I'm having a love affair with GUMSHOE

[Piratecat]

I ran Pelgrane Press's game Esoterrorists back when it first came out. I wasn't crazy about the system. I wrote off GUMSHOE, even thought I had a little interest in Mutant City Blues and Trail of Cthulhu, and I converted my Esoterrorists scenario to Dread before moving on to other one-shots.

GUMSHOE is an interesting system that I didn't quite understand how to run. It's designed to make running mysteries and procedurals into a breeze. Skills are split into two parts: Investigative and General. Investigative skills always work to provide you with clues, with no roll required, so long as you say you're using the skill; for instance, in The X-Files, Scully isn't going to miss a crucial clue during an autopsy just because she rolled poorly on her Spot Hidden. In comparison, General Skills handle combat and non-clue-collecting tasks, and you spend these points as you use them. This means you're going to run out of breath while running, or run out of steam while scuffling with foes. There's a meta-game in there of "how many points do I spend to achieve success without over-spending?" Nifty, but hard for me to initially adjust my style to.

Fast-forward to six months ago, a bit before GenCon, when I learned that Robin Laws had written a GUMSHOE game named Ashen Stars. It was a space opera where you play freelance law enforcers out on the edge of the galaxy; sort of Firefly meets Star Trek meets BSG. I decided to check it out, expecting to be disappointed.

I'm a big boy. I can admit when I'm wrong. And I was so, so wrong. The game is great -- exceptional in background, flavor, and rules.

What the heck happened? It turns out that the GUMSHOE rules get tweaked and improved every time a new game comes out. Laws hit Ashen Stars out of the freakin' park. I wrote a one-shot for GenCon that I've now run about eight times, and it's been fun and surprising every single time. I'm sold.

And now Ken Hite has written Night's Black Agents, a GUMSHOE game that is more thriller than mystery (and thus is much easier for me to GM for.) The concept is super-spies vs vampires, or The Bourne Conspiracy if Treadstone was run by a conspiracy of vampires. My first thought was "well, there's a good super-spy game ruined by a dumb concept, but maybe the spy stuff is salvagable." And DAMMIT I was wrong again. It works just fine as a pure spy/James Bond game (I've used it to run a Burn Notice game), but the vampire material is simply brilliant. I've run a NBA one-shot five times now, with a few people telling me it was one of the best games they'd ever played, and I want more.

So go check 'em out, and talk about them here if you've played them or have questions. I'm kinda in love. I want more.

 

[MerricB]

Heh. I've got Trail of Cthulhu on order - just waiting for my FLMOS to restock.

How much do the mechanics support roleplaying, Piratecat?

Cheers!

 

[Piratecat]

How much do the mechanics support roleplaying, Piratecat?

Quite well. I haven't read Trail of Cthulhu yet, so take this with a grain of salt in case the rules are different, but...

The system is best at modeling very competent or knowledgeable characters. For example, interpersonal skills give a player an idea of what sort of interaction they're best at, and they can spend these points to gain a permanent advantage for the game. For instance, if you're a GUMSHOE spy in NBA and are trying to get information from the beautiful Russian agent by flirting with her, you can spend one of your flirting points (of which you probably only have one or two) to have her fall in love with you. It's a great emulation of the spy genre. Spending those investigative points doesn't affect your ability to learn clues, but it basically tells the GM "I want something cool to happen." We've had a tremendous amount of roleplaying come out of this mechanic.

The player needs to describe/roleplay how they're using their skills, so I haven't run into any problems with RP at all.

Meanwhile, combat is short and brutal and dangerous. Medics are essential for keeping PCs alive if there's much combat.

 

[Crothian]

I ran Fear Itself when it was submitted to the ENnies back a few years. It was an interesting game and I think I would run the system better after stumbling though running it the first time. There were some things I realized about the system when the session was almost over that I just didn't comprehend reading it.

I've yet to play or run Ashen Stars. The week prior to Gen con and me getting Ashen Stars (based solely on Pcat's recommendation) I started a short campaign in Star Wars. If I knew about the game a week earlier we would have been playing that over Star Wars.

 

[Rogue Agent]

Do you know what they've changed?

I was significantly underwhelmed by the early instantiations of GUMSHOE (since they didn't fix the problem they claimed to fix and had hard-coded limitations on scenario design that they didn't provide decent guidelines for).

 

[nnms]

The key to running Gumshoe (even the earliest instances of it) is to simply treat the investigation skills like ones you roll, but you always automatically succeed, so you don't roll.

So when a player describes her character searching the book shelves for books that don't belong, you don't roll "perception" or "spot hidden" or whatever. You just describe what she finds without breaking out of the narrative and using the system.

Then, on top of that, if the player feels there is something more they could learn, they may want to spend a point. When they do, you give them something worth the point. Or, at the very, very worst, you decline the spend, give them something more for free and then tell them there's nothing worth spending a point on here.

It's definitely a matter of scenario design. They now have these planning sheets where you make sure you have enough clues of different skill types and have your bases covered when it comes to point spending.

Also, there is an excellent variant where players don't spend points and the GM keeps track of everything, giving additional information based on the investigation skill levels of different players. If you're the type of GM or player who likes games where you never leave the narrative to reference the system in play, it works amazingly.

I think the best thing about the newer published Gumshoe games is the player and GM advice is much, much better. But you'll find all you need in that regard on Pelgrane's See Page XX column if you have an older Gumshoe game.

 

[Rogue Agent]

The key to running Gumshoe (even the earliest instances of it) is to simply treat the investigation skills like ones you roll, but you always automatically succeed, so you don't roll.

So when a player describes her character searching the book shelves for books that don't belong, you don't roll "perception" or "spot hidden" or whatever. You just describe what she finds without breaking out of the narrative and using the system.

Is that one of the changes? Because that's not the way it worked in Esoterrorists.

 

[nnms]

Is that one of the changes? Because that's not the way it worked in Esoterrorists.

"Gathering clues is simple. All you have to do is: 1) get yourself into a scene where relevant information can be gathered and 2) have the right ability to discover the clue and 3) tell the GM that you’re using it. As long as you do these three things, you will never fail to gain a piece of necessary information. It is never dependent on a die roll. If you ask for it, you will get it."
-- The Esoterrorists, p28-29​

Sadly that's about it. Not enough time was given to explain exactly how this works or giving examples of play.

What's missing is a lot more of the advice text that's in later books and also on the Pelgrane website. Basically each work after their initial publication of The Esoterrorists and Fear Itself has more and more "how to do this" advice, more examples and generally a tighter presentation of the system for the setting its being used for.

The early Gumshoe products have rather small "how to" sections. The Esoterrorists has what? 6 pages that mostly talk about how to avoid railroading.

I totally agree with the OP that the later Gumshoe products are so much better than the earlier ones. The same sections (Gathering Clues) in Ashen Stars has examples of play right after any rules idea is put forward. Just paging through it, I see example text all over the place. It makes the earlier works look so, so poor by comparison.

EDIT: Here's a quote from Ashen Stars:

"...you tramp across the crunchy silicate surface of the planet Chronos.

GM: “You spot a peculiar shack hidden amid the transparent rocks.”

You: “A peculiar, huh? I draw on my knowledge of Industrial Design to see if I can tell anything about it from its style of construction.”

GM: “From its biomorphic forms and distinctive support struts, you recognize it as the work of a little-known alien species called the Uthon.”
-- Ashen Stars, p64​

See what I mean about the play basically being the same as traditional RPG play but when its time to use a skill, you don't roll and just succeed?

 

[Wednesday Boy]

Since hearing about the theory behind investigations in Trail of Cthulhu I've been interested in the Gumshoe system. For those of you who've played the Gumshoe games, is there one that you would recommend over the others?

And how easy is it to take the rules from a specific book and adapt them for a different genre or setting? (For instance, if I bought Ashen Stars how easy would it be to run a Call of Cthulhu Gumshoe game using my old Chaosium CoC setting stuff?)

Thanks!!

 

[Piratecat]

The rules in a specific game are tweaked and customized to match that genre. The Night's Black Agents rules emulate spy movies, and the Ashen Stars rules emulate sci-fi. It'd be utterly simple to run classic Call of Cthulhu scenarios using the Trail of Cthulhu rules, but you wouldn't want to do so from Ashen Stars. Well, not unless your 1920's investigators use Disruptor pistols and scan for alien life forms.

I'd recommend either Ashen Stars, NBA or Trail of Cthulhu. It depends what type of game you like.