Pills & Ghosts

Pills & Ghosts is a little experiment—a Lasers & Feelings hack that started when I discovered a Twitter account that randomly generated what it referred to as "two stats." (RIP Twitter account, as it appears to be gone, and RIP Twitter, as it is now run by an asshole.) I asked said account for two stats, and it responded with "Pills and Ghosts," and then I spent a year or two trying to decide what that meant. How were they ideas in opposition in the way John Harper's game contrasts "lasers" (technology, science) and "feelings" (persuasion, physicality).

And here's what I came up with: The "rational" world is skeptical and scientific. It might see things outside its milieu as detrimental to its worldview. It might offer you "pills" to align your thinking with its own--medications, therapies, skeptical hot takes. The "irrational" world is intuitive, occult, and psychedelic. It might manifest itself as literal or figurative "ghosts" to interact with.

Neither of these worlds are better than the other, and most of us seem to float somewhere between the two, drifting from one side to the other. In Lasers & Feelings and its many hacks, usually you decide if you are more "lasers" or more "feelings" when you make a character and you stay that way. Though you are welcome to do the same in Pills & Ghosts, I encourage you to roll a d6 and let the die decide where you are on the spectrum. Embrace the possibility of a character shuttling between the approaches if, say, you decide to reroll between every session, or even every scene. Let your relationship to the "rational" and the "irrational" change.

Go nuts. Have the fun you want to have.

And for real, feel free to have it for free. This is the first of the Sympathetic Destroyer games. If you like it, follow me and consider supporting later projects financially.