Gamify It! Ghostbusters 2016

Last week I reviewed the Ghostbusters 2016 remake. You can find it here. The film's villain enacts a plan to release an army of ghosts on New York by powering up the local ley lines. Let’s see how we can make that plot work in the Chronicles of Darkness.

Gamify It! Ghostbusters 2016

Some Assembly Required

The main elements of this story seed are:

• Ley Lines
• An otherworldly gate that the antagonist hopes to open
• Spectral manifestations
• Some form of technology or techno magic to make it all work.

Within the Chronicles of Darkness, ley lines serve to transport resonance (Mage: the Awakening). Where lines intersect mystical power collects. With the proper spells this energy can be used for mundane purposes like powering a building. The resonances can also be used to make an area receptive to other magics, to provide nourishment to spirits, or just to alter the character of the area the lines pass through.

The resonance concept works well with an Underworld, or Avernian, gate. The Book of Dead describes a system for opening gates based on specifics of the opener and the location. Filling a space with death resonance should provide a bonus to rolls to open such a portal.

While Ghostbusters focuses on an Underworld gate, there is no reason that needs to be the case. Any sort of resonance might help breach the Gauntlet into the Shadow. Specifically a potent spirit can feed on that energy on the other side to grow stronger. A strong enough spirit can create its own gateways.

Alternatively an Abyssal or Infernal taint might allow the creation of a portal to the Abyss (again from Mage: the Awakening) or the Inferno (from World of Darkness: Inferno).

All of these options (Underworld, Shadow, Abyss, Inferno) come with their own cast of problematic entities. These beings could use the gates to enter the "real" world or be summoned to help create the gateways. Ancient ghosts can be artificially anchored to this world with Supernal magic (or perhaps specialized rituals or supernatural powers). Spirits with the proper resonance can be summoned (and perhaps later fed to each other create a strong enough entity to finish the ritual). Abyssal manifestations are dangerous even to the summoner but eager to arrive. As are demons of course.

The method for summoning the entities and opening the portal are going to depend on the individual in question.

Madmen and Geniuses

Mage: the Awakening: this is my go-to for the villain. A focused mage can access any of the options I listed above. They can easily summon and bind ghosts (using Death 2 and 4), spirits (Spirit 2 to 4), or other entities. With other spells they can weaken the gauntlet (Spirit 3) and help manifest the normal incorporeal entities. The plan works only a little different for infernal demons, with horrible acts creating wounds in the spirit world from which demons to emerge.

A mage might also seek to open a door to the Supernal, not to let it in but go through themselves. Though only Archmasters are likely to succeed, many mages would like to try. A first step might be flooding the local ley lines with Supernal resonance (perhaps with a Demense placed on the intersection of some ley lines). Then they might summon supernal entities to further push the local conditions to converge with their chosen realm. All of this is as likely to punch a hole into the Abyss as a higher reality.
Werewolf: the Forsaken: The logical antagonist here is one of the Pure, trying to bring about the good old days before the Gauntlet. Using a special Rite they lower the local gauntlet. Spirits cross over to gather power from the material world. Once they have enough power the werewolf enacts a larger version of the Rite to bring down the Gauntlet across a whole city.

Alternatively a Bale Hound might seek to deal with Infernal powers, creating such negative resonances (with spirit and werewolf fueled atrocities) that wounds in reality open up. Then they just wait for their masters to arrive.



Geist: the Sineaters: After mages, these are the folks most likely to be opening gateways. Perhaps a rogue Sineater seeks to release old ghosts back into the world. They open Avernian gates around the city. Using special rituals they anchor the ghosts to this world so they can escape the Underworld. The climax focuses on the Sineater’s use of this spiritual power to become a God of Death.

Demon: the Descent: A dedicated demon might try to create a portal for much the same reason as a Supernally obsessed mage: the find a way to their personal hell. Alternatively perhaps this is a plan of the God-Machine. In Ghostbusters, Rowan does summon four ghosts along the ley lines. And four is a a sign of the Machine’s plans. Was Rowan a cultist?

One Last Idea

My final idea concept is to have it all be mundane. Stealing from the Esoterrorist’s setting, perhaps Rowan hopes to make people believe in ghosts. The technology he uses creates convincing holograms to scare people. Once enough people believe in ghosts, he hopes this weight of belief will make it true.

That makes him a threat to all supernatural creatures who desire to remain hidden.

To add to the confusion, perhaps a group of NPC ghostbusters emerges to combat this threat. Theses deluded ghost hunters think they can deal with the (fictional) dead.

But what happens as people begin to believe in ghosts? Do real ghosts suddenly find it easy to manifest? Do vampires take to the streets and pass themselves off as fairly solid apparitions of the past? What if something spectral appears but it isn't effected by the normal rules of ghosts?

Review: Ghostbusters (2016)

Before I start on my review of Ghostbusters (2016), let me talk about how I review movies. I’ve been accused of liking everything that comes out and that is not a fair assessment. The Transformers movies for instance are trash, ruined by extraneous love stories.

When I watch a movie I try to enjoy it based on what it is trying to be. If I watch an action movie I am not judging its plot but more the explosions and set pieces. If I see a spy movie, then I don’t compare it to a Bond flick (James Bond is a terrible spy) but look at the convoluted telling of who did what.

This gets harder with a remake, particularly one based on a property from my childhood. There is a lot of nostalgia to overcome to come up with a fair assessment of how good a film like the 2016 Ghostbusters movie really is. So with that caveat out of the way, let us look at a fun, visually thrilling, and mostly humorous film about friendship, being taken seriously and fighting ghosts.

Also Spoilers!!

Review: Ghostbusters (2016)

As expected of a remake the plot follows many of the contours of the original. Again we have four ghostbusters, three academics and one everyman (or woman). Again the team is drummed out of academia and forced into the private sector. And yet again the authorities try to silence them.

There are many differences however. Erin Gilbert (played by Kristen Wiig), the Ray Stantz equivalent, and Abby Yates (played by Melissa McCarthy), our Peter Venkman equivalent, begin as estranged friends. Together they conducted pioneering work in the field of ghost and related paranormal activity but Erin, after decades of ridicule, decided to seek legitimacy.

A haunting at a historic home causes the manager to contact Erin, making her aware that her book is back in print without her permission. She confronts Abby and her lab assistant Jillian Holtzmann (played by Kate McKinnon) and they are off to examine the ghost. They film and get slimed by the ghost. The video footage goes viral. They lose their jobs (Erin due to besmirching the school’s reputation and Abby by accidentally reminding the incompetent dean that her department exists by asking for money).

The banter between the characters works well. The dialogue is snappy and the jokes generally are funny. I found some of the humor spoiled by the previews but not much. In particular the more elaborate jokes still worked like poking fun at the insanity of New York City housing prices.

They try to rent the original movie’s fire house but find it costs 21 grand a month. Instead they get a place above a Chinese restaurant.

That leads to their first hire and my first real problem with the movie. The Janine Melnitz replacement is Kevin, played by Chris Hemsworth. I think Hemsworth plays the role well but I dislike how strangely they wrote him and other side characters. Everything Kevin does is strange. He can’t answer phones, he is blind to social norms, and is generally clueless about how human society works. He seems to be the worst employee ever. For a while I considered the possibility he was an extraterrestrial.

But it is not just Kevin. They cast the mayor as hapless idiot. His spokeswoman seems drunk. The chinese food delivery guy seems to work for a shop that is either actively carrying a grudge for Abby or is so incompetent that it should be out of business. I understand these characters are supposed to be caricatures like the EPA asshole in the first movie. But they seem far too implausible. It ruins my suspension of disbelief. I have an easier time believing in the ghosts.

As for the main characters, Holtzmann also comes off as a little strange. We never really any decent explanation of her background and motivations. Her end movie confession doesn’t have any backing elsewhere in the film and fails to redeem her in my eyes.

This flaw thankfully does not extend to the rest of the core cast. Leslie Jones‘s everywoman Patty Tolan may be a bit stereotypical but at least she seems to be a real person. She has family, good motivation, and a number of good lines.

The villain, also gets some decent characterization. Rowan North, played by Neil Casey, is a small white man who thinks the world owes him one. He is priming the city’s ley lines using the same technology as the team, releasing ghosts and preparing to create a portal to the afterlife. Then he and his new friends will harass (i.e. torment) humanity. He can’t see that the people whose work he is basing his plans on (i.e. Abby and Erin’s book) are equally if not more oppressed. He just wants his revenge.

This isn’t the only bit of social commentary. The film shows how women suffer lots of abuse and disrespect. Erin is reminded that men often simply focus on their looks. The film warns us not to read the comments, comments no dissimilar to the hyperbole we see in real life. Even Kevin tries to take credit for saving the day in the end, ignoring how the women did all of the work.

The rest of the film is great. I really liked the third act twist. The heroines appear to triumph but they only play into the villain's plans. After that the story becomes bit predictable if still fun. Rowan returns after his death as a ghost, possesses a few people, activates his doomsday device, leads authorities in rousing dance, and finally turns into a giant monster. The team rigs a way to send ghosts back to the other side, enact a last-minute rescue and the end result does not leave New York in ruins for a change. The end credit scenes are also rather enjoyable.

I also have to say that the look of the film is really excellent. The devices have a worn cobbled together look that sells the hand-made nature of the ghost fighting and summoning equipment. Creepy mirror/windows filled with angry ghosts pressing in decorate the villain's lair.

On the negative side, there are some plot holes like where the team’s money comes from or how Homeland Security tries to take over yet never seems to call in any experts. I tired of the banter by the end.

On the other hand I enjoyed the cameos of the original cast, as well as the other callbacks to the original film.

Overall I found the film really fun. Too bad it suffered from all of the controversy.

Rebooting Roleplaying Games

Over the last year I watched several rebooted franchises: Ghostbusters, the latest Spiderman, Evil Dead. They made me think about how I might approach rebooting roleplaying games. I’ve friends who have done it to varying degrees of success.

For instance, Mike (a.k.a. salientmind), one of our main organizers at No Ordinary Obsession, had a very successful reboot of his first Mage: the Awakening chronicle. The same players played mostly the same characters in the roughly the same setting. There were differences. The player characters differed slightly. The tone was closer to what he originally shot for. He altered the line up of NPCs. Eventually he revealed the story was set in an alternate timeline of the original game, where a powerful Master of the Time Arcanum had altered past events.

My interest in the concept (beyond the theoretical) is that I ran several games that ended unsatisfactorily. Continuing or rebooting those games with the same cast of players is unfortunately out of the question but revisiting the setting may still be possible.

Here are a few options.

Mage: the Awakening

The “Norfolk game” (as I called this otherwise nameless Chronicle) is the prime example I’d like to return to. That story featured some of my favorite scenarios and the promise of some major time travel shenanigans. I’d like to resolve the political story of Left Handed mages infiltrating the Guardians of the Veil and the strange variant Orders running the next town over. I would also be fun to revisit the stories of the empty room (from Mysterious Places), the power (a contagious magic ability from Second Sight), and the insanity of an abandoned sanctum the PCs claimed.

The time travel aspect (much like Mike’s game) invites a reboot. The timeline has already been altered once and a further change could see the core cast return altered. I also still have many of the electronic notes from the game. Finally I do have one of the original players in my online group.

On the other hand, rebooting this will require her buy-in more than the others. Also while she played one of the core three, that still leaves filling in the gaps left by the other two characters: the vampire socialite Vivian and the slacker hacker Notemus. Forcing someone to play those characters doesn’t seem fair to me outside of a one-shot.

Demons and Gods

Partly inspired by this.

The first game I ran in grad school (and my first D&D 3.5 edition game) focused on a war torn dark age setting. The world featured a thin boundary between the living and dead. Ghosts easily manifested and mortals occasionally ventured into the gray lands. In the world’s cosmology, the elves and the race that became known as demons predated the birth of the gods. The elves recognized the god’s status even if they didn’t worship them. The demons chose to defy them and were cast down. Now this ancient race is finding its way back to this world and using the current blood filled conflict to fuel their rituals.

The PCs in this setting were soldiers in a desperate war. In addition to exploring the world, fending off demons and other great deeds, they have an army to defeat.

In this reboot, I don’t see a need to replicate the original PCs. Neither does using the original system matter. The important aspects of the game are the setting, NPCs and the core conflict. I’d let the players create what they want and use either Dungeon World or D&D 5th edition as the ruleset. A downside to this reboot is that I lack much of the original material I used since I ran it just as I was going digital with my game notes and well before my use of Google documents.

Dark Sun

Rather than reboot one of my own games, my last concept involves rebooting an entire setting, specifically Dark Sun.

The original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition game setting revolved around survival in the desert world of Athas. Ravaged by magic, the land is ruled by immortal sorcerer-kings, filled with psychic monsters and adversaries, and populated by races both strange and somewhat familiar. This post-apocalyptic take on D&D owes more to John Carter than Mad Max.

Unfortunately the original line suffered due to a fast moving metaplot. In the first adventure, included in the original box set, one of the sorcerer-kings is assassinated starting a chain of events that leads to the death of the world's only dragon as well as other sorcerer-kings and a change in the very climate. The published adventures allow the PCs to follow along in the epic as bystanders.

In a reboot, I could cast the PCs as the core figures in these changes and see how they alter the destiny of Athas. Do they bring democracy and freedom to the world? Or do they profit off the limited life force remaining in the land to raise themselves up as new god-kings?

Final Thoughts

Part of the appeal of reboots to me is seeing the familiarity and differences in the setting and characters. How does the action look through a different director’s lens? How does a different actor change the character? Is the mood affected with a different take on the genre? In a way it is like the entire product is full of easter eggs for the original property.

I think that concept translates to roleplaying games but perhaps it works best f the players and the game master are familiar with the original.

What do you think? Have you ever rebooted a game? How did it go?

Review: The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding

The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding, a collection of essays on world building, ended up on my wish list somehow. Overall it is in an interesting read but as one might expect from a collection, some of the contributions are more useful than others.

The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding

Edited by Janna Silverstein

The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding contains essays on world design written by some of the great contributors to the field of roleplaying. The topics range from building religious organizations, and whole societies to the role of technology and magic to creating a convincing history.

Some of the highlights as I saw it include:

• Playing in Someone Else’s Backyard by Janna Silverstein which talks about the pitfalls and restrictions of working on a licensed world as a professional.
• It’s a Mystery! Designing Mystery Cults by David “Zeb” Cook details creating and using mystery cults in your game.
• Why No Monotheism by Wolfgang Baur which asks the question of why we see so few monotheistic worlds in games and what can be done about that.

For the record I have run a monotheistic world with religious strife (sort of). The establishment was taken by surprise by their goddess’s decision to end her life and the world as a whole. Luckily the PCs managed to save the latter.

The book is slim, only a 124 words long. Most of the contributions come from Wolfgang Baur (8 out of 18 essays). He tends to plug his game world as an example of what to do. This gets a bit tiresome.

If you’ve read other books on worldbuilding, particularly building game world then this book is not terribly useful. There are plenty books devoted to world building which provide much more value. On the other hand, if you get it as a gift, its worth a quick read. But I’m not sure paying for the physical book is worth $20.

Review: Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe

I first encountered this long running radio serial back in college. The mixture of science fiction, New Age and Classical symbolism, and detective noir stuck with me. Recently I decided to track the series down and reexperience the magic of Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe. Then I discovered I’d only heard the third of nine stories.

Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe

by the ZBS Foundation, written by Thomas Lopez

Ruby focuses on the titular character, a noir-ish female detective living in the 22nd century on the alien world Summa Nulla. Ruby possesses the unique power to slow down time. The tone is slightly tongue in cheek with plenty of puns (like in series 1 with the mole people and their leader’s dance partner Moleena), innuendos (a sample episode title is How to Activate a Male Android), and repeating gags (for example Ruby’s ally Professor T. J. Teru has a habit of collapsing ceilings down on himself).

The first series focuses on Ruby’s investigation into who is manipulating the planet’s media. Along the way she tangles with androids (“frankies”), tentacled aliens, techno-witches, ancient alien “games”, and more. Someone wants to keep her from the truth and arranged for the slimies (bio-engineered assassins) to kill her. Ruby however is tough to kill. Though the trail eventually goes cold, Ruby and listener put together who or rather what is behind this as well as learning their desire to hide until the inhabitants of Summa Nulla have advanced spiritually.

The imagery used in Ruby is fantastic. The narration is mainly first person, usually by Ruby. It keeps to short but evocative descriptions. The world described could fit into any fantasy game. In the series the listener encounters several alien races, pick up some slang (slimies, reptilian assassins who hunt Ruby for much of the first series), explored a few locations (like the Utopias, a chain of islands where people have tried to build a series of ideal societies) and experienced some of the world’s entertainment (via the interlude segments given by the Android Sisters).

Each segment of the series is very short, a few minutes each. It might be a bit too short for me, but it is much easier to concentrate on a scene at a time than some hour-long episode when you are juggling a couple of kids, a job and house chores.

Overall the series is a great listen. I intend to listen to the rest of the Ruby series as I have time to do so. What I really like however is the deeper weirdness going on. The New Age material can be found here with discussions of the philosophy of work, appearances, and clues to enlightenment.

As far as gaming uses, I’ll definitely be using some of the ideas here in my future Mage: the Awakening game. The Utopias might become a section of the Astral. I also like the idea of ancient and deadly “games”left behind by the ancient masters of magic to test and train future generations of willworkers.