Quote from: AaronBrown99;888384I started reading Trail of Cthulhu and stopped when I saw the writer/editor can't or won't use English pronouns correctly.

How did they use pronouns?

Quote from: Bren;888387How did they use pronouns?

They used "she" as a default pronoun. When I read an RPG that uses "she" as the pronoun for a non-specific person, I stop reading.

I know at that point that the writers or editors are more interested in causes over grammatical correctness, and I won't support that with my time or money.

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;888334I have the Gumshoe SRD and Mutant City Blues. I'm really grooving on it lately, but I'd like to know how others feel. Would you run it, or run it again?

I've only run Fear Itself as a one-shot, but overall, it was positive. Of course, it helped to visualize the skills as "tricks to turn the tables", which I explained to my players they're required to do:).
I'd probably run it again, but I've got enough games as it is:D!

Quote from: AaronBrown99;888393They used "she" as a default pronoun. When I read an RPG that uses "she" as the pronoun for a non-specific person, I stop reading.

I know at that point that the writers or editors are more interested in causes over grammatical correctness, and I won't support that with my time or money.

Same here.

The other annoying one, I forget where I read it, is scrupulously switching back and forth between he and she every time. If pronouns bother you, use "character" or "player" instead of "he".

I'm don't care for the system at all but I do think the ToC stuff makes for interesting CoC supplements/adventures. Good alternative takes on the Mythos.
Some of their other setting are cool to borrow from as well.

Quote from: AaronBrown99;888393They used "she" as a default pronoun. When I read an RPG that uses "she" as the pronoun for a non-specific person, I stop reading.

I know at that point that the writers or editors are more interested in causes over grammatical correctness, and I won't support that with my time or money.

That was part of what someone else was referring to as the 'pretentious twattery'. Glancing back through Trail a little more closely and I can see that now. Does it in Esoterrorists too.

I guess the game is playable only by women? :cool:

I've run Gumshoe, but Gumshoe is like d20, in which you have to really specify which version you're running.  Gumshoe's investigation side has evolved significantly since the first wave of books -- Esoterrorists 1e to Night's Black Agents -- and its combat and bells-and-whistles have really evolved since Night's Black Agents.

FWIW, I really enjoy Night's Black Agents, and most Gumshoe games, but they're not intuitive if you've been playing classic roleplaying games.  It took me a long time to realize how much of a shift they are.  I was playing them basically like a normal RPG with the investigative end attached, when the "procedural end", as its called -- your combat, your social stuff, etc. -- is just as unique and different.

For example, refreshes are really important to the game's action economy, but that's not obvious at the start.  Pacing the use of general skills is also important, but counter-intuitive to the way most people play until somebody explains, "Hey, this is the designer's intent."  

With that said, Gumshoe is probably an acquired taste.  If you don't like it, you don't like it, and you're not doing anything wrong.  Even if you don't like it, I think it's produced some incredible campaigns -- I'd put Eternal Lies, The Armitage Files, and the Bookhounds of London books as some of the best stuff ever released for Mythos roleplay, and The Dracula Dossier is simply an incredible work, even if you convert it to something like Spycraft 2.0 or whatever.  There's some good baby in that bathwater.

I don't care at all for the system for reasons previous posters have explained but The Book of Unremitting Horror (Their "Monster Manual" of Clive Barker-ish splatterpunk beasties) is excellant.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;888475I've run Gumshoe, but Gumshoe is like d20, in which you have to really specify which version you're running.  Gumshoe's investigation side has evolved significantly since the first wave of books -- Esoterrorists 1e to Night's Black Agents -- and its combat and bells-and-whistles have really evolved since Night's Black Agents.

Can you comment on how things have changed?

What are the changes in investigation and combat? Does the case of spending on Firearms and Weapons still apply, for example?

Quote from: jhkim;888487Can you comment on how things have changed?

What are the changes in investigation and combat? Does the case of spending on Firearms and Weapons still apply, for example?

Investigation-wise, the thinking behind how to structure adventures and clues has gotten a lot more in-depth and thorough.  The types of clue-bearing scenes and the types of clues have been better thought out.  The two games which use these expanded thoughts are Gaean Reach and Esoterrorists 2e, and I found them much more useful than in previous games.  

As far as General abilities go -- those are the action type skills -- starting in NBA really, they get a big kick.  Opportunities to refresh pools increase through the use of cinematic rules for combat and skill benefits for having a skill of 8+, which means the number of times where you come out with no points to spend is reduced.  Opportunities to use skills in inventive ways to get more benefits, like Tag Team Skill Benefits and the like, increase, which involve pairing an Investigative ability to a General ability.  

The key is that a lot of baked-in assumptions that the designers clearly had in mind but didn't explain have been fleshed out and clearly stated better.  In addition, they've had about three years of Gumshoe con-panels to get questions and think about answers, and it shows.

They're still games which are built around replicating a literary or cinematic type of story, be it a mystery or weird tale or movie thriller.  If you're looking for something where there's no metagame thought, it's not going to be your cup of tea.  They've even added more metagame mechanics, like the Preparation ability.  They're pretty out-there, design-wise, and I think as time has gone on it's become apparent that they're a little more out-there than even the designers originally thought.

Quote from: Future Villain Band;888475...There's some good baby in that bathwater.

That is a fair point.

I don't refuse to read e.e. cummings just because he chose to format his poems like a nutjob!

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;888334I have the Gumshoe SRD and Mutant City Blues. I'm really grooving on it lately, but I'd like to know how others feel. Would you run it, or run it again?

I ran the entirety of The Zalozhiny Quartet and a variety of Night's Black Agents one shots, and played a good deal of Trail of Cthulhu. Overall, the games were very good, and the system largely achieves its goals.

Which is not to say it doesn't have its weakesses. To wit:

Quote from: jhkim;888370The telling point with skill point spending that turned me off was this:  A character has a loaded gun, but their best choice is to club an enemy with it because they are out of Firearms points, but still have Weapons points for boosting. This happened several times, and seemed utterly nonsensical.

Yup. I think the investigative skill system works nicely, but I dislike the general approach of the General Abilities. Beyond problems like this, I also notice it can make players hesitant to act since they are afraid to run out of points. I sort of overcome this by slathering on extra general ability points and paying fastidious attention to the player's chance to refresh. So it can work, but I do sort of recognize that part of that is me working around the weaknesses of the system.

I've come to disdain systems that make you pay points from a pool entirely in lieu of static bonuses (which is also a big reason I disdain the Cypher system.)

I do think Gumshoe should get credit for its investigative technique. Yes, if you are a sharp GM, you can do essentially the same thing in other systems. But again, those are often workarounds, not characteristics of the system, and I think having good practices "baked in" to the system is a good thing(TM).

At the end of the day, despite not liking the way it does some things, it still makes it onto the short list of games I'd run again soon.

EDIT: I think FBV makes some good points. I can't speak to all of the Gumshoe games, but I like NBA a good deal more than ToC.

It does nothing for me, but then I have always run lots of investigative games, and they run very smoothly. I even was going to write a game called Ecce Homicide which was a police procedural game, but  while setting down the ideas, I realized there was nothing mechanical at all there and it was all about the setup and presentation so I lost interest. Gumshoe reads like someone decided to do everything backwards just so they could mechanize the process.

never played but based on every little piece of info iv seen yea

Quote from: Future Villain Band;888475There's some good baby in that bathwater.

Pretty much every single thing they put out for Trail of Cthulhu is a near must buy for anyone running any type of Cthulhu game.