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.

Ghostbusters roleplaying game - a Halloween one-shot

 

I've been remiss in keeping the blog up to date. But that's been for good reasons. I was developing a homegrown d20 version of the Ghostbusters roleplaying game with a view to running a one-off Halloween game for my roleplaying group. Well, time got away, and we were only able to catch up for the game last Sunday evening.

These pictures are from a critical moment in the opening act of the game. The game began with the lads hurtling down Main Street in Ecto 1B in hot pursuit of The Driver who had possessed a taxi. Being new recruits to The Ghostbusters, they weren't entrusted with using Ecto 1A. As it stood, they and a police car were chasing the taxi as it drove recklessly narrowly missing pedestrians and other vehicles on the wrong side of the road. The police car lost a tyre as it was attacked by mutant spookflies and was taken out of the chase. The lads, hanging out the window with their proton emitters, managed to take out a number of spookflies (the driver also took out a couple with one splatting into the windshield of Ecto 1, and another slamming into the rear window when he slammed on the breaks).

Finally, the lads managed to take out one of the possessed taxi's wheels and it came to rest in a blocked off intersection.

This was where the fun began when The Driver possessed one car after the other sending them careening forwards into the intrepid players. They managed to get out of the way and a car pileup at the intersection ensued. Eventually they were able to make The Driver manifest and hit him with their proton streams before wrangling him into a trap. Job done; they felt pretty good about themselves.

Slimed! Down for 1d4 rounds. Bloody spookflies!

This was Act 1 of the game and meant to teach them how to play using some of the special mechanics for ghost wrangling and capture. But it turned out to go for longer than I expected and was a blast. I have to say that it's the first time I've seen my players actually pull together as a team.

I didn't get any photos of Act 2 of the game. But what was supposed to be a one-shot adventure has turned out to be longer than I expected. The idea to do a Halloween special one-shot was done on the fly, and you can see that I still haven't fully finished basing the miniatures. Nor did I have any decent road terrain, having to make do with an old grid board. Still, everyone enjoyed themselves and felt involved in the action.

Anyway, once I've finished painting and basing the miniatures properly, I'll post some better photos. But these were caught in the middle of the action and so I thought I would share them given how absent I've been on the blog of late.

The cars are all 1:43 scale. The miniatures are all Crooked Dice Miniatures Paranormal Investigators. The lads were all recruits and so aren't the main characters from Ghostbusters. The setting had them standing in with minimal training whilst the main characters all were interstate at a conference somewhere.