Improvising With GUMSHOE by Steve Dempsey This article discusses an improvised variant of the GUMSHOE rules. It can be just as easily used for Fear Itself, Esoterrorists, or any other GUMSHOE game. Most games of GUMSHOE are played using a scenario that the GM has written. Not only does she introduce each scene and play […]
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Talking at Yourself by Robin D. Laws Experienced GMs know to avoid situations in which multiple NPCs carry on a conversation. These conversations with yourself are hard for GMs to sustain and for players to follow. Most of the time you can engineer events so that this doesn’t happen. If one or more PCs […]
by Kevin Kulp (From the introduction to TimeWatch, his investigative time-travel game) General Abilities are how you get stuff done. Sneaking, fighting, running… all these are done with General Abilities. If you have a General Ability rating of 8 or higher, you’re incredibly talented at that activity (and may get access to cool bonus […]
by Wade Rockett As you probably know, Robin Laws is hard at work on the second edition of The Esoterrorists, his legendary horror game that introduced the GUMSHOE investigative system. I hadn’t planned on running it any time in the near future, because I’m focused on my 13th Age campaign; but I very much wanted […]
By Robin D Laws Though most players find GUMSHOE simple and straightforward, we’ve heard from a few folks who’ve had trouble assimilating it. Usually this happens when they see that it’s a little different from the roleplaying rules they’re used to, and then assume that it’s even more different than it really is. Here are […]
An extract from the forthcoming Botts RPG Miscellany, Adrian Bott’s big book of GM’ing wisdom. By Adrian Bott Some Games Masters fear failure – not so much their own, but the players’. For a none too confident GM, the thought that the players might experience failure can be daunting. Failure is generally understood to […]