Over on his YouTube Channel, Daddy Rolled a 1, Martin R. Thomas has put up a pretty comprehensive overview of all the various Witch classes.
So, of course, you know it has my attention.
It is great overview.
Nothing new to anyone who reads this blog regularly, and I think I have covered more, but still a great overview.
It's Halloween after all and more witch discussion is always welcome!
The great thing about the AD&D 2nd Edition version of Ravenloft's demi-plane was that the borders were completely malleable. Lands came in and out, even darklords would come and go. So the first two accessories for the Ravenloft setting capitalized on this. The first was RR1 Darklords and the next was RR2 Book of Crypts and both gave us more expansions to the Demiplane of Dread.
1991. By Andria Hayday (with some additional design by William W. Connors, Bruce Nesmith, and James Lowder). 96-pages, color covers (Tim Hildebrandt), black & white interior art (Stephen Fabian).
This soft-cover tome gave 16 new darklords and their domains for use with Ravenloft. There is a mixed bag here, but I tried I to use all of them at one point or another. These new lords felt less "gothic" in their presentation and more "AD&D" in their origins. For example, Tristessa, the Banshee Darklord, is a Drow mourning over the loss of her son, who turned into a Drider. The Hags of Tempest certainly have a William Shakespeare veneer over them, but they are pure AD&D hags.
There are some very interesting ones here too. Merilee, the Child Vampire, brings "Interview with a Vampire's" Claudia to mind. Von Kharkou is twice cursed. He was panther transformed into a man killing machine, then cursed again to vampirism. Zolnik is a different sort of ice-age Werewolf. Anhktepot and Tyet give us two very different takes on the Mummy.
Among all of these, The House of Lament (a haunted house as a darklord) would go on to see new life in future editions of the game, and the intelligent sword, Ebonbane, would get a full adventure in the pages of Dungeon magazine.
1991. by Dale "Slade" Henson with J. Robert King. 96-pages, color covers (David Dorman), black & white interior art (Laura and Kelly Freas, Stephen Fabian).
This book has nine short and loosely connected mini-adventures taking place in the core realms of Ravenloft. Of these, the "Bride of Mordenheim" was my favorite.
This was (is) actually a fun book. Horror lends itself well to the short story format and by extension horror RPG also does these smaller adventures well. They help remind us that not every adventure is going to part of some Grand Conjunction or even dealing directly with a Darklord.
Re-reading them now there are many that I would like re-run for newer versions of the game.
And to round off the pages nicely we get three new monsters in AD&D Monstrous Compendium format.
The PDF is a scanned document and it is a little washed out compared to my original from the 1990s. But still perfectly readable. At present, there is no Print on Demand option for either titles.
The movies largely have the same plot and story with minor differences.
The Blob (1958)
How many horror movies have their own catchy pop song? Well the Blob does.
This one also features future action star Steve McQueen as a squeaky clean teen.
The blob comes from space, a big deal in the 1958, and proceeds eat the towns-folk and get larger all the time. Effective as a scare and I can recall watching this one with my dad back in the 1970s. Actually I recall watching it on an old Black & White TV in my parents basement. My dad had set up a movie-watching area down there. It seems like a perfect place to watch old horror movies.
The cure? The discover that it can be frozen and this stops it.
The sequel Beware! The Blob (1972) features the Blob getting defrosted and going on a rampage again.
The Blob (1988)
This a remake to fit what will become part of the Paranoid 90s, thanks X-Files. In this, the Blob was created by the military and shot into space.
This one has Kevin Dillon, Matt's brother, as our teen hero. Of course, now he is a little punk just south of the law, but that is not a big shock, really. These were the roles he was type-casted in. To be fair, he did give a good performance as drummer John Densmore in the Doors. Shawnee Smith, who plays our "good girl" heroine, is still quite active in movies today.
The special effects are better here and still surprisingly effective when you consider they are all still practical effects (for the most part). The plot, though, is the same as the first movie.
The twist of the Government to create the Blob is a nice but utterly expected twist.
Del Close, who portrays Reverend Meeker, also had a small part in the 1972 Beware! The Blob movie, so that is the sort of thing I enjoy.
Featured Monsters: Black Pudding, Gray Ooze, Green Slime, and Ochre Jelly
The Blob must have left a serious mark on the creators of D&D. We have four monsters that can fit the bill. And this doesn't even cover the Gelantinous Cube. Of these four, the Black Pudding and Gray ooze might be the closest in how the movie Blob acts. The Green Slime doesn't really move (and the blob is fast) and the Ochre Jelly is slow(er) moving.
A "Blood Ooze" would be good, one that starts out gray or even pale and getts redder and redder as it eats people.
October Horror Movie Challenge 2024
Viewed: 11
First Time Views: 4
by Tracy and Laura Hickman, with additional material by Bruce Nesmith. Art by Dana Andrews, Clyde Caldwell, James Crabtree, and David C. Sutherland III.
PDF and Print. 64 pages.
For this I am considering the PDF from DriveThruRPG and my original print copy from the 1990s.
This is the original I6 Ravenloft Adventure from 10 years prior. This time the action has moved to the Demi-plane of Dread.
Bruce Nesmith does the "Demi-plane" conversions here which include AD&D 2nd edition conversions, using the fear and horror rules from the Ravenloft boxed set AND the updated Strahd stat block.
Strahd, in I6, was a 10th-level necromancer vampire. Now, he is a 16th-level one.
The text is largely the same as the original I6 but yet it somehow feels like it is "less." I have run Ravenloft many times, and while I have run it using the AD&D 2nd ed rules, I have never used to book save for the updated stat block and some monsters. For lack of anything I can put my finger on, the I6 presentation is vastly superior.
Still, though, I am happy to have it. If I were to run AD&D 2nd Ed Ravenloft I would certainly use this adventure. I'd just use the maps from the I6 version and maybe some ideas from the 3e or 5e versions as well.
Night of the Demon (1957)
There is something quintessentially British about this one. Black magic, witchcraft, even a meddling American.
Despite being almost 70 years old this movie is still rather effective. The special effects, ie the demon, are a bit dated, but still looked good and great for the time. Heck, they are not really terrible for now.
It mixes up a lot of demonology and witchcraft myths, but that is also fine really.
We get demon summoning, spells, storm-raising, a seance, and even an Indian spirit guide. A little bit of everything here.
It would have been interesting if they had embraced some of the new ideas from Gerald Gardner and the growing Wicca movement, but that connection would not be featured in movies until the 1970s.
Oh. The plot. The scientific community denounces witchcraft and black magic, so a pissed off occultist demonstrates his power by summoning a giant demon to kill key members. I suppose if it were redone today there would have been more deaths, but it still works.
Featured Monster: Demon
Again, while I can't say for certain this movie had any effect what so ever on the demons (and devils) in the Monster Manual, they are drawing from all the same sources. The demon here looks a bit like the Nalfeshnee or Type IV demon. The demon in this movie is much larger than I expected, making close to the same size as the Nalfeshnee.
When I was reading The Classics of the Horror Film, I saw this picture and thought it would make a great "Cat Demon." It was the ears and the nose. There was a cat demon in this movie, but it looked like a regular cat.
The movie is also a good example of a wizard in his castle with his magic books and our virtuous rogue (or, in this case, psychologist) investigating.
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Night of the Nalfeshnee |
The more I think about it, the more and more I think that this movie demon was the inspiration for the Nalfeshnee's look.
October Horror Movie Challenge 2024
Viewed: 10
First Time Views: 3
