This post originally appeared on DyingEarth.com between 2004 and 2007. A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Everybody knows this ancient joke: A guy goes to the doctor. He rotates his arm a bit and says, “Doctor, it hurts when I do this.” So the doctor says, “Don’t do that.” When designing roleplaying rules […]
Tag Archives: GUMSHOE
This post originally appeared on DyingEarth.com between 2004 and 2007. A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws For the past couple of installments we’ve been examining investigative scenario construction from a macro perspective, mostly looking at the way scenes interact with one another. This time let’s zoom in a bit and talk about a […]
This post originally appeared on DyingEarth.com between 2004 and 2007. A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Click here for part II of the “Fear of Structure” With The Esoterrorists now available and a series of GUMSHOE products in the pipeline, it’s time to embark on a series of columns supporting the game. Even […]
by Joshua Kronengold and Catherine Ramen One of the most interesting features of GUMSHOE is that failure is frequently not an important part of the gameplay. Whether by finding a clue with an Investigative Ability, or spending enough points on a General Ability test to ensure success, GUMSHOE games focus more on the what (which […]
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Game Moderators seeing the Push rules in The Yellow King Roleplaying Game and now second edition Mutant City Blues sometimes ask how to import them into previous GUMSHOE games. To recap how Pushes work, players get two of them per scenario. They can spend Pushes to gain non-informational benefits from their investigative abilities. For example: […]
The following article originally appeared on an earlier iteration of See Page XX in April 2008. A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws Give a Clue The heart of the GUMSHOE system is its method of ensuring that players always gather the clues essential to the solution of a mystery and lots of other […]
When asked to explain GUMSHOE, a key part of my standard spiel goes like this: “GUMSHOE says that it is never interesting to fail to get information. When you use an Investigative ability, you never have to roll a die. If you have the right ability and use it in the right way, you simply […]
The following article originally appeared on an earlier iteration of See Page XX in December 2007. A column on roleplaying by Robin D. Laws The GUMSHOE system focuses primarily on investigation and by default assumes that moments of interpersonal conflict will be handled through roleplaying. As such it lacks an equivalent of the Persuasion/Rebuff system that […]
The following article originally appeared on an earlier iteration of See Page XX in October 2007. by Graham Walmsley At first sight, Gumshoe would make a perfect LARP. There’s little die-rolling, so it suits a game played standing up; and, as an investigative game, it’s about talking to people. It sounds ideal. Would it work? In this […]
The following news items and diary entries originally appeared on DyingEarth.com between 2006 and 2009. You can find the entries for 1998-2000 here. You can find the entries for 2001-2002 here. ☀ Editor’s note: A few of these news items were not categorized by month or year – I have done my best to approximate their […]