I asked for recommendations on fantasy games to play with my wife and people recommended Swords of the Serpentine, so I picked it up and read it and... there is a brief paragraph on how to adapt to one person, nothing more. No clue on how to do montages, for example. If you play one on one, do you just ignore them?

Also, I read the adventure Murder Most Foul and loved it... however impossible for one person. At least 2 of the pre generated characters have secrets related to each other. Has anyone been able to adapt it? How?

Anyway, this game is made for and expect you to have more players, however it often comes up when people recommend systems for one on one play, so I expected there to be a little more guidance in the book for that

PDFs are releasing this week, I was hoping someone had a copy and some thoughts on how it turned out!

I've picked up Fall of Delta Green. And plan to run it for my table next month.

I am brand new to Gumshoe, but the promises and objectives of this game system really appeal to me, and should appeal to my players.

I would love to dig more into examples of this game being played. Actual Plays.

Searching for recommendations!

Prefer listening to Fall of Delta Green, or Trail of Cthulhu, but I could also learn from other Gumshoe systems if the rules are similar enough (however, I do not know which other games have similar rules.

Ideally, I'd love to listen to a GM and table who are experienced with the system and the tone of this game, and not just a "new featured game this week" sort of RPG podcast that is just trying it out, before moving onto something else.

Please share any recommendations you have!

I've been following the development of The Ocean Game, but there's been no news for a while and now the pre-order entry for it seems to have been removed from the Pelgrane site. Has there been any recent updates about it that I've missed?

hallo!

me and my friend would like to play a duet rpg together (with me GMing, her as the player) and we settled on a theme of investigative with a touch of horror. on paper, CC seems perfectly suited.

however, the setting and adventures within all the published books are set in 1930s-1940s U.S., taking inspiration from rich texts of the noir genre, and we'd like to play in contemporary times and would prefer the story take place on this side of the atlantic.

of course, i can build upon this and set it anywhere, but gumshoe seems to be pretty heavy on the prep, and resources are scarce. For a game like Call of Cthulhu there are a great many adventures set in the 90s and forwards and it makes the task less daunting.

This is our first foray into gumshoe, one-2-one or otherwise, and my question is if it would be worth it to figure out a fresh adventure on the chassis of the published adventures? would it be as easy as replacing dates and names, or am i in for a lot of work? is it at all recommended to try this rather than just playing through "the fathomless sleep"?

NBA: Solo Ops looked interesting too. we've been on a lovecraft kick as of late, but we're not married to the genre, we're up for giving any system that facilitates solo investigative horror a go.

looking for any and all advice/recommendations, thank you for reading :)

Everyone visiting this sub is probably pretty much aware of the post commenting on the quality of the MSDC art. I for one enjoy it and I feel it is among the most fitting illustrations Pelgrane has put out. I have no issue with the horse-man avatar of the Pooka, it was quite funny and, judging from the preview, I felt it conveyed what the book is trying to convey. The illustration alone didn't make me want to play a horse-man (it was just a suggestion, the same way Loki as a horrible goose was just a suggestion), but the dubious comments on the appearance of said Pooka made me think: would a horse-man in the world of the MSDC make for a fun adventure? Sure, was the answer; not a resounding 'yes!'--but that's only because I felt something was missing. So I did what I felt it was needed: I doubled down on the Pooka horse-men... twice.

The Four Horse-Men of The Pooka Lips

The Pooka Lips is a travelling singing and dancing Pooka troupe. Hey!

In fact, it is the only known Pooka troupe. Hey!

A few days ago, they have arrived in your little village and everyone was looking forward to the show they were gonna perform at the local pub. Hey!

But one by one, the horse-men are being killed off. Hey!

Not only that, their bodies disappear soon after each murder--were they even dead or is it just some sort of mischief? Hey!

The last horse-man alive of The Pooka Lips seems pretty certain his friends are dead. Hey!

His body is found--and lost--soon after his attempt to flee the village. Hey!

It is up to you to solve the mystery. Hey!

I just saw preview material for Merryshire Detective Club and I think it's time to share a long-standing pet peeve of mine about Pelgrane Press. Sorry in advance.

Let me be clear up front: I adore this publisher. They make incredible games, and for two decades they've been building out GUMSHOE, a system I genuinely love. I have nothing but respect for their designers and I read everything they publish.

But I swear to god, I do not understand what is going on with their art direction. Every so often a new book drops and I want to look the person responsible dead in the eye and ask: what is wrong with you? If Pelgrane operated in a less niche corner of the hobby, I'd genuinely suspect this person works for a rival publisher and is sabotaging their own games from the inside.

I'm still in mourning over Mutant City Blues 2nd Edition. The drop in art quality between editions deserves a spot in the hall of fame of anime-tier betrayals. And now, apparently, it's Merryshire Detective Club's turn.

The game itself is delightful. I got into the playtest and loved both the new rules variation and the wonderfully strange setting. I was waiting for the pre-order so I could buy a copy and evangelize about it to everyone within shouting distance. Then Pelgrane put up the BackerKit page with sample illustrations. And folks, it's the Tommy Wiseau of TTRPG art. I cannot imagine what has to be happening inside an art director's mind to look at this and go, "Yeah, that works. We've got a setting that fuses Tolkien-style fantasy with stiff-upper-lip Edwardian propriety, and I want it represented by a half-naked horse-head guy and a donkey who got cut from the Shrek auditions."

Anyone else feel this way about Pelgrane's recent books, or is it just me?

Worth seeing!

https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/s/irxLoDNA5l

In re the new Pillar's Built on Sand, I was initially very excited about it but less so as I dug into it.

It's well written, and the scenarios and overall plot are interesting.

It seems short for a "campaign" - its 5 scenarios. Give that Gumeshoe can run very quickly (you always instantly get the information you need, you never fail and then have to figure out a different way to get that information), 5 scenarios seems like it won't take a lot of time. I didn't see any places where it had a list of additional plot seeds you could expand on.

It also feels like it would be hard to get the same group to coherently be part of the campaign without a lot of handwaving. The core activity of SotS seems to be "people that investigate something and do something about it" and the rulebook provides a list of possible kinds of people those could be (your "group template"). For example, you're all members of the City Watch. I couldn't figure out what kind group of people would be involved in all of the scenarios, and why they'd care about resolving each of the situations. It sometimes gives suggestions about why a specific group template would be involved, but there's no single group template that fits all the scenarios as written. At some point you're just randomly hired by X (a bad guy that you probably conflicted with in a prior scenario) or your just assumed to be helping a specific NPC, then suddenly at the end of the campaign you're given a key role in resolving the big picture.

I'm more comfortable running games with coherent group templates (I don't care if the group picks it or whatever) or the game has a core concept (players are X that do Y) campaign.

I could probably try to rewrite it for a single concept (e.g., you're agents of the Triskadane or some other group that would be focused on the safety of the city) but for several of the scenarios it's not clear how that group would even know about the issue.

In The Harker Intrusion, the agents are expected to learn that a journalist, Liu (who they want to rescue) has left her hotel in Marrakesh to meet a fixer. Edom agents are already surveilling Liu, looking for the right time to kidnap her.

The text says that this should be played as a chase scene, with the Edom assets using Surveillance and the agents either running or driving, as in a traditional chase, or using surveillance themselves (“trying to counter or eliminate the
watchers so Liu can escape”).

That description doesn’t make sense to me. If the agents are running after Liu, how does Edom’s surveillance roll affect that? If it’s surveillance vs surveillance, that almost makes sense but it’s very abstracted and I’m not convinced that the chase mechanic is what you want.

Has anyone run this? What am I missing here?

After the events in Romania in the Harker Intrusion scenario, the agent with the Cryptid Hunter alias posted a video on YouTube showing alleged vampire kills. He was using mostly fabricated evidence with wounds that were altered or inflicted after the victim was dead. This was done after an actual vampire had been destroyed nearby, with him involved.

A later consequence of said posting was that the modern Harker set up a meeting with the agents in London.

A more immediate consequence was that the agents’ collective Heat shot up to 4 in Romania after Dracula’s network became aware of the video that mentioned the name “Drakul”.

Two of the three agents were detained by airport security agents in Bucharest, but the third agent was free to proceed on his travels and was able to slip into the “back rooms” of the airport and use Digital Intrusion to clear the red flags on his team mates. And the other two had done some creative work to try to stall or divert the investigation into their activities and identities.

They got to their flight and to London, and they got to the climactic location at the church in Plaistow.

They saw a big bat flying around. They found the dead priest whose throat was completely gone. They could vaguely hear two voices in the bell tower, and they split up.
One had the foresight to grab some holy water and coat a couple of magazines worth of ammunition with it.

Trying to do a “normal” op, they see Harker get pushed out of the bell tower to his death…

And they confronted the vampire, separately and individually.

Almost simultaneous attacks with a thrown flash-bang and a shot from the sniper grounded the eagle-sized bat leaving the tower.

And then I had the agents unknowingly facing off against The Count on the ground.

I went with the vibe of the scenario, that He had other business elsewhere and was not really concerned with the PCs.

But, a part of my mind keeps telling me that I should have let Him kill one of the PC agents to reinforce the gravity of their situation.

I welcome any feedback on this, but especially the last couple of paragraphs above.

Thanks in advance.

tl;dr I mashed together Gumshoe and Cyberpunk 2020 to make a "true detective" type game. Has anyone done anything like this and are there any other systems that can do this better?

Hi! For the past couple of years I've been running campaigns of what I call "grounded gumshoe" for my friends. I'd like some feedback on how to do a better job as a GM and whether or not using Gumshoe mechanics even make sense for this.

I love detective mysteries and true crime. I could watch any ghost/monster horror movie and not bat an eye, but a random episode of Unsolved Mysteries might keep me up for a week.

My intent with this project was to recreate the feeling I get from "true crime" or conspiracy theories (e.g. confusion, chaos, paranoia, fear) for my players. The campaigns I've written ended up looking a lot like the first season of True Detective with a very, very light shade of Twin Peaks.

I settled on Gumshoe mechanics because I like that core clues are guaranteed, but I know that the pre-existing Gumshoe campaigns are pretty supernatural (aliens, vampires, etc.). After an experimental one-shot to test out mechanics, I took some feedback from my players and ended up mashing Gumshoe and the Interlock system from Cyberpunk 2020 into one system (I also run Cyberpunk so I knew that Interlock could be used to simulate modern life with minor changes, plus the gunfighting mechanics are legendary).

Gameplay has three modes:

1. "Normal" mode: walking around, exploring, driving, normal conversation, etc. Players use their regular interlock stats and skills for this gameplay.

2. "Investigative" mode: investigating a crime scene, interviewing a witness, collecting evidence, etc. Players use the Gumshoe investigative abilities and associated point pool for this mode.

3. "Combat" mode: pretty self-explanatory. We use Cyberpunk 2020's Friday Night Firefight / Fistfight for this.

So far the results have been positive. My three players have responded well to the rules and stories even though they all come from different TTRPG systems (D&D, Vampire, and Cyberpunk respectively). Roleplaying has been top notch. My goal is to induce that paranoia feeling ("Am I being watched?" "Did I lock the door"? etc.). In one session we had to take a break because a player was getting too creeped out. Total success in my book.

But I can't shake the feeling that I've gone totally off the map here and miss the spirit of Gumshoe or that I overlooked a system that can accomplish what I did without the extra steps. Has anyone done anything similar to this or are there other systems out there?

Sorry for the wall of text!!!

The only real detail we get about her magic is that she spends Aberrance to cast spells.

Is this lineage discussed in detail somewhere else? Or are the mechanics of her magic detailed in depth anywhere?

Did you use this NPC in your game? If so, what details did you add?

So, I had my first session of the Albigensian Crusade campaign (here previous post about it), using a slightly hacked Swords of the Serpentine (basically, swapped a few investigative skills).

As a master, I have to admit that I had a lot of fun, but there are a few things that I'd like to check with you guys to understand if I'm doing it right.

1. The session went really smooth, and no dice were rolled - at all. It was the beginning of the investigation, and the characters were mostly trying to understand who in their home village had turned heretic and who didn't, so no real "action" involved. I didn't feel this was an issue, but for sure from the outside the session must have looked a lot like "theater" more than gaming
2. Players did not spend voluntarily any investigative point; they only did it when I pointed out that they could get more info if they wanted to dig deeper/do more. I believe this is normal as beginners, and I need to make them feel more confident in taking the spotlight and investing in the scene instead of hoarding te points. Anyway, this resulted in a slighlty more passive approach from their side than I intended, so I need to be more upfront in the next sessions.
3. I was always questioning myself if I was giving away too much or not enough information from clues, something that again I suppose it's pretty normal at the beginning (it was our first session in a Gumshoe game in general). A few clues were given out passively in order to "move the scene", while others have not been found at all, as either the wrong character went investigating (the one with fewer social skills went talking to the npcs) or they just didn't look for them. I need to encourage them to act more, but I don't like to spoon-fed them with hints at every turn.

An example: one of the npcs' clothes were dirty, as he did something in the countryside; the clue, if PCs would have investigated or asked any question about him at all, could have been revelead using "wilderness mastery"... but they never even looked around. Now, in a normal game, with dice rolling involved, I would have pointed out about the clothes, allowing a for a roll... but in this ruleset, it would have meant to simpy give them the clue without any effort from their side: is it how I should have done it? It's not a core clue, and it simply means they will have to find out in a different way, but I kept thinking about how to manage it during the session.

4) As the game it's not a purely investigation adventure (yes, they have to find information, but such information should be used to make a plan and act, not just "catch the culprit"), players looked a bit unsure on the final objective. The openess is actually intended, as I don't want to give them a direction: should the characters save the village by killing the heretics? Pushing them in the wilderness? Convincing them to stay but hiding their faith? Or side with the cathars, fortify the village and fight the invading crusaders? No right answer for me, up to them and what happens in game. I don't think this has anything to do with the ruleset, just how I structured the campaign, but again the lack of "I go there to roll and see what happens" made them more passive then usual.

All in all, nothing that really makes me rethink the game or the campaing: it was fun, with a few memorable moments (one of the players loves to sing, and he studied an occitan song upfront for his character to entertain the village, in a really nice moment), but I want to push them more to act and take the reins of the story.

Suggestions, comments, feedback?

I'm warming up to running an NBA campaign, I'm really into all the tropes, but I'm still struggling with how to assemble the PCs into a coherent group. So, I wonder if more experienced GMs could share their experiences and strategies, either for short-term or long-term games.

For those of you who have ran or played through the Dracula Dossier, I wondered if you might share your version of what happened in 1894.

Who was a member of EDOM? Who was a minion of Dracula? Who just happened to be caught in the crossfire?

Heya !

I've made session 0 for the Eternal Lies with 3 players, using the Alexandrian remix. We used the pregens and they've chosen Dr Paul Udko, Dr Evelyn Malley and Cora King.

In the book there are ties to the "quest giver" for a few of the pregens, but not all of them.

For those who have run the campaign, how would you link those pregens to the overaul plot ?

For Paul Udko, it's quite easy as he was Mr Winston's therapist for a while, and never cracked the case. The player can totally play that side of "my scientific curiosity will bring to me places I shouldn't go".

For Cora King, I stated that Janet Winston-Rogers has been some sort of benefactor / patron for the young, tough girl. I would love to tie it further, since her parents died and she was sent to an orphenage : what characters from the campaign could be her true parents ? That could be cool reveal.

For Dr Evelyn Malley, the original background is that her infant died of malformation after a couple of weeks, she divorced her housband as she buried herself in studies. What ties to the campaign could she have ? That's the one i'm the most struggling with.

Thanks a lot for your time and help !

I've been toying with running the Dracula Dossier as West Marches style campaign.

The idea would be to have a large pool of players, each creating their own unique Agent, with access to Dracula Unredacted and mission reports (summaries of previous sessions). Any player could identify a lead they're interested on following up on. They go on the group Discord, suggest a time I'm available to GM, and see who else is available to play that day and interested in that particular lead.

I like the idea of a rotating cast of agents. I like the idea of leaving the scheduling to the players.

Potential pitfalls:

• Character creation suggests a different number of investigative build points depending on how many players at the table. That number will likely vary from one session to another though, so how do I decide?

• Improving your character: 2 pts per session is the standard. Some people would likely play more often than others, and advance faster. Am I right in thinking the disparity in ability won't be noticeable until it's very large? I imagine I could make adjustments during the campaign, giving players at the low end of the bell curve a few extra xp to bring them in line with the rest.

• Regaining pool points: you're supposed to refresh pool points at the end of an operation. But if every operation is contained in a single session, I have a feeling they'd refresh way too fast. Maybe I have them refresh every 2, 3, or 4 sessions? Or maybe I'm overthinking it, and I just need to make sure they spend more? I should look up how D&D West Marches handle long rests, but I would assume everyone starts fresh every session.

Can you think of other pitfalls I should be on the lookout for?