It's hard to know what to say to that. With lots of the criticisms, the answer is: yes, that's how it works, it's sad you don't like it, but that doesn't make it a bad game.

For example, Gumshoe works well for Sim-style games, such as Cthulhu, where revealing the mystery is subservient to the atmosphere.

It also works well where revealing the mystery is subservient to the terror and the relationships between the characters. The mystery's a vehicle.

I don't think the "fail to jump a fence" thing is really true. This isn't a game where the GM says "OK, roll to jump that fence". You just get over the fence. You can fail by dying, sure.

The thing is: Gumshoe does what it does. It lets players explore a pre-written mystery. If you don't like that sort of game, you'll hate Gumshoe. Depending on how you investigate, different pieces get revealed, but the main bit always gets out. I quite like that, but not everybody does.

Oh, I have a question! How would you feel if, every time the players spent an investigation point, they decided what clue they found? So it's like Inspectres, with players making up their own mystery. Because Gumshoe works pretty well like that.

Graham

...I think Graham has nailed it. The problem Gumshoe has is that gamers expect it to be something it isn't.

I have made my opinions on Esoterrorists very clear in the past and have little desire to go over all that again.

I did, however buy a copy of Trail of Cthulhu at Dragonmeet and have spent some time reading that. The Gunshoe system still does little for me (by which I mean it's a million times better than the BRP systems is for investigative games but still designed to explicitly help the GM railroad players through a pre-written plot in a pretty unsubtle and illusionistic way) but there's some really neat stuff in that book. Like the Stability and Sanity rules. I fucking hate sanity type mechanics, and I still hate these, but they are the still the best ones I've read for a while. It's also cool in that if flags "Purist" ("Last one mad's a sissy!") and "Pulp" ("Last one dead's a sissy!") style material as well, explicitly making the two styles of game possible and making it easy to get everyone on the same page/SIS. Something that a lot of "flexible" games fail dismally at. There also appears to be a genuine attempt to build a layer of "character stuff" over the spine of the Gumshoe system/investigation stuff. So you'll have scenes you can control as a player connected around the outside of the GM's seemingly inviolate plot.

Would I run ToC? Nope, the system utterly fails to deliver or even promise the experience I'd want from a game as a GM. Would I play it? If one of the guys from my group wanted to run it, I'd be up for a couple of weeks of that. It'd be fun, as a player I think for a short bit as long as I was enjoying the social bit.

It sounds like an honest attempt to formalise how lots of people run "investigative" games. ie that there is no investigation, there is drip-feeding of clues so they are revealed and the fiction/plot/events move forward.

No problems so far. Because to be honest, that kind of game isn't really about the investigation. It's about the journey through it. The meat of the game is elsewhere , combat encounters or character reaction or whatever, depending on the group preference. "The investigation" is a backdrop to string together a few fights or it an opportunity to wallow in the setting feel, or whatever the game is really about. Solid gaming fun of different kinds.

I think the disconnect seems to be the "about investigation" part. Some people expect that to mean "about the investigating", but I wonder if that's not really what Gumshoe is about. The investigating will work. It's not a puzzle to be unlocked or a challenge to disentangle. It just happens. In a way natural to the scenario at hand. It provides a framework for other stuff to happen in.

So the disconnect happens when people expect something else. Does that sound right?

-Matt

Realms Publishing

Forgot to say.

1. At conventions, I often play Cthulhu games, with pre-written plots. What fascinates me is that everything that Cthulhu does informally ("OK, let's say you find this clue..."), Gumshoe formalises. All the GM "tricks" are built into the system. It's very clever.

(Edit: Cross-posted with Matt. Matt, yeah, exactly.)

2. I think Gumshoe has a marketing problem. The flagship product is usually thought of as Esoterrorists. Really, though, I think Gumshoe works best if you think of it as based around The Book Of Unremitting Horror or Trail Of Cthulhu: that is, based in rich settings, where it's about exploring the setting, not so much discovering a mystery.

3. Don't get me wrong. I think Gumshoe, and especially Fear Itself, has problems. The biggest one is the combat: why on earth is it so traditional, given that the game is investigative? Why not have a system that, if you discover enough clues, you kill the monster? Why do all the scenarios, after all that investigating, end in a bloody combat?

Graham

The main problem is that it's almost 100% Story Before and all the Gumshoe system does is ensure that the GM's story gets told. Because the investigators aren't really creating story, they're discovering it.

Which is fine, if you're prepared to accept that. Which every CoC fan I've ever met is. I find is piss boring and thus don't play CoC and Gumshoe really doesn't offer me anything CoC doesn't. In fact, it's pretty much functionally identical to CoC with a houserule that says "Don't roll for clues: players find them automatically". Like I say, a million times better than plain vanilla CoC. Still not a game I'd ever want to run or really play, but a massive improvement.

{EDIT: GAH! THIS IS EXACTLY THE DISCUSSION I SAID I WASN'T GOING TO WASTE TIME WITH ANY MORE! ARGH, CURSE YOU GUMSHOE!!!}

Though reports are not exactly enthusing me to do so...

When I play this sort of thing I tend to be pursuing the same basic question as I like to in other genres (or media, which is why I loved Babylon 5): "What is going on?" In this situation, that's me as a player trying to unravel the mystery. It'd probably work reasonably well from that standpoint. For someone looking for immersive character whatnot it'd be a different deal.

Tim Gray
Silver Branch Games
www.silverbranch.co.uk

Although the first game of Trail of Cthulhu that I ran was a mixture of preplanned and improvised. I certainly did not know what was going to happen but I did have loads of clues that I dumped on players and let them sort out direction. I made up clues between session like when one of the players dropped out so I had his PC get trapped in the past and send messages forwards in a fresco.

In fact, pretty much the same thing happened in the first GUMSHOE Cthulhu game I ran. This was a playtest of a CoC scenario that someone asked me to evaluate. There were lots of clues as to what had happened, but no given direction as to how to resolve the issue. In the end the PCs made a deal with the monsters.

...is actually to spawn endless debate on the internet.

:)

Actually, it does, elegantly, solve the problem of players looking in the "wrong" places for clues, when the GM believes they are "obvious" (to anyone that has read his scenario).

I think that is the key. All complaints seem to be based on wanting something completely different.

I think the marketing line sets it up for a fall in this regard. The sales line appears to be "fixes investigations", which gets it the wrong audience in some cases!

A vocal part of the audience who want the whole "solve the plot through player cunning" and are then disappointed with a game that doesn't even try to deliver that. The game needs a pitch that encapsulates what it really provides... Though I'm not sure how I'd start doing that.

-Matt

(As it happens this is textbook creative agenda clash)

Realms Publishing

Actually most of the audience are quite happy with it. I think it's in the intro where is says that the game is not so much about getting the clues as what you do with them.

Maybe a big red sticker on the front saying "Danger. Beware Possible CA Clash" would help.

I actually pretty much agree with what you're saying.

I'd add the rider that when you say...

The main problem is that it's almost 100% Story Before and all the Gumshoe system does is ensure that the GM's story gets told. Because the investigators aren't really creating story, they're discovering it.

If you consider the story as the relationships between the characters, and the emerging mystery as background and bangs, Gumshoe supports Story Now pretty well, really.

All the good sessions I've played have been like that. Sure, there's this thing we're uncovering, but the interesting part is how it affects us.

Graham

should have clarified that, will edit...

-Matt

Realms Publishing

The marketing problem is an intersting one. To me an investigative game means the players actually investigating something, gathering clues, coming to conclusions and acting on those conclusions. Basically how cluedo works.

What Gumshoe does is ensure the investigation happens, it will come to the right conclusion, which should allow for focusing on how the characters react. However it doesn't. There is little for the players to grasp onto as regards to their character, and little changes about their character as they interact with the world. Maybe if it had a more interesting 'fallout' for the players to deal with it might be a better game, I don't know.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.

...is the issue at hand. You expect it to be one thing, but it's another. I honestly think that's what the bee in your bonnet is about the game. It's a bee shared by many.

I see this a fair bit from folk who heavily self-associate as gamers, actually. They have an opinion of how things should be, and are heavily fixated upon things actually being that way.

However, I look forward to seeing what this drives you to come up with as a ‘better’ game, one that scratches your itch in the way you want it to.

Regarding Story Now and development through characters...

the game I played in was fairly rewarding on those fronts. Granted, the system itself wasn't contributing directly to this, beyond chargen putting some shape onto the character - but it sure as hell got out the way and allowed a lot of fun, free-formy development.

Now, coming from someone who generally raves about the Design What Matters approach, this is unusual, and an insight for me that my gaming palate is more open than perhaps I give it credit for. But there you are.

London based indie gamers - we try to get stuff rolling via here
http://www.sunnyblue.net/forum/

Stability and Sanity(?) tracks are ways of tracking s-term character development, and they directly feed into your interactions with others, driving they way they treat you, driving.. ad infinitum.

From the point of view of game design I really don't like the the 'system gets out of the way for freeform' argument. Some people like it and that is fine and they can play those games, but they just are not for me.

As to my reaction to the game, I think the problem I have with it is that everyone who likes it has sold it to my as an investigative game, hell it sells itself as an investigative game. I think if you advertised an investigative TV series you would see characters gathering clues, working out what is going on and the fallout from what happens. This isn't what happens in gumshoe and that kind of took my by surprise.

Gumshoe doesn't seem to really be about the clues, as you will get to the right one by the way the system works. However it does not focus on the characters enough either and so lies in an uncomfortable middle ground. If it had instead kept the clues system, but emphasised what the characters are about and how they respond to the clues they find then you might have had me hooked. As it stands it doesn't.

Cheers

Iain

Mob Justice now available!

'The Giant Brain':Small games, big ideas.