Fantasy Fridays: The Dying Earth

 Today marks the 110th anniversary of Jack Vance's birth. Back in May, I covered his Dying Earth books for my Witches of Appendix N. Today I want to look at the RPGs of the Dying Earth. There are essentially two published ones, Pelgrane Press' and Goodman Games for Dungeon Crawl Classics. I will consider both today.

Games at The End of the World

I have been spending quite a lot of time lately thinking about dying worlds.

Not post-apocalyptic worlds necessarily. That is something different. I mean worlds that are simply old. Very old. Ancient. Worlds where civilizations have risen, fallen, been forgotten, and had new civilizations built on top of their ruins. And those have fallen and been forgotten as well. Worlds where the sun itself is old, and everyone knows, at least somewhere in the back of their minds, that eventually it is going to go out.

Such is the world of Jack Vance's The Dying Earth.

Vance began the series with The Dying Earth in 1950, followed by The Eyes of the Overworld, Cugel's Saga, and Rhialto the Marvellous. These stories helped give a name to the entire "Dying Earth" genre, although Clark Ashton Smith had already been exploring similar territory with his tales of Zothique in the pages of Weird Tales. (I'll get back to this...)

For gamers, though, Vance is particularly important because his fingerprints are all over Dungeons & Dragons.

The most obvious is magic.

The classic D&D Magic-User studies spells, holds a limited number of them in memory, casts one, and then loses it from memory. That system comes directly from Vance. Gary Gygax openly acknowledged the influence, and The Dying Earth and The Eyes of the Overworld appeared in the famous Appendix N of the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide. Even things such as the Prismatic Spray and Ioun Stones have Vancian ancestors.

But reducing Vance's influence to "Vancian magic" misses a lot.

The Dying Earth is full of dangerous ruins, forgotten technologies that might as well be magic, bizarre monsters, petty magicians, decadent city-states, amoral adventurers, strange customs, ancient artifacts, and people willing to undertake extraordinarily dangerous journeys because someone told them there might be something valuable at the other end.

Sound familiar? It should. 

Plus, there is the feeling of overwhelming dread that the sun could go out tomorrow or next week or in a thousand or a million years. The people, though, are not letting that stop them. Party like it is 1,999,999,999. 

That mixture of wonder, decadence, fatalism, absurdity, and danger makes the Dying Earth a fantastic place for gaming. It also makes it surprisingly difficult to get right.

There are currently two major licensed attempts to bring Vance's world directly to the gaming table. One comes from Pelgrane Press. The other comes from Goodman Games.  Both have their merits and take remarkably different approaches.

And I think both approaches tell us something useful about the Dying Earth.

Pelgrane Press - The Dying Earth

When Pelgrane Press put out The Dying Earth Roleplaying Game in 2001, they were putting the first officially sanctioned version of Vance’s world into print. And this one is nearly as legendary as the stories it is based on. Robin D. Laws was the chief designer on the 192-page core book, with John Snead and Peter Freeman.

Laws was quick to see that a straightforward adaptation of D&D would not do for his game. There is no denying the debt D&D has to Vance, but for all that, a D&D character does not act like one of Vance’s creations. That was the problem Laws intended to put right.

Combat is there, of course, but so are Persuade and Rebuff, and they are just as vital. An argument is made into a mechanical contest; with the right style of persuasion or resistance, you can be as effective at talking an opponent into some folly as you would be with a sword. It has the right feel.

The mechanics are built around a d6 and point-rated abilities, which can be spent to tip the odds, giving the narrative play a light touch of resource management. One should not confuse this with GUMSHOE, even if Pelgrane has become synonymous with that system in later years. The Dying Earth RPG has its own rules and predates GUMSHOE entirely.

Then there is the matter of power levels, perhaps the most interesting thing about the design. A campaign is broken down into three tiers. You have the Cugel level, where you are an adventurer or a rogue, and survival is as much about a well-told lie as it is about your fighting prowess. Move up to Turjan, and the characters are magicians of note, delving into ancient places and wielding serious spells. At the Rhialto level, you are dealing with the likes of the sandestins and commanding extraordinary power.

It is a fine way to handle the source material. Cugel and Rhialto may share a world, but they are hardly of the same genre or power level, and Pelgrane makes no pretense that one evolves into the other by the ordinary process of advancement. They are simply different ways to play.

Pelgrane has also been thorough in their treatment of Vance’s world, from the oddities of Kaiin to lost civilizations and the more eccentric corners of the Dying Earth. They have backed the game with a good number of supplements and The Excellent Prismatic Spray magazine over the years.

There is an obvious weakness to it all, however. This is a game keen on staying true to Vancian behavior, and the player has to come to terms with that. The long list of abilities is a telltale sign of the late 90s/early 2000s design school, and even some adherents of the game wish it were shorter (the Revivification Folio has since put some order to the rules).

But the basic aim is met. If the players start quibbling over armor class and marching order when a monster turns up, they are missing the point. But when one player declares that character must go in first by virtue of his education, and the player is hard put to make the case for another’s superior qualifications, then we are on to something.

Pelgrane is not after D&D’s take on Vance. They are after Vance himself. There is a difference. Understanding that is the key to playing this game.

Dungeon Crawl Classics - Dying Earth

Then there is Goodman Games, which takes almost the opposite approach.

With Dungeon Crawl Classics Dying Earth, you are not put to the task of learning some new game built for the express purpose of emulating Vance or a Vancian world. The question posed here is far more intriguing: what if we were to take Dungeon Crawl Classics (DCC), with its Appendix N pedigree, and shove it headlong into one of its own source materials?

As it happens, quite a bit comes of it, and the results are quite fun.

The 2023 release from Goodman is a substantial boxed set for the DCC RPG. You will find a 64-page Player’s Libram, the 104-page Primer of Practical Magic, a bestiary, and other resources in the set. It is an expansion and a setting, not a stand-in for the core game; the regular rules are still required.

Four new classes make up the bulk of the mechanical changes: the Magician, Wayfarer, Witch, and Vat-Thing. You already know this has my attention.

Take the Wayfarer. He is your Cugel type, a rogue and opportunist, a confidence man who is as much a survivor as a traveler. Since Luck is already a defining feature of DCC, Goodman has made much of it. A Wayfarer’s Luck can be wonderfully volatile, and the class has the rhetorical tools for the verbal manipulation a Vancian scoundrel requires. In a way it is a clever solution to the problem Pelgrane noted, that Cugel is apt to talk someone else into having his problems for him. Only here it is done in DCC fashion.

The Magician is another matter. DCC wizards have always been something of a risk; spell checks are unpredictable and dabbling in the supernatural leaves its mark. The Dying Earth version of the class goes further. The designers have made for an exceptional offensive caster where spells are not so much a curriculum as fragments of lost knowledge handed down by some eccentric sorcerer. Very Vancian.

Then you have the Witch and the Vat-Thing, which move things away from standard DCC fantasy. The latter, in particular, is well suited to a world where magicians will putter about making life in vats with little more than a vague notion of what they are at. It underlines the fine line between magic, old science, and monstrosity.

New rules, patrons, and creatures are in order, as well as grudge tokens, which I like. There are rules for grudges because this is Jack Vance. The petty feuds and betrayals get some mechanical heft. And with fresh treatments of rhetoric and Luck, the DCC mechanics acquire a Dying Earth edge.

You could make a case for criticism. After all, it is still DCC.

Someone on the RPG subreddit put it well: with Pelgrane, you have the Cugel stories where everyone is out to swindle each other, whereas DCC is more like the early Dying Earth where the world wants to eat or deceive you. Another felt Goodman was simply forcing the setting into DCC rather than making a system for Vance. That is certainly the mission statement of the original Dying Earth RPG.

I would say both are fair points. But I don’t see the second as a flaw. DCC is already in the neighborhood with its desperate tomb robbers, its inexplicable artifacts, and its wizards playing with forces they do not comprehend. There is no need to force the fit. DCC was already halfway there on its own. It is largely one of tone and personal choices.  

Pelgrane has you playing Vancian characters. Goodman provides the Vancian adventure. They are not the same, but they are close enough that I could see myself drawing on either for a campaign.

In fact, the best Dying Earth experience likely lies somewhere where these two games intersect. Either is fine on its own, really, but together they provide a truer picture.

No. I am not going to attempt conversion notes. 

The Ash Witch

Since I first read Clark Ashton Smith's "Zothique," I have had this image of a witch walking out of the desert where no one should have survived. She has a staff with a skull on top and covered in ash. I'll also admit the idea of her walking out of the desert and into a city-state was largely influenced by Black Sabbath's "The Wizard."

Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" has done nothing to dissuade me from this vision.

Eventually, the Ash Witch became someone important in my Yog setting, even if just as a tale or legend, but that legend starts somewhere. So here she is, for the DCC Dying Earth (fits her the best).

This is very much a "Dying Earth" version of this character; I even have The Murthe, the Sorceress Llorio, as her Patron. 

Larina, the Ash Witch

Larina Eschata, the Ash Witch
10th-level Neutral Witch
Pact Entity: The Murthe, Llorio the Sorceress
Occupation: Scholar of forgotten religions
Alignment: Neutral

Str 10 (+0)
Agi 15 (+1)
Sta 14 (+1)
Per 18 (+3)
Int 17 (+2)
Luck 16 (+2)

HP: 38
AC: 13

Init: +1
Speed: 30'
Attack: +5
Action Dice: 1d20 + 1d20
Crit: 1d20/II

Saves: Fort +4, Ref +7, Will +7

Spell Check: +13
Maximum Spell Level: 5

Ritual Weapon: Dagger
Birth Augur: Survived beneath the Dying Sun.
Birth Gift: Second Sight.
Known Squalms: 14.
Demonic Taint: 3

Starting Animus: Syncretic Heretic

Larina has publicly denied the divine authority of the Priest-Kings and incorporated forbidden rites, dead gods, and the teachings of Llorio the Murthe into her witchcraft. Priests, inquisitors, and agents of the Priest-Kings regard her as a particularly dangerous heretic.

Ensqualm: Curse

First level: Charm person*, comprehend languages, detect magic, demon summoning, magic missile, ropework, sleep, ward portal.
Second level: Detect invisible, ESP*, forget*, invisibility, levitate, scorching ray.
Third level: Consult spirit, dispel magic, fireball, paralysis*, write magic.
Fourth level: Control fire, polymorph, wizard sense.
Fifth level: Magic bulwark.

* The Murthe's Favor

Transfer Vitality: d20 + Personality modifier + class level check.

#RPGaDAY2026: Day 24 Distance

I have two modern horror campaigns. They let me play with similar ideas under different assumptions and even different rules. My oldest calls this "save scumming." It is from video games: if you don't like a particular outcome, you go back to your previous save and start back from there. For me, I think it is more about having two separate but equally enjoyable outcomes.

Jackson, IL, and Carbon Vale, IL, are about 220 miles apart. That is their physical Distance.

That is not nothing, but it is not exactly the other side of the world either. You could drive it in an afternoon. Different roads, different towns, different exits, but still Illinois. Still the Midwest. Still close enough to feel familiar, but still far enough to be different. I know, I drove to and from their real-world counterparts many times. 

Except they are not in the same world.

For me, Jackson and Carbon Vale are separate universes. They even use different game systems, which makes the distance between them feel larger than any map can show. They are not just separated by miles. They are separated by rules, histories, assumptions, and the kinds of monsters waiting in the dark.

And yet magic makes them closer.

A mirror, a spell, a book, a dream, or the right impossible moment can cross a distance no highway can. That is what I like about using both settings. They are far enough apart to be different worlds, but close enough that one girl can still reach for the other.

In this case, it is a battered-up copy of "A Wrinkle in Time." Notes left in the pages are transported to a similar book 220 miles and a universe away. I talked a little about this back on Day 12.

So what is the difference between Jackson and Carbon Vale?

More than distance, honestly. But also less than distance.

Jackson, IL and Carbon Vale, IL NPC

Today is Emotion and Fair of Face.

Siân Nichols is Larina’s mother in the worlds where she lives, beautiful, warm, and emotionally central in ways Larina does not always admit. Siân died in the Jackson, IL campaign, but thanks to Nix and Creepy communicating via "A Wrinkle in Time," she is alive in the Carbon Vale, IL campaign.

There will likely be some repercussions to this act, but I am not sure what they are going to be yet. But I know they will happen.

Jackson Soundtrack

https://www.autocratik.com/ • https://www.castingshadowsblog.com/

#RPGaDAY2026: Day 13 Strain

Strain is what happens before something breaks.

In Jackson, IL, everyone is under some kind of strain. The students are trying to act normal. The parents who know less than they think, or the ones who know more than they let on. The teachers pretending the old building is just old. The witches holding wards, secrets, friendships, and bad dreams together with both hands.

It is good for horror gaming. Fear is the easy part to come by. Strain is more subdued. It is in the poor grades and the lack of sleep, the tremor in one’s hands or a hallway argument born of exhaustion and fear for which there is no ready explanation.

For a witch, this strain takes on a magical quality. There is a price to be paid for every spell, a demand for focus with each ritual. Hold onto a secret for too long, and it begins to weigh on the soul. A witch has her limits; one can bear much, but not indefinitely.

Eventually something has to give. In Jackson at least, it tends to happen at the worst possible moment.

In fact, "the worst possible moment" for the characters is often the best possible moment for the game.

I have an adventure outlined, but not developed yet. Something to get all the characters in the game to distrust each other to distract them from the problem of my big bad, The Hollow King, attacking Rowan. It's an old trope, but an effective one. I am ratcheting up the stress and strain. These are teens. Sturm und Drang. The idea is to have them confront their personal demons before confronting actual demons. 

Jackson, IL or Carbon Vale, IL NPC

Still in Associates Week, and today is Thursday Far to Go. 

Tessa Marr: A runaway from Jackson who keeps turning up in towns where witch trouble is about to start. She has traveled most of Southern Illinois and so far has avoided becoming a sad statistic. This is because of her uncanny ability to avoid trouble and be where she needs to be. 

Her older sister Selene, a woman with pre-cognitive gifts of her own, has been looking for her.

Jackson Soundtrack

https://www.autocratik.com/ • https://www.castingshadowsblog.com/

#RPGaDAY2026: Day 12 Loss

Another Witchcraft Wednesday. Let's talk about my favorite witch. 

In most versions of Larina, she has lost both of her parents.

I have used that for nearly forty years now, and honestly, I have come to realize it is a little lazy. Dead parents are easy character development. Too easy, sometimes. They explain the pain, clear the stage, and give the hero a wound without making the writer work too hard. And gives them a reason to be away from their homes. I mean it works, and everyone does it.

But loss has defined Larina for a long time.

So now I am experimenting with it. In Jackson, IL, Larina has lost her mother, but not both parents. In my Carbon Vale, Illinois setting, she still has both. The question becomes less "what did she lose?" and more "who is Larina when that loss changes?"

That is the useful part for gaming.

And since this is all about occult associations, there is another thing to consider. Jackson Larina, aka "Nix," and Carbon Vale Larina, aka "Creepy," communicate back and forth via notes slipped into a copy of "A Wrinkle in Time." And Nix warned Creepy what was going to happen. So Creepy stopped it from happening. There will be a debt to be paid here; I am not sure what, and I am not sure when or even who will need to pay it.  

But it will come due.

A character’s loss can be canon, variant, rumor, retcon, or alternate timeline. What matters is not whether every version has the same tragedy. What matters is what the loss taught her, what it cost her, and what she refuses to lose next.

Jackson, IL NPC

Still in Associates Week and Wednesday's Child is Full of Woe. 

Evan Harrow is a Jackson teen descended from a family everyone whispers about, but no one confronts. Evan is from a long-suspected witch family, which is true, but not for a generation or two. It is not something they are happy about, and they still get a lot of grief in Jackson, but no one quite remembers why.

Jackson Soundtrack

https://www.autocratik.com/ • https://www.castingshadowsblog.com/

Witchcraft Wednesday: Daggerheart Witches

 A while back, when I was talking about my witch Elowen Hale, I said that the Daggerheart playtest witch played a big role in who she is and what her character was like. I also said then, "When the new Dread add-on for Daggerheart is out, I'll come back to this and detail a bunch of witches." 

Well. It is out now. And it's not just witches; it has warlocks as well.

Elowen Hale

I have posted Elowen once before, but I wanted to check how well the playtest matched the final version. So far I have not noticed much difference, but granted, Elowen is only first level. Elowen really typifies what I think of when someone says "Hedge Witch." She is not about power, or flashy magic. She like tea, a pastry, dancing in the rain with her friend Dori, oh, and figuring out why she returned from the dead. The new Daggerheart: Hope & Fear has a "returned" character type that almost, but not quite, fits her. Maybe I'll adapt some of it later on for her. She isn't a reanimated corpse nor is she a ghost or a vampire. She is...well, she is Elowen, and she is fairly unique among my witches. 

Elowen Hale

Level 1
Class & Subclass: Witch (Hedge)
Ancestry & Heritage: Loreborn human
Pronouns: She/Her

Agility: 0
Strength: -1
Finesse: 0
Instinct*: +2
Presence: +1
Knowledge: +1

Evasion: 10
Armor: 3

Minor Damage: 7 Major Damage: 14

Weapons: Wand. Trait and Range: Knowledge Far. 1d6+1 (Magical)

Armor: Leather 6/13 +3

Experience
I See Dead People +2
Fate Always Has a Price +2

Class Features
Hex
Commune (with ghosts only)

Talisman (the spoon she was holding when she died.)
Dagger (she rarely uses it)

Spells (Spell casting: Instinct)
Blightning Strike, Level 1 Dread
Umbral Veil, Level 1 Dread

For her experiences. "I See Dead People" should be pretty obvious. She sees ghosts. Everywhere and all the time. Even the harmless ones. She sees them, and they see her. This can given her clues as to something going on. She can look at an ancient burned building and see it filled with tavern patrons and know that it was a tavern at some point in the past. When? Well, that depends on her rolls. 

Her "Fate Always Has a Price" is there to help me find creative ways to deal with the fact that maybe she didn't really come back in one piece. There is something strange still going on. This lets her tap into her strangeness.

Skylla

Skylla is not always my go-to Warlock, but in this case she works very well. Especially if I am planning to use my Iriandor setting. She is largely the same as her AD&D/D&D counterpart down to my idea that she is somehow a clone, duplicate, or something related to Charmay. Daggerheart has enough flexible weirdness for me to explore this more. Giving her the Pact of the Wrathful is my way to represent her own internalized anger issues. I also have worked up my other warlock, Taryn, a little, and she is also Pact of the Wrathful, but in her case it is because her father is a warrior defending a realm.

Skylla

Level 3
Class & Subclass: Warlock (Pact of the Wrathful)
Ancestry & Heritage: Loreborn human
Pronouns: She/Her

Agility: +1
Strength: -1
Finesse: 0
Instinct: +1
Presence*: +2
Knowledge: +0

Evasion: 12
Armor: 3

Minor Damage: 9 Major Damage: 16

Weapons: Dual Staff. Trait and Range: Instinct Far. 2d6+3 (Magical)

Armor: Leather 6/13 +3

Experience
I Will be a Master of Magic: +2
I am More then Charmay's Shadow: +2
More Power: +2

Class Features
Patron's Pact
Favor (3)

Talisman (the spoon she was holding when she died.)
Dagger (she rarely uses it)

Spells (Spellcasting: Instinct)
Blightning Strike, Level 1 Dread
Umbral Veil,  Level 1 Dread
Voice of Dread, Level 1 Dread
Hideous Retribution, Level 2 Dread
Invisibility, Level 3 Grace

Skylla has some anger issues and a huge case of imposter syndrome. She thinks she knows who she is, but is plagued by nagging self-doubt. This causes her to throw herself into her magic. She has to be better, more powerful, and then and only then can she feel like she is truly herself. 

Her experiences reflect this. She craves more power, she craves validation, and she can't help but do the things she needs to do to survive and become more powerful.

Daggerheart is nothing if not a great place for some really good conflicted characters. Maybe she needs therapy and not an adventuring career. 

Larina Nix

I have not worked out all the details yet of the Larina of Iriandor, save that I know she is powerful. Did she fight in the Last War? Certainly. This would be a reflection of her D&D version that Unmade an Archduke of Hell. I think, given the nature of Iriandor she would be part of the group that seeks to rebuild the world into someplace better. That is very much her. 

Also, her focus would be protecting witches and warlocks. Post-war, these spell casters are mistrusted and thought to have sided with the fiends who had controlled everything. While many did, not all, and Larina is here to make sure they are protected, though there are still some witches who conspire to bring back the fiends and return to power.

Larina Nix

Level 10
Class & Subclass: Witch (Moon)
Ancestry & Heritage: Loreborn human
Pronouns: She/Her

Agility: 0
Strength: -1
Finesse: 0
Instinct*: +5
Presence: +2
Knowledge: +3

Evasion: 11
Armor: 3

Minor Damage: 16 Major Damage: 23

Weapons: Dual Staff. Trait and Range: Instinct Far. 4d6+3 (Magical)
Dagger. Trait and Range: Finesse Melee. 1d8+1 (Physical)

Armor: Leather 6/13 +3

Experience
Scholar of the Occult +5
Affinity for Languages +4
Commanding Presence (Witch Queen) +3
Witches are Everywhere (Contacts) +2
I have seen Horrors +2

Class Features
Hex
Commune

Talisman (Book of Shadows)
Handcrafted Besom

Spells (Spellcasting: Instinct)
Blightning Strike, Level 1 Dread
Natural Familiar, Level 2 Sage
Terrify, Level 3 Dread
Healing Field, Level 4 Sage
Spectral Mists, Level 5 Dread
Dire Strike, Level 5 Dread
Darkness, Level 6 Dread
Sage Touched, Level 7 Sage
Rejuvination Barrier, Level 8 Sage
Eldritch Flesh, Level 8 Dread
Fane of the Wilds, Level 9 Sage
Avatar of Terror, Level 10 Dread

This feels right for a scholar-turned-warrior witch-turned-healer sort of Larina. Iriandor is a world after the Last War, and it needs healers more than warriors. She is 10th level, so she is not likely to be a PC but rather an important NPC.

But so far, I really like these characters, and they bring something a little different to the table. I might also build versions of Étaín Moonshadow and, of course, Taryn. Étaín is easy enough, to be honest; the hardest part is translating her quest to discover an ancient religion tied to the moon goddess. Or maybe not...after all, during the rule of the Arch Fiends all other religions were stamped out, and maybe Étaín's Threefold Goddess was something only passed down via an oral tradition.

Though...there is a lot with each character here, but especially Étaín, that ties them directly to their own worlds and not Iriandor. Maybe I need a new bunch of witches just for this world. Wouldn't hurt that is for sure.

Fantasy Fridays: Larina for Advanced Witches & Warlocks

Advanced Witches & Warlocks by Eugene Jaworski

 I have spent the better part of this week talking about my witch character, Larina. Mostly about where she has been and who she has been. Today I want to share the next Larina. A little bit like the cameo of the 12th Doctor in "Day of the Doctor." Is this the same witch as my Dragon #114 Larina or the AD&D 2nd Ed Larina? Yes. And maybe. 

Advanced Witches & Warlocks

I wanted to be much further along on this than I am right now. I have been picking at it for a number of years. In truth, as soon as I finished my Basic Witch book. But OSRIC had not caught on like Labyrinth Lord, Basic Fantasy, or later on Old-School Essentials. But I kept at it, testing different ideas. Some of those ended up in other books, others got cut from drafts altogether, but the documents remained. I also had plenty of notes left over from other versions of my witch classes. Things I wrote, but never could get to work the way I wanted them to. Case in point: today's meta-topic. 

Advanced Classes

One of the ideas I introduce in AW&W is that of Advanced Classes. The examples were already there; the Thief-Acrobat, the Hierophant Druid, even the Bard to a degree. These are classes that start with one of the base classes and then move on to a specialization. I mean, I could have called them Specialist classes, but I like the sound of Advanced Classes. AW&W introduces three Advanced classes: the Archwitch, the Witch Priestess, and the Witch Queen. Each offers the witch something different. 

In playtests, it became clear that, with the restrictions I built in, the advanced classes were less powerful than the base class. To remedy this, I made some changes to spells and swapped out expanded spell lists at the cost of occult powers. Though there is the option to choose some occult powers later on, they are usually one of a choice of options. 

Of course, as you have all seen from my posts this week, this is exactly the sort of thing I use Larina for. In-game, and in my own history with her, she starts out as a witch but typically becomes more "faithful" and religious. She isn't just a witch, but a witch priestess in function. Now she can be that in form as well.

"Larina" by Djinn

I dabbled with the idea of making her a 13th-level witch and a 7th-level Witch Priestess. Taking the Witch Priestess levels later on, but in truth the differences were very minor save for choices of occult powers or other powers. The big difference is the choice of spells. Of course that also didn't track with the rules I wrote, but hey, sometimes my rules are not right, and I need to tweak them. In this case, though, my rules will stand. 

In this new book, there are spells common to every witch. There are other spells if the witch takes an advanced class, and there are spells unique to their tradition. So no two witches ever need to be alike in terms of the magic they have. This is less revolutionary and more evolutionary. We will see this with schools of magic and spheres of divine influence in AD&D 2nd edition, and we saw it in the Dragonlance Adventures book for the Schools of High Sorcery in AD&D 1st edition. This is just the logical middle ground between those two design choices. 

Traditions

Presently, the new traditions I am putting into this new book are The Atlantean Tradition, The Daughters of Baba Yaga, The Followers of Aradia, The High Order, and The Scaled Sisterhood. I am considering a sixth, but I want to work on it some more before I do. Five is a better number.

Each of these is considered to be "Higher" witchcraft. While many are depicted as older (Atlantean, Daughters of Baba Yaga, and Followers of Aradia), they set themselves above what they consider to be simple Hedge Witchcraft.

I suppose though that the Followers of Aradia *could* just be another type of Pagan witchcraft. Certainly their roots are there. I am still hashing that one out. Maybe Aradia is just the Witch Queen of the Pagan Tradition and not a Patron herself. 

See. Still work to do.

Larina Nix, Witch Queen of the High Witchcraft Tradition

Larina Nix, Witch Queen of the High Witchcraft Tradition

30th level Human Witch, Lawful Neutral
(7th level witch, 13th level Witch Priestess, 10th level Witch Queen)
Tradition: High Order Witchcraft

Secondary Skill: Translator (+1 language)

S: 10
I: 18
W: 18
D: 11
C: 11
Ch: 18

Paralysis/Poison: 3
Petrify/Polymorph: 3  
Rod, Staff, or Wand: 4
Breath Weapon: 6
Spells: 5

AC: -1 (Bracers AC 1, Amulet of Protection +2)
HP: 66
THAC0: 10

Weapon
Dagger +1
Staff +3, Staff of the Witch Queen

Familiar: White flying cat ("Cotton-ball")

Languages: Common, Lawful Neutral, Supernal, Elven, Draconic, Celestial, Infernal, Dwarven, Undercommon, Goblin

Occult Powers
1st level: Familiar
7th level: Circle of Warding (+2 to spell saves)
13th level (Witch Priestess/Divine Favor): Secret Formula* (one 4th level or below spell is always prepared)

19th level (Witch Queen/Occult Eminence): Witch’s Focus

Witch Priestess Powers
Divine Favor (Healing Hands, Nature’s Wrath, Invoke the Ancients, Occult Insight), Sacred Coven, Charge of the Goddess, Drawing Down the Moon.

Witch Queen Powers
Awesome Presence, Occult Eminence, A Thousand Faces, Timeless Body, Mantle of Sovereignty, Ninth Level Spells (5)

Spells
Cantrips: Clean, Dark Flame, Mend, Occult Mark
First level: Arcane Dart, Charm Person, Command, Faerie Fire, Glamour, Häxen Talons, Moonlight Veil, Sanctuary, Speak with Animals, Unseen Servant, Ceremony (Ritual)
Second level: Augury, Bless, I Told the Crows Your Name, Magic Broom, Mirror of the Self, Misty Step, Penny for Your Thoughts, Share My Pain, Sister to the Dark Ones, Spiritual Hammer (Witch's Hammer), Warding Circle
Third level: Call Lightning, Cauldron Sight, Circle of Rue and Iron, Curse of Withering, Eldritch Enchantment, Fey Bargain, Larina’s Eldritch Caress, Magic Circle, Power Word (Command), Tongues*
Fourth level: Analyze Magic, Coven Gate, Divination, Elemental Armor, Larina's Witchfire, Lunar Winds, Protection from Evil (10' radius), Scrying, Soul Snare
Fifth level: Circle of Sevenfold Flame, Coven's Might, Power Word (Pain), Speak with Hidden Folk, Two Places At Once, Witch Gate, Larina’s Word Beyond the Veil (Ritual)
Sixth level: Aspect of the Crone (Crone of Death), Blessings of The Morrigan (Greater), Guardians of the Watchtowers, Heal, Mind Fortress, Word of Return
Seventh level: Speak with the World Soul, Storm of Crows, Witch's Writ of Binding, Wave of Mutilation
Eighth level: Coven Eternal, Larina's Liberum Libre, Ritual of the Closed Veil (Ritual)
Ninth level: Bind Soul, Command the Coven, Power Word (Kill), Rewrite the Name, Seal the Gate

Theme Song: Night Bird and If Anyone Falls

Larina is a High Order witch. These occult scholars combine Arcane, Divine, and Occult practices into one esoteric philosophy. She has always honored the Triple Moon Goddess, and it was her introduction to the craft, but her "learning" of witchcraft began in a more academic way.  

I debated whether her advanced class should be Witch Priestess or Archwitch, and there are really good arguments for both. Archwitch had the advantage of sounding cool and reflecting her origins as a Magic-user, but in the end I went with Witch Priestess because it better reflected how she had been played over the years. She always stood in for a cleric in many of my games. If given the choice between what is optimal and what sounds better for the character in my head, I will always go with the character-serving option. 

So her start was in the High Order due to her academic bent and the learning she did from books at the magic school library. As she progresses in her witchcraft, she becomes increasingly spiritual and takes up the Witch Priestess advanced class. 

Larina the Witch Queen

I am also giving out some spoilers for spell names like "Circle of Rue and Iron," "Lunar Winds," "Coven Eternal," and a personal favorite, "I Told the Crows Your Name." 

There will also be a few more Secondary Skills. Larina is a translator because of her gift for languages. Alchemist or Herbalist might have been the more meta-game choices, but I am playing her as a character here, not a min-maxing experiment. 

Her stats were what I rolled back then. I had three 18s, something like a 1-in-12,340 chance using the 4d6 drop-the-lowest method, and I knew the dice were telling me to do something special with her. Aside: I wonder what happened to the other characters I rolled up that day? I NEVER rolled up just one; it was always a group. I have the ones from right before (rolled up for my birthday game) and the ones after, including my next attempt at a healer. I wish I had kept those "classmates" or even "near Larinas." Somewhere in that lost stack might have been another character I would still be talking about forty years later. I did find her ex-husband and one of my other drow characters who apparently hated her. They were from my birthday game back in June of 1986, though. 

AD&D Characters from the 1980s and early 1990s

It seems rather fitting to me that Larina, who was featured as a 6-year-old witch girl in my first-ever publication, would go on to be the witch queen of my next *D&D-compatible witch book.

It only took me 40 years.

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. 

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.

• This Old Dragon, #114
• Character Creation Challenge: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 1st Edition
• Skylla: Dragon Magazine #114
• Larina Nix for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (Dragon #114 version)

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. 

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.

Witchcraft Wednesday: Larina at 16, the Girl in Jackson, IL

Larina Stephanie Nichols at 16

 On Monday, I talked about Larina and her genesis in 1986 and before. On Friday, I am going to talk about the character's future. So today I thought, what about the present? What is Larina doing right now, and how does she affect my game design? So *who* is the Larina sitting on my desk now as I write?

Well‚ unless this is your first day here‚ the current incarnation of Larina is the one in Jackson‚ IL‚ set in 1985-86‚ and she is not the witch queen, not yet and se might not ever be․ She is often more frightened than not. Well‚ not that she'd tell you․ She only knows two spells and has a handful of books on witchcraft. And now, she and her dad just moved to Jackson‚ IL‚ the most haunted town in the Midwest․

There are a lot of really good reasons to go back to an earlier version of this character․ For starters‚ as I have hoped to point out‚ this was when she began in real life‚ so it would make sense to explore the character becoming who she is․ Not the legend․ Not the queen․ Not the character who has shifted through AD&D‚ Chill‚ WitchCraft‚ Mage‚ and NIGHT SHIFT‚ but just simple Larina‚ the sixteen-year-old trying to figure out why every shadow in the town knows her name․

I have had forty years to get to know the person Larina is. But in 1985-86, when I play Jackson Larina, it is an altogether different matter. At sixteen, fresh to town, left to make sense of her magic on her own. She has some friends who become her coven and are like sisters to her, and other friends she will fiercely defend. But the monsters here always have the upper hand.

Back in real 1986, Larina was not nostalgia. She was immediate. She was a character I needed at the table, a witch-shaped answer to a question AD&D had not quite answered for me yet. Today, writing Jackson Larina as a sixteen-year-old in a fictional1986 is something else. It is not just returning to the character. It is returning to the age when I first imagined her.

That changes everything.

I was the same as Larina when I first put her on the page. Being a teenager in 1986 is no exercise in imagination for me; I was living it. The music and books, the games and the anxieties that came with them, the moral panic, the cheap notebooks where I would scribble down character ideas, the disputes over rules, the feeling that the world was a far stranger place than the adults would have you believe, all of it was right there. Larina is a product of that time.

With Jackson Larina, I can return to those days, but from a different vantage point. I am not sixteen any longer, nor am I looking ahead from 1986. I am looking back. It puts her in an altogether different position in my writing and in the games I make. She is more than a younger iteration of a familiar character; she is a means of inquiring what she was before the weight of mythology and design had a chance to settle on her. And honestly, I like her that way.

There is utility in stripping away the power one has accrued over the years. Jackson Larina does not have a host of powerful allies or old enemies to call upon, no lost loves, no artifacts or cosmic scars to speak of. What she has is her father, a few spells, some books and a good deal of stubbornness. And an instinct telling her something is amiss in Jackson, and that if she does not put two and two together, someone will be the worse for it. That is a witch of a different sort. 

She does have friends. Stephanie and Faye are her coven. Candy and Denise are loyal even if they need saving more often than help, but they are still there. Even later characters like Andy, Rowan, Ami and Valentino have their places in her life. Much different than her Dark Places & Demogorgons counterpart.  

Which is precisely why she is so useful in my game design. I can have all these versions of her.

While Larina is always a feature in my design work, here she plays a more crucial role. She is my test of the rules and setting for other characters, the character others might use. Characters you might use. If the rules only work when a witch is already powerful, then they do not work. If the setting only makes sense once the character has become legendary, then the setting is too thin. Jackson Larina asks a more basic question: can a beginning witch survive here?

That is what I need to know.

You will not find high-level characters in Jackson, IL. This is a town of teenagers and their teachers and parents, of record stores and public libraries and old cemeteries, of college lore and haunted houses and things best left unencountered after midnight. A witch operating in this environment must be able to conduct research, protect her friends, and make mistakes. The game has to let her be clever, not invincible.

So the fact that this Larina knows only two spells is of consequence. It makes me, as a designer, consider what witchcraft is apart from a laundry list of abilities, powers and spells. What does she suspect? What has she read that is beyond the others? What does she see when they are not looking? And at what cost? Those are the questions that matter to Jackson Larina, not the damage a spell might do. With this version, I am able to create a witch as a playable character rather than a pre-packaged archetype. She ought not come across as the inferior of an older one, but as one who has only just started on a perilous education. Jackson Larina is my means of testing that proposition. She shows me if a novice has sufficient mystery to hold a player’s interest, or enough to offer an adventure and a group.

Larina also serves as a reminder that knowledge is among her most ancient of powers. Even in the days of AD&D she was never simply a matter of spellcasting. She was the one with the books and the lore, the one with the questions, the translator of ancient languages. If there was a symbol on the door or an old name in the grimoire, or a ghost that made its annual appearance, it was she who sought to make sense of it. Jackson Larina refines that. Her two or three spells are beside the point; her strength is in what she pays attention to. She reads and listens and connects one weird detail to another.

I want a "knower" in NIGHT SHIFT and in my Jackson work, not merely a caster who hurls magic at a monster without knowing why it is there. 

She doesn't have firepower. She has two spells and a library card.

The Larina on my Desk

There is a certain vulnerability in her that the older incarnations lack. An adult Larina can be fearsome, the Witch Queen mythic; some versions of her can enter a room and reality must bend around her. Jackson is not at that stage, she might never get to that stage. She can be overmatched or mistaken, in need of assistance, the new girl unsure whom to trust. That suits Jackson better. 

The town is at its best when the characters are not entirely in command. That is Horror Movie logic and Gothic Fiction logic; it is good for horror. They may be resourceful and brave, but Jackson should seem older to them. Dangerous. There are secrets in the place that predate their birth, colleges with ghosts, houses with memories, and adults who know either too much or not nearly enough. A sixteen-year-old Larina belongs in such a world; she has the power to spot the cracks but not always know how to put them right.

In a way, that is what Larina is worth to me today. She is no longer just the character from forty years back, nor the Witch Queen in waiting. For now she is the red-headed girl in Jackson with her couple of spells and a handful of books, some really great friends, an over-protective dad, and a nagging feeling the town is going to put everything she knows about magic to the test. As a designer, I need her to be there.

If Jackson Larina works, then the witch works. Not the high-level witch. Not the legendary witch. Not the Witch Queen. The beginning witch. The playable witch. The girl who has just enough magic to get herself into trouble and just enough courage to try getting everyone else out of it.

That is the Larina sitting on my desk right now, and after forty years, she is still teaching me how to write witches.

Two Spells and a Library Card

A natural question can be raised. Why her? I mean I have no shortage of witches. I even created a brand new one (more or less) just last week. I even have a witch that has a great background AND is about the right age in Elowen. 

So why go back to Larina?

I think part of that has been answered above. Larina, the character, is a product of the mid 1980s for me. A lot of what I wanted a witch to be in 1986 is her. So naturally, if I am going to have a witch character in 1986, why not her?

Also, Larina is always great for me because I know her so well. When I am running situations as a thought experiment or at the table, I know how she should react, not how I, as someone who knows the rules of the RPG, would react. That's important to me.

Also, Elowen has a very specific role in my mind. She is deeply connected to West Haven and very much Larina's "adopted" daughter. More so than Sinéad was, despite that being an early idea. 

Larina at 16, at least how I am using her in Jackson, is becoming something really fun and she can proudly stand beside her "sisters" (or Shards as I have been calling them) from Chill, WitchCraft, Mage, and the Witch Queen from AD&D. Even the other versions of her in NIGHT SHIFT. 

Other Larinas have crossed worlds and realities; the Larina of Jackson, IL has to get across town to St. Michaels for her Greek II class in her old purple 1977 VW Bug (which she has named "Eurydice" which makes no sense really). That is enough of a challenge.

And she is teaching me more this way.