You spend points from your appropriate skill pool, roll 1d6 and try to beat the GM’s hidden target number. There is dice rolling involved in the General skills, such as for fighting things or driving. They still have to interpret the clues and put the mystery together. The game flows smoothly from scene to scene and players aren’t left scrabbling around if they miss a core clue. This works quite well in play, having run Trail of Cthulhu a number of times. You can also spend points to get more information out of a scene. You get the information as long as you say that you’re using that skill in a particular scene. The basic idea behind the GUMSHOE system is that you never roll for investigative skills. It's quite structured, but this structure provides a clearly defined set of parameters for how an investigation-based game can be run.
The GUMSHOE system is a commendable attempt to nail out a framework for both running and playing investigative games. Laws has seriously though about how people actually play genre RPGs and has made the game practical and accessible. I was surprised at how pragmatic the GM advice and the game design is Robin D. It’s also covered in the GM section of Ashen Stars, which covers on how to build these episodes, how to add a twist, and how to build in personal character arcs across the episodes, such as you’d see on Battlestar Galactica. (This is also much better explained by the Confrontation! Or plot-twist! The holodeck is broken (what a surprise!) The god-like alien is really a naughty-child.Something weird is happening on the Enterprise/planet the crew has landed on.Then, I realised as I read through Ashen Stars that every episode of Star Trek was a procedural mystery: I’m a big fan of Trail of Cthulhu (the ancestor-RPG to Ashen Stars) and wondered how on Earth you’d use the system for a space opera setting. It’s a bit like Traveller or Serenity (in that you have a PC-owned ship with a PC crew) but rather than flying from port to port trading, the focus is picking up investigation contracts and building up your precious reputation score rather than your wealth. The Federation-analogue, the Combine, haven’t pulled themselves together after the War yet, and hence rely on the Lasers to keep peace in the sector and to investigate crimes and distress signals. The PCs are ‘Lasers’ - Licensed Autonomous Zone Effectuators, who are essentially freelance police in a space frontier (‘the Bleed’) after a big war that ended seven years ago. Ashen Stars is a new sci-fi RPG from Pelgrane Press, focusing on space opera procedural mysteries, using the GUMSHOE system.
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