46: Ghost Pranks, Planar Influencers, and The Birthday Rat

D&Daniel: Greetings, listeners and patrons, especially Hedwig, Carlo, and A Socialist Hobgoblin. Whatever you may have heard about somebody’s haberdashery being stolen from, I guarantee you that I had nothing to do with it, and if I did, some people have to steal from haberdasheries to cope. That is all

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Pencil: Hello, and welcome to The Probably Bad Podcast, a podcast which is definitely bad. I’m Pencil

Paper: I’m Paper. Today’s probably bad RPG idea is

(dice rolling noise)

Paper: “The ghost’s unfinished business is to get a group of ghost hunters to carry out a series of increasingly convoluted and difficult instructions, under the guise of laying it to rest”

Pencil: This guy who died going “if only I’d been a little bit more of an asshole in life”

Paper: I mean, no-one ever said that the unfinished business had to be a good thing

Pencil: Yeah, I mean yeah, you get evil unfinished business of “I want to stab that person”, you don’t really get just “I want to be more of a douchebag”, and I feel this is a missed opportunity

Paper: Yeah, I’ve always liked the idea of ghosts whose unfinished business is just stuff like “I didn’t tip the milkman”. I feel like it’s a natural escalation of that concept, just what’s the daftest unfinished business?

Pencil: My unfinished business is that I died without anything that I was invested enough in to count as unfinished business. Now I can’t rest until I find something that I care about enough not to rest until I’ve fulfilled it

Paper: I need a moment for that one

Pencil: What you need to do is get the ghost invested in something, and then kill them again so they can come back as a ghost a second time, but now they have that unfinished business

Paper: See now we’re getting into metaghosts

Pencil: Yeah, this is where metaghosts come from

Paper: I’m just wondering, could you deliberately make yourself a ghost by starting some big project when you know you’re about to die

Pencil: It’s in interesting method of immortality

Paper: “I’ve been diagnosed with a terminal disease, time to start this 5000 piece jigsaw”

Pencil: Honestly I think it’s funnier if “oh no, my car swerved off the road, time to start this 5000 piece jigsaw”

Paper: “My car’s swerving off the road. In my last moments of consciousness, I’m gonna sign up for Duolingo”

Pencil: I love this necro…this bargain bin necromancer who always has a 5000 piece jigsaw in them. In them?

Paper: Oh no!

Pencil: Who always has a 5000 piece jigsaw

Paper: Absorbed the power of the jigsaw

Pencil: My unfinished business is

Paper: To put things together

Pencil: My unfinished business is to stop having a jigsaw inside me. Anyway, they always have a 5000 piece jigsaw on them, and any time they’re about to die, they just pull it out and start making things. That’s the only necromancy they know

Paper: My question is, are you allowed to undo the pieces of the jigsaw later, like Penelope with her weaving, or is there a point where you pull it out and you realise there’s only one piece left

Pencil: This is why you have multiple jigsaws

Paper: But this is my thing, eventually…if you just start a new one when the other one starts getting close to being completed, then that isn’t that you haven’t completed it, that’s that you’ve abandoned it

Pencil: Hmm

Paper: I know that it’s semantics at this point, but this whole thing is semantics

Pencil: I think…so this is why you only start the jigsaw when you’re sure you’re about to die. The jigsaw is magically enchanted so you can only open the box if you’re going to die in the next five minutes

Paper: I like that. I like the idea of pulling it out of your pack and accidentally opening it, and just being like “oh shit”

Pencil: (laughs)

Paper: There’s someone else in the room

Pencil: I like this needlessly horrifying magic item

Paper: (laughs)

Pencil: You just have it at home, and then you accidentally drop your jigsaw, and it opens, and then you get to have five minutes of “what the fuck is going on” before a wolf bursts out of your closet

Paper: But the important part is you do need to start the jigsaw while you’re going “what the hell is going on?”

Pencil: Also, I do like the unfinished business doesn’t need to be anything you’re invested in, it just has to be anything you literally left unfinished. My unfinished business is to record 1 million podcast episodes

Paper: I think I would like to have a character whose unfinished business was to find a route to immortality

Pencil: Hmm. I feel like “my unfinished business is not to die” is…there’s a reasonable ghost idea in there somewhere

Paper: See the thing is not to die, to me, is, it’s less an unfinished business that a thing you’re trying to avoid, but if it’s finding the elixir of life

Pencil: Mmm. I feel like

Paper: That’s something more active, it’s more achievable, you know?

Pencil: I feel like finding a method of immortality works. I guess this is a question of at what point does it constitute an unfinished business? You have the classic ghost “I want to come back to protect my loved ones”. Is that different from “my unfinished business is I hope there’s nothing bad happening to my loved ones”? I feel like what we need is some ability to petition the Raven Queen and ask for the rules on this

Paper: Mmm

Pencil: ‘Cause this is complicated

Paper: Plus, there is the question of, ‘cause one of the ones you said was come back and protect your loved ones

Pencil: Mmm

Paper: Is that an unfinished business, or is that just a separate goal for after you die?

Pencil: Yeah, if my unfinished business is “after I die I want to…”

Paper: I don’t think that counts, personally

Pencil: Hmm. Yeah

Paper: I feel it has to be something that you were actively working towards while alive

Pencil: Although, although, so, suppose you die

Paper: Mm-hmm

Pencil: You go to whatever afterlife there is, you’re then resurrected, can you have reverse unfinished business?

Paper: Where, if you get, you get resurrected, and then if you complete it you just die again?

Pencil: Yeah. You get resurrected but you can exist intangibly in the afterlife, but then if you complete it you die. This is a second way of reverse ghost. So you’re just alive, and you have your life, but then every so often you’re just like “oh, I need to go haunt a house in purgatory”, and then you vanish, and then you come back like “sorry about that”

Paper: Ok, but if you’ve been a ghost for long enough that’s all you remember, imagine how terrifying a human would be. It’s this thing, you can block it out with something as simple as a wall, but it’ll keep trying to find a way in

Pencil: Mmm

Paper: Because I don’t think that ghosts are pursuit predators, I feel like they’re more ambush predators

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: Whereas humans’ll just go

Pencil: Firstly I like that ghosts and humans are different species’ now, and secondly

Paper: I feel like they’re different enough that you can treat them differently

Pencil: And also, yeah, just, ghosts don’t remember humans, and they’re just occasionally like “what the fuck? Why can’t you walk through a wall?

Paper: What if

Pencil: Dumbass

Paper: You know the, obviously ridiculous, theory about cats thinking that we’re just helpless kittens

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: What if ghosts think that humans are really bad ghosts

(crosstalk)

Paper: Walk through walls

Pencil: Is that why ghosts keep trying to kill people?

Paper: I think so, they’re like “no, you need to leave behind the corporeal form. Here, I’ll help”

Pencil: You’re all covered in meat

Paper: Take that meat of immediately, you just look silly

Pencil: ‘Cause that’s the question, why would ghosts kill someone? ‘Cause if they’re evil ghosts that just means they’ve made the person they killed able to punch them in the face

Paper: They wanna help you also achieve your true potential, as a ghost

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: It’s like a pyramid scheme

Pencil: You’ve got all this (laughs) “The afterlife is a pyramid scheme” is a great idea, and I think it might be one we’ve done?

Paper: It is, but I’m bringing it back (inaudible)

Nick: It’s only a pyramid scheme if it’s in Egypt

Paper: Otherwise it’s sparkling multi-level marketing. But yeah, to get back to the actual idea, the idea of a ghost’s unfinished business just being maximum mischief is very pleasing

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: But I feel like for it to feel like a classic unfinished business one of the ghost hunters would have to have screwed them over in some way, like maybe the ghost hunter was indirectly responsible for that person’s death, and that’s why they’re messing with them

Pencil: I feel like it has to be that they screwed them over, but in a really petty way, ‘cause if someone was responsible for my death I’d probably do more than mischief, but if it was just like “ha ha, it’s me, the ghost of the person that got the lead role in the school nativity in year 6 after, over you” Yeah, the ghost of the person that you got the lead role in the nativity in year 6 rather than me. You know

Paper: The ghost of the person who you beat in an ebay auction

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: We never even met

Pencil: Yeah, it’s your standard vengeful ghosts, except instead of going after its killer, or anything like that, it’s going after people who very mildly annoyed it

Paper: What if it’s someone that killed you, but in a really…only if you’re really stretching the definition, like “well, you defrauded my grandad, which meant that we had to go live in poverty, and then I died from poor living conditions, so you killed me”

Pencil: I wouldn’t count that as killing me. I feel it has to be something like “I was killed in a car crash, and you invented cars”

Paper: I’m pretty sure the inventor of cars is already dead

Pencil: That’s what you think. Also, this is a fantasy land, you know, maybe cars were only recently invented

Paper: Ah, see I was interpreting it as a Monster of the Week type game

Pencil: That is also possible, yes. “I fell off a building and died, and I notice you’ve been making breakthroughs in gravity research, you traitor”

Paper: (laughs)

Pencil: That kind of thing

Paper: “I was killed in a war, and you once posted on facebook that you support the troops”

Pencil: There’s something…I feel it could be weirdly tragic or utterly hilarious, of a ghost that is so desperate to find someone that they can blame for their death that they’re just going to these ridiculous lengths

Paper: I think it’s kind of both, and isn’t that the best kind of RPG character?

Pencil: I also like “I was murdered, I don’t know who the murderer is, it was probably you, I’ve never trusted your face”

Paper: (laughs)

Pencil: “If any of my friends were going to murder me, it would be you, let’s be honest here”

Paper: “You were the last person to see me alive. I died of a brain aneurysm, but you were the last one to see me alive!”

Pencil: (laughs) “I had a brain aneurysm, and I notice you have a brain. Coincidence?”

Paper: (laughs)

Pencil: Weird ghost conspiracy theorist

Paper: See, that is a character I would like to play. I may have to make that a Monster of the Week NPC

Pencil: “I died doing what I loved, and you are someone I loved, so it’s your fault”

Paper: Oh no! I think that’s a good point to move on to questions

Pencil: Yeah

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Pencil: So, our first question is from Blatella. “Which planes of existence do you think would make the best and worst vacation spots?”

Paper: Insert obligatory material plane is the worst joke here

Pencil: (rimshot) Here at Probably Bad RPG Ideas, we have a very firm opposition to real things

Paper: (laughs)

Pencil: I feel the Elemental Plane of Fire wouldn’t be a good vacation spot

Paper: Explain

Pencil: It’s on fire

Paper: Good explanation

Pencil: (laughs) I feel like generally if I was like “here’s your holiday home, it’s on fire”, I would probably ask for a refund

Paper: I feel like there’s a few that would be good for a few minutes, but…like I feel like the Astral Sea would be quite a nice time for a little but

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: Kind of a sensory depravation chamber, but then you’d realise that there’s just nothing

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: A two week holiday to a sensory depravation chamber sounds like a good way to go insane

Pencil: It sort of sounds like the kind of thing where you go to a wonderful natural vista and you’re like “wow, this really is a beautiful natural vista” and then “well now what do I do?” Just there. On Probably Bad RPG Ideas we do also have a firm anti-nature stance, The Grand Canyon can get fucked. In terms of planes of existence I’d like to go to, the good planes, the upper planes are obvious choices, but I feel they’re too obvious. Obviously the plane of pure happiness is gonna be a good place to go on a vacation spot, but also that means it’ll be very booked up

Paper: Yeah, you go to the plane of pure happiness and it’s full of very entitled

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: Other tourists. You know there’d be influencers visiting there

Pencil: I think I would go to limbo, ‘cause, you know, it’s exciting, you don’t know what you’re gonna get, get to hang out with frog people, you probably fly. I think you can fly. I’m gonna say you can fly

Paper: Of course, then there is a chance of being caught and eaten by the frog people

Pencil: There’s a risk of that anywhere you go

Paper: I’d like to visit The Feywild, for maybe a long weekend

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: But I think at a certain point the adrenaline would wear off and you’d just be like “oh, ok. Ok…”

Pencil: I think my main issue with going to The Feywild is that I am way too accommodating, and so I’d very rapidly give away my name, childhood memories, and face. To be fair, I’m not using any of them, maybe I should go to the feywild

Paper: But Pencil, you’re using your face right now!

Pencil: That’s what you think. We’re doing this over recording, so Paper doesn’t actually know whether or not I have a face

Paper: That’s true, it was purely extrapolation from what I know of your face

Pencil: Mmm, yes. Other dimensions that are good. I think the worst vacation spot…the elemental planes, again, are bad vacation spots, ‘cause you’d die. I think hell is…hell, I feel, would be a good vacation spot, but then you’d get the bill, and it was 10 times more than you thought it was going to be, and it turns out there’s a series of obscure loopholes and minor fees

Paper: I think Hell would be briefly good, because you could do a Dante’s Inferno thing where you just go and watch all the people you don’t like suffering

Pencil: I guess, yeah, the lower planes are a good vacation trip if you’re really spiteful and all of your enemies are dead. I guess The Abyss would probably be the worst of the outer planes to go to

Paper: That does make sense

Pencil: Or the one where it’s just someone screaming in your ear for an entire dimension

Paper: I’d quite like to go on holiday to Mechanus, I think

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: It’d just be all the little robots everywhere

Pencil: Yeah, I think my main issue is I’m way too chaotically aligned, and I would be murdered immediately, but that’s a me problem

Paper: You don’t think you could get away with it for just a couple of days?

Pencil: No, I would start messing with the gears as soon as I landed. I would stick my cane into the gears and then run away giggling as gravity stops working. But yeah, I feel like for people other than me Mechanus would be nice. I think it’d be a bit bland, but it’d be one of those where everything’s been pre-arranged, and tomorrow we’re going on a tour here, and then the day after we’re going to this museum

Paper: It’d be like an all-inclusive steampunk vacation

Pencil: Yeah, for some people that would be incredibly dull, but for some people that’s the kind of vacation they like

Paper: I feel slightly called out when you said it’s all planned and going to museums, ‘cause that’s what I’m doing on my holiday later this year

Pencil: Yeah, Paper is going to Mechanus on holiday later

Paper: I am

Pencil: We can all wish them a good time. If you go to Hades you just get put in a crappy house with a bowl of cold porridge and told to have fun

Paper: (laughs)

Pencil: By a ghost

Paper: What about Shadowfell? For an adventuring

Pencil: I think shadowfell works as a vacation destination if you’re really really goth. If you bring a Cure album and black eyeshadow and all of that, you will have a great time hanging out in the spooky building, lamenting ravens that fill your lungs

Paper: Although I feel like Shadowfell’s another one that would be full of influencers, just a different aesthetic of influencer

Pencil: Mmm

Paper: You cannot move for people taking selfies with the ruins of our world

Pencil: Yeah. I think that one’s also gonna be…everyone who didn’t go to the Plane of Pure Happiness went to Shadowfell, ‘cause they’re edgy and different. I think Mount Celestia would probably be ok, although it would be also very pre-planned. You know what would be the best place? Bitopia, based purely on the name

Paper: Nice. I do not know that one

Pencil: That’s because it was removed from the canon for being slightly silly. It’s two dimensions that are just opposite each other like a sandwich, and one of them is a city and civilisation, and the other is a wild natury place, and there are big ladders to help you get between the two

Paper: That does sound like a good holiday though, you can pick and choose exactly how much civilisation you want

Pencil: Yeah, you can stay in the city side, and have shops and baths and so forth, but then you go on a little hike up the ladder and hang out on the wilderness side. And then after you’ve had enough being mauled by bears you can go back to the…it’s the gnome home dimension, so it will be full of gnomes

Paper: That’s fine, it’s just glamping but everything’s a little bit small

Pencil: Yeah, everything’s small and everyone’s playing pranks on you, but otherwise if there’s too many pranks you can climb a ladder and go hide up a tree for a bit. Yeah, there you go, Bitopia is the best one

Paper: Yeah

Pencil: And I stand by my claim that the elemental plane of fire is the worst

Paper: Yeah, I can’t argue with that. I would not enjoy being on fire

Pencil: No. We at Probably Bad RPG Ideas are very opposed to you setting us on fire

Paper: You keep making statements on my behalf

Pencil: We at Probably Bad RPG Ideas are very in favour of Mod Pencil, specifically, as the best mod

Paper: (laughs) Well you can deal with the inbox from now on then

Pencil: (laughs)

(music)

Paper: So, our other question is from ancelineonline. “If you were to play Chuck E. Cheese as a player character, what class would he be?” I feel like the obvious answer’s bard, but I don’t know if that’s too obvious

Pencil: I think music is his job, but I wouldn’t say it’s his passion. It’s what he does to pay the bills, but I don’t think he’d say “yes, music is enough of my passion to become a bard”

Paper: Well no, because we established on the episode where we talked far too much about Chuck E. Cheese that his passion is just the general concept of birthdays

Pencil: Yeah. I don’t know which one that would be. I’m gonna say cleric, but rather than a god, he just worships birthdays. Which domain would that be?

Paper: Life?

Pencil: Yeah ok

Paper: Because you’re celebrating still being alive

Pencil: Yeah, and of course new life. So he’s a life cleric, and all of his cleric magic manifests and party poppers and streamers and birthday cakes

Paper: I can also see him as a paladin, whose oath is just to help people celebrate

Pencil: Yeah. Yeah, he’s a paladin, and if he hears there is a birthday nearby he will go wish you happy birthday, even if he has to fight through an army of orcs, he will make sure you have a happy birthday. He will also make sure each individual orc has a happy birthday before he kills them

Paper: His favourite spell is presumably rite of passage

Pencil: Yes. I can (audio cuts out) also see him as

Paper: I think I’m sticking with paladin

Pencil: Yeah

Paper: I feel like his…he did kind of take an oath

Pencil: Yeah, he’s definitely got some kind of divine magic

Paper: We’re going to have to homebrew a birthday paladin now, aren’t we

Pencil: Probably. And a birthday cleric, maybe

Paper: Yeah, I think that was a fairly short answer, but there you go

Nick: I have a question

Paper: Oh no, Nick has a question

Pencil: We have an exciting third question

Nick: What would Chuck E. Cheese’s unfinished business be?

Paper: Find out who killed his parents. Chuck E. Cheese is Batman. Chuck E. Cheese is Ratman!

Pencil: I…yeah, Chuck E. Cheese never has a birthday because Batman killed his parents, and now he’s trying to get revenge by becoming Ratman, a better superhero because, unlike Batman, he also serves children at a fast food restaurant. Those are the two, these are the three things Batman famously doesn’t do: kill, eat his girlfriend out, or serve food at a fast food restaurant

Paper: You know, I’d forgotten about the eating out thing

Pencil: Yes, that is the other advantage Chuck E. Cheese, sorry, Charles Entertainment Cheese, has over Batman. Yeah, I feel like the other obvious unfinished business is have a birthday

Paper: Mm-hmm

Pencil: Although I do like the idea of his unfinished business being something completely out of left field, like Chuck E. Cheese dies and he comes back and he’s like “I cannot rest until we have overthrown the bourgeoisie and implemented fully automated communism”

Paper: Chuck E. Cheese’s unfinished business is to change his name to something better, he’s just never got around to it

Pencil: Yeah. “My unfinished business is to stop being called Charles Entertainment Cheese”. Which, to be fair, is also my unfinished business

Paper: Pencil real name revealed

Pencil: I was Chuck E. Cheese this whole time

Paper: The real Chuck E. Cheese: the friends we made along the way

Pencil: Yeah. I feel my unfinished business would be to overthrow the bourgeoisie and implement fully automated communist

Paper: I like it, it’s a long-term goal

Pencil: Yeah, I will keep throwing plates at people until we stop having billionaires

Paper: I like it. Will you just throw them at billionaires, or just in general throw plates?

Pencil: Ghosts don’t seem to have the self-awareness to…’cause ghosts don’t just go after their murderers, they tend to hang around in a house yelling at people, so regrettably I think i would be throwing plates at just random people

Paper: That is unfortunate but understandable. So, yes, the things we say at the end. If you have a question, you can email probablybadpodcast  @ gmail.com or message ProbablyBadRPGIdeas on tumblr. We’re also on twitter as BadProbably, and on redbubble, as probably bad, I keep forgetting to mention that we have a redbubble with merch and stuff

Pencil: You can buy merch and stuff

Paper: Yeah, both merch and stuff available on redbubble. If you want to support us and get access to patreon exclusive one-shots and homebrew and bonus episodes, then you can go to patreon.com/probablybadrpgideas and give us some moneys, please. So, thank you for listening, and

Both: Remember to have a probably bad day

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