See Page XX A column about roleplaying by Robin D. Laws On a recent episode of Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff, Ken and I talked about ways players can organize the information they gather over the course of a GUMSHOE investigation. And now I’m going to organize some of those thoughts into this column […]
Category Archives: Gumshoe
GUMSHOE general category
Most roleplaying games have some sort of diminishing resource that limits the player character’s ability to keep going. The commonest example are hit points and similar measures of health – if you’re running low on hit points, you need to stop and heal up. F20 games like 13th Age also treat some of your characters’ […]
Many years ago – the fabled year of 2003, or so – I wrote a largely forgotten book called OGL Horror for Mongoose Publishing. It was designed to be a toolkit for running modern-day horror games, using (somewhat awkwardly) the d20 system. As it was based on the Open Gaming Licence, Pelgrane was able to […]
Giving Out Clues This is an excerpt from the most recent version of GUMSHOE – The Esoterrorists 2nd Edition. It is GM-facing advice on the most central element of the game – how the characters interact with the scene in the game’s fiction, and how the players and GM use GUMSHOE to handle the delivery […]
We are controlling this transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus […]
In the shadowy world of The Fall of Delta Green, you never know who’s got clearance, not to mention who’s got your back … and who’s got your back in his sights. The Company man – the man from the CIA – might fit any of those descriptions, or any other. That’s kind of the point, […]
Sign up here to become a Pelgrane Press convention GM Like a burnt but still alarmingly competent spy with the whiff of vampire in her nostrils, convention season has crept up on us once more. Last year was our most successful yet, with Pelgrane games on the rise at a number of conventions around the world. More than […]
I’m glad tabletop culture still seems to respect elder wisdom. Otherwise I’d be reluctant to tell you how long I’ve been doing GM Masterclass panels. Over time a few questions change, but some stay the same. One question you don’t get much anymore: the once-standard, “How do we get new blood into the hobby?” This […]
by Yohann Delalande [Editor’s Note: Yohann ran the the One Sheet GUMSHOE competition on RPG Geek, which had an extraordinary 18 entries. Congratulations to all the entrants .You can download all the entries here.] One of the recurring obstacles every GM has met at least once concerns time vs preparation work. After all, it is […]
See Page XX A Column about Roleplaying by Robin D. Laws When we of the Pelgrane-Industrial Complex write and test GUMSHOE scenarios, we take care to avoid short circuits—moments that, early in play, could conceivably allow the investigators to abruptly move to the end of the story. The dissatisfactions of short-circuiting are various. The players […]