This is the latest in a series of posts talking about tabletop roleplaying games that I highly recommend you play. Last time out, I talked about the dark delights of Call of Cthulhu, the first roleplaying game which needed a statistic to measure your sanity. As I mentioned, regardless of how fun it might be, the subject matter can be a bit of a downer…

… which is why if you are in the market for a supernatural RPG that won’t have you glancing nervously into dark corners, then don’t wait another minute. Pick up the phone and call the professionals!

8 ) Ghostbusters

I’ll forgive you for thinking – like so many other high-minded roleplayers before you – that Ghostbusters is just some stupid movie tie-in game. Because on some levels, it’s exactly that. It’s got the hallmarks – very few rules; lots of pretty cards and handouts to play with; an almost cavalier attitude to the oh-so-serious activity of roleplaying.

When you take a closer look though, not only has Ghostbusters got a design that is being emulated by today’s ’story-driven’ roleplayers, but it’s also got a campaign background that could spawn a million adventures. Not bad for some movie tie-in.

Created by the multi-talented guys who also brought you Call of Cthulhu – who were probably glad for the break – Ghostbusters: A Frightfully Cheerful Roleplaying Game was released by West End Games in 1986. These days, a two-year gap between ‘product’ and ‘tie-in’ would seem suicidal, but we forget what a global phenomenon Ghostbusters was – not to mention how long it would have taken to materialise on ‘home video systems’. Those two years were well spent however, as Sandy Petersen, Lynn Willis and Greg Stafford had created a game that perfectly emulated the original movie, while also expanding its potential.

With four statistics and four skills per character, all of them simply given a number to represent how many six-sided dice you threw to beat a difficulty number, Ghostbusters’ system was so simple… that I just described all of it. Except one thing I suppose; the infamous Ghost Dice, which was just a D6 with the Ghostbusters’ logo (AKA Casper, the Friendly Ghost) replacing the ‘6′. Used whenever a roll was made in the game, if you ‘rolled a Ghost’ that meant Something Bad Happened. Beat your difficulty number and we’re talking minor setback; fail your roll and get a Ghost, and it’s major disaster time.

This mechanic, coupled with the liberal use of Brownie Points to let players fudge things, gives an appropriately freewheeling and cinematic feel to gameplay. The average game of Ghostbusters basically rattles along as fast as you can take it, which, in my view, makes it absolutely brilliant. Want to do something? Pick a number, roll it, bam – done. Next!

Apart from the smart but simple system, Ghostbusters has one other massive trick up its sleeve. Not content with just describing the science-meets-spooks setting of the original film, the designers realised that in the Ghostbusters universe, anything goes. And I mean anything. Aliens? Check. Dimensional travel? Check. Time travel? Check. Science experiments gone awry? Check. Essentially, if it’s been seen in science fiction or comics, it’s fair game to appear in a Ghostbusters adventure.

With that one background tweak, Ghostbusters suddenly becomes a multi-genre game with a system that can handle everything… because it doesn’t try to handle anything. The rules are almost Zen-like in their simplicity; the inherent comedy in the setting is a free pass for the GM and players to do anything they like, because the aim of the game is just to kick back and have fun.

While I didn’t pick up Ghostbusters until a few years after its debut, and didn’t run it until many years later, I’m almost in awe of how good this game is today, and how it’s still so relevant to my style of gaming. So many games since have borrowed or stolen elements – not least the one I’m going to talk about next – that it’s no surprise I still feel it’s a gold standard by which others should be measured.

And what could be better than Ghostbusters? Why, the Ghostbusters system, but with another famous sci-fi movie as background….