Quote from: CRKrueger;364433My point is did you really need an entire frigging game system to tell someone... "If there's a clue so important it will ruin the entire adventure if the players miss it, then make sure they don't miss it?"  I mean you could have just said...

We don't need a system for anything. Moreover, we don't need new or different system. You can continue to use whatever you have for whatever you're going to run.

That said, why would people want a Trail of Cthulhu? There are several reasons. I would imagine most of them are subjective, so there isn't much point in labeling them good or bad.

Seanchai

Quote from: The Shaman

Quote from: Originally Posted by LordVreegAnd if you are going to find nearly every clue every time you look, where is the investigation?

A couple of thoughts here.

First, environments should be clue-rich. One of the consistent problems I note with investigative adventures is that the amount of information available to the adventurers tends to be too limited. I understand why this is: the designer doesn't want to 'overwhelm' the players with too much information. But by making a clue-rich environment, you open up opportunities for the players to find some and miss others without creating a bottleneck.

Second, 'investigation' doesn't just mean following clues to solve a mystery. It may also be the case where the adventurers have a good idea of what's going on, but they must gather evidence to prove what they know in order to initiate some kind of prosecution. In this case there's no 'mystery' per se, but the adventurers must still piece together the elements of the crime. How they go about doing that is the adventure.

Quote from: The Shaman

Quote from: Originally Posted by LordVreegFailing a check/CC just means the game moves, and if the PC's work harder and dig deeper, they keep going from there. No fear of failure means no thrill of success.

Access to clues does't equal necessarily success. If the adventurers can't gather clues fast enough, the perpetrator or antagonist may escape, or succeed with her plot, or implicate someone else.

I think I was trying to phrase points in terms of the OP, which dealt with the importance of failing.
I also agree with you that due to many adventure designs teaching simple flowcharting, often games are set up with 'clue a' leading to 'clue b', etc.  as opposed to a more dynamic, posssible clue-rich enviroment.

And of course access to clues does not equal success.  It's just that the OP was about the importance of failure, and often no access to clues = failure.  There are many ways to set objectives, sometimes time based, enemy based, negotiation based, etc.  
And Seanchai is very right that if the GM has detailed notes and the PC is searching right where the clue/item/idea is, good playing overrules the needs of the dice.

Quote from: Seanchai;364548We don't need a system for anything.

I agree.  However, one of the core themes running through the new-school design philosophy is not just "system matters" but "system matters to the extent that it is necessary in order to play a certain way".

So we end up getting an entire game system that basically could be done in a one-paragraph GM-tutorial.

Gumshoe isn't a "bad" system, it suffers from a design philosophy I find terribly misguided.  Attempting through mechanics to prevent bad GMing is a useless exercise.

I've only read Gumshoe as part of Esoterrorists rather than Trail of Cthulhu.

The principle behind Gumshoe is that the challenge in a roleplaying game should not be finding the clue but making sense of the clue.

It is an interesting insight. It may be old news to some or not. YOu may agree or disagree.

Gumeshow goes and implements this principle taking out investigative skills from the geneeric core system and putting them into a more granular and scaleable investigation subsystem. It not unlike many games in which the combat rules forms a subsytem separate and more detailed from the core rules. And I can see the sense in that.

Where it get a little paradoxical is this: if the principle is that finding the clues is not what matters in a mystery, then why do you need an expanded investigative skill system? The answer, according to Gumshoe is the clues need to be layered. That is to say the basic clues are for free but futher clues depend on your specifc skills.

That's where it lost me. It might work fine but it seemed to me on paper a little a fudge not to mention a lot of work for the GM to prepare.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;364439I have some experience of tracking. The usual thing is that finding some tracks isn't in doubt, how much information you get out of them is in doubt.

I don't doubt Kyle's Tracking feat, but clearly he's never encountered one of these:

Awsome find on the picture, WB!  Thanks for that.  Darn it, the artist's name eludes me at the moment, but I always loved his semi-comedic/semi-realistic D&D art.

Quote from: CRKrueger;364746So we end up getting an entire game system that basically could be done in a one-paragraph GM-tutorial.

I guess I'm thinking in response, so what? There's another game out there that's different from the others. I don't see the harm.

Quote from: CRKrueger;364746Attempting through mechanics to prevent bad GMing is a useless exercise.

No, but they can help alleviate some of the symptoms of bad GMing.

Seanchai

Quote from: Drohem;364819Awsome find on the picture, WB!  Thanks for that.  Darn it, the artist's name eludes me at the moment, but I always loved his semi-comedic/semi-realistic D&D art.

mmmm, Jim Holloway?  

Quote from: winkingbishop;364824mmmm, Jim Holloway?  

Good guess, yup, it's him.

Jim Holloway

Hehehe... there was some cool nostaglia going on as I looked over his website.

Quote from: Seanchai;364823I guess I'm thinking in response, so what? There's another game out there that's different from the others. I don't see the harm.

No, but they can help alleviate some of the symptoms of bad GMing.

Seanchai

That's the problem and the harm.  New school design philosophy is to treat the symptoms of bad GMing through mechanics instead of just letting people learn how to GM.  It's the over-protective Nanny mentality applied to game design and it ends up just crippling who it was meant to help.