A game for one ghost, and one GM.
You'll need a bunch of red dice, white dice, and black dice. Just normal six-sided dice.
You may also want some things to take notes.
Your goal is to move on.
You have to decide some things for yourself. Keep them to yourself, unless and until the GM figures them out, but take a moment now to envision them and come to some clear answers:
How did you die? Was it betrayal, brokenheartedness, hatred, love, or something else? It's up to the GM to figure this out.
Why haven't you moved on? Is your killer alive, must you protect your children from something, are your bones unburied, or something else? It's up to the GM to figure this out.
When you can be seen, what do you look like? When you can be heard, what do you sound like? What marks of your death linger on you? When and if you reveal yourself to the GM in a haunting, you can describe this.
You also have to decide one thing, and tell the GM, because otherwise they won't know where their mortals are:
In what area are you trapped? Is it a house? A forest? A mine? A hospital? Somewhere else?
You can always witness the world around you. When you witness the world, ask any of the following:
- Where am I?
- Who do I see?
- What does ______ hope for right now?
- Who does ______ trust or rely on here?
- Who feels most confident here?
- Who harbors a secret here?
The GM will answer truthfully, and you can go back and forth asking and answering as much as you like. You can ask other questions, too, but the GM doesn't have to answer them.
You can't affect the world around you unless you roll dice to cause a haunting. You also can't be seen or heard or smelled or felt without a haunting.
Say what you want to do, and the GM will tell you how many successes it'll require, from one to five. Remember, you're a ghost: you can make the walls bleed, you can make the light fade, you can make words appear in a fogged mirror, or more. You cannot explain what keeps you here.
Take as many dice as you like from your dice pool, and roll them. Every die that comes up a four or higher is a success. Whether you got as many as you needed or not, remove all the successful dice from your pool. Return the rest to your pool. You don't start the game with any dice in your pool.
If you succeed, the highest single die indicates the way that your ghost powers manifest: red is angrily, white is with fear, black is with sorrow. If there's a tie, red wins over black and white, and black wins over white.
You get dice for your pool this way: when you witness a mortal experiencing anger, get a red die. Sorrow, a black die. Fear, a white die.
If you resolve whatever is keeping you here, tell the GM, and you can move on.
Your goal is to keep things spooky and interesting. Your goal is also to find out how and why the ghost died and why it lingers, and maybe help it move on.
Describe what mortals do and what the world looks like. You're here to make the ghost's story interesting, and to find out how and whether they'll move on. Pay attention to their descriptions of their hauntings, and make the mortals react accordingly.
When you start, remember the ghost won't have any dice in their pool. So it's up to you to show them mortals feeling anger, sorrow, and fear. If a bunch of people are in a haunted place, probably at least one will be afraid because it's spooky, and another will be angry that the first one is afraid. Don't make it hard for the ghost to get a few dice to start. But once they've started haunting, they'll have to up the stakes to get a bigger reaction from the mortals.
Play the mortals like real people: they can be petty and afraid and self-interested, but they can also be curious and brave and caring. The ghost is a little like a toddler: it can't really use its words. If it haunts too scary, too angry, or too sad, it may just drive the morals away. But if its hauntings are intriguing, too, then the people will want to dig deeper, and try to do something to help this ghost.
When the ghost wants to do a haunting, it'll take between one and five successes. To determine how many, answer the following for yourself:
- It cuts off routes of escape.
- It fundamentally changes the nature of something present.
- It affects more than one sense.
- It can be sensed by every mortal present.
The number of successes needed should be about one, plus one per question you answered "yes" to, but you can exercise your judgment to modify this a bit.
If your mortals are completely scared off and manage to leave, the game is over. Maybe play again with the same ghost and different people, maybe don't.
We live in a world full of ghosts. We just have to see how they're still haunting us.
Thanks for feedback from Brie S. and Paul B. and Nick W. and Stras A. and Meguey B.