The Adventures of Keith Garrett

This is post number 10 in the series “31 Days of Ghostbusters,” a celebration of the franchise’s return to the big screen.

The New York City setting was a big part of the look and feel of Ghostbusters. In additon to the visual component on screen, New York also influenced the presentation of elements like character attitudes, location details, dramatic situations, and ghost types.

Setting your game in a different city will similarly change the feel of your campaign. Let’s take a look at a few places that might inspire local-flavored spectral activity. I’ll start with my own town as an example, since (conveniently enough) that’s where I set my most recent game.

Memphis

I’ll be honest: I didn’t choose to set a campaign in Memphis because of any special features; I chose Memphis because that’s where my players and I live. But that’s a fine place to start! Researching your own town to figure out what kind of “haunted history” it might have—as well as where the Ghostbusters themselves will set up shop—can give you a new appreciation for where you live. As it turns out, Memphis has:

• Cool HQ Options: the Pyramid, Mud Island, Beale Street
• Haunted Hot Spots: the Orpheum Theatre, Graceland, Sun Studio, Peabody Hotel
• Special Ghost Types: yellow fever victims, Civil War soldiers, Peabody ducks
• Unique Phenomena: Memphis suffered multiple yellow fever epidemics in the 19th Century, resulting in thousands of deaths. Yellow fever ghosts might haunt mass burial sites, old buildings that served as makeshift hospitals, or even a spectral steamboat that was not allowed to dock due to its infectious passengers. (Also, surely Elvis is still around.)

Las Vegas

One of the perks of being a Vegas Ghostbuster is having plenty of things to do during one’s down time. Unfortunately, it’s harder to do the job when flashing lights and casino sounds interfere with your PKE readings, and hauling a proton pack around in desert temperatures can challenge even the Ghostbuster with the highest Cool rating. (In fact, your Ghostbusters will probably want to wear uniforms more suited to the warmer climate.)

• Cool HQ Options: on the Las Vegas Strip, or near Hoover Dam for extra power
• Haunted Hot Spots: Golden Gate Casino, Moulin Rouge Hotel, Nevada Test Site, Old Mormon Fort
• Special Ghost Types: casino ghosts, radiation monsters, desert spirits
• Unique Phenomena: You’ll see two common types of casino ghosts in Vegas: those who lost it all and committed suicide, and those who won big but died before they could enjoy it (whether from accident, heart attack, or criminal action). (Also, surely Elvis is still around.)

New Orleans

In a city that’s home to Mardi Gras, jazz music, ancient crypts, and voodoo, a team of Ghostbusters running around won’t seem that unusual. As the supply of fancy cemeteries hints, the likelihood of finding enough work to keep a Ghostbusting franchise in business is high. If your Ghostbusters really get into the spirit of New Orleans, perhaps they’d like to use a streetcar as their Ectomobile! Sure, it’s not at all practical, being on a track and all, but that’s a problem for R&D to solve!

• Cool HQ Options: Bourbon Street, an 18th Century crypt, a jazz club, anywhere near a streetcar line
• Haunted Hot Spots: Saint Louis Cathedral, Saint Louis Cemetery
• Special Ghost Types: War of 1812 soldiers (American and British), Civil War era slaves, Hurricane Katrina victims
• Unique Phenomena: Being the site of multiple wars, natural disasters, diseases, and even voodoo practices, New Orleans is an ectoplasmic melting pot. The city’s famous crypts have proven strangely difficult to keep ghost-free.

London

A city as old as London is bound to have a lot of ghosts in the pantry (is that the phrase?). Just keeping all the museums in London spectre-free would probably be a full-time job! And in addition to simply having a large number of ghosts, London would also have more than its share of FAMOUS ghosts. What will the London Ghostbusters do if they encounter the ghost of a famous figure such as William Shakespeare or Anne Boleyn (carrying her own head)? Will they zap and trap the old soul just like any other job? Will they talk to the spirit and try to get it to move on peacefully? Or will they find a way to put the contained spook on display and charge admission to the public?

• Cool HQ Options: Big Ben, London Dungeon, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, or in the London Underground
• Haunted Hot Spots: the Tower of London, the Natural History Museum, Madame Tussauds, Globe Theatre, Royal Albert Hall
• Special Ghost Types: historical figures, especially royalty; Black Death victims; Great Plague victims; Great Fire victims
• Unique Phenomena: London’s spiritual history goes all the way back to its founding by Romans in 43 AD. In addition to encountering English ghosts, you might also be slimed by Romans, Anglo-Saxons, and Vikings.

Washington, D.C.

Ghostbusters operating in the United States capital should be extra careful to mind their targets; the Secret Service doesn’t have a sense of humor about stray shots hitting the White House. But there’s good news, too: just like a Washington prostitute, many of the Ghostbusters’ clients will be rich and powerful!

• Cool HQ Options: Library of Congress, Old Patent Office Building, Watergate complex, Washington Monument, the White House (picture the Ghostbusters working in the halls of power, West Wing style!)
• Haunted Hot Spots: Ford’s Theatre, Smithsonian Institution, any of the war memorials
• Special Ghost Types: Politicians, veterans
• Unique Phenomena: It’s possible that memorial sites such as the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and the numerous veterans’ memorials somehow collect spiritual energy which draws certain ghosts to them, perhaps from far away. For example, maybe it’s the the ghosts of veterans, and any soldiers who fought (and died) in any country and in any time period might find themselves wandering the National Mall looking for an enemy to fight.

Have you set a Ghostbusters game somewhere other than New York? Was it your town? I want to hear about it!

This is post number 9 in the series “31 Days of Ghostbusters,” a celebration of the franchise’s return to the big screen.

As the original film showed us, the Ghostbusters aren’t limited to supernatural enemies. In that movie, the Environmental Protection Agency, in the form of Walter Peck, served as a great foil for the team. It’s good to occasionally give the Ghostbusters an enemy other than ectoplasmic entities to fight. For one thing, spending time on conflicts other than ghosts can highlight how strange and scary the spooks are when it’s busting time again. For another, having an adversary with a human face and personality can be a refreshing change from scene after scene of shooting proton beams at slimers.

However, we don’t want to reuse old material too much, so we might want to retire the EPA as the bureaucratic bad guy. Luckily, the mortal world has no shortage of sources for authoritative asshattery. Sources such as:

Local Police

“Those ghost-chasers have it so easy. No regulations to follow, no Miranda rights to read, a fraction of the arrests that we make, yet people LOVE them! They even have a cooler car!”

Police officers might resent a number of things about the Ghostbusters: their cavalier attitude toward authority, the attention they get from the public, the damage they do to the city, even the traffic laws they break on the way to a job. So maybe the PCs finish a bust and find a parking boot on the Ectomobile. Or they find themselves arrested for trapping a ghost that was related to an officer—or a judge. Getting on the bad side of the local police could cause constant trouble for the team, unless they take steps to make peace. (I won’t list any solutions here in case your players are reading, but I’ll give you a hint about one: it rhymes with “shmo-nuts.”)

Ecto Rights Activists

“Incorporeal Americans are a living, breathing (well, not so much living and breathing) part of our national heritage, a part of our past! We must learn to coexist with them, not blast them with nuclear guns and stick them in some kind of ghost jail!”

Could zapping a spook into a trap be considered a hate crime? The members of a new group, the Ecto Rights Activists, sure think so. (They don’t like the use of the epithet “spook,” either.) ERA members are not above forming a human barrier to keep the Ghostbusters away from the scene of a haunting. Our heroes will need to deal with this problem with care to avoid looking like jerks to the public, even though most citizens don’t agree with the ERA.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

“We acknowledge that these non-cohesive organisms exist; what we have yet to confirm is whether they can carry infectious agents from their habitat to ours.”

Some CDC personnel are concerned that the increase in ghost sightings is caused by a disease, perhaps spread by ectoplasm. Armed with that theory, they can be overzealous in inviting themselves to various Ghostbusters headquarters to take samples from the premises (and the Ghostbusters) to look for evidence of otherworldly infection. Smart Ghostbusters don’t let them in, but it’s more difficult to stop them from showing up at a job site, where they excel at both getting in the way and overreacting. (If you imagine a CDC lab worker in a hazmat suit chasing a slime-coated Ghostbuster so she can take him back to the lab for analysis, you’re not far off.)

Department of Homeland Security

“It was bad enough when these dead illegals were just taking up space in our graveyards…now they’re occupying our nation’s finest high-tech containment grids! Let’s send these spooks back where they came from!”

Many Americans, the DHS says, don’t like the idea of the Ghostbusters storing captured non-native ghosts on American territory. (Most of these Americans work for the DHS.) One especially gung ho DHC director is attempting to acquire funding to recreate the Ghostbusters’ equipment, with the goal of creating a new Office of Ecto-Immigration. (This director is not above engaging in industrial espionage to achieve that goal.) If this office does form, it will focus on identifying and trapping the ghosts of illegal immigrants, then storing them in special deportation traps.

Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF)

“You say your training is in parapsychology, correct? Would you mind telling me exactly how that qualifies you to operate a weaponized positron collider?”

Some groups—such as police organizations, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Democratic Party—are demanding legislation that would require the Ghostbusters to register their weapons and license their operators. ATF is now actively looking into these options by interviewing witnesses, studying records of Ghostbuster operations, and analyzing scenes of protonic collateral damage. Because of this, individual Ghostbusters may find themselves called to Washington to give testimony about their activities. Ghostbusters R&D is against the idea of regulation, fearing that it would slow their process of releasing new equipment for the franchises to test. Ghostbusters Legal, on the other hand, is proactively developing a training and licensing program (before one is required by the government), and plans to try it out soon on a few test markets. Will this new program add a point or two of the Talent “Fire Proton Pack” for trained and licensed Ghostbusters—or will it instead take away their proton pack privileges until they pass a grueling multi-session training course?

(Thanks to Delta Green for its comprehensive list of federal agencies.)

This is post number 8 in the series “31 Days of Ghostbusters,” a celebration of the franchise’s return to the big screen.

As we covered in the post about modernizing the Ghostbusters RPG, smartphones alone open up a new world for our heroes. A big reason for that is the availability of apps that can help them hunt down paranormal critters. Apps such as…

Tobin’s Spirit App

In addition to being bulky, heavy, and hard to reference while holding a PKE meter in one hand, copies of Tobin’s Spirit Guide are also so old and emotionally charged that they’re sometimes haunted themselves! Enter the modern replacement: Tobin’s Spirit App. The 21st Century Ghostbuster uses this app to look up information about a nearly endless collection of spooks, spectres, and spirits. Who has time to flip through crumbling pages to find out how to deal with the mythical two-eyed cyclops while it’s trying to eat the rest of your team? Using the app, you’re just a few taps away from learning that all you have to do is knock off the brute’s monocle and he’ll be defenseless!

PKE Meter App

Once you equip your phone with a small psychokinetic energy sensor developed by Ghostbusters R&D (sold separately, available in bluetooth), you can access almost all the functionality of the PKE meter in a smaller, sleeker, handier, smartphonier package. This app is especially handy for the occasional job when you want to keep your equipment hidden (or the more frequent job when you just forgot to pack the PKE meter). In practice, most Ghostbusters still use the standard meter when given the choice, until R&D works out that bug where an incoming call causes a feedback pulse that attracts all the ghosts in the area.

Spectral Activity Mapper

Using a combination of GPS satellite data and an array of industrial PKE meters mounted throughout the city, the Spectral Activity Mapper app can help the ghostbusters narrow down a search for a ghost to within a few blocks. The SAM app is especially useful for following a ghost the team already knows about. In theory, it could be used to find unreported ghosts to track, but unless a paying customer is attached, such uses of the app are considered by Ghostbusters Inc. to be “outside recommended parameters.”

Haunted History Apps

Remember the bad old days when researching the spook inhabiting a disused wine cellar required a visit to the library, along with the associated problems with crabby librarians, photocopy fees, and paper cuts? You and me both, ‘buster! Luckily, the modern Ghostbuster has the power of the internet at her fingertips, including apps that cross-reference historical data with interactive maps to let you easily reference the psychic history of whatever area you’re in. Note that Ghostbusters R&D hasn’t created any apps of this type because so many have already been developed by third parties, including ghost-hunting clubs, universities, and random kooks. In other words, the quality varies.

Equipment Status Trackers

Ghostbusters use a lot of tech. Dangerous tech. Fortunately, a new suite of apps lets the team keep an eye on containment capacity, trap charges, nuclear decay rates, and more, directly from their smartphones. Set an alert for when the grid is nearly full! Automatically order a new shipment of traps from HQ when stock is low! Notify emergency responders when a positron leak occurs!

What app would YOU want to use if you were a Ghostbuster?

This is post number 7 in the series “31 Days of Ghostbusters,” a celebration of the franchise’s return to the big screen.

If you use the Ghostbusters RPG to run a game set when the movie came out—the mid 1980s—then you’re all set. The game world and equipment list reflect that reality, from the standard Ghostbusters walkie talkies to the new, cutting edge “cellular phone” the team could carry in the car. The last time I started a Ghostbusters campaign, a few years ago, I was tempted to go with such a retro setup. The Ghostbusters would receive missions by phone, or from people walking in off the street, or by a letter from Ghostbusters Inc., and the clothing, music, and guest star NPCs would all be artifacts of the 80s.

If, on the other hand, you want to run a game set in the modern day, you’ll need to do some modernizing. I had some ideas about this for my campaign, which I’ve broken up into three categories: equipment, societal changes, and social media.

Equipment

First, the Ghostbusters will probably ditch walkie-talkies and switch to smartphones. In addition to enabling the team to talk and text on the go, smartphones will let them:

• research ghostly phenomena and location histories online (Spates Catalog is probably hyperlinked and searchable)
• capture images, audio, and video for later research
• find the location they’ve been hired to cleanse
• use apps (This is a big topic that I’ll address in a separate post.)
• stay in touch with their fans (more on that under Social Media)
• read reviews of new restaurants (OK, that one’s not job related, but they’ll still do it.)

The main tools of the ghostbusting trade—proton packs, ghost traps, and the containment grid—still seem pretty futuristic today. But don’t let that stop your efforts to update them! Maybe Ghostbusters R&D has developed a miniaturized containment grid, perhaps even a portable one, say the size of a shoebox. Or maybe proton packs have built-in stream-crossing failsafes, or we have ghost traps that hover and chase a target. And one thing all ghostbusting equipment could use is a reduced environmental footprint. (Just ask the EPA.)

No changes are needed for the beach kit. It remains as relevant as ever.

Societal Changes

If your Ghostbusters modernization assumes that the movie events took place in the 80s and that the modern player characters are the inheritors of that legacy (as I did in my recent campaign), then you might also want to consider the changes in society that would likely result from these two facts: (1) ghosts exist, and (2) Ghostbusters exist.

From these facts, we might expect to see an increase in popularity of parapsychology as a college major. A concrete example of this would be to have an NPC working for the team who is an intern from a local university.

Proof in the paranormal would also likely have an effect on the TV shows that center on ghostly phenomena, like the ones airing in the real world on the increasingly-poorly-named History Channel. These shows might have higher budgets, more prestigious guest stars (“Mr. Cruise, tell us more about the ghost that’s stalking you,”) and even content the team could use for research purposes. “There’s a ghost stealing socks from the dryer in the White House? I think I saw a show about sock-stealing ghosts the other day on SpookTV!” You could even have a camera crew following the PCs around during an adventure to document a day in the life of the Ghostbusters.

Political issues could be a concern for your team, too. Maybe some people think it’s immoral to trap a ghost, and try to get Ghostbusting outlawed. The team might also find themselves in legal trouble for all the property damage they cause. (Be wary of overdoing this angle, though, because trashing buildings and the like seems integral in recreating the feel of the movies.) Also, busting ghosts can be a hazardous job—does your franchise offer a sufficient healthcare plan?

Social Media

Like any other modern business, the Ghostbusters will need a strong presence in social media.  For starters, your players’ franchise absolutely needs its own Facebook page. How else will their fans give them research tips, request missions at any hour of the day, and post “friendly” messages telling just what they think about the local Ghostbusters and where they can put their Ectomobile? This might open up a new Goal: Friends (strive to have an ever-increasing number of friends, online and off). But most importantly, we can finally learn which Disney character each team member would be.

“Who Ya Gonna Call”™ is so last century. Today it’s #WhoYaGonnaTweet? Like Facebook, Twitter could be a valuable source of customers and complaints, with the dubious addition of being able to connect the team with celebrities around the world. Want to know what @WilliamShatner thinks about the outcome of the latest Ghostbusters mission? Too bad, you will. PCs with the Goal of Fame will certainly get a lot of use out of Twitter, as will the newest generation of up-and-coming millenial Ghostbusters who like phone calls about as much as Slimer likes proton streams. #PoorSlimer

Photo and video sharing could be big for the franchise, too, adding Instagram and YouTube to the Ghostbusters’ social media empire. How many likes will the capture of a free repeater earn? Or a shot of a figure from history scaring the crowd at a Starbucks? Or one Ghostbuster accidentally blasting another? (Answer: not as many as a spectral wardrobe malfunction.)

What Else?

The new Ghostbusters movie will likely have more ideas about Ghostbusting in the 21st Century, so I’ll address this topic again later. Until then, what are your ideas?

(Fake text message created using the Fake iPhone Text Generator by FoxSash. The fake tweets, though, that’s my doing.)