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clockworkjoe posted:If you want to go overboard on ideas for that, I would recommend this novel http://www.amazon.com/Delta-Green-Denied-Cthulhu-Mythos/dp/1887797246 I'll move that up my list. I was going to read Tales from Failed Anatomies anyways after I finished reading Made to Kill, which is a pretty Gumshoe appropriate novel.
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Feb 3, 2016 03:33
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So Bubblegumshoe finally has an actual release date and product page: http://www.evilhat.com/home/bubblegumshoe/ Looks like it's coming in June.
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Feb 16, 2016 23:12
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unseenlibrarian posted:So Bubblegumshoe finally has an actual release date and product page: Is there any hint of a preorder early release beta for this? Because I want to run a brick RPG right now.
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Feb 21, 2016 21:33
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unseenlibrarian posted:So Bubblegumshoe finally has an actual release date and product page: Holy poo poo, no way
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Feb 21, 2016 21:55
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unseenlibrarian posted:So Bubblegumshoe finally has an actual release date and product page: Well that looks awesome. Hopefully it comes out on time. So I'm thinking of running a Fear Itself game in a few weeks as a oneshot for my regular game group and I'm thinking of doing a survival horror bit set in some abandoned tunnels and stations in the NYC subway system . I'm thinking the players will be urban explorers out to explore these tunnels and they willl run into a Homeless people camp where they'll learn someone or something is preying on the local homeless and as they go deeper into the system things will get more strange and they'll be harassed by some creature till they meet a camp of homeless people who have become almost cultists of the creature stalking the tunnels which will lead to a final confrontation with the monster. I just hope Fear Itself is a good way to go since there's not really a lot of investigation going on with it. My other idea would be getting a copy of Dread and a Jenga tower and running it that way, but I already own a copy of Fear Itself and figure the interpersonal stuff was also a very good fit for the game
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Feb 29, 2016 09:37
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Anyone know a good Trail of Cthulhu adventure that opens with the investigators having no idea the mythos exists and just happen to stumble on creepy poo poo? I'd like it to be an intro to the group just doing one shots and going around and handling mythos problems as they crop up.
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Mar 2, 2016 04:15
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Armitage Files and bookhounds of london have that kind of set up I believe. As for individual scenarios, you could always go full apocalypse: http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=4106 - everyone knows Cthulhu is real when he wakes up obviously
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Mar 2, 2016 05:08
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Bubblegumshoe is now available for preorder through the Fate More backerkit.
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Mar 2, 2016 05:16
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Len posted:Anyone know a good Trail of Cthulhu adventure that opens with the investigators having no idea the mythos exists and just happen to stumble on creepy poo poo? I'd like it to be an intro to the group just doing one shots and going around and handling mythos problems as they crop up. A lot of them have this kind of setup, TBH. I'd grab something like The Murderer of Thomas Fell, since it's free and pretty good. It's explicitly written to be an intro to Gumshoe in general and Trail in particular.
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Mar 2, 2016 05:41
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I believe all the scenarios in Stunning Eldritch Tales follow that model. I think they're all Robin Laws; off-hand, I know that Shanghai Bullets and Devourers in the Mist involve unfortunate people stumbling into the mythos. Most (but not all) of the Out of Time and Out of Space scenarios follow the same trend.
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Mar 2, 2016 06:01
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inklesspen posted:Bubblegumshoe is now available for preorder through the Fate More backerkit. It's out. Anyone try it?
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Jun 14, 2016 07:35
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Haven't actually gotten to play it yet, but did sit down with it and watch a few eps of Veronica Mars and count where she used relationship points to help solve the plot, so you know, it works on that scale, at least.
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Jun 14, 2016 10:03
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Read it but haven't ran. Seems the most consistent and thorough execution of a singular idea I've seen for Gumshoe. Good, good, gosh.
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Jun 14, 2016 16:01
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Yeah I just picked it up yesterday reading it right now and I'm really excited to run it
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Jun 17, 2016 20:51
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Some friends and I recently started playing Trail via our phones basically a pbp only using our always on us smart phones. Right now we're doing Murder of Thomas Fell and that's going to go right into the Armitage Files. Has anyone run Armitage Files before and if so do you have any tips or tricks? I found a blog from a guy who went through the whole thing and I've been reading that but I'd like to get more input
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Nov 3, 2016 01:50
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I picked up a bunch of Night's Black Agents books at Gencon and finally got around to reading them. It sounds cool but I'm wondering if it's a case of a game book making for a good read but not being great in play. What I want to know is what does GUMSHOE look like in play, particularly NBA? I've tried listening to some LP podcasts of the system. The One Shot podcast was all right but benefitted from being one session led by the writer of the game. I just can't get into any RPPR sessions.
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Dec 20, 2016 19:24
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Since this thread is alive again how often do you guys do stability checks in ToC? I feel like I'm not doing then quite enough but it sounds like it's DM discretion most of the time
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Dec 20, 2016 19:34
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The Malthusian posted:I picked up a bunch of Night's Black Agents books at Gencon and finally got around to reading them. It sounds cool but I'm wondering if it's a case of a game book making for a good read but not being great in play. What I want to know is what does GUMSHOE look like in play, particularly NBA? If you can't get into RPPR sessions, I can't recommend specific other podcasts. They're the only ones I've listened to besides One Shot and I liked them very well. If you would prefer write-ups, the co-writer for the Dracula Dossier (Gareth Ryder-Hanhrahan) has been working on one for running that campaign frame during a con weekend: http://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/weekend-at-draculas-part-1/ I am not sure it's complete, but that is another option. I think there's an RPG.net game where half the party starts out falling from a plane and they have to react from there. I unfortunately can't remember the name of it, though. Based on both RPPR and the One Shot, I think it works pretty well in play. I would say that it's maybe not the easiest place to jump straight into Gumshoe. I think it could still work, but you would want to have a scene introducing how investigative abilities work. Then a scene about general abilities. And then a combat scene of some kind. Then finally stuff like converting investigative points to general points or the ability cherries, maybe a session or two in. I haven't run NBA myself, only Trail of Cthulhu. But I think overall Gumshoe works very well and it's mostly a matter of introducing it gradually. It's relatively simple compared to D&D but more complex than most indy games. Maybe slightly more complex than CoC given the two types of abilities. Len posted:Since this thread is alive again how often do you guys do stability checks in ToC? I feel like I'm not doing then quite enough but it sounds like it's DM discretion most of the time I generally keep them for the "worst thing" the characters are likely to encounter. So generally not more than once or twice in a scene. It is kind of DM's discretion, but especially once you get into Mythos shocks, the Stability points tend to drain away fairly fast. Sionak fucked around with this message at 02:15 on Dec 22, 2016 |
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Dec 22, 2016 00:50
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Anyone had the chance to play Fear Itself 2E? Is it worth buying if I already have Trail and some supplements? I feel like I can update the Trail stuff to modern day adventures easily enough, does it have enough good ideas to be worth the buy?
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Jan 2, 2017 00:38
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Had a crash course first session running GUMSHOE over the weekend with Trail of Cthulhu--playing with a group of six players, so it was a bit of a crowd. Being everyone at the table's first real brush with GUMSHOE, we had a well enough time with the resolution of general abilities--but investigative abilities, specifically interpersonal ones still threw us for a loop and I'm having a hard time sussing out how things 'should' go in attempts at just listening to live play sessions of GUMSHOE games so far. Essentially, the snag we're tripping on is twofold: when/how are we to draw attention to a particular interpersonal or other investigative skill in the context of conversation / questioning an NPC--and what are you supposed to do if someone is roleplaying well but really coming off with an interpersonal skill (or other investigative skill) their character just plain lacks. It feels jarring to interject mid-dialogue with 'You're using reassurance / flattery / etc.' especially if no point spends are required, but it's also weird to have someone, say, threatening someone with leverage when they don't have any intimidation and flagging them for it, too. On the flip-side, if it's entirely relegated to periodically glancing at the matrix just to see if someone's on the 'appropriate' tracks, keeping it completely under the hood can make it feel to the players like their point allocations didn't really mean anything. Other than that, it's mostly wrapping our head around covering edge cases and whatnot. Additionally, we've mostly been handwaving money (in part because a large portion of the group is credit rating 4+ and everyone is on a sizable payroll by the investigation's benefactor) but it seems to make moot the case material offering players choices between classes of accommodation, or having NPCs offer bribes that -ought- to feel substantial when really they're a drop in the bucket and so on. Any insights or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
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Mar 21, 2017 19:06
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Would anyone be interested in attempting to play a beginner ToC game over Skype one of these weekends? I can't get a physical game going so I'm going to try a virtual one.
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Mar 21, 2017 19:19
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You need to specify a timezone, first. Either way, you should probably just make a game on Roll20 for it. I'm sure you'll find players. Megazver fucked around with this message at 20:47 on Mar 21, 2017 |
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Mar 21, 2017 20:16
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GaistHeidegger posted:It feels jarring to interject mid-dialogue with 'You're using reassurance / flattery / etc.' especially if no point spends are required, but it's also weird to have someone, say, threatening someone with leverage when they don't have any intimidation and flagging them for it, too. It really is GM's discretion on how to handle it. The purpose of spreading out the Gumshoe investigative skills is to give everyone's character a roughly equal amount of spotlight time. The thinking is that the adventure's clues will be distributed roughly across all the skills so everyone will take part in "solving it" in the narrative (i.e. Player B's character will be instrumental in gaining a clue, then Player C, etc. etc.) The way I would handle it is that if player X starts to intimidate someone but doesn't have Intimidation, AND Intimidation spends would get a clue, AND the other player with Intimidate (we'll call him/her Player Y) is fine with not getting spotlighted, I would either say: 1) You remember your coaching from Player Y (they can spend their points on behalf of Player X) 2) You can see that the NPC is starting to waver and that you've created an opening that Player Y can exploit If you have a tough-guy player who likes RPing hardasses keep that in mind when distributing skills.
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Mar 21, 2017 23:10
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Megazver posted:You need to specify a timezone, first. I'm East Coast US but don't work weekends so I'm free all times. I've never used Roll20 how does that work?
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Mar 22, 2017 02:10
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Len posted:I'm East Coast US but don't work weekends so I'm free all times. It's a virtual tabletop for your dice rolling and sheet managing and map-and-token needs.
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Mar 22, 2017 15:35
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:It really is GM's discretion on how to handle it. This is a good solution. Also, sometimes people don't realize they want to play the intimidating hardass at character generation, so I do occasionally let them move the skill points around once early in the campaign if they change their minds that way. If it's a zero point spend (keeping the plot moving) and the role-playing is interesting, I generally would give them the information. If they're trying to intimidate, don't have the skill, and don't have actual leverage - well, the interrogated character can point that out and dig their heels in. Then you can signal to the other player who does have intimidation that it's their chance to jump in, as Megaman's Jockstrap suggests. There's a little wiggle room on some of the skills - Persuasion, Reassurance, and Flattery can hit similar notes, for instance. I'd agree that as long as everyone's getting equal spotlight time that the details are less critical. I think it gets a bit more natural with practice, but especially early on you can explain stuff like, "You see him start to trail off, but based on how reassuring you are, he swallows and begins speaking again..." The other trick is offering the players spends on the most appropriate ability when they're using one that really fits the situation. That's more of a carrot (you can look cool, and here's more information) than the stick of breaking the RP flow or simply pointing out that they don't have the right skill. For the campaign edge cases, like bribes, maybe you can offer something besides money? Nicer rooms give some bonus refresh to abilities, maybe. Perhaps the NPCs offer items that are illegal or otherwise hard to come by instead of cash. I've also found that while players hate owing favors to NPCs, they love it when the NPC owes them one. (And that encourages them to remember a little more about the NPC for the future.) Sionak fucked around with this message at 15:26 on Mar 24, 2017 |
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Mar 24, 2017 15:23
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I can't recall which GUMSHOE book said this, but I recall that in cases where there are multiple people in the same scene with the same expertise, the GM should maintain a list of players. Whenever a player earns a "0-spend" clue, put a mark next to their name. Then, whenever a "0-spend" clue is due to be revealed, it should be credited to the player with the fewest marks next to their name.
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Mar 26, 2017 13:23
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quote:The purpose of spreading out the Gumshoe investigative skills is to give everyone's character a roughly equal amount of spotlight time. I have a really great player. Fun, inventive, and always shows up, which on roll20 is a big deal. But he can really be dominating in a game and Gumshoe is really great at letting me make sure the other players can get some "screen time." quote:What I want to know is what does GUMSHOE look like in play, particularly NBA? I think on the point spend system, you either like it or you don't and I don't see a lot of people in the middle. On NBA in particular, we started NBA last month on a one shot and liked it so much, we're doing the Dracula Dossier. I'm not sure how well I could GM it if I hadn't listened (twice) to the One Shot podcast with Ken Hite GMing. NBA is over the top and the rules are meant to give the PCs a lot of crazy advantages that mirror a thriller. You just have to accept the players have a lot more control than in a traditional scenario--even a traditional investigative scenario. You can show them a transport company riddled with vampires, and have a whole physical infiltration mapped out, but they can decide the best way to investigate that is to hack the IRS and then spend a ton of points to call in a drone strike. You just roll with it. NBA is sort of Gumshoe with a thousand special rules, so it's kind of difficult to figure out how it all hangs together until you start playing, but as unwieldly as they are, the special rules really work with the concept. In our first scenario, there's a fight at the end with a vampire blood enhanced assassin and I'm gearing up for the usual sort of RPG slugfest with a lot of regular shots that people add one or two points to. Instead, one character with a lot of hand to hand pulls a "support move" which lets him add points to another character's attack by putting the defender into a compromised position. (I had to look it up--I didn't even remember it.) That gives the shooter an extra +3 to play with. Then the shooter does a technothriller monologue where he describes the attack in intricate detail to get a shooting refresh, he uses those for a called shot to the head for +2 damage, then dumps I don't remember how many points into the attack. He rolls a 6 which with all the other points qualifies as a crit (natural 6 and 5 over hit threshold for double damage) and rolls well. My big bad's head explodes into a mist and the fight is over. I'm dumbfounded for a moment because the big bad barely touched the party and then I realize just how awesome the whole thing was. Moving into the Dracula Dossier is terrifying. There's just so much there. I've done a full readthrough and filled two notepads with notes about what I want to do with different NPCs and such. I'm not finding the conspiramid very helpful though because it's just too big and there's really two conspiracies, Edom and CD. The other thing I'm finding is you really want all the "stuff." I'd never looked at the Edom Field Manual, but there's a silly amount of information in there.
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Mar 28, 2017 14:33
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I'm not ashamed to say that Dracula Dossier has defeated me 3 times. Just can't figure out a way to make it all work and am scared as hell to start a campaign without a solid skeleton. If you want a "big idea" campaign it's probably the biggest one ever (I don't count those books of big cities and dungeons that are just 1000 little shops/rooms with 2 lines of description and an npc name.)
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Mar 30, 2017 22:29
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I'm finally making a push to get a group together to play Trail of Cthulhu. I'm going to settle with three players to start I think since that's the most I can reliably get at the table. Maybe I can swing four but most likely three. I do have some questions though since I've only tried running a game once and it went over like a wet fart. It was fun but mechanically I had no idea what I was doing. This time around I've listened to a lot of actual plays and have a much better idea so things will go smoother. My first question is will three players actually work or is that asking too much out of the characters? The framework I'm going with is the Armitage Inquiry and I'll be using the Armitage Files since I've always been more of a seat of my pants DM and that works out for both me and the players. Is there a splatbook for creating mythos items? I know at the end of the day it's just whatever weird poo poo I feel like giving to that mirror/cup/shotgun but I want some references to see if something is too weak/strong or too insanity causing/not insanity causing enough. I also think I want to do a mixture of purist and pulp which should be doable. I just feel like nameless mooks shouldn't be able to do a party wipe but that cultist leader with the flaming hands flinging spells should be a real viable threat, as should mythos critters. Is that a good idea or should I just settle on one or the other?
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Jun 26, 2017 04:37
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Can't help for the mythos items questions but three players should be fine as long as everyone is clear that a small party size means they need very diverse skills to cover bases and all. Feel free to pick and choose for Pulp vs Traditional, the whole point of the book helpfully marking those two elements in the book when they come up is so you can pick and choose exactly how much of either you want. I've never played a game that was 100% either or, in my experience if you want to play a fun investigative game where the danger of the world beyond the norm is clear but players still don't feel like complete pushovers you probably need to use a blend that suits your group best. For mine we're about 60/40 Traditional Lovecraft/Pulp Bullshit Funtimes and we wound up in about the situation you're describing where anyone who's skilled in combat can at the very least hold their own just fine against Jimmy The Mook but when his secret employer Gustav The hosed Up Cult Magus comes in we usually need to bail and make a plan of attack better than 'I'm gonna shoot him in his stupid face'.
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Jun 26, 2017 05:14
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So I've got a question for y'all about Ashen Stars. I'm running my first game tomorrow night, and I'm thinking about stun weapons. As the game points out, in most space opera SF, a stun weapon stuns after the first hit, or has no effect. I'm not really a huge fan of that, but I do like the idea that a weapon set to 'stun' should still do something, while not necessarily a huge fan of the way the game seems to suggest handling it, where one shot drops the Health Threshold by 1 and the second shot stuns. My proposed fix is this: the first shot weakens the target (assuming it's not some kind of alien megafauna), preventing spends from combat pools from the creature hit by it. The second one stuns them. My group mostly plays PbtA games, so we tend to handle things like combat movement narratively rather than bothering to measure it out in feet/meters/zones/spradoinkles, which is why I didn't just have it halve their movement rate or something. What do you guys think about that as an alternative rule for handling stun fire?
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Jun 30, 2017 15:27
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Len posted:I'm finally making a push to get a group together to play Trail of Cthulhu. I'm going to settle with three players to start I think since that's the most I can reliably get at the table. Maybe I can swing four but most likely three. I do have some questions though since I've only tried running a game once and it went over like a wet fart. It was fun but mechanically I had no idea what I was doing. This time around I've listened to a lot of actual plays and have a much better idea so things will go smoother. I actually just ran a short (two sessions of about 3.5-4 hours) case with three PCs whose players ranged from "what's a roleplaying game?" to "It's been a few years." It worked well with three people, it let me do one-on-one scenes without everyone else getting bored and I could move the spotlight at my own pace. I did have one player who seemed to think that if he wasn't moving things along, we were stuck. Frustrating, especially as I told him a couple of times that we were in no rush and he didn't have to drive the plot. I did have some issue with my investigators kinda just waiting on me to say "you can make a cop talk point spend here" I'm chalking it up to inexperience with the system but I was looking for advice as to how I can get them to take the initiative, they seem to view investigative points as a resource to hoard and I think it's because they think of me as the enemy, instead of someone building a story with them.
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Jun 30, 2017 16:05
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Well I posted a thing https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3826353
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Jul 9, 2017 22:40
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Curious about anyone's experiences with Gumshoe One-on-One. Feel free to sound off.
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Sep 8, 2017 01:43
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It seems to work just fine?
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Sep 8, 2017 12:07
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Curious about anyone's experiences with Gumshoe One-on-One. Feel free to sound off. Finally got a chance to play this. It's awesome. The Edges and Problems are not the purely mechanical devices I'd feared -- they work great to create story points and emotional beats. The only scenario I've run so far is the NYC one from the book, but it's very well constructed for the most part. Writing scenarios seems hard, but I'll test that eventually. In the meantime you get a lot of play from the book and available scenarios, so I'm not too stressed.
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Oct 14, 2017 06:55
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https://twitter.com/PelgranePress/status/922883136815489024
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Oct 25, 2017 16:58
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Finally I've got a game to go with that old germ of an idea about a Monster hunting team that picks their cases from the comments section of their gag website that sells tacticool monster hunter gear.
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Oct 25, 2017 17:16
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| # ? May 3, 2024 12:36 |
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This is very interesting. Definitely something I would want to try on the forums (maybe with IRC or Discord)
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Oct 25, 2017 20:37
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