
Land of Confusion is where they meet.
What started as a reflection between the fantasy witch and the teenager is now seeing one of them cross over.
The mirror was never just a mirror.
It's more of a door.
.jpg "A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987)")
.jpg "Invaders from Mars (1986 film)")
.jpg "Invaders from Mars (1953 film)")
.jpg "Necropolis (1986)")