I'm having a love affair with GUMSHOE

[Wednesday Boy]

Do you think Ashen Stars could be adapted to a Star Wars jedi-centric campaign? We're playing a jedi-centric SW Saga game right now and are considering switching the campaign to a more narrative system. Fate is the frontrunner currently but we'd entertain adapting Ashen Stars if it seemed worthwhile.

 

[Piratecat]

Hmm. Tentatively yes, with a few caveats.

- Ship combat is great as is.
- Create a new light saber skill. For PCs with 8+ points in the pool, allow them to pay 2 points to simply deflect a Disruptor blast. (NBA in particular does a great job laying out bennies for every skill that has 8 or more points in it. AS has a little of this, but it's easily added or adapted.)
- Remove viroware from the game and instead use these as force powers. Add additional force powers as needed, possibly using a skill pool to activate them (as per the vas mal.)
- Sense trouble becomes a force skill.
- Ashen Stars PCs are badass investigators but are moderately fragile. This is easily adjusted, though. Use a higher than normal amount of general skill points and a lower than normal amount of investigative skill points.

 

[RangerWickett]

I vaguely recall a friend of mine who played a Trail of Cthulhu game, about which he complained that the party would run out of points and be unable to do anything interesting. Never having read the rules myself, I assume there's some sort of guideline to the GM saying, "If the PCs have X points available, split your adventure into 3 acts and try to wrap up an act every time the party hits one-third of their total."

Is that anything like how it works?

 

[nnms]

If you spent all your investigation points, you still get the core clues related to that skill. You don't ever miss out on a critical piece of information because you over spent.

For non-investigation skills you can still do everything you did before, you just can't guarantee success. Say you want to climb a slippery slope before some creature eats you. You find out you'll succeed on four and decide to spend three points. Now even if you roll a 1, your result will be four and you succeed. Now the guy next to you has already spent all his points in the applicable skill and will simply have to rely on the die roll coming up 4 or higher.

You are still capable of doing absolutely everything you did before, but you can't manipulate the odds in your favour once you're out of points in that area.

 

[Alzrius]

I'm having a love affair with GUMSHOE

Not good. The system's always-find-the-clue rules will ensure that eventually your wife will find out.

 

[Piratecat]

I vaguely recall a friend of mine who played a Trail of Cthulhu game, about which he complained that the party would run out of points and be unable to do anything interesting. Never having read the rules myself, I assume there's some sort of guideline to the GM saying, "If the PCs have X points available, split your adventure into 3 acts and try to wrap up an act every time the party hits one-third of their total."

Is that anything like how it works?

Nope. The players should be getting refreshes for their General skill pools as the game progresses, a lot like handing out action points in MnM. It varies from game to game, but things that can trigger pool refreshes (either whole ones or partial ones - say, "add back 3 points to 2 pools") include:

- good roleplaying
- clever use of a skill
- figuring out major clues
- following your character drive
- reaching a dramatic juncture
- resting (ie your PC gets a good night's sleep)

I'd also hand them out for roleplaying genre-appropriate actions. If you're playing Ashen Stars and trying to capture the feel of old Star Trek, I'd probably give you a refresh if you make sure the Red Shirt dies first.

As a GM, you want to reinforce behavior that you find fun. Pool refreshes are a great way to do this. Want your PCs doing crazy athletic maneuvers? Give a "that was cool" pool refresh when someone does so. Want to reward them for James Bond-like seduction of a NPC? Pool refresh. Heck, you can even partially refresh a Driving pool in the middle of a chase scene, just to reward the player for describing something really fun.

 

[Piratecat]

Just noticed a tweet from GUMSHOE's publisher; they're making up a cheat sheet for each game on when, and how, pool refreshes occur. This makes me happy. It varies from game to game, and I have a hard time keeping it straight.

 

[Janx]

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.

Could this be modeled in 3e to say that clues require a certain total score in a related skill. Like Search 8 to find the footprint clue?

The planning sheet concept would ensure the proper spread of skills/levels needed to provide a fair playing field.

By eliminating the roll, and just requiring certain levels in a Skill, you eliminate the problem of missing clues because of die rolls. But you still retain the feature that the guy with the skill finds the clue, not the fighter who rolled a 20, while the expert rolled a 1.

 

[Piratecat]

Sure, you could do that. It's slower, though. The nice thing about Gumshoe that if you have the ability, and you ask about it, you get the clue. Period. If you set minimum skill levels in D&D, you'd be spending a fair amount of time double-checking those unless you say "if you have X ranks, put a mark next to your skill. That's an auto-clue-obtain."

In other news, "auto-clue-obtain" is the most awkward thing I'll write today.

 

[Janx]

Sure, you could do that. It's slower, though. The nice thing about Gumshoe that if you have the ability, and you ask about it, you get the clue. Period. If you set minimum skill levels in D&D, you'd be spending a fair amount of time double-checking those unless you say "if you have X ranks, put a mark next to your skill. That's an auto-clue-obtain."

In other news, "auto-clue-obtain" is the most awkward thing I'll write today.

True, but remember, in D&D currently, it's slower than that:

PC: I search for clues in the room
DM: ok, what's your skill level?
PC: um, 8.
DM: (rolling behind a screen, gets a 12 + 8 =20, consults the notes, sees the DC is 15) You notice a faint bootprint on the carpet, next to the wastebin. it looks to be a size 11 sneaker.

The DM already has to look for a DC in his notes, do a die roll, and worse, if the check fails, more game time is wasted floundering around for clues.

the Auto-Clue-Obtain may be the slickest concept to hit the investigation genre of D&D since THAC0.

It could certainly be ruled as taking 20, just to simplify the math (no need to convert existing DCs to not require a die roll).