Pop quiz, hotshot: a mysterious figure tosses a grenade at you. How much damage do you take? In GUMSHOE, it depends on who’s throwing the grenade. A cultist of Hastur? Point-blank grenade damage in Trail of Cthulhu is +3. Right there, one table, look it up, bang. Or rather, boom. A vampiric henchman, or a […]
Tag Archives: GUMSHOE
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 […]
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 […]
By Robin D. Laws “It was not a significant bullet. I am not afraid.” – filmmaker Werner Herzog, upon being shot by a passing assailant wielding a sniper rifle in the midst of a television interview Hit points have remained a part of the roleplaying design lexicon since the beginning because they serve […]
24
Jun
Jun
CONFIDENTIAL//SI-NBA//ORCON We have intercepted communications indicating a high probability of a vampire presence at DEXCON 15 in Morristown, New Jersey from 2:00PM – 8:00PM, Saturday, July 7, 2012. Register to join one of six strike teams under the direction of Kenneth Hite and neutralize the threat by any means necessary. The winning team — even if represented by just […]
Insurers specializing in high-end art have become increasingly worried by the proportion of their clients’ art collections stored in a small handful of warehouses, mostly in Switzerland. By stashing their art at a so-called free port, the hyper-rich avoid taxes and customs fees. To rip this story from the headlines, we can see an obvious […]
Share a link to your online playlist for Night’s Black Agents (or just your suggestions) on Twitter with the hashtag #nightsblackagents — or leave a comment below — and we’ll pass it along. We can always use more cool spy music in our lives. And if you listen to cool spy music and haven’t ordered the [REDACTED] […]
By Robin D Laws Any game design that starts with me reading an enormous stack of Jack Vance novels is one after my own heart. Before re-acquainting myself with his classic cycle of novels set in the far future Gaean Reach, I assumed that Pelgrane’s companion to The Dying Earth Roleplaying Game would use its […]
by Robin D Laws The GUMSHOE rules break with roleplaying tradition in several notable ways. Most obviously, its information gathering skills, here called investigative abilities, default toward automatic success, with a point-spend mechanism to allow for extraordinary successes and additional benefits. Also, its general abilities—those governing activities where failure is as likely to lead […]
Ulf Andersson has kindly supplied us with Refresh cheat sheets for all the GUMSHOE games, including Night’s Black Agents (which is available to pre-order now). These are extremely useful and comprehensive resources, a must for any GUMSHOE GM. GUMSHOE Cheat Sheets You can download the PDF here.