I'm having a love affair with GUMSHOE

[Rogue Agent]

Paul, as someone who playtested the GUMSHOE system, what do you think of this article's critique of the system as basically giving you a "breadcrumb trail" to follow, rather than allowing you to come to the conclusion from multiple paths?

Note, as mentioned above, that the system doesn't do that. That is what Laws' advice tells the GM to do, though.

What is true, however, is that if you ignore Laws' advice about how to construct scenarios (i.e., by including multiple leads and redundancy) the entire "auto-find the clue" mechanic becomes irrelevant.

And if you do follow Laws' advice, the "auto-find the clue (if you use the right skill in the right place)" mechanic doesn't actually solve the fragility of the linear bread crumb trail.

(The original "spend a point to have the GM tell you what this clue means" mechanic that was talked about during the early development of the game would solve that fragility. But, AFAICT, that rule never actually made it into a published GUMSHOE system. Probably due to the massive critique it received due to the loss of player agency.)

 

[nnms]

(1) They mechanically fail to find the clue

Solved by auto-successes on all investigation skills in which your character is a professional.

(2) They don't look for the clue
(3) They don't look for the clue in the right place
(4) They don't look for the clue in the right way
(5) They ignore the clue
(6) They misinterpret the clue
(7) They can't solve the clue

These are all player skill issues.

You seem to think that automatic success at the investigation is the goal of the Gumshoe system.

It. Is. Not.

Gumshoe is all about moving the skill test from the characters onto the players. It's about testing player skill, not character skills through rolls.

If the Keeper says "As you enter the room, you see a desk with papers scattered all over it," and the players immediately go "There's nothing here, I leave." Then they were the cause of 3,4,5 occurring, not the system.

When you misinterpret the clue, you're still going to look for leads for more information. Even if you are totally wrong, you're going to be going somewhere and doing something that will give you more information. Having a lead not pan out because you made a mistake is very, very informative to any investigator. Not to mention the possibility of getting other information while crossing a bad interpretation off the list.

GUMSHOE and its designers claim, repeatedly, to solve the entire "cannot solve clue" problem by fixing #1.

Not at all. They claim that you'll never have the problem of not getting the information you need because of a die roll. They specifically call out the meat of the game as being deciding what to do with the information you do get.

In short, it's a focus on player skill.

Which just renders the entire "auto-find clue" mechanic into redundant complexity.

The goal isn't to make 2-7 automatically go away and thus make dealing with 1 to be redundant. In fact, the goal is to focus on them. The players need to decide where to look, how to look, who to talk to, how to approach them, what the clues mean and where they should go for more information.

I think the issues you have with the system are the direct result of expecting it to do the exact opposite of what it does and from misinterpreting what you've heard about the system to arrive at your false expectations.

 

[nnms]

And if you do follow Laws' advice, the "auto-find the clue (if you use the right skill in the right place)" mechanic doesn't actually solve the fragility of the linear bread crumb trail.

I think you may need to reread your sources. The Trail of Cthulhu section (which is analogous to the poor section on scenario design from The Esoterrorists) talks about constructing a linear spine, but also about free floating core clues, changing the order of scenes, improv and a variety of other issues. The section talks about multiple spines, revisiting information sources with leverage you found elsewhere and so on.

I just read a See Page XX article that talks about a completely different way of designing scenarios based on concept of character sheet flags from Robin Law's days at The Forge.

I think you may have made a caricature of the scenario design advise Robin Laws has given that is convenient for your purposes but doesn't actually reflect reality.

 

[nnms]

Paul, as someone who playtested the GUMSHOE system, what do you think of this article's critique of the system as basically giving you a "breadcrumb trail" to follow, rather than allowing you to come to the conclusion from multiple paths?

I don't think the author actually engaged with the content of the quote in question. Laws is basically saying that the mystery story emerges from play and that the trail of clues is not the story but simply part of it. As the investigators engage with the information, their conversations, actions and conclusions is what contributes to the plot that is produced during play.

After reading the quote from Laws and then the quote from Sherlock Holmes, my response is "Yes, that's exactly what Laws is talking about and it's not actually a counter example from genre fiction."

Holmes discovers a couple example of a man's stride and some writing on the wall. He then deduces a conclusion about the man's height. I really don't see this as being any different from the type of play Gumeshoe produces. He found clues A, B and C and came to a conclusion. In system terms, a couple of those clues might have been automatic or perhaps gained through spending points.

Holmes saw the clay, then inside the building he saw the dust. Both of which told him about the size of the stride of the person. Thirdly he saw chalk writing at a certain height. Three pieces of information gained in a sequence and then interpreted it.

The Alexandrian actually uses a quote from genre fiction that supports the clue gathering model used in Gumshoe as being present in the fiction rather than not. Holmes literally finds the clues in a sequence and then interprets them.

 

[nnms]

What I don't like about Gumshoe:

The combat system is very abstract and often very safe for participants in what should be dangerous situations. Health levels are very high relative to weapon damages.

This is solved by the optional rules presented in Trail of Cthulhu. I cap health at 4-6, make gunfire automatically seriously would those hit and then also add the amount you succeed in your roll to the damage done when using anything that could be considered lethal force.

EDIT: Another issue I have is with "health" in general. Like many RPGs the health/hit points in ToC are often thought off as representing morale, near misses and courage as much as actual damage. But then you have things like some magic spells requiring X health points worth of blood. When you get shot, it talks about it as being hit and rolling damage.

I think a better way would have been to separate out a "avoiding harm" stat that you use to reduce any damage you might take by spending. It makes it a near miss, or not as bad as you first though (just a scratch or winded) But if you actually take damage, they go straight into getting hurt or wounded.

This is all easily fixed with the optional rules, but I would have liked a move away from the typical "health" that is more than health type hit point system.

 

[Rogue Agent]

I think you may need to reread your sources. The Trail of Cthulhu section...

... which was probably not written by Robin D. Laws.

I just read a See Page XX article that talks about a completely different way of designing scenarios based on concept of character sheet flags from Robin Law's days at The Forge.

It's fully possibly Laws has other views on scenario design. It's also quite likely that he's realized his earlier mistakes. I'm explicitly talking about what he wrote in Esoterrorists and, to a lesser extent, on See Page XX during the development and release of the game.

You seem to think that automatic success at the investigation is the goal of the Gumshoe system.

No. I'm saying that they claimed they had fixed the fragility of mystery scenarios. Why am I saying that? Because that's what they claimed.

For example, here's page 1 of the Esoterrorists: "This game includes the new GUMSHOE system, a modular rule set designed to combine bullet-proof investigative rules..." (emphasis added

If there's any doubt what "bullet-proof investigative rules" meant, let's flip to page 26: "Investigative scenarios have been done wrong since the early days of roleplaying games. As a consequence, they're hard to run and prone to grind to a halt... Imagine a dungeon game where you always had to roll well to find another room to plunder, or sit around feeling frustrated and bored."

This is a direct claim that their "auto-find the clue (if you use the right skill in the right place)" is going to solve the problem of mystery scenarios grinding to a halt because players don't know where to go.

Claiming that they're not saying this -- that they want you to design scenarios in which players "sit around feeling frustrated and bored" -- is, of course, a patent absurdity that ultimately brings us back to the exact same point: In order to fix the fragility of investigative scenarios in GUMSHOE, you need to apply the exact same solution you would apply in any other system: Redundant clues and lots of them.

The "auto-find the clue (if you use the right skill in the right place)" mechanic is a gimmick that accomplishes nothing at all.

Not much else to be said about this.

 

[Anselyn]

The "auto-find the clue (if you use the right skill in the right place)" mechanic is a gimmick that accomplishes nothing at all.

Not much else to be said about this.

Other than actually playing a game can be more informative than theoretical pontificating and quibbling about perceived authorial weaknesses.

Proof of the pudding ...

 

[Piratecat]

It's really good of you to track down those quotes. Thank you. I agree the phrasing is what I'd call strong.

The "auto-find the clue (if you use the right skill in the right place)" mechanic is a gimmick that accomplishes nothing at all.

Here I'll emphatically disagree, because I've been in more than a dozen Call of Cthulhu games where exactly what Robin described occurred. It almost became a running joke. The Keeper would say "roll spot hidden," we'd all miss them, and then ten minutes would pass while we'd try to figure out ways to justify getting another roll. I really, really love that Gumshoe sidesteps this problem entirely.

 

[Piratecat]

And guys, some of you are sounding testy. No need for that, please. It's okay if not everyone agrees, and it's fun to discuss.

 

[Janx]

Other than actually playing a game can be more informative than theoretical pontificating and quibbling about perceived authorial weaknesses.

Proof of the pudding ...

An straight question for [MENTION=6673496]Rogue Agent[/MENTION] then:
Have you played a complete GUMSHOE game?

It's clear you've read up on it. Surprisingly so, since you seem to object to it so much.

I have never played it or seen any rules or articles about it.

[MENTION=2]Piratecat[/MENTION] just gushed about it and mentioned a game concept that may help with investigation scenes in D&D.

I do know this:
PC seems to think GUMSHOE works very well for the genre
PC says he has run lots of successful games with the system

I'm inclined to think a system ain't crap if you can run successful games in it.

As is often the case, when 1 guy says something doesn't work, and I see other people making it work, I know where the problem is.