Mail Call Wednesday: D&D Basic & Expert in Print

 The BEST version of Dungeons & Dragons in back in print now. The Moldvay Basic book and the Cook/Marsh Expert book are now available in Print-on-Demand formats from DriveThruRPG.

While maybe not as crisp-looking as the originals from 1980/81 are, they are still easy to read and great to have.

The books do compare well, and they allow me to keep them on my desk without worrying about ruining what I call my "museum pieces." 

The Expert book even has a nice little bonus.

A reprint of the 1981 Gateway to Adventure TSR Product Catalog. Though I suppose if I am being nit-picky, this is the one that came with the Basic set, since the one with the Expert set had a picture of Isle of Dread. 

The Dungeons & Dragons Basic and Dungeons & Dragons Expert books will run you $15.99 each. More expensive than 45 years ago, but I guess that is to be expected.

I just got these last night and have not shown them to my kids yet. I am sure my oldest will now want his own copies.

Dice not included.

Now, let's see the BECMI books in print!

Jackson, IL: Pride (In the Name of Love)

Yes, I *DO* know what the U2 song "Pride (In the Name of Love)" is about; it also fits here.  

Photo courtesy of the Peace News Archive/University of Bradford, Special Collections

With Pride Month here, my thoughts keep returning to Jackson, IL.

I’m not talking about the real Jacksonville in Illinois. I mean my version of Jackson from Night World, a college town in the Midwest during 1985-86, where the Veil is thin, the high school is haunted in both mundane and supernatural ways, and some students are witches, psychics, monsters, monster-hunters, or just unlucky enough to know the truth.

It keeps reminding me of Monsterhearts.

I have said before that what makes Monsterhearts a good game is its take on the horror of adolescence. There is the “monster of the week” variety, to be sure, but more so the intimate horror of being sixteen and unsure of your own identity. Or you know who you are, but you are not ready to put it into words. And if you do, you find others have decided they can define you for you.

Many horror games only hint at this, but Monsterhearts really understands it. The monster is a metaphor, but it still feels real. The original World of Darkness does this well, and so does the Buffy RPG, but a lot of games focus only on fighting the monster.

That’s the foundation Jackson, IL is built on.

In a NIGHT SHIFT Night World like Jackson, IL, supernatural characters are outsiders by nature. A witch notices things others miss, a psychic hears thoughts that are better left unsaid, and a werewolf knows what’s inside him might break free at the worst time. There’s the vampire with his hunger, the ghost with unfinished business, the faerie who never quite fits in, and even the monster-hunter, marked and haunted by what he knows.

You could say the LGBTQ character in a mid-80s setting is in much the same dramatic position. (Side note: I don't recall what the preferred term was back in the 1980s. So I am just using what we have today.) They might know something true about themselves that the rest of the world either can’t or won’t see. They have to make judgments on who is safe to confide in, pass in one room, and be open in another. There are friends in the know, adults with their suspicions, enemies who will make a weapon of a rumor, and strangers who would never get the whole story.

Now, I am not going to suggest that it is the same as being a vampire. I have no desire to flatten one experience into another or make the LGBTQ experience into a cosplay. But fiction, and horror in particular, has always had a way with the outsider. The one standing outside the circle tends to see it better than anyone in it.

That is the sort of thing I want to get at with Jackson, IL. Here, being different is not a kind of flaw. It is where you get your power and your story from. It is role-playing fuel.

Take my witch NPCs, Faye and Larina. Faye is a lesbian, and Larina is bisexual. These aren’t special episodes for their characters any more than dealing Faye’s white hair or Stephanie’s confidence are. They are who they are, down to the secrets under the town of Jackson itself. Their identities matter because they color how they and the world view each other, but they are not defined by them alone. Ok, maybe Faye's white hair is a bad example since it IS a side effect of her soul being leeched out by her aunties. Maybe a better example is why does Larina, who is right-handed, wear a watch on her right wrist?

Faye has a head start on living with a secret. Her Aunties raised her, and there is more to that than the people of Jackson know. They are not humans; they are Urban Hags and are forcing Faye to become a monster herself. She knows how to watch a room, to pick up on what is said when she thinks no one of consequence is around. She knows family can be your shelter and your danger in the same house. Being a lesbian doesn’t make her tragic; beng raised by monsters makes her tragic. It also makes her sharper, gives her cause to spot a mask or a threat or an act of kindness for what it is.

Then you have Larina. Her bisexuality is part of her liminal state. She is the weird witch girl with one foot in the everyday and the other in something much older. Some find her frightening because she won’t be simple. She is likes boys and girls alike, as well as records and occult tomes and whatever is calling from the other side of the Veil. In a way, she is all the things Monsterhearts is made of: hunger, fear, curiosity, power. If she is confused, it is not because of her sexuality. She is because she is sixteen and grieving the loss of her mother, and powerful and watched and wanted, and she is afraid of the price of wanting anything. There is danger in having the power to curse an entire bloodline and still not being able to legally drive. 

To me, that is the real stuff. And it makes for some fine role-playing. They are not "after-school special" topics; they are characters. 

Ally, Lesbian, and Bi in Jackson, IL.
Yes. I know those flags were not around in 1985-86, nor were supernatural monsters.

You have to be careful with the dramatic opportunities so as not to turn a character’s identity into some kind of penance or punishment. I am keenly aware of how LGBTQ characters have been portrayed since, well, forever, and that is not something that I am going to do here. Characters are nto going to be punished because of their sexual preferences. They will be punished for dabbling in the dark arts, or because the whole damn town is filled with monsters and ghosts. Characters are punished for bad choices in a dangerous, not because of their identity. 

The 1980s were a pressure cooker for any sort of identity. Adults wield power, and in those days, your reputation was everything. A misstep in the wrong corridor could haunt you for months. Thomas Avery, one of our teachers, is well aware of this. Being gay, he is cautious; he knows how fast a rumor can be turned into a weapon. He is a good teacher on account of his ability to listen, not because any suffering has made him noble. He will know when a student is trying to put something across without putting it into words. He is a good person and a likable guy. 

Then there is Elaine Bellweather. She is gay as well, but the world makes of her what it will, quite differently from Thomas. She is no front-line warrior. She teaches music and lives a quiet life, but she is one of the few adults in Jackson who keeps an eye on things and does not jump to condemn. In a town rife with secrets and monsters, you do not find many like her. And that counts for something. She is no one's "favorite teacher," but she does provide a space for the students (often read as Player Characters) to grow.

It is part of what makes for good LGBTQ representation in a horror game. An adult need not be attacking demons with a sword to be heroic. Sometimes, providing a space where a kid can get some air is enough. Sometimes the adult is the hero who just lets them feel safe, even for a little while. 

Monsterhearts has a way of putting it all in words. You have your strings for leverage or emotional debt, and your conditions for the labels people slap on you: "Freak." "Witch." "Creepy." "Queer." "Devil worshipper." In a high school horror set in the 1980s, those are as perilous as claws. But they can be put to the test. That is where the role-playing is. Not in having queer characters put through the wringer for being there, but in seeing what they do when someone tries to put them in a box. Do they run? Lash out? Or do they take the very label meant to hurt them and make it a banner?  A condition like ‘Freak’ might begin as hallway cruelty, but in play, it can become the moment when a character decides she would rather be feared honestly than accepted falsely.

There is your Pride. It is more than the parades and flags, as great as those are. It is the choice to stop making excuses for being real. Think of the witch who ceases to feign deafness to the dead, or the werewolf done with calling himself broken. Or the lesbian teen who sees right through the monster trying to work his charms on every girl in school, because what she wants is hers alone. A bisexual witch is figuring out that wanting two different kinds of futures doesn’t make her a fraud. That is not pandering; it is simply good character work.

I want the LGBTQ folks in Jackson, IL, to be part of the world. Some are ordinary, some are witches, some are teachers, some are students, and many are just regular people. Let them be messy and wrong about things and as complicated as the rest. Some are scared, some are not. Monsterhearts is adept at that; it won’t make adolescence neat and tidy or desire safe. It acknowledges that being young is intense and strange in its own right. We are putting that in 1986, with the Satanic Panic and some fine music in the background, where even a note passed in class feels like a spell.

For Pride Month, that is the part I want to acknowledge and celebrate.

The outsider is not outside because they are lesser. They know where that divide is because they have often been made painfully aware of it. They are outside because they can see the shape of the door.

And sometimes, in Jackson, they are the only ones who know how to open it. 

And to the kids I went to High School with in the 1980s who later came out and are much happier now, I am glad you found your happiness. 

This Old Dragon: Issue #44

 I talked about Gardner Fox and his contributions to the Appendix N yesterday. I thought I'd pull out a very old Dragon magazine, #44, and feature his contributions from it today. As I mentioned previously, he is one of the rare few authors in the Appendix N who would later also publish within the pages of Dragon. So let's set the controls all the way back to December 1980. At this point, I have been playing D&D for a little more than a year. Playing was rare, but it always filled me with excitement.  Clint Eastwood stars with an orangutan in "Any Which Way You Can." In a sad note, the orangutan, Buddha, who played Clyde, was clubbed to death by his trainer for stealing a doughnut. There were no laws about the treatment of animals on the books at the time, so nothing happened. "Lady" by Kenny Rogers is all over the airwaves, and on tables and game store shelves everywhere is This Old Dragon #44.

Our cover is from none other than Phil Fogolio, featuring the new included game, Food Fight. Other artists include Mike Carroll, Jack Crane, Jeff Dee, Tracy Lesch, Kenneth Rahman, Roger Raupp, Jim Roslof, and Bill Willingham.

I have to start by noting how thick the paper is for this one. At 100 pages, this issue is heavy. Yes, there is the Food Fight game inside, but still, the paper is quite thick. Compared to the similar page count of Issue #85 (my first purchased issue) they feel very different.

So already this is a big issue in more ways (weighs?) than one. 

We have two Editorials: one from Bryce Knorr on his Food Fight game, and another from Assistant Editor Kim Mohan on all the features of this issue. 

Letters is still known as Out On A Limb at this point. The topic of the month are Dwarven Women, Beards or No. 

Up first, and foremost, is The Lure of the Golden Godling, a Niall of the Far Travels tale by Gardner F. Fox. While this is not a Dragon I owned back in the 80s, I looked up once I got my Dragon CD-ROM and I was completely surprised that Fox had written for Dragon.

The Super Spies for the new Top Secret game is up by Allen Hammack. This covers the Top Secret stats for various movie and TV Spies like James Bond, Napoleon Solo, John Steed, Emma Peel, and even Maxwell Smart and Agent 99. I rather love things like this and have done my own fair share of multimedia witches here. So I can appreciate this level of obsession. This is not something you would see anymore; corporations are far too litigious. 

Mark Simmons has a review of the King of the Mountain board game. The game is for 2 to 10 players. The premise is simple: get your character to the top of the mountain first and claim the wizard's prize with one player controlling the actions of the Wizard and the monsters. It sounds like it could be fun, but it doesn't trigger my "Traveller Envy," which I guess is good.

We get to an early featured topic section in Dragon with Fantasy Genetics. These articles all attempt to take a scientifc point of view on the various humanoid species in D&D. 

Gregory G. H. Rihn is up first with Humanoid Races in Review, which builds upon The Dragon #29 article from Gygax about the Half-ogre and the issues it caused back then. Among other things, we get some quasi Linnaean taxonomy on the various species. Humans are Homo sapiens sapiens, elves are Homo sapiens sylvanus, and orcs are Homo sapiens orc. The implication here is that humans are fertile with both elves and orcs. Cavemen are Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, dwarves are Homo faber (and both genders feature beards), and the Sasquatch is Homo sasquatch. Gnomes are a subclass of Homo faber. So both dwarves and gnomes are "makers." That works. Halflings are not covered, but 24 years later, we get the discovery of Homo floresiensis, who are called "Hobbits."

Half-ors in a Variety of Styles by Roger Moore takes us to Fantasy Genetics II. Here, our focus switches to the orc family and the various cross-breeds they can have. Here Moore contends that orcs are a member of the genus Australopithecus. These include: Kobold (Australopithecus boisei), Goblin (Australopithecus africanus), Hobgoblin (Australopithecus robustus), and Bugbear (Australopithecus giganticus). Even ogres (Ramapithecus robustus) and hill giants (Meganthropus giganticus) are covered.  The science is a bit bonkers, but it is a lot of fun. I mean if dragons can have a taxonomic nomclature, humanoids certainly should.

Fantasy Genetics III kicks off with What Do You Get When You Cross...? by John S. Olson. He is also building off of the Half-Ogre idea from The Dragon #29. He makes the radical suggestion that nearly any sort of creature can crossbreed with another. But not all of their offspring are going to be suitable for play.  In fact there is a section here that is close to the hearts of many new players that most old players seem to have forgotten was first introduced in 1980.

Finally, in Fantasy Genetics IV, Paul Montgomery Crabaugh takes us back to high school biology, Mendelian genetics, and Punnett squares in Half + Half Isn't Always Full. Well, a really simple overview of inheritance by genes. Examples are given with humans and orcs. 

None of the four articles really solves any problems and likely introduces new ones. I'll have to pick ahead and see if there are any letters about this issue. 

Nice big ad from J.J. Brodsky & Sons, Inc. Hobby Distributors. Featuring all the hobby stores in the Midwest that offer Dungeons & Dragons. This gives a little bit of evidence to my whole Illinois Pipeline idea. There are a ton here whose addresses are well known to me, but sadly, there are no hobby stores left there. One of which would have been a 10 min drive or less from my home. 

Sage Advice covers some AD&D rules questions.

Dave "Zeb" Cook (of the Expert Set, Isle of Dread, and so much more) is next with a new Giants in the Earth featuring two more NPCs taken from novels. We have C.S. Lewis's Reepicheep and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger. I don't know the first, but I am a fan of Challenger, who in my mind should be played by Brian Blessed. Though I don't think he is a 16th-level fighter, really. He would make for a great NIGHT SHIFT character.

My late friend Len Lakofka is up with Leomund's Tiny Hut Monsters: How Strong is Strong? where he attempts to give some monsters some Strength Scores. His logic is sound IF the damage types and spreads are good. I have gone through many, many monsters in my oft-languishing "Basic Bestiary," and there is some good data here. But as well know, really, that Gygax often did not build his monsters using the same rules that characters use. That is not something we will see until the new editions of D&D, starting with 3rd. Len, though, makes a solid showing here, and his numbers look really good.

The Simulation Corner is up with A History of Games and Gaming from John Prados, noted Wargame designer, and here about two years shy of his Ph.D. in Political Science. He is lamenting the lack of any written history of games and gaming and is actively looking for such documentation. 

Food Fight is our mini-game this issue, but it does take up quite a lot of the issue, to be honest (24 pages and a cardstock insert) . The game was designed by Byce Knorr, and the art is from the amazing Bill Willingham and Jeff Dee.  You can read a bit about the game at Board Game Geek, but it does make this your better-than-average value Dragon magazine. Honestly, reading it over more I kinda want to adapt it somehow to my Jackson, IL game! Though it doesn't really fit the vibe I am going with.  Though there is a really convenient map.

After this, we get the continuation of the Gardner Fox Niall tale. 

Here Comes the Judges Guild, by William Fawcett, is an overview and review of nine products from Judges Guild. These are some of the classics of the early days of JG; Modron, Escape from Astigar's Lair, The Treasure Vaults of Lindoran, Inferno, Portals of Torsh, Spies of Lightelf, Wilderlands of High Fantasy, Legendary Duck Tower, and City of Lei Tabor. Great content. Too bad JG went to complete shit. 

The agents for Top Secret continue, as does the review of King of the Mountain. 

Glenn Rahman is up with his classic Minarian Legends for the Diving Right game. This time about The Black Knight. I will admit that I know next to nothing about this game. But there is a wiki for it, so maybe I will check it out.

The Electric Eye from Mark Herro offers early examples of computer software for playing D&D-like games (Dungeon of Death). Keep in mind, we are talking Atari 2600-level games at this point, and this is the end of this column's first year. The games include  Dungeon of Death by Instant Software for your solo gaming needs. Android Nim by 80-US, and Time Traveller by Krell Software. Software companies came and went like leaves in the wind back then. Few survived to today.

There is even a little BASIC program at the end. 

Dragon's Bestiary gives us three new AD&D creatures. The Koodjanuk, Cyroserpent, and Ice Golem.

Another ad for a Hobby Game Distributors, with more stores in Illinois than in nine other states combined. 

Nothing But the Ho-Ho-Ho Truth by Douglas Loss is an odd one, since WotC has it online for you to read.

Comics include Wormy and Darlene's The Story of Jasmine. The art for Jasmine is still above and beyond anything you should expect from a magazine.

So this is a really good issue and filled with some really fun content.

Makes me want to check out more from this era.

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.

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."

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.

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

• Plays Well With Others: DP&D Cryptid Manual
• Plays Wells With Others: Dark Places & Demogorgons and Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Plays Well With Others: Modern Occult Horror Games
• Plays Well With Others: Night Shift and Modern Supernatural Games

Dark Places & Demogorgons

• All DP&D Posts
• Review: Survive This! Dark Places & Demogorgons Companions
• Review: Survive This! Dark Places & Demogorgons

Sunny Valley, OH

• Welcome to Sunny Valley, OH
• Willow & Tara: Survive This! Dark Places & Demogorgons
• Survive This! Dark Places and Demogorgons - Supernatural / Buffy Crossover
• Dark Places & Demogorgons: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed; How Soon is Now?
• Dark Places & Demogorgons: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and The Hex Girls; Bizarre Love Triangle
• Survive This! Dark Places and Demogorgons - Carmilla / Buffy Crossover
• Monstrous Monday: Melonheads for Dark Places & Demogorgons

NIGHT SHIFT Veterans of the Supernatural Wars

• All NIGHT SHIFT Posts
• Plays Well With Others, Generation HEX, and my Traveller Envy
• Plays Well With Others: Night Shift and Modern Supernatural Games
• Willow & Tara: NIGHT SHIFT Veterans of the Supernatural Wars

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.

Monstrous Mondays: MoChem the Morgan Chemical Monster

 Going back today to Jackson, IL, my current NIGHT SHIFT^® campaign and my all-consuming obsession. 

Today I have a monster that I have been trying to bring into a game for the better part of 47 years. Not that this guy is a hard monster to figure out, it's just that his history is so tied up in my hometown that he didn't really fit into any other game I have done before.

This particular monster was created by me one afternoon in the summer of 1979 when I was 10. I had been reading a lot of Daniel Cohen's "monster books" thanks to our town's well-stocked Carnegie grant library. 

I lamented that our town didn't have their own local monster (the word "cryptid" was not in my vocabulary yet) though this was way before the internet and before I discovered microfiche to discover my hometown did indeed have it's own history of monsters, ghosts, and other things. 

I figured my creation was as "real" as anything I had been reading (age 10 was the start of my real exploration into skepticism, which led me to the conclusion that the supernatural was all bullshit). While I still enjoyed reading it all, I thought it was as real as, say, "Star Wars."

So in a fit of childhood bravado and creativity that I subject you all too every day, I made a monster.

Outside of town was a chemical plant. Now, I am not sharing the name because my blog gets hit by bots I have found material I have written here for games passed off as "truth."  Details about the Hex Girls and Astral Spiders, just to name two. So there is no reason to drag a real company with real employees into something invented by a 10-year-old. But I am keeping the monster's name.

So let's switch over to the fictional Jackson, IL and it's resident mutant.

The Story of MoChem and the MoChem Monster

Just east of town, the Mauvaisterre splits into various creeks and smaller bodies of water. One of these runs by the now-closed Morgan Chemical plant. Morgan Chemical came to Jackson in the late 1800s, and was founded by Jacobi Morgan and Sons. Morgan Chemical produced fertilizer, pesticides, and other agricultural chemicals needed by the growing farming boom in Central Illinois post-Civil War economy. The plant was well-run, provided hundreds of jobs for locals, and brought money into the local economy. So successful was the plant that the road on which the plant was located was renamed Morgan Ave, and businesses began to pop up all along the east-west corridor. So much so that it eventually took businesses away from the North-South Main Street. 

Jacobi Mogan was very typical of many of the entrepreneurs who had settled in the area at the time. "Work Hard. Tend to Family. Fear God" was his motto. In all fairness, he was, for the time, a good boss. His employees did work hard, and he paid them a fair wage. The company grew on his solid Presbyterian-Protestant work ethic and the belief that anything is possible with faith and hard work. He was an early benefactor to MacAlister College and helped build one of Jackson's famous Gothic-revival style churches.

His sons, however, were not so charitably minded. When the sons took control of the company in the early 1900s, they saw ways to increase profits by cutting some safety standards. They also got involved in the Great War, providing "fuel additives," but it was well known they had taken a side contract in weapons research. When World War II came around, Morgan Chemical provided gas masks, and rumor says the chemicals the gas masks protected against. 

With each generation, the Morgan family motto (metaphorically speaking) lost another word until, in practice, only “Work Hard” remained. By the 1960s, under the fourth generation of Morgans, the plant had become notorious among workers for failing safety standards, careless disposal practices, and toxic leaks. Waste seeped into the groundwater and into the channels that fed the Mauvaisterre. Cattle downstream sickened or died. Children born to workers were whispered about in hushed voices. Whatever prosperity the company had once brought to Jackson now came at a terrible cost.

It was in this poisoned environment that MoChem first came to be known.

No one agrees on what MoChem truly is. Some claim it was born in the tainted water itself, shaped by chemical waste and bad earth. Others whisper that it was once a deformed child, discarded by frightened parents after the plant poisoned too many families. Another tale says it had been a worker who fell into a vat and came back wrong. The most popular story holds that MoChem was an undercover reporter from St. Louis or Chicago who came to expose Morgan Chemical, got too close to the truth, and was murdered and dumped in the waste.

What is known for certain is that in 1973 Morgan Chemical was fined, shuttered, and abandoned. Cleanup was promised. Very little was ever done.

Soon after that, sightings began.

MoChem (AD&D 1st Edition)

Frequency: Very rare
No. Appearing: 1 (Unique)
Armor Class: 5
Move: 9”
Hit Dice: 4+4
% in Lair: 55%
Treasure Type: Nil
No. of Attacks: 2 or 1
Damage/Attack: 1-6/1-6 or special
Special Attacks: Blood drain, engulf small prey
Special Defenses: Semi-liquid form, surprise
Magic Resistance: Standard
Intelligence: Low to Semi-
Alignment: Neutral (Evil)
Size: M
Psionic Ability: Nil
Attack/Defense Modes: Nil
Level/X.P. Value: IV / 240 + 5 per hit point

MoChem (NIGHT SHIFT)

No. Appearing: 1 (Unique)
DV: 6
Move: 45 ft.; may flow through narrow gaps at 30 ft.
Vitality Dice: 4
Attacks: 2 slams/claws
Damage: 1d6/1d6
Special: Semi-liquid form, blood drain, engulf, surprise, light sensitivity, sunlight damage, double damage from fire
XP Value: 140

MoChem is a malformed humanoid horror spawned from decades of illegal chemical dumping. Roughly man-sized but squat and thick-bodied, it has overlong arms, short, powerful legs, a single milky eye in its upper torso, and a flexible feeding maw below. Its body is coated in a red oily secretion often mistaken for blood.

Combat: MoChem attacks with two heavy slams or claws for 1-6 points of damage each. It may instead attempt to batter, grapple with, or press itself against prey to feed. It is cunning only in an animal way, preferring darkness, ambush, narrow spaces, and prey that are alone or already frightened.

Special Abilities

Blood Drain: Whenever MoChem scores a critical hit, it opens feeding pores or its maw against exposed flesh, draining 1-4 additional hit points of blood and vital fluids. This is in addition to normal damage. A drained victim may appear pale, weak, and chemically burned around the wound. This is not a vampiric or magical effect.

Semi-Liquid Form: MoChem may compress itself into a half-fluid shape, allowing it to pass through bars, storm drains, culverts, wide cracks, broken windows, pipe openings, or any aperture large enough for a cat or small dog. In this form, it cannot attack normally, but it may move through spaces inaccessible to most man-sized creatures. It may resume its full shape in the following round. Because of this ability, it cannot be held by ordinary ropes or manacles, and non-magical grappling attacks against it suffer a -2 penalty.

Engulf Small Prey: Creatures of small build, as well as animals the size of dogs or smaller, may be engulfed if MoChem successfully hits with both attacks in a single round. The victim must save vs. petrification or be pinned within its semi-fluid mass. Thereafter, the victim suffers 1-4 hit points of damage per round until freed or dead. Small animals may simply be swallowed whole at the DM’s discretion.

Surprise: In darkness, sewers, culverts, abandoned industrial works, or wet ground near polluted runoff, MoChem surprises on 1-4 on 1d6.

Light Aversion: Bright light causes MoChem pain and disorientation. A strong lantern beam, continual light spell, or similar bright illumination forces it to attack at -2. If trapped in such light for more than 3 consecutive rounds, it will retreat if possible. A light spell cast directly upon or very near it inflicts 1-4 hit points of damage.

Sunlight: Direct natural sunlight inflicts 1-6 hit points of damage per round and prevents use of its semi-liquid form. MoChem avoids daylit areas whenever possible.

Vulnerability to Fire: All fire-based attacks inflict double damage.

MoChem is not undead, nor is it a true elemental or demon. It is a pollution-born predator, a toxic life form awakened in bad ground and abandoned waste. It lairs in culverts, runoff tunnels, chemical pits, and flooded industrial ruins.

MoChem possesses a rudimentary intelligence. Enough to know it despises its own existence, but not enough to know how to end it. It fears light and the sun and avoids both at all costs. According to scholars on local BBS sites, if you could lure it into direct sunlight, it would dry up and die. Others speculate that such a death would not be permanent unless the creature was also burned.

--

I kinda wish 10-year-old me could see this!

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

Tales of Jackson, IL: Hot for Teacher

I had something scheduled for today, but got my dates wrong, so today's post will be in one week instead. This one was supposed to be next week's post. 

One of my good friends has been helping me with ideas for this game. He has expertise here since he is a high school football coach and works security at a large suburban high school. Valerie Beaumont is one of his characters that I use as an NPC often. I have been helping him a little with his current Star Trek game, so I figure he can help me with some more teachers for my Jackson, IL game.

Today, two coaches and their friendly rivalry. 

Dr. Kiera "Keri" Moreau

Dr. Kiera Moreau could have gone anywhere. Former Olympian (Montreal, 1976), she retired, returned to school, and got her Ph.D. in Classical Studies. She was on her way to an interview for a job at MacAlister College when she crossed paths with Valerie Beaumont. They knew each other from years before and convinced her to come and teach at Jackson Public School. They also know each other's secrets. Vallerie is immortal, and Kiera is Fae, in particular, a sea nymph, or rather, the daughter of one. She isn't immortal, but she is long-lived. 

She opted to stay. She teaches Latin I and II, and an elective in Classical Mythology. Larina is in her class and is annoyingly excited about it. She is also the girls' swim team coach. 

In truth, Keri really kinda outclasses everyone here. I really like her and want to do more with her, and I know the characters can learn a lot from her. But. She has it all. Beauty. Brains. Strength and power. Why is she slumming it here? She knows something is going on. 

She has seen these patterns repeated throughout history, and this time she has decided that she won't just sit by. Valerie stays away because her connection to others hurts. Keri stays because life without that connection hurts more. This is a point of contention between the two. Val thinks Keri gets too involved, Keri thinks that Val doesn't get involved enough.

And if she can give the cast something to aspire to be? Well then, "fortes fortuna adiuvat." 

Dr. Kiera Moreau
7th Level Psychic (Empath), Half-fey (Sea Nymph)

Base Abilities
Strength: 12 (0)
Agility: 16 (+2) n
Toughness: 14 (+1) 
Intelligence: 18 (+3) 
Wits: 18 (+3) n
Persona: 20 (+4) A

Vit: 43 (7d6)
DV: 9
Fate Points: 1d8

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +4/+2/+1
Attack bonus (base): +2
Melee bonus: +0  Ranged bonus: +2

Languages: English, Latin, French, Greek 
Skills: History (Int), Swim (Agl), Occult Knowledge (Int)

Saves: +3 to Persona-based saves

Psychic Abilities
Body Control, Empathy, Hydrokinesis

Fey Abilities
Glamour, Breathe underwater (1 hour), Harmed by cold iron and shadow steel (double normal damage), Long-lived

Hair: Black
Eyes: Gold
Height: 5'10"

Archetype: The Teacher with a mysterious past
Quote: "Fortes fortuna adiuvat." Fortune favors the brave!
Quirks: Arrives at school super early to swim. 
Theme song: "Rio" - Duran Duran

Coach Kurt Zimmerman

Coach Zimmerman here is as much Greg's character as he is mine. Nearly all his background came from Greg.

Kurt Zimmerman, and he was born in Wisconsin in 1950. Went to college for math and was drafted into the Vietnam War in 1969. Did one tour of duty, where he rose to the rank of corporal. Was there at the Fall of Saigon and nearly missed his ride out. He was delirious but was rescued by Valerie Beaumont, whom he only sort of remembers. 

He was awarded medals that he felt he didn't deserve. He used the GI Bill to return to college and ended up at the University of Illinois, where he followed the Illini as a religion. Got his teaching degree in math and a coaching certification. Kurt likes the orderliness of math. Finding proofs and working on problems were his solace while overseas. 

He graduated and took a job teaching honors-level math (a job that Warren Evans wanted) and is the school's sponsor of the National Honor Society. He was raised on the idea that anything worth doing is worth doing correctly. This extends to his coaching and to his Calculus class.

He has a friendly rivalry with Keri over who will have more of their athletes on the Honor Roll. The winner gets to choose where they eat dinner, and the loser has to pay. Though they almost always end up at Sal's Pizza, where Keri orders her pizzas with green olives and extra anchovies. 

Kurt has seen the supernatural and fought it before. But he reasons that he left all that behind in Saigon. Now he is not so sure. He doesn't suspect that Keri or Valerie are anything other than they appear. Though he can't help but think he has seen Valerie somewhere else.

Kurt Zimmerman
6th Level Veteran, Human

Base Abilities
Strength: 16 (+2) A
Agility: 15 (+1) n
Toughness: 14 (+1) 
Intelligence: 16 (+2) n
Wits: 14 (+1) 
Persona: 12 (+0) 

Vit: 38 (6d8)
DV: 8
Fate Points: 1d8

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +4/+2/+1
Attack bonus (base): +3
Melee bonus: +2  Ranged bonus: +1

Languages: English, Latin, Spanish
Skills: Math (Int), Running (Agl)

Saves: +2 to all saves

Veteran Abilities
Melee combat, Ranged combat, Increased damage, Combat expertise, Improved defense, Supernatural attacks, Tracking

Hair: Brown, usually cut close to his scalp
Eyes: Green/Blue
Height: 5'11"

Archetype: The Coach
Quote: "Hello, class, my name is Coach Zimmerman. No, you can't call me Coach Z. Yes, I was in Vietnam. No, I will not tell you if I killed anyone."
Quirks: Flies a crop-duster plane over the summers and fall. Says he nevers takes late homework, but always does. Hates the sound of chalk on a chalkboard, one of the only teachers who has a whiteboard.
Theme song: "Fortunate Son"  - Creedence Clearwater Revival

Coach Zimmerman is one of those guys who could have come back bitter from the war, but instead threw himself into his chosen vocation. He could have gone on and maybe even gotten his Ph.D. in math, but he wanted to teach so he could be a positive influence. He is kinda based on my high school calc teacher who was also a coach. 

As of now, Kurt is the only Veteran in the group. I kept the Veteran class out of the players' hands because I couldn't justify it. I suppose if someone had come to me and said that their character was a hunter, then maybe. I mean, I knew kids like that in high school, so it's not that odd. But these players grew up in the suburbs. That never dawned on them.

He gets a bit flustered around women, especially Keri, but she makes conversation easy, and they have a lot of common ground. 

Their Quarterly wager is well known throughout the school, just as it is also known that they will end up at Sal's Pizzeria. The only thing more certain is the constant shouting match between the waitress, Denise, and the owner, Sal.

Kurt and Keri's date, while Denise wants to be anywhere else.

"I swear, why do I bother writing this down? You two order the same stupid thing each time: a large pizza, green olives and extra anchovies, and two Budweisers. Gross." - Denise. 

I think I'll have to detail Sal's Pizzeria along with some other locations.

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

Tales from Jackson, IL: Witchy (Wednesday) Woman, Sylvia Velasco

No game for me this past weekend. My wife was sick, so I had dinner prep all on my own (we usually work together on the big game-day meals), but even then, I think it came out looking good.

Ham, homemade Mac & Cheese, caramelized sweet corn.

It also gave me some time to work on adventures, monsters, and an NPC. 

"Hey, maybe if we get lucky, someone will drop a house on her." - Valerie Beaumont on Sylvia.

Getting ready for this coming weekend's game, and I thought I'd introduce the campaign's resident evil witch. She is not going to be a big bad or anything like that, and I might have to go after the theosophist. If there had been a witch PC in the group, that theat character would have been the target. But this character is a background threat. Like a yard with a loud dog. Sure, they look dangerous and are noisy, but as long as you don't try to get into their yard, you can ignore them.

While deciding on my witch of choice, and I have so many to choose from, one became obvious to me right away. Sylvia Velasco. Though you all know her better as Skylla. 

Sylvia Velasco

Sylvia Velasco is one of the few adults the cast of characters will interact with who are not teachers or parents. She runs an occult bookstore, El Espejo Oscuro ("The Dark Mirror"), and claims to be from Spain. While her shop never seems to have customers (and most people are afraid of the place), she dresses immaculately and drives a brand-new (1985) Ferrari 308 GTS (red, of course).

Everything about Sylvia screams style, class, elegance, and danger.

Her accent is exotic without being off-putting. She is attractive without being threatening. She is older than the characters without coming off like a stereotypical evil witch.

Trouble is, of course, she *IS* the stereotypical evil witch.

My original plan was to have her go after any witch characters in the cast to prey on their power.  But we don't have a PC witch. I might set her after the psychic and/or theosophist. I want to establish her as evil and a real witch, making her a threat (but not THE threat). Later, she is going to the target of the local mob in my "Satanic Panic" adventure. She and her shop will also serve as a resource for PCs and NPCs alike.

Sylvia Velasco
6th Level Witch, Human

*Background: Sorcerous

Base Abilities
Strength: 9 (0) 
Agility: 11 (0) 
Toughness: 14 (+1) 
Intelligence: 12 (0) N
Wits: 15 (+1) N
Persona: 17 (+2) A

Fate Points: 1d8
Defense Value: 5
Vitality: 28

**Degeneracy: 0
Corruption: 0

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +4/+2/+1
Melee Bonus: +1 (base) 
Ranged Bonus: +1 (base)
Spell Attack: +3
Saves: +3 to Spells and Magical effects (Witch) +2 to Intelligence saves (Sorcerous background).

Witch Abilities
Arcana, Arcane Powers (2): Innate Magic: Arcane Dart, Beguile Person

Witch Spells
First Level: Arcane Dart, Glamour, Gout of Flame
Second Level: Beguile Person, Magic Lock, Paralyze Person
Third Level: Dark Lightning, Dispel Magic

Heroic Touchstones
2nd Level: First Level Spell: Mystic Senses

Archetype: The "Evil" Witch
Quote: "I'll never make you do anything you don't want, and I will never lie to you." All of which is technically true.
Quirks: Looks AMAZING. Never so much as one perfect silver hair is out of place.
Theme song: "Abracadabra" - Steve Miller Band

Ok, a couple of things here.

I am going to start using the Backgrounds introduced in Wasted Lands. Though the backgrounds I am going to use are "Jock," "Band Kid," "Nerd," and other high school archetypes. since Sylvia is the first I am just using the stock "Sorcerous."  Right now, my high school background will only provide a bonus of +1 in either a skill type or a save.

I am also bringing in Corruption, though it is not as dangerous as what Wasted Lands has. In my Jackson game, it is called "Soul Burn." The first sign of soul burn, literally burning away pieces of their soul, is white hair. This helps explain why Sylvia and Faye Thorne both have white hair. Sylvia has done hers on purpose; Faye was subjected to it by her evil aunts. 

As I mentioned previously, I am also experimenting with adding various Heroic Touchstones. But since want this to be a more "realistic" game, or at least on the more realistic side of cinematic, I am going to pretty judicious in adding these. 

Looks like witch-bait to me.

And it can hardly be the 1980s without a great soundtrack!

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