GUMSHOE is the rules engine used in many of Evil Pelgrane’s products, from The Esoterrorists to Trail of Cthulhu to our newest (evil) release, Timewatch. (GUMSHOE is capitalised because it’s an acronym – Generic Universal Mechanic Serving Henchmen Of Evil Why else would it be all-caps?).
It’s 10 years old this year, so let’s take the time to review the basics of Evil GUMSHOE.
If you want to take the advanced class, that’ll be $129.99, peons. And it doesn’t even come in a black cube.
NOTE: Pelgrane Press are happy and enthusiastic backers of the Invisible Sun Kickstarter, and are engaging in a bit of friendly teasing. Evil Gar’s opinions are evil, and are not shared by Good Pelgrane.
EVIL GUMSHOE FOR PLAYERS
Or, how to ruin your own fun.
USE YOUR INVESTIGATIVE ABILITIES!
Right there on your sheet, you’ve got a long long list of methods for gathering information. Use them all! All at once! All the time! I mean, the rules clearly say that if you use the right ability in the right place at the right time, you’ll always get the clue, no rolling. So, obviously, the right place is HERE and the right time is NOW and the right ability is ALL OF THEM.
Good Example of Play
GM: Ok, you time-travel back to the professor’s lab on the night before the explosion. It’s deathly quiet except for the occasional bleep from one of the instruments. The professor’s prototype time machine is still sitting there on the desk, hooked up to various monitoring devices. From the bluey science glow, you guess it’s already powered up and running, but hasn’t been activated yet.
Player 1: Can I tell anything more about the machine with my Science! ability?
GM: Are you touching it, or scanning it with your tether, or just looking at it.
Player 1: We know this thing is going to explode soon, so I’m being as careful as possible.
GM: OK, it’ll take you a few minutes to work out what it’s doing.
Player 2: Can I get the Professor’s emails?
GM: Do you have Hacking?
Player 2: Yep. I sit down at his computer and start using exploits that haven’t been discovered yet to get through his security systems.
GM: Do you want to spend a point to get it done faster?
Player 2: Nope.GM: Ok, as you’re both distracted by your respective tasks, you don’t notice the presence of the night watchman until he’s right in the corridor outside. He’s about to come through the door – what do you do?
Player 3: I’ll disguise myself as one of the professor’s lab assistants and use my Authority ability to convince him we’re allowed to be in here.
Evil Example of Play
GM: Ok, you time-travel back to the professor –
PLAYERS (Overlapping): Anthropology! Charm! Architecture! Military Tactics! Streetwise! Medical Expertise!
GM: You’re using Charm on…
PLAYER 1: EVERYTHING!
GET CLUES BUT DON’T FOLLOW THEM
In fact, go in the opposite direction. Run away from those leads! Investigation only leads to fun, and Evil GUMSHOE isn’t about fun – it’s about torturing your GM and the other players.
Good Example of Play
GM: One of the professor’s emails is from a woman named Sybil. She wants to meet him at a café near the university – tonight, in about ten minutes. And attached to the email is a photograph of a weird symbol painted on what looks like the wall of a basement.
PLAYER 1: Ok, let’s go to the café and see what’s going on there.
PLAYER 2: Actually, I’m going to spend a point of Anthropology to blend in – I’m travelling back five years in time and getting a job in that café. I figure by now, I’m running the place and I’ve set up really good security and surveillance there.
Evil Example of Play:
GM: One of the professor’s emails is from a woman named Sybil. She wants to meet him at a café near the university – tonight, in about ten minutes. And attached to the email is a photograph of a weird symbol painted on what looks like the wall of a basement.
PLAYER 1: Ok, let’s ignore this obvious lead and obsess about something obviously irrelevant.
PLAYER 2: That night watchman had a moustache, right? WAS HE TIME TRAVELLING HITLER?
GM: No, he just –PLAYER 2: FALSEHOOD DETECTION!
GM: That only works on NPCs!
PLAYER 2: TRUE. I go to Berlin anyway.
EVIL GUMSHOE FOR GMS
GUMSHOE’s core thesis is that the challenge of an investigative game shouldn’t be getting the clues, it should be deciding how to act on them. Evil GUMSHOE’s core thesis is that life is suffering and you can’t spell “frustration” without “fun” (and “tsr ratio”, apparently). So, as an evil GUMSHOE GM, your watchwords are:
LOVE MY NARRATIVE RAILROAD
If the players always get the clue, and the clue leads to the next scene, then you can just dispense with all that tiresome roleplaying and decision-making on the part of the players, and focus on what really matters – your unpublished novel. The players have two very important tasks – they need to use their investigative abilities to find clues, and they need to sit there while you explain what the clue means and how it fits into the story.
Good Example of Play
GM: Ok, you used Hacking to get into the professor’s computer and you’ve found that email from ‘Sybil’ talking about a meet in the coffee shop. What are you doing?
PLAYER 1: Let’s go and spy on them there.
PLAYER 2: One moment – that symbol. Do I know anything about it with any of my Histories? I’ve got Past, Contemporary and Future.
GM: It’s not from any of those, but you do recognise it from the Timewatch archives. There’s a parallel history where Earth gets invaded by aliens in the 1950s, and that symbol was used by the human resistance to mark the homes of collaborators. You know that the change point for that timeline was Roswell, in 1947 – a Timewatch team disabled the distress beacon on the Roswell saucer, so the alien mothership never came looking for it.
PLAYER 2: So, if someone wanted to change history back again, then Roswell 1947 would be the place to go?
GM: Yep.
PLAYER 3: I’m going to ask that night watchman if he knows this ‘Sybil.’
GM: He doesn’t recognise the name, but he does mutter about the car parked across the road from the lab. There are two people out there, and he’s convinced they’re watching the university. He describes them as sinister government-types. Men in black.
Look at that! Three possible leads for the players to follow. That’s far too much work. Railroads are much easier!
Evil Example of Play
GM: Ok, you used Hacking to get into the professor’s computer and you’ve found that email from ‘Sybil’ talking about a meet in the coffee shop. You go to the coffee shop, and you see the professor talking to the woman. Who has Spying?
PLAYER 1: I do.
GM: You sneak close enough to eavesdrop, and the woman’s saying that she knows the professor escaped from another timeline with alien time-travel technology stolen from Roswell and now you must go back to Roswell in 1947.
PLAYER 2: Can I talk to Sybil and –
GM: NOW YOU MUST GO BACK TO ROSWELL. LOOK AT MY SCENE DIAGRAM! IT CLEARLY SAYS THAT THE ROSWELL SCENE COMES IMMEDIATELY AFTER THE CAFÉ SCENE.
DEMAND THE RIGHT ABILITY!
GUMSHOE games have lots of highly specialised investigative abilities, allowing the players to interrogate the world in many different ways. When writing a scenario, note which clues can be found with which investigative ability, and stick rigidly to that note. Never relent, and never reward ingenuity on the part of the players.
Also, make sure you hide your clues in really obscure, non-intuitive places using inappropriate abilities. That’s always fun.
Good Example of Play
GM: Ok, you’re in Roswell air force base, disguised as military police. How are you going to find the flying saucer debris?
PLAYER 1: I could just order a soldier to tell me with Authority, right?
PLAYER 2: It’s probably top-secret. I’ll go to the base office and use Bureaucracy to find out where the restricted areas are.
PLAYER 3: It’s all probably been documented in history books – can I just check with Research or Contemporary History to find out which hangar contains the ‘weather balloon’?
GM: They’ll all work, although Research will take a few minutes. Which one are you using?
Bad Example of Play
GM: Ok, you’re in Roswell air force base, disguised as military police. How are you going to find the flying saucer debris?
PLAYER 1: I could just order a soldier to tell me with Authority, right?
GM: He doesn’t know.
PLAYER 2: It’s probably top-secret. I’ll go to the base office and use Bureaucracy to find out where the restricted areas are.
GM: They don’t tell you.
PLAYER 3: It’s all probably been documented in history books – can I just check with Research or Contemporary History to find out which hangar contains the ‘weather balloon’?
GM: No. It’s not in any of the books you check.
PLAYER 1: Ok… can I scan with Science for radiation emissions or –
GM: You don’t detect anything.
Two hours later.
PLAYER 2: Sigh. Ok. ANTHROPOLOGY! ARCHITECTURE! MILITARY TACTICS! CHARM!
GM: You can’t just shout out investigative abilities! You have to describe how you’re using them.
PLAYER 2: Ok, Military Tactics – I know how air forces bases work. If I was dragging in debris from a crashed object, which would be the obvious hangar to use.
GM: You can’t tell.
PLAYER 3: Can I find any tracks with, uh, Notice? Like, fresh tyre-tracks on the road from the ranch where it crashed.
GM: No.
PLAYER 3: Can I find any tracks on that road with Outdoor Survival?
GM: Yes! They clearly point at Hanger 3.
Don’t just make it a railroad – make it a painfully delayed and overcrowded railroad with a nightmarish ticketing system! That’s the Evil Pelgrane way!
There’s more bad GUMSHOE advice on twitter (look for #evilpelgrane), and we’ll happily give you personalised bad advice in the comments on this article, too!
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TimeWatch is a time-travel adventure RPG where brave agents of TimeWatch defend the timestream from radioactive cockroaches, psychic velociraptors, and human meddlers. Go back in time to help yourself in a fight, thwart your foes by targeting their ancestors, or gain a vital clue by checking out a scroll from the Library of Alexandria. But watch out for paradoxes that may erase you from existence… or worse.. Purchase TimeWatch in print and PDF at the Pelgrane Shop.