I want to get in some Witchcraft documentaries from the 70s.  These really cover what formed some of my earliest thoughts on witchcraft and the occult.

These movies are not really horror, but they good supporting movies for all the horror movies I typically watch. All these titles received an X rating when they were released but are really all pretty tame.  

An interesting note that all these films feature Alex Sanders and Maxine Sanders.

Legend of the Witches (1970)

This is a nice weird one and It is part of a larger DVD/Blu-Collection I grabbed from Amazon.  The first part is a slow narration over scenes of the moon and sun rising and setting in glorious black & white.  It reminds me a little of the start of Aradia, Gospel of the Witches.  We get to the creation of man and we see a number of neolithic shamanistic cave paintings. 
We get to the part about witches with prerequisite naked dancing under the moon.

We get to see a witchcraft initiation, which looks a bit Gardenarian or Alexandrian (checked it is Alex Sanders, so Alexandrian). We get some history of England including the notion that William the Conqueror was the son of a Witch, and Robin Hood had a coven. This leads to a bunch of material about witches including the witch hunts. 

Different witch rituals are shown from wicca to Luciferian with copious amounts of nudity (likely the source for the X ratings) but nothing even remotely shocking really.

Secret Rites (1971)

This one starts off with a "witches orgy" and a woman being dragged to "unspeakable obscenities" but fear not! Her lover "John Goodfellow" has come to rescue her brandishing a cross and rebuke witches as if they were vampires.  The scene freezes and our narrator continues in saying that this has been the perception of witches for years.  We cut to Alex Sanders who tells us it is complete rubbish. 

This covers the initiation of a new witch into Alex's coven. As well as a very brief look at his discussion group (likely brief since there is no nudity), a Wiccan handfasting, and even a Great Rite.

The following were included on the same DVD. 

The Witch's Fiddle (1924)
A man gets a fiddle from a witch that can make anyone dance. 

Out of Step (1957)
A documentary series that covers witchcraft in this episode.  Interviewed are Margaret Murry, Gerald Gardner, and Alastair Crowley's friend, Louis Wilkinson. 

The Judgement of Albion (1968)
From Robert Wynne-Simmons, the director of Blood on Satan's Claw.  Based on the poems of William Blake. It is a trippy little flick where faeries, in the guise of young college students, still roam "A Green and Pleasant Land" amid modern troubles.  Completely experimental and yet so utterly British. 

All of these movies and shorts reveal an interesting look at Britain at the end of the 60's.  While in the US we were moving headlong into the excess of the 70s and "left-over hippie shit", England seemed to be two different places at the same time. A country aware that it is slowing down even as new prospects are on the horizon and a country whose Pagan past was just a little bit below the surface. These two are likely related to each other.

Witchcraft '70 (1970)

This Italian "documentary" follows the lives of various real witches in England. I say "documentary" because it only details the most salacious elements of the neo-pagan movement in England.  It also conflates all witchcraft with satanism.  Now a few of the people they profile like Alex Sanders dabbled in "the Left-Hand Path" decades before and Anton LeVey who was a Satanist, others like Eleanor Bone and Maxine Sanders were Wiccans.  The Sanders in fact developed the Alexandrian Tradition of Wicca.  In fact, there are many times that what is depicted on screen and what the narrator is telling us is happening are complete conflict.   There is a hand-fasting between Alex and Maxine Sanders which is described as Maxine marrying the Devil in the guise of Alex.  They imply that in all of these "Satanic Weddings" that Alex, as the Devil, gets to have sex with the women first.  A lot of criticism has been laid at the feet of Alex Sanders and Alexandrian Wicca, but this is not one of them. 

Oh there is the implication too that Brazilian witches engage in incest.  If that feels like it came out of nowhere then yeah, I thought so too. In the middle of talking about proper British witchcraft we get this side trip to Brazil. 

Another unforgivable sin (if that word can be used) is that the Narrator (Alberto Bevilacqua) quotes Jacob Sprenger of the Malleus Maleficarum as an authority. 

Finnish witchcraft is shown to have a nubile nude witch submit to a cult leader as her future husband, chosen by the high priestess. 

It is all very Mondo with plenty of blood sacrifices.  There is a bit on Ted Serios and his psychic photography.  Mediums. Krishna Consciousness (which is entrapping all of America's youth!) and some more on Brazil.  Oh. and they spend some time on LaVey.  Plenty of nude women hanging around including LaVey's own daughter and future high priestess of her own sect. There are a few scenes in the LaVey piece that I am sure got in front of some of the artists of White Dwarf. 

And it ends with Cryonics, or the freezing your body after death.  Cause why not.  Even the start of the 70s was weird.  I guess their issue was the artificial extension of life. 
It feels like some Christian scare tract/documentary.  Better watch out those English witches will get you!

It has an X rating, but there is nothing here that I have not seen in a "TV-MA" series on Amazon or Netflix. 

Reading other reviews online I just watched the Italian version "Angeli Bianchi... Angeli Neri" (White Angel ...Black Angel), not the redubbed, re-edited "American" version. 

NIGHT SHIFT and Old-school Content:  A few notes.

I have had this game idea for a while now, Spirit of '76, that takes place in the summer of 1976.  It has a solid Americana feel to it and it is inspired as much by movies like "Smokey and the Bandit" and "Convoy" as it is "The Omen" and "It's Alive".  But this got me thinking of a similar idea, only maybe set in England during the end of the 60s, 1968 to 1972 in particular.  Something very Mod but with horror and supernatural elements.   I'd love to set it in London. 

Watched: 55
New: 39

Okay, lots going down over the next week, including Saturday’s Halloween Day Porch Sale, what would have been my grandmother’s 95th and my father-in-law’s 89th birthdays respectively, that much-promised Halloween full moon (which should be visible in the Dallas area … Continue reading →

It was really only a matter of time before I got around to posting this. 

One of my personal goals with NIGHT SHIFT was to be able to create any character, any situation, I could think of.  While I have dozens of characters I have created for NIGHT SHIFT I am only posting a few to show off the capabilities of the system.  Since we are getting to the end of Witch Week, this is a must post.

Following up on my 2018 Update of my witches I had them coming out of retirement to battle a bloated orange monster.   Looking over my recent posts of both NIGHT SHIFT characters and Baba Yaga from a couple nights ago, I wonder if maybe there is something else going on.  

What if Baba Yaga was targeting the girls of the Wayward Sisters so Jodie and Donna seek out the help of Rowena (who can't help them because she is in Hell) but instead gets them in touch with Charlie, who in turn leads them to Willow and Tara.   Feels like it could be a part of my War of the Witch Queens campaign set in modern times.  It would be appropriate.  I'd just have to figure out how to also work in the Charmed Ones!  

Why go through all that effort? Well to be honest it would take something this big to pull Willow & Tara out of their comfortable retirement. I honestly have not used these characters in anything of my home games in years. Baba Yaga, especially how I am thinking of revisioning her? Yeah. That is big.
Maybe that is one of the reasons the War of the Witch Queens starts, Baba Yaga is on some other world now. 

I digress.  Here are Willow and Tara in their 2020 versions.

Tara Rosenberg-Maclay
11th level Witch, Human

Strength: 12 (0)
Dexterity: 9 (0) 
Constitution: 12 (0)
Intelligence: 16 (+2) s
Wisdom: 18 (+3) P
Charisma: 16 (+2) s

HP: 34 (11d4)
AC: 9
Fate Points: 1d10

Check Bonus (P/S/T): +5/+3/+2
Melee bonus: +2  Ranged bonus: +2
Saves: +5 to spells and magical effects

Special Abilities: Arcana, Casting 105%, Telekinesis, Arcane bond (Willow), Innate Magic (Cure), Telepathic Transfer

Skills: Dance (Dex), Literature (Int), Research (Int), Theology (Int), Beast Whisperer (Wis)

Languages: English, Latin, Greek, Gaelic, 

Spells

1: Bless, Cure Light Wounds*,  Dancing Lights, Detect Evil
2: ESP, Locate Object, Produce Flame, Protection from Evil
3: Clairvoyance, Dispel Magic, Fly, Protection from Evil 10'
4: Cure Serious Wounds*, Dimensional Anchor, Restoration
5: Heal, Contact Higher Plane
6: Enchant Item

Willow Rosenberg-Maclay
12th level Witch, Human

Strength: 9 (0)
Dexterity: 11 (0) 
Constitution: 11 (0)
Intelligence: 18 (+3) P
Wisdom: 16 (+2) s
Charisma: 17 (+2) s

HP: 32 (11d4+2)
AC: 9
Fate Points: 1d10

Check Bonus (P/S/T): +6/+4/+2
Melee bonus: +2  Ranged bonus: +2
Saves: +5 to spells and magical effects

Special Abilities: Arcana, Casting 110%, Telekinesis, Arcane Bond (Tara), Enhanced Senses, Telepathic Transfer

Skills: Computers (Int) x2, Science (Int), Research (Int), Theology/Mythology (Int)

Languages: English, Latin, Greek, Hebrew

Spells

1: Chill Ray, Detect Evil, Detect Magic, Magic Missile
2: ESP, Invisibility, Produce Flame, Protection from Evil
3: Clairvoyance, Fly, Remove Blindness/Deafness, Speak w/ Dead
4: Arcane Eye, Daylight, Produce fire
5: Commune, Dispel Evil, Raise Dead
6: anti-magic Shell, Enchant Item

Yes. I can see these versions working out great, to be honest.  In fact, these versions feel just as "right" as the WitchCraft RPG versions and the official ones in the Buffy RPG (which I worked on anyway).  Looking over them again I maybe should have given them an extra level each.  They are retired, but I am certain they still managed to stay busy.

NIGHT SHIFT Characters

• Wayward Sisters (Supernatural)
• Charlie Bradbury (Supernatural)
• Rowen MacLeod (Supernatural)
• Wynnona Earp
• The Hex Girls (Scooby-doo)
• Larina "Nix" Nichols
• Elizabeth Bathory

Noah Berlatsky / October 30, 2020

This is a revision of a piece that originally ran on Noah Berlatsky’s Patreon.  

The Omen is generally considered a bleak film because the devil wins. But it’s even bleaker as a picture of who the devil is supposed to be, and what kind of measures are needed to defeat him.

The movie stars an aging but still virile Gregory Peck as Robert Thorn, the American ambassador to Britain and a close friend (and former roommate) of the U.S. president. When the film opens, Thorn’s substantially younger wife Kathy (Lee Remick) is in the hospital where she has just delivered and lost a baby in a Catholic Italian hospital. A priest suggests the couple substitute a baby whose mother has died at almost the same moment. Robert agrees without telling his wife, which is a mistake because the baby, Damien, is the spawn of hell. After Damien grows into a disturbingly smirking toddler (Harvey Spencer Stephens), the child quickly uses mysterious powers and malevolent allies to murder, in quick order, his governess, his unborn sibling, his mother, and Robert himself en route to the apocalypse and the extermination of the human race (the last two heavily foreshadowed albeit not quite accomplished at film’s end.)

As with most Hollywood movies that focus on politicians, The Omen carefully has no particular politics of its own. We never learn what party Robert belongs to, and his own geopolitical views are unspecified beyond a general opposition to allowing the antichrist to drown the world in blood. Despite this wishy-washy reticence, viewers can draw some conclusions about the movie’s view of righteous order from context. Director Richard Donner’s cinematography is tasteful and high class, as are the Thorn’s lifestyles and sumptuous residences. Servants are thick on the ground, and little Damien’s fourth birthday party is celebrated with all the casual opulence the American de facto peerage can muster, including but not limited to an apparently rented merry-go-round. The good, the normal, and the safely non-demonic status quo is represented by opulent high ceilings and expensive clothes draped upon the trophy wife, who in one scene tosses a lavish piece of outerwear upon the pricey floor in preparation for what will presumably be equally pricey and opulent intercourse. 

Into this paradise of privilege slides Damien, whose sin, like the fork in a snake’s tongue, is twofold. First, he’s a child, and America in 1976 was notably anxious about the next generation. The Omen‘s most direct predecessor, 1973’s The Exorcist, is less shy about drawing the connection between the demon in the daughter at home and the demon in the daughters and sons out there protesting in the streets. But even if Vietnam is never mentioned in The Omen, Damien’s revolutionary assault on his elders’ government seems congruent with the nation’s contemporary traumatic generational conflict. The demon child’s remote murders of his various adversaries show up as dark, shadowy predictions on photographs—a priest bisected by a dark line, a governess with a shadowy, inexplicable loop around her neck. The children are the future, and that future is one in which the confident, smug olds are harvested with a scythe of blood and documentary photography. 

Damien is not just evil because he’s young, though. He’s evil because he’s upwardly mobile. Damien has no birth and no breeding; he’s a presumptuous upstart who murders Robert’s infant heir and seizes the perks of power to which he has no right. It’s significant in this regard that Damien’s chief allies are servants. You’d think that, given a choice, the devil would subvert the wealthy and powerful to his cause. But those most drawn to him aren’t capitalists and kings, but service workers. The obsequious priest in the hospital in the opening scene is eager to bend the rules to get the American ambassador the child he wants. It is Damien’s first nanny (Holly Palance) who delivers to him the most enthusiastic paean he receives in the film, shouting “Damien! Damien! I love you!” as she hangs herself to make way for her equally devoted replacement, the malevolent Mrs. Baylock (Billie Whitelaw). The horror of The Omen is in large part a terror that all the people you pay to scrape and stoop are plotting your downfall from down there on their knees. 

In addition to the hired help, the devil’s other devoted acolytes are dogs; he is attended by a number of bristling Rottweilers. Damien’s association with animality is cemented in one of the film’s most striking images: in a barren cemetery, Robert opens the tomb of Damien’s mother as the camera, panning down, reveals the skeleton of a jackal. Damien was not born of a human woman; he’s of a different, fouler womb. The eugenic implications are that the elite are actually of a different species than the less fortunate. Damien is passing as rich, as white, and as human, all categories that are conflated with each other in a film that, not coincidentally, barely has a single person of color on screen during its entire run time.

Damien represents the young, the poor, and the non-white—all those in the outer darkness staring in at Robert’s immaculate top hat and Kathy’s blond coiffure. When Robert realizes the uncouth hordes have breached the gates, and the stray dog is actually in the living room, his eyebrows flex, his jaw clenches, and he turns to rabid homicidal conspiracy theories and Christian apocalypticism. Driven by the paranoid ramblings of priests and millenarian, vaguely anti-Semitic prophecy, he drags his four-year-old to the altar and prepares a ritual sacrifice. Faced with a challenge to its purity, power, and lines of succession, the humane, rational representative of cosmopolitan American power reaches immediately for the prop of religious zealotry, bending his upright angles to the bloody work of reaction and child murder.

Robert’s bid to murder his son for the greater glory of God and country is foiled by the authorities, who shoot him dead, little knowing they are contributing to their own doom. The last, now famous shot of The Omen is of Damien holding the hand of his new adoptive father, the U.S. president; the child turns towards the screen with an unsettling grin. The revolution has come, and all will change utterly. The American way of nice homes, genetic purity, and obedient servants will fall like the blade of a guillotine, or the pane of glass that Damien arranges to have slice through the neck of a meddlesome reporter. Change is apocalypse, and the defenders of the status quo must do all they can to resist it, even unto murdering their own children. 

Damien’s smile, though, was perhaps premature. The forces of reaction and Christian nationalism are not so easily overthrown. In retrospect, The Omen warned not of the devil’s child, but of those who hunted him—all those blank-eyed patriarchs and their long knives.

Noah Berlatsky is the author of Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics.

This one is a last-minute find.  I am going to have more to say on all my 5e reviews and how they might work together.  But for now, let's look at this one on its own merits. 

Witchcraft: Magic of Hereva (5e)
From Xacur

This one caught my eye with its very striking art. Downloaded and the art continues throughout the book and the layout and design are top-notch.  I do want to get into detail about the art, more so than other products I have reviewed, but first I want to talk about the 5e content.

The PDF is 121 pages for $13.00.  That might sound like a lot, but given my guidelines of 10 cents per page that is only a buck more.  So that is fine.  You also get a mobile version for your phone or tablet.

This looks like the first OGL book for this author, prior to this they have had some DMsGuild Titles. 

This witch appears to be based on the Web Comic "Pepper & Carrot" which helps explain the art. Again, more details on that in a bit.  But for playing purposes this is part class and part world guide. The world of Hereva to be precise. 

The Witch Class

The witch class presented in this PDF is a full 20 level caster.  They do get spells up the the 9th level, but they do not have the normal spell progression as say Wizards or Clerics. They have known Cantrips (max 4) and known spells (max 15). It is the same as the warlock, without the Invocations. They do get Spell Research starting at 11th level and something called Rea ("Reality") Points starting at 1st. Rea points to power your spells.   Doing some quick mental calculations this means that there are many spells that will tap out your Res points quickly.  This makes this spellcaster a bit underpowered compared to others. They do have some other powers though.

I supposed here it should be noted that this is not a generic Witch class, but rather a Witch of Hereva. 

This witch gets 1d8 hp per level and is a Charisma-based spellcaster.   You do get familiars, and they have a mechanical benefit to the characters.  

Witches of Hereva's archetypes or subclasses are known as Houses. A nice change from the others I have reviewed all month.  You get your House at 2nd level.  

These witches also can brew potions (3rd level) and get Broom riding at 5th level. 

There are six Witchcraft Houses. Each provides an additional list of spells and powers. Each also has its own special niche to cover in the world. 

There is a chapter on Player's Options. This includes a number of backgrounds. Most are specific to this world, but all can be altered as needed and easily done.  There are some Feats as well that fit both the world and the witch in general. 

The magic chapter has the witches' spell lists as well as 43 new spells. It also 74 new magic items for witches. Making this chapter a step above many of the other witch classes I have reviewed all month long. 

There are also two Appendices. The first covers Familiars. The second monsters. Both feature creatures that are unique to this world. 

We end with some art credits and the OGL.

The Art and Artist

I grabbed this product because of the art. It has a cool "Kiki's Delivery Service" vibe about it and that is something I have been wanting to play lately. I thought this might be the product to do that, but I was prepared to like it anyway if it wasn't.  

Since this is based on a webcomic I thought I should check it out. After all, the art here is fantastic.  The webcomic is "Pepper & Carrot", Pepper is the witch and Carrot is her cat familiar. It is created by David Revoy.  You can find him at davidrevoy.com and the comic at peppercarrot.com.

It was here I discovered that Revoy releases his comic into the public free as Open Source!  I mean wow. The comic is supported by his Patreon who charges per comic released. That is seriously cool. The comic looks fantastic and I am going to have to start reading it.   I went to his story to see if there was a paper/dead tree version of his comics, there are, and to see if there was a paper or even PDF version of this D&D 5 supplement.  There wasn't.  Ok, no big. Did some digging.

So according to this post the Witchcraft: Magic of Hereva (5e) was a Kickstarter project (again, no big deal) BUT the comic creator didn't know anything about it. He was not consulted or asked.  Now that all seems to be fine with Revoy, he released the comic as Open Source after all, so it fits with his overall philosophy.  There is a bit about how any new art created will be released back into the public domain via Creative Commons. That sounds nice and Revoy seems to take that as good enough.   The author of this game supplement Xacur did in fact do that.  But it was only two pieces of new art; a broom and a wand.  The Kickstarter for this PDF raised a little over $3,100.00.  You would think that most of that money would go for art, as typical for a Kickstarter, but all of the art was free/open source.

I can't help but think that this PDF adheres to the letter of Revoy's Open source philosophy while violating the spirit of it.  No mistake, the class is fun and the spells and magic items are very nice, but I was drawn to this product based on the art and style. That all belongs to someone else's vision.   Strip away what started with David Revoy and what is left?  Well. Mostly an underpowered warlock with some powers I have seen in various "Hedge Witch" products.  I mean the author didn't even have the decency to list Revoy as the artist on the DriveThruRPG page. Note: He is listed on the supplements for this class. 

Is this a playable class? Yes.  Is this a fun playable class? Absolutely.
Could have Xancur created this class without the influence of the webcomic? I don't think so.

But there is something here that I feel is a bit distasteful. I know that David Revoy is likely ok with all of this. But it feels a little off to me. 

Here are the links to David Revoy's sites.

• Pepper & Carrot comic, https://www.peppercarrot.com/
• David Revoy's Patreon, https://www.patreon.com/davidrevoy
• His Website, https://www.davidrevoy.com/
• His Post about the Kickstarter, https://www.davidrevoy.com/article728/derivation-witchcraft-rpg-supplement-on-kickstarter-by-xacur

In the end, you have to decide if this product is the one for you. 

Part 2 of my Halloween-themed Kickstarter round up.  Today I have mostly some comics. 

Brian Pulido's Newest: Hellwitch: Sacrilegious #1!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/brianpulido/brian-pulidos-newest-hellwitch-sacrilegious-1?ref=theotherside

Brian Pulido has assembled an all start group of comics writers, illustrators, and colorists to bring the latest in his Hellwitch Saga.  I have picked up a couple of these over the years, but have been looking to complete my collection.  This looks like a good way to do it. 

This is the same talent that brought us Lady Death. I will admit I have used more than a few things from these comics in my own versions of Hell for my games. 

Stake Presents: Jessamy #1

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/davidabyrne/stake-presents-jessamy-1?ref=theotherside

If vampires are more your speed then might I suggest meeting Jessamy from the world of Stake.

David A Byrne has also brought us an A-Level team for this comic.   I know less about it, but the art is fantastic. 

Looking forward to reading more on this one too.

And finally!

Elvira's New Comic Book Quarantine Special!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dynamiteent/elviras-new-comic-book-quarantine-special?ref=theotherside

Do I really need to remind everyone here how much I love Elvira? No? Good.

It's Elvira. She has a comic from Dynamite Entertainment. That's all I need!

Cabin Risotto Fever is an investigative horror scenario set in the depths of winter in Canada, involving a missing academic or two, an Italian antiquary, and a bone warming dinner. If the scenario is run as written, then the Game Master will have prepared said dinner and actually dish up during play! As with other scenarios from Games Omnivorous, Cabin Risotto Fever is a system agnostic scenario, but unlike previous scenarios—The Feast on Titanhead and The Seed before it, it takes place in the modern world rather than a fantasy one. Specifically, northern Canada in 1949. However, just like The Feast on Titanhead and The Seed before it, Cabin Risotto Fever adheres to the Manifestus Omnivorous, the ten points of which are:

1. All books are adventures.
2. The adventures must be system agnostic.
3. The adventures must take place on Earth.
4. The adventures can only have one location.
5. The adventures can only have one monster.
6. The adventures must include saprophagy or osteophagy.
7. The adventures must include a voracious eater.
8. The adventures must have less than 6,666 words.
9. The adventures can only be in two colours.
10. The adventures cannot have good taste. (This is the lost rule.)

As we have come to expect for scenarios from Games Omnivorous, Cabin Risotto Fever adheres to all ten rules. It is an adventure, it is system agnostic, it takes place on Earth, it has one location, it has the one monster (though like the older scenarios, those others that appear are extensions of it), it includes Osteophagy—the practice of animals, usually herbivores, consuming bones, it involves a voracious eater, the word count is not high—the scenario only runs to twenty-eight pages, and it is presented in two colours—in this case, tangerine and black. Lastly, Cabin Risotto Fever does lack good taste—though that will either be ameliorated or exaggerated by the quality of the scenario’s singular handout and how the players and their characters react to it.

It is 1949, and Professor Martin D. Ernst from the Department of Anthropology at Schuylkill University has led an expedition into the wilds of northern Labrador in order to locate and explore an ancient Algonquian ritual site. The expedition is funded by Italian antiquarian, Rubicondo Bronzetti, who also accompanies the expedition, as does Professor Ernst’s researcher, Solomon Silverberg. It is three weeks since the expedition has been heard from, and a team of rescuers is being sent to check on them. The scenario suggests a Forest Ranger and his apprentice, another professor of anthropology, and a native shaman. It outlines the basics of the four Player Characters, all of whom should be easy to create using the roleplaying game of the Game Master’s choice. In fact, Cabin Risotto Fever could be run straight from these descriptions should a playing group want a very light game in terms of its mechanics.

What Cabin Risotto Fever does include mechanically, is rules for handling Sanity. These require four tokens per Player Character. When a Player Character sees, hears, or experiences something weird or unsettling, the Player Character’s player rolls a six-sided die. If the result is less than the number of tokens the Player Character has, the Player Character suffers a minor panic attack and looses a token. The Player Character may also learn a piece of random information pertinent to the situation in Cabin Risotto Fever. At two tokens, and then at one token, the Player Character suffers a worse panic attack and another effect, determined by the roll of an eight-sided die on the included table. These effects range from attacking a fellow Player Character to a case of unfortunate micturition. Of course, should a Player Character lose all of his tokens, then he becomes an NPC.

Cabin Risotto Fever requires some set-up, some of it traditional, some of it less so. It is suggested that the playing space be lit with candles for atmosphere and that a fast and light roleplaying game be used to prevent any impediment to roleplaying. That is the traditional. The non-traditional is the preparation of the risotto that is the scenario’s singular handout—or is that dishout?—or prop, that should be served during the play of the scenario. The recipe for the risotto al midollo in full is included in the scenario.

The focus for Cabin Risotto Fever is the cabin—as much as it is the risotto. Here the Player Characters will encounter the expedition, its members surprised to see them, but welcoming all the same and happy to invite them to dinner. Events will play out as the Player Characters poke around the cabin and interact with their hosts, some of them random, and of course, the horror of the situation slowly dawning upon them. The likelihood of course, is that the players will realise what has happened, but not their characters—and it is their realisation the players are roleplaying and reacting in horror to.

Physically, like The Feast on Titanhead and The Seed before it, Cabin Risotto Fever is well presented. It is darker and gloomier in tone given its choice of colours. The single location of the cabin is mapped out inside the separate cover. The map is detailed, but suffers a little from forced perspective. Some of the chosen fonts are a little difficult to read, but overall, Cabin Risotto Fever is easy to read. The illustrations have a heavy oppressive feel and many can easily be shown to the players during play. It needs a slight edit in places, but is overall quite a sturdy product, being done on heavy paper and card stock.

As with other scenarios which adhere to the Manifestus Omnivorous manifesto, Cabin Risotto Fever is nasty, brutal, and short, it being possible to play through the scenario and even survive in a single session. It is also easy to run using a wide variety of roleplaying games. The most obvious one is Lamentations of the Flame Weird Fantasy Roleplay, another is the publisher’s own 17th Century Minimalist: A Historical Low-Fantasy OSR Rulebook, but with some adjustment it would work with Cthulhu by Gaslight or a darker toned version of Leagues of Gothic Horror for use with Leagues of Adventure: A Rip-Roaring Setting of Exploration and Derring Do in the Late Victorian Age!. Take it away from its European setting and Cabin Risotto Fever would work well with Mörk Borg as they share a similar tone and sensibility.

Whether used as a one-shot, or added to a campaign, Cabin Risotto Fever is easy to prepare and set-up for a night’s single session of juicy, meaty horror. Indeed, the only thing difficult to set up is the risotto itself. 

Slight interlude: as promised, the YouTube channel has been updated with work that really needed to be posted a while back. In the interim, I hope you enjoy Pitcher Plants In Moonlight and Texas Triffid Ranch at NARBC Arlington. With … Continue reading →

Demon Witch Child (1975)

Another one that has been on my list for a while now.  I had it on tap for 2018, but for some reason, I never got around to it.  I think I just forgot about it. Actually, it is perfect for this year and right now.

Before I get into the plot, such that it is, I want to talk about what this movie represents.  All month long I have been focused on the time period in Europe, and mostly Italian and Spanish cinema, just right before the Exorcist hit.  The sweet spot for me has been 1971 to 1973.  Now maybe someday I'll do a post Exorcist run of movies, but until then this is the film that I will hold up as Exhibit A as to the effect the Exorcist had on filmmaking. 

Demon Witch Child, aka The Possessed and La Endemoniada, has a pedigree of sorts.  Marián Salgado who plays Susan, the titular "Demon Witch Child," was the Spanish voice actress for Linda Blair's Regan in the Exorcist.  So she was handpicked by director Amando de Ossorio for his Exorcist rip-off, er, homage.   The fact that she also bears some similar facial features to the old witch played by Tota Alba helps.

The Exorcist influences are all over this movie.  Susan crawls around, her body (not just head) spins around 180 degrees. She swears, she makes rude sexual comments all the time, she speaks in different languages (though we never hear them).  And it is all a little weird. I honestly got the feeling that the movie was written one way, but when the Exorcist hit more was added. 

An old witch desecrates a church and is arrested.  She is suspected of kidnapping a baby, but instead of talking she throws herself out of a window.  Her daughter (played by Kali Hansa who also spent some of time working with Jess Franco, including one of his hardcore outings, Weiße Haut und schwarze Schenkel, 1976) witnesses this and decides to curse the daughter of a local politician, Susan. 

Susan it seems is now possessed by the spirit of the dead old witch. The make-up effects are pretty good and do a good job of making Marián Salgado look like Tota Alba.  

Sadly the movie goes nowhere really.  Susan sacrifices babies, eats them,  gets people killed, murders a reporter, and comments on how well hung he is before castrating him. But there is also a surprising lack of gore or nudity for the time.  There is a subplot with a priest, our would-be exorcist, how before he became a priest he was engaged.  It is all very random in places. 

This is not the only movie I have seen from the time that suffers a lot from comparisons to The Exorcist, but this one of the most glaring ones. 

Watched: 52
New: 36

NIGHT SHIFT and Old-School ContentPossession is always fun in a game. Unless you happen to be the one possessed.  While this movie was obviously about demonic possession they can be other types.  Based on similar tales, I posted about the Eretica Vampire a few years back.  I even used a still from this movie.
Eretica (Vampire)No. Appearing: 1AC: 6Move: 40ft.Hit Dice: 7Special: 2 attacks (claws, bite), Mind control, Strong and Fast, Witch spells, blood drain.XP VALUE: 750 
Eretica are the spirits of dead witches who possess the living, turning them into a sort of living vampire.
Unlike the typical Vampire, these creatures cannot Polymorph and cannot create new vampires.  In their host form, they can also move about during the day and are immune to holy items.  In their "possessed" form they have all the standard weaknesses of vampires. They can witch spells at the 4th level of experience.

We’re finally coming upon the end of the growing season here in Dallas, aggravated by the surprisingly cold temperatures of the last week in OCTOBER. One more Porch Sale on October 31, and then the tents go into storage, the … Continue reading →

Ok, this is not a witch RPG per se, but that is not going to stop me.  

Also, this one appeared on my doorstep and I have no idea if I ordered it, if it was sent to me, or what. I looked back and I have no interaction with the author or the company Strange Machine Games (SMG).  

So let's get into it.

Charm RPG
by Jeff Mechlinski, illustrations bt Yimi Jian "Meammy"

Charm is a "universal" RPG designed to be quick and usable across any genre or playstyle.  It advertises itself as being portable enough to keep your character sheet in your pocket and use a dice roller app to play.

For this review, I am considering both the softcover physical book and the PDF.  The book is 158 pages, 8" x 8" format. The covers are color, the interior art is black & white.

A quick note about the art. I like it, it does have a comic-book, almost anime style to it, but it also fits the game well. 

The first 40 pages cover the basic rules and the remaining 100 or so cover the seven different sample "worlds" you can play in.  

The rules are pretty simple, roll a d20 (sometimes with a d6) to get over a particular Target Number set by the GM.  Greater levels of success or failure result in added effects.  Rolls can be modified.  You add the d6 when your character is particularly good at something. 

Characters regardless of the Power Level of the game are assumed to be good at what they do.  So out of the gate this game is going to have a more "Cinematic" feel to it.  A thief will almost always be able to break into a place or steal something for example.  Rolling occurs only when there is a chance of failure, combat (or other opposed rolls) or the GM needs it.  

The Challenge Threshold, or target numbers, are pretty easy to use and memorize, so players and GMS will catch on very quickly.  The levels are all multiples of 3, so abstraction of the rules is easy.

Characters are built using some basic abilities in a way that reminds me of Fate, but a little crunchier.  To me this is a GOOD thing. I find Fate a little too fluffy for my needs. This includes the use of a similar term, Aspects. At first level you have three aspects rated at 4, 3 and 2 points.  As you level up you can add points to these or gain new aspects. A list of sample aspects is given with guidelines on what else can work.

And that is it.  Not difficult to learn and certainly very easy to play the first time.  Get together with some friends, decide on a world and then make characters with various aspects. You are ready to go.

While not as crunchy as say GURPS it is crunchier than Fate or FUDGE.  I'd put it just south of True 20 and Unisystem in that regard.

The seven sample scenarios are:

•  Action 5 News: You are the city's most elite local news team! It isn't easy staying on top. You'll need to pull together all your guile and charisma to keep the number 1 spot.
•  Temporal Raiders: Travel time, seeking the ultimate heist. Ally with powerful historical figures, change history, be your own grandfather. What could go wrong?
•  Dustbound: Take on the role of a god-touched gunslinger in a bleak world of dust and decay. Fight Oni, rival gunslingers, and vengeful townsfolk.
•  Mystery Incorporated: Jeepers, guys.  Play as a gang of kids, or possibly a lovable pet, who solve mysteries using their astonishing meddling abilities.
•  Pact of Night: Small town woes meet big monster drama. Play a Vampire or Werewolf as you balance your life with the humans during the day and beasts at night.
•  Onitech: You exist in a high-tech world ruled by demon masters. Civility has superseded morality, leading to a perverted and deadly state of affairs.
•  Asylum Reflections: In Victorian London, people are being replaced with mirrored doubles. Uncover the duplicitous mystery in this dark world.  

Actually, these all sound like a lot of fun.  I have to admit it was the Action 5 News that really grabbed me at first.  In this one, you are not likely to get into deadly combat, but your social "hit points" could take some damage.  No they don't call them "hit points" but that is my translation to my readers.  I will admit, years ago I tinkered with a True 20 idea of newspaper reporters, tabloid writers and news bloggers as a game. When Fate came around I tried it in that too.  Never really got it to jell the way I wanted.  Action 5 News though does this now for me.  A few EASY tweaks, and to be fair all tweaks in this game are easy, and I can run it like I was planning some 20 years ago.
Mystery Incorporated practically jumps off the page and begs me to run something with it. 
If I had a complaint at all it is that book makes me jump all over the place to get the information I need.  For example there are lot of "see page XX" (no actual xx though, they do have page numbers.)So reading about Power Level on page 11 I need to jump to page 25 to get information on aspects. There are a few of these. Now to be fair you quickly figure out where things are and how to get to them fast.  But maybe a character creation flowchart might be nice for first time players.
Still, there is a lot to like about this game.

It's Supernatural Thursday of Witch Week and that can only mean one thing; let's do some NIGHT SHIFT stats for Rowena MacLeod.

Spoilers up to Season 15 follow.


What is there not to love about Rowen? She is a badass redhead witch who gave the Winchesters a run for their money for seven seasons. She was the big bad for Season 10. She was born in the 17th Century Scotland, she is a pagan and is the mother of the former King of Hell, Crowley.  Now she is the Queen of Hell.  She only "died" because she needed to turn herself into a giant ghost bomb.
There were a lot of magic-using characters in Supernatural as well as a lot of them that were witches, but Rowena was the most powerful. 
Rowena MacLeod
15th level Witch, Human

Strength: 12 (0)
Dexterity: 13 (+1) 
Constitution: 15 (+1)
Intelligence: 18 (+3) P
Wisdom: 17 (+3) s
Charisma: 20 (+4) s

HP: 52 (11d4+8)
AC: 8
Fate Points: 1d10

Check Bonus (P/S/T): +7/+5/+3
Melee bonus: +3  Ranged bonus: +3
Saves: +6 to spells and magical effects

Special Abilities: Arcana, Casting 125%, Charm Person, Enhanced Senses, Pre-cognition, Innate Magic (Raise Dead, self only), Suggestion

Skills: Sleight of Hand (Dex), Body Control (Con), History (Int), Research (Int), Theology/Myth (Int), Convince/Deceive (Cha)

Languages: English, Latin, Greek, Gaelic, 

Spells

1: Bane, Command, Disrupt Undead, Inflict Light Wounds, Sleep  
2: Cause Fear, ESP, Hold Person, Locate Object, Suggestion
3: Cause Blindness/Deafness, Curse, Fly, Remove Curse
4: Arcane Eye, Cure Serious Wounds, Inflict Serious Wounds, Produce Fire
5: Dismissal, Finger of Death, Harm, Raise Dead*
6: Disintegrate, Enchant Item, Projected Image
7: Death Aura, Draw forth the Soul
8: Wail of the Banshee

I will admit. I adore Rowena.  She was a fantastic enemy AND ally of the Winchesters, and I would have loved to see a little of Rowena's and Charlie's road trip. That would have been a lot of fun.   

If I am serious about running a Wayward Sisters game, Rowena will have to show up. Dead? That never stopped her before!  And we know that Rowena/Ruth supports the Wayward cause!

 

Ruthie Connell is an absolute delight.  I can't wait to see what she does next.

Links

• Wikipedia
• Supernatural Wiki
• Supernatural Fandom Wiki
• Villains Wiki

Reviews / October 29, 2020

Invitation to Hell
Directed by Wes Craven
ABC (1984)

Last year, my esteemed editor-in-chief delivered me a Halloween treat for our Tubular Terrors series in the form of The Night Stalker. My overall lack of familiarity with the made-for-TV horrors of yesteryear led to another recommendation this year, and it was just as enjoyable as skulking around 1970s Las Vegas with Carl Kolchak. But the sunlit suburbs of Wes Craven’s 1984 Invitation to Hell hide just as many demonic horrors—and conspiracies among the ruling class—as the shadowy, vampire-stalked alleyways of Las Vegas’s sleazy eternal night.

Invitation to Hell (Wes Craven’s previous made-for-TV horror was the 1978 Linda Blair vehicle Stranger in Our House) definitely follows on well-trod thematic ground, examining the American nuclear family’s impulse to conform and keep up with the Joneses in suburbia. But it’s on the execution, in the casting, and in a few of the left-field plot developments that the film really shines. Robert Urich and Joanna Cassidy play Matt and Pat Winslow, a married couple with the requisite pair of kids, Robbie and Chrissy (Barret Oliver of D.A.R.Y.L., Cocoon, and The NeverEnding Story and Soleil Moon Frye of Punky Brewster), and the obligatory dog moving into a brand new planned community as Matt takes a new job at the believably-ludicrously-named firm Micro-DigiTech. Matt is working on a new spacesuit for NASA’s exploration of Venus (not only is it temperature resistant to the thousands of degrees, but it can also identify non-human life; unsurprisingly, these details will become very important later in a unique case of Chekhov’s Spacesuit).

The Winslows’ beat-up station wagon literally runs into the town car of the woman who seems to really run this community: head of the local Steaming Springs Country Club, Jessica Jones (played by All My Children star Susan Lucci). The Winslows are soon drawn into the inevitable peer pressure to “join the club,” which, yes, ends up being a Satanic coven where the wealthy members of the club are replaced by doppelgängers from Hell. Matt ends up becoming the de facto resistance to this infernal conspiracy as his work colleagues get “promotions,” loyal secretaries are killed in mysterious accidents, and eventually the members of his own family are replaced by their evil demonic duplicates.

Again, this is all pretty bog-standard stuff that’s been explored since the very beginnings of American postwar suburbia: we’ve seen it from Invasion of the Body Snatchers to The Twilight Zone and back again by this point. If the Reagan 1980s jostle alongside Eisenhower’s 1950s as the collective psychological emblems of our Cold War material bounty (and the neuroses that come along with it), then it’s no surprise that we’d see a reflection of the same social-parable B movies just as “morning in America” is dawning. But this is the ’80s, and times have changed. From the very outset of Invitation to Hell, the creeping presence of technology is as much a sinister undertone as the impulses towards conformity and upward mobility. From the very first minutes, we see Robbie staying up late playing a hand-held video game (later smashed up by one of the neighborhood’s bratty demonic kids) and Matt’s habit of bringing his work home, impelling Pat to complain, “I want this house to be a home. Not a lab.” Later on, as Matt’s paranoia ramps up, he finds a seemingly hypnotized neighbor kid over at the house for a sleepover smiling in front of the television—not in front of static as in 1982’s Poltergeist but in front of violent riot footage. Matt’s first secretary at work suspects something is wrong with all the people who’ve received promotions at Micro-DigiTech; she hands Matt the pertinent HR files on a giant computer tape. All around Invitation to Hell, the ways in which surveillance, automation, and computers are beginning to intrude upon family life in the 1980s abound.

The brand new home that the Winslows move into also becomes demonically-possessed in a way. Full of the family’s more old-fashioned furniture and decor at the beginning, Pat redecorates it in a severely dark and angular 1980s style, laden with all the modern amenities, once Pat and Robbie and Chrissy become “members of the club” without Matt’s knowledge. All around the country in the 1980s, the often homespun aesthetic embraced by Boomers in the 1970s as a post-hippie reaction to their plastic childhoods began to shift to something more aspirational, sophisticated, and urbane. This transformation is foreshadowed early in the film—before Pat’s demonic replacement!—with Pat stating that she wants to redecorate to make this house look like a home, not “a fraternity house.” “We’re grown up now,” she says. “You work for a big corporation.” Of course, Pat’s hope for a “pretty and bright” home is subverted when you see it looks like something out of an ’80s music video—or the films of David Lynch or Tim Burton.

Pat wants to keep up with the neighbors, which leads to her being seduced by Jessica into membership at Steaming Springs. The family (minus the suspicious Matt) undergoes a creepy “initiation” ceremony in the resort’s springs, which is actually a literal portal to Hell locked behind a giant steel door (with, of course, electronic keypad lock). The idea of locating the town’s demonic clique at a country club is a deeply resonant American trope by this time, but the prominent and conspicuous addition of a health club and spa to the country club’s social matrix shouldn’t be ignored. In the 1980s, physical fitness was peaking throughout America, and while jogging had been a fad since the 1970s, the next decade saw more and more Americans buying memberships to pricey private health clubs. Locating the sinister impulse to conformity within a palace of fitness and health might be one of Invitation to Hell‘s more subtle and successful horror metaphors, especially considering so many other ’80s horror films did so either exploitatively or gruesomely.

It’s really only in the final act that Invitation to Hell somewhat falls apart. As Matt discovers his family are seemingly forever replaced with their evil duplicates, he takes the fight right to Steaming Springs and Jessica. Filching his experimental space suit from the lab at work, Matt gate-crashes the club’s Halloween party (where the guests favor costumes as conspicuously evil as honest-to-God SS uniforms!) and makes his way down to the steel doorway leading to “the springs.” There he actually physically enters Hell. I was still under the impression that there might be a twist, and Jessica and her doubles might be aliens from Venus themselves, or robots—but the shadowy Gustave Doré-like caverns and the cries of the damned (including Matt’s coworkers and family) convey neatly that Matt is about to follow Orpheus, Aeneas, and Dante into the depths. And at the very bottom of this TV-movie Hell? Well, it turns out that it looks an awful lot like suburbia (the suburban street grid that Matt falls into, shot in negative film, actually looks a bit like a circuit board). In a mist-cloaked replica of the Winslow family home (empty of all furniture except a piano that Pat must play eternally), Pat, Robbie, and Chrissy are trapped in laser-lit circles, which Matt can only break through by reasserting his familial  love for (and patriarchal control of) his family. They escape, of course, and Jessica—who tries and fails to seduce Matt into abandoning his family—is defeated. The Winslows teleport home to find the country club in flames after the Halloween party.

Whatever mawkishness the ending might possess, and despite the overall simplicity of the film’s message, there’s a lot to love about Invitation to Hell. Susan Lucci manages to convey real menace without chewing the scenery, portraying a sort of 1980s glad-handing, professional-class noblesse oblige that hides an iron fist underneath. It’s only when she’s forced to become a run-of-the-mill succubus that her character becomes uninteresting. In a pre-credit sequence at the very beginning of the film, she mercilessly combusts a limo driver who accidentally runs her over; in the aftermath of the explosion, her perfectly-poised big hair, makeup, and wardrobe say more in a few seconds than any clumsy exposition: Jessica is a confident, powerful, shoulder-padded coven leader for the Eighties. After getting used to Robert Urich in hardboiled TV series like Vega$ and Spencer: For Hire (as well as his turn as a world-weary cop investigating cattle mutilations in Endangered Species), it’s hard to buy this tough guy as a middle-management, Lacoste-wearing tech nerd. His transition to third-act quasi-badass seems almost like a fait accompli. But the scene where Soleil Moon Frye portrays a possessed Chrissie sitting in the middle of the dark and severely redecorated Winslow living room disemboweling her beloved stuffed bunny with a crowbar (!!!) throbs with real eerie energy. The synth soundtrack also gives the film a potent underscore of the technological paranoia telegraphed but never quite delivered upon by the film’s final act. Unsurprisingly, it’s mostly swapped out for an orchestral score during the scenes in Hell.

Wes Craven, for the most part, delivers the goods in Invitation to Hell, a funny little parable from a year of paranoia that occasionally punches above its B-movie lineage to deliver some real thrills and thought-provoking themes.

—Michael Grasso

Here we are at the end of all my 5e Witch class reviews.  I was saving this one for last just because it is so complete and there is so much here.  

Again, I am following my own rules for reviewing these; I want to stay fair. 

Hidden Oddities, A Witch’s Primer
By Eva M. Brown

Hidden Oddities is a monster of a book.  At 154 pages for a single class it has my attention.  Also at 154 pages, no point in figuring out how much is content vs. title, ogl and the like.  It is a beast of a book.

This book rivals any other published book for the D&D 5 game or any other game.  The layout is great, with crisp easy to read text. The artwork is fantastic.  And the authors know their OGL.  I should really just say "Author".  While it looks like Eva M. Brown surrounded herself with a great team to work on this, it is obvious from the reading that this is a single voice and author vision. 

Up first is a Foreword and it becomes obvious that this book is just more than a witch class. There is a bit of world-building going on as well.  This can only be a good thing in my mind.   There are Seven Chapters in this book. 

Chapter 1 covers the Introduction, what this book is about and the list of Kickstarter backers.

Chapter 2 is the Witch Class.  There are little quotes and “magical text” all throughout the book that really gives it a nice feel.  Break the code of the magical text for more information!

And in a bit of “magic text” of my own, “yes Eva, I do think we will be great friends!”

We start off in a place I think it great.  Background.  There are also d6 tables of “I Became  A Witch Because…”, a d6 table of “We Whisper to Each Other By…”, “Our Relationship Is…” and “My Curios Are…”  This is great stuff and perfect not just for EVERY D&D5/DMsGuild Witch I have reviewed but nearly every witch I can think of (and that is a lot is I can be so bold).

An aside. Curios are a great idea. I love them. I wish I had come up with them first.

The witch is a full 20 levels spellcaster. She can’t use armor and has 1d6 HD.

Instead of getting spell slots the witch gets curios, which are tiny mundane object that can store spells.  The witch records her spells in her spell book but uses that knowledge to charge her curios.  The witch gains two spells per level (four at level 1) of any spell level she can cast, half her own level rounded up.  This means the witch can know up to 42 spells. She can only cast the number of spells as she has curios.

The witch also gains an otherworldly companion. These are roughly the same as Familiars, but can be more than just animals.  The witch’s other worldly companion teaches the witch, Witch Script. It is invisible to all non-witches save for when detect magic is cast on it.

The Witch Archetypes are known as Sacred Secrets. There are also some powers known as Arcane Wonders.  

Between these, the different types of otherworldly companions and the various types of Curios, there should be an unlimited variety of witches one can create with this book.

Chapter 3 covers the Sacred Secrets.  Each one has their own background, Arcane Wonders and other powers.  Again, these are treated like subclasses, Traditions, or Covens in other books.  There are 14 of these and are all quite details have a lot of great potential.

Chapter 4 (mis-labeled Chapter 3 in text) are Additional Options.  This is a great chapter and one often forgotten about by other authors of Witch classes (including myself on occasion) and that is other archetypes for other classes.  There is a new Druid Circle, a Fighter Archetype, A Paladin Oath, a Ranger Archetype, and a Wizard Tradition. There are also new backgrounds, complete with personality traits, ideals, bonds, and flaws, for any class.

This chapter also has a number of new feats and some new equipment.

Chapter 5 gives us Spells.  Here there are 111 new spells. Overtly for witches they can be used by other classes as well.  Some of these spells share the same or similar names with spells I have written, enough to make me do a double take.  But it is obvious from reading them that these are not used OGC, merely the result of both Eva Brown and myself reading a lot of the same source materials.  Which in a way is really cool.

Chapter 6 Lore is our world-building chapter. Here we get some organizations the could belong too, or are against the witches. Even if you only use them as ideas or seeds there is a lot here to add to any game.   Membership, leaders (some detailed), goals and headquarters are all detailed.   Nine such organizations are detailed here.

The Appendices cover how to choose a companion, what equipment you might need and the roles of the witch. 

Additionally, there is art information and a Witch’s Script translation guide.  OGL and a four-page Character sheet.

While this might not be my favorite 5e Witch class, it is my favorite 5e Witch book.  There is just so much here that is great and really grabs my imagination.

I mentioned before that the art is great, but it really needs to be re-said.  This is a great book.

You can also get the Character Sheet for PWYW.  It works nicely with other witch classes as well.

Baba Yaga (1975)
I started watching this one a couple of years ago, but for some reason, I never finished it.  I kept meaning to come back to it but never did.  Next thing I knew Amazon Prime no longer listed it.  So I picked up the Blue Underground BluRay of it.  I always enjoy Blue Underground's DVDs and BluRays, so when I saw they had this one I knew I better jump on it.  
So glad I did.  Blue Underground is now listing it as Out of Print.  If the years of doing this October Challenge has taught me anything it is to jump on the movie when you can, I have lost track of all the ones that have gone out of print or have become unavailable over the years. 
Carroll Baker plays a very haunting version of Baba Yaga, one is immediately reminded of Delphine Seyrig's Elizabeth Báthory from "Daughters of Darkness".  Isabelle De Funès plays Valentina, a photographer in Milan. They meet when Baba Yaga's car nearly hits Valentina while she is petting a stray dog.
After Baba Yaga takes a clip from Valentina's garter belt some strange things start to happen.   Valentina goes to Baba Yaga's home and it is wonderfully creepy. Full of strange antiques, seemingly bottomless wholes, and a doll wearing S&M gear. Though when photographed it is wearing a normal doll's dress.   There are times too when the doll seems to come to life (played by Ely Galleani).  
There is also a clear plastic phone that I am sure was the coolest thing ever in 1975.
When Valentina's models start to get hurt or die she begins to suspect that Baba Yaga might be a witch. 
The movie is slow. No doubt. And it tries to be experimental in places, various hallucinations or visions of fascism or even silent German horror films. But it does have a nice creepy vibe and you never really know what is real or not. 
The story is based on the Italian comic, or fumetti, Valentina by Guido Crepax.  The movie even features some of the art from the comics in the credits and the actors can be seen paging through some of the comics.  Isabelle De Funès certainly has the look of Valentina down.  She looks like she walked right off the page, to be honest. 
The movie is listed as 91 minutes on IMDB, but my BluRay is 83 minutes.  There are some cut scenes on the BluRay that add up to the missing time.  But I am not sure if they are the same missing minutes or not.   They don't really add anything to the movie really. 

Watched: 51
New: 35

NIGHT SHIFT and Old-School ContentMovies about Baba Yaga in English are so rare. This one was dubbed into English from Italian, so rarer still.  This is not your Russian Grandmother's Baba Yaga. This Baba Yaga drives Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud not a mortar and pestle.  The ancient myths of Baba Yaga were about an old witch that devoured or sometimes protected young girls.  The Swinging 70s Baba Yaga is an older woman that preys on younger women in a carnal way. What would a 21st Century Baba Yaga be like?  Maybe a powerful businesswoman, who employs a number of young beautiful women. Likely models or maybe webcam girls.  In the modern retelling, she is not a predator that eats or seduces the young women, but rather uses them up in other ways. Maybe something like I did with Willow & Tara: Web of Lies.

Let's go with one I have had since the Summer.  I love the concept and can't wait to see what I do with it.

Kids on Brooms

Before I get too far into this review I want to start off by saying how much I love the art by Heather Vaughan.  It just fits, or more importantly sets, the tone of this book.  This could have been a cheap "Harry Potter" knock off, but Vaughan's art makes it feel darker and more dangerous.  The kids in her art have power, but they also have fear, and even a little hope. So kudos to Vaughan for really setting this book up for success from the cover and into the book.

Again for this review, I am considering the PDF from DriveThruRPG and the physical copy I picked up at my FLGS.

The game is 96 pages, roughly digest-sized. The art is full color and used to great effect.  The layout is crisp and clean and very easy to read.

Kids on Brooms (KoB) is a new (newish) game from the same team that gave us Kids on Bikes. Authors Doug Levandowski and Jonathan Gilmour with artist Heather Vaughan. New to the team is author Spenser Starke.  If Kids on Bikes was "Stranger Things" inspired then the obvious inspiration here for Kids on Brooms is Harry Potter.  If it were only a Harry Potter pastiche then there would be nothing to offer us.  

The game follows in the footsteps of many newer games in that narrative control is shared. The players help decide what is going on.  So our Session 0 for this game is to have the players come up with their school.  This can be just about anything to be honest, Harry Potter's Hogwarts is the obvious model, but I also got some solid Night School from Chilling Adventures of Sabrina as well. Also, I could see a Breakbills Academy easily being created here, though the characters in Magicians were older.  These students are very much of the 12+, highschool age, variety. 

The players create their school and even provide some background history and some rumors. It all looks rather fun to be honest.  This section starts with the first of many questionnaires to do your world-building.  None are very long, but they are rather helpful to have. I should point out that prior to this school building you are tasked with setting the boundaries of the gameplay. What is and what is not involved.  A LOT of people think this is a means to stifle creativity. It is not. It is a means to keep everyone at the table comfortable and playing what they want.  I mean a drug-fueled sex party prior to a big magical battle is not something you would find in Harry Potter, but it is the exact sort of thing that happens in Magicians or Sabrina.  

Something else that is a nice added touch is talking about the systems of power in the game world. So figuring out things like "This form of bigotry exists (or doesn't) in the game world and is different/same/better/worse than the real world."  To quote Magicians, "magic comes from pain." Happy people in that world are not spell-casters. Quentin, the star, was depressive and suicidal. The other characters had their own issues, or as Quentin would say "we are fucked in our own ways, as usual."  To ignore this page is to rob your game of something that makes your world fuller.

Character creation is equally a group effort, though the mechanic's piece of it is largely up to the player. The player selects one of the Tropes from the end of the book, these are only starting points and are more flexible than say a D&D Class. You introduce your character (after all they are young and this is the first day of class) and then you answer some questions about your character to build up the relationships.

Mechanics wise your six abilities, Brains, Brawn, Fight, Flight, Charm, and Grit are all given a die type; d4 to d20, with d10 being average.  You roll on these dice for these abilities to get above a target number set by the Game Master. 

As expected there are ways to modify your rolls and even sometimes get a reroll (a "Lucky Break").  The "classes" (not D&D, but academic levels) also gain some benefits.  You also gain some strengths and flaws. So if it sounds like there are a lot of ways to describe your character then yes! There is. 

There is a chapter on Magic and this game follows a streamlined version of the Mage-like (as opposed to D&D-like, or WitchCraftRPG-like) magic system.  You describe the magic effect and the GM adjudicated how it might work.  Say my witch Taryn wants to move a heavy object. Well that would be a Brawn roll, but I say that since her Brawn is lower and instead I think her Grit should come into play.  So that is how it works. Rather nice really.

At this point, I should say that you are not limited to playing students. You can also play younger faculty members too.

 Filling out the details of your character involves answering some questions and getting creative with other ideas. You also fill out your class schedule, since there are mechanical benefits to taking some classes.

The mechanics as mentioned are simple.  Roll higher than the difficulty. Difficulty levels are given on page 45, but range from 1 to 2 all the way up to 20 or more. Rolls and difficulties can be modified by almost anything. The first game might involve the looking up of mods and numbers for a bit, but it gets very natural very quickly.  As expected there are benefits to success above and beyond the target difficulty numbers and consequences for falling short of the numbers. 

Some threats are covered and there is a GM section.  But since a lot of the heavy lifting on this game is in the laps of the players the GM section is not long.

There is also a Free Edition of Kids on Brooms if you want to see what the game is about.  It has enough to get you going right away.

This game is really quite fantastic and there is so much going on in it. Personally, I plan on using it as a supplement to my own Generation HEX game from NIGHT SHIFT.  

Plays Well With Others, Generation HEX, and my Traveller Envy

I am SO glad I read this after I had already submitted my own ms in for Generation HEX in NIGHT SHIFT.

Thankfully I can see a game where I would use both systems to help expand my universe more.  The questionnaires here for both the school and the characters would also work well for a Generation HEX game.  In this case though everyone knows about magic and the school is AMPA.  OR Use the background of the hidden school like in KoB and then add in some GenHEX ideas.

So let me take another character today, Taryn, Larina's daughter.  Taryn is my "Teen Witch" and a bit of a rebel.  She was my "embrace the stereotype" witch, but has grown a little more since then.  Compared to her mother her magic came late (Larina was 6, Taryn was 12) so she feels like she has a lot to make up for. Her father is a Mundane and her half-sister has no magic at all.

Taryn is cocky, self-confident, but also a little reckless. Now that she has magic she is convinced it can solve all her problems.  She feels she has a lot to prove and is afraid there is some dark secret in her past (spoiler there is).

She spends her nights in an underground, illegal broom racing circuit.  She is very fast and has already made a lot of cash and a few enemies.  She is worried that one of her secrets, her red/green colorblindness, will affect her races. 

Her other weakness is guys on fast motorcycles. She is particularly fond of the Kawaski Ninja Carbon. Yeah, she judges people based on their bikes.  

Speed is her addiction of choice. Not the drug, the velocity.  Though that might be an issue in the future.

I find I am able to depict her rather well in Kids on Brooms, NIGHT SHIFT and Dark Places & Demogorgons.  I even gave her a try in the Great American Witch (she is Craft of Lilith).

This game has a bunch of solid potential and I am looking forward to seeing what I can do with it.

 Here is the great big map of Ornria.  

The campaigns of the Fabulouth Armee of the  Second Polyester Freestate, and it's nemesis the Blackguard Hordes of Oppressorbad, all take place on this lovely diskworld full of dinosaurs, interwar tanks, pre-dreadnaughts, and biplanes, Chocolotl, paper, lead, and plaster are the great trade items that make the world go round...and cans of coffeecola...

Reviews / October 28, 2020

Cruise Into Terror
Directed by Bruce Kessler
ABC (1978)

World-weary Captain Andy Andrews (Hugh O’Brian) never smiles, but he is especially not smiling today. The company’s luxury liner was overbooked, you see, and he’s been ordered to take eight passengers 800 miles to Mexico on a busted up “battle wagon” (in fact a midsized pleasure boat decorated with ferns) with a broken port engine. Andrews refuses, and is hit with an ultimatum by the line’s director (Marshall Thompson): “Are you gonna take the Obeah to Mexico? Or are you gonna look for a job in the Bolivian Navy?” Andrews, as you’ve probably guessed, chooses poorly. Then again, Obeah refers to an alleged (by white people) type of evil Caribbean sorcery, so he kind of asked for it.

The director, from his office that is for some reason smack in the middle of a warehouse chock-full of giant cardboard boxes (spoiler alert), quickly places a call, telling the other line that the deed is done before hanging up and asking God to save his soul. Enter menacing tribal chanting over a Jaws-like theme (it will occur throughout the movie, and it is a joy) as a runaway forklift rams a stack of giant cardboard boxes (told you) that squash the director.

Briskly, our unlucky passengers are introduced: the ship’s black cat Carina (real name unknown), who is scooped off the dock by recently divorced and looking-to-party Ms. Marilyn Magnesun (Stella Stevens, well acquainted with cursed ships); deck hand Nathan (Magnum, P.I.’s Roger Mosley, here employing a very unfortunate Jamaican accent); archeologist Dr. Isiah Bakkun (Ray Milland, bless him); too-busy-for-love husband and fed up, horny wife Neal and Sandra Barry (played by real life husband and wife Christopher George and Lynda Day George); gal pals Judy “the looker” (Jo Ann Harris) and Debbie “the great personality” (Hilarie Thompson), the former immediately inviting First Officer Simon McLane (pre-Battlestar Galactica Dirk Benedict) to make a house call; too-holy-for-love Reverend Mather (John Forsythe) and fed up, horny wife Lil (Lee Meriwether); and the straggling, bumbling physicist Matt Lazarus (Frank Converse).

Mr. Lazarus is familiar with Dr. Bakkun’s work on “Mayan-Egyptian cross-culturization,” obviously, as we find out during happy hour on the first night. “Ancient Egyptians sailed to Mexico 2000 years ago and founded the Mayan civilization,” the good doctor explains to the skeptical passengers. His evidence? A piece of papyrus revealing that Cleopatra ordered a tomb built “where the sun hits the sea.” I’m not sure how that narrows anything down, but apparently his “calculations” prove that the tomb is on the island of Cozumel, directly off the Eastern coast of the Yucatán Peninsula—the destination of the Obeah. 

Strange occurrences begin: Debbie nearly falls overboard when malevolent red eyes encroach in the darkness. But Debbie, because she’s somewhat intellectual (i.e. she wears glasses and reads books), is just “high-strung” and “hysterical.” What she saw were the lights of the channel police, says the Captain. Meanwhile, looker Judy is getting it on with Simon, who is only fulfilling his obligations as the “entertainment director.” Mrs. Barry and Mrs. Mather are not so lucky: their husbands both spurn their sexual advances, Mr. Barry because he’s a bigshot finance director and a giant asshole, Reverend Mather because he’s trying to impress God by doing “penance for the years I spent worshiping the bottle.”

The physicist “whiz kid” has done some independent research and concluded that Dr. Bakkun’s “calculations” are for shit: the tomb is actually 41 miles north of Cozumel. And sure enough, that’s exactly where something called the the injector pump breaks. Everyone wants to raid the tomb except for the good Reverend, who thinks “the dead should be allowed to rest in peace,” but Bakkun has “waited for this moment my whole life” and will not be swayed by “Biblical fantasies.”

Ms. Magnesun uses this opportunity to hit on the Captain, sensing he’s “spooked”: “Oh, I pick up on things,” she coyly brags. “Sometimes I know what people are thinking before they know.” Is she “some kind of a witch,” the Captain wants to know. “Well, some people might pronounce it a bit differently,” she says, “but like I said, I do read minds, and yours looks like some pretty heavy reading.” Is that a smile lurching across the Captain’s stony face?

The passengers take a dive and dig up an Egyptian tomb plate, to the orgasmic delight of Bakkun. The Reverend, who can apparently read ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, explains that the plate specifically warns against desecration. Also, according to Bakkun’s own papyrus, the tomb (despite all the big brains in the room, no one seems to understand that the tomb has already been desecrated) is to be opened every thousand years for inspection. The last time that happened, the entire Mayan civilization disappeared without a trace. “Something evil” resides inside, the buzzkill Reverend declares, “something waiting for the next millennium.”

The passengers haul up the sarcophagus in short order. It is… much smaller than we were led to believe, but big enough to make dollar signs dance in Neal’s head. Nathan, left in the water like so much chum, is soon “buried under a thousand pounds of rock.” But there’s no time to mourn! The passengers want to take the sarcophagus back to the States and cash in, but the Captain gives them a quick class on maritime law: the salvage belongs to the ship. The Reverend wants to destroy the cursed thing “before the seal is broken on the lid,” because “the son of the evil one is inside, the son of Satan.” Evidence? He reads from a book called the Key of Solomon (a real Renaissance grimoire that has nothing to do with the Bible): “where 12 souls gather, the child of Satan shall be lifted from his bindings,” and so on. One of the 12 is his “guardian”—“One by one, he’s going to take us all.”

Ms. Magnesun uses this opportunity to bed the Captain. During the post-coital cigarette, Cap reveals that it’s his last trip; he’s making all the wrong decisions (he sure is) and feels guilty about Nathan’s death (as he should). Ms. Magnesun tells him something her father used to tell her: “That there is a devil, there is no doubt. But is he trying to get in us, or trying to get out?” She wants the Captain to “let [his] devil out.” Now, unless this is her roundabout way of asking for seconds, I believe she has completely misunderstood the point of her dad’s creepy rhyme.

Thunder and lightning. Lustful Lil has had enough: she must have sex. After making eyes at the heaving sarcophagus, she visits Lazarus’s room unannounced, breathes heavily, and drops her nightgown. Minutes later, disheveled and stumbling down the hall, she meets the Reverend, starts speaking in tongues, and tries to choke him to death. Meanwhile, Neal has become increasingly obsessed with cashing in on the sarcophagus, even while Sandra reasons that it’s clearly evil and should be thrown overboard. “We came on this cruise to be happy again,” she pleads. His response is the best line of the movie:

Happy? And how do you plan to work that miracle? We’re a little old to find happiness on a beach in some sleeping bags like a couple of hippies. Happiness has a price tag, Sandra. It costs money.

Dr. Bakkun comes to his senses, grabs an axe, and tells the baby devil that he’s going to chop him up. Bad move: devil baby shakes the ship, toppling Bakkun, and the sarcophagus launches itself off the table into Bakkun’s face. Neal threatens the physicist into teaming up with him and removes the sarcophagus to his cabin for caressing and safekeeping. They need to get it to the launch before the Obeah docks in Mexico and the treasure is confiscated. But the Obeah is dead in the water, and Simon has to take the launch to get help. The guardian reveals himself, but the Captain still believes there’s a logical explanation. The Reverend strongly disagrees, chucking a couple of gas lanterns at the sarcophagus (and poor Carina, who has snuggled up to it)—“to the flames you shall return”—and wrestles with the guardian. Lil, her trance broken, sticks with her man to expire, along with the guardian and the devil baby, in the flames. The survivors escape in the launch before the ship explodes (an explosion lifted from a production with an actual budget and clumsily overlaid onto the Obeah), and the Captain concludes with a morose voiceover log entry. He will never smile again.

I have spent much too long describing the plot of a 1978 TV movie called Cruise Into Terror that is very obviously a rip of the greatest telefilm of all time, The Horror at 37,000 Feet, but I couldn’t help myself. There is magic here. Good magic. Hugh O’Brian utters every word with the gravitas of a Rod Serling-narrated Twilight Zone epilogue, and at one point the Captain, Bowie knife in hand, quite literally stares down a shark. Christopher George is spectacularly over-the-top, as was usual during this stage of his career. Milland is a treasure, and I won’t hear otherwise (he too would go on to star in Battlestar Galactica as the debauched Sire Uri). And the sarcophagus! It really breathes, with accompanying heartbeat sound effect! Ultimately, that’s what seals the deal for me. The ’70s were a golden age of paranormal media and pseudoscience and urban legend, and the idiotic and recycled occult theme feels like home. Also, I’ve got a thing for boats (see below).

An Aaron Spelling production, Cruise Into Terror was obviously banking on the success of Spelling’s The Love Boat, then in its first season. And yet it was probably an earlier Spelling TV movie, the murder-mystery Death Cruise (1974), that set the template (minus the foul play) for The Love Boat. Anyway, every single member of the Cruise Into Terror cast would go on to star one or more times on The Love Boat. Yes, I checked.

—K.E. Roberts

 

Getting back to more 5e Witch classes today I wanted to review one from Hope Punk Press that caught my eye.    Again, these are OGL based classes, but I am still following my own rules on reviewing them.

The Witch: A 5e Compatible Class
by Brandon Elliott, Hope Punk Press

This is a 26-page pdf (cover, 2 OGL pages, 23 pages of content) for the witch class.  The art is good and used well. The layout is good and very clean to read, but the background image makes printing a bit expensive. 

This witch is also a full 20 levels (as expected) with spellcasting to the 9th level.  This witch has 1d6 for HD and can’t wear armor.  These witches use Intelligence as their spellcasting ability.  This witch is a ritual caster.   

These witches choose a magical conduit; eight are presented here in two broad categories. Each one gains a list of bonus spells and new powers as expected of any archetype/subclass.   Other conduits could easily be added to these lists. 

The two broad categories, Dawn and Dusk witches have slightly different spell lists.  This is a nice touch and something I have done with my various Traditions for my own witches. 

There also 11 new spells for this witch so that is pretty nice.   

A discussion on magic items, feats, and spells from other books to add to the witch.  With the way the conduits are put together, there is infinite flexibility to this witch.  

This one has quite a lot going for it as well. It takes the witch in different directions and I like it.

Staying in the 70s tonight. In fact, I seem to be stuck in 1971-1973, but that is fine really.  I had seen this one before but I realized I had never reviewed it for my October Horror Movie marathon. 

Well, there is not a lot to recommend here. A very young Anthony Geary stars as a Vietnam Vet and a bunch of women run around completely naked.   How much of the movie is that? I have an edited for TV version that is only about an hour-long, so at least 20 mins were cut.  He meets up with a woman, Yyala, but he can't find her later. 

It does have Dyanne Thorne as Alotta, Queen of Witches.  So there is that I guess. The biggest issue is that the movie is so slow. 

I remember first wanting to see this for the overt association with hippie culture and witchcraft and it certainly has that.  Alotta makes for a good if somewhat stereotypical 70s-era witch. But that doesn't make her less fun.  Susan Damante as the water nymph/witch Yyala is less entertaining, but I think it is because her lines are so bad.  

So to love Yyala, David has to get rid of his soul. A bargain the Witch Queen is happy to oblige him with. Then of course the horror ensues. 

It is pretty typical of the Occult 70s right before the Exorcist hit the theatres. Lots of jumbled up occult ideas, lots of weird filming, and plenty of soft-core nudity.  It also pretty much typifies what I call the "leftover hippie shit" of the 60 going into the 70s.

There is a pretty good review of it (with plenty of screencaps) at the Grind House Database.

Watched: 50
New: 34

NIGHT SHIFT and Old-School ContentSo one idea I had based on this one and The Boy Who Cried Werewolf last night is the PCs find a group of hippies, yes in 2020, but these hippies seem a bit stranger than most. That is because they are all Fey or nymphs and satyrs. Maybe even Dionysis is still with them but instead of wine he the god of drugs. 
The characters run into problems when these fey want them to "Tune in, Turn on, and Drop Out" with them for the rest of eternity.