No Clues Without Consequence, part 2

Let’s talk about clues in GUMSHOE-style gameplay.

This article is the second part of a larger essay that began with “No Clues Without Consequence, part 1” and introduced some of the core ideas of GUMSHOE. Start there or start here, if you prefer. References to future articles in this series will become links as those articles become available.

So, Clues

In GUMSHOE, information flows toward the players. It moves in packets called clues. But clues can encompass a lot. Here’s where I go so far as to put a dictionary definition of clue on the table for us to examine:

noun: information which may lead one to a certain point or conclusion

noun: an object or a kind of indication which may be used as evidence

noun: insight or understanding

verb: to provide someone with information that he or she lacks

A lot of players and GMs, I think, read the word clue and think about that first definition. Does a clue lead to “a certain point or conclusion” in GUMSHOE? It can. It doesn’t have to, though. It can deliver evidence that reinforces or dissuades characters and players. (“Maybe we shouldn’t go after this guy who thinks he’s a wizard, yet, because it’s sounds like he might actually have magic powers now.”) It can deliver insight or understanding without pointing at one certain point or conclusion. It can simply provide information to the players.

A clue can lead toward the revelation that the killer is left-handed but that’s not a narrative conclusion. Clues don’t have to point at a single, for-certain conclusion to the story but they should point forward in the direction of narrative progress. Clues help things happen.

“Clues move information toward the players.”

In other words, things should be able to happen after a clue is obtained that might not have been able to happen before that clue was obtained. Investigators might be able to visit a suspect’s apartment now that they have his address, for example, or dig up new information on the history of the mummy now that they know its name. Information leads to revelations that lead to new actions inspired and informed by the fictional world they inhabit. That leads to new clues and revelations, which lead to new actions, on and on, creating a story along the way. (We explore this more in “How Clues Connect.”)

So, clues move information toward the players — from where?

In the fictional work of the gameplay, clues move information from the world at large to the characters. In the actual practice of play, what that means is that information moves from the game designer or scenario writer (which may or may not be the GM) to the players — and it should move through the fictional game world, including the characters, to get there. A player’s character knows things that the player does not. The character, after all, has lived in the fictional game world her whole life, studying the skills and experiencing a life that the player may only see through glimpses, a few scenes of play at a time.

Clues create a channel to get information from the game world to the players in a way that is dramatic and automatic.

It’s dramatic in that the information flows through the game’s fictional world even as it’s traveling from one player at the real-world game table (the GM) to another (the player of a PC). By transmitting that information about the game world through the game world, it helps describe the world and the player’s character while driving the story forward with new information. A clue reveals something about the world and the character that knows or uncovers that clue. (We explore this more in “Worlds Acting On Characters.”)

It’s automatic in that no dice need be rolled to see if the information gets conveyed. Using an investigative ability doesn’t have a chance of failure. It won’t turn up a clue if no clue exists to be found in that location or scene, but that’s not a failure. This propels the story forward by opening a new option for action, a new trail for the players to explore.

That automatic element has been a major selling point for GUMSHOE to date — as well as a point where some players and GMs detach from the game. I’ve read messages from GMs who fear the automatic process may be become boringly automated when players spam every investigative ability in every scene. I’ve seen GMs and designers find this idea plain to the point of rejecting any procedure for it. I’ve heard players and GMs alike decry this kind of information-gathering as unrealistic (for various values of that term).

(This is not a problem unique to GUMSHOE. Disbelieving in hit points can undermine that mechanism. Not buying into a sleuth’s deductive leap can undermine the enjoyment of a mystery novel. One person’s realistic police show is another’s boring slog.)

All of these frictional issues have the potential to undermine actual play and all can be prevented or overcome by operating the GUMSHOE system like the communicative, descriptive mechanism it is. For now, focus on the movement of information. We’ll look at how to operate and portray those movements in other parts of this essay series.

So, clues move information to the players from the game world — but they don’t have to move only complete or infallible information to the players.

“Even Batman and Sherlock Holmes have to do research.”

In GUMSHOE, player characters have degrees of expertise that help them and the players perceive and make sense of the fictional world they’re exploring. That world can contain all sorts of weirdness or occulted factors invented for the sake of drama or mystery. Some of this information is unknown to the players because they are not the experts they are portraying in play. Some of this information is impossible for the player to know because it’s wholly made up by other participants in the fiction, like the GM, the game designer, the scenario writer, or other players.

Clues both answer questions and raise new questions.

• Did Gertrude kill Jacob? Why would she do that?
• Are vampires real? What are they like?
• Do aliens walk among us? Where did they come from?
• Can ghosts escape the material plane? How do they do that?

Characters use their expertise to know things about the observable, recorded aspects of their chosen fields but they seldom know what was in an NPC’s head or heart without evidence, for example. Characters are well read and well informed but they’re not omniscient. Being well versed in archaeology doesn’t mean an archaeologist knows the for-certain truth about the murder of Tutankhamen if she wasn’t there. It means she knows what’s knowable from her position and perspective as an expert from her era. Archaeology, after all, is a science that hinges on assembling evidence and information into educated conjecture. So it is with most GUMSHOE investigative abilities.

Even expert characters do not know everything in their purview all the time. Sometimes expertise means knowing where to find and how to recognize the information you need when you need it. Even Batman and Sherlock Holmes have to do research.

Investigative abilities don’t precisely overlap with the information a character knows to be true by witnessing it actually happen in the fictional world — that’s what actual play actually covers — because they are not a substitute for backstory and character history. A character’s statistics aren’t the fiction, they inform the fiction and the fiction informs them in turn. Your character’s personal history, profession, and experiences mean that your expertise in archaeology might be mechanically equal but cosmetically distinct from that of my character’s expertise in the same ability. (Still, it’s a good idea for groups of characters to diversify their expertise in most GUMSHOE games.)

If your character is a time-traveler from the future, and mine is a time-traveler from the past, and we meet in the year 2014, our methods and know-how about archaeology will be … different … even though we are both entitled to get archaeology-related clues from the GM. Once we both have a particular clue, we the players can portray the ways our characters incorporate and respond to and build on that clue in different ways.

This is where character expertise and player expertise come into direct contact. When two players have the same clue, they are free to reach different conclusions about how it should inform their character’s choices and future actions — because clues in GUMSHOE point forward but players decide what to do with them. Clues might spark a player’s imagination and thus provoke the characters to take action, switching from investigation mode to actions that have the characters add information to the game world.

Conclusions are the business of the players and their characters.

Core Clues Versus Spending Points

In GUMSHOE, we rate investigative abilities numerically to show how vast and profound a character’s knowledge is — and also to indicate how often they (and the player) can experience a breakthrough, make a greater discovery, or have a flash of insight that gives them an edge when solving the mystery at hand.

Our aforementioned archaeologist might be an astute professional just shy of world-class status, so let’s say she has a rating of 2 in the Archaeology ability — better than many peers but still looking up to those with higher ratings, perhaps. (For now.) It’s a short scale. Having a rating at all means the character is competent in that field and entitled to get certain clues from the game world (via the GM) just by taking action in the appropriate scene. Ratings are important because they also indicate how many points the player can spend before needing to refresh that ability, with each “point spend” (or spend for short) roughly equating to one better-than-average breakthrough or insight. Some grand insights might even require two points spent at once, depending on the circumstances like the unrevealed facts of the case or the particular interaction of this specific character with this specific scene.

Note that “a scene” in GUMSHOE is a narrative thing — as in “a scene between these two characters” or “a fight scene” — that can and often does overlap with a physical place. The term works two jobs, perhaps unfortunately, so it’s a good idea to be clear. Although a narrative scene might end when the characters depart, say, the interrogation room it can also end before that, with the hours between narrative scenes glossed over with a few words. Likewise, two adjoining scenes could happen in the same place, hours apart, just by saying “Early the following morning, your stakeout bears fruit when…”

The ability to have scenes and space overlap or diverge highlights the power and pliability of the RPG as a medium, but of course it also shows the importance of clarity and technique when talking about play and describing the fictional spaces and times where the story is taking place.

How and when abilities refresh varies from one GUMSHOE game to another, depending on the genre or world being modeled by the game. Abilities often refresh only once per investigation (or some other narrative unit of time like a chapter or scenario) rather than in fictional durations like hours or days. These points are dramatic, narrative devices; they typically don’t represent any resource that the character knows about.

“Leaning forward and being curious about the game world
makes your character shine.”

As narrative devices, points help the players decide when to leap ahead in the investigation by spending points. At the same time, they give players a simple means of drawing attention their characters — and their characters’ expertise — because spending a point not only says “I want more information here” but “I get to bring in more information because my character is especially good at this.” With the characters as experts at different things, the narrative spotlight moves around not at the whims of the dice or the capricious interactions of characters but in direct response to player needs. “I want to know more about those runes,” Annie says. “I have a point to spend in Archaeology if I need it.” Leaning forward and being curious about the game world helps make your character shine.

GUMSHOE parlance often describes a variety of clue types, usually depending on where and how the clue is communicated. I won’t teach them all here. For now, let’s focus on two types: common clues and clues requiring spends.

Common clues are packets of information that players and their characters are entitled to for showing up and having points in the relevant ability. This is a profoundly broad term. Really it means “any clue you don’t have to spend points to get.”

Some common clues are core clues and some are not. Core clues are the vital details that the scenario writer and/or GM expected to be necessary to drawing players and characters deeper into the investigation. “The victim was mauled to death” and “The victim was mauled to death by a lion” and “The victim was mauled to death by a lion the size of a Volkswagen” could all be variations on the same core clue, depending on the scenario writer’s aims and the judgment of the GM in actual play. It’s an art. In one scenario, spotting a bullet hole in a wall could be a core clue, unlocking a line of inquiry that leads to the short or circuitous history of the murder weapon. In another scenario, finding a similar bullet hole might require a spend, perhaps because the killer tried to patch it over or because the bullet landed just so in the mortar between bricks such that the investigators could easily miss it.

Those details though, of patches and mortar, may be dramatizations. The point of typifying a clue as core not not-core is often a question of adventure design. Core clues tell the GM to dramatize but not delay that information. A clue that requires a spend tells the GM that the related info is a bonus, shortcut, or advantage — a reward for a player who dares to spend a point now that might be useful later.

Thus, the clue types are a pacing mechanism of sorts, even though players can accelerate that pace by spending an appropriate point. Pacing isn’t in any one person’s hands here.

“Tell me something that makes my character look good.”

When do players spend points? Good question. The answer reveals a point of articulation in GUMSHOE, a spot where dramatic style — and an appreciation for the needs of collaboration — is essential to good play.

Sometimes, as the GM, I announce outright that a scene has some opportunities to spend points. “Lauren,” I might say, “your character’s a biologist. There’s more information to be had here if you want to spend.” That’s pretty weak sauce, dramatically speaking, but it is clear and helps teach the game and establish a rapport. This puts the emphasis on the player’s choice, not the fictional actions of her character.

I sometimes hint at the spend option entirely through description, teasing out the spend offer by the player. “Marty,” I might say, “those sigils painted on the floor look awfully familiar, but you can’t quite place them. They’re not from the old Mystical Order of the New Key but they might be related or something?” (See how I snuck in a bit of free information in there, too?)

The longer I play in cooperation with a particular player, the less overt I am. Often, this is a matter of a few scenes or a couple of hours. Sometimes it just takes a look, a moment of eye contact, to get the player to ask if they can spend a point.

And here’s the thing: I almost always say yes.

When do I say no? Usually when I don’t want to spend a lot of real-world time in the same scene or I’m afraid that I’ll bullshit some clue that makes a later part of the adventure less compelling. In short, I say no when I don’t want a player to feel like their point would be wasted. Never waste a player’s point. They either get an advantage or they keep the point.

Players volunteer to spend points because they want more information or some edge in the events of play. A player says, “Can I spend a point?” and I hear, “Tell me something that makes my character look good.” So I do.

This means spends can be implicit or explicit negotiations sometimes. A player might want to make a spend so he can feel definite progress or so he can escape a scene that’s not working for him or for a hundred other reasons. That point gets spent if I can think of something worth giving him in exchange. Individual GUMSHOE games offer various examples of worthy exchanges (sometimes overtly, sometimes by example). Some things I’ve given players for their points:

• Clues from other scenes, given out early
• Clues I expected to give out through other abilities (if the player made a compelling argument about how a particular skill applied, for example)
• Tools, equipment, or evidence that they can use later on (even if I’m not sure yet how they might be used)
• A new NPC to meet and interact with
• A new destination to explore where underrepresented skills can be used
• Bonuses on later actions as a result of insights made now
• The option to refresh another ability by one point

That list isn’t exhaustive, of course, and it looks a lot more interesting if I use specific examples from specific adventures to dress them up. It’s been my experience that dramatizing these results makes them feel worthwhile. Using an Urban Survival spend to find the scraggly survivor of an alien attack, hidden in the trunk of a stomped taxi cab, and discovering you two can commiserate using Urban Survival and social skills is more satisfying than just saying, “You realize that survivors would’ve probably headed east.” That I made up that NPC on the spot to convey the same clue is just part of the gig.

This requires some skill or experience with improvisation, sure. These kind of spends are like writing prompts for me. It’s a part of GMing that gets into collaborative world-building and impromptu writing and it’s something I love to do. (We look at this more closely in “Playing Adventures By Remixing Clues.”)

Over time, I find that experienced GUMSHOE players volunteer to spend points more often than I hint at opportunities to spend them.

As characters move around the game world, discovering new clues, the story moves with them along paths the clues reveal. This can be as simple as the GM saying “These runes are thought by your fellow archaeologists to be contemporary with Pictish etchings and, if they’re right, the best book to help you decipher them is at the British Museum.” That packet of information — multiple facts in one clue — points toward the British Museum. The players can decide when or if to go there, with or without nudges from the GM, depending on how many leads they have and what they want to pursue in whatever order.

This is where a player might volunteer to spend a point.

ANNE: I want to spend a point of Archaeology here to say that I’m already familiar with that book. I studied in London after all.

GM: Oh! Okay, yeah, nice. Sure. So: Those runes are definitely not Pictish but possibly from a sea-going precursor culture that helped inspire myths of Atlantis. The runes are a kind of florid rhyme, in their own tongue, that warn of autumn as the season of their dreaded harvest god, who they say can be heard in the trembling of the stones of Brodgar on the Orkney mainland on first and last sunsets of fall.

ANNE: Nice, okay. So add Orkney to our list of possible sites to investigate, I guess.

In this made-up example, I took Anne’s prompt as an opportunity to give her a core clue she could’ve gotten at the British Museum, letting her more or less skip that scene if she wants. As the GM, I’m empowered to move clues around that way to devise suitable rewards and keep things rewarding and compelling.

Now maybe there’s an NPC at the British Museum whose job was to give out that clue and who might not be a part of the adventure anymore. That’s okay. Anne’s choice to make a spend doesn’t mean she can’t still go to the British Museum and meet that NPC, but if the investigators don’t go there and meet him, they might be losing an opportunity to use that NPC as an explanation for future spends. If there are core clues still at the museum that I think they need, I can move them around to other scenes, say something like “Dr Haversham at the British Museum knows what you know now, Anne, so somebody might try to get this info out of him,” or devise another option.

The choices the players make cascade into the game world. As they act on the world, it acts back on them, provoking them to new action and creating narrative along the way.

This essay continues in part three, “How Clues Connect,” and beyond. One day we’ll collect the whole thing as a PDF for download, too.