October Horror Movie Challenge: Prime Evil (1988)

Here we are at the end of it all. 

Prime Evil (1988)

Prime Evil is directed by Roberta Findlay and concerns an ancient sect of Satan-worshipping monks who have survived into modern-day New York through a bargain involving human sacrifice. There is an undercover nun, an upcoming sacrifice, a lot of talk about Satan, and enough low-budget occult weirdness to make sure nobody mistakes this for subtle horror.

The plot details don't hold my interest as much as the movie’s place in the decade. It is as near to pure late-1980s Satanic Panic horror as one can get. The Devil is no metaphor here, and the cultists are not some misunderstood lot of occultists; they are in fact worshipping Satan and putting into practice centuries-old traditions of sacrifice. And yet this ancient evil is at work in contemporary New York. In that respect, Prime Evil is one more instance of the theme I have been coming across all month: horror comes home. Sure, NYC is not a small town, but it is someone's hometown; in fact, 8.6 million someones.

That is probably my biggest takeaway from this year's October marathon. I set out to find some small-town horror from 1985 to 1986 and found something of a wider scope. Time and again the horror has come home, making its way into the houses, schools, malls, hospitals, and neighborhoods. At times it has been there for generations; at other times it was let in by accident. Or, as in Prime Evil, an age-old evil has just taken root in the modern world.

I also appreciate how completely sincere movies like this could be about their supernatural premises. There is no point in trying to offer a psychological reading of Satanism or make of the cult a complex social metaphor. The monks made a deal with the Devil, and that is the end of it.

Is Prime Evil any good? Not really. It is cheap and uneven and at times confusing without being as wild as you might expect from the premise. The pacing, the performances and the story have drawn their share of criticism in reviews both then and now. But it has a certain 1980s low-budget earnestness I have grown to like in the course of this marathon. Someone had a tale of immortal Satanic monks in New York and thought that was reason enough to put a film together.

And really, that is part of what I have enjoyed about revisiting this decade.

The 1980s were not afraid to be ridiculous.

They were not afraid to mix old folklore, religious horror, slashers, science fiction, teenage drama, heavy metal, and whatever else happened to be lying around.

Sometimes the results were classics, some were terrible, and some, many in fact, were pure 80s fun.

Either way, I had a lot of fun.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 47
First Time Views: 33

October Horror Movie Challenge: Witch Story (1989)

I am getting to the end of this, and I am running out of movies for my theme.

Witch Story (1989)

Witch Story, aka Streghe, is a 1989 Italian horror movie directed by Alessandro Capone, but most of it was shot in Florida. That combination actually fits the movie pretty well because the basic story feels much more European than American.  

A brother and sister have come into possession of an old farmhouse and with some friends in tow they find that the place is haunted by Helena, a woman put to the torch as a witch half a century ago. One will also find demons, possession, a priest with a past and no end of bloody supernatural retribution.

I like the premise. An inherited piece of family land with a buried history, a curse that has made its way to the present and some witchcraft is my kind of thing. The setup is nearly Gothic despite the location. But the film does not hold up in the middle; it drags, and the characters are not great, nor are the actors. Ian Bannen carries some of the weight as Father Matthew, the most familiar face in the cast.

The lead is listed as Amy Adams in the role of Susan. She is not the one you would see in Enchanted or Arrival, but a credit like that makes you double-check. None of the actors here went on to much more. This is not atypical of horror movies.

NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson Connections

As for my 1980s "Horror Comes Home" theme, this is right up my alley. There is no quest for a far-off castle here. The terror is in the house you have been left with, in an old family tale, and in what the locals did decades back. The past has been biding its time for someone to return.

It fits well with Sunny Valley and its older history, though there is nothing here I couldn't do in any of my three settings. I can always use the "50 years ago" idea from this movie, but 1939 is already a crowded year in Jackson!

It has a good premise and some entertaining supernatural mayhem. Only too much dead space in the center. I would have liked it better.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 46
First Time Views: 32

Urban Fantasy Fridays: NightLife (1990)

 NightLife is a game I have had on and off for a number of years. I only ever owned the core rules and the Magic book. I never got a chance to play it, but it is a game we talk about every so often in our Elf Lair Games meetings. The game is quintessentially early 90s. It's filled with blood, dark, and dirty streets, and where you get to play the monster. Vampire: The Masquerade may have done it better, but NightLife gave it its all a year earlier.

NightLife is set in New York. A strange New York that is sandwiched between the movie Warriors and the First World Trade Center bombing.  A city that is hot and perpetually at night. Something like Dark City meets Nightbreed.

NightLife

by Bradley K. McDevitt, L. Lee Cerny, Walter H. Mytczynskyj
1990, 1992 Stellar Games, 256 pages.

Much like Beyond the Supernatural, NightLife is wonderfully crunchy.  Character creation is a prime example. Roll 4d10 for the eight attributes: Strength, Dexterity, Fitness, Intellect, Will, Perception, Attractiveness, and Luck. Then there are another twenty d10s to put toward your skills. And there is a lot of them. It is very much an RPG of its time in that having a skill for something matters, and you will find them for everything from firearms and martial arts to pharmacology, manuscript illumination, seduction, and even skateboarding. Honestly, it already feels like the heart of this game is a cyberpunk game gone horror, splatterpunk. This will not be the last time I feel this while going over the rules.

The underlying system is simple enough. Your attributes and skills yield a percentage, and you roll under on percentile dice. A 20 in a given skill denotes you are competent at the everyday task without needing to make a roll; it is only when things get difficult, or you are under pressure, that the dice come out. Character generation can be a bit of a time sink, but once you are in the game, the central mechanic is not hard to grasp. 

The art is very early 1990s punk style. Cool for the time, but looks a bit dated by today's standards. To be fair, one of the creators, Bradley K. McDevitt, has his own stock-art service, and his stuff is great. I have used his art many, many times in my own work. So, to me, despite its age, the art is very much a "draft" of what I consider "urban horror art." Later on, the artists for Vampire: The Masquerade and WitchCraft RPG would help define this style in my mind. But credit where credit is due for starting here. 

The Kin

What sets this apart is that you do not go after the monsters. You are the monster. Like I mentioned above, it covers similar ground to Vampire: The Masquerade, but the tone here is less Anne Rice. 

The supernatural types refer to themselves as the Kin, leaving ordinary people with the rather condescending title of "the Herd." The book has seven varieties of Kin: Vampyres, Werewolves, Ghosts, Daemons, Wyghts, Inuits, and Animates. They all have their Edges, or powers, and the traditional Flaws of being a monster. The Magic sourcebook also adds Witches to the mix.

Vampyres are of the old school. Give them sunlight, garlic, a wooden stake, running water, or holy objects, and they will be stopped. They turn into bats, mist, and wolves. These vampyres are more akin to Dracula than Lestat, but his DNA is in there as well. Werewolves change shape. Ghosts are the dead with unfinished business. Animates are your Frankenstein’s monsters and golems. Daemons are extradimensional and have been magically put here. And Wyghts are unpleasant undead affairs that siphon the youth from their victims.

Then we have the Inuits.

Well, yes. This is where the game’s age shows, and not in an endearing way. The handling of Indigenous spirits under that moniker is something I would either not use or rewrite. 

Edges, Flaws, and Humanity

You have Edges, the supernatural side of things. Some are common, some are for a particular Kin. Claws, telepathy, weather control, possession, invisibility, speed, and armor are among the options. But the cleverness lies in the price.

That price is Humanity.

Humanity is not merely a morality stat on the sheet for the GM to levy punishment with. It is a resource to be spent. 

Your monster can do some very cool things, but they are the very things that erode what is human about him. That is a fine mechanic. There is a built-in temptation in the rules. You can have more power, but how much of yourself are you prepared to put on the line?

It goes both ways. High Humanity can make you functionally human. Let it drop, and the character becomes more visibly monstrous, his weaknesses more pronounced. Lose too much Humanity, and now your character has become a true monster and an NPC. I like this idea. The World of Darkness games made this idea their central thesis; other games have a form of this as well. NightLife wasn't the first to do this, but they did do it well.

The City at Night

An urban fantasy needs somewhere for its denizens to put down roots, and NightLife gets that. Not just a crypt or a haunted house. We are talking clubs and bars, record stores, and warehouses. Back rooms and street corners. The sort of places for showing off, making bad decisions, and hearing what is going on. You could say nightclubs are the heart of the game's culture. Style is everything, as is the right music and the right clothes. The book is so preoccupied with fashion that a modern retrospective put it best: in NightLife, a gun can sometimes look like the more economical option than a proper wardrobe.

Then there are the particular modifiers for a fight on the dance floor. That's about as much of a NightLife rule as you will find. I can't think of another game that does that.

Do not mistake this for Gothic horror moved to an urban environment. This is urban horror. The monsters are of the city; they have their neighborhoods and their enemies three blocks away; they have favorite clubs, and they listen to the music. It is easy to see why the comparison to The Warriors holds up.

New York is as much of a character here as it is a setting.

The supernatural is divided into factions and gangs with differing views on humanity. You have the Commune, which is content to let Kin and humans coexist, or the Complex, which would rather control and make use of them. The Morningstar Corporation will undermine society with its wealth and politics, while Red Moonrise is far less subtle and has no qualms about terror and slaughter. And if one wants to be hunted, there are human outfits like the Van Helsing Society and Target Alpha who know the Kin are out there. In short, there is always someone to have a go at. NightLife anticipates as much.

There is some wonderful worldbuilding here that sadly went unnoticed at the time.

Putting the Splatter Back in Splatterpunk

This is no subtle affair. The rulebook will tell you exactly how big a wound is from the damage taken. A Kin can take some horrific injury and come back for more unless put down in a certain way. That kind of durability is what lets the game live up to its splatterpunk side.

Shadow of the Vampire

One cannot help but compare this to Vampire: The Masquerade. NightLife came first in 1990 with Vampire behind it in 1991. They share the d10s, the Humanity stat, the urban backdrop and the same sort of player characters. Yet the tone is worlds apart. NightLife is punk where Vampire is Gothic. It is all about the leather jackets and the loud music, the blood on the wall, and the monsters having it out in the alley behind the club. There is plenty of angst to be had, but also a motorcycle chain and a switchblade.

In NightLife, everyone is Clan Brujah or Tremere.

What do I get out of NightLife? More than one might expect.

I am fond of the way it treats Humanity. It is not a passive number for the GM to judge by. Your very existence as a supernatural puts your connection to humanity at risk. I can make a lot of use of that.

I also appreciate the Kin being a single culture. Vampires and werewolves do not need to be in separate societies that never cross paths; they can be in the same faction and have the same enemies. Very fitting for an urban setting. They can still hate each other. Fight in gang wars or even have an uneasy alliance. Same with the other types here. 

The factions are fine, though I would not use them verbatim. What interests me is the concept: supernatural beings at odds over how to deal with ordinary people, and those differences turning political or violent.

But the thing NightLife offers above all is a sense of place. The supernatural has to be somewhere on a Friday night. It may sound foolish, but a community is only convincing when there is a bar they all know, a record store open till two in the morning, a diner where the night staff won’t remark on odd patrons, and an alley to settle scores. I put that to work in NIGHT SHIFT.

For example, in my 1990s sequel to Jackson set in Chicago, Faye Thorne, now calling herself Fiona Voss, runs a record store called Muse. Muse is where people (and not-people) congregate and hear things. Even those who would not normally work together can be found across from each other because they both know it is safe ground. 

And that is what NightLife does best. It is not a matter of monsters hiding in the city, but of them having a life in it. The distinction is important. The vampire has a band he likes. The daemon has a drink with an old friend. The ghost knows her way in. The werewolf has friends and enemies and the clothes and the neighborhood to prove it. The supernatural is not in town for a visit. It lives here.

And regardless of the Kin, they all need somewhere to buy the new Inkubus Sukkubus album. 

My Jackson Kids: Chicago 1992

This campaign does not have a name yet. Nor is it even very well defined. I just know this. Like my real kids, my Jackson, IL kids will grow up and move out at some point. Some end up in Chicago in the 1990s. Why Chicago? Why not! I LOVE Chicago. 

Among the PCs/NPCs I'll work with, there will be Larina, Faye/Fiona, Roderick Morgan, and Moria Zachary. There will be new characters too, but the players will create those. 

Fiona, Larina, and Moria, Chicago 1992

And...that is about all I have for that campaign! Really. I have some other idea involving the Maxwell Street Market and other things I loved about Chicago in the 1990s, but this notion is in it's infancy. 

So I am trying out a lot of different ideas. Namely, this campaign is an attempt to move from Modern Horror (Jackson, Sunny Valley) into Urban Fantasy. The horror is still there, but it isn't the same sort of thing.

So, for NightLife, I started with the core book and create a character who fits. I considered turning one of my Jackson kids into a ghost, but in truth I just couldn't bring myself to do that. So instead, I am using a character and keeping her more or less as is. Then I grabbed a copy of the magic book and created twom more characters.

Edited to Add: In my online research, I see that there is a book for NightLife called "America After Dark." I didn't really have the time to buy a copy. Though maybe I will grab it later on since it covers the time period when I was living downtown. In truth I should assemble all the RPGs and supplements that cover Chicago sometime. Especially if I get this Chicago game off the ground.

Moria Lucille Zachary

Race/Kin: Daemon
Age: 21

Abilities
Strength (STR) 23
Dexterity (DEX) 34
Fitness (FIT) 27
Intellect (INT) 26
Will 21
Perception (PER) 27
Attractiveness (ATT) 27
Luck 19
Magic Ability (MA) -

Base Hand-to-Hand (HTH) damage 4
Max Humanity 80
Humanity 36 (40)
Survival Points 46

Edges and Flaws
All Kin
Armor 5, Aura Sight 27, Claws 27, Danger Sense 27, Drain 27 (diet: Human or Animal Life Force), Speed 34

Kin Specific Edges
Alter Form 21, Body Control 27, Flight 27 (true form only), Telepathy 26, Travel 21

Flaws
Substance Vulnerability: Flint, Holy Relics, Fire (double damage), Command: Majestic Daemonic

Skills
Combat Skills
Pistol 41, Streetfighting 52

Archaic Skills
Kin Lore 37

General Skills
Alertness 34, City Knowledge (Chicago) 32, Disguise 30, Language (English) 30, Persuasion 31, Psychology 33, Seduction 31, Stealth 57, Streetwise 42, Theology (Catholic) 32

Occult Skills
Occult Knowledge 34

Connections
Bar Bouncer, Bartender, Police Detective

Money: $13,000.

Moria is great for this. Plus, we haven't seen her in Jackson for a while, so it has a nice "what the hell are you doing here?" vibe. I also like the idea that the girl who was considered dangerous in Jackson is just mildly threatening here in Chicago. 

Larina Stephanie Nichols

Race/Kin: Human, Witch
Age: 22

Abilities
Strength (STR) 15
Dexterity (DEX) 28
Fitness (FIT) 25
Intellect (INT) 35
Will 34
Perception (PER) 34
Attractiveness (ATT) 30
Luck 21
Magic Ability (MA) 30

Base Hand-to-Hand (HTH) damage 5
Max Humanity 100
Humanity 48 (50)
Survival Points 46

Edges and Flaws
All Kin
None

Kin Specific Edges
None

Flaws
None

Magic
Shadow Paths, Deflection, Escape, Magic Sight, Vibes, Word, EMT, Lighter, Open

Skills
Combat Skills
Knife 31, Pistol 27, Martial Arts (Judo) 42

Archaic Skills
none

General Skills
Alertness 39, City Knowledge (Chicago) 38, Driving 31, First Aid 34, Language (English) 35, Language (Greek) 35, Language (Latin) 35, Persuasion 37, Psychology 43, Research 48, Streetwise 31

Occult Skills
Library Research (Magic) 48, Talismanic Magic 40, Herbal Magic 40, Occult Knowledge 44

Connections
Bar Bouncer, Bartender, Police Detective, Elder Kin

Money: $8,000.

Larina only lives here during her undergraduate and Master's degrees, from fall of 1987 to Spring/summer of 1993. I have her going on other adventures in 1993 that correspond to her Chill 2nd edition period and flowing into her WitchCraft RPG time. Whether those games involve the same "mirror shard" of Larina or not, I don't know yet. But for now, this is Larina in 1992.

Fiona Voss

Race/Kin: Human, Sorceress (near Kin)
Age: 22

Abilities
Strength (STR) 20
Dexterity (DEX) 24
Fitness (FIT) 28
Intellect (INT) 34
Will 46
Perception (PER) 30
Attractiveness (ATT) 34
Luck 20
Magic Ability (MA) 35

Base Hand-to-Hand (HTH) damage 4
Max Humanity 80
Humanity 30 (Soul Burn)
Survival Points 48 (36 in stored spells)

Edges and Flaws
All Kin
Drain 28 (Fiona "recharges" herself by going out)

Kin Specific Edges
None

Flaws
Substance Vulnerability: Metorite iron, salt (she makes up for it with hot peppers)

Magic
Black out, Shadow Paths, Deflection, Escape, Hotwire. EMT (white), Dispel Magic (white), boombox (white), Binding (black)

Skills
Combat Skills
Pistol 28, Streetfighting 32

Archaic Skills
Kin Lore 40

General Skills
Administration 42, Alertness 36, Business 44, City Knowledge (Chicago) 42, Dancing 29, Driving 28, Fashion Sense 34, First Aid 38, Intimidation 50, Leadership 54, Musical Style (Goth/Alternative) 46, Profession (Record Store Manager) 46, Research 38, Security Systems 39, Stealth 29, Streetwise 56

Occult Skills
Occult Knowledge 42

In many ways, Fiona has become my standout NPC in my Chicago games. 

Larina is a human witch; Fiona is a near-kin Sorceress. I opted to go in this direction so I could see the differences between the two magic types in the Magic book. Fiona is still recovering from her near Hag-conversion. So her magic feels more like a Kin than Larina's coven magic does. 

So, I want to talk about the differences between Jackson-era Faye and Chicago-Fiona. Same girl, different experiences. In some ways, Fiona becomes more Fiona in NightLife. Faye hated high school, and she hated (hates) Jackson. She flees first to UIUC and then to UIC, but it isn't college or university academics that give her life. It is Chicago. Here is a giant city filled with strange new people, and she LOVES it. 

I get it. I remember leaving class one summer night and looking out at the city from a Blue Line L station and just being in awe of how beautiful it was. In my mind, Faye saw the same sight, but where I was in awe, she fell in love. Faye embraced Chicago in such a fundamentally deep way. From that moment on, she was never, ever going to leave.

NightLife also gave some great ideas for Faye/Fiona regardless of what game system I might use. She works till close at Muse (before she owned it) and then goes out to clubs that would have been too dangerous for a girl in her 20s to go to by herself, but she is a powerful sorceress/witch. She dances until 3 am, eats Thai food or whatever is still open (lots of places), and turns around and goes back to work the next day. 

While all of this is wonderful for Fiona, it is the start of Fiona and Larina growing apart. They still remain close; you can't erase that. But they are setting their sights now in different directions. 

Jackson to Chicago

I did not set out to create another campaign this month. I certainly don't need another campaign. But somewhere along the way I followed these kids out of Jackson and into Chicago. By 1992 they are no longer kids, and the supernatural isn't something hiding beneath their hometown anymore. It has neighborhoods, jobs, stores, clubs, politics, and a social life. I don't know what I am going to do with that yet. For now I am calling it Chicago 92. I suspect I will be coming back to it. 

Jackson was about discovering the supernatural. Chicago is starting to look like it will be about living with it.

Final Word

NightLife will not replace NIGHT SHIFT on my table. NIGHT SHIFT is just a far better fit for what I want out of a horror RPG. But I would not have NIGHT SHIFT in my hands now if it hadn't been for the nightclubs and streets of NightLife. 

I intended to explore how a single campaign idea could be viewed through the lens of different games; I ended up with much more than that. I got so much out of these games that I think I'll do a proper retrospective later. Likely next month. 

October Horror Movie Challenge: Vicious Lips (1986)

Vicious Lips is not a great movie, nor does it fit well with my theme this month, but I had fun with it.

Vicious Lips (1986)

Directed by Albert Pyun, the premise follows an all-female rock band traveling across space for an important gig. In the course of their journey, they crash on a desert planet and have to deal with a killer alien, while spending much of their time in neon-lit sets looking as though MTV has exploded on them. 

It is an all-female Streets of Fire, but with a Heavy Metal sequence, then run through the mid-1980s MTV filter. I like that description better than the movie itself, but it explains why I enjoyed it. 

Style is what does the heavy lifting here. The hair is enormous, the wardrobes are louder than the music, and the sets are awash in a neon glow; it is as if someone set about making a science-fiction universe from a nightclub, a music video and the left-overs of the Empire Pictures warehouse. The band's new lead singer is called Judy Jetson. Subtlety was never on the agenda.

It gets off to an energetic start but once the band has crash-landed the film loses much of its steam. The middle section is overlong with the band tramping around the ship and the desert when I would have preferred more of the space-rock craziness. There is a Venusian beast and other ghoulish oddities, but the film could have used more aliens. 

A lot more.

There is no call for restraint when making a picture of a glam-rock girl band going intergalactic. That is the lesson. If you are going to go full speed, go warp 9.9.

The 1980s Were Not Afraid to Mix Things Up

In watching these movies all month long, I am reminded of how open the 1980s were to mashing genres. Vicious Lips is at once science fiction, horror, rock musical, comedy, creature feature, and music video. It does not seem to care whether the parts fit. They are put on screen, and the audience is expected to follow along.

They do not always fit. Which is part of the appeal.

You have your killer creature and spaceships, your rock concerts and futuristic nightclubs, some horror imagery and scenes that seem to have come from another production altogether. Pyun pushes the visuals even when the story isn't moving and, as some have pointed out, the neon and editing are far more memorable than the plot.

I miss that kind of genre mixing. Modern films are boxed in before the cameras roll. Horror is horror, sci-fi is sci-fi. 

The 80s would ask "What if the girl band has a spaceship?" or "What if there is a serial killer on board? An alien monster too?" and just go with it. Then throw in some sexy, half-naked sand sirens and call it a wrap.

That doesn't necessarily make for a good movie; Vicious Lips shows us that. The acting is inconsistent, the story gets lost, and the pacing falls apart at times. At times, the movie seems to forget its purpose. Where were they going? I forgot at points.

But it is never shy about being strange. And that is worth something.

Final Thoughts

This doesn't really fit my hometown-horror theme for the month, but it does fit what I have been rediscovering about the 1980s. These filmmakers were willing to take a chance. Some of it was great. Some of it was Vicious Lips.

I had my fun with it.

Give me the neon and the big hair, a girl band in space and a killer alien, a film that thinks *Streets of Fire*, *Heavy Metal* and MTV can exist in the same world.

Only put in a few more aliens next time.

NIGHT SHIFT, Jackson, and Thirteen Parsecs

No. I am not about to send my Jackson kids into space à la "Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space."  Certainly, I should remember that unrelenting horror is just torture without some fun. 

This could work as a crazy "Space Truckers" adventure. Instead of hauling space-beer to the outer colonies, you are hauling the latest girl band. Trouble is there is a price on their head!

Or something. 

If we learn anything from Vicious Lips, it is that don't be afraid to mix it up a bit.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 45
First Time Views: 31

October Horror Movie Challenge: Spookies (1986)

Last night's movie was Spookies from 1986, and crimony, what an absolute mess. Normally I write these up as I am watching them and then a little time at the end to cover some more. But I needed time to read up on this mess, so I am posting it tonight, early. I might need another movie to work this one out of my system.

Spookies (1986)

A group of people wander into an old mansion and start getting picked off by an astonishing collection of monsters. Normally I would describe the characters a little more carefully, but this is one of the strangest collections of supposed friends I have seen in a horror movie, and that is saying something. We get a couple who seem to have wandered in from a 1960s greaser movie, a buttoned-down yuppie, some idiot with a puppet, an Englishwoman for reasons I never quite understood, and a woman saddled with the unfortunate name Meegan. Not Megan. Meegan. The credits and closed captioning confirm it. There is a sorcerer, his dead wife, a kid who makes me long for the intellectual discourse we got from Gamera's Kenny, and a weird-ass spider woman who is inexplicably the best actress of the lot. 

The acting is terrible, and the story barely holds together. Characters appear, disappear, and occasionally seem to be participating in entirely different movies.

Turns out they are.

Spookies began as a movie called Twisted Souls, written by Frank Farel, Brendan Faulkner, and Thomas Doran and directed by Faulkner and Doran. They shot it in 1984, primarily at the Jay Estate in Rye, New York. After a falling out with financial backer Michael Lee, the original filmmakers lost control of the production. Lee subsequently brought in Eugenie "Genie" Joseph, who shot a substantial amount of completely new material with different actors and storylines. The filmmakers then edited the footage from the two productions into Spookies.

Suddenly the movie makes perfect sense.

Well, no. Not really. It still makes absolutely no sense.

But at least now I understand why it makes no sense.

The partygoers wandering around the mansion and encountering monster after monster are largely from the original Twisted Souls. The sorcerer Kreon, his imprisoned bride Isabelle, the kid wandering around, the werecat, and several other pieces came from the later material. Genie Joseph herself described being hired to rescue what she saw as an unsellable rough cut and rewrite, reshoot, and re-edit it into something releasable.

The seams are not merely visible. They are basically load-bearing walls.

What saves Spookies, at least somewhat and why I didn't turn it off the moment the idiots from Twisted Souls opened their mouths, are the monster effects. There are muck creatures, zombies, a spider woman, demons, a Grim Reaper, and all sorts of other rubbery horrors. The original filmmakers were clearly more interested in creating monsters than coherent characters, and honestly, I can respect that. The creature work involved effects artists like Gabe Bartalos and others who went on to work in practical effects.

There are several moments where I found myself thinking, "That is actually a pretty good monster." And a lot of them were good as far as the effects go. The Muck Men, the makeup, especially that Spider Woman. 

Then someone starts talking again and reminded me that yes, as bad as this movie is, the original Twisted Souls was likely a lot worse. I know. That is a bold statement given how bad this one actually is. 

Still, there is something almost endearing about a movie willing to throw this many creatures at the screen. If Spookies had a coherent story, halfway competent acting, and characters who seemed like they had actually met one another before arriving at the mansion, it might have been a fun little monster movie. Maybe.

Instead, it is cinematic taxidermy. Two dead movies stitched together and propped up in the hope nobody notices the seams. 

Everybody notices the seams. 

The Maria Pechukas Rabbit Hole

Then Spookies sent me somewhere completely unexpected.

Maria Pechukas plays Isabelle, Kreon's imprisoned wife, and naturally I looked her up afterward. Pechukas apparently had a very small filmography after Spookies, but that led me into an extremely obscure corner of shot-on-video horror.

She later worked repeatedly with filmmaker Jay Lind, whom she was also married to for several years. It immediately made me think of the relationship between Lina Romay and Jesús Franco (and not Rob Zombie and Sherri Moon Zombie).  Her credits include Blood Dreams (also known as Sangre Songes), Valerie, Do You Like Women?, Night of the Cat, and finally Carmilla in 1998.

I initially thought I had stumbled onto a whole series of no-budget Carmilla knockoffs. It is not quite that neat, but it is close enough to be fascinating.

Blood Dreams was a 40-minute lesbian vampire film made in 1991 with Pechukas, Debbie Rochon, and Amy Lynn Baxter, reportedly intended to attract financing for a feature-length version. Valerie again paired Pechukas and Rochon in another lesbian vampire story. Do You Like Women? veered sideways into an erotic horror-comedy about a society of female cannibals, while Night of the Cat involved a woman transforming into a murderous cat creature. Then Lind finally made an actual adaptation of Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla in 1998, with Pechukas herself playing Carmilla in modern-day Long Island.

This is exactly the sort of obscurity that makes me lose an hour on the Internet and not get to bed until very late.

Unfortunately, finding information about these movies is much easier than finding the movies themselves. Most appear to have had tiny VHS releases and essentially no modern distribution. I found one DVD listing for over $130, which is more than I am willing to spend to satisfy my curiosity about an obscure lesbian vampire movie shot on video thirty-five years ago. Not to mention I am not even sure it is the right one. 

SIDE NOTE: Actress Lili Reinhart has been all over social media (well, at least mine) talking about how she wants to do "Carmilla" as a movie and Hollywood is too afraid to do it. Seriously? I found one, maybe two, new versions of this tale that I have never seen before, and I have covered this tale a LOT here. Message to Lili Reinhart: Read my blog; you can learn what has worked and what hasn't for Carmilla. 

So, somewhere out there, though, is an entire little ecosystem of early-1990s microbudget horror starring Maria Pechukas, Debbie Rochon, Amy Lynn Baxter, and others. And now I know it exists.

This is how these things start.

You watch Spookies. Then you look up one actress. Three hours later you are trying to locate a 40-minute lesbian vampire movie from 1991 that may only exist on somebody's deteriorating VHS tape.

The October Horror Movie Challenge is working exactly as intended. This is why I haven't gotten out of the 70s and 80s for horror, too many side quests!

Jackson Connection

Oh. Shit. Yeah, I am supposed to talk about what I can use from this movie for my settings...Uh. I got nuthin'.

Well. That's not 100% true, but the ideas I do have have been better executed in other movies. So let tonight's movie be a cautionary tale about researching movies late at night, and about how all my Peach Tea Monster Energy drinks (my current drink of choice these days) are down in my office, not here next to me when I needed them most. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 44
First Time Views: 30

October Horror Movie Challenge: Gamera (1965)

 Tonight is my oldest son's birthday, and he wanted to watch a Kaiju movie. We have seen all the Godzilla movies and wanted to see something from the same era. To our mutual surprise, we had never seen the first Gamera movie. So tonight it is giant, flying atomic turtles! 

Gamera (1965)

Some airplanes carrying atomic weapons fly over the Arctic. One crashes, explodes, and awakens Gamera, "The Devil's Envoy."

And we are off.

There is no question that Gamera owes a lot, ok everything, to Godzilla. Atomic weapons awaken a giant prehistoric monster, conventional weapons are useless, and Japan once again finds itself being stomped by something enormous. But Gamera quickly establishes his own personality. He breathes fire, feeds on energy, and, most importantly, can pull his limbs into his shell and fly like a gigantic spinning UFO.

That alone was worth the price of admission.

The practical effects are a lot of fun. Miniature cities, tanks, jets, explosions, and plenty of buildings wait to be smashed. Some effects work better than others, but I have always had a soft spot for this kind of physical monster filmmaking. Gamera feels like he is actually there because, in a very literal sense, something really is standing in those miniature streets knocking things over.

It's silly. It doesn't always work. But I love it all the same. 

Another key difference from Godzilla is Toshio/Kenny, the turtle-loving boy who becomes convinced Gamera isn't really evil. Gamera even saves him at one point, planting the seeds for the much more child-friendly direction the series would take later. In this first movie, though, Gamera is still dangerous. People die, buildings burn, and nobody really knows what to do with him.

I would be lying if I didn't admit that Tetsuya "Tetsu" Hayashida wasn't based on the "annoying" kid from all these Kaiju movies.  

Eventually humanity comes up with Plan Z, which is basically: if we cannot kill the giant flying turtle, shoot him into space.

Sure. Why not?

I enjoyed this more than I expected. It is not as polished or as ominous as the original Godzilla, but it has its own weird charm. The moment Gamera pulls everything into his shell and spins off through the sky, you know exactly what kind of movie you are watching.

My son wanted giant monsters for his birthday.

Gamera delivered.

NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson Connections

Ah...yeah. Maybe not this time. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 43
First Time Views: 29

October Horror Movie Challenge: Sukkubus (1989)

Sukkubus, also known as "Sukkubus - den Teufel im Leib" or "Succubus the Devil Inside (in the flesh)" is a German film that has been on my list for a bit. I finally found a copy.  The plot, indeed the entire story, is basically the same as Sennentuntschi (2010).

Sukkubus (1989) 

The film is in German, but you almost don't need to know any to follow the movie. Two shepherds and a boy are up in the Alps tending their flock. They are a bad combination of cruel, horny, and overly religious. One night they decide to add drinking to the mix, and the two shepherds make an artificial woman out of the old rags they have lying around. 

The doll comes to life the next day as a succubus, played by Pamela Prati, who is pretty much only wearing colored contacts. The shepherds, in their fear, alternate between assaulting her and trying to kill her. Unlike Sennentuntschi, there is no doubt about the maliciousness of the succubus. She wants them dead as well. 

But who is the monster here?

The movie identifies the created woman explicitly as a succubus and leans much harder into the supernatural than Sennentuntschi does.

That is where the comparison gets interesting.

When I watched Sennentuntschi in 2021, the question I kept coming back to was whether the woman was a demon, a witch, or simply an abused woman onto whom everyone else was projecting their fear. The film deliberately complicates the old legend. The men create the doll, but what follows becomes tangled up with rape, murder, religious hypocrisy, and decades of violence against women. By the end, the supernatural explanation is almost less horrifying than the human one.

Sukkubus is much closer to the legend in its raw form. The men are isolated, sexually frustrated, drunk, and foolish enough to make themselves a woman. Then the fantasy becomes real and punishes them.

There is something almost fairy-tale simple about that.

Be careful what you make.

Especially when what you are trying to make is another human being for your own use.

The 1989 movie is also much more direct about sexuality. The title itself tells us what sort of creature we are dealing with, and Pamela Prati is presented as an explicitly erotic supernatural presence. That puts the movie squarely into the territory where sexploitation and folk horror overlap. The men want a woman reduced to an object of desire, and then that object becomes a subject with desires, power, and violence of her own.

That is probably the strongest connection between the two movies.

Both begin with men constructing an imaginary woman.

In one version, she becomes a demon.

In the other, the real horror is what the men do to the woman once she exists.

NIGHT SHIFT and Sunny Valley Connections

For NIGHT SHIFT, Sukkubus and Sennentuntschi take me straight to Sunny Valley, not Jackson.

Sunny Valley is where the old stories aren't quaint folklore. They are survival instructions. The mountains are full of things that were there before the town, before the settlers, maybe before humanity itself, and people learn quickly that some traditions exist because someone once ignored them.

That is where The Ragwife fits.

The Ragwife is Sunny Valley’s version of the same basic "made woman" story behind Sukkubus and Sennentuntschi. She is assembled by lonely, cruel, or foolish men from whatever they have at hand: feed sacks, corn silk, quilt scraps, broom straw, flour paste, coal dust, stolen hair, even a church dress. The men make something shaped like a woman because what they really want is a woman without will, without demands, and without the ability to say no.

Then the Hall’er gives her life.

That is the part that makes her very Sunny Valley.

The men think they are performing the act. They think they are making her. In truth, they have only built the invitation.

Something older notices.

The Ragwife is not necessarily a succubus, demon, ghost, or witch. Sunny Valley has plenty of things that do not fit comfortably into those categories, and I am perfectly happy keeping such categorizations vague. She exists because the men tried to reduce a woman to something they could own, and whatever lives in the mountains answers that act by giving their creation exactly what they tried to deny her.

A soul.

A will.

And anger.

The local version of the story probably comes down to one warning:

"A man makes a Ragwife when he wants a woman without a soul. The Hall’er always gives her one anyway."

That makes her closer to the moral machinery of Sennentuntschi than the straightforward demon of Sukkubus, even though she can still function as a supernatural monster. Her violence is not random. She responds to ownership, coercion, shame, and abuse, and her revenge has a symbolic quality to it. The men who tried to make a woman into an object discover that the object can remake them in return.

For a NIGHT SHIFT adventure, I would not explain exactly what she is.

The characters might find three different versions of the story. One old woman insists the Ragwife is a demon. A preacher says she is punishment for lust. Someone else says the Hall’er simply reminds people who forget that living things cannot be owned. 

All three explanations may be wrong.

All three may be dangerously right.

That is how Sunny Valley works.

Jackson has monsters with histories, grudges, motives, and names. Sunny Valley has things that feel more like parts of the landscape. You don't necessarily defeat them by learning their Vitality and Defense and finding the right weapon.

You learn the rule.

You figure out who broke it.

And sometimes the smartest thing you can do is put things back the way they were and leave the mountain alone.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 41
First Time Views: 28

October Horror Movie Challenge: The Gate (1987) and The Gate II (1990)

Heading into the last week! The double feature for tonight is 1987’s The Gate and the follow-up The Gate II. The sequel was made in 1990 but did not see a U.S. theatrical release until 1992. While both are about teenagers opening doors they ought to leave alone, they have very different ideas about how to handle the demons that come through them. I enjoyed The Gate. The Gate II does not quite measure up, but I can appreciate what it set out to do.

The Gate fits my theme, so I figure adding the sequel was okay.

The Gate (1987)

It has a wonderfully simple premise. After a tree comes down in Glen’s (a very young Stephen Dorff in his first movie) backyard, he and his friend Terry (Louis Tripp) find a geode in the hole it leaves behind.  Through a combination of blood, strange writing that appears on one of those "magic-slate" tablets. 

Of course, Terry has a heavy metal album from the band "Scarifyce," whose lyrics hold the key to what they have let loose. It is not long before the boys comprehend they have made a gateway for demons called "The Old Ones". 

The whole thing is very much 1987. One can feel the Satanic Panic in the air, yet the film has some fun with it. Terry has the metal records and the occult knowledge to tell when things are going wrong. The heavy metal album in question is more useful than corrupting. The boys have called forth demons, all right, but the music isn't the evil.

I also enjoyed the practical effects quite a bit. Randall William Cook oversaw a combination of miniatures, matte work, forced perspective, and other visual effects, and the movie is all the better for it. The little minions are particularly creepy because they feel like physical entities in the room with the kids as they crawl and swarm.

What I liked the most is the model rocket. When the climax comes around, Glen figures the rocket is a symbol of "love, light, and purity" and can be turned on the demon. He launches it into the creature to shut the gate. It is a fine idea. Most horror films would have the characters cast a spell or hold a relic or weapon. Here they take something of Glen's, something from his family and youth, and make it the means of destruction. The film isn't cynical about it. Love and light have their place. If the story is pushed hard enough, a kid’s model rocket can end an ancient demon. I like that. The symbolism is what is important.

Then there is the matter of the heroes being real kids. They are not twenty-something actors playing at being teens. Glen and Terry are young enough that the situation is truly overwhelming, so it is more satisfying to see them fight back. A modest horror movie, for sure, but it knows what it is and, for the most part, does it well.

The Gate II (1990)

Also known as "The Gate II: Trespassers." The sequel gets off to a good start with Louis Tripp returning as Terry, or Terrence as he is now called. Glen and his family are gone, and Terrence is older and lonelier, with a home life to match. His mother is dead, and his father is an alcoholic. He makes a point of returning to where the first Gate was because he thinks the demonic power there can set things right.

Its a good idea for a sequel. The first film had the children opening the gate by accident; this one has one of them doing it on purpose once he is older. Terrence understands the danger and does it anyway. That puts a darker cast on the proceedings. There is no curiosity here, only desperation.

They have also altered the demon. Instead of a horde of faceless minions, Terrence calls up a single entity to grant wishes. They are appealing at first but are bound to go bad or become repulsive. The filmmakers wanted this one to be a trickster of sorts, not the swarming type in the original. Very good thinking.

Only the execution is an issue. Even with a more ambitious premise, the film is slower and less imaginative, and it has lost some of its charm. The wish-fulfillment side of things ought to open up all sorts of possibilities for the movie, but in too many ways it comes off as smaller and flatter than the original. But I like what they set out to do, though.

In truth, the sequel has more horror than The Gate was. There is a greater focus on the cost of having your way, on desperation, addiction, and corruption. Terrence’s father seems to work a miracle in getting sober and his life back, but we are left in no doubt that anything from the Gate will require payment. That is the film at its best. Terrence has no designs on power, he just wants his dad to get his life back. 

It recycles the notion of pitting light and love against the dark, this time via Terrence’s mother's jewelry box. Its a good enough thematic carry-over even if it does not have the same impact as the model rocket.

So, yeah, The Gate II is not as good. I respect it nonetheless. 

NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson Connections

You could put either of them in NIGHT SHIFT without much trouble. The first provides the sort of occult mishap that would happen in Jackson. Two kids find something odd in the yard, read what they shouldn't, add some blood and a measure of incomplete knowledge, and before you know it, there is a hole in the Veil. It almost writes itself!

I like how The Gate uses the heavy metal record; in Jackson, the parents would be quick to point the finger at the music and D&D as the source of any demons. They would be wrong for the most part. The record isn't evil; the kids have simply stumbled onto something real that everyone else took for fantasy. That is a more serviceable form of Satanic Panic for NIGHT SHIFT. The adults blame the music out of ignorance of the mechanics, while the kids know enough to compound the problem. Terry would be right at home with the occult kids in Jackson.

But the sequel offers me something I like even better: the kid who grows up and figures out that the power that nearly put him under can still be useful. Very NIGHT SHIFT really. One of the Jackson survivors returns after his life has gone to pieces, remembering the demon or ritual that was his undoing and what it was capable of. This time it is not an accident; he opens the gate by choice. Much darker. That's how I want the supernatural in Jackson to be. Magic is hazardous but not without value. If it didn't deliver, nobody would be drawn to it. The finest kind of temptation is one that works. For a while anyway.

In fact, Terry is a bit like my Darren Vale. In his first adventure ("Am I Evil?"), he is just a little jerk who happens on some real magic. In his next adventure, "Land of Confusion," he has made better use of his power and trapped all the PCs (and a lot of NPCs) in his own world. 

Final Thoughts

I have had more fun with The Gate than with some of the movies I have put in front of me lately. The practical effects hold up well, the kids are likable, and the heavy-metal occultism is entertaining. I am fond of the straightforwardness of putting down an old demon with a model rocket of love and purity.

The Gate II is a step down, but I admire the ambition. Bringing Terry back and having him put himself in the path of the Gate, rather than stumbling into it again, is a far better concept. The first is the more enjoyable movie. The second is the darker one and perhaps the superior horror idea. But it is not the better film.

Still. I have spent worse than three and a half hours. 

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 40
First Time Views: 27

October Horror Movie Challenge: A Slumber Party Massacre Double Feature

The grindhouse classic deserves a double feature. So for tonight’s viewing I have queued a double feature of the 1982 The Slumber Party Massacre and its 1987 follow up, Slumber Party Massacre II. They are good examples of the slasher genre, maybe even some of the best, but I am watching them more to gather ideas for my West End Girls adventure.

The first film has an interesting pedigree. Rita Mae Brown (the author and feminist activist) wrote it, and Amy Holden put it on screen; a slasher flick originally made by women. Fairly progressive for the 1980s. One could be excused for not figuring that out with all the long, lingering shots of naked young ladies on display. Brown's screenplay was meant as a parody of the genre, but Roger Corman, the producer, had other ideas and wanted a straight horror movie. The result is a film that falls between those two poles. I mean, Corman has a reputation to live up to. Though I would have liked to have seen Brown's original treatment, Sleepless Nights, before it got "Cormanized."

The Slumber Party Massacre (1982)

The premise is as simple as it gets. Trish, a high schooler (though we do hear she is 18), throws a slumber party while her parents are away. And there is Russ Thorn, an escaped murderer, making his way through the neighborhood with a huge power drill. 

I will leave you to imagine the rest. Don't tax yourself; you'll do more work than the movie does.

Ok. So, in practice, the movie is better than it sounds. It is quicker than your average early eighties slasher and has a good deal of humor. The girls are convincing as friends and not just a roster of victims biding their time. It has some self-awareness without tipping into full parody. Then there's the drill as a weapon, hardly subtle.

It has all the worst of the genre too, the nudity and the voyeurism, which makes the fact that Brown and Jones were behind it all the more of an oddity. They do not so much subvert the formula as work within it, giving the exploitation market what it wants while having a word or two with its assumptions.

You will see some familiar faces in the cast. Robin Stille is Valerie, Debra De Liso is Kim, and Brinke Stevens is one of the party guests. Stille, in particular, would make a name for herself as a scream queen in films like Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, which, oddly enough is not on my list of movies to watch.

Valerie is one of the better characters. For most of the running time, she stays away from the main party, but when the killing starts, she becomes much more central. I like that the girls are not left to wait for rescue.

It is a cheap, at times ridiculous movie, very much of its era, but also efficient. Russ Thorn is an escaped killer with a drill, no need for any complicated mythology. The peril is in how fast a night out with a group of ordinary girls can become a nightmare. That is why it works.

Slumber Party Massacre II (1987)

By the time the sequel comes around five years later, subtlety is seen as unnecessary. This movie was also unnecessary, but here we are. We also lost the "The" somewhere. 

Valerie’s younger sister Courtney Bates is now a teenager and still reeling from what befell her sister. She has nightmares of a rockabilly type in leather who has an electric guitar with a huge drill on it.

Yes, it is what it is.

Crystal Bernard (before her run on Wings) plays Courtney (replacing Jennifer Meyers from the first film), and Deborah Brock wrote and directed. The film takes the original concept and heads straight for A Nightmare on Elm Street country, muddling dreams, trauma, and reality until you can hardly tell where one ends and the next begins. Atanas Ilitch is the Driller Killer, and he is nothing like Russ Thorn. He will sing, dance, and put the boot in to Courtney like someone who's part rockabilly frontman, part Freddy Krueger, and has been given a guitar of no practical use whatsoever.

It is all rather absurd. I cannot say it is good, but it is memorable enough.

Courtney is what makes it work. The trauma has not left her even if she was spared the first movie’s events by dint of her sister. Her friends dismiss her visions as nightmares until the impossible shows up. In that way, the sequel is less an exercise in the escaped-murderer genre and more about the dread of something from your past coming back for you.

The Los Angeles Times made the same observation in their review of the day, drawing a line to the Nightmare on Elm Street movies and asking whether Courtney is seeing things or in the grip of a hallucination. I find that more useful than the guitar drill.

Jackson Connections and West End Girls

I get some mileage out of both these films for my West End Girls adventure, if not quite what they set out to give.

From the first I take the closeness of young women in a space where they ought to be secure. It matters, since I have no wish for the victims in West End Girls to be just another name on Edwin Harrow's (my slasher) tally. They are college freshmen with their friends and routines, their jokes and summer plans and the odd complaint. Some share a room; others share a wardrobe. There is always one studying while the rest want to go out.

When the killings come, the ordinariness of it before then only heightens the intrusion.

The Slumber Party Massacre gets this right on its own. The girls go about their business, and the horror comes anyway.

Slumber Party Massacre II offers a different thing: the reiteration of trauma. That is nearer to the supernatural heart of West End Girls. What happens in 1985 is not some other killer emulating Edwin Harrow. It is the same horror from 50 years ago.

Edwin was fixated on Marian Ashcroft and Clara Deane, but his anger reached out to other freshman women he though were laughing at him. From May 25 to 30, 1935 the original murders ran their course. Marian lived to tell of it, some did not.

Now history haunts the present.

I want the adventure to read as a haunting in a slasher's outfit. At first, the characters spot the usual: a girl alone at night, a tail, a body left on the emptying campus. All the signs of a slasher-killer.

Then it does not add up. A man is seen in clothes from another era. A victim says she can hear music from 1935. A dorm room seems older for a moment. One has a dream of a stranger and finds her picture in the yearbook.

The past isn't recalled so much as attempted again.

These two movies make that clear to me. The Slumber Party Massacre has the social world of the young women. Slumber Party Massacre II suggests that one can survive a horror and still not be free of it; trauma can become something of a supernatural affair.

The trick with West End Girls is to put those together and keep the women as people and not mere victims. 

Edwin had no such qualms, viewing them as objects for his resentment. The adventure must do better.

October Horror Movie Challenge 2026
Viewed: 35
First Time Views: 23

Urban Fantasy Fridays: Coven & Crucible (2023)

 I feel a little bad about this one. It has been sitting on my desk to the left of me for a very long time on my TBR pile. I wanted to get a review of it done back when it was new. Then, when the revised edition was out on Kickstarter. Now we are in between editions. This particular edition is no longer available on DriveThruRPG (which is disappointing, to be honest), and the new one isn't up yet. 

It is a good game and perfect if you are like me and want to have a focus on Witches and Witchcraft in your game. But how does it hold up?

Coven & Crucible

Raechel Henderson and Stephan Kelly
2023 13th Moon Games, 196 pages.

The product is from 13th Moon Games and the work of Raechel Henderson and Stephan Kelly. Henderson is behind the story and setting, while Kelly has put together the mechanics. The two saw the game through playtesting in 2022, and it was funded the following year. They are married and their kid does the art. The art is actually pretty good.

A word before we proceed: this review is of the original core rulebook. A second edition, Coven & Crucible: Reforged, was funded in early 2026 and should be in fulfillment soon. That version will preserve the original's collaborative spirit while streamlining the rules. For now, then, this is an examination of where the game started.

The World of Coven & Crucible

What you will find is that magic is not secret. That is the one thing that puts Coven & Crucible apart from most of the urban fantasy/horror games I have been turning over for previous Urban Fantasy Fridays like WitchCraft or Mage. There is no Veil, no Masquerade, no grand secret war to keep the rest of us in the dark. Everyone is aware of witches and what they can do. You can go online and hire one.

The game puts it on a par with martial arts, cooking, or computer programming. You could become a witch if you wanted, but it is a matter of study and discipline. I have to say I am fond of that. It means if there is some magic work to be had, you can just put out a contract to a witch.

That choice ripples through the whole of the setting and changes the tenor of the game. You get your magical businesses and professions, your occult markets and currencies, and organizations with enough history to have built up their share of wealth, grudges, and bureaucracy. The introduction paints a picture of specialists who might be stockbrokers using divination or working at a place like the Magic Beans coffee chain. The latter alone gives you a sense of the tone. It can be a dark affair but not everything supernatural has to be evil.

Chicago

I was drawn to the default setting of Chicago for the obvious reasons. And it feels right. You have old neighborhoods and the new construction all in a pile with the witch politics. This is not one of those settings where "Chicago" is reduced to the Sears Tower and deep dish pizza because someone has seen The Untouchables or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. Here, the architecture, the lake, and the weather are part of the fabric of things. The supernatural is layered on top of the mundane rather than in some other dimension, which is how I prefer to run the city in my own games.

There are good details too. Take the Midnight Market, a black market for the magically inclined that runs parallel to the regular flea markets. Or the fact that witches deal in Pentacles; not because paper money is no good, but because in magical commerce discretion has a price. Favors will do as currency in some cases. It is the kind of thing that makes a world feel lived in.

The Coven and the Crucible

As for the name, it is a nod to the two big institutions. The Coven is the international organization with its Houses and internal squabbles. The Crucibles are another matter entirely, an independent network of sorts to offer neutral ground and services. You could describe it as a magical hotel, an embassy and concierge service, a meeting place and sanctuary all in one.

Then there is the matter of the Coven and the Crucibles. The Coven would be only too happy to have control over them, but does not. The two put up with one another for the simple reason that any attempt at absorption would come at too high a price. It is a fine source of tension; neither has to be evil for there to be conflict. People are after influence, organizations want their territory, families are concerned with prestige and witches with their independence. One does not need an ancient Dark Lord to rouse himself from his slumbers to make for a compelling setting.

While the focus of the book is Chicago, other Crucibles are mentioned.

The System

Coven & Crucible makes do with just two d12s, which is enough to put it in my good graces right off the bat. Characters are defined by four Attributes (Will, Body, Agility, Magic) along with nine Skills and sixty-three Sub-skills. Resolving an action is straightforward: add Attribute plus Skill and Sub-skill, factor in modifiers, and a Difficulty set by the Storyteller equals the Target Number. Roll 2d12 to come in under or on this Target Number. So higher skills are still better since they increase the Target Number. A 13 is a special case, resulting in a critical of some sort depending on the circumstances. Since we are talking about 2d12 here, 13 is the most likely result.

The formula has its flexibility, though, and that is where the system becomes more engaging. A Sub-skill may be listed under a certain Skill, but the game is open to the player and Storyteller to put together whatever combination of the three best suits what the character is set on doing. This is of paramount importance when it comes to magic. This makes it more akin to Unisystem than say a d20 based game.

Character creation is a bit more of an undertaking than the core rules might imply. With Attributes starting at 3 and Skills at 4, and a pool of 63 levels to put into Sub-skills or Traits, one has to make no end of decisions. I don’t mind that. The payoff is a degree of specialization. The game is looking for characters who are very capable in their own right, not blank slates that will take twenty sessions to become interesting. They know when they are out of their depth and will call on others.

Though, like many games I am looking at this month, it is easier since I know what I want to end up with and after doing it a couple of times. 

Magic

Unsurprisingly, this is the part of the game I like best. Forget spell lists or slots or even “named spells” in the way most RPGs have them. The witch tells you what she wants to do and the Storyteller works out the formula. Say you want to turn invisible. The book will put forward a number of options: Magic + Magical + Disguise, or perhaps Stealth or Larceny. If it is a case of evading a camera rather than a person, even Security Systems might be called upon.

Two witches can end up with the same result while going about it in entirely different ways. That is how I prefer my witchcraft. The effect may be the same mechanically, but the intent and symbolism should be the character’s own. Faye is not going to ward a house the way Sylvia does, any more than Larina will go about making herself invisible as another would. Larina would bend light around herself; Faye would simply make people not see her. Coven & Crucible handles that nicely.

There are two ways to cast: Improvised for the quick fix in combat, and Ritual for something with more staying power. You will also find alchemy, materia magica, familiars, grimoires, summoning, and all the other accouterments one expects from a game of this sort. Grimoires are of particular note. They are no run-of-the-mill spellbooks but a record of a witch’s research and discoveries. I was reminded of Larina’s Book of Shadows straight away.

The System at Its Best

One could make the case that the magic system is the game’s most compelling mechanical conceit. It delivers on what so many systems promise and then don't: a form of freeform casting that does not forgo structure in the process. There are still numbers to be had, and character specialties matter. Try something hard, and there will be consequences. Yet you are never put in the position of poring over a list to see if you have the right spell for the job. In that way, your characters come across as witches rather than mere assemblages of powers.

Teamwork fits into this nicely. Put a Divination specialist with one who is good at Warding and an investigator of some note, and the system is happy to reward them for acting like a coven of specialists. I would hazard a guess that is by design.

Where It Gets Rough

That very flexibility is a double-edged sword. Some groups will find it wanting when the player and Storyteller have to hash out which combination of abilities is in play. A group inclined to talk through their intentions will be fine with it; others may want to argue over the most advantageous mix for every roll and put a damper on the pace. Magic only magnifies the problem. The absence of a spell list is liberating but it forces the Storyteller to make judgment calls on what can be done and how taxing it should be. I have no trouble with that, though those in need of tightly codified powers might.

Then there is character creation, which is more of an undertaking than the resolution mechanic. With sixty-three Sub-skills and Traits to account for, there are plenty of little numbers to wade through before you start. Once the character is put together, however, things move along much faster.

As for the book, in spots it has the feel of a first core offering from a smaller publisher. The visual design is striking enough with its black-and-white art and sharp color in the chapter pieces, but some of the rules are dense and call for a re-read. It did not deter me from wanting to get behind the table. If anything, it left me curious to see what the designers would put in place after a few years of use, and that is what makes Reforged so interesting.

Building my Characters

I went with a couple of the Jackson teens for this one; the setting suggested another approach. So I put the clock forward (from Jackson, backward for us) to 1990. I have been considering a "sequel game" for some time, and I know it will be set in Chicago in the 1990s.

Sylvia is here because she causes trouble and this is exactly where she would end up after being chased out of Jackson.

In my "Jackson Universe" version of Chicago, I have Larina Nichols and Faye Thorne. They are both twenty. Larina is at the University of Chicago and well on her way to being the scholar she will become. Faye is new to the city, having transferred to the University of Illinois at Chicago from the sister school, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Faye is still Faye, but you can see the growth that will cause her to reclaim her birth name, Fiona Voss. She has found her life increasingly tied up in music and the supernatural side of the city’s nightlife. And there is Sylvia, the older witch with experience to spare. Three different witches with three different goals.

Building Larina was almost too simple. Her character sheet says it all:

Will 7
Magic 7

Academics 7
Magical 10

You have your extremely intelligent, strong-willed, and magically potent type, physically unremarkable but with a head for Academics. Add in some solid Occult, Linguistics, History, and the like for Divination or Warding, and you have her. 

Since the poor girl was always getting her ass kicked in physical fights, she is taking a judo class now. She is not very good at it, but at least she won't get knocked down as much. 

Faye is the other side of that. Less concerned with theory, she is more physical and instinctive, a streetwise sort. Athletics, Underworld, Hexing, and Warding are where her strengths lie, as is the nascent Artistic side that will take on greater significance in time. Then there is Sylvia, the Veteran. She puts decades of experience to work alongside her natural talent and shows me what those rules mean in practice. It is a good thing she does; it keeps Larina and Faye from coming across as finished products. They are very good, but Sylvia makes plain how much ground they still have to cover.

What Did I Learn About My Characters?

I have been going round and round with this for some time (with many games), but Coven & Crucible has put it into perspective: a witch is not made by her spell list. Her approach to magic is what defines her. Larina will research and name things, looking for precedent. She needs to know who first did the magic and why, what language or symbols were involved, if anyone put it to paper. Faye goes about it by feel. And Sylvia has done it enough times to tell you which rules are worth following and which can be let slide. The end result may be the same, but the method should not be. Coven & Crucible offers a rules language for that kind of distinction, and one I can put to use elsewhere.

What Can I Use in NIGHT SHIFT and Jackson?

More than one might think. I am not going to bring the whole setting over; the assumptions do not hold up, and my NIGHT SHIFT magic is not so open. But there are ideas I want to make my own.

Take Formula Flexibility. Not the mechanics per se, but the notion that two characters versed in protective magic need not employ it in identical fashion. Or the idea of coven specialization. A coven ought to be like an adventuring party: one for spirits, another for wards or divination, one for combat, one for the old books. It is far more compelling than having five people with the same Witch class.

I already do this, to be honest. Stephanie’s protective magic looks like blue flames. Larnia’s like a mult-sigiled ward, and Faye’s looks like a growth of thorns and brambles. 

The concept of the Crucible is also something I can put to work. I won’t use the institution itself; it is too tied to this setting, but a neutral piece of supernatural turf is excellent for lending a setting instant history and politics. Be it a hotel or a club where factions agree to certain terms, it is useful. As is the magical economy. Favors, obscure ingredients, information, introductions. Occult types have their priorities, and money is not always at the top of them. It is an idea I have toying with in Nightlife as well. Another game set in Chicago.

Final Thoughts

It is no surprise I am fond of Coven & Crucible. It is a game of witches and d12s that gives me a supernatural Chicago and lets me build a character based on what they know rather than a prewritten selection of spells. What I value is its particular view of a witch. Here, magic is not a superpower or a religion. You learn it, study it, improve upon it. In theory, anyone could, but most will not put in the effort. It has a different taste to the mages of Mage or the arcanists of Beyond the Supernatural.

That is what I was after for this year’s Urban Fantasy Fridays. I have no interest in five games that are cut from the same cloth. I want to see how the supernatural exists in our world. Coven & Crucible says it has a job and bills to pay and family troubles and a favorite coffee shop. And it has politics. And before lunch, it might hex someone. That is fine by me.

This does make me want to pick up the new edition of Coven & Crucible when it comes out. Maybe I'll give these characters a run set in 2027 when they are all close to 60. Sylvia will be a lot older than that, but I am not asking her age, and neither should you.

My Jackson Chicago Kids: Larina, Faye, and Sylvia

So I created sheets for many of my witches in Jackson, IL. But since this game is set in Chicago and I already had some ideas about who would be there, I decided to focus on just Larina and Faye. Both are growing in different directions, which is about to cause a rift that won't be addressed until 1995. Vague, I know; it's supposed to be. These are just broad strokes that I'll figure out at the game table. But 1990 is still a few years away from my current year of 1986.  

I threw Sylvia into the mix because I want an NPC who would know things. 

Larina Nichols

Gender: F, Age: 20
Height: 5'4", Weight: 125

Pentacles: 18

WILL 7
BODY 2
AGILITY 3
MAGIC 7

Initiative 10
Speed/Sprint 18/6
Health 17
Magic Resistance 24

Magic Resistance (Tattoo) 3
Linguist 2
Attractive 1

Skills and Sub-Skills

Academics 7
 - Computers +1
 - History +3
 - Linguistics +3
 - Lore +1
 - Psychology +1
 - Theology +1

Magical 10
 - Alchemy +4
 - Divination +2
 - Forging +1
 - Hexing +5
 - Occult +7
 - Summoning +5
 - Warding +6

Strategic 6
 - Awareness +1
 - Tactics +1

Artistic 5
 - Dancing +1
 - Drawing +1
 - Performance (Sing) +1
 - Writing +2

Martial 3 
 - Unarmed (White-belt Judo)

Technical 5
 - Animal Handling +1
 - Survival +2

Athletics 4
 - Sleight of Hand +1
 - Stealth +1

Social 5 
 - Appearance +1
 - Conversation +1
 - Ettiquette +1

Underworld 4
 - Intimidation +2

Faye Thorne
Gender: F, Age: 20
Height: 5'3", Weight: 114

Pentacles: 11

WILL 5
BODY 3
AGILITY 4
MAGIC 6

Initiative 10
Speed/Sprint 30/12
Health 19
Magic Resistance 23

Impulsive 2
Fearless 2
Creative Soul 2
Sneaky 1

Skills and Sub-Skills

Academics 4
 - Lore +2
 - Psychology +1
 - Theology +1

Magical 8
 - Alchemy +2
 - Divination +2
 - Forging +2
 - Hexing +7
 - Occult +4
 - Summoning +3
 - Warding +7

Strategic 4

Artistic 5
 - Drawing +1
 - Performance (singing) +4

Martial 5 
 - Dodge +4

Technical 4
 - First Aid +1
 - Survival +2

Athletics 7
 - Acrobatics +1
 - Endurance +2
 - Sleight of Hand +2
 - Stealth +2

Social 5 
 - Conversation +4
 - Persuasion +3

Underworld 4
 - Deciet +4
 - Force Entry +1
 - Intimidation +2

Stephanie is at UIUC. Vera is still in Jackson. And Renee is back home in Finland.  I have Sylvia's sheet, but I wanted to redo her numbers again. She should be more powerful than the notes I have written. But I like how these two came out. 

Links

• 13th Moon Games
• ... on DriveThruRPG
• ... on BlueSky
• ... on Patreon