Game: Ghost Stories: Horror Mystery Adventures
Publisher: Politically Incorrect Games
Series: genreDiversion
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 23rd, May 2003
Reviewer’s Rating: 8/10 [ Really good ]
Total Score: 8
Average Score: 8.00
Politically Incorrect Games’ Ghost Stories are a bit like haunted bullets; quick and scary. The experience points paragraph in the game starts “If your character survives an entire scenario…” and that should dismiss any lingering thoughts you had about Casper the Friendly RPG. Ghost Stories isn’t just about horror though, it’s mystery too, the sort of investigative horror that does without chainsaw murderers – for awhile, at least.
Ghost Stories is part of the genreDivision series and it would therefore be entirely wrong to compare it to a fully-fledged RPG. I think. No wait. I take that back. Ghost Stories is a fully-fledged RPG in the sense that it has everything you need for a roleplaying game. The 36-paged download shouldn’t be compared to an expensive 280-paged hardback campaign setting and game mechanic combo. The genreDivision games are designed to fill in the gaps, for that break between campaigns, for when friends unexpectedly turns up or the GM forgets the character sheets.
There’s no absence of character sheets in Ghost Stories. In addition to the blank character sheet there is a bunch of pre-written character sheets where the only thing to fill in is the name of the player. A third of 36-paged PDF product is devoted to four ready to roll scenarios. Given that genreDivision is trying to provide an RPG that can be whisked up at short notice, I think this is a winning tactic. It should be simple to print off a few pages from Ghost Stories, give the GM a little time to get ready and then start playing.
The game mechanics won’t hinder a quick and easy play either. If you’re familiar with other Politically Incorrect Games’ products then its possible you’re already familiar with the genreDivision mechanics. I think that anyone who’s happy with the company’s Active Exploits diceless roleplaying system will be able to mix and match the two without any fuss. Most importantly, the rules here are the same as the other genreDivision products, such as HardNova. Simply put you’ll be looking to roll 2d6 and get less than your skill. If you enjoy a bonus dice (or more) then you’ll roll more dice and pick the best two (the lowest two) and if you’re being hindered by a penalty dice then you’re rolling more dice and picking the worse two.
It would be wrong to dismiss Ghost Stories as just a set of ideas with a half-baked 2d6 mechanic attached. Experienced roleplayers will see the scope of the game through the streamlined casing. Character generation includes optional backgrounds, for example, which introduce explicit advantages (such as an occult library) and implicit disadvantages (such as having an occult library). Two backgrounds to watch are Medium and Sorcerer.
Ghost Stories comes with a pocket set of rules for a medium’s ESP. The extra sensory perception powers included are augury, precognition, psychometry, telekinesis and telepathy. As with the rest of the book these rules don’t dive into minutia of numbers but go further than just explaining what each power does. For example, the rules for telepathy show how the difficulty rating increases for each range increment.
There are similar rules for Sorcery. Powers of conjuration, endowment, intervention, necromancy, nullification, teleportation and weaving mean that there’s a slightly larger selection of sorcery powers than ESP abilities. That’s no sin in a game like this. There are even more powers of True Faith; call to faith, communion, consecrate, divine light, divine recovery, divine will, purify, return to innocence, sanctity and water to wine. I think that’s just about right. Too few powers would render any system fairly pointless but too many powers would slow character generation too much.
The Horrors is a chapter that looks at the sort of critters that might pop up and cause a scare in ghost stories. This isn’t a fantasy style beastiary, there’s no stat block for these horrors, and so your ghouls or imps can be as powerful as weak as best suits the story. Horrors like Serial Killers and Cultists couldn’t really have any sensible generic attributes anyway. What these entries do include are examples of typical powers these monsters tend to be associated with and you’ll find explanations of these abilities later on.
Ghost Stories has a Hallowe’en vibe to it; the PDF has a spider on a cobweb which runs through the sidebar and there are smaller spiders which rather cutely decorated any boxed text. One page concludes with a scattering of flies. The font sometimes turns wobbly and twisty but thankfully it always remains readable. These formatting quirks make up for the lack of illustrations in the product and the lack of illustrations in the download help ensure that it’ll be fairly easy on the ink when you print it off. The front cover, though, is rather expertly illustrated and atmospheric with a howling wolf.
I like Ghost Stories; this sort of game suits my tastes, it sets itself a goal, something to make the purchase worthwhile and then achieves that. If there was ever cause to run an impromptu game I’ll turn to genreDivision and if the mood for were a horror or occult mystery game then I’d print off character sheets from Ghost Stories and get going. Success.
