The Esoterrorists by Robin Laws

[Mathew_Freeman]

I just got this for Christmas, and it looks great on a first read.

Here are some handy links for background info:
GUMSHOE - Esoterrorist
Review of The Esoterrorists - RPGnet
The Esoterrorists « The Gist @ WordPress

Anyone played it or can give me any useful tips? I'm thinking about running it in February.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

I don't have Esoterrorists, but I do have Trail of Cthulhu and Fear Itself. I like the GUMSHOE approach. You might check out the Yog-Sothoth forum for Trail. Even though it's focused on Trail, there's a lot of discussion of GUMSHOE and how to run it that would apply to Esoterrorists. You might also look at See Page XX, Vol 1: The First 24 Columns, which is a great read; Robin Laws also talks about the design and use of GUMSHOE and Esoterrorists in there.

 

[Piratecat]

Although my preferred style of horror games runs more towards Trail of Cthulhu, I like Esoterrorists quite a bit. Your resources erode during an adventure, and that makes for some really nice tension. I also like their sanity mechanic.

I think the reason it makes me uncomfortable to run is that I never watch crime and investigative shows. When your concept is basically that of paranormal investigators, I'm at a disadvantage. But one of the great things about Esoterrorists is that ideas can be yoinked right out of the news. Go to Robin Laws' blog and search for Esoterrorist posts; he has a lot of great plot kernals he's thought of on the fly.

 

[Crothian]

THe system was a little odd at first and once I was mostly done with the one shot I ran I relaized a few things I was doing that could be done better. THe players were of a mixedf bag with the system not all of them liking the limited skill resources.

 

[SiderisAnon]

I have not played Esoterrorists myself, but based on the partial review a friend of mine wrote, I've been wanting to give it a try. (Transitive Property of Gaming: Esoterrorists)

From what I've seen of the game, it seems like you could get ideas for adventures from any "Enquirer" or "Star" type newspaper as well as from searching the web or library for information on "urban legend", "modern myth", and probably "conspiracy theory". (Though that last might be dangerous territory on the internet.)

For investigative type games, I often get ideas from blurbs from TV shows, whether I've seen them or not. Crime shows like "Law and Order" or "Castle" can provide whole plots just in those couple of sentences. (Just don't use in-show details if one of your players is a fan of the show.) For weirder ideas, try "X-Files", "Fringe", or possibly even cartoons like "Scooby Doo".

 

[arscott]

I'd been using Esoterrorists to run my Dark•Matter game, but while alright for one-shots and short campaigns, I don't think it really held up for the long run, and I ended up switching to Alternity.

The game's advancement structure heavily favors increased generalization rather than specialization, and there just aren't enough skills to support that--After enough sessions, every character had a few points in almost every skill. Plus, there were a few weird gaps in the skill list that came up quite a bit--there's no obvious 'hacking' skill, for example.

On top of that, the combat rules just weren't interesting enough for my game, given how often the players got into firefights.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

On top of that, the combat rules just weren't interesting enough for my game, given how often the players got into firefights.

Were you using the Esoterror Factbook? It has some additional crunch for a game where combat is more important (e.g. called shots, criticals, extra actions, reckless attack, etc).

 

[arscott]

I was not, no. I imagine if someone was otherwise satisfied with the game but wanted a bit more combat cruch, they'd have fun with the Factbook. Esoterrorists just wasn't going where I wanted it to go for the game I was running.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a pretty nice system in many ways, and I've had great success using Trail of Cthulhu for convention one-shots--you can teach anyone the rules in three minutes, even if they've never played an RPG before. Just be aware that the core book won't sustain a long campaign very well, especially if you have lots of players.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Now this does sound like something I could get in to - Something Beginning With D by Alisdair Stuart: Mutant City Blues | Bleeding Cool Comic Book News and Rumors

Mutant City Blues - playing superpowered cops in a superpowered world. I particularly like the idea about having to take certain flaws if picking certain powers.

 

[SiderisAnon]

Mutant City Blues looks interesting to say the least.

And it's on sale. I was checking the price on RPGNow and, "This title is one of Twenty for Ten titles. It will be $10.00 from now until January 7."