This Old Dragon Retrospective: The Road to the Witch

 Larina is a Dragon Magazine witch. But not in the way that you might initially think. 

My witch class and Larina went through many design phases and had many influences, as I have talked about here, but the truth of the matter is her genesis and my witch class's evolution owe a lot to the pages of Dragon Magazine, all long before Dragon #114 landed on the store shelves and ultimately my gaming table. 

So for today's "This Old Dragon," I am not going to do a deep dive into one issue, but rather the issues between Dragon #85 and Dragon #114, 1984 to 1986, not just some of my prime AD&D playing years, but when I did the most work on my various classes.

Since this is also a bit of an "In Search Of..." post in tone and flavor, I'll explain why this search is important to me.

Now, keep in mind, I did not read every Dragon when I got them and think, "What can I add to my witch?" I *DID*, however, read each new one and thought, "What can I add to my game?" As it turns out, I found the articles on magic, clerics, and new monsters the most useful. 

Now I did go back when I got my Dragon CD-ROM archive and look specifically for witch-related and witch-adjacent material. But that was in the 2000s. It helped inform my Basic Witch, but a lot of those concepts were already present in my earlier works. It was, however, a wonderful bit of archaeology. 

Class is in Session

To refresh everyone's memory and to set the stage from 1983 to 1987, I was in high school in Jacksonville, IL (no, not Jackson...exactly). During this time, I played in a regular group where I took turns on DM duties, usually about half-and-half. I had been working on a few new classes: The Healer, The Sun-Priest, the Necromancer, and The Witch. I saw each as related classes where clerical and wizard magic were blended. The Healer never really manifested the way I wanted, though I have played a few healers from the Werper family. The Sun-Priest eventually found life as an AD&D 2nd Edition Kit, and, using the rules as written, I have played some Sun-Priest-like characters in both D&D 4th edition and D&D 5th edition. Again, usually members of the Werper family, often sister-and-brother healer-and-Sun-Priest teams. The Necromancer finally found some life as the Profane Necromancer in my Monster Mash book. 

The witch, however, has been my runaway success. When I got the above classes into a playable state, each had what we would call today an iconic character. There was Celene the Healer, younger sister of Johan II the Sun-Priest and Paladin. The Necromancer was Magnus, and, really, the most unassuming of them all was Larina the witch. Of the four, she went on to true immortality here.  I suppose, though, the writing was all there. Luna Mondgott, Johan's and Celene's mother, was played as a witch using Cleric rules, and Johan's wife, Cara, was played as a witch using Illusionist rules. The witch was more or less inevitable for me.  

But the form it took was not. 

So let's look at one factor that shaped the class, and the character: the pages of Dragon Magazine.

Dragon #85 -May 1984

Why am I starting with this one? Good question. This is the first Dragon I ever owned and used regularly. It was in the pages of Dragon that I saw additions and changes to rules. They were not set in stone; they could be changed. I had already created many new monsters by this time, and the idea of new classes seemed not just reasonable, but actually required.

Dragon 85 was where I saw this. This issue gave me the highly valued Cleric Collection. Clerics were my main class of choice, and I played them less like holy men and more like occult scholars. So, less fighting, holy man, and more Van Helsing. 

This is also the first time I saw an ad for the Witch Hunt game.

Dragon #86 - June 1984

Gods of the Suel Pantheon and the Dragon Deities helped me rethink what gods could be in D&D terms. This issue also gave me new familiars to consider and the idea that they were not just a special pet. The article wasn't perfect, but it was a good start. The Ecology of articles were always great because it made me feel like there were "monster naturalists" in the various worlds studying these creatures.

Dragon #87 - July 1984

The big one here is the Ecology of the Dryad. I know this was a catalyst and one of the reasons why Cara and Larina are both redheads; Red hair = magic. The review for Stalking the Night Fantastic and the ads for Chill made me realize that horror in RPGs was a good option.

Dragon #88 - August 1984

This is another important one. We got Wee Jas ("Wee Yas" or "Ouija") as the Witch Queen, Goddess of Witches and magic. Plus she looked great. THAT was Larina's look for a long time. How could I have not fallen in love with her? And she is Lawful Neutral. The same alignment Larina is to this very day. I may not have known all my witches yet, but I knew who their goddess was. 

Dragon #89 - September 1984

Very helpful article in Many Types of Magic since it shows already that many types of magic are already baked into the system; it is just a matter of finding a spot for witchcraft. The ads for the Time-LIFE Enchanted World prominently feature their first book, Witches and Wizards, which gives witches legitimacy in the pages of Dragon. 

Dragon #90 - October 1984

This features the witch-coded Incantatrix. The name is related to Enchantress, and her ability to steal spells gives her a witch-like feel in a world already filled with wizards. I tried Cara out as an incantatrix for a bit, but didn't care for it for her, and she went back to being just an illusionist. Dragon is certainly circling around a witch-shaped center of gravity for me. Speaking of charm, this issue also has the definitive list of creatures that can be subject to the Charm Person spell. 

Dragon #91 - November 1984

We go darker here with a new demon from Gygax and more devils from Greenwood. Certainly material for masters of the occult.

Dragon #92 - December 1984

Double hit again from the Gygax/Greenwood tag team. Gary has more to say about clerics and I am all ears. This helps me figure out things for my clerics and paladins and ultimately my healer and witch classes. On the other end of the magic spectrum, Ed gives us more spells and has the audacity to introduce me to the Witch The Simbul without explaining anything else about her! 

Dragon #93 - January 1985

Real-world witch hunts come to D&D as told in Gary's “Thinking for Yourself.”  In fake worlds, “The Making of a Milieu” gave me strong advice about building a world where witches would live. This article, along with the two organization articles for Top Secret and Gamma World, gave me something I could build for Chill right away. Which in turn gave me more for D&D and witches. 

Dragon #94 - February 1985

The fiction section featuring Baba Yaga is a great addition to my witch mythos. Not a lot ton of information, but enough. The Ranger revisions also show me that classes don't have to be a static concept.  

Dragon #95 - March 1985

This one is useful as a perspective issue. Tolkien, Forgotten Realms material, non-combat experience, magic-item creation, and the religious response to RPGs in the form of DragonRaid, all feed the broader question of what fantasy gaming is allowed to be. The Denis Beauvais art for the fiction, Desperate Acts, gave me a character who was a contemporary of Larina and part of the same adventuring group. 

Dragon #96 - April 1985

I have to say, I never had much use for Dragon’s April Fools issue each year. This one was no exception; there was little in it of interest to me for the witch class, or to Larina in particular. The only thing that stands out is the FASA Star Trek vessel Ginny’s Delight. Which I low-key loved. It may not have a direct bearing on the witch, but then again, my reading and gaming habits were not so easily compartmentalized. Whether it was fantasy, horror, the occult or superheroes, I did not see them as distinct categories. The starship is part of the same milieu as all the other science fiction, and the like I was into back then.

Dragon #97 - May 1985

Another Pages from the Mages article. The implication here is that wizards are dynamic; they research, they record their work. And spell books are treasure, maybe worth more than gold by weight. 

Dragon #98 - June 1985

If nothing else, this issue reminds me that we are not, and certainly were not, bound by books. There is a lot of talk of playing RAW and rules orthodoxy these days; back then, that is not at all how we did it. There was a lot of experimentation. The “Creative Magic Items” article reminds us of this. 

Dragon #99 - July 1985

This issue covers Unearthed Arcana, and how it will change AD&D. This is a sign to me that AD&D IS a game that can evolve. The Neutral point of view helped me figure out how to play a Lawful Neutral witch when, say, a chaotic Neutral one would have been easier.  

Dragon #100 - August 1985

Classes are on Gary's and Frank Mentzer's mind with the Druid-Ranger, which seemingly breaks the rules. Well, if it is good enough for these two, who am I to argue? The Forum reminds me, though, that there are still people who refer to additions and changes to rules as "illegal."  

"City Beyond the Gate" showed me something I already knew in theory, but this was great in practice; that AD&D is not confined to the quasi-medieval world. Now I remember playing this adventure; I remember many of the characters in it: Johan II, Nigel, and I know Larina was not there.  Too bad; she would have loved it. Marvel-phile gave a strong write-up in Dr. Strange and was a good model on what I wanted for my witches. The variant magic system was also quite fascinating. 

Dragon #101 - September 1985

The biggest draw for me here is the Creature Catalog III with some witch-adjacent monsters. "Sorry, Wrong Dimension" from Mike Manolakes covers alternate realities, a feature that would be important to Larina's many futures. 

Dragon #102 - October 1985

I have not done this one for a "This Old Dragon" because I don't have a copy anymore. This one does have some items that I considered important, but not in the typical manner. Ads for The Complete Spellcaster and Elvira/Chill had my attention. The "Valley of the Earth Mother" was good, but not one I ever ran.

Dragon #103 - November 1985

A look into the future here. Gygax discusses future editions of AD&D and the game's evolution. The article on the saurians catches my interest, but not for the witch. 

Dragon #104 - December 1985

The articles on the thief class are interesting and showcase the class beyond the charts and numbers. I will use similar logic to pull the witch further away from her "magic-user" roots. 

Dragon #105 - January 1986

Our first issue of 1986. I mention here that I recall January 1986 starting out really cold. I recently taken these memories to help form a new Jackson, IL adventure featuring my frozen misanthrope The Refrigerator, but more on that later.  "Seeing is Believing" by Geoffrey Meissner covers different types of invisibility. While this had immediate uses for my witch class, it served my DM and his Riddlemaster/Adept psychic classes even more. The magic in our worlds stopped being a monolith and became multiple expressions. 

Fraser Sherman's "A world of difference: The parallel concept expands gaming horizons" was the right thing at the right time for me, as I was really exploring the idea of parallel worlds at the time. This was the height of DC's "Crisis on Infinite Earths," so we really made extensive use of these ideas. Larina would later be in contact with some of her alternates via her Mirror, or "Shards," as I now call them. 

Dragon #106 - February 1986

Issue #106 matters to me because of "A Plethora of Paladins." That article showed that the paladin need not exist only as a single lawful-good archetype with an evil mirror image. There could be variations. There could be holy warriors shaped by alignment, ethos, patronage, and worldview. For someone building new classes, that is an important lesson. It says the game's iconic roles can be opened up, examined, and rebuilt.

That matters to the witch because the witch was never just meant to be the "distaff magic-user" or the "evil cleric" or the "NPC spellcaster from a fairy tale." She needed her own space and reasons to grow. Sure, I never used a lot of these paladins; I was pretty happy sticking to the Lawful Good ones and my single Anti-Paladin NPC, but I was thrilled to see them. 

"The Laws of Magic" and "Casting Spells for Cash" both feed into the idea of magic as something with rules, culture, economics, and social consequences. That connects nicely to Larina's earliest personality: a witch pretending to be a wizard-in-training. She is not merely learning spells. She is learning how magical society works, what it expects, what it permits, and how to pass inside it while being something slightly different.

Dragon #107 - March 1986

I have not reviewed this one yet, but it is sitting here next to me. I will get into it in detail in a future This Old Dragon, but the artifact from this one is a reference to Laurana from Dragonlance. That matters because Larina’s name almost certainly owes something to Laurana. Did I get the name from this issue? Probably not. It is much more likely that it came from reading the Dragonlance novels themselves years before. But #107 shows the name, or close enough to it, was in the air at exactly the right time.

This is one of those small pieces of character archaeology that I can't prove, but that's too interesting to ignore. Larina was not named Laurana, but the resemblance is obvious, and the timing is right. Somewhere between Dragonlance, Dragon Magazine, and my own teenage need to make the character mine, Laurana became Larina. In truth, Sinéad owes her overall look and part of her history to Laurana. 

Dragon #108 - April 1986

I would not call Issue #108 a major witch issue, though "Cantrips for Clerics" is an entry worth a mention. I had come to view divine and semi-divine spellcasters with more variety in mind than the run-of-the-mill cleric; one could see that same design impulse at work in the healer, the sun priest, the necromancer and the witch.

Clerical cantrips suggested that even minor magic could help define a caster’s identity. There is no need for every effect to be a miracle or some purpose for the dungeon or the battlefield. A few well-placed blessings, charms, and practical bits of magic speak volumes about how a character stands in relation to the supernatural.

This applies to witches as well. It is not enough for a witch to be judged by her top-tier spells; she must have that quality in her minor workings, too. Hedge witches need recognition as well and need to work into my systems of magic.

Dragon #109 - May 1986

While I can easily point to Dragon #114 as a major issue for the witch, issue #109 might have been more influential. While I had a fairly good grasp of the math behind XP per level values, Paul Montgomery Crabaugh’s "Customized Classes" becomes the article where I can test my ideas. It was a pivot point in my home games. I created the witch, healer, and sun-priest XP values that spring. My DM Grenda used it to create his various Riddlemaster/Adept classes. That summer was spent playing and playtesting a lot of new classes. This article showed me not just that I could build a witch, but I could build a good one. 

The Barbarian Cleric by Thomas Kane even gave us a shaman-like class. Great for my ideas on what a primitive witch could be. 

Dragon #110 - June 1986

The Cult of the Dragon was a HUGE influence on the development of cults and heresies in my game. In fact, my very first notes on what would become my Scaled Sisterhood Witchcraft tradition were written down here. Ed also gives us some more background on Elminster himself and some spells.

The Norse Myth articles gave me Angur-boda, Grid, and Gullveig. All described as witches and all of whom have played some role in my writings and development. 

Dragon #111 - July 1986

The magic focusing items grabbed my attention right away, and certainly West Haven owes a little bit to the magical city Malachi. 

If DC was dominated by the Crisis on Infinite Earths at this time, Marvel had their Phoenix Cycle. Phoenix gets a write-up from Roger E. Moore and later on Supergirl gets one as well from Greg Gordon. Why are they important, well both are described as two of the most powerful beings in their respective universes and both to a degree had impacts on my later game writing in particular the work I did on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 

Dragon #112 - August 1986

I just covered this one last week. The big thing for me was that this was the first issue that let me know there had been a witch class in the pages of Dragon, and I was not creating something that no one would want.  I would need to wait for Dragon #114 to see it, but that was only a couple of months away; it wouldn't be until I picked up Best of The Dragon (Volume 1) that I saw the witch from Issue #5. And it would be even longer before I got the Dragon Magazine CD-ROM collection and then saw the witches from issues #20 and #43.

By the time Larina appeared in my notebooks in July 1986, most of the ingredients were already there. Dragon #112 showed me the magazine had older witches in its own past, and Dragon #114 gave me the first Dragon witch class I actually had in my hands.

Dragon #113 - September 1986

The last issue before the witch. The cover alone was enough for me since the swordsman reminded me of my Johan III character.  "Clout for Clerics" is a good article for expanding the Cleric's role and giving them some followers.  James Yates gives us lesser clerics and man-at-arms followers for clerics and explains why, out of all the classes, they should have them. I expand on these ideas for covens. 

There is also a great article on Hades. 

Dragon #114 - October 1986

And here she is. I have said so much about this particular issue that I am at a loss as to what more I need to add. So, here are some links to things I have already said, including Larina's involvement.

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

The Larry Elmore art of the "enchantress" became my stand-in art for Larina for decades. While this was the first Dragon Magazine witch I read about (like many others) it was not their first, nor as you can see from above, the first time witchy topics were discussed in the pages of Dragon.

In retrospect, there is an inevitability to Dragon #114. Not because TSR was always going to publish a witch class, but for over two years I had been reading in that direction. The magazine had put before me its share of god-bound clerics and odd familiars, goddesses of magic and spellbooks with a past, not to mention alternate and custom classes, the monsters of folklore, parallel worlds, magical cities and the sort of horror that lingers at the periphery of fantasy. Come October 1986, the pieces were all laid out on the table; I picked them all up and reassembled them into something more Larina-shaped. 

Special Mentions

While these do not fit inside the publishing window for the most part, I would be remiss if I didn't bring up Best of Dragon vol. I, II, and IV.

Best of The Dragon

This first collection reprints the witch from The Dragon #5. Great little bit of archaeology and shows that the witch has been haunting the pages of Dragon (and D&D) since the very beginning.

Best of Dragon, Vol. II

This one gave me the Anti-Paladin and the Healer class. Not to mention two different ninjas. I learned that classes are not a static thing.

Best of Dragon, Vol. IV

This is where I first saw the Death Master NPC class and compared it to my own Necromancer. I liked the Death Master quite a bit, and I actually approached Len Lakofka about it later on. We stayed in regular communication until his death.

Not all of these shaped Larina in particular or even my witches in general, but they did contribute to the environment in which my witches could grow, and Larina could be created and grow. 

That is why I say Larina is a Dragon Magazine witch, but not because one article created her. Dragon gave me permission, examples, arguments, monsters, spellbooks, gods, and the idea that classes could be built, tested, changed, and made personal. Dragon #114 gave me a witch. The previous two years helped make sure that when I finally found her, I already knew what to do with her.

Mirror Mondays: The Witches of 1986. The Midwest Witch

Some cold has a way of altering a place. I am not talking about the sort that calls for a heavier coat. I mean the kind of cold that comes sweeping across miles and miles of prairie that only seems to get colder the longer it travels.  The kind of cold where an old house will complain about in its very walls, or that will harden a field to iron under a grey sky and make the road out of town seem a good deal longer, and harder to travel, than it is.

That is where you are likely to find my witch.

She is not from Salem. Nor New Orleans. She is from the Midwest.

If you put "witch" and "America" in the same sentence, most folks will think of Salem (and I don't even need to say "Salem, MA"). It has a way of pulling you in with its gravity. You have the Puritans, the judges, the gallows, the confessions, and the fear. History. The whole national myth of the American witch seems to orbit around this one spot. Say the word "witch", and Salem takes notice.

Then there is New Orleans, which is only natural. That city has a deep magic of its own. Voodoo, Marie Laveau, the Catholic saints, the river fog, jazz funerals, Anne Rice, the heat and the perfume and the blood and the rumor. It is as beautiful and dangerous and theatrical as can be; you hardly need to put in a vampire when the city has already supplied enough ghosts for an entire country. But we do keep adding more.

But not all our witches are from those parts. For what I want to put in Jackson, Illinois, or for Advanced Witches & Warlocks, they won’t do.

I need a witch a bit farther west and north. A touch more stubborn and less given to display. One who lives under a big sky and can tell you what the weather is up to before the man on the television does. She is familiar with spring mud and gravel roads, brick schools and old courthouses, county fairs and church basements, lake fog and potlucks, and the sound an adult makes when they is not going to be honest with you.

That last bit is important.

Salem offers us the witch as a public accusation, a name bellowed in court, the terror of being seen. New Orleans gives you the mystery, the ritual, and the glamour, a sacred performance of sorts.

The Midwest gives you silence.

Not empty silence. The kind that comes over a kitchen at the mention of an uncle no one wants to discuss. The kind on a county road after dark, or in a farmhouse once the furnace has shut down and the wind is blowing across the fields.

You don’t need a castle or a ruined abbey for Midwestern horror. No Carpathian storm required, a storm moving across an Illinois plain is every bit as terrifying. In Illinois, a winter field can be as gothic as Transylvania. An ice-caked creek will keep a secret that a crypt could not. And if your headlights pick something up at the edge of the corn on a lonely road under a full moon, well...may whatever gods you believe in help you. February is enough. 

It is a matter of scale. Too much land, too much sky, a town so small everybody knows their neighbor, but nobody says everything.

Make of it what you will, it is fine "witch country." Which is why the Midwest means something to me in the games I like. Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, holds a spot in my RPG heart for all it did to bring us Dungeons & Dragons. You could call it an impossible little miracle of a game, the one Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson put in our hands. With it came dungeons and dragons, gods and devils, polearms and treasure charts, not to mention the wandering monsters, the maps you would be drawing on graph paper at two in the morning, and the inevitable arguments over rules.

They gave us all that from the Midwest. I find that significant.

It is not some New York or Hollywood affair. You will not find a polished, glamorous origin story here with an air of "look how clever we are." This was from towns in the Midwest where people would make their rulings, settle their disputes, and draw their maps, then do it all over again the following week. There is something right about that.

By 1986, AD&D had long since outgrown its Lake Geneva beginnings, yet it never quite left them. It had gone national and worldwide. You can still sense a fine tension in D&D between the practicalities of a basement sandbox and cosmic myth. Devils and ten-foot poles. Artifacts and encumbrance. That is the sort of space Advanced Witches & Warlocks occupies.

The witch I am after is not the Salem type. She is not the New Orleans type. She is broader and more local than that. Sure, she could be the wise woman on the edge of the village, but she is also the prairie medicine woman, the midwife, the retired teacher or the farmer’s wife. The immigrant grandmother with her own charms the priest would not approve of. The kind of woman who can tell you what this town was called before the town fathers put a name to it, which creek is going to flood, and what sort of winter is coming.

That is where her power lies.

Midwestern witchcraft has its layers. You have your English and French, German farmers, and Irish railroad men, the Scandinavians in town. The African-American communities putting down roots for their churches and businesses in places not always keen on it. And the Indigenous peoples whose history is older than any courthouse or white-painted farmhouse or county line.

Then there are the mounds. 

I want to be very precise about this because it is important. They are not props for an adventurer to dig up a cursed idol or some spooky "mystery Indian" set dressing. They are the remains of civilizations and ceremonies, of deaths and memories, from long before the American town began to identify itself. A proper supernatural setting in the Midwest, Jackson, IL, for instance, needs to understand that. Or else it is just a haunted town with a couple of eerie names slapped on it. I want better than that. I grew up around mounds of this sort. Prehistoric, ancient. A people who lived, thrived, and died before a white man ever knew who they were. Those ghosts are old.

History is not a single stratum. It is written and oral tradition, things misfiled and buried, old photographs and newspaper clippings, church registers, and the stories your grandmother let drop and then changed her mind about. This is all great material for a witch.

She knows the geography and the history are connected, even if they don’t get along. She knows the street and the road that preceded it. She knows which cemetery is empty of ghosts and which is not as empty as you might think. She knows why nothing is planted on the east side of the field and where the first church was. She knows the old mound is a place of death and should be left be, not treated as a picnic spot for souvenirs.

That is power. And it makes for a very good game.

There is a point in Jackson, IL, where the witch ceases to be an exercise in classification and becomes part of the town’s very machinery. One could say she is part of its immune system. At least that is how she is working in Jackson right now.

Jackson has the proper soil for such a tale. You have the old school and the colleges, the Carnegie library with its surprisingly good occult section, Magical Mystery Lane, the Witch Chairs, and the Crimson Cougar. Then there are the stories people will laugh at until a kid finds a newspaper clipping that shows the adults were either lying or not telling the truth very well.

That is Midwest horror. The thing in the next town. The house on your street. The local cemetery or the abandoned hospital out by the edge of town. A mascot you can’t be sure was ever just a mascot. The road your parents put their foot down about. The local legend they all make fun of until you check the archives.

It is why I have an affinity for Chill.

Pacesetter Games put it out in 1984 as a modern investigative RPG for ordinary folks up against the supernatural. Their S.A.V.E. society gave you a license to go after monsters and poke around where a sensible person would have been home watching Knight Rider. But what I remember is not so much the society or the creatures as the proximity of it all. The feeling that this could happen close by.

And there is something to that. Pacesetter was from Wisconsin; Mayfair, who published 2nd edition, was in the Chicago suburbs. Like Lake Geneva, it made a difference. These were games from places I knew, with basements and long winters and highways and pizza joints and the kind of adults who know more than they let on.

Chill put an idea in my head that I still hold to: local horror works.

You don’t need to dress every hero up as a monster or have some glamorous darkness. I am sure there is room for a nightclub full of immortals in expensive coats quoting poetry at one another, but that is not Jackson. Here, you want ordinary people with the courage to be extraordinary.

Life in Jackson goes on in ways you can put your finger on. Folks work the factories and farms and offices and hospitals, they run the small businesses, they raise a family, and have a slice of pizza after the football game. The librarian can tell you which of her students are in the occult section come October. The old woman next door has known them all since they were born and holds onto memories she ought to let go of. When trouble comes, everyone is in on it more than they will say.

This is the horror experience I want from Jackson. It does not make a noise about it. It is patient.

The Salem witch is public fear and accusation. In New Orleans, she is ritual and reputation. But the Midwest witch is useful, if unsettling. You may not put your trust in her, but you will be at her door. You will call her odd and then ask for the tea. You will whisper and then take the charm. They will tell you she is not right. Then they will want to know: what does it mean when you hear something at the screen door every night at 3:17am?

I also want that kind of witch in Advanced Witches & Warlocks. Not some cleric with a pot of herbs, or a druid who has taken up residence indoors, or a magic-user with a better hat.

She is part of the community in a social and supernatural sense. She is privy to the local dead and the old bargains, to the land spirits and the family curses and the lies people spin when they are half dead with fear.

In Jackson, you won’t find her on the school board or any church committee. There is no sign in the window with “WITCH” on it. She may not even use the word. She could be a retired teacher for all you know. An aunt. A widow. The farmer’s wife. A former nurse or the owner of the bookstore.

You might see her in a white farmhouse out past town, or in a small brick place by the college. Or in an apartment above a shop that is closed up, where the curtains don’t move but the porch light is on. When the creek runs black in June, you have her number.

There is an emotional quality to it I am after.

Salem is public and touristy now. New Orleans is humid, mythic. But the Midwest is cold. It has a way of freezing things. You can be smiling at one another in church and then give each other the wide berth in the grocery store. Grown-ups will say “we don’t talk about that” and leave the children to wonder what “that” was. Old wrongs become like the weather, settling into the walls of the town.

Winters here are not for show; it is a monster. It punishes and isolates. It will trap the poor inside and the careless outside. It breaks roads and pipes and batteries, howls in the old houses, and makes the timbers talk at night.

A witch who puts up with that world knows practical magic. Nothing pretty or for the stage. The sort of magic that turns a fever or keeps the pipes from bursting. To keep despair from taking root. To make sure a spirit doesn’t cross your threshold or to spoil the milk of someone with ill intent.

The Salem witch is bound to a national myth. The one in New Orleans to another. But the Midwest witch is of a dozen smaller ones: the immigrant charms and Protestant superstitions, the Catholic saints and the river ghosts, the prairie weather and the silence of the mounds. The railroad deaths, the school legends, the things kids talk about because the adults won’t.

This is the witch I want.

Photo by Arian Fernandez

Mirror Shard: The Prairie Wise Woman

The Prairie Wise Woman. You will find one in every town.

Try to put a description on her, and you won’t do it justice. Is she a witch? A healer? Or just an old woman with too many cats and nothing better to do with her time? Maybe. Then again, maybe not. You can tell enough by the way the elders of the town don’t so much as say her name unless they are put to it.

She keeps to herself, well away from the center of town, literal and figurative. You might find her where the pavement ends and the gravel begins, or near the creek, or the cemetery. Some would say next to that old mound, the town has no respect for. Her place is hardly a showpiece; in fact, it could be called a mess if you were looking for tidiness, though “dirty” isn’t the word for it. It is simply not put together for other people’s comfort. The porch is swept, the garden is for use and not for show, and the windows have a way of watching you.

In the pages of Advanced Witches & Warlocks, she is defined as the frontier equivalent of the village witch, suited to the plains and borderlands. No royal wizardry here, no temple priestess. She is who you go to when the proper channels have run dry.

Take Jackson, IL. She is the de facto authority on local lore there. One never knows her history: ex-nurse, schoolteacher, farmer’s wife, or maybe she put in some years at the library. She was around when the Old Jackson High was still just a school and not yet haunted like they all seem to get.

She is familiar with the lot of it: fever teas and warding knots, grave dirt and iron nails, red thread and saints’ medals. And the gods that predate the settlers.

She knows who has witch-blood in them and which land is under a curse. She knows what went down on Magical Mystery Lane and why you should leave the Witch Chairs be. She is aware that the Crimson Cougar is more than a bit of school spirit, and she can spot the teenager who has already started to see things.

That makes her useful in Jackson. Don’t expect an answer machine or some NPC to lay out the plot because you missed your clues, and everyone is worn out. She is there to let you know the kids aren’t making it up. Maybe she will help. Maybe not. There is something afoot. Something old and local that knows your name.

Come to see her, and she will hear you out. She might put on the coffee, or make a point of inquiring after your mother. If you are rude in asking for help, she will have you sort out your manners first, and rightly so. Should you bring up the supernatural, she will act as if her ears are full of wax.

But in her own time she will put the question to you: "What did you see, and who put it in your head not to?"

She is the Prairie Wise Woman. She may hand you a charm of iron and red thread, or advise you to keep off the old road once the sun is down. She’ll tell you the ghost is only lost, not mad, and that some spirits are not for you to bind or banish.

If Larina or Faye come by, or any of the young PC witches in training, she might just remark, "You’ve begun to see it." And leave it at that.

There is a difference between what is hidden and what is buried. The former you can find. The latter was put there for good reason. In the Midwest, that is how a witch lives.

This Old Dragon: Issue #85

 I am not completely sure why I have never done this one before now. Was I saving it for something special? I think I was, but I can't recall. What I do know is this: Dragon #85 is the first Dragon I ever bought for myself from Belobrajdic's Bookstores. Sure, I had borrowed a lot of Dragons, and I have even been given some. But this is the first one I bought because of the content. I'll get to that in a bit. 

It is the spring of 1984. I am a Freshman in high school. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom is the #1 movie. Newly inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Phil Collins "Against All Odds" is our #1 song and on shelves everywhere, and certainly my game table is This Old Dragon #85.

Ok, the art for this issue is quite striking and it immediately drew me in.  "The Innocent Power" by Susan Collins was one of the best I had seen on Dragon. It is what drew me in, but not what sold me. 

This issue is memory-rich for me. I went over every word and image in this issue. Case in point, the Ral Partha ad on the opposite side of the cover. It features "The Black Prince's Chariot of Fear" pulled by freaking Balrogs! Wait! Can you do that??  Yeah, I had seen many minis before, but this was different. This was me looking at this image in my own bedroom or out on my front porch (where I often worked on "D&D stuff" during the summer). Either way, 40 years later, it is still cool.

Kim Mohan is our Editor-in-Chief here, and he discusses two different electronic dice tools. I always wanted one of those, but could never justify the cost. What I did was program my calculator to be a dice roller. This was before I learned about pseudo-random numbers. The next part of the Editorial covers the "feature" of this issue, and why I bought it; it is all about Clerics. At the time, I played a lot of Clerics as Undead and Vampire hunters, not necessarily as healers. 

The Letters section is known as Out On A Limb at this point. Letters include a guy asking about copyrights on the various published D&D materials. Sure, use as you want, but don't try to resell anything. Some comments on typos. And more.

Ad for Gen Con 17. I am wearing my Gen 52 shirt as I am writing this. 

The Forum covers deeper opinions and reflections. I like the Forum, but this one bugged me at first. Every entry dealt with something from a previous issue so it made it hard to know what was being talked about. As I went on this discussion held more value to me.  Interestingly enough, one of the contributors in Katherine Kerr talking about one of her own articles.

Ad for Grenadier models. I bought one of the Fantasy Lords sets and then proceeded to try to paint them with Testor's paints. Yeah. I did that.

The Cleric Collection is the feature of this issue, and I ate it up.

Kim Mohan is up first with Here's To Your Health. This covers more first aid in AD&D. There is a nice overview of curing magic, including healing vs curing magic. 

Special Skills, Special Thrills from Roger E. Moore expands on an idea introduced by Gary Gygax in his World of Greyhawk setting. This expands, granting Clerics new powers based on their god, as detailed in Deities & Demigods. This includes not just powers but also the taboos they must follow.  There are enough examples here to apply to any god. This all basically became part of the rules in AD&D 2nd Ed and later editions. But back in 1984? This was great stuff, and I locked on to it. My Sun Priest, Necromancer, Healer, and yes, the Witch began here in their earliest forms. 

Nice ad for Powers & Perils. I had no idea before this that there were so many games. Yes, I knew about all the big names, but Powers & Perils was not one of those. The game still has an active presence online.

In our non-Editor entry, Fraser Sherman gives us a good companion piece to Moore's article. In Clerics Must be Deity-Bound he talks about the behavior clerics follow to earn those spells, turning, and even special powers. The example dialog between a Cleric of Thor, Tyr, Diancecht, and Aphrodite, and how each would deal with a couple of dozen guards. Let's ignore the logistics of how or why the four are in the same party and focus on the message. Clerics need to be different than each other. Again, this article is the model from which the later Faiths & Avatars books for the Forgotten Realms and AD&D 2nd edition game would take their ultimate form.

Ad for the Traveller book. Also called the Blue Book in my gaming circles, I think I ordered it that very summer along with Chill.  

Michael Gray is up with PBM: Problems by Mail, a discussion on the various issues currently bothering play-by-mail gamers.

I did not know it at the time, who did really, but the next article would set a tone for yet again, AD&D 2nd Edition and the Forgotten Realms. The Ecology of the Ixitxachitl by Dragon MVP Ed Greenwood. Here I learned about their worship of Demogorgon and even the rare vampire Ixitxachitl. 

Susan Shwatz has our fiction with Valkyrie Settlement. I am sure I read it at some point, but skimming it over, I can't recall much of it.  

What can be considered the first hero of English epics, Beowulf, is up but three different versions from three different authors, Robert Cook, Roger E. Moore, and Kyle Gray in Three Cheers for Beowulf.

For the price at the time, $3.00, I felt Dragon was a good deal, but when it added some like a mini-adventure like The Twofold Talisman, Adventure Two: The Ebon Stone by Roger Moore, Philip Tatercyznski, Douglas Niles, & Georgia Moore. I always wanted to get Part One, which I eventually got, but I ran this one a few times. There is some silly bits here, the Halfling D.V. for example. Still, it is fun and I might be giving it a little more latitude because I was not expecting to get an adventure in my issue of Dragon.

Speaking of adventures, Modules: What We're Hunting For, covers some guidelines on what sort of things the editors of Dragon are looking for. We are still a little bit away from Dungeon magazine, but I can't help but think this is related to that effort.

Dragonlance is still brand new and has not yet caught the gaming world by storm. But it will. A Stone's Throw Away by Roger E. Moore is the second short story set in the Dragonlance world to appear in Dragon. I won't go as far as to say I was/am a huge Dragonlance fan, but I did enjoy the novels, and I liked reading the adventures, but even then, I knew they were railroady and set to serve the needs of the main characters. One day, I would like to run them, but I would need to significantly rewrite them. 

Oh. Witch Hunt. An ad for this game hits on page 58, and I had to have it. I never found a copy 'til much later, but I still have it. 

Ken Rolston is up with more game reviews. In Advanced Hack-and-Slash, he covers four new games that all have heavy combat focuses. Up first is Warhammer. It looks fun, I wonder if it will catch on?  Rolston likes it and thinks it is a good entry into the mass combat fantasy rules category. REAPER: Fantasy Wargame Rules is next along with a scenario, Attack of the Fungoid Trolls. It was created in 1981 with 2/3rds of the designers of Warhammer. Rolston points out that criticisms of the game are unnecessary since most of the glaring errors and missteps have been corrected by Warhammer, but he has it here as a historical perspective. Next is the celebrated Lost Worlds playbooks from Nova Game Designs and designed by Ace of Aces' Alfred Leonardi. These books fascinated me because I always wanted to see how they worked. No one near me played it, and I never saw it in my local stores. Rolston likes the game and concept, but finds it expensive; each character needs a playbook at $6 per, and replayability is very low. Finally, Cry Havoc is not a Fantasy Wargame, but "a lovely model of what a perfect FRP combat wargame should look like." It is a medieval skirmish game that is easy to learn and play and is "superb in every way."

Providing the counterpoint, Katharine Kerr has her review of Warhammer in Warhammer FRP System Falls Flat. No. She is not a fan. 

We now come to the Ares section. Now I knew nothing about SPI or Ares prior to this, so I thought this was *just* the Sci-fi offering in a normally Fantasy magazine. But it did feel different. The Federation Guide to Luna is a great kick-off by Dale L. Kemper. I learn that it is part of a series detailing the Moon in different sci-fi settings. If this sounds a little like my notion of West Haven, then you would be correct. This is for the FASA Star Trek game.

John M. Maxstadt is up with Gamma Hazards, New Mutants for the GAMMA WORLD Game. These include some fungimals and the humbug. 

Roger E. Moore is more than pulling his weight this issue with some advice for Traveller players.

Lions, Tigers, & Superheroes covers animals for the Champions game by Leonard Carpenter. 

Starquestions is our "sage advice" for Star Frontiers.

Gamer's Guide has our small ads. This includes one of the previously alluded to dice rollers. A module for "the most popular fantasy roleplaying game." And The Game Master program on cassette for the Vic-20 and Timex-Sinclair and compatible with Dungeons & Dragons.

The Convention Calendar is next for what is going on in the Summer of 1984.

Wormy is next with some weirf mutants. Dragon mirth has our comics, including the short-lived Talanalan by Kurt Erichsen.

We wrap it up with Elmore's Snarf Quest.

All in all, a fantastic issue. Though my perception may be colored by nostalgia. You never forget your first...Dragon really. The copy I have here is not my first. That one is long, long gone, but I hold on to this one as if it were some sort of sacred text. Yes, it is technically no different than Dragon #84 or #86, and they do not get the same sort of reverence out of me. 

New Releases Tuesday: The Witch Finder Class

 Walpurgis Week continues.  I have a new release for fans of the Old-School Essentials game (and any Basic Era game).

I mean, someone has to keep all these witches in line.

The Witch Finder Class

I have been tinkering with this one for a while now. Finally came together for me while working on my most recent witch book (spoiler, out tomorrow).

From the DriveThruRPG page:

“We are the fire. We are the silence. We are the last prayer between damnation and the soul.”

- Creed of the Order of Saint Ossian.

In a world where magic and witches are real and pose a threat to law, light, and good, there will be Witch Finders.

Inside, you will find:

- The Witch Finder Half-Class for Old-School Essentials (compatible with other Basic-era games).
- New spells for witch finders (and for clerics if you choose).
- New magic items, including the infamous Malleus Maleficarum.
- Two Witch Finder Orders, The Orders of St. Ossian and St. Werper. United in purpose but divided by methods. 

Requires Old-School Essentials Core Rules.

--

Classic Classes

I am calling this series "Classic Classes," though some are not "classic" per se, save for how long they have been languishing on my "to be completed" lists. I do not have a projected timeline for them all yet, but I plan on completing the Healer, the Sun-Priest (I just need to give it a new name), and a few more. For now, the plan is only to complete my own unfinished work. 

What is a Half-Class?

The Witch Finder is a "Half-Class" that is it is designed to be used along with another class that is the character's primary class. A quick look at the various Witch Finders and Witch Hunters shows they began as something else and continued that.  Cotton Mather (Salem Witch Trials) was a "cleric" first and foremost. Mathew Hopkins (England) was mostly a charlatan ("thief") and even in modern times Robin Sena, aka Witch Hunter Robin, was also a witch herself. 

So by this logic, I created a "Half-Class" for the Witch Finder. This also helps me preserve some of the flavor of my old 3.x era Witch Finder Prestige Class. 

Will future Classic Classes be Half-Classes? No idea yet, but it will be fun to find out.

New Releases Tuesday: The Swan Maiden Class

 I have a new release for fans of the Old-School Essentials game (and any Basic Era game).

The Swan Maiden Class

Whether you are a fan of Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts and Three Lions," or old Welsh myth and tales of the Gwragedd Annwn, or the Swanmay from AD&D, this is the class for you.

From the DriveThruRPG page.

The swan maiden has appeared in the pages of literature and tales of legend. Many of which were the foundational tales of the Fantasy RPG hobby.  In this new supplement, you can now play as a member of this shapeshifting sorority of protectors of the natural world.

Inside, you will find:

- The Swan Maiden Class for Old-School Essentials (compatible with other Basic-era games).
- New spells for the swan maiden (and for rangers and druids if you choose).
- New magic items, including their fabled Cloak of Feathers.
- Alternate swan maidens including the Gwragedd Annwn, Crane Wives, and the evil Strix.

Requires Old-School Essentials Core Rules.

One and Two-page spreads are offered.

Classic Classes

This class came about while I was going through all of the material I was bequeathed from my late friend and former DM R. Michael Grenda. He had so much unfinished work here that it reminded me of my own oft-mentioned unfinished classes I have. So, I resolved to finish them up this year. This is the first.

I am calling this series "Classic Classes," though some are not "classic" per se, save for how long they have been languishing on my "to be completed" lists. I do not have a projected timeline for them all yet, but I plan on completing the Healer, the Sun-Priest (I just need to give it a new name), and a few more. For now, the plan is only to complete my own unfinished work. Grenda had his reasons for not wanting his published, and I have to respect that. However, some, like the Swan Maiden here, will get pushed up the line because of material of his I have read. 

Though there is a "Classic" in another sense. I have been going through and rereading all the Appendix N works and many of the "Further Reading" mentioned in the D&D Basic book from Tom Moldvay. So, my opinions on what those classes will do will be informed by those readings.

I am most likely to publish these for the Old-School Essentials RPG. I like the rule set, and the levels 1-14 are a nice sweet spot. But I leave myself open to whatever system works the best. 

Most of these classes will be classes I was working on at the same time I first developed my witch class. Some might even have some cross-over, but for the most part they will be non-witch classes.

I could not find the option to list this when I set up the title, so I'll state it here. 

This product has no AI art, and no AI/LLM was used to generate text. 

Why would I need AI to generate more text? I have hundreds of notebooks and files filled with notes. The last thing I need is a new way to generate MORE.

Character Creation Challenge: Finn Danis

 This is the first Monday of the new year and the first day back to work for many. So it is good that I am starting off the week with this character. 

Finn Danis was a Cheysuli Starmaster.

Ok, that is a sentence I need to parse out a bit. 

Back in 1986 both Grenda and I were heavy into making our own classes. I have detailed that tera here plenty of times with my Witch class. This era also produced my Healer, Necromancer, and Sun Priest classes.

Grenda created the Riddlemaster, Shadowmaster, Beastmaster, and finally the Starmaster classes. I will detail these classes this month as they come up more and more. But suffice to say they were extremely overpowered. This was be design, and they had the XP requirements to match. 

I posted my own Riddlemaster last year. The Starmaster class was essentailly a proto-prestige class similar to the original Bard or Acrobat classes. A potential Starmaster had to advance as Riddlemaster, then a Shadowmaster and then a Beastmaster. Never reaching level 10 (The Black of Mastery; levels had colors) in any. Then you progress as a Starmaster.

Finn was the head of the School of Riddlery in Grenda's game. He was his test character for for all his Riddlemaster classes. He was, in pretty much every aspect, his "Larina."

The notion here was all the Riddlemaster classes were Psionic. Their powers were psionic/psychic based. We decided that the powerful Wizard's Guilds and Priestly Orders had worked together to make psionic powers illegal in our realms. So the Riddlemasters (also called "Adepts") had to disguise their powers to look like magic. They could take wizard spells, had thief skills, turn undead, and had great combat. Did I mention they were overpowered? 

Finn was also a Cheysuli, from Jennifer Roberson's Chronicles of the Cheysuli. He was a tall dark-skinned, shape-shifting warrior who could also become a large panther. Since Finn was 6'7" we figure he turned into a giant panther.  I was not into Roberson's books as much as Grenda was. But I liked Finn. 

Think of Dean Henry Fogg from The Magicians, but instead of being played by Rick Worthy, he is played by Tony Todd. 

The biggest problem with Finn is how do I represent him in other games?

On the surface he is a Psychic, with enough heroic touchstones to give him some other abilities. But even with a heroic touchstone per level I am not sure I could replicate him well enough.

Finn Danis

Class: Psychic / Scholar
Level: 20
Species: Cheysuli
Alignment: Light Neutral
Background: Cheysuli

Abilities
Strength: 19 (+3) 
Agility: 19 (+3) 
Toughness: 13 (+1) 
Intelligence: 15 (+1) N
Wits: 16 (+2) A
Persona: 19 (+3) N

Fate Points: 1d12
Defense Value: 1
Vitality: 140
Degeneracy: 0
Corruption: 0

Check Bonus (A/N/D): +8/+6/+2
Melee Bonus: +4 (base) +1 (touchstone) 
Ranged Bonus: +4 (base)
Psychic Attack: +7
Saves: +7 vs Persona (Psychic), +1 to all (touchstone)

Background
Shapeshift to a large panther. Speak with Animals.

Psychic Abilities
Psychic powers: 5, Supernatural attacks, Supernatural power: Astral Projection

Psychic Powers
Bio-feedback
Psychokinesis
ESP
Telepathy
Temporal Sense

Sage Abilities
Languages: 15, Lore 95%, Mesmerize others, suggestion, Renegade Skills: 3rd level, Spells 3/2/1

Stealth Skills
Open Locks: 30%
Bypass Traps: 25%
Sleight of Hand: 35%
Sneak: 30%

Spells
First level: Arcane Dart, Light, Mystical Senses, Command
Second level: Lesser Renewal, Unlock
Third level: Concussive Blast

Heroic/Divine Touchstones 
1st Level: Glamour
3rd Level: +1 to melee combat
5th Level: First Level Spell: Command
7th Level: Divine Smite
9th Level: +1 to all checks, attacks, and saves
11th Level: Immunity to Undead Attacks
13th Level: Character ceases to age
15th Level: Persistent Luck
17th Level: Down but not out
19th Level: Overwhelming Aura

Heroic (Divine) Archetype: Natural Order

Gear
Sword (Mistweaver)

Ok. There is no way I can do Finn justice and stay within the rules as written for Wasted Lands. Or pretty much any other game really. For amusement sake I started a D&D 4e version of him, but even that was unsatisfying.

No. Finn is really too much for any game and he is even stretching AD&D to point of ridiculousness. 

But, that was the point. He was an experiment who just happened to also be a great character. 

There is a question here though.

Does anyone want to see the Riddlemaster classes? Is there any interest out there for these über-powered classes?

Mind you, I LOVED playing my Riddlemasters. Maybe as much as I did my witches. But I am sure they are a lot more niche than my witches are. 

You can get the Wasted Lands RPG and the NIGHT SHIFT RPG at Elf Lair Games.

Review: Forbidden Lore (2e)

By 1992, Ravenloft was going full speed, though we would later learn that all of the settings were contributing to the eventual demise of TSR. I am not even sure if Ravenloft was ever profitable. I made my best efforts to make it profitable, even on a Graduate student budget. I bought a lot Ravenloft material. The Forbidden Lore boxed set was one I purchased back then. I loved the idea of my own Tarokka Cards and Dikesha dice sets. The material included was a mixed bag of course.

I sold off my boxed set many years ago, likely in my big move in 1997 or maybe in 2001-2002. Do I regret it? Hard to say. The material is not not needed to play in Ravenloft, and while having those cards would be nice, I have since acquired other Tarokka decks and even other tarot decks that work great.

Forbidden Lore (2e)

1992. Design by Bruce Nesmith and William W. Connors. Box cover art by Clyde Caldwell, Booklet cover art by Stephen Fabian, interior art by Stephen Fabian and Bob Klanish.

The boxed set originally came with five booklets, each covering a different aspect of the game. Reading these you can see that it is a collection of errata, material that didn't quite make it to the Ravenloft boxed set, and updates to cover the evolution of the AD&D 2nd Ed game and other game worlds; for example psionics. 

While the books could be used in any order. I am going with the order used in my Print on Demand copy. 

Dark Recesses. Psionics.

Much like magic, this section deals with how psionics are changed. The psionics used here are the same as featured in the The Complete Psionics Handbook. If you are not using that book, or don't have it, then you can ignore this book. Well...sort of. Even if you are not using "AD&D Psionics" this is a good resource on any sort of psychic powers or visions when used in Ravenloft. Psychic ability has been a horror staple forever, even if the psychic ability is "magic" there is still great advice here.

This includes an appendix for Dark Sun characters coming to Ravenloft.

Nova Aracanum. Magic.

This covers new magic spells and items. The conceit here is that some of this new knowledge comes from Strahd himself. I liked the idea that Strahd, the former warrior, was turning to necromancy and wizardry to find ways out of his prison. It certainly helped separate him from his origins as a "Dracula-clone."  Had there been rules for it I would have given him Alchemy instead, but hey, it works. 

This book covers more altered spells and gifts from the Realms, Wild Magic, Elemental Magic and Meta Magic. 

There are 14 new wizard spells, 7 new priest spells, and 5 new magic items.

Oaths of Evil. Curses.

This book is based on feedback from Ravenloft players it seems. This covers curses and dark powers checks. Giving clarifications and some edits on material presented in the Ravenloft core boxed set. 

Of note, the Apparatus of the Alchemist from module I10 makes an appearance here, though only in art, not in text.

We also get three very cursed and very evil objects that have found their way to the Demiplane of Dread.  

Cryptic Allegiances. Secret Societies.

What is horror without some secret societies? Here, Ravenloft takes a page from the Forgotten Realms. We get guidance on how to create and use secret societies in Ravenloft. We are given the examples of six secret societies. Of these, the Kargatane would spin off into a real-world group I was active in to develop new Ravenloft material. 

The Waking Dream. Fortune Telling.

This final book covers fortune telling and Vistani. This gives us the description of the Tarokka deck and how to use it. There are 54 cards in a Tarokka deck, so a standard deck with two jokers works in a pinch. 

The next section covers the Dikesha dice. A bit on how to use and read the portents of the dice. They are standard d6s, so they can also be replicated. You need five d6s, one each of red, yellow, orange, green and black. The PDF of the dice can be used and numbers added. OR if you feel particularly crafty you can get get some d6s of the correct colors and print out the PDF and glue these faces on the dice. 

Of the two, I, and I assume most people now, used the Tarokka decks over the dice. The fact that you can still find and buy Tarokka decks from various editions of Ravenloft lends some weight to my claim. 

There was also a large poster map included in the Boxed set. It was not printed with the Print on Demand version, but it is available as a PDF along with a PDF of the Tarokka deck and the Dikesha dice.

The Print on Demand version of this set is nice. It is clear to read and is a better scan than most. 

Do I miss my boxed set? Well, I have to say no. The boxed set was great yes, but this makes for a good substitute. It is also only $5 more than the list price, so not bad after 32 years of inflation.

Secret Journey: Walking the Witches' Road

I am finally caught up on the new Disney+ series "Agatha All Along," and frankly, I love it.  Kathryn Hahn and Aubrey Plaza are so great in this, and Aubrey Plaza already has "witch cred" with her books "The Legend of the Christmas Witch" and "The Return of the Christmas Witch." It is a lot fun and I am enjoying watching Agatha Harkness come to life after reading her exploits for so long. 

I have a lot of people asking me how I would implement the "Witches' Road" in my games. Well, obviously, I can't use the Witches' Road as it appears here, Disney being so understanding and forgiving. BUT thankfully, I do have something, and the advantage here is that it shares a genesis with my first witch class.

Upon a Secret Journey

Back in the early 80s I was building a bunch of new classes. I have talked about them here before, but briefly there was the Witch, the Sun Priest, the Healer and the Necromancer. The witch you have seen, the Sun Priest, though has yet to see a lot of text here. You can find the complete AD&D 2nd Edition kit here and on my downloads section. 

There was a notion that the Sun Priest would need to complete a pilgrimage ever so many levels to prove their faith. While it was based on the pilgrimages made by Medieval faithful, the idea here was one of greater spiritual understanding. It was inspired by the Police song "Secret Journey." For me it added a bit more mysticism to the idea. 

Here is what I said back then.  

At 3rd level and every three level thereafter (6, 9, 12,...), the Sun Priest must go on a "secret journey." This journey is one of faith and must be accomplished alone, in secret. It might be nothing more than a dedicated study of church tomes (a journey of understanding), of deep contemplation (a journey of enlightenment), of destroying some foe (a journey of vengeance), or anything else the player and DM agree upon. The journey will last as long as necessary, and during this time, the Sun Priest will receive no experience points, nor can he partake in an ongoing adventure. The journey can be played out, or the priest may simply rejoin the adventures at a later date. The journey must be performed, or the Priest can not advance to the next level.

Again, remember this was for AD&D 2nd Edition. And while it is certainly geared towards a clerical class, there is no reason I can't adopt it, and adapt it, to the Witch.

In fact, I kinda have been doing that now anyway. When I was moving out of 3e over to 4e I was trying to decide if I was going to continue Larina under the new rules. I go my answer when I saw the Feywild get more emphasis. Very long story short, Larina went to the feywild, had a daughter with Fey Lord, but had to leave her behind to complete a quest at the behest of Baba Yaga. When she returned 13 years had passed. This quest was a Secret Journey in all but name.

You Will See Light In The Darkness

The Secret Journey for witches (The Witches' Journey maybe) is one a witch must complete at some point in her life before she can receive greater understanding about her magic, her craft and her place in it. For many it is an essential part of their lives as a witch. 

Given this I am tempted to have it related to the steps of the Hero's Journey and include some of the elements of modern witch traditions of a symbolic Life-Death-Rebirth. The Witches' Journey is a symbolic death and rebirth.

In AAA, the "Witches' Road" is taken on by a coven, but a Secret Journey is a solo affair; a witch must complete it on her own. Since it is a symbolic death and rebirth, this is not supposed to be easy. The witch will emerge from this fundamentally changed.

The Witches' Journey (Rough Draft)

It is now a few hours later.

I pulled up a copy of the Hero's Journey, Buckland's Complete Book of Witchcraft, and of course, Jung's Man and his Symbols. I like the idea of witches having to embrace their own shadow-self in their journey of self-realization. I also added in some ideas from my NIGHT SHIFT notes. 

Part 1: The Call to the Journey (Life)

    1. Ordinary World: The witch lives in a mundane environment, feeling a sense of disconnection from nature and the spiritual world, unaware of their inner potential.

    2. Call to Adventure: The witch experiences an awakening—perhaps through a sign, dream, or encounter—that ignites their curiosity about magic and the self.

    3. Refusal of the Call: Doubts and fears surface as the witch grapples with societal expectations, personal insecurities, and the weight of tradition, resisting the call to explore their true nature.

    4. Meeting the Mentor: An experienced witch or wise figure appears, offering guidance, wisdom, and tools to navigate the inner and outer worlds, encouraging exploration of the self.

Part 2: The Descent into the Underworld (Death)

    5. Crossing the Threshold: The witch consciously steps into the realm of magic and the unknown, leaving behind their old life and beginning to confront their inner landscape.

    6. Trials and Allies: The witch faces external challenges and meets allies, but also begins to encounter aspects of their Shadow Self—unacknowledged fears, desires, and insecurities that surface during their journey.

    7. The Abyss: A significant challenge forces the witch to confront their Shadow Self directly, facing their deepest fears, regrets, and repressed emotions. This moment represents a metaphorical death, where the old self must be faced.

    8. Rebirth through Initiation: The witch undergoes a transformative ritual or initiation, symbolizing acceptance of their Shadow Self. They emerge with greater self-awareness and empowerment, integrating both light and shadow aspects of their identity.

Part 3: The Return with Wisdom (Rebirth)

    9. The Road Back: With newfound knowledge and power, the witch begins the journey back to their ordinary world, now equipped with a deeper understanding of their whole self.

    10. Resurrection: The witch faces a final test or confrontation that challenges their integration of the Shadow Self, solidifying their transformation and understanding of the life-death-rebirth cycle.

    11. Return with Wisdom: The witch returns to their community, sharing the wisdom gained from their journey, including insights on the importance of acknowledging and embracing one’s own shadow.

    12. The New Ordinary World: The witch finds a place in their community, living in harmony with both the magical and mundane worlds, embodying a balance of light and shadow, contributing to a holistic understanding of existence.

Last Step: The Eternal Cycle

    13. The Wheel of the Year: The witch embraces the cyclical nature of existence, celebrating seasonal festivals and the ongoing journey of life, death, and rebirth. They recognize that integrating the Shadow Self is an ongoing process, each cycle presenting new opportunities for growth and transformation.

Again, this is a draft, and I need to find some solid game applications for this. I want to add up the horror elements a bit. This journey needs to be a terrifying experience for the witch, but ultimately, a rewarding one where the witch emerges reborn.

I like what I have here, to be honest. 

RPG Blog Carnival

This post is for my October RPG Blog Carnival: Horror and Fantasy.