There it was, on the shelf at King’s Hobby Shop. Ghostbusters: The Frightfully Cheerful Roleplaying Game. Somehow I’d missed the adverts for this in Dragon magazine and elsewhere. I had to have it. I was a huge fan of the film, the cartoon, the Commodore 64 computer game. This was going to be awesome.
This game is an ancestor of the D6 system I adore from the West End Star Wars RPG, but even more free-form and fast-and-loose. Characters fit on index cards, and in fact, the box comes with punch-out cardstock Ghostbusters ID Cards that double as character sheets. There’s also cards for equipment, with proton packs, traps, an Alpine kit with lederhosen, a beach kit… you know, everything you need for supernatural elimination.The game uses six-sided dice only, with the only twist being the Ghost Die. This is a special die that was, sadly, printed rather than engraved. This means most Ghost Dice from the 80s are blank white cubes now. Anyway, the 6 face was replaced by the Ghostbusters logo, and when that came up, something bad had happened. Otherwise, total the dice, beat a target number. That’s it. The rest of the game was a whirling mixture of horror and hilarity. With modules like Hot Rods of the Gods and Ghost Toasties it’s pretty clear the intent of the game focuses more on the funny than the scary, but it was definitely fun.
The game itself is ridiculously simple to play, roll some d6s, add them up, and if the Ghost Die came up a ghost, something unfortunate happens. That's it. That's pretty much the entire system. The rest is up to you, even the selection of, well, "skills" in the form of talent specialties. Which can be anything - anything - the players and GM can agree upon. Let's see how it works.
Character Creation
So, a Ghostbuster has four Traits. Brains, Muscle, Moves, and Cool. To determine your Traits, divide 12 dice among the Traits, with a minimum of 1, and a maximum of 5. Your Ghosbuster will roll that many dice any time that Trait is used, unless the roll has to do with your a specific talent within each of the four main Talents. And, as referenced above, it can be pretty much anything. Egon has Physics, which seems reasonable, then Venkman has Seduce. I guess there's a Bard in every game.
OK, so, let's create a character in the vein of Winston from the original script. Our everyman hero, Winston Zeddemore, was originally a former military man. He brought a certain amount of physicality and combat ability to the team. In the final film, the everyman aspect won out, and Winston becomes our POV character, bringing the perspective of someone without a PhD to the film.
So... Brains 2, Muscles 3, Moves 4, Cool 3. Now we have to come up with a Talent for each of these. Each of the sub-talents gets an additional 3 dice when it comes up in play. For Brains we'll go with Mechanics. Muscles? Climb. Moves will be Fire Weapon, and Cool will be Calm Under Fire.
Now, we get 20 Brownie Points. These are our Hit Points, as well as extra dice we can roll, 1 per Brownie Point spent. Finally, we have to have a goal. Egon's is "Soulless Science." Venkman's is "Sex." In homage to Winston, our goal will be "A Steady Paycheck."
And... that's it. That's character creation. Probably the shortest and simplest we've had so far.
The Character
Robin Hill was done with the Army. She had her DD-214 in hand, and was ready to do something else. After eight years of the Green Weenie it was time to find a better way to spend her time. Problem was, most of the job offers she'd gotten were for PMCs or former mates trying to get her into law enforcement. There had to be something else out there... and then she saw the ad. Some crazy bastards were trying to open a Ghostbusters franchise.
She remembered her family members talking about what happened in '84, and '89, before she was born. But nobody'd caught any real evidence of supernatural phenomenon since then. There were no ghosts, and maybe all that crap in the '80s was just mass hysteria.
So... if these folks had money to pay employees... and they were hunting things that didn't exist... that might make for a nice, relaxing job until the idiots ran out of their nest egg. Maybe this gig could buy her a few months of gainful civilian employment until she could find something else.
How hard could it be?
My Thoughts
I've always held that West End's Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game was the greatest "gateway drug" to gaming since Red Box D&D. It was a world nearly everyone is familiar with, it used only six-sided dice, and it had a very simple system. Ghostbusters is the parent of that game, with an even simpler version of the system. And hey, Ghostbusters. This should also be on the list of simple, accessible games to get non-gamers to dip their toes in the pool.
I have played some amazing games of Ghostbusters. My favorite was when we were on a cruise in the Gulf of Mexico, and we all went up to the Lido Deck, grabbed some food and booze, and played Ghostbusters in the ship's library on our way to Cozumel. The GM, Bobby, had us aboard... the same ship we were sitting aboard in real life. There was a paranormal conference aboard, you see, and the keynote speech was going to be from Dr. Egon Spengler. We were aboard to listen to him speak, as franchisees from Texas.
Remember the kid from the original film, who was actually starting to guess the ESP cards thanks to electric shocks? Apparently, those shocks did awaken ESP abilities in this kid, and they became super powerful and drove him mad. He had come to get his revenge, and we had to defeat him without sinking the damn ship. Proton Packs being effective against ghosts, but also pretty hard on collateral damage.
It was amazing! We felt connected to our heroes from the movies. We felt connected to our environment, because we were using the deck plans of the very ship we were sailing upon. The game system just got out of the way. And we busted some ghosts. And we busted a lot of things on the ship.
Folks, if you can get your hands on the boxed set, or the slightly different Ghostbusters, International, go for it. It's a great piece of gaming history, Ghostbusters trivia, and it's just a damn playable game.
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