A Gumshoe One-2-One Character And Setting

by John Harness

GUMSHOE One-2-One protagonist character

NOWHERESVILLE, USA

featuring

DANNY BOONE

Danny Boone

Eleven year old Danny Boone is your average awkward pre-teen, assuming that the average awkward pre-teen is a precocious small town sleuth with a knack for high-risk hijinks. (Choose one: black eye, cast over a broken arm, nasty scabs on knee.) He tends to notice what others overlook and he uses his obsessive knowledge of cryptid sightings, Stephen King fan sites, and late-night cartoon marathons to connect the dots between the mysterious and seemingly unrelated happenings in his sleepy hometown.

Danny wears dusty purple Skechers, cargo shorts, a Discman CD player, and an oversized Batman logo t-shirt. (Choose one: Danny listens to Korn, “Weird Al” Yankovic, Spice Girls.) He keeps an assortment of gadgets in an old Army messenger bag that hangs way too low from his shoulder. (Choose one gadget: A folding hunting knife, a Tamagotchi, a K’Nex motor with a handful of parts.) He lives alone with his mother, Ruth Ann, a teacher and coach who often works late at the county high school.

Character Card

Danny Boone

Meddling Kid

Investigative Abilities:

1. Assess Honesty

2. Astronomy

3. Bargain

4. Respect

5. Meddling

6. Taunt

7. Inspiration

8. Raised By Television

General Abilities:

9. Athletics 1

10. Conceal 2

11. Cool 1

12. Devices 2

13. Filch 1

14. First Aid 1

15. Preparedness 2

16. Sense Trouble 1

17. Shadowing 2

18. Small Size 2

19. Stability 2

20. Stealth 1

Starting Pushes: 3

Story: On the verge of the new millennium, local kid sleuth Danny Boone can’t help but stick his nose into trouble in his rural home town. Out of insatiable curiosity (or incurable boredom) he can’t ignore the strange occurrences that no one else in town seems to notice. Danny counts on his inventiveness, a few supportive adults, and dial-up internet access to make sense of his world and of himself.

Sources

• Smoulder_Fox (Net Denizen) – Danny met Smoulder_Fox on the CryptidCavern web forum. Although they are tight-lipped when it comes to details of their everyday life (“That’s classified,” or “You wouldn’t believe me even if I told you”), Smoulder_Fox loves nothing better than to talk conspiracy theories, UFO sightings, and other implausibilia. They also console Danny whenever the youngster is upset with his mom.

Investigative Abilities: Archaeology, Chemistry, Cryptography, Cthulhu Mythos, Forensics, Hacking, Occult

• Gerald Powell (Town Eccentric) – Mr. Rittenberg lives alone in a huge, practically collapsing house at the center of town that is filled with a well-organized but idiosyncratic collection of books, paraphernalia, and strange inventions. Well-read and with the demeanor of a retired preacher or school teacher, he has no job but pitches in at every town bake sale or civic fundraiser. In exchange for doing yard work or running small errands, Gerald allows Danny use of his eccentric library.

Investigative Abilities: Anthropology, Architecture, Art History, Craft, Geology, History, Physics, Theology

• Angie Brown (Small Town Girl) – After dropping out of high school to get her GED early, Angie works several jobs and is enrolled in a mail-order pre-Med course (on VHS). She has babysat every kid in town and worked at the roller rink, Pizza Palace, Dr. Teddy’s dentistry office, and practically everywhere else. Because of her jobs, she knows everybody and everybody’s business. She’s taken a liking to Danny’s straightforwardness and will happily chat with him about the goings-on around town.

Investigative Abilities: Accounting, Bureaucracy, Flattery, Languages, Oral History, Photography, Reassurance, Streetwise

• Cousin Jerry (Ex-Military) – Mid-30s, recently out of jail, and failing to stay sober, Cousin Jerry is the coolest person Danny has ever known. He lives in a camper trailer near Carter Cave. He knows how to fix cars and how to hunt, and will teach Danny what he knows, but he doesn’t want to talk about his dishonorable discharge. Danny’s mom doesn’t like when “men like him” come around the house.

Investigative Abilities: Intimidation, Law, Medicine, Outdoorsman, Pharmacy, Psychology, Streetwise

• The Gang (Local Kids) – This rag-tag group of 10-13 year old misfits roams the streets of Nowheresville. Danny might enlist the help of the Gang when he thinks adults just won’t understand his problem, or when he needs help with a “prank.” Their knowledge and power comes from their combined experiences in the world, and they act as a team.

Investigative Abilities: Meddling, Raised By Television, The View From Down Here

The following is a partial list of kids who make up the Gang. Feel free to expand or adapt the list as desired, giving each new kid a specific skill of their own.

• Bethany Carter (11 years old): Thin and pale with platinum hair. Quiet. Her mother is a night nurse at the Old Folks Home. (Medicine)

• Randall Steggs (13 years old): Big, tall, and strong. Mended clothes. Hates that everyone calls him “Randy.” Loves wrestling. (Taunt)

• Buttercup Bleistock (12 years old): Short, street smart and talkative. She lives with her grandmother after a few years in foster care. (History)

• Tanner and Reggie Frank (10 year-old twins): Mischievous and always muddy. They know about animals. Reggie lost his pinky in a bb-gun accident. (Outdoorsman)

New Investigative Abilities

Meddling (Technical)

This is a kid-friendly combination of Evidence Collection, Notice, Locksmith, and Research. We’re talking about a kid, not an FBI Agent! This ability can also work in an interpersonal way if the young investigator avoids detection or apprehension by leveraging their age and presumed naiveté.

Raised By Television (Academic)

Like Trivia, this ability covers a wide smattering of seemingly unrelated knowledge: Anything that might be featured on the nightly news, sensationalized on a crime procedural, debunked in a special report, centered by a sitcom’s very special episode, gossiped about on daytime tv, or lampooned in a late night monologue. The idea here is to highlight knowledge gained in the living room, not the lecture hall. Use requires reference to a plausible and period-appropriate TV program.

The View From Down Here (Interpersonal)

This ability acts as an investigatory counterpart to Small Size. Just as children can slip into areas inaccessible to most adults, kids sometimes inhabit a mental landscape that older people can no longer easily navigate. This includes knowledge of the world literally dependent on scale and perspective (words written on the underside of the desks at school, for example) as well as knowledge stemming from the nebulous social vantage point of children, including…

• More vivid awareness of communication from animals and inanimate objects

• Attunement to psychically charged locations (the attic, the last house on the block, that one knobby tree stump)

• Fluency in nursery rhymes, urban legends, and ghost stories, as well as skill in their creation

• The ability to say or hear exactly the wrong thing at exactly the right time

To fit the small town, Y2K, child-centered setting, I have modified the Cthulhu Confidential Investigative Abilities list in the following ways:

• Respect has replaced Cop Talk (and so can apply to a broader array of authority figures like parents, pastors, and pesky neighbors).

• I’ve added Hacking and Taunt into the mix.

New General Abilities

Small Size (Physical)

This ability acts as a general counterpart to The View From Down Here. Because of their stature, kids are able to squeeze into small spaces, shimmy down tight passageways, and reach into crevices, cracks, or compartments that no adult’s larger fingers could manage. This ability can be used to escape from handcuffs or other restraints or used like Fleeing (i.e., instead of Athletics) if escape through a small passageway would reasonably shake off a larger pursuer.

In this writeup, Small Size has replaced Fleeing in the list of Cthulhu Confidential General Abilities.

Homemade Hijinks (Manual)

Whether out of a childlike sense of whimsy or simply a lack of other resources, you are adept at using found materials (especially toys, craft materials, sports equipment, and household tools) to create traps, tricks, or weapons. Use this skill to terrorize bumbling home invaders, to construct a Rube Goldberg-esque timing or delivery mechanism, or to thwart ancient evil using nothing but what you can find in the garage.

Setting

Nowheresville sits in the middle of soybean and cattle country, just north of the Missouri River. Adults and maps call the town “Loutre Lick”, but none of Danny’s friends ever call it that. This one-stoplight town parallels a rarely-used rail line that, for a time, made it the relatively bustling central shipping hub for the surrounding farm communities.

It is the year 1997, Clinton’s second term: Many Americans are flush with cash after the technological progress of the 80s and early 90s, but not the people of central Missouri. The combined effects of global economic forces and rising fear of the nascent technological age (and a looming Y2K apocalypse) leave the country’s “fly-over” states on edge. To make things worse, the Great Flood of 1994 destroyed many small towns throughout the region. Families displaced by the flood trickle into Nowheresville seeking a new start, putting strain on the area’s limited schools, businesses, and social services.

But all of that is hardly perceptible to an 11 year old boy in the country’s heartland. To Danny Boone, the nightly news is full of wonder and drama: Mark McGwire is beginning his ascendancy as MLB home run champ. The Hale-Bopp Comet has the whole planet looking skyward. The Undertaker dominates Wrestlemania 13. TV shows, music, and technology from Japan are the new hit thing, represented by the Sony Playstations or Nintendo 64s that every kid with a lawnmowing or tomato picking job is saving up to buy. (Pokémon will release in the US next year.) Most importantly, though it has not yet become ubiquitous in small town USA, a handful of computers begin to connect Nowheresville to the World Wide Web.

Moon Tower – Locals call the abandoned grain elevator at the center of town “Moon Tower,” though no one can explain exactly why. The elevator proper is the tallest structure in town, held aloft by cables connecting it to the top of five nearby, house-sized grain bins. Once, farmers brought their corn and soy to be stored in the bins and then loaded onto trains. Now, scaling the structure’s precarious ladders and railings is a risky rite of passage for teenage boys with something to prove.

Pit Stop – A NASCAR-themed gas station/trucker bar/pizza joint/arcade, Pit Stop is busy nights and weekends with all sorts of townsfolk and travelers. Unlike the dozen other bars in town, Pit Stop manages to remain popular with families, whose children distract themselves playing table shuffleboard and Cruisin’ USA while parents discuss their crop yield. When drunk truckers get out of line, the bar’s owner, Hank Hoburn, doesn’t have to ask twice to get them to move on down the road to “Jimmy’s”, a Quonset hut dance hall with a much less family-friendly reputation.

Carter Cave State Park – Not too far from Nowheresville, down an old twisting highway, squats Carter Cave. The cave itself isn’t much to look at, being merely a shallow overhang of pale rock, yet it served at various points in time as an Indigenous dwelling, a livestock pen, a smuggler’s cache, and (now) as a preserved natural wonder. Educational placards describe a once much deeper cleft that filled in with rock long before human habitation, which local kids can’t help but speculate was once filled in to hide something special: some of the outlaw Jesse James’ stolen gold, an ancient Indian city, Confederate guns, or something even less likely. The park contains campgrounds, picnic areas, hiking trails, a waterfall used for baptisms, and a Park Ranger cabin.

StarMart SuperCenter – The first of its kind, which opened in 1988. Despite the effect it has had on local businesses, local residents begrudgingly love the convenience of the sprawling complex complete with gardening center, car mechanic, hair salon, eye doctor, family photo, and electronics department. Teenagers love to drive from Nowheresville and roam the aisles of the 24 hour facility, or to hang out in the parking lot “not doing anything, officer!”

Adventure hooks

The Snapper: A poacher encounters a humongous creature near Carter Cave, kicking off a race among local hunters to be the one to bag “the Snapper.” Soon, Forestry Department scientists arrive on the scene to protect this newly discovered, presumably endangered species. Meanwhile, hog “feeding floor” operators deny a connection between their use of growth hormones and the appearance of the creature. Tensions heighten after a local 7 year old goes missing near the cave.

Found Footage Fright: A local teenager, Samantha Graaf, has found a strange VHS tape in the bargain bin at the Movie Palace. It contains footage of a group of high schoolers who went missing four years ago. This “found footage” shows the teens snooping around the abandoned Gaines homestead at the edge of town, then cuts out just as the filmmakers encounter a shadowy, shovel-wielding figure.

Pandora’s Box: Last night’s tornado destroyed just one home, an unremarkable and uninhabited split-level in the center of town. While snooping around the wreckage, members of the Gang uncover a military footlocker marked with the words “DANGEROUS! DO NOT OPEN!” Soon, a mysterious woman shows up looking for the box.

Fairground Flyers: Local authorities have apprehended two teenagers, putting an end to a spree of cow tippings and crop circles that plagued local farmers for weeks. But if the boys swear they were working alone, and they both spent the night in jail, then who created the huge crop circle that popped up overnight out by the fairground—the largest one yet?

E-Scope Espionage: TV commercials advertise the new E-Scope Family Telescope: “View the night sky like never before! An exclusive, complimentary CD-ROM will send your family’s E-Scope telemetry directly to Top Scientists for analysis, with cash and toy prizes for evidence of new astronomical phenomena!” Tammy Baumgartner and her daughter Amber recently won $100 and a set of rollerblades for sending in images of “just a few moving dots” in the tail of Hale-Bopp.

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GUMSHOE One-2-One retunes, rebuilds and re-envisions the acclaimed GUMSHOE investigative rules set for one player, and one GM. Together, the two of you create a story that evokes the classic solo protagonist mystery format of classic detective fiction. Can’t find a group who can play when you can? Want an intense head-to-head gaming experience? Play face to face with GUMSHOE One-2-One—or take advantage of its superb fit with virtual tabletops and play online. Purchase Cthulhu Confidential and Night’s Black Agents: Solo Ops in print and PDF at the Pelgrane Shop.