Review of Ghost + Human, a 2 player mystery solving TTRPG!
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Ghost + Human is great for any age, especially due to the 2-player buddy mechanic
Ghost + Human is a system where one player is a human and the other player is a ghost tethered to an object that the human has (which could be the person themself). There are suggested mysteries that involve helping friendly ghosts, and you also have freedom to create your own adventures that tailor to your player’s needs. This means that, as long as your players are OK with having benign ghosts in the game, it should be content appropriate for any age.
The mechanics are also rules-lite, requiring players to be able to count up to 6 and remember a few short rules for the ghost, and just the rolling mechanics for the human. This means that if a grown up or older kid is playing the ghost with a young player as the human, it’s built in that the ghost is there supporting the human, and it’s easy to help with remembering mechanics and strategizing. The buddy system very much facilitates having young players in the game and able to use the rules with natural support from the other player in the pair.
Ghost + Human is set anywhere that you could have a mystery to solve!
Ghost + Human is all about this supernatural pair finding and solving mysteries together, so it can be set anywhere that there’s some unknown to puzzle out. This could be on a ghostly train, in a haunted library, around a spooky mansion, etc. And it doesn’t need to be supernatural! Maybe your culprit is just a dude in a mask, and the only supernatural element is the ghost in the pair who gives a bit of an advantage over mortal culprits!
For my sample play, I chose one of the suggested fill-in-the blank adventures (which, those are awesome prompt starters) to create a case where “Old Bay”, a pirate captain and member of the local museum’s ghostly friends, had his tether (a gold coin) stolen from the museum by a thief! Sir Chesterton, the ghost of a medieval cat, and Luca Libre, the town’s librarian needed to track down this tricky burglar!
Your characters in Ghost + Human
In Ghost + Human, there are two characters: one ghost and one human. Both are required to play, and they each have their own special set of skills, meaning that teamwork is required!
The Ghost is a spirit that’s tethered to an item that The Human holds or they can be tethered to The Human. They help the human by using their supernatural powers to find out hidden information, talk to other ghosts, and interact in small ways with the physical world.
The Human is an amateur sleuth who solves mysteries and is the primary character to interact with the physical world. They generally cannot see the spiritual world like The Ghost can, so they rely on The Ghost for assistance in closing the case.
Both characters are very easy to create – the only mechanic stats to spec are the target number for The Ghost and the occupation and trait for The Human. Both character sheets are easy to track and have a summary of the rules on the page for quick referencing mid-game.
All other details, like background, the bond, world details, and so much more that do a wonderful job of setting up the game are also part of the set up and include an amazing set of roll tables and ideas to get started. Overall, the whole process took about 15 minutes to set up and gave two well defined characters and world to play the game in.
Mechanics in Ghost + Human
Like always, I can’t cover ALL mechanics, so I’m going to highlight a couple of my favorites from this game, which are: support and variation between The Ghost and The Human and the amazing prompts found throughout the game.
Buddy system mechanics
Because each player has a different mechanics set and different strengths, is requires cooperation and support to tell the story.
The Ghost is part of the spiritual world with limited capability to interact with the physical realm, so they need to work with The Human. They also only roll 1d6 and have to balance their connection to their tether or spiritual world as they use their cost ability to even their odds a bit.
The Human gets a xd6 dice pool based on if they’re utilizing their own skills or help from The Ghost and is rolling to try to achieve a target number for varying levels of success.
Their skills and mechanics sets are easy to understand, but because they are different, they are going to be beneficial to different types of situations. It’s rules lite with lots of strategy and teamwork built in.
Awesome game prompts
I’ve mentioned in earlier sections that this game has fill-in-the-blank mysteries and roll tables to help get the creativity going, and these are GREAT for setting the scene and generating mysteries and making a world with out a GM.
It can be really difficult to come up with a solid mystery on the fly or to create a scene, especially if you aren’t normally a GM. To help with that, Ghost + Human has roll tables and questions for everything to act as a guide. They cover character traits and backstory, worldbuilding, critical scene and story components, complications, how the characters are bonded, and more. These tables and questions are also not meant to be restrictive, they’re just there to add some chance or help with generating ideas while also providing some GM-less structure to the game.
In addition to roll tables, there are four pre-suggested mysteries at the end of the document that have ad-lib style prompts to help you create multiple unique mysteries from the same story suggestions every time you play. The same museum capper from my sample play through could easily be shifted from a pirate ghost tethered to a gold coin stolen by a burglar to an Egyptian ghost tethered to a jeweled scarab that was taken by a robot cat controlled by someone trying to summon a mummy with just a few changes to the scene words! The ad-lib style prompts are also ESPECIALLY fun with young kids who suggest some wacky words and have fun playing with vocabulary to see how it affects the story each time.
Overall thoughts on Ghost + Human
Ghost + Human uses an intuitive system that provides tons of aid for GM-less play, young players, or first time TTRPGer’s. It has awesome storytelling ideas to start off your adventures, and the premise is wonderful for some mysteries with scalable spookiness. I enjoyed playing this, and I love the ad-lib style adventures creating amazing replay value. I hope you get to check it out with your gaming buddy!
Find a copy of Ghost + Human
You can find a copy of Ghost + Human on the Almost Bedtime Theater itch.io!
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