Tales of Jackson, IL: Winnie the Witch

I love public domain and open source characters.

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

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

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

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

In Search Of...Winnie the Witch

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

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

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

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

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

Winnie’s House of Horrors

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

Every Saturday night:

WINNIE’S HOUSE OF HORRORS

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

Winnie is the one who puts them on.

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

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

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

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

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

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

Samantha Stephens Meets Elvira

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

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

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

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

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

She lets the silence hang for a moment.

"Was pregnant again, as it turned out."

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

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

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

She will look right at you.

"In other words, Charlie."

Other Horror Hostesses

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

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

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

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

The Joke Is Winnie Is Really a Witch

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

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

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

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

It is probably Charlie’s fault.

The Soccer Mom of Darkness

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, you can say that again."

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

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

The Jackson Connection

Naturally, Stephanie, Faye, and Larina watch her.

Stephanie, Faye, and Larina watching Winnie the Witch

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

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

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

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

She sits up a little.

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

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

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

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

Over in Alton...

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

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

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Winnie shuts her eyes.

"I hate this job."

She absolutely does not.

Using Winnie in Your Game

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Links

• The Levitation of Winnie the Witch
• SLAY Monsterbot of the Deep! Bold Fashion Choices--Winnie The Witch!!
• Ghostly Haunts
• Rip Jagger's Dojo: The 13 Faces Of Winnie!
• Marvel Mysteries and Comics Minutiae: Ditko at Charlton Part 2: 1972-1974
• Facebook
• Public Domain HEROES
• Charlton Neo Comics
• International Catalog of Superheroes
• Comicvine: Winnie the Witch
• Winnie the Witch at the Grand Comics Database
• Ghost Manor (1968 series)
• Ghostly Haunts (1971 series)
• MyComicShop: Ghostly Haunts Issue Index
• Night Shift: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars

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.

Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. What I Learned from 40 Years of Larina

The Witch Queen and the Girl in Homeroom: What I Learned from Forty Years of One Character

I created Larina in July, 1986. 

That sentence feels simple enough, but it carries a lot of weight. It means she has been with me through six editions of D&D, most of high school, college games, new systems, abandoned campaigns, resurrected notebooks, lost files, new editions, new worlds, and more than a few versions of myself. She has been a magic-user, a witch, a sage, a horror heroine "last girl", a multiversal constant, and occasionally the person in the room who knows far more than she should.

I have known her longer than my kids have been alive, and I met her 15 months before I met the girl I would one day marry.

I wish I could remember the exact date, but failing that, and for reasons that make sense to me, I'll say it was 40 years ago today. July 6, 1986.

At some point, a character stops being just a character sheet. At some point, she becomes a mirror to what I am doing at the time. 

And Larina has always been a mirror.

Larina was not my first character. She was not even my first "witch" character. But over the years of playing her and using her in many games, she quickly became a favorite of mine.

If you like, you can read some more about her here on her own page and all the versions of her I have posted here over the years.

The Character You Start With Is Not the Character You Keep

That first version of Larina was nothing special at the time. Not really. She was a "witch" but only in the respect that she was a collection of ideas I had about witches. Some notes, some ideas, a rough draft. Her class at the time? Magic-user, 1st level. This was July 1986. I would use her a few times, but my main "wizard" was Phygora-Cronus. He was, and let's be honest here, my Doctor Who-ripoff character. A traveler who messed with the lives of others. Phygora did eventually become his own thing. But that very, very first version of Larina barely saw any adventures. Phygora even stopped traveling to be Larina's "advisor" at the magic school. 

Larina 1st Ed AD&D Character Sheets

Still, there was something that drew me back to her. She saw some play, but not a lot really. I am hard-pressed to remember any of her adventures between that summer and the Fall. 

Then came October 1986 and the release of Dragon Magazine #114 with its new take on the witch class. I really can't overstate how much that issue affected my ideas of how to play a witch. That put an end to her as a "fake-wizard". I made her into a 1st-level Magic-user/1st-level Witch right away with a brand-new sheet. I figured out that she had been to magic school, but the tuition was too much to keep up. Sound familiar? I was in the same boat with one school, so I took my second choice. Another mirror.

So I gave her a backstory to fit. She was working in the school library to make ends meet, and she picked up her witchcraft on the side. Libraries have always been where I study things on the edge of belief, so it was only natural. It was another mirror of my own situation.

That little bit of backstory did a lot more work than I realized at the time. It explained why she knew things she was not supposed to know. It explained why she had access to odd books, old languages, half-forgotten rituals, and dangerous scraps of lore. It made her something other than a spell list. She was not just a student of magic. She was a student of forbidden shelves, closing-time whispers, and books that should probably have been locked up better.

Looking back, that is where Larina really started to become Larina. Not by virtue of better hit points or power, but because she was the one who knew where to find the book. She was the one with the answers. 

This early Larina was hardly the best version of herself. Beginnings seldom are. But she had a spark. Her core was there.

Every Edition Reveals Something Different

I have done this with all of them. I currently have Vera Rook sitting on my desk, and I have six character sheets for her, maybe seven soon. I showed you all this as an experiment with Elowen Hale.  Vera began with a concept and then character options were used to support that concept. Elowen was built by looking at character options across the games and choosing the concept that fit them all. Every game and edition offers a chance to redefine a concept. With Elowen and Vera, it was a matter of deliberate design; with Larina, it has been a decades-long process.

Larina, 2nd Edition AD&D, the Witch Priestess

I have some 75 versions of her in posts for various systems now, each one a test to see if I could make a proper witch. For example, in AD&D 2nd Edition, she took on more of a priestess role. I called it her Wiccan side (to put it in modern terms) as she found her faith. The mechanics were simply there to put it on paper. 

And in a way, it was another mirror: while she was getting deeper into the supernatural, I was embracing my atheism and skepticism. There is a contradiction in all this that I have always found amusing. The further I put distance between myself and belief, the more exacting I became with hers. She became the High Priestess of faith and belief, while I rejected such ideas for myself. 

Perhaps that was her utility. She let me get at faith, ritual, gods, spirits, and the like without having to put my own stock in them. Where I was skeptical she could be sincere, she could stand in the circle and invoke the Goddess in earnest while I was on the periphery with a notebook to put in a word: "Yes, but what are the game terms for that?"

If you want an honest appraisal of my witch writing, there it is. I don’t need to believe in a thing to see its power.

I will ask her different questions depending on the game. D&D wants to know what she can cast. A horror game will ask what she has endured to survive. Superhero games make you wonder how much power she truly has. Sci-fi asks what she knows of the universe. Modern horror asks what she does when the monsters are not locked in some dungeon but are down the street. And so on. Every answer tells me how to play her and how to bring her into whatever comes next.

Converting a character is never a mere numbers game for me. You can have your fun making sure a 7th-level spell translates to the equivalent power in another system, but that is not the work. The task is to determine what the game deems important. Some games are about combat or social standing, others about trauma or whether you can afford rent and still be at the ritual on time. When I convert Larina, I am not just changing her stats; I am letting the game have its say with her.

Forty years on, she still has something to say.

Long-Lived Characters Become Mythology

Larina has been with me long enough to take on a mythic quality in these worlds. My players and my kids’ players are familiar with her. I have minis and 3D prints of her in the game room, art on the wall, even a Monster High doll someone went to the trouble of modifying for me (people love this post). Here, you will hear her name in the same breath as "The Simbul," "Circe," or "Tasha/Iggwilv."

I won’t pretend she is on their level in the annals of game history or literature, but at my table, she occupies that space. She is one of the names the young witches talk about in hushed tones. She is the woman who has already had her bout with the thing you have just come across, the one whose notes you find in the margin. She may be of assistance, or she may decide you are not ready for the truth.

Tea with the Witch Queens by Brian Brinlee

That is what mythology is. Not official canon or a publication record. It is what a name means when enough people at the table understand it.

It also means the little details start to matter more. Her red hair, the purple clothes, the dragon tooth necklace, the Triple Moon Goddess tattoo, and the scar below her left collarbone. Or the way she will tell you her birthday is Halloween when in fact it is the 25th of October. Things that were once just bits of color are now like relics. 

After a while, the details are no longer decoration; they are signs.

And because Larina has so many versions, those signs are what tell me she is still Larina. The stats can change. The edition can change. The cosmology can change. She can be in Mystoerth, Jackson, West Haven, WitchCraft, NIGHT SHIFT, Wasted Lands, or some far future starship-adjacent nonsense that probably started with me watching too much Doctor Who and WAY too much Star Trek. But if she is still the woman with the books, the questions, the occult knowledge, the stubborn compassion, the terrible habit of putting herself between people and the dark, and biting her nails, then she is still Larina.

Larina by Jeff Dee

She Taught Me What a Witch Is

Every Witch class I have ever written has Larina’s shadow somewhere in it. Sometimes obvious, sometimes hidden, but always there. Elowen is an "adopted daughter"; Vera is a dark shadow; Marrissia is the mother of hers that devours.  Even Sinéad, to a degree, is "what if Larina had been raised in the Forgotten Realms?" All these witches are part of what I call her extended coven. Which is more growth for her because from the start she was a solitary witch learning via books she borrowed from her library. 

My witch books don’t just appear out of a vacuum; they are born of a lived-in experience I have with her. One feeds the other. Another mirror.

Larina made it clear to me that a witch is more than a woman with magic, a druid who has taken to the indoors, a wizard with better jewelry, or a cleric with the wrong holy symbols.

A witch is a relationship.

That was a revelation when I first saw it. Which is odd since what I was looking at were my own notes and writings. But there it was. Was it my writing or hers? Sometimes it is hard to tell.

The witch is a relationship. With power and place and memory. With old gods, false ones, and things that were never gods. With a coven, be it made of ghosts, familiars, past lives, a very patient cat, and the odd book.

That informed my design. A witch needs magic, but she also requires the rituals, the pacts and taboos, the marks and the consequences. She needs to be able to heal, curse, bind, and banish. And most of all, to know. Intelligence is important. Wisdom informs. But it is Charisma that sets it all into motion. 

Larina was never at her finest when she was flinging the largest spell in the room. She was best when she could tell you what the monster was and where it came from, what book made a passing mention of it, and why you should have heeded the old woman at the start of the adventure. 

That is the witch I keep writing.

The witch girl and the Witch Queen

A Good Character Can Outlive the Campaign

This is something of a big deal. Groups disband, people move on, editions are replaced, files go missing, and books get sold. Most campaigns have an end. Yet some characters endure.

Larina is my means of keeping old games from being set in amber. She is continuity, if sometimes of a confusing sort. I have four timelines for my main computer to make sense of what she has been up to since 1986, which is no small chore. In fact, trying to account for her "lost years" and sort out one of those timelines is what first put the notion of an updated Advanced Witches & Warlocks in my head. If you look at one of my playtest notebooks, you will find nothing but character sheets of her from various stages and reams of notes. What was she doing? What was she thinking? Why did she begin to embrace witchcraft as a practice and a religion more?

Will any of this make it to print? No, not all of it. Does it inform what does? You bet.

Those campaigns are history now. I am the only one left alive from some of them. But she has been here with me all along, my witness to the fact that it all happened. She was the chronicler of those long-lost campaigns. The people who were there are gone, but I have the notes I kept in her voice still tucked away in one of my 3-ring binders or stapled to a character sheet. It is strange when I read something like "Must talk to Killian" or "Find out what Morgan Highstar knows." Notes on Larina's sheet by her (by me for her) directed at characters who can no longer answer. Another mirror: Larina, when she is a GMPC or DMPC, often acts as the party's translator or chronicler. There is a certain sadness to it, and a comfort as well. Knowing that she is still bearing witness to deeds of glory.

Old campaigns are like ghosts. You hold on to the recollection of the character deaths and the lucky rolls, the big set pieces and the arguments over rules, not to mention the maps we were sure we would have for all time, only to mislay them. And the dumb jokes. But memory is no good at archiving; it will let go of what you once deemed important and hang on to the odd bits.

She reminds me that those games happened. Those people sat at those tables. That we cared very much about things written in pencil on loose-leaf paper. That we spent entire afternoons arguing over what a spell could do. For a little while, the world was bigger than the room we were sitting in, and the room we were sitting in was bigger than the world outside.

Larina is not the campaign itself, but you can smell it on her clothes.

The trick with an old character is not keeping her exactly the same. It is letting her change without letting her become someone else. Larina from 1986 is not the same character as Larina from 2026, because I am not the same either.

She has become something of a creative engine for me. What she needs is what my books need. It may sound mad, but then again, I once put in some time as a QMHP at an institution for schizophrenics, so perhaps it rubbed off. Or I just know this character well enough to tell the difference between what works and what I might want.

The WitchCraft RPG made clear to me the distinction between her magic and her psychic side, and I carried that over to Ghosts of Albion with its separate Magic and Faith abilities. From her I got the Wicca and the Witch Priestess for Advanced Witches & Warlocks, and the Witch Queen for Liber Mysterium and my 3rd Edition book. She was the six-year-old in my AD&D Complete Netbook of Witches & Warlocks. 

Which is the strangest thing of all: the adult Witch Queen and the girl in homeroom with glasses, wearing her watch on her right wrist, are one and the same. Not in any tidy, linear way, but in the manner of a dream or a myth, or an RPG you have been at for a while.

The child answers the call. The teenager comes across the book. The young witch puts up with the vampire. The adult who becomes the teacher. And the Witch Queen who becomes the warning. 

And somewhere in there is a guy (also with glasses) with a notebook, trying to figure out what all of that means in terms of saving throws, spell levels, and whether or not this really belongs in the next book.

Forty years on, and Larina is still around. 

I don’t hold on to her out of stubbornness (though there is a lot of that too); she has a way of showing me something new. Just when I think I have had my fill of her lessons, another one of her turns up. A stat block in a folder I have not opened in ages. A picture. Some class feature that is there only because, at some point, Larina did that at the table. A spell that is logical in a way only she could make it so.

Maybe that is the real lesson.

The best characters are not the ones who stay frozen on the page. They are the ones who follow us out of the dungeon, through the years, and into whatever strange country comes next.

For me, Larina has been a witch, a mirror, a witness, a test case, a mythology, and a creative engine.

Not bad for a little 1st-level magic-user girl from July of 1986.

Larina by Claudio Pozas

The Mirror Shard: The Dark Anima

This one is a little bit different than other mirror shards. Those typically cover concepts I can use in both my Occult D&D campaign and my Jackson, IL campaign, even if they appear different in each. 

I have talked about this before, but it is worth bringing up again here because it is part of Larina’s genesis.

My first foray into psychology was in the mid-80s. I went the way of most people and began with Freud and then Jung. Freud had his Id, Ego, and Superego, all very serviceable concepts. Jung I found a bit more philosophical, or at any rate more to my liking as a writer and a gamer. From him I took the archetypes, the Shadow, synchronicity, the Animus, and the Anima. That was what resonated. 

The Anima, in Jungian terms, is the inner feminine image in a man’s psyche. The Animus is the inner masculine image in a woman’s psyche. Now, I am not going to pretend this is modern psychology, or even particularly good psychology by today’s standards. This is armchair Jung, filtered through a teenage gamer in the 1980s who was reading books he only partly understood and immediately turning the interesting bits into D&D characters.

In a way, that was all I really needed then.

But the notion of the Anima held me. Jung would have you believe it is the inner feminine in a man’s mind (the Animus being the woman’s inner masculine). I wanted to know what mine looked like, and not in the pedestrian sense of an ideal type of woman. I was after something darker and more symbolic. If the feminine side of my imagination were to step into a dungeon with a spellbook and some secret she wasn’t in a hurry to share, who would she be?

Larina was the answer. Or perhaps she was there first, and I put the question to her later. In college, I worked on my undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees in Psychology. All the while, I had Larina by my side. Informing me, informed by me. I read Jung in highschool, I read it again in college and discussed him in History of Psychology classes I was in. Her first "publication" may have been a paper I wrote about the Anima with the Witch as archetype. That would have been at least 1989 or 1990. 

She is not simply “the girl character.” Sure, I like witches, and I have played a lot of women over the years, but that is not why she is here. She was curious and intuitive. She was compassion made into a weapon. She was the part of me still open to magic while the rest of me was being weaned off it. A useful tension.

As my Anima, Larina, is not merely soft and healing. She is dark. Not evil; there is a distinction. She is the witch standing at the periphery of the firelight; the one standing in the liminal space. The one who tells you there is more to it than you see. The librarian who will hand you a cursed tome because you need the lesson. The red-haired woman in purple who smiles when the monster misnames her.

Forget the seductress or the evil queen; they are too convenient and too cliché. The Dark Anima is your guide to the underworld. Think of Beatrice with a black cat, or Persephone once she has memorized the map of Hell. She won’t rescue you from the dark; she will show you how to navigate it. She is Innana and Ereshkigal. 

That is why she has a habit of appearing in my work as a sage, a mirror, or a teacher. She is the voice in my head that says the monster is a symbol, a wound, an old story in new clothes.

It also makes for good company with Nigel. He is my Id, all impulse and violence, the one who will put a blade to the problem and leave the philosophy for another day. Larina is his interpreter. She understands his danger and his necessity. Between them, I have Phygora as Animus, Johan as Super-ego, Retsam as Ego… a full psychological adventuring party in my head. It may not be entirely healthy, but it has given me my share of characters.

But Larina is the one who has stuck.

The Anima is no ordinary character. She is a mirror. She shows you desire and fear, and the things you put aside for being inconvenient. And as the person looking in the mirror changes, so does she. In a very literal sense, she has been my mirror, reflecting my turn away from religion, my skepticism, my fondness for libraries, my urge to codify the occult for a game, and my fascination with women who know more than they ought not to.

She is not me. But she is mine in a way my other characters are not. 

I suspect that is the reason for her forty-year run.

Witchcraft Wednesday: Étaín Moonshadow

 I picked up a new Forgotten Realms game over the past weekend. Sorta. It is actually the same game I have been playing in, just with some new characters. In reality, I am worried less about the setting or background and more about the playtest. I am using this game to try out some more ideas from my Advanced Witches & Warlocks book. While I have the classes pretty much where I want them, I still want to "stress test" them a little more. 

Étaín Moonshadow

 I have half-jokingly referred to Étaín Moonshadow as my Margaret Murray of the Realms. She is a Moon Elf and was born in Evereska. She was an acolyte of Sehanine Moonbow and could have lived the quiet life of a priestess. That was until Sehanine came to her in a dream, telling her there was more to her faith than she knew. The dream, nearly half-forgotten, disturbed her at a fundamental level. She tried to forget it and ignore it, but the more she tried, the more it got to her. 

Her mother was a member of the clergy of Sehanine, and her father was an archivist. This gave her access to documents, scrolls, histories, and tales of the elven folk.  As she read, she remembered tales from her grandmother on how her own grandmother came from the Moonshae Isles, and her worship was different.  Much was the same, but other aspects seemed odd or incongruous at the time. Until she read more and discovered that some of the rituals were similar to those she had read about in Selûnite prayer texts. Liturgical texts lifted word-for-word from Sharan ones. At the start, she believed what any elf would, that humans had copied older elven texts. But as she read, she became less and less certain of that. She began to come to the conclusion that the worship of Sehanine Moonbow, Selûne, and Shar were all one and the same. Even more than the three goddesses were all but a face of a single Moon Goddess.

Étaín left Evereska to seek adventure, at least that is what she said. It was not uncommon for a young Moon Elf to do so. But what she didn't tell anyone was that is was not treasure she sought, but knowledge. Knowledge to support her idea of the Triple Moon Goddess.

--

So now I have this adventuring witch who is not looking for gold and glory, but for knowledge and divine truths.  She feels there is an ancient religion out there, and she just needs to reclaim it. She is also searching for others who share her beliefs. These will be members of the other classes from the book. Some will agree with her, others will challenge her. She will run into the orthodoxy of the Sehanine, Selûne, and Shar religions and she will have to deal with them as well.

Her interest in Selûne started out as an academic curiosity, until the dream of Sehanine. Then it became much more. 

This is also where she is less Margaret Murray and more Raymond Buckland. This ties back to my 1986 connections with his own "Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft" published that year. Étaín is not just searching; she is reconstructing this religion as she goes. "Moonshadow" then becomes the craft name she chooses for herself.

Calling Étaín the "Margaret Murray of the Realms" is only partly accurate. Like Murray, she is assembling scattered traditions into a larger theory. Unlike Murray, though, Étaín is willing to abandon her conclusions if better evidence appears. She is less interested in proving herself right than in following the evidence wherever it leads. In that sense, she also owes something to Raymond Buckland, who took fragments of older traditions and helped shape them into a living modern faith.

So she is a witch character to help me discover more about other witch characters.

Étaín Moonshadow

Moon Elf
Witch level 6

Secondary Skill: Scribe

S: 10
I: 14
W: 16
D: 12
C: 10
Ch: 15

Paralysis/Poison: 11
Petrify/Polymorph: 11
Rod, Staff, or Wand: 12
Breath Weapon: 14
Spells: 13

AC: 10 (None)
HP: 22
THAC0: 18

Weapon
Dagger 1d4/1d3
Staff 1d6

Familiar: Snowy Owl "Nóta"

Spells 
First level: Charm Person, Glamour, Mend Light Wounds, Read Languages, Speak with Animals 
Second level: Augury, Detect Thoughts, ESP, Knock, Suggestion
Third level: Clairvoyance, Tongues

Theme Song: The Mystic's Dream - Loreena McKennitt

Eyes: Blue with flecks of silver
Hair: Black
Born: 1230 DR (age 128)

What excites me most about Étaín isn't whether she'll discover the truth about the Triple Moon Goddess. It is whether she'll change her mind along the way. If the evidence leads somewhere unexpected, then so will she. That's the sort of character I want to spend time playing, and exactly the sort of witch I want Advanced Witches & Warlocks to encourage.

Now I just need to play her some more.

One of the things I want to test with Advanced Witches & Warlocks is whether a witch can drive an entire campaign through curiosity rather than combat. D&D often assumes adventurers are motivated by gold, glory, or survival. Étaín is motivated by questions. If there is an old moon shrine, she wants to read the inscriptions. If there is a forgotten library, she wants to compare its texts. If there is a village with unusual customs, she wants to talk to the oldest grandmother she can find. Success for her isn't measured by magic items recovered, but by another page filled in one of her journals.

When the party enters a ruin, the fighter looks for enemies, the thief looks for traps, and Étaín looks for inscriptions. If someone says, "We found treasure," she'll smile and congratulate them. If someone says, "We found an old prayer carved into the wall," she is already halfway across the room.

Unlike some of my other witches, Étaín does not have a Jackson, IL counterpart. Étaín is too linked to the history and the mythology of the Forgotten Realms in my mind.

Jackson, IL: NPCs, the Adults in the Room

No game for me this past weekend. They were doing their "Pokémon meets D&D" game and no time for the 1980s. That's fine, I have a bit more world-building I need to do.

The thing about Jackson is that not every adult in town is clueless about the Supernatural. Many are, most are too thick to know. But there are some who know the truth, and some of them have fought these battles before. Here are some of the adults I want to put forward as my actual "Veterans of the Supernatural Wars." 

Old Jackson Public High School

Most of these adults don't really need stats; they won't be doing any fighting unless it is off-screen. Though it is possible that they could need them later on. For the most part, these are either 0-level humans or maybe 1st or 2nd level in something.

Lars Nichols

Lars is Larina's father. He is a good one to have in the game, whether or not Larina remains a named NPC. Like Larina as the New Girl, he is the New Teacher. He is a professor of Anthropology at MacAlister College, so he will make a good resource for the characters. 

Lars came to mind nearly fully formed. I knew he had the same hair color as Larina and that he had brown eyes. He sings, he loves music, he has an impressive music collection. And he LOVES Yes. Like obsessively so. And Larina is a complete Daddy's girl. Of course, "Larina" means "daughter of Lars." But Larina came first, and Lars came around later. Her mother is/was named Siân Stephens Nichols (my homage to Bewitched). She was blonde with blue eyes, the same eye color as Larina. I spent some time with Lars and Siân as OSE characters, and they were a blast. 

In Larina's original AD&D 1st ed version, her mom and dad both died when she was 19, necessitating her adventuring.  In my Dark Places & Demogorgons version, her parents are both still alive. Here, her mother died, and Lars and his daughter moved up from Southern Illinois so he could take a job at MacAlister. 

Lars is likely a Sage, maybe level 4. Yeah, I know I said 0 or 1, but he is going to be a solid resource. Plus, Lars knows about the supernatural; he prefers to avoid it when he can, but that is difficult when his daughter is one of the most powerful witches in the game.  

I like Lars. He is a good guy and acts all happy, but he is still mourning his wife. Because of this he will be protective of the characters.

Archetype: The cool, but heartbroken, single father
Quote: "Love what you love while you can, and never apologize for playing the record one more time."
Quirks: Has a huge record collection. Loves Yes, still misses his wife.
Theme song: "Wonderous Stories" by Yes

Malcolm "Mac" McGowan

Malcolm "Mac" McGowan is first and foremost the grandfather of Rowan McGown, the presumptive Spirit Rider of Jackson. His son, Jake, was the Spirit Rider for this area, but he and his wife were killed in a car crash leaving only the baby Rowan to survive. She was supposed to die as well. They were killed by supernatural agents. Mac has always known this and has done everything in his mortal-mundane power to keep Rowan safe. But he knows that sooner or later she is going to need to take up the mantle if Jackson is to remain safe. 

He is an older man who moved here from Scotland many years ago with his Irish wife. Their son Jake was born here in Jackson, and they settled down. Mac got a job caring for the horses at the Thompson Stables, hired by Andy's grandfather, who always respected Mac. It was their idea to have young Anderson come to the stables to learn how to care for the animals and destiny was forged when Andy fell in love with Rowan.

Yes, that is the flannel shirt Rowan wears now. She stole it when she was 12 and never gave it back. Wearing it reminds her of her grandfather.

Mac likes Andy, he sees more of Andy's own grandfather in him than his father, which is good. He also knows he will be kind to Rowan.  MAc respects people who work hard, but has a lot of issues with those who deal with the supernatural, especially Valerie Beaumont. These two have a history, and he is one of the very few people who know her secret.  Valerie wants to train Rowan in sword fighting to prepare her for her role as Jackson's Spirit Rider, and conveniently keeping all three away from directly helping and stealing the spotlight away from the PCs.

Valerie: "Good morning, Mac. You going to invite me in for coffee or shoot me with that revolver you are hiding in your jacket?"
Mac: "I have not decided yet. Maybe both."

If Mac has a class, he would be a level 1 or 2 Veteran. 

Archetype: The Protective Grandfather
Quote: "Horses don’t care what you say you are. They only care what you actually are."
Quirks: Talks to horse like they understand him. Maybe they do.
Theme song: "The Skye Boat Song" - The Corries

There are a lot of parallels between Lars and Mac, just as there are between Larina and Rowan. Almost like they are similar characters with different paths and choices. I like to explore these ideas. If Larina and Rowan are very similar, it might also explain why, in my mind, they are friendly to each other, but not friends. 

Of course, none that might matter in the actual game. So far, the players and the characters have only seen them in the background.  The teachers in the school are more important right now.

Here are a couple more.

Thomas Avery

Mr. Avery is the school's "cool" teacher. He is known to be a little eccentric, a little odd, and his classes are a lot of fun. He teaches Classical Literature, Senior Honors Lit, and Freshman English. He quotes Shakespeare in class, and he directs the Fall plays. 

Mr. Avery's big secret is that he is gay. He tries to keep his personal life to himself because, well, it's just 1985-86 and people are still bigoted. When he was younger, and the AIDS crisis began, he got "The Talk" by the school board. He was so embarrassed and frustrated that he considered leaving teaching altogether. Now he makes sure he is never alone with a student, always meets in the open, and never, ever touches anyone. He knows how quickly misunderstandings turn into rumors and rumors become more.  To that end, Keri Moreau flirts with him openly and often, which he finds amusing. She told him that she was willing to do whatever was needed to ensure he was protected. She is also at his side during the school plays as the "Assistant Director" of the plays. The other English teacher, Glenn Daniels, wants him gone, but he is intimidated by Keri, and she makes sure he never has an excuse. 

Thomas Avery is a lot of students' favorite teacher, and they will say he is one of the few who listen to them. Really listens to them. Again, I like to think Avery is a good guy. He loves teaching and he loves when students read something that really means something to them. 

Thomas and Elaine have been sharing their observations, and they are coming to understand that some students are more than they appear. And there are some things that hide in the dark. 

Thomas is likely just a level 1 Sage. 

Archetype: The Fun Teacher
Quote: "Words are not harmless. That is why we teach them."
Quirks: Quotes Shakespeare whenever he can.
Theme song: “The Sound of Silence” by Simon & Garfunkel

Elaine Bellweather

Elaine: "Some things work whether you believe in them or not. That is why you must be careful."
Faye: "Are we still talking about Jazz, Miss Bellweather?"

Miss Elaine Bellweather is Jackson Public High School's music teacher. She teaches Music Appreciation and History, Choir, and is the orchestra conductor. She doesn't teach band, though. The students think she is a bit old-fashioned; she still dresses like she did in the 1960s, and most students think she is older than she really is. She is only 45. 

Miss Bellweather is from one of the "first families" of Jackson. Along with the Thornes, Thompsons, and Vales, the Bellweathers were among the first to settle on the Mauvaisterre Moraine that would become Jackson. She never married, so she will be the last Bellweather. Like the Vales and Thornes, the Bellweathers produced a number of witches. The Thornes are hags, though many don't know that, and the Vales have a history of magic. The Bellweathers were Hedgewitches. As Elaine would say, her "grandmother could see around a few corners."  Elaine herself has no magical ability, but I do say she has some sensitivity. In game terms I say she is a 2nd or 3rd level Sage. She knows a couple of simple spells. 

Elaine lives in a small house with Marian Fitzpatrick, her long-time friend from their days at MacAlister.

Elaine Bellweather is also gay, but she doesn't get the same level of discrimination that Thomas does. That is the double standard of the 1980s that, for once, works in her favor, just for the wrong reasons. 

Not many students consider her their "favorite teacher," but she loves her job, and music is her life. She keeps a detailed set of notes on all the strange things she sees. She shares these notes with Mr. Avery and Mrs. Gloria Haskel, the school Librarian. Between the three of them they know about the monsters and work where they can to protect the students.

Archetype: The Shockingly Perceptive Teacher / Hedge Witch
Quote: "No, I do not know magic. I know songs. People are always confusing the two."
Quirks: Never married. Grandmother was a witch.
Theme song: “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” by The Shirelles

Thomas and Elaine are also my subtle nod to the Monsterhearts game I played a while back, which was also almost like a Proto-Jackson. Much like Stranger Things did a flashback involving the previous generation, I like to think that Thomas and Elaine may have known something back when they were kids struggling on their own. I don't think they were in school together, at least I have not worked out their histories or backstories much more than what I have here, but I am leaving it all open. Mac would have been here, but he would have been an adult then as well. 

These are more of my "veterans of the supernatural wars." Just in this case, the last war.

Jackson, IL: Character Questionnaire

 One of the larger challenges of my Jackson, IL campaign for the NIGHT SHIFT^® RPG, hasn't been the rules or the supernatural, but rather getting players into the right frame of mind. Not just playing teens (for people like me who are 30-40+ years past their teen years) but also getting 20-somethings used to the world of 1985-86.

A lot of that will be a certain level of "hand wavem" where the reality of the game world gives way to the supposed reality of the time. For example, many of the twenty-somethings don't think to look for a pay phone. The fifty-year-olds forget what it was like to be teens and feel the things teens feel so intensely. I can't handle all of those, BUT I can at least get them going into the right place with their characters. 

To this end, I worked on a Character Questionnaire. Give the players a chance to think about their characters in a group and what this character is like as a teen in 1985. 

This is in addition to Quotes, Quirks, and Theme Song, I ask of all the characters.

I was thinking about my developmental psychology classes, back when I was closer to being a teen than I am now, and how teens feel like they are on a stage the whole time. They often feel everything they do is visible to (and judged by) all. Their thought process is not the same as an adult's, because their brains are still developing. So things they do (or did if you are feeling reflective) feel different. These different thought processes are one of the features of this game, not a bug.

Here is the Questionnaire, as it exists now. Note, the players fill this out AFTER the characters are rolled up. I might change these a bit as the game goes on.

Character Questionnaire

• What is this teen known for at school?
• How were they seen before Jackson, if applicable?
• How are they trying to redefine themselves?
• What classes fit them best?
• What are they good at?
• Who notices them, and why?
• What rumors or assumptions follow them?

Favorites 

• What are their favorite groups, bands, and/or singers? What is always in their Walkman?
• Favorite movie?
• Favorite TV show?
• Favorite clothes?
• Favorite colors?
• Favorite drink?
• Favorite food?
• What poster is on their bedroom wall?
• What store do they always stop in at the mall or downtown?

Home Life

• Who do they live with?
• What is their house like?
• What is their room like?
• How much privacy do they have?
• What is their relationship with their parent or guardian?
• What unspoken pressure lives in the home?
• What freedom do they have that other teens might not?

Weekend Life

• Where do they go first when they have free time?
• What do they do when left alone?
• What social places do they end up in?
• What teen rituals do they enjoy, tolerate, or avoid?
• What changed once they found their people?
• What does freedom look like to them on a Saturday?

Communication

• Do they have privacy on the phone?
• Who do they call most?
• Whose number do they know by heart?
• Are they better in person, on the phone, or in notes?
• Do they make mixtapes, write letters, pass notes, or invent codes?

Secrets

• What secrets are easiest for them to keep?
• What secrets keep leaking out anyway?
• What private fear drives them?
• What private need shapes them?
• What has this cost them?
• What part of themselves are they afraid others can already see?
• Teen Places in Jackson
• Where do they belong?
• Where are they watched?
• Where are they most themselves?
• Where are they least comfortable?
• What public place changes when they enter it?
• What hidden place matters only to them or their closest friends?

Teen Archetype

• How does the school see them?
• How does the town see them?
• Who are they in private?
• What role do they play in the game?
• What do they want?
• What do others wrongly assume about them?
• What emotional tone follows them into a scene?

Contradictions
Things that go against the grain or what is expected of their character.

I don't expect players to fill out all this. Some details will be learned in-game, and others may change as the game moves on. The point is not to make this "homework" but rather to use it as a device to focus on who this character is and what they do.

And because I can, I figure I'd fill them in for some of the NPCs. This also gave me the chance to try it before I gave it to the players. 

Character Questionnaire: Larina

School Life

What is this teen known for at school?
 Being the smart girl who still seems a little weird.

How were they seen before Jackson, if applicable?
 At her old school, she was the weird girl. After the fire, she became “the girl whose mom died.”

How are they trying to redefine themselves?
 Her old life was marked by estrangement, sadness, and loss. In Jackson, she wants to remake herself into someone people like rather than pity or mock.

What classes fit them best?
 Languages, literature, and the social sciences.

What are they good at?
 Languages especially. She has a real gift for them.

Who notices them, and why?
 Everyone notices her. She is the new girl, with bright red hair, striking looks, and an air that says she knows more than she should.

What rumors or assumptions follow them?
 Her mother died in a freak accident. True.
 Her father is on the run. False.
 She is like Carrie. Not entirely false, but not in the way people mean.
 She is a witch. True, though not in the way most think.
 The she, Faye, and Stephanie are all "involved." Not really, they are a coven.

Favorites 

What are their favorite groups, bands, and/or singers? What is always in their Walkman?
 Stevie Nicks. A bit cliched she knows, but she can’t help it. “The Wild Heart” is her favorite. 

Favorite movie?
 She just saw “Return to Oz” and loved it. Dorothy is a witch, and no one can convince her otherwise.

Favorite TV show?
 She loves “Masterpiece Theatre” on PBS. “Bewitched” is a guilty pleasure.

Favorite clothes?
 Has a plaid purple skirt she loves, a pair of black Jordache jeans she can still fit into, and her black Doc Martens.

Favorite colors?
 Purple and black.

Favorite drink?
Tea. Iced tea works fine, too. 

Favorite food?
 Thai, but there are no Thai restaurants in Jackson, much to her dismay. 

What poster is on their bedroom wall?
 A poster of Jean Rollin’s 1970 “La Vampire Nue.” She also has a star chart and poster of Latin verb conjugations. 

What store do they always stop in at the mall or downtown?
 Paula’s Bookstore downtown, always. 

Home Life

Who do they live with?
 She lives with her father, Lars, a professor of anthropology at MacAlister College.

What is their house like?
 A nice two-story home near the college, in a part of town that is respectable enough but not especially fashionable.

What is their room like?
 She has the master bedroom upstairs with an attached bathroom. Lars did not want it after her mother died.

How much privacy do they have?
 A great deal. She has most of the upstairs to herself. There is another bedroom and full bath up there, but Lars prefers the downstairs rooms.

What is their relationship with their parent or guardian?
 She loves her dad, and he loves her. They are close, but both still carry sadness over the loss of her mother.

What unspoken pressure lives in the home?
 Larina tries to take care of Lars more than a teenager should. He worries about her, but she worries about him, too. He cannot cook worth a damn, except for tacos.

What freedom do they have that other teens might not?
 She has unusual privacy, including her own teen-line phone.

Weekend Life

Where do they go first when they have free time?
 On Saturdays, she heads straight to Paula’s Bookstore downtown. After that, she usually ends up at Jackson Public Library, and sometimes one of the college libraries.

What do they do when left alone?
 She reads constantly. If she is awake, she is usually reading or taking notes.

What social places do they end up in?
 At night, she goes out with Stephanie and Faye in Stephanie’s car. Like most kids in town, they cruise Morgan Street and eventually end up at Sal’s Pizza.

What teen rituals do they enjoy, tolerate, or avoid?
 Larina is only an occasional drinker and does not care for drugs, though she has tried getting high a couple of times.

What changed once they found their people?
 She became more open, both to other people and to the world around her. Friendship made ordinary life feel worth entering.

What does freedom look like to them on a Saturday?
 Cruising Morgan with Stephanie and Faye, getting pizza at Sal’s, then bringing some home to share with her dad, who almost certainly forgot to eat, while listening to his records.

Communication

Do they have privacy on the phone?
 Yes. Lars got her her own teen line when they moved to Jackson.

Who do they call most?
 Faye and Stephanie.

Whose number do they know by heart?
 Faye and Stephanie.

Are they better in person, on the phone, or in notes?
 Much better in person. Her written notes tend to become long, intense, and overthought.

Do they make mixtapes, write letters, pass notes, or invent codes?
 She makes mixtapes for Faye from her dad’s record collection. She also makes Stevie Nicks tapes for Candy, partly out of affection and partly because it feels easier than saying what she means. She, Faye, and Stephanie have worked out a code so they can talk about supernatural things in public without anyone noticing.

Secrets

What secrets are easiest for them to keep?
 Other people’s secrets. If someone swears her to silence, she will keep it forever.

What secrets keep leaking out anyway?
 She cannot keep gift secrets at all. She buys birthday and Christmas presents months in advance and can never quite stop herself from hinting.

What private fear drives them?
 Larina believes her mother’s death was not an accident. She suspects something evil and eldritch was responsible. Her father insists it was faulty wiring in her mother’s spice shop, and the investigation officially agrees. (Spoiler: It actually was an accident, but it shapes her all the same.)

What private need shapes them?
 She is haunted by the fear that she can never know enough. That is why she is always reading, always writing things down, always trying to get ahead of what might happen next.

What has this cost them?
 She has not read a book purely for pleasure in years.

What part of themselves are they afraid others can already see?
 She likes girls and boys equally, and part of her is certain everyone already knows. Even if she doesn't really understand that all yet herself. (It's 1985, there is no internet to look things up, and no easy-to-access books.)

Teen Places in Jackson

Where do they belong?
 On ordinary nights, Sal’s Pizza. On quieter days, Paula’s Bookstore and the public library.

Where are they watched?
 In the school halls. Since Larina arrived, she, Stephanie, and Faye have become inseparable, and people notice.

Where are they most themselves?
 With her friends, or alone with a book and a problem to solve.

Where are they least comfortable?
 Anywhere she cannot make sense of what is happening. Confusion unsettles her more than danger.

What public place changes when they enter it?
 The public library. The librarians all know her by name, and her presence there feels almost permanent.

What hidden place matters only to them or their closest friends?
 Behind the school, in sight of the track and field, but far enough from the road to feel secret. Sometimes Candy and Denise show up.

Teen Archetype

How does the school see them?
 The new girl, who is still a little strange.

How does the town see them?
 The new girl. Professor Nichols’ brilliant daughter. The smart girl who is still a little strange.

Who are they in private?
 She is still trying to figure that out for herself.

What role do they play in the game?
 She is the Witch, the one who knows, or at least the one who tries hardest to know.

What do they want?
 To make sure no one else dies if she can help it.

What do others wrongly assume about them?
 That she is arrogant. In truth, she is still shy and more uncertain than she lets anyone see.

What emotional tone follows them into a scene?
 Alone, she brings quiet intensity. With friends, she brings frantic energy. When happy, she is openly affectionate. When angry, she is genuinely frightening.

Contradictions

  She wants to be known, but hates being misread.
  She is deeply affectionate, but guards herself carefully.
  She reads constantly, but almost never for pleasure.
  She seems confident, but is still remaking herself from grief.
  She keeps others’ secrets perfectly, but cannot keep a birthday surprise to save her life.
  Tries to shield herself from pain, but she will set herself on fire to save others.

Character Questionnaire: Candy

School Life

What is this teen known for at school?
 Being one half of the “Candy and Denise” duo.

How were they seen before Jackson, if applicable?
 She has always lived here.

How are they trying to redefine themselves?
 At the moment, she is not. Candy is not trying to reinvent herself. She is just trying to get through.

What classes fit them best?
 She actually pays attention in health class.

What are they good at?
 Candy is very good at first aid. She keeps her cool, acts fast, and gets things done when someone is hurt.

Who notices them, and why?
 Mostly teachers, because she is usually in trouble or seems about two seconds away from it.

What rumors or assumptions follow them?
 That she drinks all the time. Partially true.
 That she and Denise have hooked up. Partially true.
 That she is an airhead. False, but she lets people believe it.

Favorites 

What are their favorite groups, bands, and/or singers? What is always in their Walkman?
 Loves pop music, especially when it has a party feel. Loves Stevie Nicks as well. Has a copy of The Wild Heart that Larina gave her.

Favorite movie?
 She tells people, “Porky’s” to get a shock out of them. But in truth, she loves watching old black & white movies with her mom. 

Favorite TV show?
 “Who has time for TV?” but will have MTV on in the background.

Favorite clothes?
 Anything bright. She has a leather jacket she dug out of the "Lost and Found" of her dad's bar, which she always wears. 

Favorite colors?
 Pinks, yellows, oranges. 

Favorite drink?
 Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill wine. Coffee with a lot of sugar. Iced with sugar and Sweet-n-lo.

Favorite food?
 Pizza. Pepperoni with green olives, the same as Denise's. 

What poster is on their bedroom wall?
 An old, faded poster of “The Outsiders” Movie.

What store do they always stop in at the mall or downtown?
 “Strawberry Fields” record store at the mall. She always runs into Faye there.

Home Life

Who do they live with?
 Candy lives with her working-class father, “Ron”, her terminally ill mother, “Carol”, and her little sister, “Ronnie”.

What is their house like?
 Too small for four people carrying that much stress.

What is their room like?
 A wreck, but in a very normal teenage way for the time. Clothes everywhere, school things mixed with junk, and half-finished bits of life shoved into corners. Bags of chips, Coke cans, a forgotten bag of weed.

How much privacy do they have?
 Almost none.

What is their relationship with their parent or guardian?
 She loves both her parents, and they love her. But she is furious at the world for taking her mother from her piece by piece.

What unspoken pressure lives in the home?
 Everything in the house is organized around helping her mother. All the money Candy makes helping her dad goes to medical bills.

What freedom do they have that other teens might not?
 Her dad works at the local bar, so she stays out late more often than most teens can. She also has easy access to alcohol.

Weekend Life

Where do they go first when they have free time?
 Wherever Denise is.

What do they do when left alone?
 She hates being alone. Being alone means she has time to think about everything going wrong.

What social places do they end up in?
 Sal’s Pizza, parties, parking lots, anywhere Denise is, anywhere the night feels louder than home.

What teen rituals do they enjoy, tolerate, or avoid?
 She drinks most weekends, looks for parties, and avoids anything that feels too much like school spirit or forced enthusiasm.

What changed once they found their people?
 She met Denise in junior high when they were both sent to the principal’s office, and they have barely been apart since.

What does freedom look like to them on a Saturday?
 Not working at her dad’s bar. Not being stuck at home. Being out in the world with Denise, even if they are doing nothing.

Communication

Do they have privacy on the phone?
 None.

Who do they call most?
 Denise.

Whose number do they know by heart?
 Denise.

Are they better in person, on the phone, or in notes?
 In person, but she is constantly passing notes.

Do they make mixtapes, write letters, pass notes, or invent codes?
 She passes notes constantly. She and Denise have nicknames for every teacher in school.

Secrets

What secrets are easiest for them to keep?
 Anything between her and Denise stays buried.

What secrets keep leaking out anyway?
 She makes inappropriate jokes about everyone’s sex lives and sometimes reveals more than she means to by acting like nothing matters.

What private fear drives them?
 That she will end up alone.

What private need shapes them?
 She wants to help people, but does not know how to do that in any lasting way.

What has this cost them?
 She rebels. She drinks. She sleeps around. She makes herself seem harder and less breakable than she is.

What part of themselves are they afraid others can already see?
 That deep down, she is terrified. Terrified, she will be left alone. Terrified she will lose her mother. Terrified that she will lose Denise as her best friend. Terrified something will happen to her dad or Ronnie.

Teen Places in Jackson

Where do they belong?
 Anywhere she decides to be. In Candy’s mind, no place is off-limits.

Where are they watched?
 Mostly by adults.

Where are they most themselves?
 With Denise.

Where are they least comfortable?
 By herself.

What public place changes when they enter it?
 School. Sal’s. Any place where people know she is about to bring noise, trouble, laughter, or all three.

What hidden place matters only to them or their closest friends?
 Behind the bleachers near the track and field, where she and Denise go to smoke and be alone together.

Teen Archetype

How does the school see them?
 As a troublemaker.

How does the town see them?
 As a troublemaker who ought to be home helping her sick mother.

Who are they in private?
 Far more caring, frightened, and vulnerable than people realize.

What role do they play in the game?
 The party girl who is deeper than anyone expects.

What do they want?
 To live her life, keep the people she loves, and not lose anyone else.

What do others wrongly assume about them?
 That she is stupid.

What emotional tone follows them into a scene?
 Excitement, chaos, heat, and the sense that something impulsive is about to happen.

Contradictions

 She is flighty, but loves with her whole heart.
 She acts dumb, but is actually pretty bright.
 She seems careless, but cares deeply about the people around her.
 She runs from pain, but is the first to act when someone else is hurt.

Candy surprises Larina after Larina saves her life.
 "Don't make it weird, babe."

Ok, I like these. They really give the characters more character. One thing I added after I did these was, in addition to a theme song, "What songs are on their mix-tape?" But I then had to explain what a "mix-tape" was when I did the first version of this, and I died of old age right in front of the players.

Artifacts of a bygone age.

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