GUMSHOE Question

[SeaJay]

I am hoping someone might clear something up for me. I've read various GUMSHOE games like Esoterrorists, Fear Itself, and NBA, but I'm unsure how zero ratings work.

Let's say I have a rating in Intimidation, but right now I've no points left. Can I still intimidate someone? Or let's say I have points in Driving, but right now, it's zero, can I still participate in a high-speed car chase?

The rules seem to suggest no, which doesn't make sense. I mean, what happens if I see the bad guy in a getaway car and say I'm going to "give chase?" Does the GM just say, "Don't bother rolling you fail"?

 

[Bill White]

If you have a rating in an Investigative skill but have spent all your points, you can still use the skill. If there’s a "core clue" to be gained in that way, you receive that information. But a "bonus clue" or other benefit that would require a spend would be out of reach.

 

[Bill White]

A General skill like Driving on the other hand is used to take action. With zero points left, you can roll but you have ability to improve your odds by adding to the roll.

The designer imagines the system to be a way of managing player spotlight time.

 

[Agemegos]

The rules seem to suggest no, which doesn't make sense. I mean, what happens if I see the bad guy in a getaway car and say I'm going to "give chase?" Does the GM just say, "Don't bother rolling you fail"?

I found that to GM NBA I had to be careful about never presenting the PCs with a challenge of any given sort more than once in each adventure, because they'd be Jason Bourne the first time and the Keystone Cops the second. I ended up deciding that the Gumshoe system is not suitable to my needs.

 

[SeaJay]

I found that to GM NBA I had to be careful about never presenting the PCs with a challenge of any given sort more than once in each adventure, because they'd be Jason Bourne the first time and the Keystone Cops the second. I ended up deciding that the Gumshoe system is not suitable to my needs.

That's what I am concerned about.

 

[Ragr]

Bill nails it. If you have a Rating in an Investigative Ability you can always use it for "core" activities but of you're out of points in your Pool you can't get additional benefits. With General Abilities you can still use them at 0 Pool but you can't add to your d6 roll to enhance the chances of success. In some games, ToC, if you have no Rating in Firearms to begin with you are heavily penalised if you use a gun, but not if you have a Rating but are down to 0 Pool.

Ime, there are few problems with the system swinging from competence to incompetence as players generally marshal their Point uses very effectively and it's worth noting that in all the variations of Gumshoe each session you can have a Refresh of three General Abilities if you can find a safe place to hole up for an hour or so. For something like NBA where you are a super competent agent you can take a Haven and refresh up to full some of your fighting Abilities if you suspect a fighting scene is coming up, and given that agents in NBA normally have combat ratings at 8+ to begin with you really don't get the hero to zero decline; at worst you still generally have a 50/50 chance to hit most enemies if out of Pool points unless it's something very vampiric indeed - in which case it's probably an endgame anyway. If you started the session at full points that means you could have 16 (+) to spend throughout the session if things go your way. In NBA there are also additional ways to Refresh points by doing or saying cool, thematic things, just let your players know at the start how to do that and they will. Remind them if they forget.

One thing I would say to watch out for if you use pre-written scenarios is that a few Gumshoe scenario writers don't apply the rules properly in the scenarios, often using absurdly high target numbers or suggesting Spends in a way that points towards a bit of steerage for the "story." Be ready to change those back to what is suggested in the core rules so your players don't feel manipulated.

 

[Bill White]

Gumshoe's central game design conceit is this idea that "you always find the clue you need to do the next thing." It's a way of dealing with the problem of whiffing the investigation roll and not finding a clue you need. So it solves that problem by saying, okay, if you have Skill X, and you are present in a scene where clue X1 lives, you get that clue. The adventure designer then just needs to prepare an array of clues keyed by skill, and as long as the PC group has the right skills, they'll get to the end of the investigation.

In practice, that produces difficulties. "Who has Evidence Collection?" "I do." "Me too." "So you both notice..." "Ok. Do I mark off a point of Evidence Collection now." "No, it's a core clue; you would only spend a point if the clue were a bonus clue." "So I pay for non-essential clues but not for essential ones?" "Right."

Also, the fact that General abilities and Investigative abilities are measured on different scales seems hinky to players. "I only have 2 points in Library Use." "Oh, that's very good!" "So is my 2 points of Driving very good, then?" "No, I'm afraid not."

The easiest solution (in the sense of least system rewriting, because you just want to play those groovy spies vs. vampires or whatever) is to forget about "core clues" and "bonus clues" and just think about information and how different skills might produce different sorts of information in any given scene. This is often how people tend to play anyway. So Investigative skills would just be "Yes" or "No," you have them or you don't.

General skills would get rated the same way as in current iterations, and you could use all of the different special rules that have been grafted onto the system to add tactical depth to the in-game action if you wanted that, although I think those are actually a tough fit for the system.

A slightly different fix would be to rate all skills on the same scale, recognizing that sometimes you'll use "Chemistry" to make enough explosives and sometimes you'll use it to analyze what substances are present on the body--that is, sometimes investigative, sometimes general. So multiply all Investigative skills by 3, and then roll every time you used the skill. If you were using it to gain information, use the Cthulhu Dark model of a "1" gives you the least possible information and a "6" gives you the most; if you were using it to take action, use the existing system of setting a target number or rolling an opposing die. You could spend in either case; maybe instead of adding to the result you roll multiple dice and take the highest. That's a bigger drift, but the logic of it strikes me as easier to explain to players, since all skills work the same way.

 

[SeaJay]

Thanks all for the info, much appreciated.

So what do you make of this rule:

Esoterrorists, Page 10: “When your rating in an ability is 0, you can never get information or other benefits by using that persuasive tactic.”

Makes it sound like once you're at 0, that's that.

 

[Ragr]

It refers to having no Rating in the Ability rather than no Pool points. If you have no Rating you cannot use that Ability. If you have a Rating in the Ability but your Pool is at 0 you can still use the Ability for core actions related to it.

 

[Ladybird]

I am hoping someone might clear something up for me. I've read various GUMSHOE games like Esoterrorists, Fear Itself, and NBA, but I'm unsure how zero ratings work.

Let's say I have a rating in Intimidation, but right now I've no points left. Can I still intimidate someone? Or let's say I have points in Driving, but right now, it's zero, can I still participate in a high-speed car chase?

The rules seem to suggest no, which doesn't make sense. I mean, what happens if I see the bad guy in a getaway car and say I'm going to "give chase?" Does the GM just say, "Don't bother rolling you fail"?

So Investigative and General skills work differently. For an investigative skill, like Intimidation, you can still do it perfectly fine; you're still a top-class intimidator. But if you're out of points, you can't use it to get extra information until you get a refresh; you'd need to use some other approach for that.

For general skills, you can do it, but you're out of points to spend. You'll need to try and get a refresh somehow (Following a drive or a story complication, getting some rest in a haven, just waiting long enough, or using tactical fact-finding). Stuff like the thriller chase rules in NBA allow someone to get a small refresh fairly easily; once a chase, you can get a three-point refresh in exchange for some appropriate narration.

In general, I've found that a one or two-point general ability refresh in exchange for some small cost in narrative time isn't going to break the system, and can be just thrown out in exchange for nominal player effort in the downtime between dramatic scenes (Your group is going to be on the road for two hours - what are they chatting about or working on as they drive? Give a couple of points out.). Three points is a big refresh, which should require some level of effort to get, but anything less than that can just be given away fairly freely.

Thanks all for the info, much appreciated.

So what do you make of this rule:

Esoterrorists, Page 10: “When your rating in an ability is 0, you can never get information or other benefits by using that persuasive tactic.”

Makes it sound like once you're at 0, that's that.

Remember that ratings and points are not the same thing.

You get a pool of points equal to your rating, and it's points that you spend; the rating remains unchanged.

 

[Bill White]

So a player tries to sweet talk an NPC into letting them through the gate into the secured area. They role-play it out, and it's pretty good. As the GM, your job is to say, "Great! Do you have Flattery?" If yes (Flattery rating 1 or more, even if they have no points in the pool), then it works, for some value of works. "They blush and stammer and let you through." You can say, "Okay, spend a point of Flattery" if you think that this trick should only work a few times before getting old. If no (Flattery rating 0), then it doesn't work. "They look annoyed and shut the window. 'Don't make me tap the sign.'"

 

[chuckdee]

I found that to GM NBA I had to be careful about never presenting the PCs with a challenge of any given sort more than once in each adventure, because they'd be Jason Bourne the first time and the Keystone Cops the second. I ended up deciding that the Gumshoe system is not suitable to my needs.

It's a matter of managing resources. I like it personally, because I like giving the players a chance to mitigate risk and point towards what they think is important.

 

[SeaJay]

Thanks all for the feedback. Much appreciated

 

[Agemegos]

It's a matter of managing resources. I like it personally, because I like giving the players a chance to mitigate risk and point towards what they think is important.

The thing that I find disconcerting about it is that it requires the players to manage a resource that is not constrained for the characters, a Doylist constraint rather than a Watsonian one. Then you get the secondary constraint on the GM that if you present two obstacles or challenges of the same kind in an adventure the PCs cannot use their skills to full effect against both of them. I find when running NBA that I can’t use my main GMing technique – presenting things as they are or would be — without forcing the PCs into ignominious failure. PCs in Gumshoe can’t succeed in realistic circumstances because their general skills are exhaustible. And I don’t excel at or enjoy contriving the highly stylised circumstances in which they can excel. Besides, I haven’t worked out what to save NPCs’ pool points for.

 

[Agemegos]

So a player tries to sweet talk an NPC into letting them through the gate into the secured area. They role-play it out, and it's pretty good. As the GM, your job is to say, "Great! Do you have Flattery?" If yes (Flattery rating 1 or more, even if they have no points in the pool), then it works, for some value of works. "They blush and stammer and let you through." You can say, "Okay, spend a point of Flattery" if you think that this trick should only work a few times before getting old. If no (Flattery rating 0), then it doesn't work. "They look annoyed and shut the window. 'Don't make me tap the sign.'"

I’m not sure about this, so I’d like someone more competent with Gumshoe to explain, please. Flattery is an investigative skill, so it doesn’t cost anything to use it to get a clue or to overcome an obstacle necessary to propel the PC from the current scene further into the story. That means that this attempt would simply work for a character with Flattery if getting past the guard were further in to the story, cost a Flattery pool point if getting past the guard were outwards from or askew to the story, and not work for a PC with null rating in Flattery. Is that right?

 

[Bill White]

Yes, that's right. The general RAW principle is that something that's essential to getting to the end of the adventure doesn't cost anything, while something that's not essential but might be useful costs resources. If it's a total tangent it might not cost anything either, but still work. Or it might not work at all. You definitely spend when it's bonus information that might give you an edge or a lead to a short-cut, conceivably--both helpful and essential. You don't spend when either (a) inessential and unhelpful or (b) essential and helpful. If you don’t have Flattery, you have to try it a different way.

In practice, players like to spend, I have noticed. And I think it's okay to make them spend even to get a "core clue" if they get it in a way that seems contrived or overly convenient, as is often the case with Interpersonal skills in Gumshoe. But you're right that the RAW say it a little differently.

 

[chuckdee]

The thing that I find disconcerting about it is that it requires the players to manage a resource that is not constrained for the characters, a Doylist constraint rather than a Watsonian one. Then you get the secondary constraint on the GM that if you present two obstacles or challenges of the same kind in an adventure the PCs cannot use their skills to full effect against both of them. I find when running NBA that I can’t use my main GMing technique – presenting things as they are or would be — without forcing the PCs into ignominious failure. PCs in Gumshoe can’t succeed in realistic circumstances because their general skills are exhaustible. And I don’t excel at or enjoy contriving the highly stylised circumstances in which they can excel. Besides, I haven’t worked out what to save NPCs’ pool points for.

I’m not sure about this, so I’d like someone more competent with Gumshoe to explain, please. Flattery is an investigative skill, so it doesn’t cost anything to use it to get a clue or to overcome an obstacle necessary to propel the PC from the current scene further into the story. That means that this attempt would simply work for a character with Flattery if getting past the guard were further in to the story, cost a Flattery pool point if getting past the guard were outwards from or askew to the story, and not work for a PC with null rating in Flattery. Is that right?

Both of these seem to go with conflation between the three types of actions in Gumshoe - Clues, Spends, and Tests.

When dealing with an investigative skill (Flattery as in your example), if you have Flattery and say you're using it to gain the clue (or in transitional scenes where you'd not necessarily be looking for clues, the director can use it passively), then you get the clue if it is one necessary to the story. If you don't have Flattery, then you won't get a clue that's keyed to only Flattery (which is the reason for the divvying of Investigative Skill points- you want to go wide, not high. "Clue" is a loose name for it- it can also be used as shown above, to gain small favors, at the same zero cost.

Spends give you additional special benefits- something to help in your interpretation or a bonus in certain circumstances, even in some general conflict or test. The director tells you how much the spend will be before you spend the points, so you're never spending blindly. Every spend should count and not be trivial, especially as its a limited resource.

Spends can also be used to represent a degree of effort, and I think this is where the game shows that spends are not purely Doylist. When a runner is running a race, they have to take into account endurance vs speed and manage that for the race. But they have no hard numbers, only their sense from where they have trained. Agents in Gumshoe are already highly trained without making spends, and considered competent in their skills. Spends represent additional effort, and there are limits to how much effort you can put in during a given time. Take a break and come back to it in real life would be the equivalent of exhausting your pool and becoming stymied. This effort is what you refer to when you talk about spending a point to get past a guard, but it's only if for some reason the guard required additional effort - it has no relation to how important it is to the story.

They even say this in one section in NBA: In the game world, expenditure of pool points in this way represents special effort and concentration by the
character, the kind you can muster only so many times during the course of an operation.

Tests are a totally different animal, and are what you usually deal with in most games- roll a d6 and add your Spends. It doesn't say for sure, but I let the players know about the difficulty before the roll, and they can decide what to do with those. The only one it explicitly says you don't is Sense Trouble.