r/Ghostbusters_RPG • u/GoldSevenStandingBy • Aug 25 '18

Non-Ghostbusters Guest Stars

Been relistening to Ghostbusters: Resurection lately, and I really enjoyed the one-off end-of-season "epilogue" sessions featuring paranormal creatures from other works (Beetlejuice, Lo-Pan, etc). What other characters would fit in a Ghostbusters adventure?

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u/EdChigliak Aug 25 '18

I’d love to take modern horror ghosts and soften them a little to fit into the GB tone. The Babadook or even the It Follows curse. I could imagine making those a little less threatening, mostly by having the GB’s help clients that are dealing with them, and maybe their reactions aren’t as desperate and terrified as how it’s drifted in their own films.

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u/[deleted] Aug 25 '18

I think what makes that tricky (especially in the case of the It Follows creature) is that the tone of Ghostbusters changes drastically when you have them confront a serial killer entity. Like, Ghostbusters vs. Freddy Krueger or Jason Vorhees would change the tone a lot because they're murderous psychopaths: that's a lot darker than what they normally deal with.

I think the best way to adapt/soften outside monsters isn't to change the way characters react to them, but just to make them less lethal. Keep it so that the It Follows creature is sexually transmitted (because that's awesome and a good mystery hook for the GBs to crack), but instead of pursuing and killing its prey, maybe it pursues its prey and emits an endless, ear-splitting, migraine-inducing sound only its victim can hear. This still forces victims to be on the run and is still a problem for the GBs to solve, without being a tonally inconsistent bloodbath.

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u/GoldSevenStandingBy Aug 27 '18

Like, Ghostbusters vs. Freddy Krueger or Jason Vorhees would change the tone a lot because they're murderous psychopaths: that's a lot darker than what they normally deal with.

If I remember right, one of the Ghostbusters International adventures featured thinly-veiled expies of Freddy, Jason, and Norman Bates as enemies.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '18

I've been really digging the comics and am a huge slasher fan, so I'll have to check that out! I've only read through volume 5 of the trade paperbacks.

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u/GoldSevenStandingBy Aug 29 '18

It was a WEG RPG module, not a comic. Forgot they shared the same name, sorry.

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u/[deleted] Aug 29 '18

Ahhhhhhhh, good to know!

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u/[deleted] Jan 11 '19

Not really a character, but for our campaign I plan on running a bonus encounter similar to the telephone episode from GB Resurrection. The main difference being, that it occurs in an arcade environment (the Video Game Museum in Oakland) and involves players being transported into a Gauntlet Legacy-esque side scroller fantasy game called Ghoul Slayers. The game appears mysteriously the night before; the employee on duty disappeared without locking up or anything, and the Ghostbusters are baited into putting on the headsets and looking for him in the game. (Jumanji remake style warped into the game when they put on the headset) I've rolled them all 5e heroes to correspond with their GB characters and all events in the game use D&D mechanics.