See Page XX: Critical Successes in GUMSHOE

A column about roleplaying

by Robin D. Laws

The GUMSHOE moment when you decide how many pool points to spend on a general ability test is meant to put players on the spot. They weigh their desire to hang on to a finite resource with the need to succeed. The rule makes them decide how much they care about the event at hand, giving it narrative weight and emotional punch.

A note of paradox creeps in for some, however, when they spend high and roll high, greatly overshooting the Difficulty Number they needed.

The feeling of success fights with the thought that the player overspent, to sometimes bittersweet results.

A common house rule for this allows the player to add to their damage in the case of an attack roll in combat.

This doesn’t work outside of combat. Or in Yellow King fights, which use the collapsed single roll per player system of QuickShock.

The first temptation would be to refund the spent points. But that incentivizes the player to always spend high, blowing the mechanic’s core should-I-shouldn’t-I dynamic.

Here’s an alternate rule you can try for groups who acutely feel the anticlimax of the overspent success—the save.

In a save, the player who has scored big calculates the number of overspent points and subtracts 1.

If other players are making tests at the same time, for example during a fight or when the entire party has been called upon to make Composure or Athletics tests against a shock or hazard, the high-scoring player can transfer that save amount to another player. Unlike other GUMSHOE spends, this happens after the fact. You use it to save another character from failure, hence the name.

The whole save must be spent on a single other player. The player making the save must justify it in story terms.

“Dixon’s jut-jawed resolve in the face of the writhing things in the ancient temple gives Pyari hope.”

“Honoka, diving clear of the wreckage, grabs Noel and pulls him to safety too.”

“Zeynep tosses an extra damp rag to Ariel, allowing her to also resist the gas.”

When an overspent big success occurs on a test taken alone, the player moves the unneeded spend, minus one, to a save pool. This can later be used to turn any other player’s failure into a success, provided that the player making the save can convincingly justify it in the story. By default both characters have to be present for one to make a save for the other. But maybe a sufficiently creative justification works perfectly in a particular context.

In a group test where at least one PC fails, you must use your save then and there. You can’t instead allocate it to a save pool for later use.

You can’t spend part of a save pool; it’s all or nothing.

Your save pool empties at the end of a session, even if the scenario is breaking partway through and will resume next time. (This assumes a three to four hour session; adjust if playing in short bursts.)

Example: Emma, Bud, and Violet step momentarily into Carcosa, calling for Composure tests. Emma spends 4, Bud 1, and Violet 2. The Difficulty is 5. Emma rolls a 6, Bud a 2, and Violet a 3. Violet gets exactly what she needs to succeed. Bud fails, 2 short of the needed total. But Emma has a result of 10, twice what she needed to beat the Difficulty. She would have succeeded with no spend at all, meaning that all of her spend was unneeded. Subtracting 1 from her spend (not the total result) she is left with 3 points. This is a collective test, so she does not have the option of squirreling the points away for later in a save pool. Only Bud failed, so if she’s to use the save it has to be on him.

Emma justifies it: “I distracted myself from this awful vision by remembering that our final assignment is due in a week. I say to Bud, ‘you have to get back home and finish that lovely portrait!”

Bud plays along: “My goodness yes. Mater and Pater might forgive me for dying in an alien land, but not for wasting their tuition money.”

Emma can then add her 3 point save to Bud’s result of 3, for a total of 6—enough to beat the Difficulty, saving him from a Major Shock card.

Example: While she’s exploring the old mill alone, an ex-anarchist pawn of Camilla throws a grenade at Emma. The GM calls for an Athletics test. “I’m going to kick it away,” Emma says. She spends 4 points and rolls a 6. That beats the Difficulty of 5, which the raw roll would have done on its own. Emma subtracts 1 from her spend of 4, leaving her 3 points to put in a save pool.

Later, Emma and Bud are poking around in an old barn when its owner bursts through the door and hurls an ax at him. Bud spends 2 on his Athletics test but rolls a 1, failing to beat the Difficulty of 4. Emma spends all of her save points, as she must, to boost Bud’s result from 3 to 6. “Replicating my move with the grenade,” Emma says, “I kick the ax, which would otherwise have connected, off into the hay.”

GMs may decide that the surprise conversion of failures into successes violates the bleak tone of a series, as with Yellow King in horror mode, Trail of Cthulhu in purist, or Night’s Black Agents in dust.

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GUMSHOE is the groundbreaking investigative roleplaying system by Robin D. Laws that shifts the focus of play away from finding clues (or worse, not finding them), and toward interpreting clues, solving mysteries and moving the action forward. GUMSHOE powers many Pelgrane Press games, including The Yellow King Roleplaying Game, Trail of Cthulhu, Night’s Black Agents, Esoterrorists, Ashen Stars, and Mutant City Blues. Learn more about how to run GUMSHOE games, and download the GUMSHOE System Reference Document to make your own GUMSHOE products under the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution Unported License.