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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 5786307" data-attributes="member: 2">I ran Pelgrane Press's game Esoterrorists back when it first came out. I wasn't crazy about the system. I wrote off GUMSHOE, even thought I had a little interest in Mutant City Blues and Trail of Cthulhu, and I converted my Esoterrorists scenario to Dread before moving on to other one-shots.GUMSHOE is an interesting system that I didn't quite understand how to run. It's designed to make running mysteries and procedurals into a breeze. Skills are split into two parts: Investigative and General. Investigative skills always work to provide you with clues, with no roll required, so long as you say you're using the skill; for instance, in The X-Files, Scully isn't going to miss a crucial clue during an autopsy just because she rolled poorly on her Spot Hidden. In comparison, General Skills handle combat and non-clue-collecting tasks, and you spend these points as you use them. This means you're going to run out of breath while running, or run out of steam while scuffling with foes. There's a meta-game in there of "how many points do I spend to achieve success without over-spending?" Nifty, but hard for me to initially adjust my style to.Fast-forward to six months ago, a bit before GenCon, when I learned that Robin Laws had written a GUMSHOE game named Ashen Stars. It was a space opera where you play freelance law enforcers out on the edge of the galaxy; sort of Firefly meets Star Trek meets BSG. I decided to check it out, expecting to be disappointed.I'm a big boy. I can admit when I'm wrong. And I was so, so wrong. The game is great -- exceptional in background, flavor, and rules.What the heck happened? It turns out that the GUMSHOE rules get tweaked and improved every time a new game comes out. Laws hit Ashen Stars out of the freakin' park. I wrote a one-shot for GenCon that I've now run about eight times, and it's been fun and surprising every single time. I'm sold. And now Ken Hite has written Night's Black Agents, a GUMSHOE game that is more thriller than mystery (and thus is much easier for me to GM for.) The concept is super-spies vs vampires, or The Bourne Conspiracy if Treadstone was run by a conspiracy of vampires. My first thought was "well, there's a good super-spy game ruined by a dumb concept, but maybe the spy stuff is salvagable." And DAMMIT I was wrong again. It works just fine as a pure spy/James Bond game (I've used it to run a Burn Notice game), but the vampire material is simply brilliant. I've run a NBA one-shot five times now, with a few people telling me it was one of the best games they'd ever played, and I want more.So go check 'em out, and talk about them here if you've played them or have questions. I'm kinda in love. I want more.</blockquote>

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