Running NIGHT SHIFT and Dark Places & Demogorgons: What I've Learned from Two 80s Campaigns

I’ve explored the world of 1980s supernatural gaming before.I have done it with two OSR-adjacent rule systems, NIGHT SHIFT: Veterans of the Supernatural Wars and SURVIVE THIS!! Dark Places & Demogorgons. This is not a post about which game is better than the other; I am not doing that. Both games are fantastic, and live very happily next to each other on my shelves and my gaming table. This is about what I learned from running two similar-style campaigns using rule systems drawn from the same ecology. And what you can learn from all of that.Road to Nowhere: From Sunny Valley to JacksonA few years ago, I played SURVIVE THIS!! Dark Places & Demogorgons from Bloat Games to revisit my love for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but with a twist. Instead of Sunnydale, California in the late 1990s, I set the story in Sunny Valley, Ohio, in 1984. The characters were still Buffy, Willow, Tara, Faith, vampires, high school drama, and a Hellmouth. But the setting felt different; colder, more Midwestern,…