Gumshoe and Me

Within the next week I should have my hands on a print copy of Casting The Runes, an RPG based on the ghost stories of M. R. James. As a huge James fan I'm pretty excited about this.  As a kickstarter backer I've already got the pre-production PDF so I've already had a good read.  With the print copy of the adventure, The Secret of Chimneypots already in my hands, I've been taking another look at the PDF in preparation for the arrival of the print.

There's only one thing I'm not sold on regarding this game and that's its use of the Gumshoe engine.

I've played Gumshoe games before (Bubblegumshoe and Night's Black Agents) but they never really clicked.  I thought that I wasn't quite getting the system.  But reading Casting The Runes, I've realised that it's not that I haven't got my head around it. I understand it OK. I just don't enjoy it.

I don't like not rolling dice for the investigative abilities. I understand the design principle that the game is about interpreting the clues, not finding them, and the way that the players should always be able to find the core clues.  However, I prefer the approach Liminal takes, where if you're searching for a key clue and fail the roll, you're still going to find it but there's some negative consequence.  Imagine you're searching an office for a letter.  You suspect it's in a hidden drawer but fail the awareness roll.  You still find the drawer, but you make so much noise trying to brute force the thing open without having located the trigger mechanism that you attract the attention of the owner of the office.  Now what do you do?

I can see the merits of both approaches, but the latter is the one I find more fun.

I don't like pool spends for the general abilities.  Having to gamble on how many points to spend on something before you've rolled and without knowing what target number you're aiming for isn't fun for me.  It's stressful.  When I roll dice I like to have some grasp of  how likely I am to succeed, and I never have that in Gumshoe.  Constrast with Call of Cthulhu, where I know exactly what my chances of success are, and while luck is a finite resource, I don't have to spend it until I already know how well I rolled.

I like tension and uncertainty in investigative horror, but I like it to come from the unpredictability of dice rolls, not whether I happened to pick an appropriate point spend.  And I can absolutely see how that aspect might make for a more thrilling game for someone else.  It's just not my kind of fun.

It's time to accept that Gumshoe and me don't get on.  The issues could certainly be mitigated; the rules allow for 'toll tests' where you do know the difficulty and can spend points after the roll.  Simply doing all general ability rolls that way would remove a lot of what I don't enjoy.  Including some kind of roll to investigative abilities if there's a potential for negative consequences would also add some extra interest, although that would be mathematically more complicated to handle.  All of this does require that the other players and the GM are all on board with the changes.

I intend have a shot at running Casting The Runes as written, using the pre-written adventures and maybe the above rules modifications.  However, I rather suspect it's going to join Serenity as a game I use for its setting material rather than its system.  The question is, which system do I use?

Call of Cthulhu is the obvious choice, as the classic game of investigating occult mysteries.  The time period is slightly different, but not so much as to require significant changes to skills, and the stereotypical James antiquarian protagonist is near enough to a Lovecraftian librarian to be confident we're going to end up with similar types of character.

Cthulhu Dark is another good option.  The rules-light system requires effectively no conversion, and the focus on narrative over combat is very fitting.  The idea where if you actively take on the horrors you will die certainly works thematically.

Liminal, despite being a modern day setting with a lot of explicitly supernatural character options, is also a contender.  It shares what I consider Gumshoe's strong point - a focus on abilities over attributes - and while the thematic differences would require more work to overcome, with such a simple underlying mechanic it's certainly possible.  It's my favourite game for doing investigative scenarios, so could be worth the effort.

To me, Christmas is just as much a time for spooky tales as Halloween, so whatever rules I end up using for it, I hope to get Casting The Runes to the virtual table very soon.