Gaming Brouhaha

I’ve been looking at Mutant City Blues. I’m very fond of  the Gumshoe line of game, but recently I find myself questioning the big idea behind them. As Robin D. Laws sees it investigative games (such as Call of Cthulhu and Nemesis) become derailed when players fail skill rolls and their characters fail to spot vital clues. His resolution to this issue is simple – assume the investigators are competent enough to find the clues and give any character who has even the lowest level in the applicable investigative skill the clue. Then to allow higher ranks in the skill to provide additional flavour text or provide the clue in a less ambiguous format. This in theory shifts the emphasis from finding clues to the interpretation of clues. My concern is that by removing the investigative roll the game is removing some of the suspense from the game.

For a moment lets take a moment to look at a non-investigative roleplaying game. For example in an action filled pulp game I might expect rolls to determine if the protagonists manages to escapes falling rocks, to slip under the rapidly closing door to escaping the chamber filling with water, to defeat the guards without sounding the alarm or to impress Dr. Overdoom’s daughter with his manly charm. Each of these is a suspenseful situation, but no matter the outcome the player and the GM know the game will continue.

Once we’ve determined what makes these suspenseful, can we find a way to apply this suspense to the investigative game model without running into the failed roll breaks the plot issue? I believe the reason these events produce suspense is:

1. There are multiple interesting paths down which the adventure could proceed, and the players have no idea which way things will go. For a moment (the duration of the dice resolution) the future of the game is in flux. Without a moment where the future is unknown we can have any suspense, and
2. The players have a stake in the outcome. The results of the roll will affect the character either directly or indirectly. In fact ideally the result will change the character in some way. The most suspense filled moments are those where permanent change for the character could result.

So, returning to the investigative game, I would like to find a way to reintroduce this suspense into the game without derailing the game. I’m going to suggest two models. Both are more narrative than the Call of Cthulhu method – in fact one of them will probably be dismissed instantly by many Call of Cthulhu GMs as unworkable, but I feel its worth suggesting.

The first suggestion is to change the question. Instead of asking “Does your character find the clue?” we ask “What does it cost your character to find the clue?” or “What is you character willing to give up in order to find this clue?”. This may involve a small step from task resolution to the more macroscopic level of conflict resolution. We can change those investigative rolls to be things like: “Do you find the book without the librarian noticing you nosing around the occult section?”, “Can you get the information from the witness without a bribe?”, “Do you spot the secret door out of the room before the non-Euclidean architecture takes its toll on your mind?” or “Will you locate the map before your sister is sacrificed?”. The players still get the clue, but there is a genuine sense of suspense.

The second suggestion is a little less traditional. Let the player and GM roll for narrative control of the clue, so for example if you are searching a library perhaps a successful ‘Library Use’ roll will allow the player to actually narrate what he finds, whilst a failure places narrative control in the hands of the GM. You could go a stage further and allow various degrees of narrative control of the clues – so perhaps a great roll gives the player full narrative control of the clues whilst a bare pass allows the GM to change two or three minor or one major item in the description. The issue here is that the game will not follow a pre-plotted path. I’d suggest it doesn’t have to. So long as you note all the clues, and ensure that once something has been discovered it’s not later contradicted you may be surprised how smoothly things will run if you are willing to improvise. Players familiar with the indie scene may have seen this sort of resolution in games like Wilderness of Mirrors by John Wick or InSpectres by Jared Sorensen (both produced by The Wicked Dead Brewing Company). Its also not a huge step from the way Primetime Adventures resolves conflict. I’d like to attribute this idea to someone but I’ve no idea who originally came up with the idea.

I like the Gumshoe system. I first encountered it with Fear Itself, but since then have purchased Esoterrorists, Trail of Cthulhu and Mutant City Blues, but I still feel there is a place for dice in investigation. Having said that through the introduction of rules like Character Drives, Sources of Stability and Pillars of Sanity I feel the Gumshoe rules have added tremendously to Cthulhu style investigative play.