Dedicated Night’s Black Agents Director R. B. Bergstrom urges you to use up those Shooting points and kill some damn mooks. Read his hard-won and heartfelt advice on running and playing combat scenes in GUMSHOE (in Night’s Black Agents specifically, but the advice is applicable across the lines) in his latest Transitive Property of Gaming […]
Category Archives: Gumshoe
GUMSHOE general category
A tip of the Pelgrane hat goes out to Michael Rees’ new blog, The Game Is Afoot, dedicated to all things GUMSHOE and DramaSystem. Entries so far include a Bookhounds of London adventure, Burmese Trail of Cthulhu doings, and Bone Wars, a DramaSystem series pitch in which you play rootin’-tootin’ paleontologists.
The GUMSHOE system by Robin D. Laws revolutionized the investigative roleplaying game, and is the basis for RPGs that will appeal to fans of many genres: space opera, spy thriller, Lovecraftian horror and two-fisted pulp adventure — with more to come. Its central premise, though, can be challenging for newcomers to wrap their heads around. What […]
[ Ed: Steven Sander‘s has produced this distinctive image for Will Hindmarch’s GUMSHOE game Razed.] My approach to detailing the alien threats and adversaries of Razed was inspired by Ken Hite’s multifaceted approach to the Mythos in Trail of Cthulhu. Each style of enemy is not a single vision of alien menace but a category […]
In this Gamerati interview, I talk Hillfolk, Stone Skin Press, Dreamhounds of Paris, The Gaean Reach, and our plan to apprehend Flattop, with David Melmo, the Secret DM. Check out his lovely intro, subscribe to Ed Healy’s Gamerati YouTube channel, or dive in directly below.
During character generation, after determining why they want vengeance against the common enemy called Quandos Vorn, Gaean Reach players specify why catching up with him will prove a task of epic difficulty. Each supplies a reason of particular relevance to his own motivations and backstory. In the in-house playtest, it was determined that Quandos Vorn: […]
With Hillfolk in outside playtest and on the brink of a crowdfunding campaign, I’m now in the early stages of The Gaean Reach, Pelgrane’s game of interstellar vengeance, based on the classic cycle of SF novels by Jack Vance. While I originally thought this would be a Skulduggery variant with some GUMSHOE grafted on, it […]
A Ripped From the History Books scenario premise for Trail of Cthulhu It is 1936. Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace, hailed for his New Deal innovations, is easily the most mystical of cabinet secretary in US history. A self-proclaimed spiritual seeker of Theosophist bent, he openly connects his occult beliefs to his liberal politics. He even […]
Rewatching Zodiac recently, I was struck by the desire to see David Fincher similarly tackle the Mothman incidents of 1966-1967. This is no swipe at Mark Pellington’s The Mothman Prophecies, which I quite like for the way it evokes the enveloping paranoia of paranormal inquiry. It does, however, impose a cinematic structure and sense of […]
I am once again looking to augment the ranks of my Thursday night playtest group—hence this open call for one new recruit. To join the group, you’ll need to be reliably free on Thursday nights and able to get to the Bloor-Bathurst area in downtown Toronto. We meet from 7 pm to 10 pm. You […]