John Griogair Bell – Arlecchino Malbenvolio

Contents Note Credit where credit is due --- Spoiler Warning --- --- Draft Warning --- Thoughts Adventures Demerits Resources Elements Worlds Storytelling Episodes

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Witch Girls and Witch Girls Adventures are the copyrighted and trademarked works of Malcolm Harris and Channel M.

This section of my site started as some posts to the Witch Girls Adventures page on Facebook. I wanted to start collecting that stuff here, and also give myself space to develop more ideas.

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Back in 2003, I was into independent, self-published comics for a little while. Two of the titles I ran into were Witch Girls and Witch Girls Tales. I only managed to get the first issue of each title at that time.

Fast forward to 2009, I ran across information about an interesting new RPG about young witches in school, and a related comic called Witch Girls Tales. Further plans were in place for another title, Princess Lucinda, and other suppliments and maybe even a movie deal. I had a strong sense of Deja Vu when looking at the logo, and was able to dig up my mostly forgotten issues of the previous incarnation of the comic.

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(I'm writing up my thoughts about the role-playing game for this, but I've not got a first draft yet.)
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Princess Lucinda: "... there are rules against openly using magic on lowly mundanes even if they so deserve it. (And I have the demerits to show it)" [via]

Princess Lucinda mentioned demerits to show for her actions. Instead of Karma, it could be more school related, like demerits. Then the punishments could be inflicted indirectly based on carrying the demerits which could cause reactions to be different or encounters to change, or directly through school detention or additional assignments.

A simple model is just to track school-based demerits/honors. Demerits are subtractions and honors are additions, and one might start with 0. Positive numbers would mean the student has honors, and might mean better relations with the faculty, but might mean poor relations with the misfit (Mistt-fit?) crowd.

But, if one wanted to track this kind of thing in a more complex way, one might have demerits/honors with additional entities. So, one might have honors within their school, but demerits against their relationship with, say, the Argos Society, or the local Mundane population.

So, this would allow the simple system to scale to allow for complex tracking of faction-relationships.

Maybe a Star could "trade" these points by taking a demerit in order to affect some outcome, say a roll of the dice or some encounter?

Here's an idea. Maybe after accumulating a certain number of demerits or honors, one can trade the lot of them in for some award or ... um, whatever the opposite is ... a Police record? So, if one's accumulated 12 honors points, maybe the whole lot can be traded in for a "Magical Science Fair Award, Third Place" which adds a semi-permanent +1 to a Science Trait or something else useful like that. Maybe 12 demerits can be traded in for "Weekend in Jail" where one picks up a trait in Picking Locks from another inmate?

Or, else, in addition to the demerits and honors points, these special awards can be given after particularly spectacular events, and act as a kind of "achievement" which gets noted on the Star's history. These would be ways of offering semi-permanent rewards for outstanding efforts, or whatever.

By semi-permanent, I mean there might be a limit on how long the effect of them lasts. For example, the +1 to Science could last only until the next "Magical Science Fair", or the effect could only last through the next Episode.

However, even when the effect of one of these awards expires, the not about having achieved the award should be retained as a part of the Star's personal story.
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I've started to collect a list of resources that may be of interest to players and writers working with the comics and role-playing game.

Canonical Material

Apocryphal Material

Ephemeral Material

Ambient Material

Other Resources

One of the most overused metaphors for stories about magic and witches is the model of the four or five elements. It’s overused, but it’s also useful. It’s a simple model that can be used for some great storytelling. Here’s some ways to think about the elemental model that may lead to story ideas.
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Mundane world, Magical world. Maybe also Oz world, Natural world, Spirit world, Mechanical world, and so on ... celestial spheres, or dimensions? There's some overlapping but not through linear cartesean, euclidian connections. An example of this is the crossroads that leads to Oz, there's a link between worlds if you can find it; but it exists in a fuzzy, borderlands kind of way.

I really like the idea, suggested in the materials I’ve already read, that there are worlds. For example, there’s a Mundane world and a Magical world. This could then be a Fantasy world. Other worlds might then also be the Oz world, for when those episodes are done. The idea of being able to move from world to world is not linear so much as moving from one to the other. Maybe there's places where the two overlap, but they are not necessarily directly connected. There may also be a Spirit world and a Natural world. Or, even, a Mechanical world, which might be kind of steampunk. Any world can exist, with its own set of rules and ideas.

It’s an exciting way to go, and opens up a whole lot of flexibility in storytelling for both Directors and Stars!

Worlds can be used to provide homes for characters from various genre sources. For example, a high fantasy setting could be used to introduce character and elements from the books in the Alanna series, which is pretty much high fantasy. Those characters seem like they’d be, if not home, at least comfortable in a fantasy setting. Other genres can be associated with other worlds, as appropriate and then let the madness begin as they mingle!
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The process of creating a character is a constant journey of crossing thresholds to meet opposites and resolve conflict in cathartic denouement. A typical story fractal in theatre is:

• Exposition
• Conflict
• Climax
• Denouement

This structure is something that is generally seen within each story, repeated. Another way to look at this is to think about the mythic cycle for storytelling developed from Joseph Campbell's monomyth. Christopher Volger developed this in "The Writer's Journey" and further demonstrated by Stuart Voytilla in "Myth and the Movies" as a large cyclical pattern of separation, descent, initiation and return; which itself can be divided again into more specific elements I won't go into here.

On another level, one can view an adventure as an even simpler continual cycle of equilibrium, disorientation and a return to equilibrium. Taken this way, the GM creates disorienting dilemmas which the players attempt to resolve, whether these are large story arcs or merely complications. This collective, dynamic between players and GM reminds me of an anecdote I've heard about the filming of The Hidden Fortress, a Kurosawa film which helped inspire Star Wars. I’ve heard that the writers would write a segment, then Kurosawa would film the scene, but place the characters in an impossible situation. Kurosawa would then hand the plot back to the writers and tell them to figure out a way for the characters to get out of the jam. So, the plot is a extemporaneous collaboration between the writers and the director ... where the characters slide from one impossible situation to the next ... which, as a role player, sounds like a great deal of fun.

The structure of a Witch Girls episode could a format of a teaser followed by four acts. Each element in the structure is itself a miniature story fractal with a build climax and then typically some kind of hook that holds attention toward the next element instead of a denouement. The final act generally holds some denouement to wrap all the acts together after the final climax.

Occasionally, this structure also contains a brief coda at the end of the episode which may or may not reflect on the action of the episode. This final event can be thought of as an opportunity to work in any last jokes or other elements that didn’t make it into the rest. This could also be used for some kind of bloopers or de-brief to give players a chance to transition out of character and back into real life; which is a meta structure that brings the players through the full experience of liminality into the imaginary world and back again, just as the teaser was a pre-liminal transition.

So, I suggest thinking about using the structure of an episode as the skeleton on which a session or a campaign can by developed:

• Teaser
• Act One
• Act Two
• Act Three
• Act Four
• Coda

This becomes a larger fractal, which can be repeated many times, and collected into a larger grouping around some particular overall arc. The overall arc can be defined by some recurring theme which is resolved through a season. This overall story arc is another important element to develop that gives meaning to the overall experience, links episodes, and creates a more vibrant texture to the collective storytelling.
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There are many resources one might look to for ideas, including any book or film; and, there’s always The Big List of RPG Plots by S. John Ross and more obscure resourses like the Thirty Six Stratagems. However, here’s where I'll be collecting ideas that come to me for story ideas.