30 June 2015

Rolling a Ghost Is Easier Done Than Said

In my limited experience playing the Ghostbusters role-playing game, the most difficult part of Ghostmastering for me is trying to come up with consequences for rolling a Ghost in a rapid and entertaining way. "Rapid" is the harder of the two, especially if I'm running a game in the evening after working earlier that day. Sometimes it's just not easy to think of something that could go wrong without spoiling the results of what is otherwise a successful roll, and if you get lazy and start recycling the mishaps, it becomes boring, and both the novelty and trepidation of rolling a Ghost wear off like so many vintage, non-etched Ghost Dice. It occurred to me that maybe the solution is to require the Ghost Die to be rolled only under exceptional circumstances. When a situation is dramatic, it's easier to imagine how things can go comically wrong even when they go right. Then again, having to face those consequences even in the most commonplace situations can lend itself to gratifying amounts of slapstick comedy. Perhaps the only real solution is practice, practice, practice, which means I'd better game, game, game.