Yes, Have Some

Ghostbusters again? So soon?

Well yes! We have an update on the new animated streaming series and I got to run a one-shot of my homebrew/kitbashed Ghostbusters AD for some very special friends last week. What better reasons do I need? 

Ghostbusters: Night Shift

New information and some concept visuals for next year's animated streaming series Ghostbusters: Night Shift were unveiled by Ghost Corps, Sony Entertainment, and Netflix at the annual Annecy International Animation Film Festival and here's what we know: 

The story takes place in New York City in 1994, five years after the events of Ghostbusters II. A new supernatural menace arises and a group of scrappy, young New Yorkers find themselves in the middle of the madness. Some aspects I find particularly interesting are the Proton Packs being cobbled together, the Terror Dog Puppy, and their vehicle, the Ecto-94.

Check out the details here and here. More info keeps trickling out and GB fans are all over the scant data we have, so expect further in-depth analysis coming in the next fews days [and beyond]. 

While I find some of the creative choices a bit peculiar, I am intrigued. I like some of the character ideas and how they get their equipment, as well as the descriptions of the few paranormal entities mentioned. They sound honestly scary and while the creative team has assured us that the series is most definitely a comedy, I'm personally happy to hear the ghosts will be appropriately spooky.

I've got a positive feeling about this so far. It's not exactly what I was hoping for but its premise is interesting enough to peek my curiousity. I am also just happy to see the franchise expanding. Ghostbusters has always been a universe ripe for expansion, as evidenced by the Real Ghostbusters animated series, the original West End Games RPG, and of course the various Ghostbusters Fan Clubs. 

Speaking of which, check out WhoYouGonnaCall.Org for a listing of over 320 Ghostbusters Franchises worldwide. It isn't complete however, as I noticed none of the Japanese franchises are listed. Very likely the site covers the greater connected Ghostbusters fan community and the Japanese, for example, don't connect with the American groups all that often.

On the subject of Japanese Ghostbusters fans...

My friend Yasa, whom Barking Alien readers may remember from our games of Goblin Slayer, Meteor City - Star Rainy Days, and his running of our co-designed adventure for Ghostbusters: Tokyo Ghost Research, has been in California for two weeks visiting relatives. His first time in the USA in many years as I understand it.

With the two of us being in more reasonably related time zones, it seemed a shame to waste the opportunity to play something together [over Discord]. We actually got in two games, the latter of which was Ghostbusters AD - my homebrew/kitbash of West End's original, InSpectres, and the ALIEN RPG by Free League. 

We had four players with myself as GM and set the game in Yasa's hometown of Chiba City in Chiba Prefecture, Japan. Everyone had a blast and I'll probably do a full write-up of it in the near future. 

This definitely won't be my last Ghostbusters post this Summer.

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Barking Alien

All Things Super

We've seen a lot of Superhero material this year and its only June!

As the subject of colorful, costumed crimefighters remains near and dear to me, I thought I'd discuss some of my favorite Supers related productions of 2026 and how they are influencing my next Superhero RPG endeavor...

Dispatch

If you love Superheroes, Video Games, and especially Superhero Video Games, do not miss out on this title. Dispatch, produced by and available for download on Stream, is a 'Superhero Workplace Dramedy'.

It largely revolves around Robert Robertson, formerly the superhero Mecha Man, who starts working as a Dispatcher for SDN after his Mecha Battlesuit gets wrecked. SDN is the Superhero Dispatch Network, a private company employing Superheroes [and former Supervillains] as an ongoing on-call protection, crimefighting, and rescue agency. 

It is funny, charming, romantic, quirky, and action-packed, with a solid story and best of all, some really fun characters. I highly recommend it! It has strong Supers RPG vibes and a game where the PCs work for SDN would absolutely rock! 

More on that later...

Invincible

The Invincible comic book series was great and the animated adaptation is quite excellent as well, particularly because its not a perfect one-for-one transfer from page to streaming screen. There are a number of changes to the original material in the form of characters and events that, IMHO, work even better than they did in the comic more often than not.

Not every wild swing the show makes is a home run but they're batting average is pretty damn good. 

Free League is releasing an Invincible Tabletop Roleplaying Game and for the most part, I think it's quite good. It does some interesting things directly related to the Invincible franchise that makes the game feel original in its approach to Superhero RPGs.

My Hero Academia: Vigilantes

I love this series. I've alluded to this in the past but I am going to come right out and say it here, I actually like it more than the original in a lot of ways.

It feels smaller but more personal and the way it explores a character learning to use their Quirk (Superpower) gives the viewer a clearer view of how such a thing might develop.

Add in some great characters, additional world-building, and a largely straightforward plot that still has some nice twists and turns and you've got the subject most heavily influencing my newest campaign. 

Spider Noir

I'll admit I went in to this series both very intrigued and highly skeptical and ended up absolutely loving it. This is how you do a Superhero alternate universe show! 

I watched it in B&W on my first run through and I just started my rewatch in Tru-Color. I gotta say, WOW! I think the purist in me prefers the B&W version but damn if their color choices aren't absolutely beautiful. 

Nicholas Cage is at his quirkiest and the rest of the cast does an amazing job that all the characters really pop. The story is interesting and the way they transfigure the Spiderman mythos is very clever indeed. I would absolutely love to see more of this series. 

Is there another Marvel 'What If' game in my future? You never know...

The Boys

After reading the first few issues of the Boys comic book I put it down and never really looked at it again. It just wasn't for me. I don't want to see deconstructions of the Superhero genre as, unlike writer Garth Ennis, I actually like Superheroes. If you are going to do it, you're going to need to do it REALLY well, with a deep love of the genre underneath it all. 

As far as The Boys as a streaming series, I loved it. Why? Because unlike the creator who hates the very idea of Superheroes, the team that produced the show clearly loves Supers. Its the same subject, story, and characters (for the most part) approached in a very different way thanks to a much more entertaining perspective. 

While I can't see myself ever running a game in this universe, there are aspects of 'Hero as Celebrity' shown in the series that are certainly on my mind.

My Adventures with Superman

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to check out the latest season as of yet so I'll save a discussion of this show for a future post. I very much enjoyed the previous seasons and I am definitely looking forward to this one.

MHA Hero Helpline and LSH Legion Outpost

I currently have two Superhero RPG campaigns going, which is probably one too many. It might even be two too many! We'll have to wait and see what happens. 

I was kind of desperate to come up with two new ongoing games, one for each the weekly groups I'm in but honestly, Superheroes was near the bottom of the list of choices. In the end I caved though because A) I realized that Supers just works with most of my friends and B) I was kind of inspired by all of the above.

With Group A I felt like we'd just played Supers not that long ago [and in fact, we had]. I

wanted to do something different though so I went with a very particular setting and vibe. The campaign is set in the world of the Anime/Manga My Hero Academia, with the players playing American Superheroes working for the Hero Helpline. Hero Helpline is an on-call private enterprise that responds to individual and business requests to fight crime, perform rescues, and provide other services best suited to the Hero profession. They are also available to assist city law enforcement and emergencies services. 

Basically, I wanted to combine the core concept of the computer game Dispatch with the setting of My Hero Academia. 

As far as Group B, well, I've been promising them I'd run Supers again with them 'someday soon' for a little while now. After a few short campaigns, false starts, and some really good one-shots, I decided someday was now. 

This campaign sees the PCs as an expansion of the Legion of Superheroes, the premier team of DC Comics' 31st Century. As the United Planets has grown in size, so has interstellar criminal activity and attacks from hostile powers like the Khund Empire and The Dominators. Our team of five Superheroes are based far from Earth on the ocean world of Vuruna. Every adventure sees one or more of the established Legion characters helping out the PCs. 

I'm having fun with these but I'm not sure they are what I want to run most. 

More on that...very soon,

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Barking Alien

Something Strange in Your Neighborhood

Well...it's been a minute, huh?

Sorry for the long hiatus but I really needed a break as my personal, professional, and yes, creative endeavors required my full attention. Don't worry, everything is good.

This blog is, after all, something I primarily do for fun and because [without it] my constantly bubbling ideas would eventually overflow and drive me quite mad if I didn't write them out somewhere. While very important to me, it doesn't 'pay the bills' if you know what I mean, and Real LifeTM must come first.

Although...more on that below. 

Yesterday was Ghostbusters Day! In truth, tomorrow is the actual anniversary of the release of the original film, while yesterday was the Ghostbusters Day Event held annually in NYC at the Firehouse of Hook and Ladder 8. Although I was unable to attend in person this year, I did keep up on the announcements and news coming out at the event, with the most interesting thing [to me] by far being Ghostbusters: Night Shift - a Netflix Animated Series coming out in 2027. Check out the logo!

Personally, I really like it. Classic but with a twist!

While we don't have a lot of solid information about it yet, we do know that the showrunners are Ben Hibon and Elliott Kalan. They were joined by Ghost Corps executive producers Jason Reitman and Gil Kenan to announce the series at yesterday's event.

Furthermore, its been revealed that the show is being done by Flying Bark Productions, the studio that gave us Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Stranger Things: Tales from '85. 

This news makes me feel it's as good a time as any to announce a new project I'm working on; I will be producing an RPG System Agnostic collection of paranormal perps for use with your favorite games related to capturing, containing, and creatively counteracting pesky poltergeists titled, 'Hosts of Freaky Ghosts'!

Based on my various past posts about spooky scallywags from my previous paranormal policing campaigns, this is largely going to be a PDF of enemies - and possibly an ally or two - for West End's Ghostbusters RPG, Memento Mori's InSpectres, Ewen Cluney's Spooktacular, and with a little work, any such similar game using a like-minded premise and your rules of choice. I will be putting in up on DriveThruRPG hopefully in time for Halloween of this year.

A note about the art - potentially:

I've developed a technique in which I draw the ghosts by hand, upload them into one of several AI Art Generators, get a 'new' image, then spend an hour or more modifying the result to my liking using Photostudio, occasionally redrawing it quite a bit. In a way these are certainly AI slop images but they are AI slop images sourced from my own original illustrations. Which, let's be honest, are also slop. 

Is it OK to use these in my product that's going to be for sale? What does everyone think? I really like how it comes out in the end and it saves me time as I'm never happy with my own art and can spend hours and hours on the smallest piece redrawing it because it isn't 'perfect'. Often, I'm still not pleased with it in the finished art. Curse my somewhat talented but neurodiverse brain chemistry!

Using the method I have described, I get images I really like, though the ethics of it are very gray in my mind. I am prone to still seeing these pictures are AI and therefore unethical regardless of how much of it is my own work. If even 1% of a given images isn't really mine, do I have any right to call it an illustration I made? Certainly I can't receive money for it. Right?

Let me know what you think in the comments and please be civil and constructive. I don't won't to produce something people aren't going to like on the grounds that I've used AI at all. I respect that view. I am only considering it because its my own art the programs are trained on. 

I appreciate your time and thoughtful input. 

Later days,

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Barking Alien

All Alone and Blue

My regular Wednesday night group decided to skip this past week's get together, largely due to exhaustion and a couple players being away because of personal and/or work obligations.

As a result, the Smurfs RPG one-shot I had planned will have to wait for another time. It's OK. I'm cool with it. No worries on my end. 

...Oh who am I smurfing? I want to play Smurfs! I'm smurfing at the bit! Chomping at the smurf? You smurf my meaning, right?

Wait...this is the perfect opportunity to try out something I've been pondering for a while now; a Smurfs RPG Solo Adventure!

I first mentioned this idea back in November of last year, in a post titled Blue Plate Special. The basic smurf of it is that I would use/focus on a single Smurf as my Player Character but have them accompanied by a rotating cast of additional Smurf companions. 

There are some rules on pages 30 and 31 of the Smurfs RPG Core Rulebook regarding playing a Smurf with a 'Sidekick' and I kind of extrapolated my Solo rules from there...at first.

The smurf of it is that a Smurf with a Sidekick isn't exactly what I had in mind for a Solo Smurfs RPG. I wanted the NPCs to have a little more to them. Less Sidekicks and more Supporting Characters I suppose. 

For the star of this Solo smurfy outing, I went with my original character Smurfcornflower, first created for The Smurfs and The Palace of the Silver Princess. I just adore her and she makes an excellent central character thanks to her Potion Making talents; needing to make a Potion, having to find the right ingredients, having to cure the effects of a botched potion, and the like all make good catalysts for an adventure.

I rolled randomly off a table I created to determine which companion Smurfs would be joining her and then wrote them up as follows: Create the NPC as per Sidekicks. Then add/expand upon elements of the character that might be prudent to know for an adventure such as Best Stat, Worst Stat, their Advantage, a Signature Item of Equipment, and a short description of their personality and motivation. 

Basically, a Smurf Companion is more than a Sidekick, less then a full Player Character write-up.

In practice, I made all of the choices for my 'Solo Smurf', while the other NPC Smurfs were guided by a mixture of my decisions and random rolls. I also generated the adventure randomly and used die rolls to determine a lot of the elements within the adventure. 

In upcoming posts I will detail the characters, the adventure, and the far too detailed plans I created for Smurfcornflower's Mushroom Cottage. 

Smurf you later!

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Barking Alien

A very Happy Mother's Day to all the Moms out there with the utmost appreciation and love for all you do!

This Is The May - From Shadow Lords to Baby Yodas

Today in a galaxy far, far away...

It is May the 4th once more, or as I like to call it, 'Secular Star Wars Day'. 'Orthodox Star Wars Day' being May 25th of course, the actual day the first Star Wars film was released. 

Nonetheless, this is the day we Star Wars fans celebrate George Lucas' creation; a universe of strange aliens, clever droids, fantastic creatures, distant planets, and of course, The Force.

This year, there is a lot to celebrate too, as we currently have the animated series Maul: Shadow Lord and will be getting The Mandalorian and Grogu on May 22th, the first Star Wars film in theaters in 7 years. 

As the date approached, I started to get an idea for a Star Wars RPG that leaned even more heavily into the cinematic, often over-the-top nature of things like the Star Was computer and video games, the animated series such as the current and awesome Maul: Shadow Lord, and one of my personal favorite projects, Star Wars Visions. 

A few weeks ago (roughly), I had the chance to play in a game of Outgunned, a rules-lite cinematic 'Action Film' RPG by a company called Two Little Mice. The one-shot was run, quite excellently, by my friend Nick, a member of my Wednesday evening group. I liked it, a lot, though I couldn't resist the desire to tweak and modify the game for an even greater potential. One thing I wanted to be able to do with it was adapt it to other genres and settings such as...hmmm.

The day after the game I started writing up some notes for an Outgunned powered Star Wars game. While the official supplements for Outgunned, Action Flicks and Action Flicks Vol. 2 respectively, each contain Star Wars-like setting options and additional rules for 'Star Raiders' and 'Star Knights', I decided to try building my version of Outgunned Star Wars from scratch. Sort of.

I did read through the Action Flicks homage versions and they did indeed inform some of my ideas and choices going into the project. I also used Twitter's Grok AI to see what different variations of my proposed adjustments would be like. In the end, I'm pretty happy with what I've got. It isn't a full-on new game by any means but rather a functional way of using a particular set of already established rules to run an already established setting. It's the work of a fan of two things hoping to merge them together. 

I'll be making a series of posts across the month of May - Star Wars Month! - detailing my ideas under the working title...

Happy May the Fourth and beware Revenge of the Fifth.

Remember, The Force will be with you, always.

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Barking Alien