GUMSHOE thoughts

[LouGoncey]

This is me rambling about the GUMSHOE system.  A roleplaying engine that powers TRAIL OF CTHULHU, NIGHT'S BLACK AGENTS and others.  It was designed by Robin Laws and is supposed to answer the question, "What happens when an investigative PC blows an investigation roll and now the PCs will never have the clue needed to solve the adventure."

 you have them roll

Laws built a rules-light engine answering this question by having the PCs always finding a clue when it is presented.  No roll needed.  The clue does not give the players the knowledge they seek -- they will have to take all the clues gathered and put them together to find out the solution.

 

I have never played a GUMSHOE game but I have read NIGHT'S BLACK AGENTS and think it is ripe with HERO conversion possibilities.

 

But Laws did not have to create a new game system to use this advice.  Here is the GUMSHOE advice translated for the HERO SYSTEM user.

 

When you design an investigative adventure you list out a bunch of locations and a bunch of skills the player has and generate 3 clues for each location that will eventually piece together the mystery being investigated.

 

When they enter that location and have the proper skill they roll:

1)  They fail the roll and they get one clue.

2)  They succeed at the roll and they get 2 clues.

3)  They succeed the skill roll by half and they get 3 clues.

 

Thoughts?

[LouGoncey]

This is also a great way to design plots that are combat free or just have a big combat at the end.

[Steve]

There was a previous discussion on importing GUMSHOE's skill system into Hero, but I don't recall if it was ever completed. With search down, it will be difficult to find now.

[Scott Baker]

There was a previous discussion on importing GUMSHOE's skill system into Hero, but I don't recall if it was ever completed. With search down, it will be difficult to find now.

Is this the thread (Spence and Sinanju talk about Gumshoe)?

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/88598-game-mechanics-you-really-like/

[LouGoncey]

I feel Hero has enough skills to handle the job. If others do not, then people should explode skills as necessary. A lot of the skills needed for investigation are Knowledge & Professional skills anyway. For example, a detective comes to visit a bartender in a dive bar. My he GM asks for the players Profession: Bartender (it is a side job he takes on when money is tight) skill. Rolls against and gets 1 under. He supplies ( or acts out ) 2 clues.

 

The GM has the players character sheets as he designs the adventure. He is going to make sure everyone is going to shine.

[zslane]

The GM has the players character sheets as he designs the adventure.

In my experience, this is rarely the case. There are a lot of lazy GMs out there.

[Nolgroth]

In my experience, this is rarely the case. There are a lot of lazy GMs out there.

 

And to top that off, there are a lot of GMs that have to balance work, kids and marriage alongside those RPGs. Between the two, there are a lot of GMs that don't use the character sheets to design the adventure. Many of them probably have the goal of using them but face all those other pesky distractions that keep them from following through.

 

As to GUMSHOE, I would so like to adapt those concepts. Same thing can be transferred to Contacts too. Instead of rolling to see if the Contact is available/willing to help, Contacts can be built to provide better information and resources the better you roll. Too many RPGs have a black/white success/fail mechanic to them. I'm totally for changing those, even if there is a condition attached to the failure. You can't do that right now, if only you had a tool/diagram/other resource. Should that resource be available, then the character can come back later. Clues, as GUMSHOE directly tackles, should be an automatic success unless they are for an optional side quest that the GM has no vested interest in making sure the characters get to.

 

I wonder if the die roll is all that matters though. Investigating a crime scene/archaeological dig/computer network takes time. I suggest that a time frame can be incorporated into the process. It takes x minutes or hours to find Clue #1. A successful die roll reduces that by x minutes. A die roll with a +4 (or better) success reduces that to a quarter/third/half the time. Clue #2 takes.....on down the line until all of the clues are found. So failure may be a simple matter of not having enough time to find enough of the clues before Something Bad Happens. 

[WistfulD]

IT doesn't sound like it needs much conversion at all. It's a plot resolution mechanic, right? Just switching "succeed by half" to something appropriate to the Hero Skill System (maybe succeed by 3? 4? 6?).

 

As to whether the GM has the character sheets or not, that's entirely up to the style of play, and whether you are crafting your adventure to the players. If the players know they are in a crime solving campaign, they'll likely have some skill in background skills for noir style professions.