The Gumshoe System

[DragonChild]

So I picked up a copy of Esoterrorists, to look at the Gumshoe system. It's a system specifically designed for investigation games, and the Esoterrorist setting is basically X-Files against people who are trying to use dark magic fueled on fear. So lots of brutal rituals, crazy monsters, and cover-ups.

Here's how the system works. You have two types of skills, Investigation Abilities, and General Abilities. There are a TON of Investigative abilities, and they're all things that help you find clues. General Abilities are things like health, fighting, driving, athletics, the "sanity" ability, and so on. They keep you from dying horribly. Each of the ability types are purchased separately, from their own pool of points.

So Investigation Abilities. There are a lot of these. They're stuff like Chemistry, Cop Talk, Bureaucracy, Flirtation, and even "Bullshit Detector". That is the name of a skill. And that is awesome. What happens is the number of points you get to spend on these is based on the number of players there are. The more players, the less points you have to spend. You're encouraged to spread the points out, putting no more than 3 or 4 points in one skill. In a game, there are certain things that are supposed to just happen in a scene if you have that skill, and want to use it. If you're talking to the detective on a case, and say "I want to use my Cop Talk to make me seem professional", it just happens. You're supposed to get clues, not continually roll dice until you stumble across them.

In addition, each Investigation Ability has a 'pool', equal to the number of ranks you have in it. You spend points out of this pool to gain more clues and insights. To make up an example, you might walk into a crime scene, and notice a strange smell. The GM informs a player with the chemistry skill that he can spend 2 points out of his chemistry pool and identify it - he does so, recognizing it as commercial acetone. Or you might be able to tell someone is hiding something because you have Bullshit Detector, and then spend a point out of your Intimidation pool to get them to confess.

General Abilities are a set amount for each player. They're stuff like health (your HP), athletics, gun skills, and driving. Stuff that'll keep you alive. Every character gets the same amount of points to spend here, and each general ability, like investigation abilities, get a pool. They do not, however, get "you have that skill, you pass" stuff going on. You don't use these to find clues.

General abilities, as there are less, and you get over twice as many (maybe even three times, if you have a lot of players) points to spend, tend to have a lot higher pools. Some you super-specialize in, and stuff like health, may very well be in double-digits. How these work is that when you want to attempt an active ability, you decide how many points out of your pool you want to spend ahead of time. You roll 1d6+(points spent), and compare it to a hidden TN that the DM set. If you reach or exceed that TN, you're in the clear.

That's a quick description of how the crunchy bits work. More thoughts later.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

So basically, finding stuff out is a function of what the GM gives you or what you decide you want to know, while whether you die horribly due to poor health or lousy driving is random. It sounds like an interesting concept, but I can see a potential problem. Depending on how big the pools are and how often they refresh, you could have a situation where a PC can't investigate any more because they have no points in investigative skills. I imagine this would be more of a problem in a game with a lot of players.

[DragonChild]

It's worth noting that the game suggests that any clue required to move a scene along - such as, in the sample adventure, a business card on a murder victim that leads you to a friend of his, who leads you to etc. - basically be given out automatically. What matters is what side clues the character gain, giving them hints at other people to track down, information on what's really going on so they can prepare ahead of time, and information that can help them with their cover-up of events afterward, so that normal society doesn't know about supernatural monsters. This includes using knowledges to twist information that other, mundane investigators are picking up, spin plausible cover stories, or even steal evidence from the detectives there.

[DragonChild]

There are 39 different investigation skills. I'll make a little chart below to show how ranks work out based on number of players.

Number of Players / Investigation Build Points / Total Party Build Points
2/32/64
3/24/72
4/22/88
5/20/100

The bigger party is going to cover a wider variety of skills, but yeah, I see potentially shallow pools being a problem. By the sample adventure, however, it looks like spending more than 3 pool points on one skill over the course of an adventure is EXTREMELY rare, while most adventures you'll only spend 1 point on a specific skill tops.

[Username17]

How does the game handle players missing a session or new players coming in? Does everyone have to make a new character?

-Username17

[DragonChild]

The game says you base points on the number of "regularly attending players" - so if you have five players total, but generally only four show up to a session, they all get 22 points.

It doesn't mention adding a character permanently, as far as I see.

[TheFlatline]

Interesting...

Is there character progression? Do you ever improve?

It seems like the system is designed for one-shot stories, or perhaps a series of separately contained "episodes".

Also, it doesn't seem like the "power level" of the party scales well. Look at the power point distribution for the individuals as you add players, and also look at the differences for the entire party:

From 2 to 3 party members, individuals lose 8 points each. The party as a whole gains 12 plot points.

From 3 to 4 party members, individuals lose 2 points each. The party as a whole gains 16 plot points.

From 4 to 5 again, each individual loses 2 points, and the party gains 12.

It seems like there's a real power discrepancy there. Simply adding in another player may, in larger parties, simply require everyone to ditch 2 plot points to bring in another major PC. But in a small party, going from 2 PCs to 3, you're going to be hurt using that system.

A good mystery/detective story really lies solely in the hands of a good GM. You have to be able to deal with success/failure (not just in a dice capacity, but in a player capacity) to keep the story rolling. Simply because nobody ever thought to look under the couch to find the murder weapon shouldn't end the game with "well, you guys are at a dead end. Mr X gets away."

This system looks like it might not get in the way, but it doesn't exactly seem on the surface to be the eureka moment for a mystery game.

[DragonChild]

Is there character progression? Do you ever improve?

Yes. At the end of an investigation (adventure), you gain 2 build points for every session. I... THINK they can only be spent on investigative abilities. They might be able to be spent on general ones. I'm not entirely sure.

It seems like the system is designed for one-shot stories, or perhaps a series of separately contained "episodes".

This is a fair assessment that I believe is true.

Simply because nobody ever thought to look under the couch to find the murder weapon shouldn't end the game with "well, you guys are at a dead end. Mr X gets away."

The system basically suggests giving away those huge, crucial pieces right out. Just saying "Ok, you guys take time to search the room and find it", or whatever.

[Stubbazubba]

Apologies for the thread necro, but I've been looking for a glimpse into the GUMSHOE system.

So, the game tells you to fiat the important stuff, auto-pass the easy stuff, and buy the hard stuff until you run out of currency. Specifically, the last part seems kind of strange to me; so the DM says, "Buy this now," and you do it. Are you ever expected to not buy everything the DM puts in front of you? It would make sense for that to be the case, otherwise everything is pretty much just the DM giving it to you but making you pay for it, too. But how is a player supposed to gauge which clues will be important or useful and which ones won't? It sounds like it's only marginally better than a traditional skill system which gives you a chance of not picking up the critical clue.

Has anyone played one of the GUMSHOE games? Is it actually a satisfying system for handling investigations?

[Red_Rob]

Having read Trail of Cthulhu and listened to Robin Laws talk about running games in the system, the basic idea is that clues are split into "Vital" and "Bonus". Vital clues are things that the players need to find out in order to progress the story. These are given out automatically if a player with any base points in the right skill uses it in the right place (even if he has exhausted his temporary pool of that skill). Bonus clues are things that will either allow short cuts past dangerous situations, provide advantages or additional useful information later, or otherwise make the adventure easier to complete without actually moving it further on. These are the things you spend your points on. Robin suggested that players might think of things they could spend points on, and bonuses that they would receive from this, once they have played the system a little, like suggesting using Intimidation points on a captive to get him to tell them a secret way into the hideout, or whatever.

What worried me most was when someone asked why the game doesn't degenerate into all the players listing all their skills when they enter every location in case there is an automatic clue - my first thought. The answer was apparently because "that doesn't make for a fun game, so you shouldn't do that."

[ModelCitizen]

Reading the Gumshoe rules now. It seems to have some cool ideas for the investigation minigame. But that's boring, on to what's wrong with it.

The biggest flaw I see is that the injury / death rules err way too hard on the side of "no one dies ever." I mean, if you want to make a game where PCs never go from standing -> dead in a single attack, that's fine, but you've gotta do it right. As is PCs are pretty much free to shoot fleeing suspects in the back since they can't die or even suffer long-term injury from it. And you never have to worry about the bad guys shooting civvies either. It's a cop drama where manslaughter is impossible and that shit needs fixing.

One idea: drastically reduce the negative Health thresholds (like -1 incapacitated, -2 critical, -3 dead) but instead of just dead it's make a check or you're dead. PCs can auto-succeed that check by throwing points at it, but random NPCs who don't have the skill can still die to single gunshots. You'd have to add a skill, but that's not a big deal since each PC would only need a few points in it.

The problem then is that nobody would ever buy that skill when they can just buy more health, and they *are* going to buy more health because it's more valuable now. Changing the way health works is probably a good idea though because a holy fuck a street-level detective game should not let you build a character who can stay standing through several shotgun blasts to the face. Either cap buyable health or just give everyone a fixed value. Once they hit the cap, PCs can still protect themselves from death by buying more points in the Save Vs Death / Injury skill.

[Simon Rogers]

The biggest flaw I see is that the injury / death rules err way too hard on the side of "no one dies ever." I mean, if you want to make a game where PCs never go from standing -> dead in a single attack, that's fine, but you've gotta do it right. As is PCs are pretty much free to shoot fleeing suspects in the back since they can't die or even suffer long-term injury from it. And you never have to worry about the bad guys shooting civvies either. It's a cop drama where manslaughter is impossible and that shit needs fixing.

One idea: drastically reduce the negative Health thresholds (like -1 incapacitated, -2 critical, -3 dead) but instead of just dead it's make a check or you're dead. PCs can auto-succeed that check by throwing points at it, but random NPCs who don't have the skill can still die to single gunshots. You'd have to add a skill, but that's not a big deal since each PC would only need a few points in it.

The problem then is that nobody would ever buy that skill when they can just buy more health, and they *are* going to buy more health because it's more valuable now. Changing the way health works is probably a good idea though because a holy fuck a street-level detective game should not let you build a character who can stay standing through several shotgun blasts to the face. Either cap buyable health or just give everyone a fixed value. Once they hit the cap, PCs can still protect themselves from death by buying more points in the Save Vs Death / Injury skill.

We've dealt with this in later iterations of GUMSHOE, so that the "hardiness" of PCs can reflect the genre you are playing. GMs can cap Health (or any other stat) at whatever level they like.

Health is a peculiar stat in that it reflects both something tangible in the game world, but also (if, for example, you Health is four times the damage a shotgun would do) the narrative plausibilty of you remaining standing having been shot at. In other words, a high Health could reflect things other than "I can take shotgun hits"

There is also a "more lethal damage" option in Trail of Cthulhu if people want to use it.

We find the opposite issue - PCs are relatively fragile and have to be very careful entering combat. More characters die in Esoterrorists than in my AD&D game, that's for sure.

PCs certainly can shoot people in the back and they drop dead. The GM just has to set the GMC's Health ratings accordingly. Unnamed bystanders or minor villains might have 1 Health (if the genre has bystanders and villains dropping dead when bullets fly) or something a lot higher (if the genre has near misses and lucky escapes as a trope).

Only GMCs who the GM decides use the injury rules.

GUMSHOE is player-facing - that is because GMCs have a different narrative role to PCs, they have different rules. GMCs don't test against Stability to go mad, for example, the GM just decides. Players roll against Infiltrate, moderated by the opponents' Awareness modifier to sneak up, but roll against Sense Trouble if a monster sneaks up on them.

Esoterrorists does not simulate reality. It simulates genre.

[ModelCitizen]

Only GMCs who the GM decides use the injury rules.

I can't find any reference to that outside of Pulp mode in Trail of Cthulhu. The more lethal combat rules and the Free-For-All combat section in Esoterrorists seem to assume nobody dies until -12. Is that a house rule?

The more lethal combat rules in Trail of Cthulhu seem to address the lethality issue alright though, thanks for pointing that out. My own suggested fix is a bit more complicated because the game seems to want to appeal to the "no PC death ever" crowd and I wanted to come up with something those people wouldn't cry about. I'm fine with just flat-out making the game more lethal.

Esoterrorists does not simulate reality. It simulates genre.

Yeah, which is why making gunfire so safe is such a weird design decision. You don't see the heroes of detective dramas and investigative horror using their revolvers as nonlethal restraint devices, and the authors seem to want PCs to take shooting at enemies seriously. Trail of Cthulhu even has this bit:

Bringing a knife, or worse, a gun into a fight is a declaration of willingness to kill. There is no such thing as a non-lethal Firearms attack. Players who don’t want their Investigators to kill people shouldn’t let their Investigators use lethal weapons on human opponents.

... but that's not true. PCs who don't want to kill people can use guns just fine, because any fighting or fleeing target has Health > -6 and no damage result from a light firearm will kill them. At health > -5 you can safely use heavy firearms, at health > -3 you don't need to switch to knives at point blank.

[Simon Rogers]

Only GMCs who the GM decides use the injury rules.

I can't find any reference to that outside of Pulp mode in Trail of Cthulhu. The more lethal combat rules and the Free-For-All combat section in Esoterrorists seem to assume nobody dies until -12. Is that a house rule?

It is a GUMSHOE rule from Trail, yes. Esoterrorists is the first, compact version of GUMSHOE and doesn't include it. GUMSHOE is pretty modular, and I'm afraid I sometimes get mixed up with versions. I'd certainly recommend this rule to you. I'll take a look through - I was sure it was in, but I haven't read Eso for a while.

The more lethal combat rules in Trail of Cthulhu seem to address the lethality issue alright though, thanks for pointing that out. My own suggested fix is a bit more complicated because the game seems to want to appeal to the "no PC death ever" crowd and I wanted to come up with something those people wouldn't cry about. I'm fine with just flat-out making the game more lethal.

Well that wasn't our intention. In Esoterrorists, PCs are expected to die quite frequently, usually at the hands of Creatures of Unremitting Horror. A typical PC can survive three, maybe four rounds of combat before going down. That's what we got from playtest and actual play. But, yes, cap Health and they'll go down even easier.

I'd be interested to hear how your solution pans out.

Esoterrorists does not simulate reality. It simulates genre.

Yeah, which is why making gunfire so safe is such a weird design decision. You don't see the heroes of detective dramas and investigative horror using their revolvers as nonlethal restraint devices, and the authors seem to want PCs to take shooting at enemies seriously. Trail of Cthulhu even has this bit:

In the genre, important characters don't die through random gunfire, even though they've been shot at a lot. That's not the same as saying gunfire isn't lethal. In Pulp games, gunfire tends not to be lethal even if it hits.

Bringing a knife, or worse, a gun into a fight is a declaration of willingness to kill. There is no such thing as a non-lethal Firearms attack. Players who don’t want their Investigators to kill people shouldn’t let their Investigators use lethal weapons on human opponents.

... but that's not true. PCs who don't want to kill people can use guns just fine, because any fighting or fleeing target has Health > -6 and no damage result from a light firearm will kill them. At health > -5 you can safely use heavy firearms, at health > -3 you don't need to switch to knives at point blank.

As I said, GMCs who aren't narratively important (or if you want to make them fragile to fit genre for another reason) die if you hit them with firearms because they don't use the injury rules.

I was playing Trail of Cthulhu once, and the PCs were being followed by a Yellow Sign devotee, and one of them shot him. I had decided he had 0 Health. They rolled 1 point of damage, and he just fell over and bleed out there and then from a femoral artery wound. Always remember player-facing and you won't go wrong with GUMSHOE.

Incidentally, there is a second edition of Esoterrorists nearly ready to go if you are interested in trying it out. Email me off-list.

[ModelCitizen]

Well that wasn't our intention. In Esoterrorists, PCs are expected to die quite frequently, usually at the hands of Creatures of Unremitting Horror. A typical PC can survive three, maybe four rounds of combat before going down. That's what we got from playtest and actual play. But, yes, cap Health and they'll go down even easier.

I did see a few things with a strong chance to drop a negative-but-conscious PC straight to -12 (Torture Dogs, point blank gunshots, bundles of dynamite). My concern is with the way the game handles NPC death; 3-4 rounds for PCs sounds about right.

Incidentally, I'm assuming the PCs in the playtests typically bought about 4-8 health. Is that right? I certainly wouldn't cap it any lower than that. I'm more worried about optimized combat builds with 20+ health. In a point-buy system you want either caps or harsh diminishing returns on the most critical skills, so that players can know when they've spent "enough" on defensive abilities and they're free to take something more interesting. Most of your skills effectively have diminishing returns (more Weapons lets you fight longer but not really better during the critical first couple rounds), but buying up health is worthwhile even if you have a ton already because it protects you from Round 1 focus fire. I may be misunderstanding the combat system, but it looks like capping Health at 10 or so frees PCs to take more proactive abilities that would be suboptimal otherwise.

As I said, GMCs who aren't narratively important (or if you want to make them fragile to fit genre for another reason) die if you hit them with firearms because they don't use the injury rules.

In a detective story you want mooks to die to bullets, but you don't want that to always happen. You want some chance of downed mooks hanging on long enough to give the next clue. Protagonists in detective stories often have to make strategic decisions about whether to fire at a suspect and risk killing him, or hold back and risk getting shot / letting the suspect escape. For that decision to have any meaning there needs to be a possibility that the mook will die, and also a possibility that he won't.

[Simon Rogers]

Incidentally, I'm assuming the PCs in the playtests typically bought about 4-8 health. Is that right? I certainly wouldn't cap it any lower than that. I'm more worried about optimized combat builds with 20+ health. In a point-buy system you want either caps or harsh diminishing returns on the most critical skills, so that players can know when they've spent "enough" on defensive abilities and they're free to take something more interesting. Most of your skills effectively have diminishing returns (more Weapons lets you fight longer but not really better during the critical first couple rounds), but buying up health is worthwhile even if you have a ton already because it protects you from Round 1 focus fire. I may be misunderstanding the combat system, but it looks like capping Health at 10 or so frees PCs to take more proactive abilities that would be suboptimal otherwise.

They took a wide variety of Health - I don't have a breakdown.

We have a rule that prevents the highest ability being more than twice as high as the next one up. I've had one guy pour everything into Health. We dealt with this by abstracting Health - in his case as Luck. In my own game I cap Health at 12. For you, I reckon your suggested range of 4-8 will work.

The Fact Book adds combat rules which make large other pools more useful (called shots, extra damage, various other combat moves) as does Night's Black Agents.

In a detective story you want mooks to die to bullets, but you don't want that to always happen. You want some chance of downed mooks hanging on long enough to give the next clue. Protagonists in detective stories often have to make strategic decisions about whether to fire at a suspect and risk killing him, or hold back and risk getting shot / letting the suspect escape. For that decision to have any meaning there needs to be a possibility that the mook will die, and also a possibility that he won't.

Again, this is in the GM's hands. Once they hit 0, it's pretty much up to you and the narrative function of the GMC.

I generally give lowly opposing GMCs a 3 or 4 Health pool, which is the recommended amount for Night's Black Agents for mooks. They might drop, they might not. But you get to decide at 0 whether they are wounded or not. I suppose if you'd prefer this to be in the hands of the system (so it's a dice risk), you could try your smaller band of injury, then death.