A Kolchak Christmas at North Texas 2023

They say the only perfect murder is the random murder. It’s the Christmas season in Chicago, and police are certainly stymied by the seemingly random killings the press has dubbed “The Christmas Murders”. Will Kolchak and his loose band of night stalkers solve the mystery? Choose a pregen from many of the guest stars who appeared on the Kolchak: The Night Stalker television series.
I’ll be cracking open Daredevils again for The North Texas RPG Con in 2023. This year’s adventure is “The Wrong Goodbye” and takes place over Christmas of 1976. It’s currently scheduled for Saturday morning at nine.
Here’s the TV Guide version:
Carl Kolchak and guest stars investigate Chicago’s 1976 Christmas murders.
All the old favorite guest stars and regulars will be available. Kolchak himself, of course, and if you’ve ever felt like letting loose a barrage of abuse at an abusive reporter who can’t understand why nobody believes him, Tony Vincenzo is also available.
A lot of the fun with a game like this is roleplaying the television roles: Vincenzo, or Pepe Torres, or Paula Griffin, or Kolchak himself. The Kolchak television series is often rerun by oldies television stations. In my area it’s currently running on MeTV. It looks like you can also stream it free on NBC. The two movies, The Night Stalker• and The Night Strangler• are harder to find.
Here are the current pregens:
- Ryder Bond (Firefall)
- Jack Burton (Primal Scream)
- Emily Cowles (Regular cast)
- Leslie Dwyer (Mr. R.I.N.G.)
- Janis Eisen (The Energy Eater)
- Jim Elkhorn (The Energy Eater)
- Paula Griffin (The Werewolf)
- Maria Hargrove (Firefall)
- Carl Kolchak (Series lead)
- Ali Lakshmi (Horror in the Heights)
- Monique Marmelstein (Sporadic cast)
- Lila Morton (Chopper)
- Charles Rolling Thunder (Bad Medicine)
- C. Evan Spate (Demon in Lace)
- Agnes Temple (Bad Medicine)
- Pepe Torres (Legacy of Terror)
- Ron Updyke (Regular cast)
- Tony Vincenzo (Regular cast)
- Bess Winestock (They Have Been, They Are, They Will Be…)
- Rosalind Winters (Demon in Lace)
If you’ve been to a previous game, you’ll have the opportunity to continue the same character.
The Daredevils game is relatively simple from the player end of things, especially for an old-school game. You’ll make a lot of d20 rolls, trying to roll under some target number related to your skills. I will also be bringing back the Daredevils Action Cubes. The only really weird thing about it is that actions in combat—what it calls Detailed Action Time—are simultaneous. So it’s possible for two combatants to knock each other out, for example.
Each character has attributes (strength, health, wit, and so on), skills (brawling, research, journalism, and so on), and talents (scientific, mechanical, communicative, combative). Rolls are made on a d20 against saving throws (based on attributes) and chances of success (based on either skills or talents), and the goal is to roll under the target number. The targets (chances of success) will be on your character sheet.
Daredevils is perfect for a Kolchak game, because Kolchak’s world is one of hard-boiled (supernatural) action. He’s a noir journalist out of time.
- Kolchak: The Wrong Goodbye: Jerry Stratton at North Texas RPG Con
- “Carl Kolchak and guest stars investigate Chicago’s 1976 Christmas murders using the Daredevils RPG from Fantasy Games Unlimited.”
- Daredevils Detailed Action Time and Action Options Cube
- The Fantasy Games Unlimited game Daredevils, from 1982, has a very interesting combat turn system. Plus, an Action-Option cube you can assemble yourself!
- Daredevils: Role Playing Action and Adventure in the Two-Fisted Thirties at Fantasy Games Unlimited
- “Play the role of an action-adventure hero. Smash spies, fight crime, defeat criminal masterminds and more. Enter the world of hard-boiled detectives, cloaked vigilantes and globe-spanning adventure. Become a daredevil.”
- Kolchak is back, baby! At North Texas 2022
- I’ll be running another Kolchak: The Night Stalker game at North Texas in 2022, again using the Daredevils rules from Fantasy Games Unlimited.
- Kolchak: The Night Stalker (Where to Watch) at TV Guide
- “A dogged Chicago reporter investigated the paranormal (everything from vampires and werewolves to a senator who could transform himself into a vicious dog) while he clashed with his perpetually (and understandably) sceptical editor.”
- The Night Stalker• (DVD)
- Carl Kolchak’s original movie, doubled with the pilot for the television series, “The Night Strangler”.
- North Texas RPG Con
- “The NTRPG Con focuses on old-school Dungeons & Dragons gaming (OD&D, 1E, 2E, or Basic/Expert) as well as any pre-1999 type of RPG produced by the classic gaming companies of the 70s and 80s (TSR, Chaosium, FGU, FASA, GDW, etc). We also support retro-clone or simulacrum type gaming that copies the old style of RPGs (Swords & Wizardry, Castles & Crusades, and others).”
More Daredevils RPG
- Kolchak: The Montique Fantom (A Daredevils adventure)
- A reskin of the Daredevils adventure The Body Vanishes for The Night Stalker in 1976.
- Kolchak is back, baby! At North Texas 2022
- I’ll be running another Kolchak: The Night Stalker game at North Texas in 2022, again using the Daredevils rules from Fantasy Games Unlimited.
- Automated Scribus Daredevils NPC character sheets
- Part 2 of 2: the free Scribus page layout software makes it easy to automate the creation of NPC character sheets.
- Daredevils NPC generator
- Part 1 of 2: a script to calculate Daredevils attributes, talents, skills, and stats from a text file of initial values and character development.
- Daredevils Detailed Action Time and Action Options Cube
- The Fantasy Games Unlimited game Daredevils, from 1982, has a very interesting combat turn system. Plus, an Action-Option cube you can assemble yourself!
More Kolchak: The Night Stalker
- Kolchak: The Montique Fantom (A Daredevils adventure)
- A reskin of the Daredevils adventure The Body Vanishes for The Night Stalker in 1976.
- Kolchak is back, baby! At North Texas 2022
- I’ll be running another Kolchak: The Night Stalker game at North Texas in 2022, again using the Daredevils rules from Fantasy Games Unlimited.
More North Texas RPG Con
- Kolchak is back, baby! At North Texas 2022
- I’ll be running another Kolchak: The Night Stalker game at North Texas in 2022, again using the Daredevils rules from Fantasy Games Unlimited.
- Daredevils Detailed Action Time and Action Options Cube
- The Fantasy Games Unlimited game Daredevils, from 1982, has a very interesting combat turn system. Plus, an Action-Option cube you can assemble yourself!
- Blackhawk: Blitzkrieg at North Texas RPG Con
- I’ll be running first edition DC Heroes at North Texas in 2020, on June 4.
- House on Crane Hill at North Texas 2019
- I’ll be running House on Crane Hill on Thursday evening at North Texas this year. If you enjoy the old Haunting-inspired books and movies, come and join us!
- Surprise and initiative in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons
- For the North Texas Role-Playing Game Convention’s tenth anniversary, I ran an AD&D game; the hardest part was re-figuring out how initiative and surprise work.
- Two more pages with the topic North Texas RPG Con, and other related pages