Does something as easily accessible as a four page role-playing game that you can download for free need a review? In the time it takes to read my incoherent ramblings you could read the game itself and form an opinion of your own. In fact, I encourage you to do so. Nevertheless I think this game deserves its place up there with the 500 page gorillas in the RPG.net review lists. Also, this game has a quality that sets it apart from other RPGs. I'll focus a little on this quality, to the detriment of a complete description of the game's contents. My excuses are that (a) fully recapping the game would just reproduce it — badly — and (b) you could read it yourself. And (c) you should do so.

Poems'n'Players

Back in the days when they became notorious for cheating telephone companies, spying for the KGB and releasing Great Worms, I watched a documentary about hackers. I don't remember much, but one line stuck in my mind. There was a hacker desperately trying to communicate his way of life to the mundanes, and he said something like: “Writing [good] code is like writing a poem to a computer.” Talking of poems, in my native language the word for (lyrical) poem shares its root with the verb meaning to compress or to condense, in the sense of being refined to the ultimate, no longer compressible, not-one-word-more-not-one-word-less core of the subject. Of course, being a work of art, there are overtones of mastery, inspiration and creativity.

It is with respect to all of the above when I say that John Harper's Ghost Lines is a role-playing poem.

I have never seen a game so rich, complex and inspiring in such a tight, elegant package. Up to now, small RPGs were small because they didn't have many rules (like TWERPS or FU or Risus, which fits on a coffee mug). This doesn't mean they are bad or stinted games, but they only have so many rules. With Ghost Lines, the mechanics are at least an order of magnitude more complex and they still fit in four pages, and that includes a setting, a character sheet, play aids and a GM's section!

Ghost Lines

Ghost Lines (v. 1.5) is an Apocalypse World hack. At this time, my knowledge of Apocalypse World is rather limited, largely to having a printout of the second-to-last alpha edition of Dungeon World in my to-read pile. However, I hope to have picked up something in these forums.

On the other hand, my deplorable igorance enables me to say that Ghost Lines is entirely self-contained, and if I hadn't seen it described as an Apocalypse World hack, I probably wouldn't have noticed. The phrase “roll+X” is a dead giveaway to the cognoscenti, but tucked away in that superb first page (which manages to serve as a cover, a character sheet and a player rules cheat sheet and presents the larger part of the rules to boot!) is a little note saying that it means “add 2d6 to stat X”.

Paradoxically, the parent's influence becomes more pronounced in the more vague parts describing the way Ghost Lines is supposed to be played. I'm not so much talking about the keyword “move” in itself but about the card- or board-game-like structure it implies, where in each turn the player picks one “move” from a limited set. Also, there is a dichotomy of in-game and downtime play, with the former eating up resources and the latter replenishing them. And the GM seems to never roll a die.

Of course, I may well be mistaken and even if I'm right play will probably benefit from a working knowledge of Apocalypse World, but I think it isn't strictly necessary to play Ghost Lines. However short the descriptions, they explain the whole game. It can certainly be played at sight.

Traditional gamers could be thrown by the nonstandard attributes and their strong connection to the associated moves, tools and roles as well as the well-defined goal of accumulating (relative) wealth (“stash”) and eventually retiring. While this would be most player characters' aim in life if you'd ask them, in play it is, in my experience, a side-effect of advancement: Sooner or later the PC has levelled-up to the point where the game — or the fact that the person still goes adventuring — becomes ridiculous. In Ghost Lines, retiring your character is made explicit.

Talking about retiring, Ghost Lines has a fairly rigid advancement system, requiring you to tick off boxes for specific achievements to get to the next level. The system doesn't force your character into retirement, though, like as a final level.

The setting of Ghost Lines is a grab-bag of genres. Most blatant is postapocalyptic. According to the author's blog, his fantasy world suffered a Big Oops — no doubt at the hands of his players — which left the countryside a ghost-infested wasteland. The position of the player characters buried in the lower strata of society as well as the illustrations feel decidedly punky, more steam- than dieselpunk. All the talk about ghosts has a Gothic ring to it, and the inclusion of vaguely defined tools the PCs use to scare off or destroy spirits, and “natural philosophers” who experiment on them, suggests a liberal amount of weird science. Finally, although you don't see wizards and spell-casting, Fantasy puts in an appearance in the form of (alchemical?) magic potions and ingredients.

So what's it about? As I've said, the countryside is a haunted wasteland, with humanity pent-up as much as sheltered behind electric shielding in the cities. The isolated (heh!) cities are connected by electric railroads, which are often assaulted by spirits. This is where the player characters enter the picture: You play “line bulls”, who patrol on the roofs of the rail cars, dislodging or destroying the ghosts trying to get in. Ghost Lines has a laser focus on these line bulls; you probably could play other character types, but the game doesn't support them, the GM would have to create them from scratch and it probably still wouldn't work.

In their “downtime”, the bulls can heal their physical damage and mental stress, and work side jobs, earning favours (which you can exchange for in-game benefits) and stash (towards your retirement).

What I like

I like that fourth page, the one not present in the earlier editions. It's got a number of tables to roll up ghosts, npcs and rumours the bulls can encounter and events that take place during in-game and downtime play. This makes Ghost Lines a low- to no-prep game.

I simply love the way all the elements of a good role-playing game are carefully, elegantly intertwined. I already mentioned the title page, which also is the character sheet and holds the most of the rules for players, but this blend of system and setting, crunch and fluff permeates the whole four pages. In each piece of mechanics there is a small but meaningful nugget of setting and vice versa. Sprinkle liberally with finely ground advice for the GM.

I love more that Ghost Lines, like a poem, requires interpretation. Just about everything beyond the most basic, fundamental rule mechanics ishellip; wellhellip; not vague, but leaves many things undefined. It's like one of these multi-card readers, where every facet of the plastic case has a plug for some kind of memory chip. However, these are not blanks to fill in to get meaningful content, but rather interconnecting lines of meaningful content that leave large parts of the paper blank for the players' imagination to fill. It's simply genius how no plug-in is actually required to run the game; the unexplored parts can be left blank, filled by the players and GMs as they please, or the gameplay expands into them and leaves its footprint. (Hey, it just occurred to me how neatly this ties in with the title.)

I should add that all those blanks and mysteries don't ever come over in a teasing, I-could-tell-you-if-I-felt-like-it way. No, Harper presents them with an implicit “here, fill them in any way you like!”

What I love most, though, is that urge to go and play. I read a lot of game books, some are dull, some are fun, some I'd like to play. Only a very few elicit that urge to instantly play the game. Last times it was Graham Walmsley's Cthulhu Dark (incidentally, there's a Ghost Lines conversion to Cthulhu Dark), which I had the good fortune to run at a convention, and Nathan Russell's FU, which I had the bad fortune not to run anywhere. Ghost Lines gives me the same go-play feeling, and it hurts that I don't have a group to play with. Curse you, John Harper!

Also, the clever, elegant and beautiful typography and layout is a big plus.

What I don't like

There is not much about Ghost Lines that I don't like. The illustrations on page 2 look rather stocky to me, as if they were picked from a Google image search for “steampunk” and “gasmask” and drowned in sepia ink. The train-in-the-mountains picture on page 3 is, on the other hand, either commissioned art or Harper's inspiration for the game. Either way, it fits Ghost Lines like a glove.

The prose describing the system may be a little bit too terse, especially if you don't know Apocalypse World. That's the other side of the poetry merit badge. Please keep in mind that this isn't a real review but only a capsule review </sarcasm>, so the things I think I understand reading Ghost Lines might come to bite me in actual play.

The outcome of the downtime side jobs is determined by rolling a d6 flat, irrespective of the actual job and the PC's abilities. This is a tad infelicitous in my opinion, but that may just be my inner trad gamer.

Interpretation: A blessing and a curse

There are people clamouring for a “full” edition of Ghost Lines, saying it would be better and more playable with a fleshed out world and background, more rules, the works. Excuse me, I am not convinced. It's true, John Harper (Agon, Lady Blackbird, Danger Patrol) is one heck of a writer and game designer; maybe he could pull it off. People like Stolze, Tynes, Tweet, Laws, Hite or Wick could potentially do it right, but in my opinion it would require a large amount of luck.

This is because the game as it is allows its players to exercise their imagination. Everybody can create the game world according to their own tastes and desires. It's not so much that an official background would of necessity narrow the audience to those with compatible tastes and desires; that's true, but I think more important is that an official background would limit most people's imaginations. Call me listless, but I for one am always happy to go along with whatever canon is presented to me, if only to see how the world according to the authors works in a rules-as-written sense.

Ghost Lines is too brilliant to deserve that fate. Filling in the blanks would make it mundane, explaining the glorious mysteries would make it boring.

Also, it doesn't need any more rules.

So, with Ghost Lines we have the curious case of a role-playing game refined to the point where it cannot become any smaller while paradoxically any additional word would only detract from its sleek beauty. I sincerely hope it stays the way it is.

About the ratings

Style? Full marks. Efficiency, blend of system and setting, writing, illustrations. It all comes together perfectly. Inspiring. Work of art. 5/5. Heck, 10/5, if the review system could do that!

Substance. Oh well. It's a tiny game, just four pages (as of version 1.5). Can you give a 5 on substance thereby comparing it with a GURPS book, or some other “big” game, running to 300 or 500 or more pages? I think you can, and in the case of Ghost Lines, I'm compelled to do so. You get a working game, a working setting (both already at the size limit, so to speak), a good helping of game aids and GM advice. Can't ask for more. Does the game accomplish what it set out to do? Yes. Does it do it well? Hell yes! 5/5.