The Ghostbusters - character cards for Pulp Alley

So, if you're going to play a campaign of Ghostbusters using the Pulp Alley rules, you're going to need Ghostbusters. Here's my take on the gents.

The Ghostbusters are a League of Legends and so all four are Sidekicks at Level 3. Based on the scenario the leadership of the group will be handed around to whichever Ghostbuster leads the team based on the scenario conditions.

All I need to do now is finish painting off the Zombicide minis for these gents.

Ghostbusting rules for Pulp Alley - Who you gonna call?

Happy New Year everyone.

Well, I have finally finished the draft of my campaign rules for Pulp Alley Ghostbusters. I have a scenario game almost ready to play test these draft rules as well. Just need to paint a few more miniatures.

But why not share it and let you give it a try as well, if you like.

So, hope it all makes sense and you like it. I drafted the campaign rules very much with the Ghostbusters video game and movies in mind. It has options for using the four main settings for the proton pack from the game, a variety of new ghostly Abilities for ghosts, and rules for capturing ghosts. So, feel free to give it a try. 

Pulp Alley cards for Animated Ornaments and a Cranky Chrissy Tree

 You better watch out. You better not cry...but you can run in fear though.

Animated Ornaments powered by PKE

And a VERY cranky Christmas Tree. This one is a Construct that must have its Christmas Star atop the tree wrangled from it in a Ghost Wrangling Challenge (more on that when I finish the campaign rules) in order to take it Out.

I've almost finished the campaign rules. I'll post those when they are done and that will clear up some of the weird things on the creature cards.

Pulp Alley cards for Gingerbread Men and Snowmen goons

I've been working on a campaign for Pulp Alley set around Christmas time and based on a famous franchise. As such I needed some Gingerbread Men and Snowmen goons. That meant that I also needed some cards for the miniature's profiles. So, here is my take on them for the campaign.

Gingerbread Goons

A Gingerbread Brute

Snowmen Goons

I've added one too many Abilities to the Snowmen than is officially allowed but it just feels right for snowmen to be able to hide in the snow. I've also made them able to reanimate as they can draw from the snow around them to repair minor damage.

You will notice that there are also a bunch of Abilities that don't match up with the Pulp Alley core rulebook. These abilities have been made for a campaign I've been drafting of late. So, you will just have to wait for me to post those Abilities as part of the actual campaign rules when I've finished them.

But if you want to try these out for yourself you can just ignore the strange Abilities for now.

One more thing. Here is an updated Slimer profile card.

Enjoy!

Slimer & the Gruesome Twosome Pulp Alley cards

Spud, aka Slimer

Work as once again gone nuts. But in my spare time, I have been experimenting with some campaign rules for Ghostbusters, Pulp Alley style. The campaign has specific rules that permit the Ghostbusters to detect, wrangle and capture ghosts as well as fight animated objects. The rules are still in their draft form, given I haven't had much time to write, paint or craft of late, but I thought I would show the cards for two of the ghosts in the campaign.

Ghosts have PKE rather than Health. PKE functions the same as Health on normal characters in Pulp Alley, however PKE can only be damaged by a proton stream or proton grenade.

Once a ghost's "health" (i.e. its PKE) is reduced to its Down state, the Ghostbuster can undertake the Ghost Wrangle Challenge on the ghost's card to drag the ghost into a ghost trap's capture cone. Failure sees the ghost immediately escape 1d8 inches in a random direction. Ghostbusters must spend an action to drop a ghost trap on the table (or pick it up again). A Ghostbuster can attempt the Ghost Wrangle Challenge in the same turn that he takes the ghost Down. Ghost can regain PKE at the end of the Turn in exactly the same way characters can with their health. A proton packs' stream is 12 inches, so as long as the Ghostbuster is within 12 inches of a trap, he can attempt to wrangle a Down ghost into the trap.

So here is Slimer's and The Gruesome Twosome's cards for Pulp Alley.

A Gruesome Twosome ghost

More mini's for this still to paint, and some more cards to make too. Hopefully work will ease off soon.

Ghostbusters Terror Dogs (from Zombicide)

 

Vinz Clortho and Zuul

Hmm, what do we have here? A couple of Terror Dogs. Vinz Clortho and Zuul. This must be heralding something bad. And just before Christmas too.

These two good little puppies are from Zombicide. I picked them up some years back on eBay. Very nice sculpts and bigger than the ones in The Real Ghostbusters boardgame. Meaner looking too.

They were base coated in a grey primer and then I used a blue ink for the whole model with the exception of the mouths. Once that was dry, I then did a dark grey drybrush, followed by a lighter grey drybrush to bring out their normal skin colour. Their mouths were done in a red ink over the grey primer. It took a couple of washes to get the colour I wanted. The eyes are done in Citadel Scab Reb, if I remember correctly. Very simple and didn't take long to do.

Aww...pretty red eyes. How cute.

Still more minis to paint before this little adventure can go down. Back to the painting table.

Stay Puft for Ghostbusters

 

The Mr Stay Puft's that I have bought over the last few years, from Zombicide, to the Ghostbusters Boardgame, haven't really been of the size one would expect from good 'ol Stay Puft. In the original Ghostbusters, Stay Puft was described as being over 30 feet tall, so at least 10 metres. Zombicide's one was tiny and the ones that came with the Ghostbusters Boardgames was still shy of what I would expect when compared to a 28-32mm figure.

Enter Playmobil's Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Amazon. He looks more the part and is reasonably priced. So, I took the plunge and purchased one. Here he is next to the Crooked Dice paranormal exterminators, which are 28mm miniatures.

The arms and hands twist on Mr Stay Puft and he feels more the right size for the work of being a Destructor. So if you want a bigger Stay Puft, Playmobils got you covered.

Ghostbusters roleplaying game - a Halloween three-shot (PART 3)

 

Where are we?

Happy Australia Day for yesterday everyone. I celebrated the national day capping it off with the lads coming around for our monthly role-playing session. We finally managed to finish off my Ghostbusters adventure.

My "one-shot" Halloween Ghostbusters scenario that became a three shot mini campaign finally came to a conclusion last night. You can find part one and part two here.

This part of the adventure saw the players arrive in a strange place, having jumped through the portal back in the cavern as Vigo the Carpathian brought the roof on the cave down upon them. With no other choice, they all dived through the open portal and ended up here.

Where was here? Good question. They found themselves in some other worldly realm where the sky looked purple and studded with stars that didn't quite look like stars. Moreover, they found themselves on islands of floating rock that were suspended in the void.

I decided to let the players stew for a few minutes as they tried to figure out how they could move over the islands to the portal they could see in the distance. Some testing revealed that if they tried to jump, and didn't make it to another floating rock, they would plummet for all eternity. Not surprisingly, none of the players wanted to test that out in reality.

Fiddling around, they caught the attention of three spooks who proceeded to slime two of the PC's, knocking one out. The pesky spooks were finally captured and one of the PC's go it into their head to shoot the portal gate they came through just to see what happens. They destroyed it!

Fortunately, at this time, Lewis Tully and Slimer (aka "Spud") turned up making their way from rocky island to rocky island to ascend to where the players were. Apparently, Egon had been getting Lewis to test out some modifications to the proton pack and there was a bright flash. Next thing Lewis knew, he and Spud where here. The players recognised that this must have been over a month ago, but to Lewis, it seemed like only yesterday. Lewis showed the players the slime injector modification that they had on their proton packs but never knew about. Together, they proceeded to slime tether one island after another to make their way across to the gate they could see in the distance, the method Tully had used get to the PC's. Problem solved.

Given one of the PC's was out cold, they had to drag his sorry backside across the rocks and weren't too gracious about it. Whether or not it was the gravel rash, or providential timing, the PC awoke as they arrived at the far gate.

Stepping through they were transported to another located and presented with a puzzle. Ahead of them were three portals, only one of which they could pass through safely. Deciphering the clews got them the correct portal and they went through. Only to find themselves plummeting to a distant rock island far below.

Just prior to impact, they slowed in mid-air and floated to the ground safely. Once again however, they were confronted by the same type of puzzle, but this time it contained different statements to decipher.

Once again, after much hair pulling, they correctly deciphered the clews and passed on safely. Now they found themselves in an area with multiple portals. The one they passed through, and the exit portal at the far end, did not change, but the four others would rotate clockwise to face the next portal in the chain.

Again, after much trial and error, one of the players correctly deduced that the portal had to face the one it was linked to for them to pass on to the next island. I had numbered the portals one to six so that they could quickly identify each portal.

Portal one, the portal they arrived at, always pointed to portal six, and the PC's could pass back and forth between these portals each round except when portal six was facing portal three. When it faced portal three, the players would arrive on the rock island where portal three was located. If they passed through any portal when it wasn't facing its linked portal, they would always appear back at the first portal.

The link sequence was portal one always lined to portal six, six to three, three to five, five to two, and two to four where the exit arch portal was located. This kept the players amused for a while (and very frustrated).

That finally solved, they moved onwards.

The final challenge was not immediately evident. They arrived at a group of linked rock islands where they could see the exit portal in the distance.

Two of the PC's moved on cautiously whilst Lewis, Spud and two of the other players remained behind. As the first two PC's approached the exit portal, the Guardian jumped from a floating rock island above them and crashed onto the island with the exit portal. This rocked the island, knocking the two PC's to the ground.

The Guardian them attempted to squish them (hey, it was a one-off adventure so if any of the PC's died now, back luck). The lumbering Guardian was crap at its job however and rolled a 5. Miss! They players got to their feet and bolted through the exit portal.

This just left Tully, Spud and the other two players. The Guardian rounded on them but rolled terribly with each attach roll (5 was its highest score!). One of the PC's on the other hand scored a critical with their proton stream attack and, rolling on the Critical Tables we use, literally melted its face off! Stunned for eight rounds, the rest of the team bolted for the exit portal.

Diving through the exit portal, the team were reunited with Ecto1b in the material realm. Job done; they took off to hospital to get one of the PC's check in to Casualty. With one hit point left, the PC had survived multiple attacks and escaped with his life.

So much for the one-shot Halloween special. But we had fun and tried out a setting that we normally wouldn't have played. So, a win all round.

Ghostbusters roleplaying game - a Halloween two-shot (PART 2)

OK, so my brilliant plan of doing a Halloween one-shot Ghostbusters adventure miserably collapsed into a mini campaign given that my roleplaying group tend to become dysfunctional when it comes to acting like a cohesive team. They say there is no 'I' in Team. However, you can make the word 'me' from it and that's exactly how my players like to run their characters. Ah, adventures would work perfectly if it wasn't for those pesky players :)

Anyway, here is part 2 of my one-shot Ghostbusters Halloween adventure using my home d20 rules system. A bit of a warning, this is going to end up as a three- or four-part adventure. I just know it.

All miniatures are from Crooked Dice and the Ghostbusters boardgame for Ghostbusters and Vigo. Reaper Miniatures for the frogs, sacrificial victim, stone arches and the Cthulhu statue. Cthulhu Death May Die boardgame for the Cultists. The cave tiles are all home-made using DM Scotty's excellent YouTube channel on home making D&D terrain as a guide.

Having captured The Driver ghost in the first part of the adventure, the Ghostbusters were called up-state on a county contract assignment to assist local firefighters. Two teams of archaeologists had gone missing, and the First Responders had been caught in a vicious and unseasonable overnight blizzard when attempting the rescue them.

The Ghostbusters were called in because some sort of barrier was preventing the second response teams and police from reaching the researchers encampment up near the top of the mountain. The secondary teams were worried for their comrades as the storm had battered the mountainside all night, abating to fine weather only by the morning.

The Ghostbusters overcame the psychic barrier to reach the encampment only to find four bodies and evidence that further up the alpine valley was a cave where the archaeologists had been undertaking their research. The bodies, one was a research assistant and the other three were the first responders, suddenly animated and attached the Ghostbusters who quickly dispatched them with their proton packs. As they began to explore the ruined encampment another freakish and unseasonable snowstorm began to descend upon them. Not wanting to end up like the others, they bolted for the cave entrance further up the valley.

Trapped now inside the cave, they began to explore and soon came upon some huge toads.

The fight saw them eventually take the mutants out. But not before two of the players were knocked to the ground and had their feet swallowed before they could escape. Another player ended up getting swallowed whole but manged to blast the beastie as it gulped him down, killing it outright and then, covered in slime, having to crawl his way back out of the belly of the beast. Yuck!

Upon each toad's death they released a small sprite that the Ghostbusters had to capture before it could escape. They didn't know what that was all about (i.e. as to why the sprites were running), but they were soon to find the reason for such strange behaviour. Little known to the Ghostbusters, these were watchers making sure that the alarm would be sounded if an intruder appeared.

In dealing with the toads and their associated sprites, one of the players "rolled a ghost" when rolling his Luck Dice. This saw three giant centipedes emerge from the tunnel and attack the Ghostbusters. However, the poor creatures were no match for the discharge from a proton pack.

After about a ten-minute wonder through the cave tunnels the Ghostbusters eventually emerged out into a large chamber where the distant murmur of chanting could be heard. "Vigo... Vigo... Vigo..."

Ahead, dimly like by sconces on the far cave walls and partly obscured by the giant mushroom forest, they could see the source of the chanting. Turned out that one of the two archaeological teams was actually a bunch of cultists who were trying call Vigo the Carpathia back from the spirit world. Now there's a nod to Ghostbusters II right there for you.

Four of the cultists were girlies with guns. The menfolk were doing some kind of Mexican Wave around the Cthulhu statue and the dude in purple (obviously their leader as he was wearing purple) had a young lady college student from the other archaeological team bound and drugged on a sacrificial alter. It didn't look like this was a formal lecture going on here. Mind you, it's been many years since I did my degree, and we never did this kind of evil in science. We just mutated Drosophila flies. Can't speak for the Archaeological Department though.

Naturally, this didn't look kosher and so the Ghostbusters began sneaking their way through the mushroom forest with an eye to taking out the Shela's with the guns first (Shela's is Ozzy slang for a woman, just in case you didn't know).

Sally, the lady Ghostbuster, got it into her head to cut her way into one of the larger mushrooms to hide within. She then managed to dislodge it and sneak forward as a large mushroom. The others just moved as quietly as they could from one mushroom clump to the next. They made some noise, but the roof of the cavern was fairly unstable to dropped rubble every now and again and so the Cultists remained none the wiser as the sound of their chanting rose ever louder.

A timed shot by all the Ghostbusters (with the help of rolling additional Ghost Dice, i.e. Luck Dice, another nod to DM Scotty) and all the female cultists went up in flames as proton bolts hit them. That saw three of the Mexican Wave cultists turn towards the Ghostbusters and advance on them with knives drawn. Then, to everyone's surprise, all three stabbed themselves in the heart killing themselves outright. This only released their cursed spirits who then attached the Ghostbusters. Nasty trick there.

Much madness then ensued as I issued a warning to the players that they had 4 rounds until the Leader Cultist would sacrifice the young woman. As the Ghostbusters tried to subdue and wrangle the spectres assaulting them, the pressure was on to take out the head cultist. Meanwhile the spell was taking effect as the mystic gateway began to glow and fog filled the portal.

Whilst the lads were trying to wrangle the spectres Sally, the lady Ghostbuster, managed to get a shot off at the head cultists. I warned the player that the shot would be at Disadvantage given that there was the Cthulhu statue and the alter with the girl on it directly in the way and that they were elevated on the raised part of the cavern chamber, if the player missed, the girl would be hit. The player elected to fire a proton bolt (3d6 damage) knowing the difficulty and consequences of the shot.

The player failed.

As such, Sally hit the girl and fried her instantly. Not only did she kill the poor college student, but she inadvertently completed the summoning ritual.

She then charged the cultists but ended up getting the worst of it and was slashed to within 4 hit points and ended up with a broken arm. Critical hits will do that sort of thing to you in my games. So, with a broken arm, she wasn't able to use her proton wand and was stunned for three rounds. Things looked very bleak for her about then.

Fortunately, the lads finished wrangling their spectres and rounded on the cultist leader, frying him in plasma and burning him to ash.

I was then that an old familiar face stepped forth through the mist of the portal and announced himself to the Ghostbusters.

"I am Vigo the Carpathia, Vigo the Sorcerer, Vigo the Evil, scourge of Moldavia. You will bow before me or die!"

The lads lit him up. But just at the moment of impact from their plasma streams, Vigo leapt into the air and summersaulted fully across the chamber to where the Ghostbusters had first entered.

"You petty mortals think you can stop Vigo the Cruel? Fools!"

And with that, Vigo rose his hands to the cavern ceiling and began to bring the chamber down in a wave of falling rock that surged towards the players. They grabbed their stricken female colleague and bolted for the still active portal, diving through it.

Thus ended the second part of the adventure. Where did they go? What befell them? Only the next part of the adventure will tell.