A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Ghosts

Ghosts by John Sgammato is a role playing game supplement published by Columbia Games Inc. for use with HârnMaster. This is a bestiary article.

The supplement is available as a four-page PDF from DriveThruRPG for $1.99 but was purchased at a reduced price during a sale.

The first page explains that ghosts are disembodies souls that remain behind after the death of their body, usually due to being denied entry into an afterlife. It explains how ghosts may be dispelled and a sidebar covers the differences between souls and spirits, dispelling and exorcism and other denizens of the spirit world.

Ghost Attributes and Skills cover their stats and skills – physical stats are 0 and any skills depending on them are affected – magic, as ghosts can still do research, manifestations and haunting. The sidebar covers manifestation costs, optional psionic abilities and mental disorders.

Manifestation goes into more detail on this, with how ghosts manifest and how others resit the effects, together with an example.

The final page has Damned Souls, the most common type of ghost, along with stats and how to lay them to rest, and Revenants, those that have voluntarily rejected the afterlife, again with stats and how they can be banished.

Ghosts in Review

The PDF lacks bookmarks and is short enough that these are not needed. Navigation is fine. The first two pages of text are single column with sidebar whilst the second are similar, being single column, but with side boxes. The text appeared to be free of errors. There are a number of colour and black and white images. Presentation is decent.

This is rather heavier on HârnMaster rules than is seen even in many bestiary supplements, due to the inclusion of rules on manifestation and creating ghosts; the latter essentially mean that any character could be turned into a ghost. Something that is rather similar to how D&D 3.x and Pathfinder would later handle templates. With it being more mechanic-heavy, this means the supplement is less useful for other systems, though there is still some generic content. Ghosts can be found by clicking here.