Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
One thing that I found hard to get my head around the first time I played gumshoe system as a player (so I made a special effort to explain it clearly to my new player) was the difference between the investigative abilities and the general abilities. They look pretty much the same on the character sheet, but are used in dramatically different ways.
The investigative abilities are there to enable you to pick up clues. You don't roll anything, and you can often make an extra spend of points to get extra clues.
The general abilities are a resource pot to improve your chance of making general skill rolls (and they nearly always are a case of improving a roll). They improve your chance of making a roll, but they WILL run out.
The nice thing about general skills running out is that resources are getting tighter as you near the climax of the adventure, which works well from a drama point of view.
But it is important for characters to grasp that although they look the same on the sheet the general and investigative abilities have different purposes, different usages and different mechanisms.
Cheers
The investigative abilities are there to enable you to pick up clues. You don't roll anything, and you can often make an extra spend of points to get extra clues.
The general abilities are a resource pot to improve your chance of making general skill rolls (and they nearly always are a case of improving a roll). They improve your chance of making a roll, but they WILL run out.
The nice thing about general skills running out is that resources are getting tighter as you near the climax of the adventure, which works well from a drama point of view.
But it is important for characters to grasp that although they look the same on the sheet the general and investigative abilities have different purposes, different usages and different mechanisms.
Cheers