Working the NIGHT SHIFT: Supernatural, The Night the Horror Came Home

 November 2, 1983 was the date Mary Winchester was killed in a fire in her home caused by a demon. Thus, the events of the series Supernatural were set into motion. The series ran on The WB and then The CW for 15 seasons and 327 episodes. It followed the exploits of "hunters" Sam and Dean Winchester and their circle of family and friends as they traveled the highways of the United States hunting monsters. Or as the series put it, "Saving people, hunting things, the family business."

The formula in the beginning was very simple. Sam and Dean would drive around in their black 1967 Chevrolet Impala (which became a character in it's own right), following leads on strange deaths or disappearances, which usually led to some sort of monster, ghost, or other urban legend coming to life (or unlife), killing said creature and moving on to the next one, all while listening to a great 80s soundtrack ("Driver picks the music, shotgun shuts his cakehole"). 

In other words, nearly every Chill game I ever played in.

What made the show successful, and why it managed to run for as many seasons as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed combined, had a great deal to do with the dedication of an extremely loyal, predominantly female fanbase. This might seem surprising at first glance. It was a show about two brothers driving around America in a late-1960s muscle car, listening to classic rock, drinking beer, and killing monsters. On the surface, it looked like something designed specifically for a male audience. But the show had something else going on, something that its fans recognized almost immediately.

At its heart, Supernatural was about family. 

More specifically, it was about two brothers who loved each other so much that they would literally go to Hell and back for each other. And they did. Repeatedly. The monsters were fun, the car was cool, and the music was great, but the emotional relationships were what kept people coming back. The Winchesters were not simply action heroes. They were damaged people trying to do the right thing in a world that seemed determined to punish them for it.

And then there was their found family of Bobby, Castiel, Charlie, and later on Jack. Even evil characters like Crowley and Rowena were part of the family. 

Fans responded in ways that went well beyond simply watching television. Supernatural developed an enormous online community, with fan fiction, fan art, conventions, and discussions about nearly every aspect of the show. The cast embraced this community, and the community embraced them right back. The phrase "SPNFamily" became more than a clever marketing bit. Fans organized charitable activities, supported mental health initiatives, and built relationships with fans worldwide. Jared Padalecki's "Always Keep Fighting" campaign and Misha Collins' Random Acts charity are especially good examples of this relationship between the performers and their audience. 

Supernatural took their fans seriously and never forgot they had a job because of them.

The show itself understood all this. Episodes like "The Monster at the End of This Book," "The French Mistake," and the 200th episode, "Fan Fiction," showed that the writers understood the fandom and were happy to have fun with it. I can't think of many other shows that made their own fans part of the mythology quite like Supernatural did.

Of course, fifteen seasons also meant that the show changed quite a bit. What started out as two brothers hunting urban legends eventually became a sprawling mythology involving angels, demons, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, and even God himself. I will admit that I often preferred the earlier monster-of-the-week episodes. There was something appealing about the idea that Sam and Dean could pull into some little town, discover something terrible was happening, research the local legends, and put a stop to it. Sometimes the simplest stories were the best ones. 

But the show could also be genuinely frightening, surprisingly funny, and occasionally heartbreaking (my youngest cried when Charlie was killed). It understood that horror worked best when the characters had something to lose. Even as the mythology grew increasingly complex, the emotional center remained Sam and Dean. As long as those two were in the Impala, there was still a story worth telling.

Supernatural and NIGHT SHIFT

It shouldn't surprise anyone that Supernatural influenced NIGHT SHIFT: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars in as much as the same sorts of stories and experiences influenced both NIGHT SHIFT and Supernatural. I remember EXACTLY where I was when I first heard about Bloody Mary, or Lilith, or Crossroads, or when I first heard "Carry on Wayward Son."

The idea of ordinary people who encounter the supernatural, survive, and then dedicate themselves to fighting it is fundamental to both. 

The early seasons of Supernatural could practically serve as a model for a NIGHT SHIFT campaign. The characters investigate strange occurrences, interview witnesses, research forgotten folklore, identify what they are dealing with, and figure out how to stop it. Sometimes that means a fight. Other times it means performing a ritual, finding the right weapon, or simply understanding what is really happening. Knowledge and preparation matter as much as being able to hit something.

The show also offered a particularly good example of what we wanted the Veteran character class to represent. Sam and Dean were not traditional fantasy fighters. They knew how to fight, certainly, but they also knew how to research, investigate, improvise, and survive. Their greatest advantage was their experience. They had seen things that most people would never believe, and they had learned how to deal with them.

There is a more personal connection here, too. When we were playtesting NIGHT SHIFT, the two Veteran characters were, for all practical purposes, Sam and Dean Winchester. My two kids played them, and they'd grown up watching Supernatural with us as a family. It was, along with Doctor Who, one of the shows we all watched together. Our enjoyment of the television show and the game influenced each other in completely natural ways. We all understood the characters, the sorts of stories they belonged in, and what they should be able to do. When everyone made their own characters for better testing, they already knew what they wanted.

And that, I think, is one of the more important lessons Supernatural reinforced for me as a game designer. You don't always need an elaborate explanation for why characters are working together. Sometimes they are family. Sometimes they share an experience no one else could possibly understand. Sometimes they are simply the only people who know what is really going on.

I also appreciated the way the show treated folklore and urban legends as material for new stories. Ghosts, vampires, werewolves, demons, witches, and all manner of strange creatures appeared throughout the series. Some were familiar, others much less so. The writers were willing to reinterpret old legends to fit the show's mythology. That is something I have been doing in my own games for decades.

One thing I wanted in NIGHT SHIFT was a game where stories like these felt natural. You could have an adventure involving a haunted house one week, a demonic possession the next, and an ancient conspiracy after that. You could play experienced hunters like Sam and Dean, or people encountering the supernatural for the first time. The game didn't need to be tied to one particular monster or one particular kind of horror.

The other lesson was that characters needed to be more than collections of abilities. Sam and Dean were competent hunters, but their relationships, flaws, fears, and loyalties were what made them memorable. The best role-playing characters work the same way. The monsters give them something to fight. Their relationships give them something worth fighting for.

Supernatural and My Games

Supernatural also has a natural connection to the sorts of stories I have been developing for Jackson, Illinois. The earliest episodes, especially, have that same small-town American horror atmosphere that I enjoy so much. Strange deaths, forgotten histories, local legends, and ordinary people who don't realize that something terrible is living right next door. Those are all things that would fit perfectly into a Tales of Jackson adventure.

In fact, the Winchesters would have no trouble finding work in Jackson. With its haunted places, strange creatures, thin boundaries between worlds, and more than a few people hiding supernatural secrets, the town would probably keep them busy for quite some time. Though I suspect some of my witches might have a few things to say about two hunters arriving in town and deciding that everything supernatural needed to be killed. Yeah, but lets be honest here. Dean and Stephanie would be terrible for each other in the best possible way, and Sam should wear a T-shirt saying "Larina bait."

That is another difference worth considering. In Supernatural, the protagonists are hunters, and much of the early mythology centers on identifying and eliminating threats. In NIGHT SHIFT, I wanted the supernatural to be more complicated than that. Not every monster is evil, not every witch is dangerous, and not every human being is innocent. Sometimes the real challenge is deciding what should be done rather than simply figuring out how to kill something.

Still, there is something wonderfully appealing about that black Impala rolling into town, two brothers stepping out, and the knowledge that whatever evil is lurking nearby is about to have a very bad day.

Horror Comes Home

Another important connection between Supernatural, NIGHT SHIFT, and my own Tales of Jackson is something I have been exploring for years, especially during my October Horror Movie Challenge. I call it "Horror Comes Home." The idea is simple enough. Horror becomes more immediate, more personal, and often more frightening when it happens somewhere familiar. The haunted house isn't an ancient castle in Transylvania. It is the old house down the street. The monster isn't lurking in some distant wilderness. It is hiding in the woods outside of town. The demon isn't waiting in Hell. It is living next door.

Supernatural understood this from the beginning. Sam and Dean spent much of their time traveling through an America that looked familiar to anyone who had ever taken a road trip through the Midwest. Small towns, roadside diners, cheap motels, empty highways, and forgotten places were all potential settings for a horror story. The show drew on American folklore and urban legends, turning familiar places into something strange and dangerous. In many ways, it was doing on television what I had been doing at the gaming table for years.

That same idea is central to Jackson, Illinois. My fictional town is filled with familiar places, schools, hospitals, libraries, shopping malls, and neighborhoods that could exist in almost any Midwestern community in 1986. What makes Jackson different is the supernatural world hiding just out of sight. The horror works because the town itself feels real. The people who live there have ordinary lives, ordinary problems, and ordinary relationships. Then something impossible happens, and those familiar places become frightening.

This theme also runs through many of the movies I watch for my October Horror Movie Challenge. I am particularly drawn to horror films that bring the supernatural into everyday life, where ordinary people discover the world they thought they knew isn't nearly as safe or predictable as they believed. Supernatural took that basic premise and turned it into fifteen seasons of television. It demonstrated that you don't need to travel to another country, continent, or world to find horror. Sometimes you only need to look a little more closely at your own.

Carry On

Fifteen seasons is an extraordinary achievement for any television series, especially one that began as a relatively modest horror show about two brothers chasing urban legends. Supernatural endured because it made its audience care about the people in the story as much as the monsters they fought. Its fans took that connection and built something lasting out of it.

For me, the show will always mean something more. We watched it together as a family. Every episode, every season. My wife, my kids, and me, and it eventually found its way into the games we played together. When I think about Supernatural and its influence on NIGHT SHIFT, that is what stands out the most. 

Saving people. Hunting things. The family business. We didn't have an Impala, but we had dice.

Carry on, my wayward sons.

Working the NIGHT SHIFT: Biology is not Destiny, The Supernatural Lessons of Lost Girl

There is a good reason I have chosen October 25 as the date for this post. It marks the series finale of Lost Girl on this day in 2015. One might expect me to go with the premiere anniversary for something like this, but the finale feels more appropriate for what I want to talk about here. 

For one thing, by the time Lost Girl was over, we had a clear view of what Bo had put behind her and what she had achieved. 

Lost Girl (2010-2015)

Bo, Anna Silk’s character in Lost Girl, discovers she is a succubus and that there is a whole supernatural world she was never aware of. More to the point, she finds that this world has its own set of rules as to who you are to be, who you are to keep company with, and which side you have to pick. She is forced to choose.

Bo’s response to all of that is a resounding "No."

And that is the most valuable thing the show offered me.

The Fae that inhabit the world of Lost Girl are not a single species. The term does not denote a single type of creature. They may hail from different mythologies, have powers that are worlds apart, or act in entirely different fashions. The only commonality is their place in the larger supernatural ecology. That, and there are two camps: Light and Dark Fae.

Lost Girl ran for 5 seasons, mostly focusing on Bo and human Kenzi, and their ability to move between the Light and Dark worlds of the Fae to investigate crimes in both and in the human world. Along the way, she meets and falls in love with Dyson, a male werewolf and cop, and Lauren, a female human doctor. Bo's bisexuality is a mirror to her ability to move between Light and Dark worlds, and the Fae and human worlds.

Much like Charmed, we developed playtest characters based on Bo and Kenzi. Bo was a good test of the supernatural character type. Kenzi became our de facto human survivor.

Lost Girl and NIGHT SHIFT

I wanted NIGHT SHIFT to be a game where one could play a supernatural character without having to codify every conceivable creature as a distinct species. The Fae in Lost Girl provided an excellent model for that. Two such characters need not resemble one another or even share a mythological pedigree to be of the same broad category. That concept was instrumental in developing the basic Supernatural species for the game.

It is a freedom of design. Rather than making a separate species for every horror movie or urban legend monster, I could put in place a framework that lets the player and Game Master make of the character what they will.

Lost Girl also underlined a notion that has taken on greater significance for me: biology is not destiny.

You will find in some older fantasy games an assumption that an orc is evil by virtue of being an orc, or that a demon is evil because it is a demon; the rules would even put a number on it with alignment. Lost Girl does not see it that way. 

Bo is a succubus by birth. Fine. That says what she can do, not what kind of person she must be. She makes the choice.

As the series goes on, that becomes all the more relevant. Her actions affect those around her. Other characters begin to doubt things they have taken for granted for centuries. Boundaries in the Fae world are crossed. It turns out many of the so-called natural and inevitable rules were just choices made by someone else at some point.

Which is why the finale is a better anniversary for this piece than the premiere. At the outset, Bo is the one insisting on her right to choose. By the end, she has changed the world around her. Even the next generation is afforded the option of deciding for herself what she wants to be, or of flatly refusing the options on the table.

That is a potent concept for a role-playing game. A character’s powers or ancestry may well matter, but they do not have to dictate who he or she is. What is of interest is what is done with them.

Not just great for drama. A necessity for RPGs.

Succubi

Then there is the matter of succubi. Lost Girl has given me plenty of food for thought on the subject.

They are traditionally demons, and I still use them as such, but the show reminds us that this doesn't have to be the whole story. A succubus can also be fae or vampiric (as in the WitchCraft RPG).

I care less for the label than for what the creature actually is in the world it inhabits. Is it feeding on blood or sexual energy? Does it have to cause harm to get by? Or are we calling several unrelated beings by the same name because humans are not adept at telling the difference?

Much more useful than the simple equation of "succubus equals demon equals evil." 

A supernatural being may have instincts or needs that are frightening to a human. Those are fine problems for a story to have. But they do not settle the question of good or evil.

That is for the characters to decide for themselves.

But once you remove the idea that a character has to act or be a certain way, it opens up a world of potential for the characters, the game masters, and the game designers like me.

Lost Girl and Jackson

You can't always see the influences of Lost Girl in my Jackson psts, but it is there, and a good deal of it can be found when you start to dig.

Take Larina, for example. The link is quite direct. During some early playtests, I was looking for something in her past that would account for certain qualities: her temper, or how at ease she has always been with magic of the more dangerous sort. There are magical avenues she will take that would give another witch pause. It is not as though these things make her evil, yet they pointed to something there, I just had not quantified it yet. 

I concluded that a little succubus blood in her lineage would do the trick. Not enough to turn her into one, or define her, but enough to add a dimension to her family history and account for those traits. And maybe that red hair too. 

In that regard, Lost Girl gave me a new perspective. Bo is a succubus, true, but that says only so much about her powers and biology. Who she is, she makes for herself. I wanted the same for Larina. Her demonic side is no excuse for her actions; it does not mean her temper is written in the stars or that dangerous magic is luring her to ruin. She is a witch, a student, a daughter, a friend and, in time, a mother. That is the sort of world I want to build. 

Then there is the matter of the cast. Lost Girl made it obvious to me that a group of women protagonists can be done right in genre fiction. For years, the convention in gaming was to have a room full of men with a woman or two for measure. Lost Girl had none of that. Either hero or villain, lover or rival, the characters were very often female, and it worked. They did not have to stand in for "the woman" of the piece; they could be as foolish as they were brilliant, as cruel as they were compassionate. You will find the same in Emily Andras’ Wynonna Earp. You saw this in Charmed as well. 

Jackson is no different. Larina, Stephanie, Faye, Vera, Rowan, Candy, Denise, Ami, Valerie, Kiera, and the rest are not here to tick a box. Some are witches, some are mundane, some run toward trouble, and some would rather be elsewhere. They are simply the ones with the most compelling stories.

If there is a through line between the two works, I would say it is the opening words from Bo: "I will live the life I choose." That might as well be inscribed over the doors to Jackson Public High School.

Larina will not let her bloodline dictate who she is. Faye is not going to let the hags who reared her have the last word. And while Stephanie has the weight of money, social standing, and family expectations on her shoulders, she will decide for herself who she wants to be. Vera has similar issues with money and family obligation on top of religion and a father who doesn't want his daughter to be a witch. She still has choices to make. Even the more ordinary folk have to make their call.

There is plenty of inherited trouble in Jackson. Old bargains, family histories, the town’s own debts from past generations. But that is not destiny. The characters must choose. It is not easy to do, and there are consequences, which is precisely why the choice is so important.

You can have the power, the history, and the problems handed down to you. But in the end, you have to determine what to do with them. Lost Girl knew that, and I want Jackson to as well.

--

NIGHT SHIFT^® is a Registered Trademark of Elf Lair, LLC. Used by Permission.

October Movie Challenge: Poltergeist II & III (1986, 1988)

 I wanted to do these two movies back-to-back since they are more connected to each other than they are to the first movie. The original Poltergeist is not just a great horror movie; it is a great movie, full stop. Spielberg shows the promise here that will earn him the accolades he gets with ET and Shindler's list. 

Sadly, Poltergeist directors Brian Gibson (II) and Gary Sherman (III) don't quite live up to the bar Spielberg set, but then again, who can? But if you ignore the first movie and take these two on their own merits...well, they still don't live up, but there is a perfectly serviceable horror movie here.

Niether of these re first time views.

Poltergeist II: The Other Side (1986)

"They're baaack."

I can't say with 100% certainty that the title of this movie didn't have a roundabout way of influencing the name of this blog. The name of my blog comes from an older website of mine, which in turn came from a newspaper column about weirdness I used to write for my high school newspaper. Though I am pretty sure I started that in 1985. In any case, the movie and the blog both take their name from the same sources.

In another bizarre connection. I guess I connection I used to talk to my dead grandmother on my play telephone too. But in my defense, I was only 2 at the time. 

The Freeling family has moved from their haunted house, now a hole in the ground, to live with Diane's mother. Missing and unexplained is older daughter Dana. The script for the movie has her at college, but that sequence was cut from the final shooting script due to the murder of Dominique Dunne, the actress who had played Dana. I have to admit that bothered me a lot at the time.

A dig at the former site of their home reveals a burial pit under the graveyard already there. Yes, it is an extra graveyard! BUT this becomes the key feature of this and the next film, introducing Rev. Henry Kane (played by Julian Beck), one of the creepiest horror movie villains in a long time. So the movie is redeemed by this alone.

We get a Magical Native American, Taylor (Will Sampson), to help the Freelings against Kane. This would be the last film roles for both Sampson and Beck.

What follows is fairly predictable, but not unenjoyable. This film has an uphill battle afterall. There are some great special effects. The "Worm" stands out, but the "Spielberginess" of the movie is gone.

Poltergeist III (1988)

In some ways, I enjoyed this one more. This movie only has Carlo Anne (a sadly very sick Heather O'Rourke) and Zelda Rubinstein as Tangina Barrons, as in the previous two movies. Henry Kane is back, played by Nathan Davis, with voice-overs by Corey Burton. The setting switches to Chicago, a place I was already in love with, so there was that.

Craig T. Nelson and JoBeth Williams are out as the Freeling parents as Carold Anne is sent to live with her aunt Patricia (Nancy Allen) and her new husband, Bruce (Tom Skerritt). I like both Nancy Allen and Tom Skerritt, so I was fine with this, and if the plot contrivance was to send Carol Anne to a special school, well that is fine, though I did have concerns about parents sending their child away after two traumatic experiences.  

We do learn from Tangina that there have been no incidents since the last movie and they only start now because Carol Anne's psychiatrist, Dr. Seaton (Richard Fire) dredges it all up again via hypnosis. 

This movie also features an early outing for Lara Flynn Boyle as Bruce's teenage daughter Donna Gardner. 

This moves the action from haunted houses built over graveyards to the modern John Hancock Center in Chicago. A good example of my "Horror Comes Home" theme. 

The Poltergeist Tragedies

I do at least want to acknowledge the various deaths that took place. Dominique Dunne was just 22 when she was murdered by her ex-boyfriend in 1982. Her death really bothered me at the time. Later on, both Will Sampson and Julian Beck would die soon after the second movie, and of course the most famous was Heather O'Rourke, age 12, who died in February of 1988 after filming, but before the movie was released in June.

Poltergeist 2015

I wanted to watch the 2015 Poltergeist with Sam Rockwell, but honestly I am a bit tired now. This was a lot easier to do 15 years ago.

NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson Connections

Both NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson, IL can draw on ideas from both Poltergeist II and III, though for different things. And honestly this is why I picked these two for tonight even though I have already seen them both.

With Poltergeist II it is the notion that one can get away from the supernatural and not have escaped it for good. The Freelings in Cuesta Verde have left town to put their lives back together, doing as much as anyone would in their position to leave it all behind. It does not keep Reverend Kane from putting in an appearance. I think of this with Jackson. Put down a haunting, and you are not guaranteed a clean ending. Some things have a memory of those who hurt them, some places hold on to former residents, and a family can be tied to something that will follow them anywhere.

I want room in NIGHT SHIFT for such stories. A bunch of characters can put an end to an artifact or a terrible encounter and go home to finish school and grow up. But come five or ten years, and something happens that makes them realize the experience has left its mark. They thought the matter was settled years ago, but then they have to consider they may never have understood what went on. In Poltergeist II at least, getting out alive and leaving something in your past are not the same.

Poltergeist III is in some respects more interesting to work with. The move to Chicago alters the whole mood. Carol Anne is older and with relatives in a high-rise. The supernatural is to be found in the elevators and mirrors and parking garages rather than another suburban house. That is along the lines of what I have in mind for my Chicago 1992 campaign.

By 1992, the Jackson kids have put some distance between themselves and their former home. They are at college or at work, sharing an apartment, having relationships, and paying bills. They have obligations and have let some of their old friends go. This is significant because in Jackson they had a support system. If something odd happened, there were people around who knew what it was, and even if the adults didn’t believe them, they had each other.

In Chicago, none of that applies. Old friends are hundreds of miles off, and no one at work or in college has any idea what transpired in Jackson. It is hard to tell someone who has never seen anything supernatural why you are afraid of a certain sound or reflection. The characters are more capable, but their support system is gone.

The city also puts the horror in a different light. In Jackson, I see it in the woods or an abandoned house outside of town. Chicago has its share of forgotten spots, but there is something about having the supernatural in the heart of a crowded city. An apartment building can have hundreds of people who don’t know one another. You might hear screaming through the wall and be told to mind your own business. The elevator could stop on a floor where a tenant is not remembered. There is a reflection in an empty hallway. You can be in the company of others all day and find nobody to put stock in what is happening to you.

That is the horror I am after in Chicago 1992.

There is a contrast too between the supernatural and the demands of being an adult. As a teen, a haunting might mean missing school or lying to your parents. At twenty-two, you still have to be at work in the morning, and the landlord wants his rent. Your classes do not stand down because you saw a dead woman in the lift, and your partner may well think you are losing it for not looking in the bathroom mirror. Those pressures put a different spin on the story. The characters have more freedom but also responsibilities they cannot shirk.

And that is how Jackson and Chicago differ. In Jackson, the kids are coming to realize that the world is stranger and more perilous than the adults say. They are young enough to hope an older head has the answers. By the time we get to Chicago 1992, they are the adults. They have to make the calls and make sure everyone is alright when things go sideways. There is no parent or teacher standing by with the solution.

Poltergeist III stays with me for that reason. I have no desire to rework Reverend Kane, the film’s mirror tricks, or Carol Anne’s tale. I want to see what happens when the supernatural tags along from childhood into adulthood.

The Jackson kids have made their way and put down new roots. But the trouble they ran into back home may have done the same.

Now I am in the mood to do a Chicago-based horror movie marathon. I bet there are enough movies. According to IMDb, there are 152 movies tagged "Horror" and "Chicago, Illinois." I might have next year's theme! Though I do want to do psychic movies sometime as well.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 31
First Time Views: 19

Tales of Jackson: We Are Not Alone

 I recently talked a bit about going home and not finding Jacksonville, or even Jackson, I remember. I was standing out in front of what we called "the old High School," the Newton-Bateman building where people in my town went to school up until about 1983. I never went there. We had the "new" High School out north of town. That structure survives in Jackson with the old, haunted High School and the new school. 

I also wrote a bit about Charmed. The one thing the new Charmed series established was that the "Power of Three" was repeated over and over in the Warren Witch Family line. That included the witches Macy, Mel, and Maggie, as well as Prue, Piper, Phoebe, and later Paige. History repeats itself. Another structure I grabbed for Jackson.

So excuse me if this post feels a little schizophrenic. It was really two posts that never really gelled on their own, and I figured out they needed each other. So, let me start with the original post, and for that, we need to talk about Iggwilv.

Iggwilv, Tasha, and Jackson

It is no surprise that I adore Iggwilv, Tasha, Hura, Zyblina, or whatever she is calling herself this week. I have known for a while now that she was going to make an appearance in Jackson in some role. Not Iggwilv from Greyhawk, but my "Shard" of her, reflected in Jackson's mirror. BUT I wanted her to be important, but not so important that she would overshadow my playtest characters (and thus your characters). So I have been sitting on a few ideas for a bit, and none of them felt right to me.  In fact, my first idea came up around my birthday, but it also didn't gel the way I liked. It DID, however, give me the tragic coven of witches that protected Jackson before Larina and her friends. 

So instead, Lena, Alyssa, and Keely were born. And...Lena and Keely died trying to protect Jackson, and Alyssa lost her mind.

But they were not the first coven of witches, nor were they the last. I mean I knew this, but I did not have names for them yet. 

Though maybe I did.

I am working on something else right now: my next Witches of Appendix N post and reading some L. Sprague de Camp, and thinking about what sorts of witches actually came from these books. I am not ready to present my thesis on that just yet, but it got me thinking about Iggwilv again and how she was never supposed to be a main or face character. Maybe my Iggwilv shard in Jackson is the same way. She is there, but working in the shadows. Not evil, per se, but certainly amoral. 

Then it hit me. Lena and Keely are dead because it was Iggwilv who sent them to their deaths.

Natasha Wilcox

My "Iggwilv shard" is Natasha Wilcox. Professor of Classics at MacAlister College and one of the few people who intellectually challenges Larina. She is one of those nightmare professors who knows everything about her subject and dares you to bullshit your way through it. She is intelligent, shrewd, driven, and knows exactly what she wants. She is also a witch. 

Back in 1983, she was the "adult in the room" when Lena, Alyssa, and Keely were in school. She was a professor at Mac, but came to the High School to teach Latin. Alyssa was her star pupil. Equally as brilliant in both academics and magic. Natasha saw a little of herself in Alyssa and sought to train her to become even better. But that training wasn't enough. Alyssa learned she was brilliant but never learned to fear the things Jackson bred. 

Natasha Wilcox caused Lena and Keely's deaths because she had not taught Alyssa the limits of her powers. Her hubris and three lives were destroyed.

I figured out then that Kiera "Keri" Moreau told Natasha that if she ever set foot in Jackson Public High again, she would kill her. A bit of a strong reaction? Maybe, but it tracks with two things. Who these characters are/were in my AD&D games AND what they were before in Jackson.

Natasha Wilcox, Kiera Moreau, and Sylvia Velasco were members of the coven that protected Jackson in the 1950s.

Cherry Pink (and Apple Blossom White)

In the mid-1950s, Jackson Public High School had three girls who were the best of friends. Mundane circumstances threw them together, but it was their magic that united them. Natasha Wilcox's family had survived World War II and had come to America fleeing Nazi oppression when Natasha was only a baby. Likewise, Sylvia's family had fled Spain and had come to Jackson via Mexico. Kiera Moreau was the half-nymph daughter of a sea god, but her human guise was that of the daughter of a wealthy family who had made millions in import and export deals (easy to do when you can control the seas); sadly, even in enlightened Jackson, with its abolitionist history and place on the Underground Railroad, her skin color was an issue with many other residents. All three girls were social outcasts within the very tight, insular cliques of Jackson Public High School. So they formed their own group. 

They had no idea they were part of a legacy that stretched backward and forward in time. 

No one knew they were magical. Natasha and Sylvia, with their magic, and Kiera, with her psychic abilities and half-sea nymph powers, protected their school and home. But more than that, they were friends. Kiera bought Sylvia that pink cardigan sweater, and Natasha said it looked great on her. 

They fought monsters. Had boyfriends. Though Natasha was always too serious about her work for any romance, Sylvia still managed to have boyfriends and girlfriends in 1955. They all went to MacAlister together. They thought they would be doing this when they were old and gray.

And then things began to fall apart. Natasha was studying magic for magic's sake and no longer stopping the monsters. Kiera fought the monsters, but could not do it on her own. Sylvia began selling off little bits of her soul for more and more power until her hair had gone completely white from Soul Burn. They only grew further and further apart.

Then in 1979, teachers Kiera and Natasha saw Alyssa, Lena, and Keely coming up through the school and recognized them right away. "They are us." And they began to disagree right away on how to deal with these new students. Natasha sees witches. Kiera sees young women. Sylvia sees an omen. Their disagreements were at first minor, but gained in intensity as the years went on. Kiera thought Natasha was being too cavalier with their lives. Natasha thought Kiera was being too soft. Sylvia wanted to know what magics these new girls knew.

Then, in 1983, Lena and Keely were killed. Alyssa had been committed to the state hospital.

Natasha didn't see herself as responsible. She taught Alyssa everything she believed Alyssa needed to know. Alyssa was exceptionally gifted, perhaps the most talented student Natasha had ever encountered. But Alyssa overestimated her abilities, failed to account for some variable, and the spell or ritual went catastrophically wrong.

For Natasha, this was a problem of magical theory and practice. Something went wrong. She needs to understand what happened so she can prevent it from happening again.

For Kiera, two girls are dead, and a third has lost her mind. 

To Kiera, this is a tragedy. To Natasha, it is a puzzle. Neither recognizes the girl they used to call "sister."

"If you set foot in this school again, I will kill you," Kiera told Natasha. Her heart was broken, but the threat was real, and Natasha knew Kiera could carry it out.

There is another important distinction here. Natasha, Kiera, and Sylvia went to the Old School. So did Lena, Alyssa, and Keely nearly thirty years later. Larina, Stephanie, and Faye attend the New School, north of town. They never walked those same halls or sat in those same classrooms. Their connection to those earlier witches isn't the building itself, but the photographs they left behind. Three girls smiling at the camera, unaware of what awaited them. Larina looks at those pictures and recognizes something that has nothing to do with the school they attended. There is no magical presence of either coven in 1986. That building sits near the heart of the town, with its haunted halls and broken bell. 

It is less about the buildings they attended and more about the roles these young women found themselves playing.

And the yearbook photographs are the only evidence of something the monsters haven't managed to destroy: the memory of ordinary happiness.

"They were all happy. Like us. And then they weren't."

What does this mean to the current generation?

We Are Not Alone

This gets me back to Jacksonville.

I was driving around taking some pictures of buildings. I wanted to drive out to the "new" High School (now 40+ years old) and take some pictures. I saw a group of kids walking downtown, laughing and generally just being kids. I mused, "Maybe they are the new witches?" I was not far from where the bookstore I based Paula's on used to be. I thought about Larina riding her bike every Saturday in 1985-86 to head to the Square for Paula's. For an odd moment, the past, present, and future of Jacksonville and Jackson all overlapped. I thought about Larina, Stephanie, and Faye. I thought about Lena, Alyssa, and Keely before them, and all the witches who had come before them and those who would come after.

This all hit in a few minutes. I was amused by these kids. Then, in typical 50+-year-old fashion, I thought, "They better get out of the road; that's not safe."

In Jackson, one of the themes is "this has all happened before." The monsters keep coming to the Bad Land. There are protectors, there are fighters, and there are those who have the power and still do nothing about it. 

Larina (in my games) sees the yearbook photos of Lena, Alyssa, and Keely and thinks, "That was us." She looks at the picture of Natasha, Kiera, and Sylvia and wonders what happened to cause these girls to grow into women who can barely stand to be around each other now.

That's what I want to happen in your games. That connection your characters have to the setting's past. Your witches can look at these girls and think, "They were like us." Fighters like Val, Andy, and Ami, or protectors like Rowan, Candy, and Denise. They all have a role to play. Not just as my NPCs but as your NPCs. 

There is no occult registry. No one knows who the past witches and protectors were unless they told someone. There may have been years without one. Lena and Keely died in May of 1983. Larina didn't arrive in Jackson until July of 1985. That is two years when no one was watching the gate. No wonder the place is a mess. Even Kiera and Valerie, who were still in Jackson, did little.  

I have no real intention of filling up the in-between years with witches, fighters, and protectors. Not here, and certainly not in any published version of Jackson. Those years belong to you. The game masters and players of Jackson. I mean, I might have an idea or two, but nothing solid beyond maybe thinking that the 1990s could use someone.  

I saw (them) in black and white; there ain't no color in memories.

Somewhere in Jackson right now, there might be another group of kids walking downtown, laughing with their friends, completely unaware of the dangers around them. Maybe they are the next witches. Maybe they are the next fighters or protectors. Maybe they are just kids enjoying an afternoon together. I like to think that Natasha, Kiera, and Sylvia were once just like them. So were Lena, Alyssa, and Keely. So were Larina, Stephanie, and Faye.

Jackson has a long history, and not all of it has been written yet. Some of those adventures are mine. The rest of them are yours.

Or they will be.

Working the NIGHT SHIFT: What Charmed Taught Me About Witches

 October 7, 1998 was the premiere of Charmed on The WB. Just seven months after the premiere of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the show would be most often compared to.  By this point, I had been writing about witches for a decade, but hadn't published anything yet (one more year). But I want to talk about what Charmed taught me about witches, specifically, what Charmed taught me about witches in NIGHT SHIFT.

Charmed (1998 - 2006, 2018-2022)

Charmed was about witches. But this was a different take than other witches on TV. We had Samantha in Bewitched and Sabrina in her own show, which showed that a witch can work well, if comedically, in modern times. Charmed had more to do with the 1996 movie The Craft, including using Love Spit Love's cover of The Smiths' "How Soon Is Now?"

The witches of Charmed were not old hags or evil sorceresses. Nor were they suburban housewives dealing with the magical and mundane worlds. They were three estranged sisters who discovered they were not just witches, but a powerful kind of witch known as The Charmed Ones. Their job was to protect innocents from supernatural threats like warlocks, monsters, and, in particular, demons, all while trying to hold down regular jobs, maintain relationships, and find a way to mend the broken pieces of their own pasts. It was a very different, and honestly a more mature take on how to deal with otherworldly weirdness in a normal world than, say, what Buffy was doing on a different day.

The show began with three sisters: Prue (Shannen Doherty), Piper (Holly Marie Combs), and Phoebe Halliwell (Alyssa Milano). Later on, when Prue is killed, Rose McGowan joined as a younger half-sister, Paige Matthews. The Halliwells lived in San Francisco in a house owned by their Grandmother, Penny "Grams" (Jennifer Rhodes). When Grams dies, their magic comes back. Their mother, Patty (Finola Hughes), had died years before, fighting a demon.

Charmed was not perfect by any stretch. There were some continuity issues. Some of the episodes were goofy. Some were not great. Some were just an excuse to dress the stars in costumes. But the show had heart. I felt that the first three seasons at least tried to be consistent in their world-building, particularly in their magic. For example, the police detective and love interest to Prue, Andy Trudeau (T.W. King) knows about cults and recognizes witchcraft items like an athame (and pronounces it correctly) among other items. As the show moved on, other new ideas were added, like Whitelighters and other types of sabbats. But Charmed was never supposed to be a documentary on Witchcraft. 

I knew Charmed would work as a game world back in 2012 at Gen Con.

I signed up to play in a Buffy RPG game that was a Buffy-Charmed-Supernatural crossover. I had played a lot of Buffy by then (naturally), but I was looking forward to playing a witch. So I picked Piper. Let me tell you, that was a freaking blast. One of the best times I had playing at Gen Con where I was a player and not the GM.

I had also already done my own crossover prior to that.

So when work began on NIGHT SHIFT, I already knew what I wanted.

Charmed and NIGHT SHIFT

Charmed has been with NIGHT SHIFT from the very start. During playtesting, for instance, I used the Charmed Ones as playtest characters. They served a purpose because they were more than just three people who happened to have magic. Each sister brings her own mix of strengths, weaknesses, and personality to the table, yet in combination they are something else entirely. That is what I was after for NIGHT SHIFT.

From this (and many other ideas) came the concept of Arcane Bonds. Power is not always an isolated thing; it can be drawn from the ties between characters, family, friendship, love, or even shared trauma. The Power of Three is the obvious case in point with Charmed, but I was less interested in replicating that particular mechanic than in the wider principle. I wanted a game where a character’s connections made them stronger, rather than just another spell or level-up. It suited my way of writing witches at the time. You can even see the development of the idea in my previous writings.

The Halliwells were formidable, but their magic was inextricably linked to their family history and obligations. Their enemies were often the result of events predating their birth. Their connection to magic and their ancestors were all part of the equation. To me, that is a far better model than a mere spellcaster with a different repertoire.

In NIGHT SHIFT, the structure is similar. The characters lead ordinary lives until the supernatural intrudes, whether they seek it out or it comes through the front door. One has to deal with both.

More than anything, Charmed offered me a new perspective on witches as protagonists. They were not types who stood apart from the world and peered in; they had families and jobs and bills like everyone else, along with the attendant problems. The supernatural was there to complicate those realities, not to put them aside. I would come to value that notion highly. The first setting I dealt with all of this was my "Ordinary World," Night World. Here, supernatural types all have to try to get along to maintain the appearance of normality, lest the "mundanes" find out. 

Charmed and Jackson

With Jackson the influence is perhaps deeper, but not as overt.

Larina, Stephanie, and Faye are not Halliwell imitations; their world is darker, the town is not San Francisco, and their magic is of a different sort. But Charmed gave me license to pursue what I already held to be true for a very long time: that witches can be heroes. Not the kind you have to sanitize, but the ones with their rituals, old books, and unsettling family secrets. There is no need for any of that to make them the villain. Stephanie's family comes from old money and not all of that was "clean money." Larina learns she has some demonic blood in her going back generations. And Faye. Poor girl is being raised by hags, and bits of her soul are being bartered out for more magic. But each one is trying to make the world better than it was before. All while dealing with normal things.

It is right at the heart of Jackson. Larina might spend her day concerned over school or whether Stephanie is mad at her, and then face down whatever has emerged from the Bad Land by nightfall. The two coexist. No. More than that. They are inseparable. 

I was also reminded of the role of family history. The Halliwells not only inherit power but also unfinished business. You will find plenty of that in Jackson. Larina’s abilities are bound to things that transpired long before she was here, and so is the town. Faye's Thorne and Voss heritages come with some serious magical debts. There are old crimes, monsters, and promises in its past. Sometimes the young ones have to put right what their grandparents or some long-dead soul left behind.

Places have a way of mattering too, much like the Halliwell manor. A library can be a repository of dangerous knowledge, a house can be more than four walls, and a town’s history will not always lie buried. Those Devil Chairs in the cemeteries have to mean something. Magical Mystery Lane leads somewhere.

Charmed did not put these ideas in my head, but it demonstrated how well they function in a sustained narrative. Witchcraft does not have to be an escape from life. It can be a part of it.

The Second Charmed

The second Charmed series taught me something different.

When the reboot premiered in 2018, it understandably wanted to inherit many of the things people associated with the original show. There were three sisters (Macy, Mel, and Maggie), the Power of Three, Whitelighters, demons, a Book of Shadows, and all the other pieces we immediately recognized as Charmed.

But having the pieces is not the same thing as building the thing.

Too often, I felt the second series wanted the benefits of the original Charmed without doing all the work that had made those ideas matter in the first place. The Halliwells had years of history, relationships, losses, mistakes, and accumulated mythology behind them. You could not simply reproduce the visible parts and expect the same emotional investment.

Interestingly, I thought the newer Charmed worked best when it stopped trying so hard to be the old Charmed and started becoming its own show. When it developed its own mythology, its own relationships, and its own answers to what witches and magic were, it became much more interesting to me.

That lesson has been extremely useful while developing Jackson.

I cannot just take three witches, drop them into a fictionalized Jacksonville, Illinois, and expect Charmed to happen.

Nor would I want it to.

Jackson has to grow out of Jackson. Its witches need their own histories, relationships, families, enemies, mistakes, and reasons for being there. The supernatural world has to emerge from the place's history and character rather than be imported wholesale from elsewhere.

Influence is useful. Inspiration is essential. But imitation is not world-building.

The things I learned from Charmed can help me understand what makes Larina and her friends work. They cannot tell me who Larina and her friends are. They can't tell me who YOUR characters are.

That part has to come from Jackson.

And that is the part I think is useful for anyone building their own game setting. You can absolutely start with the things you love. Take the family dynamics from one show, the occult atmosphere from another, the monster hunting from somewhere else, and the small-town weirdness from something completely different. But eventually those influences have to become yours.

If I can take all these influences and use them to build Larina, Jackson, Carbon Vale, and Sunny Valley into something with its own identity, then you can do the same with your characters and your world.

The goal is not to recreate the thing that inspired you.

The goal is to discover what it inspires you to create.

--

NIGHT SHIFT^® is a Registered Trademark of Elf Lair, LLC. Used by Permission.

Tales of Jackson: In Cold Blood

 It is February 1986 in Jackson, IL, and Dr. Andreas Gelé is visiting both Beecher and MacAlister colleges to give lectures on the exciting field of cryonics and its use in surgery.

The town is unseasonably cold, even for February, and the townsfolk are worried that they are in for a repeat of the Winter of 1985.

February 14th, Friday night, sometime after the school dance, Valerie Beaumont leaves the school, walks to her car, and is not noticed missing until the morning of Monday the 17th, when the police are alerted that her car was still in the lot. Her keys, purse, and most importantly, her coat are still in the car. Police suspect foul play, but the crime scene is already overrun with students coming to school. 

What the police record, but barely comment on, is that her sword is in the back seat of her 1983 Chevy Citation.  The characters know that Val would walk coatless and barefoot in the Illinois snow, but she would never, ever leave that sword behind.

The next two days, both Sylvia Velasco (2/19/86) and Renee Sylvi Jäneläinen (2/20/86) went missing. 

The police interview everyone. Valerie did not have a boyfriend; neither did Renee. If Sylvia does, no one seems to know who he is. It is also 1986; they are not asking about other options. 

One thing is certain. Someone is hunting magical women. 

I also wanted an adventure where Candy and Denise were NOT the monster bait for once. Though my players did miss them.

--

Cold Blood is the next adventure I played for Jackson, taking place in February of 1986. It features the NIGHT SHIFT debut of my frozen little misanthrope Dr. Andreas Gelé, aka the Refrigerator. I had to change his usual raison d’être here, since it didn't really fit Jackson's horror vibe. Oh, his normal modus operandi is horrific enough; I just needed something closer to Jackson. So he is not collecting women and freezing them to preserve their beauty; he is instead collecting and freezing witches to understand their magic and, more importantly, their ability to age more slowly. 

It's a well-known trope that witches don't age like normal humans. This is true in many games and media featuring witches. And it is true here as well. The witch characters in the game just didn't know this yet. They learn about it when they uncover Gelé's notes. Not just notes, worked-up profiles on all the witch characters, including their suspected ages (he thinks they are older than they are and 'pretending' to be teens). These profiles are terrifying in their clinical detachment and their dehumanizing element. Witches are not people to him. They are things, and he can extract their essence to prolong his own life. He grabs Valerie, thinking she is a witch, knowing only that she has some magic and that he has evidence she is much older than she appears. Both of which are true, but he does not suspect she is immortal. Since she is not responding to his treatments as expected (she is not a witch, really), he freezes her solid to experiment on her later. This would kill a normal human. For Valerie, it just pisses her off. 

He goes after Sylvia and Renee next, assuming that as outsiders (an immigrant distrusted by the community and a foreign exchange student), they would not be missed.

This is the first time the witch characters in the game have learned this. They know Valerie is immortal. But other than that, they know nothing else. As my playtest characters, Stephanie knows that she has a grandmother close to 100 (she is actually much older), and Faye's "aunties" are really Urban Hags. Larina's own mother is gone, and her father only has the tiniest of magic (I have him making sparks with his hand at a later point). So none of my playtest witch players or characters know. 

Sylvia knows. Because, of course, she does. And it is also the sort of knowledge she wouldn't share unless she was given something for it. Renee knows. But she feels it is not her place to say anything. She is the quiet one, but Renee is also the one who is missed.

This brings in my other layer. 

Roderick Morgan, the psychic, knows she is gone. 

Morgan: "Where’s Renee?"
Larina: "What?"
Morgan: "Renee Jäneläinen. Where is she?"
Larina: "Why would I know?"
Morgan: "Because Valerie is missing. Sylvia is missing. Now Renee is gone. And every time this town starts eating people, there are witches standing near the teeth."

Morgan doesn't like witches. But not because he is a misogynistic jerk, but because witches are "untidy"; they are too chaotic, and he thinks their psychic baggage causes half the problems in town. He is not entirely wrong. Every time someone uses magic, it is like ringing a dinner bell for the supernatural elements in town. BUT some of the players were under the impression that Morgan hates witches and, by extension, women. I mean, he is an arrogant prick sometimes, but that is too far. I wanted to show that he is absolutely NOT Andreas Gelé, but he can see the road Gelé is on from where he is standing.

Faye: "Are you keeping tabs on us, Morgan?"
Morgan: "Don’t flatter yourself. I keep tabs on all potential threats."
Stephanie (tersely): "Renee isn’t a threat."
Morgan: "No. (quieter) She isn't."

I said before that Morgan and Renee are based on two old AD&D characters that have an uneasy history, Morgan Highstar and Rhiannon. At that time I didn't know what their reactions were going to be in their Jackson versions. Then it became obvious. Morgan likes Renee. At the end of this adventure, he should be a better person. Maybe not by much, but his classification of the witches in town is a little too close to Gelé's notes, and that should bother him. It has changed how I played him afterward. 

How Does it End?

At the end of the adventure, the witches and Morgan are standing together. My not-so-subtle message here? Together they are stronger, and that is where the magic is, not in a blood or tissue sample.

So, here is the problem I was having with my adventure. I have Gelé here. He has kidnapped Valerie, Sylvia, and Renee. In my game, they were rescued by Morgan, Larina, Stephanie, and Faye. Pretty much every bit of heavy firepower I have in this game. And Larina, at this point in her life, is pretty well known for her very poor anger management skills. She wanted to burn him alive at his first "Ah, Fräulein Nichols." How do I give the characters and the players a satisfactory ending and STILL make it so The Refrigerator could come back? 

Well, as it turns out, I gave myself a "Rule of Two" roll that his machines would fail. I rolled a "1." A success that, in this case, is also a failure. The machines begin to blow up with Gelé melting before their eyes. Everyone got out, and I had Val toss out a 'See you in Hell, Andreas.' 

So, just like his horror godfather, Dr. Phibes, Dr. Andreas Gelé might return.

Presently, I don't have any plans to bring him back to Jackson, but he might appear in other NIGHT SHIFT games. 

Dr. Andreas Gelé by Eugene Jaworski

Dr. Andreas Gelé

5th level Inventor, Human Male

Background: Scholar

Base Abilities

Strength: 11 (+0)
Agility: 13 (+1) 
Toughness: 14 (+1) n
Intelligence: 18 (+3) A
Wits: 16 (+2) n
Persona: 10 (+0) 

Vit: 25 (1d6)
DV: 8
Fate Points: 1d8

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +3/+2/+1
Attack bonus (base): +2
Melee bonus: +0  Ranged bonus: +0

Languages: English, German, French
Skills: Medicine, Cyronics, Engineering

Saves: +4 to Intelligence and Wits saves. +1 to Toughness.

Inventions
Freeze Ray
Effects (1st-3rd level)
- Chill Ray
- Hold Person
- Sleep
- Slow

Effects (4th-6th level)
- Control Temperature
- Finger of Death
- Wall of Ice

Effects (7th-9th level)
- Destroy Life

Cryochamber
Effects (1st-3rd level)
- Hold Person

Effects (7th-9th level)
- Sleeping Village

Heroic Touchstones
Level 1: +1 to Toughness saves.
Level 2: +1 to hit with unique attack mode (Chill Ray gun)

Hair: Black with Gray streaks
Eyes: Blue
Height: 6'0"

Archetype: Science Nerd / Evil inventor
Quote: "Ah, you see Fräulein, only cold logic can prevail here."
Quirks: Arrogant and thinks he is smarter than everyone in the room. He is usually right about that. 
Theme song: Cold as Ice - Foreigner

And because I have not posted him yet and to show the similarities between these two. 

"Just Mogan."

Roderick Morgan

4th level Psychic, Human Male
Student at St. Michael's Catholic Academy and High School

Background: Nerd

Base Abilities

Strength: 14 (+1)
Agility: 14 (+1) 
Toughness: 10 (+0) 
Intelligence: 18 (+3) A
Wits: 16 (+2) n
Persona: 16 (+2) n

Vit: 20 (1d6)
DV: 8
Fate Points: 1d6

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +3/+2/+1
Attack bonus (base): +2
Melee bonus: +0  Ranged bonus: +0

Languages: English, Latin
Skills: Computers, Writing 

Saves: +4 to Persona saves, +1 to Wits saves

Psychic Abilities
Danger Sense, Supernatural Attacks, Supernatural Power

Psychic Powers
Precognition 4 (Supernatural)
ESP 4
Biofeedback 1

Heroic Touchstones
Level 1: +1 to Wits saves
Level 2: Pick Locks skill (35%)

Hair: Black
Eyes: Blue
Height: 6'0"

Archetype: Student 
Quote: "Witches are messy. They are untidy and frankly get on my nerves."
Quirks: Arrogant. Never uses his first name; he prefers to go by "Morgan." 
Theme song: Tom Sawyer - Rush

Morgan isn't quite Andreas Gelé, but he can see the path from where he is standing. The thing that makes Morgan, ultimately, a good person is he chooses not to take that path. Oh, he can still be an asshole, but he's not an evil asshole.

I also had pulled out my copy of Beyond the Supernatural 1st Ed since I knew I was going to be stating him up eventually. Not done with his BtS sheet yet.

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

Can I Use NIGHT SHIFT for an SCP Tabletop RPG?

Crossposted to the Elf Lair Games blog.

My kids got me into SCP.

Or, more accurately, they told me all about it, pointed me toward the Wiki, and then left me standing there staring at what appears to be several lifetimes’ worth of lore.

I am very new to SCP. The sheer amount of material is honestly a little overwhelming, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

But I am a horror RPG designer.

So once I started reading, one thought kept coming back to me: Can I run this with NIGHT SHIFT?

That answer is absolutely yes.

Running this with NIGHT SHIFT: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars?

I would say yes. In fact, the more I look it over, the more I am convinced NIGHT SHIFT is already a near-perfect fit for an SCP-style campaign.

Now, I do not mean in the sense of replicating every scrap of SCP lore or re-creating each Foundation department and classification. The old hands at SCP know that side of things far better than I do. What I have in mind is the game's fundamental structure.

You have your secret organizations and the impossible creatures they house. Haunted objects. Beings from other dimensions. Government installations where some entity has been walled off behind six feet of reinforced concrete simply because no one has yet come up with a way to put it down.

NIGHT SHIFT can handle all of that without much alteration.

An SCP game is not about playing the SCPs; it is about the ones who must deal with them. And that is where NIGHT SHIFT excels. Your characters are the researchers, the security detail, the occult experts, the field agents, and the medics. Or the poor saps you send into the basement when something starts to make noise. In the parlance of NIGHT SHIFT, they are Veterans. People who have run up against the supernatural and lived to tell of it. But they are also the Sages and Survivors, and maybe even the odd Psychic. 

It could be their first day with the organization or their twentieth. Then again, perhaps they were recruited precisely because they survived something that ought to have finished them off. There is something very NIGHT SHIFT about that.

The Foundation as the Night World

There is a basic tenet to NIGHT SHIFT: the supernatural is there, coexisting with the normal world but kept out of sight. From what I have read, SCP operates on much the same premise.

The distinction is in the organization. In a typical NIGHT SHIFT affair, your characters might come across the paranormal of their own accord. Not in an SCP vein. Here, someone is already aware of the monsters. They have the files, the labs, the protocols, and likely a number for the beast in question.

This does not have to be the SCP Foundation proper. For my own table, I would probably make up something else. A federal agency, an international body, or a private concern dating back to the Second World War or longer. It does not matter so long as someone is quietly putting the Night World in order. They have learned the hard way that some things are not to be destroyed, only put away.

Secure

Consider the investigation.

A case comes in. People have vanished. An antique mirror is showing people the future. There is an extra room in a house where there was none before. Every soul in town has had the same dream. Or a children’s program shows up on tape for no reason anyone can recall.

The characters are on the scene to find out why. You will have them talking to witnesses, poring over records and folklore, and the odd door-kicking exercise. Classic stuff. But they are not after a permanent fix right now. They need to understand what they are up against in order to get through it.

Contain

Here is where the SCP element puts its stamp on the adventure.

In a conventional monster hunt, the objective is plain: find it, kill it, head home. Containment is another matter. You try to put the creature down, and it comes back, or makes matters worse, or defies being killed altogether. That is very often the case.

So you have to think of something else. Bind it. Relocate it. Seal off the entrance. Put the artifact in saltwater. See to it that two copies of the photograph are never in the same place. Do whatever is necessary.

It turns the session into as much a puzzle as an action piece. The players stop asking how to defeat it and start wondering what the rules are. To me, that is the appeal of SCP as an RPG. The horror lies not just in the monster but in the way reality has fallen apart around it.

Protect

Then there is this part. I think I have the most fun with it. Who is being protected? I think about this one a lot.

The public, of course. The organization would have you believe the common man is not equipped to know what is really out there. But then the characters are likely to find that "Protect" is a word with many definitions.

It could mean shielding civilians from the supernatural or the other way around. It might be about keeping the organization itself from being found out, or even the preservation of reality. And on some days it means protecting an anomalous creature from the very people whose job it is to look after everyone else. That last scenario in particular makes for fine NIGHT SHIFT material.

Think of it: you go in and find the thing in containment is intelligent. Or innocent. A child. The last of its kind. What do you do? In that moment, the game is no longer a matter of monster hunting; it is something far more compelling.

From Classes to Roles

There is no need for an "SCP Agent" class in NIGHT SHIFT. I would make use of the ones on hand and view them as the sort of personnel the organization puts on its rolls.

A Survivor is your field operative or security. A Veteran is the containment agent who has seen enough. You keep a Chosen One on staff because anomalies have a way of behaving differently in their presence. A Psychic is your specialist for research and investigation. As for a Witch, put her in the Occult Research Division and let the rest of the department avoid her. No end to where an Inventor can go.

The organization is not concerned with what is written on your character sheet. They want to know if you can go into Room 17, have a word with the occupant, and return. With the same headcount you had when you left, ideally.

Anomalies, Not Monsters

I like this part best. Call it an anomaly and give it a designation rather than a monster label. Put together a containment protocol and a file on what the organization thinks it knows.

Take a vampire, for example.

Designation: NS-017

Containment: Sealed chamber with remote UV lighting. No personnel with exposed blood allowed inside.

Known Properties: Photosensitivity, rapid healing, nocturnal.

Very clinical. Until someone realizes that the ultraviolet is having no effect at all. The vampire has been putting on a show. Suddenly, you have an adventure on your hands.

Let Them Be in the Dark

One does not want to turn the supernatural into a textbook. The organization can catalog, experiment, and write reams of documentation, but understanding is another matter entirely. The best SCP-style game will highlight the chasm between the two.

The file says the entity will not cross running water. Why? Nobody can say. It goes dormant if you sing to it. Again, why? The file says there are seven of them. There are eight. That discrepancy will prove to be of some consequence. The Night World has no duty to conform to the order the organization is trying to impose.

Making Containment Procedures Work for You

This provides the Game Master with a ready-made structure. Begin with a procedure, then ensure it is broken.

CONTAINMENT BREACH

The players will be aware that something has gone wrong, though they may not have the full picture. Was the creature let out on purpose? Did it escape? Or was the procedure never doing any containing at all, and whatever was actually holding it back has just made off?

That is an adventure in the making.

On the Matter of Sanity

I would not insist on it. You can bring in mechanics for fear or trauma if the campaign calls for it, but an SCP game does not automatically require them. These are Veterans of the Supernatural Wars, not some ordinary folk having their first run-in with the impossible. They are the ones called in after the impossible has already made a meal of three guards.

The horror is in the realization that your training and your fine three-inch binder of CONTAINMENT PROCEDURES may not cut it. Because things have changed. And the thing on the other side of the door has taken note.

NIGHT SHIFT: Secure, Contain, Protect

One can certainly make NIGHT SHIFT work for an SCP-style game if one puts the mind to it.

Retain the classes and the monsters. Let the supernatural Night World remain as a presence under the surface of normal reality. Then put in place an organization whose job is to investigate anomalies and see that they do not come to light.

Assign the monsters some clinical nomenclature. Have containment procedures for odd phenomena. Leave the players with files that lack detail.

After that, simply go against one assumption.

That is all that is required. Or so I would have it after my initial foray into the SCP rabbit hole.

I am sure any veteran of SCP will be able to point out the complications and aspects of the setting I have yet to encounter. I would be interested in hearing about them. But as a game designer, what has caught my attention is this: the monsters have always been there; someone has just begun to record them.

Links

• SCP Foundation Wiki
• About The SCP Foundation
• Guide For Newcomers
• Essay and Resource Hub
• FAQ