Working on a full Ghostbusters 5e conversion

[Gozer]

Hey guys, I'm new here, and I decided to register because I'll need some sort of feedback forum for the monumental task I'm assuming.

Hopefully this is in the right place!

Back in 1986, a Ghostbusters roleplaying game was made by West End Games, but is now defunct and out of print. It also uses a ruleset that I'm not overly fond of. 5e is super accessible, widely known, and really adaptable, so I decided that I would make this conversion for myself, my friends, and anyone else who would like to use it - much in the same way SW5E was done, for those of you who are familiar with it. I don't plan to monetize it, profit from it, sell it, or anything of the like.

Right now, I have one class mostly completed, and I've started converting spells into proton pack gadgets/modifications. I knew there were a lot of spells, but I never realized just how many until I went through them all. ONE. BY. ONE.

Everything I'm doing right now is pretty much proof of concept. ALL is subject to changes/revisions/updates and the like. Once I have a baseline of at least four classes and all their abilities, I'm going to start with the monster manual. The neat thing about that is the Ethereal Plane allows for a LOT of the creatures in the MM, so there won't be as much re-skinning.

But I digress.

Throughout various points in my endeavor, I'm sure to come here for advice, thoughts, and opinions, so I look forward to sharing my progress.

And lastly, I know this is a stretch, but if there are any of you who love Ghostbusters as much as I do, I am totally down for the idea of a 'development team,' for lack of better words. If anyone wants to help, let me know. I can't pay, but hey, it could be fun. Or mind-numbing. Or a bit of both. Anyway... Cheers! I look forward to being a part of the community here and what that will mean for both me and my project.

[Stattick]

It's a neat idea, and could have some merit as a fan project.

However, there are other games that could do this without needing much work. Witchcraft by Eden, as one example of a mid-crunchy game. Fate can do pretty much anything, if you can palate Fate (personally, I can't, but it has a big fan base).

If you do want to stick with DnD 5e as your baseline engine, then I think you're going to want to give a lot of thought on how you're going to do classes and races. Further, you're probably going to want to emulate the movies and cartoon pretty closely, which means completely reworking the magic system.

First off, races. You'd think you only need humans, but if you're imagining an urban fantasy type setting, where there's a lot more supernatural stuff going on than most people are aware of, then it opens up the possibility to have some additional races. Here's what I'd envision:

Human, obviously. Variant humans too.
Half-elves. Clip the ears, and they can pass as human.
Elves. Adjust their racial features a bit, take something out, and add in a type of Glamour that they can use that makes them appear human, at will (like a Disguise Self, or maybe something longer lasting).
Dwarves - if you must. They could pass for short humans.
Changlings - yep, they pass.
Halflings - again, if you must, they could pass for human (children).

Dragonborn, Lizardfolk, and/or Yuan-ti - at the wilder end of the conspiracy theory spectrum, people talk about Reptilians and such. Here you go. Give them a glamour, similar to elves, to let them pass as human.

Shifter & Aasimar could fit in w/o worry.
Tieflings - I'd include them if you're including Aasimar. Give them a glamour.

Personally, I don't think I'd include any of the other races. But I suppose you could include the Goblinoid races, and maybe Gnomes. People talk about "little people", so that could be the Gnomes & Goblins. I guess you could include Kobolds here too. Gnomes and Goblinoids are associated w/ the Fey, like elves, so it would make sense they could draw on their blood to create that Fey Glamour to hide (as opposed to looking human - they're too short to pass as anything other than toddlers). Kobolds could draw on their Draconic blood to do the same, I suppose.

----------

Classes:

Honestly, most of them don't feel right for a modern day game. I'd probably rebuild 'em a bit, but the ones that stood out that I think work the best are:
Rogue
Sorcerer
Warlock
Wizard

I guess Fighter, for your more martial types. But what are they going to be? Cops, military, and jocks? And honestly, cops & military are more akin to the Rogue than the classic Fighter - both involve more Stealth, Investigation, and Insight (for cops) or Survival (for Infantry) than your typical big dumb fighter is likely to have.

And then there's the question of where you're going to shoehorn psychics in. Personally, I'd probably make them a new class.

Cleric is just a whole can of worms. Discussion of real world religions is forbidden on this site, so I won't say any more on the subject.

Then there's the whole question of how magic works. Canon from the movies, is that most magic and even most psychic phenomenon, just plain don't work most of the time in most circumstances. It's mostly only going to work when there's an abundance of PKE (Psycho-Kinetic-Energy) in the environment. So magic isn't likely to work except when... you have a cross-dimensional rift, eclipse, planetary alignment, equinox, solstice, and you'd probably still need to be at a ley line nexus, earth mound, faerie hill, standing stones, burial ground, or whatnot. Or someone has powered their ritual through a bunch of human sacrifices.

Most of the time, your arcanists are only going to be useful through their knowledge of ancient languages, ritual, and flailing around with a proton pack.

You might want to even have a rating system for how much PKE is available at a given time, and use that to limit magic.
At baseline, maybe nothing works.
Low level might be ritual magic only, where the time needed equals the spell level in hours.
Moderate levels might be spell level in tens of minutes.
High level might be spell level in minutes.
Extreme levels (PKE meters possibly frying if you turn them on) would allow DnD style magic to be used (casting one or two spells every few seconds).

Maybe, in an emergency, you could "quick cast" if the PKE levels are too low, but it's going to take a sacrifice - probably each spell requiring HP expenditure - say, each step that the ambient PKE is lower making you spend an additional HP per level. So, if you're at baseline, and you quickcast Fireball, you're looking at spending 12 HP per casting. You can spend your own HP... or the HP of a sacrificed victim(s).


You might get some use out of looking at Beyond The Supernatural (1st edition - 2nd edition isn't a complete game, though there might be a few things there too for inspiration). The system is rubish. But it has enough similarity to 1st & 2nd edition AD&D, that you could probably mine it for ideas. You could technically play it, but some of the system's quirks end up echoing too strongly through the system to really be useful for emulating anything other than running a Palladium game. For instance, you try to run a haunting supernatural game akin to something you'd find in a Call of Cthulu scenario (another potentially useful system for you), and instead, you end up with a game where the PCs punch mummies to death with their holy water soaked boxing gloves.

[Garfunion]

Don’t forget about the Artificer, they make good scientists. Give them the witch bolt spell and you now have a good proton pack.

[Amechra]

I think 5e isn't a very good game to base a Ghostbusters game on if you want it to feel anything like the movies. 5e heavily prioritizes combat over pretty much anything else, so anything you base it off of is going to be pretty violent.

I kinda second the Fate suggestion - if you're worried about having to buy a new game, it has a free SRD (https://fate-srd.com). Or maybe Blades in the Dark (https://bladesinthedark.com/core-system), though that is more of a heist game...

---

But hey, if you really want to do this in 5e, we'll be here to support you.

[Durazno]

A heist game could be a really good fit if you're an unsanctioned ghostbusting business!

Also, hobbits could also pass as little people. I mean, they literally are little people, but I mean - humans actually do come that short, so they don't necessarily have to pretend to be children.

[Stattick]

I think 5e isn't a very good game to base a Ghostbusters game on if you want it to feel anything like the movies. 5e heavily prioritizes combat over pretty much anything else, so anything you base it off of is going to be pretty violent.

I kinda second the Fate suggestion - if you're worried about having to buy a new game, it has a free SRD (https://fate-srd.com). Or maybe Blades in the Dark (https://bladesinthedark.com/core-system), though that is more of a heist game...

---

But hey, if you really want to do this in 5e, we'll be here to support you.

Hmm... perhaps Blades wouldn't be the best fit, but I don't think it's a terrible fit. Perhaps just generally "Power by the Apocalypse" would be better.

Hey, what about a Gumshoe hack? Afterall, half of the plot of a Ghostbuster's movie/cartoon, is figuring out exactly what's going on, who's the culprit, where spook central is, why all of this is going on, when the baddie's plan is going to come to completion, and how they're planning on executing their plan. So to best emulate what we see on-screen, you'd probably want a robust system for investigations that will keep the ball moving forward.

[Gozer]

Wow, I didn't expect such great and thorough feedback! Mayhaps it's because I'm used to the prevailing toxicity of the reddit hivemind.

Anyway, there are a lot of good points here and a lot of things for me to consider. It can be easy for me to get tunnel vision with my ideas, so it's good to have a place where I can step away and gain new perspective.

The first thing I want to address is that maybe I drop the "conversion" idea from my head and look at this as a "re-work." Partially due to things like, as Stattick mentioned, races that exist in a high fantasy setting you wouldn't find in 1990 Manhattan. However, that begs the question: would supernatural entities have embedded themselves into the general populace, akin to Men in Black? That's something for me to stew on a bit.

Given that I now acknowledge this as a re-work, I should still mention that there is much I have already converted, particularly in the way of spells for wizards, rangers, and clerics. I have placeholder names for those classes at the moment: scientist, investigators, and ionizers. I say "placeholder" mainly because I'm not completely sold on "ionizer" as a class title. I thought of "Slimer," but quickly dismissed that notion for obvious reasons.

5e "Spells" are being re-skinned into gadgets/modifications attached to the proton pack, and healing spells are generally some sort of spray or launching of positively charged slime, as seen in Ghostbusters II. Someone mentioned that 5e might be a bit combat-centric for Ghostbusters, but that's actually the approach I'm aiming for. Ghosts will exist in hundreds of forms (re-skins/re-works from the MM) and the ones that can be trapped rather than destroyed will only be able to be trapped once their HP has been reduced to 0.

Some other good suggestions you guys gave me were to consider re-skinning or drawing inspiration from other games like Fate, Call of Cthulhu, Blades, etc., and I think that's a fantastic idea. Part of the reason I've chosen to go with 5e is because of my comfort level with it. But am I set in my ways? I try not to be. I'll have an open mind and look at other systems that I haven't explored. I really liked the concept of Gumshoe, a game I've never heard of. I don't want to lose the forest for the trees, so what would a Ghostbusters game be without good investigation?

Again, none of my ideas are set in stone. I have a lot of work ahead of me and you all have given me a lot to think about!

[Amechra]

The big question I have is about the original WEG Ghostbusters - what didn't you like about the game's ruleset?

[JeenLeen]

Is there a 5th edition version of D&D Modern? That might be a better starting point, as it assumes modern jobs. Or even using that and thinking about how 3.5 shifted to 5e, and applying similar shifts to D&D Modern.

As for the multiple races: I've seen some homebrew where "races" are allowed, but the fluff is that they are all humans. Basically, allow the variety mechanically but not "in-character". Or it could be refluffed as minor things, like elves aren't elves, but are humans whose bloodline has been laced with magic.
Your glamour ideas work pretty well, too, and there's nothing wrong with that especially if you want the conspiracy theory stuff to be (in some sense) true. But I just wanted to offer this as an alternative.

For clerics, you could refluff the priestly stuff as it's just another type of magic, basically a wizard by another name. But it sounds like you plan to steer away from casting in general, beyond some very limited stuff.

[Gozer]

But it sounds like you plan to steer away from casting in general, beyond some very limited stuff.Sort of. In name only. Here's a sample of some of the conversions I've been working on. Forgive any errors/typos that might show up - the process is pretty tedious and monotonous.

Edit: I guess I can't post images yet so I'll throw out some copypast

Drone (Arcane Eye)
Level 4 gadget

Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 30 feet
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour
Classes: Scientist
You dispatch a tiny drone that hovers in the air for the duration.

Your goggles receive a video feed from the eye, which has normal vision and nightvision out to 30 feet. The drone can be turned to face any direction.

As an action, you can move the drone up to 30 feet in any direction. There is no limit to how far away from you the drone can move, but it can't enter another plane of existence. A solid barrier blocks its movement, but the drone can pass through an opening as small as 4 inches wide and 1 inch tall.

Ectoplasmodic Ethereal Gate (Arcane Gate)
Level 6 gadget

Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 500 feet
Duration: Up to 10 minutes
Classes: Scientist
Your knowledge of quantum mechanics and the ethereal plane allow you to create linked teleportation portals that remain open for the duration. You launch a small projectile at two points on the ground that you can see, one point within 10 feet of you and one point within 500 feet of you. A circular portal, 10 feet in diameter, opens over each point. If the portal would open in the space occupied by a creature, the spell fails, and the casting is lost.

The portals are two-dimensional glowing rings filled with mist, hovering inches from the ground and perpendicular to it at the points you choose. A ring is visible only from one side (your choice), which is the side that functions as a portal.

Any creature or object entering the portal exits from the other portal as if the two were adjacent to each other; passing through a portal from the nonportal side has no effect. The mist that fills each portal is opaque and blocks vision through it. On your turn, you can rotate the rings as a bonus action so that the active side faces in a different direction.

Flame Thrower (Burning Hands)
Level 1 gadget

Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self (15 foot cone)
Duration: Instantaneous
Classes: Scientist
As you hold your hands, you use your fingers to depress levers on the inside of your wrist. A thin sheet of flames shoots forth from the top of your wrist. Each creature in a 15-foot cone must make a Dexterity saving throw. A creature takes 3d6 fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.

The fire ignites any flammable objects in the area that aren't being worn or carried.

At Higher Levels. When you use this gadget with a gadget slot of 2nd level or higher, the damage increases by 1d6 for each slot level above 1st.

Freeze Spray (Chill Touch)
Simple gadget

Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 120 feet
Duration: 1 round
Classes: Scientist
Your neutrana wand fires a frosty beam a creature within range. Make a ranged attack against the creature to assail it with the chill of the grave. On a hit, the target takes 1d8 cold damage, and it can't regain hit points until the start of your next turn. Until then, frost lingers on the target

This spell's damage increases by 1d8 when you reach 5th level (2d8), 11th level (3d8), and 17th level (4d8).

Motion Detector (Alarm)
Level 1 gadget

Casting Time: 1 minute
Range: 30 feet
Duration: 8 hours
Classes: Investigator, Scientist
You place a motion detector to warn you of unwanted intrusion. Choose a door, a window, or an area within range that is no larger than a 20-foot cube. For the duration, or until the motion detector is destroyed, an alarm alerts you whenever a tiny or larger creature touches or enters the detection zone. You choose whether the alarm is transmitted to you or audible.

An alarm alerts you on your handheld radio if you are within 1 mile of the motion detector. This ping awakens you if you are sleeping.

An audible alarm produces the sound of a bell for 10 seconds within 60 feet.

Nanoptics (Blur)
Level 2 gadget

Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 30 feet
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 minute
Classes: Scientist
Your jumpsuit's exterior is infused with nano-tech that briefly bends light, and your body becomes blurred, shifting and wavering to all who can see you. For the duration, any creature has disadvantage on attack rolls against you. An attacker is immune to this effect if it doesn't rely on sight, as with blindsight, or can see through illusions, as with truesight.

Nano-Weave (Blade Ward)
Simple gadget

Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self
Duration: 1 round
Classes: Scientist
You press a button on your belt, and a nano-weave infuses itself to the exterior of your jumpsuit. Until the end of your next turn, you have resistance against bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage.

[DracoDei]

It's a neat idea, and could have some merit as a fan project.




However, there are other games that could do this without needing much work. Witchcraft by Eden, as one example of a mid-crunchy game. Fate can do pretty much anything, if you can palate Fate (personally, I can't, but it has a big fan base).
I concur that 5e doesn't sound like the best choice of system to start from. I've played a Steampunk version of Ghostbusters in FATE at DragonCon. It was fun.


If you do want to stick with DnD 5e as your baseline engine, then I think you're going to want to give a lot of thought on how you're going to do classes and races. Further, you're probably going to want to emulate the movies and cartoon pretty closely, which means completely reworking the magic system.

First off, races. You'd think you only need humans, but if you're imagining an urban fantasy type setting, where there's a lot more supernatural stuff going on than most people are aware of, then it opens up the possibility to have some additional races. Here's what I'd envision:

<SNIP>

Yeah, if you are going by the original canon*, having non-human PCs would be a sharp departure from the feel of the movies and cartoon. Closest I can think of was that Slimer was a decent sort in the second movie and the cartoon** *** but he definitely was more "henchman" than "player character". I also remember a one-off Leprichaun who the 'Busters were trying to protect from one of the cartoon episodes, but, again, not a PC.
* I know little of the recent reboot.
** I haven't watched that many episodes of the cartoon, and it was decades ago.
*** And the excellently-plotted video-game where they got the original actors to do the voice acting.


----------

Classes:

Honestly, most of them don't feel right for a modern day game. I'd probably rebuild 'em a bit, but the ones that stood out that I think work the best are:
Rogue
Sorcerer
Warlock
Wizard

I guess Fighter, for your more martial types. But what are they going to be? Cops, military, and jocks?

That Steam-punk game I mentioned? One of the characters options (to allow more than 4 players) was Annie Oakley. Proton packs require AIMING, and having a character specialized in that isn't a bad thing. Come to that, it occurs to me a character strong enough to carry an extra-large pack, and coordinated enough to duel-wield wands (and strong enough to handle the recoil) would be an option, although my gut instinct would be to make them specialize in closer range (as well as lower power per stream) than an average character, to contrast with the "sharp-shooter" style that I implied above would be good.


Cleric is just a whole can of worms. Discussion of real world religions is forbidden on this site, so I won't say any more on the subject.

One of the original four 'busters WAS a pastor I think. It didn't give him any supernatural powers. Might have helped with the knowledge, but I can't remember.

So yeah, "cleric" should probably be in there as a BACKGROUND, but certainly NOT a CLASS.


Then there's the whole question of how magic works. Canon from the movies, is that most magic and even most psychic phenomenon, just plain don't work most of the time in most circumstances. It's mostly only going to work when there's an abundance of PKE (Psycho-Kinetic-Energy) in the environment. So magic isn't likely to work except when... you have a cross-dimensional rift, eclipse, planetary alignment, equinox, solstice, and you'd probably still need to be at a ley line nexus, earth mound, faerie hill, standing stones, burial ground, or whatnot. Or someone has powered their ritual through a bunch of human sacrifices.

Most of the time, your arcanists are only going to be useful through their knowledge of ancient languages, ritual, and flailing around with a proton pack.

You might want to even have a rating system for how much PKE is available at a given time, and use that to limit magic.
At baseline, maybe nothing works.
Low level might be ritual magic only, where the time needed equals the spell level in hours.
Moderate levels might be spell level in tens of minutes.
High level might be spell level in minutes.
Extreme levels (PKE meters possibly frying if you turn them on) would allow DnD style magic to be used (casting one or two spells every few seconds).

Interesting point and idea(s)!

Personally though, I'd just leave the PC casters out entirely. The idea of Ghostbusters is SCIENCE! versus the supernatural, with religion having no OVERT power for the good-guys except as a source of information on their foes.

Could work with that the original poster said about the spells being more of gadgets... if one wanted to make it a class, you could say that the gadgets are complicated enough that you have to have a Ph.D. to operate them... or at least SAFELY operate them.


Maybe, in an emergency, you could "quick cast" if the PKE levels are too low, but it's going to take a sacrifice - probably each spell requiring HP expenditure - say, each step that the ambient PKE is lower making you spend an additional HP per level. So, if you're at baseline, and you quickcast Fireball, you're looking at spending 12 HP per casting. You can spend your own HP... or the HP of a sacrificed victim(s).

Is using a volunteer still considered a Very Bad Think ethically?



You might get some use out of looking at Beyond The Supernatural (1st edition - 2nd edition isn't a complete game, though there might be a few things there too for inspiration). The system is rubish. But it has enough similarity to 1st & 2nd edition AD&D, that you could probably mine it for ideas. You could technically play it, but some of the system's quirks end up echoing too strongly through the system to really be useful for emulating anything other than running a Palladium game. For instance, you try to run a haunting supernatural game akin to something you'd find in a Call of Cthulu scenario (another potentially useful system for you), and instead, you end up with a game where the PCs punch mummies to death with their holy water soaked boxing gloves.
If one nerfed the sanity rules (but probably not removing them entirely), I could see CoC being worth looking into. Don't know enough about it to say if it would be any good.

Hmm... perhaps Blades wouldn't be the best fit, but I don't think it's a terrible fit. Perhaps just generally "Power by the Apocalypse" would be better.

Hey, what about a Gumshoe hack? Afterall, half of the plot of a Ghostbuster's movie/cartoon, is figuring out exactly what's going on, who's the culprit, where spook central is, why all of this is going on, when the baddie's plan is going to come to completion, and how they're planning on executing their plan. So to best emulate what we see on-screen, you'd probably want a robust system for investigations that will keep the ball moving forward.
I have never heard of that game, and yet it sounds like it could be a GREAT choice for a starting point.
My biggest question would be how good it is at handling shoot-outs (and, to a lesser extent, fist fights?). Because, yeah, you gotta know your supernatural lore, and your SCIENCE! to have a good 'busting team, but you do also have to be able to mix it up with 5+ VERY angry ghosts. And that is not even getting into the big dudes. I mean, shoot, both movies involved a kaiju, it is just that in the second one it was on the good guys side (and arguably was more of a "supernaturally mecha powered by good vibes").

I think if you can make the ordinary-scale stuff work reasonably easily from that, then the kaiju scale stuff could wait until after some play-testing.

Wow, I didn't expect such great and thorough feedback! Mayhaps it's because I'm used to the prevailing toxicity of the reddit hivemind.

Caveat: Haven't 'brewed many places on the net.
Yeah, I could wish for more responses to critique my work, but generally The Playground is polite, but not afraid to look for problems and point them out. The chance of a suggestion, rather than just "this is broken" with no idea of how to fix it, is reasonably good.


Anyway, there are a lot of good points here and a lot of things for me to consider. It can be easy for me to get tunnel vision with my ideas, so it's good to have a place where I can step away and gain new perspective.

The first thing I want to address is that maybe I drop the "conversion" idea from my head and look at this as a "re-work." Partially due to things like, as Stattick mentioned, races that exist in a high fantasy setting you wouldn't find in 1990 Manhattan. However, that begs the question: would supernatural entities have embedded themselves into the general populace, akin to Men in Black? That's something for me to stew on a bit.

Given that I now acknowledge this as a re-work, I should still mention that there is much I have already converted, particularly in the way of spells for wizards, rangers, and clerics. I have placeholder names for those classes at the moment: scientist, investigators, and ionizers. I say "placeholder" mainly because I'm not completely sold on "ionizer" as a class title. I thought of "Slimer," but quickly dismissed that notion for obvious reasons.

5e "Spells" are being re-skinned into gadgets/modifications attached to the proton pack, and healing spells are generally some sort of spray or launching of positively charged slime, as seen in Ghostbusters II. Someone mentioned that 5e might be a bit combat-centric for Ghostbusters, but that's actually the approach I'm aiming for. Ghosts will exist in hundreds of forms (re-skins/re-works from the MM) and the ones that can be trapped rather than destroyed will only be able to be trapped once their HP has been reduced to 0.
I will say again that I don't think 5e is the best starting point and that having gadgets have a "how smart* you have to be to (safely) use this in the heat of battle" would be a good thing to create a diversity of characters. Although a hardcore fan of the video-game I mention would dislike this idea... their, the player character was given all the newest inventions to field-test a chapter before the original four 'busters used it... that way if it exploded/caused cancer/etc., nobody that anyone was personal friends with would get hospitalized/killed. :smalltongue::smalleek::smalltongue::smalleek:

*Or well trained in what to do WITHOUT thinking, much like a lot of what a modern soldier does in a fire fight?


Is there a 5th edition version of D&D Modern? That might be a better starting point, as it assumes modern jobs. Or even using that and thinking about how 3.5 shifted to 5e, and applying similar shifts to D&D Modern.
Now THAT might be worth looking into.

[lightningcat]

Ultramodern 5 (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/302992/Ultramodern5-REDUX-5th-Edition) is the best known version of modern 5e, with both the newer bigger version, and the much more affordable older slimmer version (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/196905/Ultramodern5SRD-OGL-5th-Edition). Same rules, they just added more stuff.
While not 5e, Spycraft had Spookbusters (https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/139830/Spookbusters) which is just Ghostbusters with the serial numbers filed off. Which might give you some ideas how they converted stuff into d20. It is not a full rules set, just campaign addon, which is what it sounds like you want to do.