The Other Side blog: In Search of

Showing posts with label In Search of. Show all posts

Thursday, July 30, 2026

Tales of Jackson, IL: Winnie the Witch

I love public domain and open source characters.

More specifically, I love characters that creators can pick up, reinterpret, remix, and send off in completely new directions.

I have a particular fondness for the kind of character a creator can take in hand, put my own spin on, and send off down an entirely different path. I put that to use with Jenny Everywhere, or "The Shifter" as she is sometimes called. An open-source creation from 2002, Jenny was made to be shared and remade on the premise that she is present in all realities and at liberty to move among them. The concept is ideal for one who wants to cross genres and continuities. And I love her.

When I was working my way through the Doctor Who role-playing games, I made good use of her. In a universe predicated on time travel and the odd encounter, she is hard to beat. She allowed me to step from one iteration of the Doctor’s world to the next without having to fret over whether continuity would hold up. There is a certain freedom in it; one is not so much replacing what was there as having a dialogue with it.

And that is what leads me to another public domain character.

In Search Of...Winnie the Witch

Winnie the Witch was one of Charlton Comics’ horror hosts.

Her claim to fame was Ghost Manor and Ghostly Haunts; under that banner, she hosted from its debut in issue #20 in 1971 all the way to 1978. In much the same vein as the Crypt Keeper or The Old Witch, or the sort of thing you would see on television later on, Winnie was the framing device for the anthology. She put a face and a personality to the proceedings by introducing the stories and putting in her two cents.

But there was an early-1970s edge to Winnie that set her apart. Forget the old crone at the cauldron; she was young, hip and blue-skinned, with a fashionable "mod" look about her. One could imagine this cool witch straying into the wrong comic from some psychedelic club in Soho or New York. She was the unmistakable presence of Ghostly Haunts and made appearances in other Charlton horror fare as well.

It put me to thinking: what ever became of her? Being who I am, I had to ask what Winnie the Witch was up to in 1986.

The answer is obvious. You will find her on television.

Winnie’s House of Horrors

In my Jackson, Illinois continuity, Winnie is now the host of a late-night horror movie show broadcast from UHF Channel 47 in Alton, Illinois. You can't always get it in very clear, the station is at the far range of what UHF can do, but it is there and some nights it comes in clear as...well UHF in the mid 80s.

Every Saturday night:

WINNIE’S HOUSE OF HORRORS

Then there are the films the network affiliates consider beneath them, or that are simply too old for anyone else to have an interest in. Some were picked up in a peculiar package deal; one has to wonder if Channel 47 was forced to put on The Giant Claw just to be allowed three titles with any name recognition. You will find Mexican vampire fare and Italian horror that has been edited until the story is even more of a mystery. Old AIP stock, creature features, public domain prints that appear to have been put through a Buick’s undercarriage. And now and again, something of genuine quality that the station folk doesn’t seem to appreciate having on their hands.

Winnie is the one who puts them on.

"UHF Channel 47 from Alton, Illinois! Home of the Piasa Bird!" she will say.

And as sure as can be, someone in the control room will cue up that old Filmation pterodactyl screech. Every time. Without fail. It is a sound Winnie loathes, so naturally the crew makes it a habit.

WINNIE: "We are broadcasting live from beautiful Alton, IL, home of the Piasa Bird..."

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

She gives the sound booth a slow look. "Charlie, I swear to God."

There is no Charlie in the sound booth. There has never been a Charlie. But when things go awry, her thoughts head there first. Because Charlie is her husband. And according to Winnie, Charlie is responsible for most of the suffering in the known universe. Well. In her universe at least.

Samantha Stephens Meets Elvira

The original Winnie was young and mod in her day. But as of 1986, my Winnie is well into her 40s. She remains attractive and has no qualms about letting you know it. Yet the old gimmick is gone; she is not "the sexy young witch" any longer. She is a mom witch now. A hot mom witch, but you get the idea.

Put it this way: imagine Samantha Stephens after two decades of matrimony, three children, PTA obligations and grocery bills have left her with zero tolerance for mortal foolishness. Then mix in some Elvira. You get Winnie. The big hair, the mod dresses that only look a little dated, cat-eye glasses and a pentagram on her throat, all with her makeup in order. There is an air to her of a woman who could call on Satan if she had the time, but there is a parent-teacher conference to attend at 8:15 am tomorrow and she knows Charlie will be late.

Her whole schtick on television is that suburban family life is more terrifying than any supernatural horror. A film will show a demon emerging from a pentagram, and Winnie will address the camera. "Demons? I have three kids. Demons would be a vacation." And we are off to commercial.

Or take a picture of some parasitic monstrosity tearing its way out of a host.

"I have felt something like that," she will say. "This thing inside me, clawing and kicking to make its exit."

She lets the silence hang for a moment.

"Was pregnant again, as it turned out."

Turns to Camera 2. "Gee, thanks, Charlie."

The viewers are fond of Charlie. They have never laid eyes on him, and everyone wonders if he is real. From what Winnie tells us, Charlie is the one who can’t fix the garage door, who considers Hamburger Helper to be cooking, or who invited his mother over "for a few days" and once put the station van through a cemetery gate. He is responsible for buying the wrong dishwasher and for forgetting their anniversary every year.

"Our next offering has an ancient curse set loose by a fool who pays no heed to warnings," she might say.

She will look right at you.

"In other words, Charlie."

Other Horror Hostesses

Winnie also has an ongoing rivalry with Countess von Bludd, the glamorous vampire hostess from a competing station in St. Louis. Introduced in Scary Tales #12, the Countess dresses entirely in red and presents herself as a far more elegant and sophisticated creature of the night. Winnie remains unimpressed.

"Over in St. Louis, Countess von Bludd is showing yet another vampire picture tonight. All red dress, red curtains, red lipstick. Apparently, subtlety died before she did."

The rivalry is mostly theatrical, the sort of manufactured feud local stations would encourage for publicity. Winnie calls her "that overdressed mosquito from St. Louis," while the Countess refers to Winnie as "the housewife of horrors." Privately, they may even like each other, but neither woman would ever spoil the act by admitting it.

Winnie the Witch - Ghostly Haunts Issue #42

She also talks about the time she won the "Miss Fortune" beauty contest against another Horror Hostess, Arachne Coffin. But she fails to mention that she lost the title to Arachne the next year. Her rivalry with Arachne seems to be one more of mutual respect.

The Joke Is Winnie Is Really a Witch

Here is the important bit: Winnie is, in fact, a witch. The viewers take it as part of the performance, and why wouldn’t they? It is a horror-host show after all. She has her cauldron, her candles, the skulls on display. Now and then she puts on a "spell" for laughs. What none of them are aware of is that some of these have a way of working.

Take the protection charm she put on before Black Sunday; that was no act. Or when she made the point about not heeding a dead relative’s voice from outside the house; one can be sure of that. As for the salt she put down at the studio door in the course of a commercial break, there was method to it.

The station crew are not entirely certain what to make of it, but they have been witness to odd occurrences in Winnie’s vicinity. They do not inquire. This is local TV, and people have their own troubles to contend with.

It's also not entirely clear when Winnie became a witch. Was it when she was in her 20s or before? Did she become a witch later after pretending to be one? But she isn’t telling anyone anything, and she uses her magic on a UHF Public Access show.

It is probably Charlie’s fault.

The Soccer Mom of Darkness

I have a soft spot for another aspect of Winnie’s act. She acts like a mother, and in truth she is one, with three children to her name.

There is another part of Winnie’s gimmick that I really like. She looks like somebody’s mom. You can tell by the way she drives; it is an aggressively normal vehicle, most likely a Chevy station wagon. One might even find a "MY OTHER CAR IS A BROOM" sticker on the back of it, though Winnie would be loath to admit Charlie put it there.

She is the type to go to the grocery store or a school function and have something to say about the school board. She has no doubt made brownies for the bake sale. And yet she does all of this while giving the impression she could be putting on a Black Sabbath show when the day is done.

Put it to the people who were watching Channel 47 as kids, and they will be talking about her in some documentary down the line. The conversation goes like this:

"Winnie the Witch? Yeah. She was the original MILF."

"Oh, you can say that again."

Only it doesn’t do her justice. They will recall the hair and the cleavage, the barbs at Charlie’s expense and that ridiculous Piasa Bird noise.

What gets left out is that Winnie knew things. She is clearly well-versed in the occult.

The Jackson Connection

Naturally, Stephanie, Faye, and Larina watch her.

Stephanie, Faye, and Larina watching Winnie the Witch

It is late Saturday night, and they are together at a sleepover with some popcorn and Diet Pepsi while a fourteen-inch set in Larina’s bedroom puts on a particularly bad horror film.

Stephanie is taken with Winnie from the start. She has an appreciation for performance and can tell when Winnie is in command of a room by dictating how one is to view her before you have made up your own mind. And she is loath to admit it, but she loves the movies too.

Faye is there for the movies; the more awful the better. And she finds Winnie to be hilarious, and kinda hot.

Larina is not so sure. She has been listening to the occult talk, and most of it is just television drivel. Until Winnie says something. Very specific. Obscure. The sort of thing Larina has come across in only one book.

She sits up a little.

LARINA: "Wait."
FAYE: (without looking up from her popcorn) "What?"
LARINA: "What she said."
STEPHANIE: "And?"
LARINA: "It was right."
FAYE: "Good for her," turning back to the screen.
LARINA: "No, you don’t understand. She pronounced it right."
STEPHANIE: "Maybe she got it out of Buckland’s book."
LARINA: (quieter) "That’s not in Buckland’s book."

Larina is studying Winnie now, and things keep catching her attention. Perhaps it is a sighting, or something Winnie put on air that had a ring to it in Jackson. Or other cases, say from Carbon Vale, Larina’s home before 1985.

In that moment, Larina stops to consider if Winnie the Witch is any kind of charade. She begins to wonder what it is Winnie knows. She has been to Jackson once and, unlike most who go there, she knew when to make her exit.

That is the way I see it. Not some superhero or sage of the occult, nor a comic relief. Winnie is a witch of twenty years' standing who has seen enough supernatural oddities to know the first rule of the trade: get in the station wagon and head home. Before Charlie sees you have taken the good car.

Over in Alton...

"This is Winnie the Witch on Channel 47 in Alton, Illinois..."

She lets out a sigh. "Home of the Piasa Bird."

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Winnie shuts her eyes.

"I hate this job."

She absolutely does not.

Using Winnie in Your Game

Winnie can be used as background or as comic relief, and that is perfectly fine. She can be on in the background just doing her show, complaining about Charlie.

"Charlie said he fixed the antenna. Charlie also said he could install a ceiling fan. We spent Thanksgiving in the emergency room."

But I intend to use her for more than that. She can be the source of some very subtle clues. Being a witch, she has her way of knowing things. For one, she is aware there are other witches with eyes on her.

I am not talking about her halting the film to look down the lens and lay out the adventure for the player characters. The clues need to come across as part of the act. A warning couched in a joke, perhaps, or a piece of folklore in the intro, or an odd shift in tone when she brings up a certain town or local legend. There might be a warding gesture while the camera is still rolling.

It is the difference between what the casual viewer and a witch will take from it.

"Tonight’s creature has a talent for mimicking the ones you hold dear. So boys and girls, if your late grandmother should ring you from the cornfield, do let her leave a message."

The room will laugh. Larina will make a note of it.

Then there is the matter of Jackson. In my games, Winnie knows it. Not in the sense of "oh, that town 70 miles up 67?" but rather, "You are living on Mauvaisterre land? Why in the hell would you put yourself in that town?"

One thing I would like to avoid, though, is having her show up in Jackson. Not because I don’t want her there; I think she would be a lot of fun, but I want to avoid a couple of things. First, I want to avoid the whole "Special Guest Star" syndrome. Sure, it can be fun under the right circumstances, but not too much. Secondly, and this is more specific to this situation is I want to avoid making her into a "Peter Vincent" from Fright Night.

I mean. Obviously, Elvira is a huge influence on…well…a lot of things, but it is Peter Vincent who is on my mind a lot for this one. Sorry, Winnie, don’t mean to compare you to Roddy McDowall.

Winnie will provide the clues, sometimes looking straight at the camera and saying things like "No. The other road." No one knows what she is talking about, but the PCs might.

Used this way, Winnie becomes a kind of supernatural numbers station. The messages are there. The players simply have to realize these are messages AND, more importantly, the messages are meant for them.

Winnie also has a feature on her show, "Winnie's Witch Mail," where a letter is "delivered" to her by a rubber bat on strings she calls "Vlad." She reads viewer mail. No one is sure if the letters are real or not, but if the Characters write her a letter, she will answer it on air in a couple of weeks.

Stephanie, Larina, and Faye watch it in complete shock.

FAYE: What the fuck?
LARINA (sipping her Diet Pepsi): See. Told ya.

Links

Thursday, July 9, 2026

This Old Dragon Retrospective: The Road to the Witch

Larina is a Dragon Magazine witch. But not in the way that you might initially think.

My witch class and Larina went through many design phases and had many influences, as I have talked about here, but the truth of the matter is her genesis and my witch class's evolution owe a lot to the pages of Dragon Magazine, all long before Dragon #114 landed on the store shelves and ultimately my gaming table.

Select Dragons from the Brannan collection

So for today's "This Old Dragon," I am not going to do a deep dive into one issue, but rather the issues between Dragon #85 and Dragon #114, 1984 to 1986, not just some of my prime AD&D playing years, but when I did the most work on my various classes.

Since this is also a bit of an "In Search Of..." post in tone and flavor, I'll explain why this search is important to me.

Now, keep in mind, I did not read every Dragon when I got them and think, "What can I add to my witch?" I *DID*, however, read each new one and thought, "What can I add to my game?" As it turns out, I found the articles on magic, clerics, and new monsters the most useful.

Now I did go back when I got my Dragon CD-ROM archive and look specifically for witch-related and witch-adjacent material. But that was in the 2000s. It helped inform my Basic Witch, but a lot of those concepts were already present in my earlier works. It was, however, a wonderful bit of archaeology.

Class is in Session

To refresh everyone's memory and to set the stage from 1983 to 1987, I was in high school in Jacksonville, IL (no, not Jackson...exactly). During this time, I played in a regular group where I took turns on DM duties, usually about half-and-half. I had been working on a few new classes: The Healer, The Sun-Priest, the Necromancer, and The Witch. I saw each as related classes where clerical and wizard magic were blended. The Healer never really manifested the way I wanted, though I have played a few healers from the Werper family. The Sun-Priest eventually found life as an AD&D 2nd Edition Kit, and, using the rules as written, I have played some Sun-Priest-like characters in both D&D 4th edition and D&D 5th edition. Again, usually members of the Werper family, often sister-and-brother healer-and-Sun-Priest teams. The Necromancer finally found some life as the Profane Necromancer in my Monster Mash book.

The witch, however, has been my runaway success. When I got the above classes into a playable state, each had what we would call today an iconic character. There was Celene the Healer, younger sister of Johan II the Sun-Priest and Paladin. The Necromancer was Magnus, and, really, the most unassuming of them all was Larina the witch. Of the four, she went on to true immortality here. I suppose, though, the writing was all there. Luna Mondgott, Johan's and Celene's mother, was played as a witch using Cleric rules, and Johan's wife, Cara, was played as a witch using Illusionist rules. The witch was more or less inevitable for me.

But the form it took was not.

So let's look at one factor that shaped the class, and the character: the pages of Dragon Magazine.

Dragon #85 -May 1984

Why am I starting with this one? Good question. This is the first Dragon I ever owned and used regularly. It was in the pages of Dragon that I saw additions and changes to rules. They were not set in stone; they could be changed. I had already created many new monsters by this time, and the idea of new classes seemed not just reasonable, but actually required.

Dragon 85 was where I saw this. This issue gave me the highly valued Cleric Collection. Clerics were my main class of choice, and I played them less like holy men and more like occult scholars. So, less fighting, holy man, and more Van Helsing.

This is also the first time I saw an ad for the Witch Hunt game.

Dragon #86 - June 1984

Gods of the Suel Pantheon and the Dragon Deities helped me rethink what gods could be in D&D terms. This issue also gave me new familiars to consider and the idea that they were not just a special pet. The article wasn't perfect, but it was a good start. The Ecology of articles were always great because it made me feel like there were "monster naturalists" in the various worlds studying these creatures.

Dragon #87 - July 1984

The big one here is the Ecology of the Dryad. I know this was a catalyst and one of the reasons why Cara and Larina are both redheads; Red hair = magic. The review for Stalking the Night Fantastic and the ads for Chill made me realize that horror in RPGs was a good option.

Dragon #88 - August 1984

This is another important one. We got Wee Jas ("Wee Yas" or "Ouija") as the Witch Queen, Goddess of Witches and magic. Plus she looked great. THAT was Larina's look for a long time. How could I have not fallen in love with her? And she is Lawful Neutral. The same alignment Larina is to this very day. I may not have known all my witches yet, but I knew who their goddess was.

Dragon #89 - September 1984

Very helpful article in Many Types of Magic since it shows already that many types of magic are already baked into the system; it is just a matter of finding a spot for witchcraft. The ads for the Time-LIFE Enchanted World prominently feature their first book, Witches and Wizards, which gives witches legitimacy in the pages of Dragon.

Dragon #90 - October 1984

This features the witch-coded Incantatrix. The name is related to Enchantress, and her ability to steal spells gives her a witch-like feel in a world already filled with wizards. I tried Cara out as an incantatrix for a bit, but didn't care for it for her, and she went back to being just an illusionist. Dragon is certainly circling around a witch-shaped center of gravity for me. Speaking of charm, this issue also has the definitive list of creatures that can be subject to the Charm Person spell.

Dragon #91 - November 1984

We go darker here with a new demon from Gygax and more devils from Greenwood. Certainly material for masters of the occult.

Dragon #92 - December 1984

Double hit again from the Gygax/Greenwood tag team. Gary has more to say about clerics and I am all ears. This helps me figure out things for my clerics and paladins and ultimately my healer and witch classes. On the other end of the magic spectrum, Ed gives us more spells and has the audacity to introduce me to the Witch The Simbul without explaining anything else about her!

Dragon #93 - January 1985

Real-world witch hunts come to D&D as told in Gary's “Thinking for Yourself.” In fake worlds, “The Making of a Milieu” gave me strong advice about building a world where witches would live. This article, along with the two organization articles for Top Secret and Gamma World, gave me something I could build for Chill right away. Which in turn gave me more for D&D and witches.

Dragon #94 - February 1985

The fiction section featuring Baba Yaga is a great addition to my witch mythos. Not a lot ton of information, but enough. The Ranger revisions also show me that classes don't have to be a static concept.

Dragon #95 - March 1985

This one is useful as a perspective issue. Tolkien, Forgotten Realms material, non-combat experience, magic-item creation, and the religious response to RPGs in the form of DragonRaid, all feed the broader question of what fantasy gaming is allowed to be. The Denis Beauvais art for the fiction, Desperate Acts, gave me a character who was a contemporary of Larina and part of the same adventuring group.

Dragon #96 - April 1985

I have to say, I never had much use for Dragon’s April Fools issue each year. This one was no exception; there was little in it of interest to me for the witch class, or to Larina in particular. The only thing that stands out is the FASA Star Trek vessel Ginny’s Delight. Which I low-key loved. It may not have a direct bearing on the witch, but then again, my reading and gaming habits were not so easily compartmentalized. Whether it was fantasy, horror, the occult or superheroes, I did not see them as distinct categories. The starship is part of the same milieu as all the other science fiction, and the like I was into back then.

Dragon #97 - May 1985

Another Pages from the Mages article. The implication here is that wizards are dynamic; they research, they record their work. And spell books are treasure, maybe worth more than gold by weight.

Dragon #98 - June 1985

If nothing else, this issue reminds me that we are not, and certainly were not, bound by books. There is a lot of talk of playing RAW and rules orthodoxy these days; back then, that is not at all how we did it. There was a lot of experimentation. The “Creative Magic Items” article reminds us of this.

Dragon #99 - July 1985

This issue covers Unearthed Arcana, and how it will change AD&D. This is a sign to me that AD&D IS a game that can evolve. The Neutral point of view helped me figure out how to play a Lawful Neutral witch when, say, a chaotic Neutral one would have been easier.

Dragon #100 - August 1985

Classes are on Gary's and Frank Mentzer's mind with the Druid-Ranger, which seemingly breaks the rules. Well, if it is good enough for these two, who am I to argue? The Forum reminds me, though, that there are still people who refer to additions and changes to rules as "illegal."

"City Beyond the Gate" showed me something I already knew in theory, but this was great in practice; that AD&D is not confined to the quasi-medieval world. Now I remember playing this adventure; I remember many of the characters in it: Johan II, Nigel, and I know Larina was not there. Too bad; she would have loved it. Marvel-phile gave a strong write-up in Dr. Strange and was a good model on what I wanted for my witches. The variant magic system was also quite fascinating.

Dragon #101 - September 1985

The biggest draw for me here is the Creature Catalog III with some witch-adjacent monsters. "Sorry, Wrong Dimension" from Mike Manolakes covers alternate realities, a feature that would be important to Larina's many futures.

Dragon #102 - October 1985

I have not done this one for a "This Old Dragon" because I don't have a copy anymore. This one does have some items that I considered important, but not in the typical manner. Ads for The Complete Spellcaster and Elvira/Chill had my attention. The "Valley of the Earth Mother" was good, but not one I ever ran.

Dragon #103 - November 1985

A look into the future here. Gygax discusses future editions of AD&D and the game's evolution. The article on the saurians catches my interest, but not for the witch.

Dragon #104 - December 1985

The articles on the thief class are interesting and showcase the class beyond the charts and numbers. I will use similar logic to pull the witch further away from her "magic-user" roots.

Dragon #105 - January 1986

Our first issue of 1986. I mention here that I recall January 1986 starting out really cold. I recently taken these memories to help form a new Jackson, IL adventure featuring my frozen misanthrope The Refrigerator, but more on that later. "Seeing is Believing" by Geoffrey Meissner covers different types of invisibility. While this had immediate uses for my witch class, it served my DM and his Riddlemaster/Adept psychic classes even more. The magic in our worlds stopped being a monolith and became multiple expressions.

Fraser Sherman's "A world of difference: The parallel concept expands gaming horizons" was the right thing at the right time for me, as I was really exploring the idea of parallel worlds at the time. This was the height of DC's "Crisis on Infinite Earths," so we really made extensive use of these ideas. Larina would later be in contact with some of her alternates via her Mirror, or "Shards," as I now call them.

Dragon #106 - February 1986

Issue #106 matters to me because of "A Plethora of Paladins." That article showed that the paladin need not exist only as a single lawful-good archetype with an evil mirror image. There could be variations. There could be holy warriors shaped by alignment, ethos, patronage, and worldview. For someone building new classes, that is an important lesson. It says the game's iconic roles can be opened up, examined, and rebuilt.

That matters to the witch because the witch was never just meant to be the "distaff magic-user" or the "evil cleric" or the "NPC spellcaster from a fairy tale." She needed her own space and reasons to grow. Sure, I never used a lot of these paladins; I was pretty happy sticking to the Lawful Good ones and my single Anti-Paladin NPC, but I was thrilled to see them.

"The Laws of Magic" and "Casting Spells for Cash" both feed into the idea of magic as something with rules, culture, economics, and social consequences. That connects nicely to Larina's earliest personality: a witch pretending to be a wizard-in-training. She is not merely learning spells. She is learning how magical society works, what it expects, what it permits, and how to pass inside it while being something slightly different.

Dragon #107 - March 1986

I have not reviewed this one yet, but it is sitting here next to me. I will get into it in detail in a future This Old Dragon, but the artifact from this one is a reference to Laurana from Dragonlance. That matters because Larina’s name almost certainly owes something to Laurana. Did I get the name from this issue? Probably not. It is much more likely that it came from reading the Dragonlance novels themselves years before. But #107 shows the name, or close enough to it, was in the air at exactly the right time.

This is one of those small pieces of character archaeology that I can't prove, but that's too interesting to ignore. Larina was not named Laurana, but the resemblance is obvious, and the timing is right. Somewhere between Dragonlance, Dragon Magazine, and my own teenage need to make the character mine, Laurana became Larina. In truth, Sinéad owes her overall look and part of her history to Laurana.

Dragon #108 - April 1986

I would not call Issue #108 a major witch issue, though "Cantrips for Clerics" is an entry worth a mention. I had come to view divine and semi-divine spellcasters with more variety in mind than the run-of-the-mill cleric; one could see that same design impulse at work in the healer, the sun priest, the necromancer and the witch.

Clerical cantrips suggested that even minor magic could help define a caster’s identity. There is no need for every effect to be a miracle or some purpose for the dungeon or the battlefield. A few well-placed blessings, charms, and practical bits of magic speak volumes about how a character stands in relation to the supernatural.

This applies to witches as well. It is not enough for a witch to be judged by her top-tier spells; she must have that quality in her minor workings, too. Hedge witches need recognition as well and need to work into my systems of magic.

Dragon #109 - May 1986

While I can easily point to Dragon #114 as a major issue for the witch, issue #109 might have been more influential. While I had a fairly good grasp of the math behind XP per level values, Paul Montgomery Crabaugh’s "Customized Classes" becomes the article where I can test my ideas. It was a pivot point in my home games. I created the witch, healer, and sun-priest XP values that spring. My DM Grenda used it to create his various Riddlemaster/Adept classes. That summer was spent playing and playtesting a lot of new classes. This article showed me not just that I could build a witch, but I could build a good one.

The Barbarian Cleric by Thomas Kane even gave us a shaman-like class. Great for my ideas on what a primitive witch could be.

Dragon #110 - June 1986

The Cult of the Dragon was a HUGE influence on the development of cults and heresies in my game. In fact, my very first notes on what would become my Scaled Sisterhood Witchcraft tradition were written down here. Ed also gives us some more background on Elminster himself and some spells.

The Norse Myth articles gave me Angur-boda, Grid, and Gullveig. All described as witches and all of whom have played some role in my writings and development.

Dragon #111 - July 1986

The magic focusing items grabbed my attention right away, and certainly West Haven owes a little bit to the magical city Malachi.

If DC was dominated by the Crisis on Infinite Earths at this time, Marvel had their Phoenix Cycle. Phoenix gets a write-up from Roger E. Moore and later on Supergirl gets one as well from Greg Gordon. Why are they important, well both are described as two of the most powerful beings in their respective universes and both to a degree had impacts on my later game writing in particular the work I did on Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Dragon #112 - August 1986

I just covered this one last week. The big thing for me was that this was the first issue that let me know there had been a witch class in the pages of Dragon, and I was not creating something that no one would want. I would need to wait for Dragon #114 to see it, but that was only a couple of months away; it wouldn't be until I picked up Best of The Dragon (Volume 1) that I saw the witch from Issue #5. And it would be even longer before I got the Dragon Magazine CD-ROM collection and then saw the witches from issues #20 and #43.

By the time Larina appeared in my notebooks in July 1986, most of the ingredients were already there. Dragon #112 showed me the magazine had older witches in its own past, and Dragon #114 gave me the first Dragon witch class I actually had in my hands.

Dragon #113 - September 1986

The last issue before the witch. The cover alone was enough for me since the swordsman reminded me of my Johan III character. "Clout for Clerics" is a good article for expanding the Cleric's role and giving them some followers. James Yates gives us lesser clerics and man-at-arms followers for clerics and explains why, out of all the classes, they should have them. I expand on these ideas for covens.

There is also a great article on Hades.

Dragon #114 - October 1986

And here she is. I have said so much about this particular issue that I am at a loss as to what more I need to add. So, here are some links to things I have already said, including Larina's involvement.

The Larry Elmore art of the "enchantress" became my stand-in art for Larina for decades. While this was the first Dragon Magazine witch I read about (like many others) it was not their first, nor as you can see from above, the first time witchy topics were discussed in the pages of Dragon.

In retrospect, there is an inevitability to Dragon #114. Not because TSR was always going to publish a witch class, but for over two years I had been reading in that direction. The magazine had put before me its share of god-bound clerics and odd familiars, goddesses of magic and spellbooks with a past, not to mention alternate and custom classes, the monsters of folklore, parallel worlds, magical cities and the sort of horror that lingers at the periphery of fantasy. Come October 1986, the pieces were all laid out on the table; I picked them all up and reassembled them into something more Larina-shaped.

Larina's Character sheet from October 1986

Special Mentions

While these do not fit inside the publishing window for the most part, I would be remiss if I didn't bring up Best of Dragon vol. I, II, and IV.

Best of The Dragon

This first collection reprints the witch from The Dragon #5. Great little bit of archaeology and shows that the witch has been haunting the pages of Dragon (and D&D) since the very beginning.

Best of Dragon, Vol. II

This one gave me the Anti-Paladin and the Healer class. Not to mention two different ninjas. I learned that classes are not a static thing.

Best of Dragon, Vol. IV

This is where I first saw the Death Master NPC class and compared it to my own Necromancer. I liked the Death Master quite a bit, and I actually approached Len Lakofka about it later on. We stayed in regular communication until his death.

Not all of these shaped Larina in particular or even my witches in general, but they did contribute to the environment in which my witches could grow, and Larina could be created and grow.

That is why I say Larina is a Dragon Magazine witch, but not because one article created her. Dragon gave me permission, examples, arguments, monsters, spellbooks, gods, and the idea that classes could be built, tested, changed, and made personal. Dragon #114 gave me a witch. The previous two years helped make sure that when I finally found her, I already knew what to do with her.

Thursday, March 12, 2026

In Search Of...Ramal LaMarr

In Search Of… Ramal LaMarr

Every so often, I run into a name that feels less like a person and more like a half-remembered fever dream. Ramal LaMarr is one of those names.

I first encountered him the same way many gamers of a certain age did. Not through dance, and not through music stores, but through the pages of Dragon Magazine. Tucked away in the advertising margins of the mid-1980s, alongside mail orders for electronic dice, miniature ads, and fantasy figurines, was something unexpected.

A record advertisement.

Not a soundtrack.
Not a movie score.

Belly dance music.

Specifically, Omens, Oracles & Mysticisms of Dance and Empires of Dance by Ramal LaMarr.

At the time, it barely registered. Dragon was full of all sorts of strange things. But the name lingered. Years later, when I revisited Dragon #98 for my This Old Dragon series, the ad jumped out again, this time louder. It was no longer just a curiosity in the margins of a magazine. It felt like a clue.

Dragon Magazine

In Dragon Magazine #98 (June 1985), Ramal LaMarr’s albums were advertised explicitly as “MUSIC for Adventure Gaming!” The ad promoted two LPs: Omens, Oracles & Mysticisms of Dance and Empires of Dance.

Both were available by mail order from Lotus Records, a small Milwaukee-based label. There was no game company logo or endorsement and no elaborate explanation. Just the quiet assumption that gamers would understand why this music belonged at the table.

And honestly, that assumption was probably correct.

The mid-1980s gaming scene was full of these cultural overlaps. Fantasy roleplaying, New Age mysticism, occult bookstores, exotica records, and mail-order catalogs all blended together in ways that feel very foreign now. If you wanted atmosphere for your game, you built it yourself. Candles, incense, weird records, whatever you could find.

Ramal LaMarr’s music promised atmosphere. I do not know a great deal about the genre, but I do know I plan to use this music when I finally run the Desert of Desolation trilogy, which appeared around the same time as these ads. Tracks like "Cities of the Jinn," "Ritual Fire Music," and "Wand Dance of the Scarlet Sorceress" from Omens, Oracles & Mysticisms are practically custom-made for these adventures. Even one online catalog files Ramal LaMarr under "occult," so you know it has my attention.

Following the Music Outside the Dungeon

Step outside the pages of Dragon Magazine, and Ramal LaMarr stops being a gaming curiosity and becomes something else entirely.

His music was composed for belly dance performance, not fantasy gaming. His best-known album, Omens, Oracles & Mysticisms of Dance, was released in 1983, followed a year later by Empires of Dance, both on Lotus Records. There is a third album, Pleasure Gardens Of Dance (1987), which sounds a little different, and another in 1989, Exotica. Neither of these later albums was advertised in Dragon Magazine. At least, not that I have seen. He would also appear on a compilation album, Dance Of Mystery, in 2015 with his song Dance Of Mystery.

The sound is unmistakably of its time. Synthesizers sit alongside electric guitar and bass, while traditional percussion instruments, such as African drums and the tabla, anchor the rhythm. Throw in some kanoon and mbira, and LaMarr goes from curiosity to multi-instrumentalist. The result is music that feels ritualistic, sensual, and deeply rooted in the early-1980s studio aesthetic.

This was not archival folk music attempting to reproduce traditional Middle Eastern styles. It was modern studio work designed to evoke an imagined ancient world. Mystery, sensuality, and atmosphere were clearly part of the goal.

The album's own liner notes describe the music as conveying "authentic rhythms and moods of the East with a wonderful quality that transcends time and geographical boundaries," promising to "inspire visions of mystic times past and dreams for future aspirations."

Which, again, explains why it made perfect sense to advertise it to Dungeon Masters.

Over time, the albums slipped out of print. Copies became harder to find. What had once been a niche record slowly turned into a collector’s item. Belly dancers still search for the LPs. Vinyl collectors trade stories and digital transfers. Online threads periodically appear asking the same question.

Where did Ramal LaMarr go?

Ramal LaMarr After Dragon Magazine

This is where the trail begins to fade.

There are no confirmed biographical details about Ramal LaMarr’s real name, musical training, nationality, or early life. No interviews have surfaced. No promotional biographies. Even Discogs, usually a good archive of production details, preserves only the album credits and publishing information.

One name does appear repeatedly: Chandrani.

She is referenced in track titles, most notably Raks Chandrani. Community recollections claim that Ramal and Chandrani lived in Germantown, WI, and that she was deeply involved in the dance world. One commenter even claims she later died of cancer. It is verified that on his albums, she played the Zills, or finger cymbals. It has been confirmed she was his wife and featured on the covers of his albums. I guess I really should say their albums. While Ramal played almost every instrument, she feels like a full contributor to the sound of these albums.

Germantown, Wisconsin, is outside my Illinois "Corridor" of gaming influence; it does sit in what many have been calling the Gaming Fertile Crescent. An area between Lake Geneva and the Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. But that is for another "In Search Of..."

These stories may be true, but they remain anecdotal. They belong more to the oral history of a small artistic community than to verifiable archival sources.

What we can say with confidence is that Ramal LaMarr recorded at least two albums, published through Lotus Records and its imprint Daughter of the Jinn Music, and that his work circulated widely enough to leave a long echo even after the records themselves disappeared.

One YouTube commenter suggested that Ramal was still alive as recently as five years ago, though attempts to contact his former label, Lotus Records, have yielded nothing.

Another possibility is that Lotus Records was not a traditional label at all. Many niche musicians in the early 1980s released records through private-press imprints, often little more than names created to manufacture and distribute their own albums. If that is the case here, then Lotus Records may simply have been Ramal LaMarr himself.

Anyone online who claims to have known Ramal and Chandrani describes them the same way: lovely, generous people.

What Happened Next?

That is the question that keeps coming up.

There is no reliable public information about Ramal LaMarr’s life after the mid-1980s. No additional albums have surfaced. No modern performances or teaching listings can be clearly connected to him. No official website exists, and there is no widely documented obituary.

In other words, Ramal LaMarr joins a long list of creators who burned brightly in a niche cultural space and then quietly stepped away.

Why This Still Matters

Ramal LaMarr fascinates me because he represents a moment that no longer quite exists.

A time when a belly dance LP could be advertised in a role-playing game magazine without explanation. When a small regional label could produce something that quietly embedded itself in multiple subcultures. When mystery was not part of the marketing plan. It was simply the way things worked.

I discovered Ramal LaMarr in the pages of Dragon Magazine, but he clearly did not belong there alone. His music belonged to dancers, gamers, collectors, and anyone looking for sounds that felt a little different and a little magical.

Ramal Lamarr and Ronald E. Pillat, the Man Behind the Music

Research is a funny thing. As of right now, I have been working on this post for a little over a year. Digging up old details, reading local newspapers for mentions. But it was not until I decided to look up copyright details for "Daughter of Jinn Music." That opened up a lot of information for me.

It seems as recently as 2011, a copyright application was filed for "Lands of Pleasure and Delight et al." Tucked away in the application was the best clue I have uncovered in a long time.

Ramal LaMarr, pseud. of Ronald Pillat (author of pseudonymous work); Domicile: United States; Citizenship: United States. Authorship: Sound recording, performance, production, music and lyrics.

There is an address associated with the filing and it is in Germantown, WI. But that house now seems to be gone and new one has been built in its place with new owners (so please don't try to contact them).

So who is, or more to the point was, Ronald E. Pillat?

There are more copyright claims for all of the Ramal LaMarr albums, including notes indicating that Ramal LaMarr was the pseudonym for Pillat.

Sadly, this is almost where the trail ends. It seems that Ronald E. Pillat, born May 24, 1951, passed away on August 13, 2021. This Ronald E. Pillat did live in the right area (North Prairie, Wisconsin) and was the age I would have suspected. The 1951 date also tracks with information found in the pulbic records for the copyright for Omens, Oracles & Mysticisms of Dance.

I am disappointed, to be honest. I posted first about Ramal LaMarr in 2017. Had I done this research, I could have reached out to Ronald Pillat for more information. I am happy, though I can finally put a name to Ramal LaMarr. I hope that others find this half as interesting as I did.

I am playing Omens, Oracles & Mysticisms of Dance while working on this. Is it D&D music? It doesn't matter if I think it is or not, its connection to Dragon Magazine is enough. And if my own research has anything to say about it, enough gamers my age remember the ads fondly and that too is enough. But, if you really want my opinion? Yes. It is. I want to play this while running a desert-themed adventure. Maybe even something for my Wasted Lands: The Dying Age campaign. Certanily there will be a Bard in my games named Ramal at some point.

Thank you Ramal LaMarr for such a wonderful research idea and your funky ads in Dragon Magazine. Thank you and Chandrani for your passion and wonderful album covers. And thank you, Ronald E. Pillat, for bringing all of this to life. I only wish I had had the chance to tell you all this myself.

Links

Discogs: Ramal LaMarr artist page

YouTube Links

DJ Farraginous blog, “Ramal LaMarr - Omens, Oracles & Mysticisms of Dance.”
https://djfarraginous.wordpress.com/2017/08/20/ramal-lamarr-omens-oracles-mysticisms-of-dance/

Hanttula Exotica archive: Omens, Oracles & Mysticisms of Dance
https://www.hanttula.com/exotica/omens-oracles-mysticisms-of-dance/

Instagram post of Omens, Oracles, and Mysticisms of Dance
https://www.instagram.com/p/DMURiJyO6q4/?img_index=1

Reddit: “Ramal Lamarr - Where is he today?”
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bellydance/comments/smfdpi/ramal_lamarr_where_is_he_today/

Reddit: “Looking for out of print LPs by Ramal LaMarr”
https://www.reddit.com/r/Bellydance/comments/kezozh/looking_for_out_of_print_lps_by_ramal_lamarr/

Tuesday, March 3, 2026

In Search Of...The SIU Connection and the Illinois RPG Pipeline

“I am a Saluki, you fools. I am a Saluki, and I will destroy you.”

- Bob Odenkirk, SIUC Grad 1984

Growing up in the Midwest in the 1980s was interesting. I was far away from both Chicago and St. Louis, the two largest cities, which I didn't get to very often, and stayed relatively stuck in my smallish town. We had our own run-ins with the Satanic Panic, and generally speaking, I couldn't wait to get out, thinking that if I moved away, I could at least find better access to cool RPGs.

How little I actually knew back then.

I later learned that I actually lived near what I have started calling the Illinois RPG pipeline. Games would flow down from Lake Geneva via Chicago to universities in Champaign-Urbana (U of I), Bloomington-Normal (Illinois State), and Carbondale (Southern Illinois University, SIUC). Mostly via I57. Of course, SIUC was the Alma Mater of Tim Kask and, later, yours truly.

Given the availability of material, I also assume that there was a pipeline that went through Springfield, IL as well. That route would have been Lake Geneva to Chicago, down I55 through Bloomington to Springfield, and then on to St. Louis and again, Carbondale.

From the early 1970s through the 1990s, these contiguous corridors stretching from Lake Geneva through Chicago and central Illinois to Carbondale functioned as a sustained creative and distribution spine for tabletop role-playing games, linking publishers, university clubs, conventions, retailers, and designers into what can reasonably be called the Illinois RPG Pipeline.

The Illinois RPG Pipeline was not just a metaphorical flow of ideas, but a physical corridor of products and ideas.

Gen Con in particular was not just an event. It was the first distribution node. Designers, retailers, and university gamers attended in person and brought the product home. Its position in late summer was ideal for purchasing content and then packing it up to take back to school in a few weeks.

What I once thought was isolation in southern Illinois was in fact proximity to one of the most important role-playing game corridors in the country: a 400-mile pipeline that carried ideas, designers, products, and play culture from Lake Geneva through Chicago and central Illinois to SIU, shaping the growth of tabletop gaming for decades.

Talking with Tim at Gary Con 2025, I learned even more.

Tim Kask from Little Egypt

Before he was TSR’s first full-time employee and editor of The Dragon, Tim Kask was a married student at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. From there, he cold-called Gary Gygax, having found the Lake Geneva address in the back of Chainmail. Chainmail was popular with the Strategic Games Society then, as it was when I got there a decade later. Kask got invited up, dropping his wife and daughter off in the Quad Cities, and the rest is history. Kask’s own reminiscences place that contact in late ’73/early ’74, while he was at SIUC. During this time, Kask would talk with Gygax about what a "mess" the rules were and how he taught the SGS how to play, but needed to figure them out himself first. This is key: the rules, given their state, lent themselves to being taught in play rather than being read to play. This became a viral campaign long before that term was coined and is still one of D&D's greatest strengths; people who watch it being played want to play more.

This area of the state in known as "Little Egypt." SIUC's school mascot is a Saluki, an Egyptian running dog. The school's daily newspaper is called "The Daily Egyptian." This dates back to the 1830s, when severe weather caused crop failures in Northern Illinois. The Southern Illinois area (today anything south of I-70) became very attractive to settlers due to the fertile land and rivers (the lower Mississippi and Ohio) that rarely froze. The richness of the soil there is so deeply ingrained that 150 years later, when I was there, people still talked about it.

Kask and I talked a lot about SIUC. Salukis never forget their erstwhile home. Tim lived in married housing while his brother lived in the dorms called "Triads," and he would go and visit him and play D&D. I also lived in the Triads. He was in Boomer Hall, and I was in Wright Hall, separated by about 13-14 years. Sadly, Boomer, Wright, and Allen halls, the Triads, were all demolished in 2012. I guess sometimes you can't go home again.

But that time was influential in shaping how D&D grew beyond those three little rulebooks.

Kask refereed the "Qualishar campaign," described in local coverage as the first Dungeons & Dragons campaign played at SIU and likely one of the first outside Lake Geneva. That’s a huge claim, but it’s coming from a contemporary profile built around Kask’s Carbondale years. Note the spelling drift you’ll see in fan histories: Qualishar in news pieces vs. Kwalishar in later forum posts and anecdotes.

Side Note: Kask has also said his first PC was named Kwalish, which fans often connect (informally) to the item name Apparatus of Kwalish. Treat that as apocrypha-but-plausible; it’s sourced to Kask comments preserved in community threads, not a primary TSR memo or publication.

The Strategic Games Society and The Egyptian Campaign

The Strategic Games Society was the gaming group that formed back in the early 1970s at SIU Carbondale. They would meet in the Student Center (3rd floor if I remember right) and play war games. At the time, prior to 1974 their membership was only about a dozen. Tim Kask and his brother were members 14 and 15, according to his recollections.

Back then, SGS at SIUC was a wargaming RSO (registered student organization) that bridged the pre-D&D and early-D&D eras. Exact rosters are hard to pin down in print, but the through-line is clear: SIU had an organized strategy gaming scene in the early 1970s, and by the mid-to-late 1970s that group was already intersecting with the brand-new role-playing hobby. There’s an active SGS presence today; they still meet in the Student Center.

The Egyptian Campaign (1987–2007)

If you gamed around Carbondale, you probably remember The Egyptian Campaign, the local convention that ran from 1987 to 2007, peaking at around ~750 attendees. It was anchored at the SIU Student Center and, for years, was the spring gaming date on the regional calendar. Even recent DE coverage of successor shows calls out Egyptian Campaign’s footprint and dates.

I went to it in April of 1988. I missed the preregistration and was unable to get into any games. It happened around the time of Spring Fest and Carbondale's famous "Cardboard Boat Regatta," so I often missed it.

What the SGS was doing through the late '70s and into the '80s, as D&D exploded, is harder to document; rosters and meeting records from that era haven't surfaced publicly, but the convention scene that emerged in 1987 didn't spring from nothing. Conventions do not appear ex nihilo. A 750-attendee show requires a pre-existing culture. One thing is certain: there was quite a bit of D&D being played there. A side effect of this? Cheap D&D books at 2nd hand book stores. I picked up a near-mint looking Deities & Demigods with the Cthulhu and Melniboné mythos for just $18. And it was not the only one.

An Aside: The Trampier Thread

Then there’s the Carbondale connection we can't escape: David A. Trampier (DAT) the AD&D 1st edition artist and creator of Wormy. After vanishing from the hobby in the late ’80s, he resurfaced in a 2002 Daily Egyptian ride-along story… as a Carbondale cab driver. He later died in Carbondale in 2014, just weeks before he was slated to surface at a local con (yes, Egypt Wars). If you’ve ever wondered why Carbondale keeps coming up in old-school circles, that story alone would do it.

Back in the early to mid-90s, I walked by that Yellow Cab depot all the time. There was this bar that all the TAs went to as soon as we were done teaching. There were more than a couple of occasions I left the bar, walked by the Yellow Cab, and got on the Amtrak to see my girlfriend in Chicago. The cabbies all sat outside and smoked. I can't verify this at all, but I know I walked by Tramp more than once.

The Pipeline

From the mid-’70s through the ’90s, a contiguous corridor of publishers, conventions, and university clubs, TSR and Gen Con in southern Wisconsin; Chicago-area publishers and retailers; UIUC’s Winter War; Judges Guild in Decatur; and SIU’s convention scene and retailers in Carbondale, created a reliable Midwest supply chain for RPGs. That infrastructure, plus TSR’s 1979 Random House book-trade deal and later Midwest distributors like Chessex/Alliance, made new D&D material easier and faster to find along this route than in regions that lacked equivalent clusters.

I have no sales figures. I have no hard data. What I do have is the recollections of many gamers and some other anecdotal evidence. But here is what I do know.

Mayfair Games (Chill, Role Aids line) was founded in Spring 1981 by Darwin Bromley, his brother Peter Bromley, and friends, and Darwin Bromley himself had practiced law in Chicago from 1975 to 1981 before starting the company. It was named for the Chicago neighborhood in which it started. Darwin Bromley was involved with the Chicago Wargaming Association and its CWAcon convention, where the first Role Aids fantasy adventures were debuted and run. Chicago had its own organized wargaming association running its own convention. That's not just a waypoint, that's an active gaming culture node.

FASA (founded in 1980 in Chicago) pumped out Traveller material early on, then Star Trek, Doctor Who, BattleTech, and Shadowrun. Further concentrating RPG/miniature culture (and distribution reps) in Chicagoland. Founder Jordan Weisman was first bitten by the gaming bug in the mid-'70s when he began playing D&D at a summer camp. The game followed him all the way to the Merchant Marine Academy and the University of Illinois at Chicago, where it ultimately pulled him away from his degree and led him to found FASA in 1980. Weisman and Babcock sold those first Traveller adventures to a local Chicago store before sending them to nationwide distributors.

FASA brought William H. Keith, Jr. and his brother J. Andrew Keith into the company from freelancing for Game Designers' Workshop. The downstate node was feeding back into the upstate one.

Games Plus (Mount Prospect, IL) has been serving the region since 1982, one of the Midwest’s longest-running RPG FLGS anchors. I would order minis from them and have them shipped to me when I was living downstate.

Moving south.

Champaign-Urbana (UIUC) as the mid-corridor node. Winter War launched in January 1974 and is still running, often cited as the Midwest’s longest consecutively running independent gaming convention. This is where Marc Miller tested out some of his classic Traveller adventures. Game Desinger's Workshop actively playtested here as well. My first connection with the Call of Cthulhu game was the summer a friend's older brother brought it back from Urbana.

Bloomington-Normal, IL was the home of Game Designer's Workshop (1973) and Illinois State University. The GDW collection at the McLean County Museum in Normal, IL shows central Illinois as a parallel wargame/RPG publishing hub feeding the same stores and cons.

Marc Miller, creator of Traveller, attended Illinois State University (in Normal), where he joined the ISU Game Club, created by future game designers Rich Banner and Frank Chadwick. ISU is as important to the development of Traveller as SIU was to Dungeons & Dragons. GDW did not advertise locally but instead focused on conventions and word of mouth.

Decatur, IL as the south-central publisher node. Judges Guild began publishing in 1976 and became the premier third-party for D&D in the late ’70s–early ’80s; TSR’s formal license lasted into the early ’80s.

Bob Bledsaw was born and raised in Decatur, Illinois, and in 1975 began running a D&D campaign after friends asked for help after four failed attempts to run the game themselves. On July 4, 1976, Bledsaw and partner Bill Owen traveled to Lake Geneva to visit TSR, where they met with Dave Arneson and received verbal approval to produce play aids for D&D. At the time, TSR's general feeling was that no one would be interested in supplemental materials.

By 1980, Judges Guild had scaled to a 14,000-square-foot facility in Decatur with a staff of 42. At that time this central Illinois town was home to one of the world's largest RPG publishers.

Springfield, IL, White Oaks Mall (Center of the State) had two book sellers (Waldenbooks, B Dalton's) that kept a regular high stock of D&D/RPG items from the early 1980s on. This was due to the Random-House distribution deal that put D&D and other games into malls all over. Many other stores also carried D&D and Wargame titles within the city. At one point, a city of just 100,000 people had five sources of D&D books.

I have talked to gamers from all over. Some had to hunt for books, drive long distances, or rely on mail order. Here, I had choices of a couple of locations in my own small hometown, and I could drive the short distance to Springfield to have even more choices.

Carbondale, IL, Castle Perilous. Coming full circle, Castle Perilous opened up in Carbondale in 1990 by SIU alum Scott Thorne. Steve Chenault of Troll Lord Games played games here while searching for Trampier.

Continuous convention calendar along the route. Gen Con (WI), Winter War (UIUC), and the Egyptian Campaign (SIU) created a reliable annual circuit for retailers, designers, and GMs to move product, run events, and cross-pollinate.

Time Line

1968–1978: Gen Con grows in southern WI (Lake Geneva to UW-Parkside).
1973: GDW founded (Bloomington-Normal, IL).
1974: Winter War launches at UIUC (Champaign-Urbana, IL)
1974: Tim Kask attends first GenCon, begins playtesting D&D at SIUC
1976: TSR opens Dungeon Hobby Shop at 723 Williams St. in Lake Geneva.
1976–83: Judges Guild (Decatur) is a primary third-party D&D publisher under TSR license, then beyond.
1979: Random House distribution deal with TSR begins (book-trade availability).
1980: FASA was founded in Chicago.
1981: Mayfair Games was founded in the Chicago area (Role Aids 1982).
1982: Games Plus opens (Mount Prospect, IL).
1984: Pacesetter was founded in Delavan, WI (near Lake Geneva, WI).
1987–2007: Egyptian Campaign runs in Carbondale, peaking ~750 attendees.
1990: Castle Perilous opens in Carbondale. Second only to Games Plus in size and sales. Still open today!
1987–98: Chessex (Fort Wayne, IN) expands Midwest distribution; Alliance forms through a 1998 merger.

The PLATO Bonus

There was another, parallel pipeline. Gary Whisenhunt and Ray Wood at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale wrote the first role-playing video game in the TUTOR programming language for the PLATO system between 1974 and 1975. Called dnd, it was named after Dungeons & Dragons and is notable for being the first interactive game to feature what would later be called "bosses."

This makes Carbondale and SIUC part of the earliest lineage of digital RPGs. Dungeons & Dragons and computers go all the way back to their origins and are interlinked. While computers will be forever associated with "Silcon Valley," RPGs will forever be associated with the Midwest.

The Midwest did not merely birth Dungeons & Dragons; Illinois sustained and propagated the hobby through a connected north-south corridor of publishers, universities, conventions, and retailers that formed a durable cultural infrastructure from Lake Geneva to Carbondale.

Selected Sources / Bibliography

Tim Kask Interview, Part I - Grognardia (2008) https://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/09/interview-tim-kask-part-i.html Kask's account of his SIUC years, the Chainmail cold call, GenCon '74, and his hire at TSR.

Tim Kask Interview, Part II - Grognardia (2008) https://grognardia.blogspot.com/2008/09/interview-tim-kask-part-ii.html Kask on the development of Basic and Advanced D&D, viral spread of the game, and his role as "midwife" to AD&D.

Bill Owen on Bob Bledsaw - Goodman Games https://goodman-games.com/remembering-bob-bledsaw-sr/ Co-founder of Judges Guild's first-person account of the Decatur wargaming scene and the founding of the company. Essential primary source for the Decatur node.

Bill Owen's ICD/Judges Guild Precursor Blog https://wargamecampaign.wordpress.com/2017/06/10/icd-judges-guilds-precursors/ Owen's detailed account of the pre-Judges Guild wargaming club scene in Decatur and Springfield, including connections to other Illinois clubs.

Marc Miller Interview - The Escapist, "A Perpetual Traveller" https://v1.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/tabletop/columns/days-of-high-adventure/7023-A-Perpetual-Traveller-Marc-Miller Miller in his own words on returning to ISU on the GI Bill, founding the ISU Game Club, and how D&D instantly made sense to him because of prior political roleplaying at U of I.

Dragonsfoot Tim Kask Thread https://www.dragonsfoot.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=92246
Primary community source for Kask's SIUC recollections and the Kwalish/Apparatus connection outside of my own conversations with him.

"An SIU Gaming Club Played an Integral Part in the Development of Dungeons & Dragons" - The Southern https://thesouthern.com/news/local/an-siu-gaming-club-played-an-integral-part-in-the-development-of-dungeons-dragons/article_a2c8bcd5-0d4c-5df3-a4cf-1f3a4225286d.html Local news coverage of the Strategic Games Society and Kask's Qualishar campaign at SIUC.

"Club Part of Dungeons & Dragons Creation" - Jacksonville Journal Courier https://www.myjournalcourier.com/news/article/Club-part-of-Dungeons-amp-Dragons-creation-14341261.php Additional local coverage of SIUC's role in D&D history.

"Exchange Club Played Part in Dungeons & Dragons Creation" - Daily Herald https://www.dailyherald.com/20190818/news/exchange-club-played-part-in-dungeons-dragons-creation/ Third regional news source documenting the SIUC pipeline connection.

Winter War - About Us (official site) https://www.winterwar.org/about Confirms 1974 founding by the Conflict Simulation Society on the UIUC campus.

"A Winter War for Gamers" - Smile Politely https://www.smilepolitely.com/culture/a_winter_war_for_gamers/ Detailed history of the Conflict Simulation Society's founding in 1969 and the birth of Winter War. Confirms the UIUC origin and the 1974 launch.

"Annual Winter War Gamers' Convention Returns to Champaign" - Herald-Review https://herald-review.com/entertainment/local/annual-winter-war-gamers-convention-returns-to-champaign/article_5f22fea4-2a5b-11e0-9c99-001cc4c03286.html Confirms Winter War as one of the oldest continuously operating wargaming conventions in the world, 38 years without a break.

Books

Gary Gygax, Empire of Imagination by Michael Witwer (Bloomsbury, 2015).

Ben Riggs, Slaying the Dragon (St. Martin’s Press, 2022).

Jon Peterson, Playing at the World (Unreason Press, 2012).

Jon Peterson, The Elusive Shift (MIT Press, 2020).

Shannon Appelcline, Designers & Dragons: The ’70s (2015)