GUMSHOE is a system for designing and playing investigative roleplaying games and adventures, emulating stories where investigators uncover a series of clues, and interpret them to solve a mystery. In a GUMSHOE game, the player characters discover something which triggers their investigation, and then the Game Moderator (GM) narrates them through a number of scenes, […]
Category Archives: Gumshoe
GUMSHOE general category
The classic murder mystery: a bunch of eccentrics gather, often at a remote house or other confined location, and then – thump! One of them’s murdered. In most roleplaying scenarios, red herrings aren’t needed. The classic advice is that the players create enough confusion as they maraud and blunder towards a conclusion that adding distractions […]
It’s a staple of the detective genre that the heroic investigator picks up on some tiny clue, some inconsistency that unravels an otherwise perfect crime. They spot that only one dinner guest could have passed through the kitchen in the two-minute window to poison the bride’s champagne glass, or that the mystery turns on whose […]
It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these Page XX pieces. In the intervening months, I’ve been working on a whole host of different adventures, ranging from classic Cthulhu mythos to epic fantasy to political drama to different flavours of weirdness. As part of the process of adventure writing, there are ten questions […]
Some GUMSHOE scenarios give players the opportunity to pick up small temporary pools. In Trail, for example, reading the collected letters of a crazed physicist might give a 2-point temporary pool that can be spent on Occult, Physics or Astronomy. The players can use these points as they would regular points from their character sheets. […]
In the latest episode of their cooperatively informative podcast, Ken and Robin talk tight-lipped informants, the 18th century antiquarian spy Philipp von Stosch, mid 90s SF cinema, and dancing plagues.
In the latest episode of their invitingly wealthy podcast, Ken and Robin talk investigation by monkeywrench, Karen Twelves, SF film on the 80s-90s cusp, and 10th century Viking raids.
In the latest episode of their mountainous, densely forested podcast, Ken and Robin talk leads, clues and details in GUMSHOE, Jennell Jacquays, the banner SF film year of 1986, and H. floresiensis survival.
We are very excited to announce that we have officially partnered with the community built INVESTIGATOR system on Foundry! Just like the 13th Age system, we will be working with the current developers to continue to improve the system over time. They’ve done incredible work, and we really appreciate the time and love that they’ve […]
GUMSHOE, as we always say, is the game system where you always find a clue. If you’ve got the right Investigative Ability, you get the information. When designing scenarios, however, it’s useful to divide those pieces of information into different categories. My usual mental breakdown (building on the Clue vs Lead division) Leads: A piece […]
It’s not that he doesn’t blink; it’s that when he does, a shudder runs through him, as if he sees something wonderful or terrible when he closes his eyes, even for an instant. It’s hard to describe, but it’s like he’s fractionally too fast. He looks over at the telephone, and then it rings. He […]