Hubble bubble, toil and trouble,
Fire burn and cauldron bubble,
By the clicking of my Friday Night Stilettoes,
Something wicked this way goes...
I was only in primary school when I first became aware of the existence of Charmed, the unhinged lunatic spiritual sister-series to Buffy The Vampire Slayer. For a long time my entire exposure to it was in the television ads that made their way to me while I was watching other shows, but as the years went by I became increasingly intrigued by this strange mysterious show about three sisters fighting demons or wizards or something. This was not least because by that point I was starting to experience strange funny feelings around girls, and the show featured Rose McGowan in a lot of slinky outfits.
And then, just like that, it was gone. The show ran its course, vanished from broadcast, and the ads vanished with it, and I turned to other more pressing interests, leaving the strange mysterious sister magic show to fade from memory.
From time to time over high school I was reminded of it when I came into contact with goth girls who were fond of the show, and from there I was able to piece together what Charmed was actually supposed to be about - a Buffy-style paranormal drama about 3-4 witches who fought demons and/or evil wizards with magic, with a lot of melodrama ensuring. So far so good, but my attention for supernatural drama quickly became dominated by Buffy, Angel and Supernatural, leaving Charmed to once again fall by the wayside.
Then just recently I finally got around to reconnecting with and finishing watching through Allison Pregler's acclaimed chronicle of the life and times of Charmed, which currently stands at twelve volumes and a little over 11 hours of footage. I discovered much along that journey, learning of the tortured history of the show both in and out of its universe, and I can understand both why it never reached the same heights as Buffy and why the goth girls I knew in high school still loved it dearly all the same.
But most of all, my single biggest impression was of just how fundamentally, quintessentially OWOD the whole thing was. The more I saw of it, the more I kept thinking "Oh my god! This is SO OWOD! This is just like the OWOD! That is EXACTLY the sort of thing that you would expect from the OWOD!"
(and also the accompanying thought, "These characters could be a lot of fun to roleplay in an OWOD environment")
And the more I thought about that the more another thought began to slowly creep in - wait a minute, why isn't this in the OWOD? Sure Charmed might have never been a tremendous cultural phenomenon, but it did still have enough traction to net 8 seasons, 2 comic book sequels and enough of a cult following to warrant a reboot 10 years later. And it came off the tail of The Craft and a general undercurrent of fascination with all things wicca by the new age and goth movements in the 1990s. That sounds like exactly the sort of thing that White Wolf would have tried to cash in on with an OWOD game about cool sexy gothic witches hanging out in covens and getting into melodrama and fighting stuff with magic and riding around on Ducati motorcycles wearing slinky leather outfits.
Yet it was nowhere to be found.
Going through the various OWOD game lines I could think of, not a single one of them matched that description. But wait! That's right, wasn't there that one OWOD game about magic and shit? Surely that one would have to have a big thing all about cool sexy witches getting into antics, after all, it was an OWOD game about magic and magic practitioners in the wicca-flavoured era of the 90s. I remembered discovering that one a long time ago and then promptly writing it off when the masses of dense nerd baggage it presented me with made my brain hurt, but maybe I had been too hasty in writing it off completely. Maybe it was worth another look.
So I opened up TVtropes and the White Wolf Wiki for some cursory research, and sure enough.... well.... I mean there was sort of kind of something like that in Mage: The Ascension, if you squinted... but it was still buried under 500 tons of nerd baggage about weird cyberpunk tesla magitek civil war stuff that still made my head hurt reading about it.
So that leaves with a roughly Charmed shaped niche, almost completely unoccupied, with Mage partially covering it from one side, and Vampire: The Masquerade's Tremere partially covering a little bit of if from another end, but in both cases with a bunch of superfluous hoops to jump through and a focus on other dense nerd baggage, and neither one really being a peg that conforms to the hole well enough to scratch the Charmed But Make It OWOD itch perfectly.
And that, then, is why I not-so-secretly yearn for a hard reboot of Mage: The Ascension that burns down "the lore" to make room for an additional new game fully rooted in a bedrock of wicca fantasy with a focus on playing out Charmed grade melodrama among witch covens in the OWOD. Look I'm sorry Mage fans, but it doesn't matter how hard you try to push it on me, at the end of the day I just can't get into Cyberpunk Magitech Civil War. That concept just does not make my brain go brrr on a fundamental level.
But you know what does make my brain go brrr? What makes my brain brrrr hard? That's right, Charmed but Make It OWOD. Give me a game where I'm a sexy petty vindictive high-drama witch with phenomenal cosmic power, hanging out in a coven of other sexy petty vindictive high-drama witches with phenomenal cosmic power, getting into all kinds of wild soap opera shenanigans with vampires and werewolves and mortals over demon hexes and mimosas, and I am fucking there. THAT, that right there, is my idea of a good time tabletop RPGing. THAT, is a premise with potential. THAT, would be an OWOD game that works for me.
What. Don't look at me like that. We all know perfectly well that wild trashy soapy melodrama is the lifeblood of the OWOD. The OWOD runs on wild trashy soapy melodrama. We're ALL here sliving for the wild trashy soapy supernatural melodrama, I'm just man enough to be honest about it.
And given how much of a cult following Charmed and The Craft both have, enough that the CW tried to revive Charmed despite the infamy surrounding it, I feel confident in saying I'm not the only one out there who feels that way. I have zero doubt that there is a viable audience for that. I have every confidence that the premise I just pitched, a well-made storytelling game of demon hexes and mimosas, would sell like wildfire with the right marketing.
I mean, just look at that tagline right there - A storytelling game of demon hexes and mimosas. That is a world-class tagline right there. The game almost writes itself from that tagline. Throw in some fun sexy artwork along that vibe and you're away with the races.
The trick, of course, is that it would sell like wildfire among a completely different audience to what White Wolf has traditionally targeted. It's very obviously NOT going to sell like wildfire amongst your archetypal old-school 90s 'hArDcOrE' nerd RPG Gamur type, the sort of archetypal basement rocker who plays D&D to punch dragons in the face as an axe-waving barbarian and reacts to mimosa nights like a vampire to a church. That sort is obviously the sort that is much more likely to appreciate some industrial edgy cyberpunk magitech civil war premise instead, which is why the Mage game we got did so well with them. I am aware that as far as archetypal old-school 90s hardcore nerds go, I am in the minority in this regard.
But here's the thing. You don't have to pitch or sell all your tabletop games to that one demographic. There are other demographics you can make tabletop games for instead, especially in this post-Gamergate, post-nerd culture world, and those other demographics pay just as well as the traditional nerds do.
And this is important because marketing some tabletop games to those other demographics is an awesome way to grow your revenue, since it taps into streams of money that aren't already going into your coffers. If you make Wicca: The Craft, a storytelling game of Demon Hexes and Mimosas, those old-school nerds are still going to buy Vampire: The Masquerade and have fun chopping bad guys to bits with katanas while wearing sunglasses in it. The difference is that now in that hypothetical, you have the old-school nerds pouring money into your game company AND a whole new audience of goth girls also pouring money into your game company, leaving you with double the money streams and thus double the cha-ching-a-ling-ling.
Yes, yes, I know that Vampire's primary audience is already 50-60% comprised of goth girls. The actual breakdown of this hypothetical demon hexes and mimosas game's core audience would probably be a similar sort of intersection of goth and LGBTQ as the one which fuels the Rocky Horror phenomenon. But my point here is that making different OWOD games to different and diverse audiences is not necessarily a bad idea. It's not going to cost White Wolf or whoever any serious loss in revenue, and actually has the potential to net them a whole lot more revenue overall.
And also that Wicca: The Craft, a storytelling game of Demon Hexes and Mimosas is a million dollar concept premise for a tabletop RPG with serious legs.
It also fits in amongst the other OWOD games as a perfect little antidote for all the unrelenting grimdark misery that goes on in those lines. Had enough unrelenting misery and despair playing Vampire? Just break out Wicca: The Craft, a storytelling game of Demon Hexes and Mimosas enjoy a good bit of free sexy lighthearted fun playing Mean Girls with black magic. Then, when you've had your fun there and you're ready for more heavier stuff, break out Wraith or Werewolf or Hunter or something instead.
It works on so many levels.
Now, I know what you're thinking right now - "But Millitant, all the best OWOD games have some kind of solid core gameplay loop based on the nature of their supernatural protagonists and what motivates them, what are these sexy witch characters going to do each night?" Well my brainworms around this concept are a step ahead of you right there! Try this one out for size:
Witches want to keep their sisterhood together against a world constantly trying to tear them apart.
Not bad huh! Yes sure OK it's almost certainly a little bit very rough and unpolished but hey, it's a first outline scribbled down on a napkin straight off the top of my head from pure brainworm energy alone. As a starting point, I'd say it's not too shabby at all. At the bottom line your characters in Wicca: The Craft are trying to keep together as a sisterhood in the face of a world constantly pulling them apart with various temptations and dangers. That's the common goal they're all trying to achieve.
What are those temptations and dangers you might ask? Well the exact specifics would be up to the GM, picking from a broad range of heart-throbs, exes, life opportunities, dickbags, rivals, rival covens, demons, evil wizards, vampires, ghosts, werewolves, monster hunters and so on. You know, the sort of dangers that haunt the OWOD every night plus the sort of temptations people get exposed to every night in most worlds. I guess you could maybe throw in some sort of league of evil witches too, but I'm not sure it's strictly necessary - if you're really in need of a big overarching cosmic doom for your cool sexy witches to fight against then you're already pretty spoiled for choice with any one of the dozen or so big overarching cosmic dooms that already populate the OWOD. Besides, the focus here is really supposed to be on the more personal melodrama side of things. Personal character-driven stakes. Remember, this is supposed to be a storytelling game of demon hexes and mimosas after all.
Core concepts? Well I think the one I'd want front and centre on everyone's minds the most is 'Sisterhood'. That's usually the keystone theme in the source material, and the magic in the source material is always fueled by coordination and cooperation amongst a sisterhood - there's always a Power Of Three or a Four Element Ensemble thing going on. I like the idea of certain dice pools changing depending on party character relationships, to really hammer home the collective sisterhood spirit and really incentivise players to fully explore and have fun with inter-character dynamics.
Maybe even have certain dice pools be transferrable, with players able to lend each other extra dice for certain things depending on the relationship between their characters. Maybe with some risks and consequences for holding onto too many dice for too long (dangerous to hoard too much magic power up for one's own selfish whims you see), just as a failsafe to make sure no-one gets too greedy.
Speaking of dice, I'm liking the classic V5 Vampire two-colour dice combination, but obviously witches are not vampires and I'm feeling a different sort of duality in the dice pools would be required, with negative dice being not so much strictly worse in the way that hunger dice are in Vampire, but more a case of different, with different opportunities and consequences attached. The idea here is based on the whole classic sort of 'no light without darkness' magic concept where the two sides are a sort of yin-yang duality to be explored, balanced and harmonised rather than mitigated and contained like vampiric hunger.
Now exactly what that would look like in game mechanics terms, well that's one area that's still a bit of an open question. Maybe one colour of dice is more consistent, more safe, while the other colour is more high-risk/high-reward. I dunno, I don't have all the specifics ironed out here yet. There's only so much room on the back of this napkin before you start running into grease blotches.
Well, I think it's a pretty fun concept anyway. And that it's enjoyed rent-free living in my head all week is a sign that it's got some kind of potential at least. I think there's room there in the OWOD for something like it, a place of hellspawn and heartbreak, of lamassu and lip gloss, of ghouls and glitter. The place where the falling Violet Orlandi meets the rising Sabrina Carpenter.
A place of demon hexes and mimosas. You know, in addition to the tesla cyberpunk magitech civil war.
No comments:
Post a Comment