Moving away from Call of Cthulhu for the rest of the week to look at a couple scenarios for West End Games’ Ghostbusters RPG (the core system of which, as it happens, was designed by Chaosium designers). It’s funny: I posted about Ghostbusters for the first time practically at the start of Vintage RPG, but it took all these years to find any of the adventure modules at anything approaching a reasonable price. Let’s see if it was worth the wait!

This is Hot Rods of the Gods (1986), which I believe is the second scenario for the system. I have it in my head that this is an all-timer, though I am not sure why. I will say that while I am disappointed it doesn’t involve ghosts, I do enjoy the fact that it riffs on the kook theory of ancient aliens, which is very much something I believe Ray Stanz would be conversant on.

It starts with a case of levitation, during with the players find proof of intelligent life on this planet that predates humanity. Which accidentally summons the aliens back to Earth. It isn’t exactly an invasion. Rather, the four-armed aliens (the Fuggs) are greasers intent on turning Earth into a planet-wide destruction derby and it is up to the players to get some flying cars and stop them. There is a nerd alien who has been monitoring human evolution for millions of years. There are Men in Black (synthetic android things used basically exactly like the Greys are in Delta Green, interestingly enough). There are angry military guys. There’s a satirical portrayal of Erich von Daniken. I think this is good, but it is hard to tell. A lot of RPG comedies try to force humor through cheap parody and references. This doesn’t seem to be the case here; rather, it looks like the module is arranged around giving the players the fuel to make their own jokes. I can be sure without bringing it to the table, but I can say that if I ever get around to running Ghostbusters, this would be the scenario I’d go for.

Timothy Meehan does the interiors, which are good on average. Richard Johnson on the cover.