CIOASIISAG Part 8: Ghostbusters ~ A Frightfully Cheerful Roleplaying Game

October 18th, 2007 by Brack

Here’s another game that passed from hand to hand. So much that there are parts of the copy I own that I have never seen, lost somewhere in the recesses of Lincolnshire, never to be seen.

This for my money is the best RPG based on a licensed property. Yes, better than West End Games other, more popular game that was based on that other more popular film series. It’s written by the people responsible for Chaosium’s Call of Cthulhu. This is the key to it’s greatness. As good a representation of the mood and ideas of the first Ghostbusters film in game form, it is also a wonderful parody of the Call of Cthulhu game. That second part wasn’t obvious to me straight away as it was probably another 3-4 years before I played CofC.

The rules are nice and simple, and if you want to play the characters from the film you can be playing it pretty much straight out the box. It had a bunch of adventures with it, plus ideas for a whole lot more and a handy bunch of off the peg NPCs for all occasions.

There’s an adventure you could buy for the game that I played as a player that I enjoyed greatly - “Ghost Toasties” - mainly for the fact it involves fighting the spirits of cereal packet mascots.

There was a second edition to tie into Ghostbusters 2, but much like that film it looked like it sucked a lot of the fun that made the first so great. Ghostbusters 2 is awful, and it boggles the mind that people still clamour for a third. Did you people see Evolution? Have you heard the commentary on the first film where Ramis and Reitman discuss Aykroyd’s mind boggling insane/awful original concept for the film? I am certain a third film would be a bad idea.

Now, on the other hand, a proper release of the Lorenzo Music era Real Ghostbusters episodes (which can be tied to the RPG via way of Larry Ditillio and CofC) would be good idea.

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Cut It Open And See If It Swallowed Any Gems Part 7: Stormbringer

October 9th, 2007 by Brack

As I mentioned before, I got Paranoia free through a White Dwarf subscription as GW got rid of their stock of their UK printings of US games. Also offered was Stormbringer, which a friend got. I think I played this once or twice as a player. There was an adventure called “Madcap Laughs” in White Dwarf that we played through. Eventually through various swaps, it ended up my possession (I think I still have it today).

I’ve neglected to mention so far that this is a RPG based on the Elric novels of Michael Moorcock. And that I’ve never read an Elric novel. I remember borrowing a Corum novel from the library around this time, and not being overly keen. I’ve since come to realise that I’m not the biggest fan of fantasy in the world. But despite my vague ignorance of Moorcock’s work (though I think I’ve read some of his comic work since) and my disposition towards fantasy, I got some decent games out of this. While not being familiar with the source material, the themes appealed to me at the time, having been exposed to them via other creators who had been inspired by Moorcock (mainly Grant Morrison).

And the game mechanic is a nice one. It’s the pared down version of the Runequest rules that were used by Chaosium for various games such as Call of Cthulhu (more on which later), combined with a magic system centred on the summoning of various entities, and the binding of said entities. There’s a scenario in the rule book that would be a key adventure in my second groups’ games, based around a cosmic gambling parlour. I now wonder if my fellow GM in that group, Barry, had taken to heart the bizarre random occurances in said adventure, as the games he’d run for years to follow were heavy with items and situations that created hundreds of unpredictable events. Stuff, like halls of mirrors where each mirror would have a different set of random effects for the person looking in it. He must have spent ages writing up chart after chart of this stuff.

Annoyingly we kind of lost contact with the chap after he said he was moving Cardiff, he then rang me a week later, while I was out, saying he was actually living in Edinburgh. And as he never left me a number, that was the last we heard of him.

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