What /tg/ thinks about Gumshoe?

Not much to say from me, but I wanted you to know I also love ToC and NBA (I also own Mutant City Blues but haven't used it yet). I wish I had a group that would get into GUMSHOE enough for me to run NBA. My current one is new to RPGs so need a lot of breaking in before I want to try the system and then it'll be a while before I feel they'll want to commit to a campaign.
>TFW you have all the Dracula Dossier books but an unripe group...

>>49859615
I keep meaning to read these, but I never get around to it. I've had them saved for at least two years.

>>49862280
Dracula Dossier looks promising, but first I have to do The Armitage Files to the end, I had to stop my first attempt to do it with a previous party because of time.

>>49862349
I'm sure you know vaguely what they're all about.
ToC- CoC
NBA- Spy thriller with vampires
MCB- Cops in a world with superpowers
The rest I'm not sure. Fairly sure I've seen Essoterrorists portrayed as Unknown Armies tier weird crossed with Delta Green. Things like News bars on TV channels being a secret plot for mind control sort of thing.

>>49862391
>News bars
You mean crawls? (the text that scrolls across the bottom of the screen)

t. broadcastfag

>>49859615
I'm a huge fan of the game from a theoretical standpoint, and I really like the core design philosophy - it might not be the only way to do things, but it's very interesting to see how the designers tackled the problem.
The one thing that stops me from running Gumshoe is scenario design. I mean, there's a lot of things that need to be prepped, from the looks of it. How do you deal with that?

>>49862428
Thank you knowledgeable Anon. At least you understand me.

>>49862444
>>49859615
I hate this system. Basically, the GM does ALL the fucking work and the players just sit around and do the least detailed actions possible so they get the most of it.
This is exactly the opposite of roleplaying

The sole purpose of its existence is to provide a solution for a nonexistent problem, and it still has the audacity to it stupid and inelegant and BRAG about it.

>>49862492
I don't think you're running it right. Read through the intros and examples of play again.

>>49862498
Okay. Sorry you don't enjoy the system.

>>49862444
First is to be sure all the Investigation Abilities are covered by the PC. After that, there is not so much things to prepare : for each scene, there is a key clue to guide the party (oftenly a clue that didn't need any ability to be found). The others clues are just suggestions to help party to understand what happend. You don't need to know them all. Just have the page opened. It's not a problem if the party don't find them all, they don't need all of them. And don't forget to have NPCs' Abilities in front of you, they will be usefull.

>>49862492
I don't agree with you anon. Whenever a player use an Investigation ability, he has to describe what he does with it (for example, "I use architecture to look after secret passage"). The Gumshoe is not easy to be handled, because the player has to learn the using of each ability. Sound like it's your party fault, because I've seen the attitude you describe in Call of Cthulhu :
>"I roll Spot Hidden Object"
>"You find nothing"
>"Ok next place"

>>49862498
Either you have never run an actual investigative scenario, or illusionism is so deeply ingrained in your DM habits that you cannot be saved.

>>49859615

System has interesting ideas, but it's a curiosity at best. I guess the problem with it is in its core concept: it was created to solve a problem that doesn't exist. There's a huge rant in... the Esoterrorists book I believe, that basically shittalks games like Call of Cthulhu because "one failed Spot Hidden check can stop the whole adventure in its tracks! Here's a new system where that will never happen!" and when I read it all I could think of was "that has never happened to anybody, it's not a real thing, WTF are you talking about".

Gumshoe focuses on detective work as advertised, that much is true. It also reduces detective work to a really mechanized form of it: a linear string of clues, where players find one clue, apply correct skill on it, get revealed the next clue, apply the skill etc. and it's just following the steps in the end. And the GM has to plan these steps rigidly in advance. I don't feel like it's doing anything dramatically better in that regard than what just rolling spot hidden (or your system's equivalent) does. Haven't played it, but reading from the books it seems like a bunch of snake oil to me.