Limited Control

The comic book, published by Oni Press, was written and drawn by Scott Morse. Creating it, he had no direct contact with Jarmusch, though he reviewed the story as it was in progress and gave notes. The book was available mainly through direct comic retail outlets and as a promotional give-away at some screenings. Unfortunately, it is out of print and pretty rare to find, even on eBay.

Sequential Tart: How did you get involved with doing the Ghost Dog comic? 

Scott Morse: Well, Artisan Entertainment had been in contact with Joe Nozemack at Oni, wanting to do other books based on films they were distributing. Oni had produced the comics for Blair Witch, and Artisan wanted to work through them again for this Jim Jarmusch project. Joe and Jamie Rich contacted me and asked if I could write the book for another artist, someone Artisan had promised the job to, to draw. I agreed and pumped out a plot, which Jarmusch read and made notes on, and I modified to the current version. The plot was done in about a week. The next Monday, Jamie called and told me the artist had dropped out, and asked if I could draw it as well. I said sure. Then he told me the deadline...two weeks for the finished book. So I hung up and got to work. The whole thing took about five days to complete, if you include time for the plot to be written. 

ST: Wow! do you usually work that fast? 

SM: Most of the time, but only due to deadlines sneaking up on me and over-committing to projects. I get offers for some cool stuff, and I never like to pass it up! Plus, my own ideas are coming a mile a minute these days, and it hits me hard when I have like a week to finish up a project. Working in animation really helped me deal with tight schedules. You have to be quick and accurate the first pass on a lot of animation projects, and that thankfully trickled over into my comics work ethic. 

ST: What did you think of the film?

SM: I was sent a copy by Artisan before I started writing the book, and having seen the trailer, I honestly wasn't expecting much. The trailer made it feel really silly, so when I watched the film, I was more than pleasantly surprised by how well it turned out. It really worked on a lot of levels and, for me, the fact that it dealt with normal mafia schlubs made it work. They really played up the characters like average guys, like guys that you might actually see on the street. The Sopranos does this really well, and it was something I had tried to do with Volcanic Revolver. And Forrest's character worked a lot better than I thought he would.

In June 2000. the movie was also adapted into a role-playing game by Canadian game publisher Guardians of Order. Written by David L. Pulver and John R. Phythyon, Jr., the game focused on two person (one player and one Game Master) group play and resource information about the movie and the real-life Mafia. According to the publisher, the role-playing game and 160 page resource book "re-creates the gangster picture as a cross-culture fusion of Eastern philosophy, hip-hop music, urban darkness, and movie iconography. A One or Two Player RPG – 'This is our first live-action movie RPG license,' commented Guardians Of Order President, Mark C. MacKinnon. 'When we first screened Ghost Dog in the office, we were all impressed with the quality of the story and immediately saw the potential for a new style of dramatic role-playing. This game is geared towards smaller gaming groups of one or two players, which have largely been overlooked by most RPGs on the market today'."

At RPGnet, Lisa Padol offers this review:

When I came to this year's (2001) GenCon, I had only one question about this game. Why a Ghost Dog RPG? David Pulver explained that the studio approached Guardians of Order with the idea. This explains a lot about the idiosyncratic RPG. 

Despite my question, Ghost Dog is both a playable game and a pleasure to read. The first chapter of the game does a fine job of placing the film Ghost Dog in its context, complete with a filmography of director Jarmusch and a list of and description of key films in the genres that Ghost Dog draws upon. There is a detailed summary of the film, as well as the obligatory explanation of what roleplaying games are. 

The next two chapters describe character creation and game mechanics respectively. The game uses Guardians of Order's Tri-Stat system, a straightforward and reasonably simple points build system. All the major personalities from the film are statted out. Previous Tri-Stat games were limited to the anime genre, but Ghost Dog demonstrates that the system can be used for campaigns based on sources with live actors and a more gritty, low powered setting. 

The fourth chapter examines the world of Ghost Dog, largely defined as the world of the Mafia and other criminal organizations. It is full of useful information for any campaign involving such organizations, detailing their hierarchy and daily activities. 

There is other material here as well, including an examination of the books that appear in the movie and their thematic significance. The authors mention the idea of radically different points of view causing different people to witness the same events in different ways, as in the movie Rashomon, based on the story "Yabu No Naka" in the book Rashomon and Other Stories which is passed from one character to the next in the movie Ghost Dog. Interestingly, the authors do not mention a key scene in Ghost Dog which exemplifies this principle. I learned that this was because they were given a poor-quality video tape of the movie to work with. I also learned that the animated cartoons watched by two of the characters predict the future, and the two characters know this. 

The fifth chapter of the game is full of general advice for GMs. The sixth has two scenarios, both intended for one player and a GM. A bibliography, another filmography, and an index rounds out the book. 

The chapter on GM advice is not off limits to players. This is sensible. Players should know what GMs need to take into account, and many players are also GMs.  Naturally, the scenarios are off limits to players. Both are intended to be run by a GM with one player. I am not sure how many people play that way. I prefer running for and playing in groups of 3-5. However, I did appreciate the advice on the differences a GM faces when running for a single player. 

The first scenario is written for a player playing Ghost Dog. It details the destruction of his relationship with his girlfriend, who cannot abide the violence of his way of life. It is nicely tragic, but railroads the player too much for my tastes. What if the player decides Ghost Dog will give up his way of life for the woman he loves? The player should have the option to take the character down a different path than the movie or the authors of the game envisioned. 

The second scenario is for a PC who is not Ghost Dog, but does work for the Mafia. As the authors point out, the scenario can be run with more than one PC; all the GM needs to change is the strength of the opposition. A certain amount of loyalty is presumed, but it is not too hard to figure out how to deal with unexpected player actions. The clock is ticking as the PC tries to locate missing money, and if the GM is at a loss, the time honored tradition of sending in a few goons with guns will work nicely. 

Ghost Dog is an odd RPG, focusing on an odd example of a Mafia movie that is more than just a Mafia movie and that kills off most of the characters stated up in the game. In many ways, the authors limited what the game could have been by focusing so closely on the characters in the movie and the world of the Mafia. This is a valid way to focus the game, but, as was pointed out to me, the movie is not specifically a mob movie, being more a movie about people who are the equivalent of fish out of water. Perhaps the authors could have developed the characters of Pearline's mother or the man building a boat on a rooftop. Perhaps they could have considered dogs that are omens, and cartoons that are prophetic. 

Still, a game about odd, quirky individuals doing odd, quirky things like raising pigeons and building boats would be harder to focus and harder to market. And while I do think wistfully about what such a game could have been, Ghost Dog is a useful sourcebook for any modern campaign involving the Mafia or other ordinary organized crime groups. It is also useful to see how the Tri-Stat system handles ordinary, as well as more cinematographic, non-anime characters, and it is a thoughtful study of a unique film.

Memory escapes me yet again -- I recall a music video by one of those English dance/rock bands a la Happy Mondays that featured a tribute to the Japanese characters in "Mystery Train."  Does anybody else remember this or was I hallucinating?

To this day I swear I remember seeing a music video for Happy Mondays' "Step On" that recreated the scene with the Japanese tourists in their hotel room (the girl smearing on lipstick and making a mess of her boyfriend's face), but a search of the internets yielded not a singe shred of evidence that such a video ever existed. Did I dream this, or what?

Well, I'm happy to report that no, we're not dealing here with a case of collective hallucination:

(This was the US music video accompanying the 1990 Happy Mondays single "Step On", off "Pills 'n' Thrills and Bellyaches".)