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.
