Game Components for Better Ghostbusting

One of the many ingenious innovations of the original Ghostbusters role-playing game was the inclusion of equipment cards. There were no complicated encumbrance rules involving weight or encumbrance units or Size ratings. You could carry three pieces of equipment without a penalty. If you had the Muscles to carry more, you could do it, but you couldn't do much of anything else unless you dropped something. As a visual and tactile reminder, you had a physical card for each piece of equipment with an illustration and a brief description of how to use it. Did you lose your PKE Meter? Surrender the card. Does your pal lend you one? Take their card. If there is a spare stowed in the ECTO-1, your pal can go back to where you parked it and grab the PKE Meter card from the equipment stack under the ECTO-1 card. Easy and fun.

How can we extend this game component innovation to other aspects of the game? Tokens are the obvious answer. Instead of tracking Brownie Points on a sheet during the game, give each player 20 white poker chips (or more or less if this isn't their first session with these characters). Every time they spend a Brownie Point, they must return a white chip to the Ghostmaster. Every time the Ghostmaster awards a Brownie Point, the player receives a white chip. The only time Brownie Points are recorded is at the end of the session when the Ghostmaster awards some, all, or more than all of the Brownie Points that the players spent. At the beginning of the next session, the players get the new amount of Brownie Points in white chips. This saves time at the table and reduces eraser detritus. And it's fun.

What else could benefit from being converted into poker chips? The obvious answer is damage. In the standard rules, injuries sustained by Ghostbusters result in Brownie Point deductions and time spent in the hospital. In the second edition rules (Ghostbusters International), an injury lowers a Trait of the Ghostbuster's choice, which can be healed by spending Brownie Points and, again, time in the hospital. Both are little too abstract for some sensibilities, so consider the following alternate rule:

Whenever a Ghostbuster is injured, he or she receives one or more red poker chips (known as Injury Points or Ouchies, perhaps) depending on the severity of the injury. Each injury is a separate stack. (For example, if a Ghostbuster is bitten on the leg by a werewolf, he or she might receive one red chip. If that same Ghostbuster is then hit by a car while running away from said wolf, he or she might receive a second injury of three red chips. These would be kept in two separate stacks.) Each red chip represents a penalty of one die deducted from a Ghostbuster's Trait roll if the injury would logically interfere with the action. (For example, after the first injury, the Ghostbuster could attempt to punch the leg-gnawing werewolf with no penalty to his or her Muscles trait because the leg is the injured limb, not the arm. On the hand, after getting struck by a car, the same Ghostbuster would probably have four dice deducted from nearly any activity that might still be accomplishable due to sheer pain and multiple fractures.) Note that no single Trait is lowered as a result of the injury. The penalty is signified by the presence of Injury Points (red poker chips), which are applied as appropriate to certain actions. One Injury Point may be removed per week spent in the hospital. Hospital stays may be shortened by one week per Brownie Point spent, although individual injuries greater than one Injury Point can never be shortened to less than one day of recovery. For added detail, one could place a card (the back of a business card will do) by each injury stack indicating the nature and location of the injury (for example, "Leg: dog bite," "Torso: auto accident"). Optionally, injuries that are completely neglected may accrue additional Injury Points at a certain rate until treated.

The number of Injury Points given to an injured party may depend on Ghostmaster fiat, the attacker's degree of success (one Injury Point for a standard success, two for rolling twice the amount that was needed, three for rolling thrice the amount that was needed, etc.), or the roll of a die (probably a Ghost Die).

Blue poker chips deserve a piece of the game component action, too. Blue poker chips are used to represent being slimed. Whenever a Ghostbuster is slimed, he or she receives a number of blue chips (Slime Points) equal to the ghost's current Ectopresence. Each Slime Point penalizes a Ghostbuster's actions by one die. Unlike Injury Points, Slime Points penalize all actions. You just can't do anything in a dignified manner as long as you're covered in ectoplasmic goo. Also unlike Injury Points, blue chips are kept in a single stack. Subsequent slime attacks simply increase the slime stack. Brownie Points are really no help in alleviating the inconvenience of being slimed. All the poor slob can do is go back to HQ, take a very long shower, and put on a new jumpsuit.

Further Thoughts

The simplicity, efficiency, and free-form style of Ghostbusters are among its most attractive features, especially when the rules subside into the background and allow role-playing and player skill to be the stars. The Brownie Points and how they interact with damage are one aspect of the game that wasn't jibing for me. If Brownie Points are a reward, a Ghostbuster shouldn't be able to lose them, only gain them or spend them. If a Ghostbuster gets wounded, he or she should gain a wound that impairs him or her. If the Ghostbuster wants to be healed, there are two choices: recover the old-fashioned way with medical bills and bed rest, or spend Brownie Points to shorten both. It should be a matter of choice how one uses one's Brownie Points. It makes them more of a resource, and thus an aspect of player agency. Brownie Points can still be used to add dice to rolls or invoke limited (Ghostmaster approved) narrative control to avoid disaster, but they shouldn't do triple duty as hit points. Injury Points allow players to see what state of health they are in, and decide what they are going to do about it.

Even if you decide to use Injury Points and Slime Points, they don't have to represent quantified penalties to rolls. You can still fully embrace the free-form spirit of the game and just have the poker chips represent the severity of injuries and the extent of sliminess in terms of how much they hinder a Ghostbuster or how much time it requires to deal with them. Instead of telling the Ghostbuster he or she has a -1 die penalty to all Moves and Muscles rolls due to a werewolf bite on the leg, you could just say such-and-such action is not possible. In fact, you can do it both ways. You can say certain injuries penalize certain actions by -1 die per chip, but other injuries just cause pain and discomfort, and maybe get worse, which could lead to other interesting, non-meta-game-related problems. I think that's probably the way to go.

As you can see from the poorly shot photo, Ray Stantz has one red chip representing a werewolf bite on his right leg, three red chips representing general torso injuries from being hit by a car, and on top of everything he was slimed by a ghost with an Ectopresence of 1 (hence the blue chip). Fortunately, he has 20 white chips representing Brownie Points to ameliorate his condition.