RPG Campaign Tour Challenge 2026: Day 02

[This is a placeholder. Actual article coming soon.]

Actual article begins here (on 3 February 2026). Sort of. It turns out I'm stumped already and it was only the second day of the challenge. I can't decide which non-player character to use as a campaign tour guide, I can't find my campaign notes (although I know I saw them a week ago), and I just realized the Toledo Ghostbusters campaign has been on hiatus since 2020. I'm not proud of that. I need to get that campaign moving again as soon as possible. If I can start it up again this year, maybe I'll have enough material to answer these questions next year.

Maybe this was the kick in the jumpsuit I needed.

In the meantime, I am managing to participate with my Mutant Crawl Classics RPG campaign, the Zem of Null, in Applied Phantasticality.

[For more information about RPG Campaign Tour Challenge 2026, read this.]

[Read Barking Alien's Campaign Tour Challenge 2026.]

RPG Campaign Tour Challenge 2026: Day 01

1. Campaign Introduction and Overview

This might be overly ambitious of me, but I'm attempting to tackle Adam Dickstein's RPG Campaigh Tour 2026 in two separate blogs. In Applied Phantasticality, I am describing my upcoming Zem of Null campaign for Mutant Crawl Classics RPG. Here in Decidedly 6-Sided, I will be describing my on-again-off-again Toledo Ghostbusters campaign.

The campaign is known as Toledo Ghostbusters. The system is Ghostbusters: A Frightfully Cheerful Roleplaying Game (the first and best edition). Although I have tinkered with many different house rules in this blog, I have used none of them in this campaign, choosing to play by the rules as written simply because so far the rules as written have been more than sufficient. They allow us to do everything we need or want to do. So far. If I need to tinker later, I will, but I am consistently pleasantly shocked by how well Ghostbusters does what it does.

The setting, as one might guess, is Toledo, Ohio, U.S.A. in 1980-something. The player characters (as I mentioned in "Ghostbusters Go Zoom") include:

• Carroll "Carl" Düsseldorf (played by Sarah),
• Ray Stantz, PhD [helping out while staying with relatives] (played by Mary Lou), and
• Thalia Wainwright (played by Emily).

Together, they operate a local Ghostbusters HQ that was formerly a fire station and drive a black hearse with purple and orange lights. Their receptionist is a goth girl who formerly worked for a roadside attraction company that operated a quasi-haunted haunted house. They also have two Norwegian forest cats they liberated from an avant-garde boutique engaged in incomprehensible activities. Each character has their own motivations as well as an earnest desire to make their Ghostbusters franchise a success. And they're hiring.

[For more information about RPG Campaign Tour Challenge 2026, read this.]

[Read Barking Alien's Campaign Tour Challenge 2026.]

Ghostbusters Go Zoom

Thanks to Zoom and the interest of a surprisingly large number of players, I have run two sessions of Ghostbusters: A Frightfully Cheerful Roleplaying Game in the last two weeks (Saturday, November the 14th, and Saturday, November the 21st). At the moment, three members of the Toledo Ghostbusters have busted ghosts in 1980-something northwest Ohio:

• Carroll "Carl" Düsseldorf (played by Sarah),
• Ray Stantz, PhD [helping out while staying with relatives] (played by Mary Lou), and
• Thalia Wainwright (played by Emily).

Two other members (played by Zippy and Joe) will be joining upcoming sessions.

I won't do a session report, but I will share a few facts:

• The Toledo Ghostbusters HQ, like the original in New York City, is a former fire station.
• The primary vehicle of the Toledo Ghostbusters is a black hearse with purple and orange lights and flags bearing the Ghostbusters logo.
• The Ghostbusters acquired two mascots (Norwegian forest cats formerly "employed" at Perspective, a premier avant-garde boutique that inexplicably acquires rare occult books).
• Carroll Düsseldorf has recently starred in a workplace instructional video highlighting peaceful methods of dealing with ghosts.

Ghostbusters is a moderately prop-dependent role-playing game, so how well does it adapt to Zoom, my virtual role-playing medium of choice? Surprisingly well. The Ghost Die, of course, can be replaced with any ordinary six-sided die of a different color or size than the rest of the dice. I trust my players to roll their own actual dice, so no dice-rolling app is necessary. Equipment cards are great for in-person games, but players can discuss with the group what they want to carry and just record it on their character sheets. Character sheets fit on an index card and characters can be generated in as little as five minutes. Name, four Traits (Brains, Muscles, Moves, and Cool), four Talents, and a Personal Goal are all you really need to start playing.

Zoom has opened some great gaming opportunities to me, and I'm glad to be running Ghostbusters (and other games) again. Who knows? Maybe I'll be able to introduce players to some of my other favorite role-playing games...