On Gumshoe

[bryant]

I owe Simon Rogers some conversation about Mutant City Blues, but I haven’t had time to play it yet. On a readthrough, however, I’m quite impressed — all the usual Gumshoe goodness, plus a creative implementation of superpowers, plus excellent material on running a police-oriented investigative game. The section on roleplaying police interrogations ought to be stapled in front of any police procedural game ever. Which, come to think of it, includes Dark Heresy.

Maybe next weekend I can ad hoc something with the back of the book adventure. Anyhow.

I’ve also been playing the Penny Arcade game. (Fine. On the Rain-Slicked Precipice of Darkness.) For the record, point and click adventure games are remarkably suitable for the Gumshoe engine. It’s the same investigative model — clues are there when you look for them. Less room for improv and branches, of course, but that’s why I love tabletop.

(Knowledge: Mimes.)

The fights in OtRSPoD are pretty pre-ordained as well. You need a bit of reflexes, but you can always run and start over, and death is no big deal, and the combat system is not hard. In fact, the fights are almost just a mechanic to time-delay the delivery of the story. Hm.

Originally published at Imaginary Vestibule.

Comments

[drivingblind.livejournal.com]

Yeah, your impressions of MCB match mine. The police-oriented stuff is solid gold... and the "procedural-friendly" superpowers implementation has me intrigued.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

I'm very curious about the advice for procedurals, but I'll be honest that the superhero part doesn't entice me much.

[drivingblind.livejournal.com]

It's intentionally understated. There's a lot that "the superhero part" could signify -- what aspects of it put you off? There's no spandex here, but there is a lot of grit. You could easily reframe the thing as "psychic cops" or "supernatural cops" ... So I'm trying to figure out which trappings are making you hold the concept at arm's distance.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

My major problem with the superheroes stems from my feelings (http://jeregenest.livejournal.com/296119.html) that Gumshoe games are lacking in detailed consideration in the ability list, especially as it applied to non-Investigative abilities. That plethora of additional powers just leads to more annoyances and frankly my brief read over of the rules didn't lead me to believe they'd dealt with it.

Add to it that the emdia it draws from (Top 10, Heroes, stuff like that) just doesn't thrill me and its a setting I just won't touh.

[drivingblind.livejournal.com]

I can understand that. Thanks for sharing your perspective!