Sam Gentle.com

Ghosts: the game

ghosts

I went to a launch party for my friend Malcolm's zombie card game, and it got me thinking about tabletop game ideas. There's one that's been floating around in my head for a while based on two important concepts: demonic possession and recursion. I call it Ghosts.

The basic idea is that players are characters in a semi-scripted scene. They get a character card with various facts about themselves, and a list of goals like "get out of the office without the boss asking you to stay late", or "ask Annie from accounting on a date". The base level of the game is that you act out the scene trying to achieve your goals (though obviously some of the goals will conflict). The game plays out in turns, with each turn involving a series of conversations between characters.

However, the scene is also haunted! Some players begin as ghosts, but you also become a ghost if your character leaves the scene for any reason. Ghosts have goals much like characters do, but their goals are in terms of other people in the game, eg "help someone achieve their goal", "prevent someone achieving their goal", "cause as many people as possible to hate each other", etc.

At the start of each round the ghosts choose who to haunt. Haunting means that when a player is about to speak in a conversation, the ghost can tell that player what to say instead. Each person can only have one ghost haunting them at a time. However, ghosts can haunt other ghosts: a friendly ghost can haunt a friendly ghost that haunts a character, and all three of them will succeed at the same time. A malevolent spirit could haunt a friendly ghost who is haunting a character, and ruin twice as many goals.

The goals of the characters and the ghosts would be secret except to the person haunting them. That would mean that over time the ghosts could build up knowledge of who wants what, but the characters would stay in the dark and have to trust in friendly ghosts to help. As characters satisfy their needs and leave the scene, there would be more and more ghosts vying for control and the scene would devolve into chaos. The game is scored at the end by how many goals you achieved.

Obviously there's a lot of tweaking needed to make sure it's fun, but I think it has a pretty appealing mix of fun hammy acting, intrigue and strategy. And, most importantly, spooky ghost hijinks.