How To Play Pocket Gumshoe

Firebreathing Kittens

How to Play Pocket Gumshoe

Pocket Gumshoe is a very short, genre-agnostic implementation of the Gumshoe investigation game system. You play a character in a mystery, which you must solve by finding clues. Clues that must be found in order to progress the mystery are called Core Clues, and you cannot miss them. If you spend time in a scene where there's a core clue, and you use an appropriate approach to looking for the clue, you will get the clue. No dice roll required. You do use a six-sided die for other types of actions and for combat.

In Pocket Gumshoe, you have three investigative approaches: Academic, Interpersonal, and Technical, and for each of these you can have a number of tags that help define how you use that approach. In this game, each player starts with one rank in each approach, and can add two more ranks (distributed as they see fit). I gave players three tags per rank in an approach-- Pocket Gumshoe leaves this and skill points up to the GM's discretion.

Here's an example of using an investigative approach. I'm playing Tom, an elderly wizard who knows a lot about medicinal plants and likes to paint. I've been hired by a nobleman to find a stolen family heirloom, a necklace. I'm in the kitchen, where there's an elderly cook and a maid, working. I could use an interpersonal approach, and maybe one of my tags is "elderly," so I get along pretty well with older folks. I chat up the cook and learn that the lord fired a footman last week. On my character sheet, I have one rank in Interpersonal, and I want to get a little more information about this footman, so I spend it to get some more dirt. The maid overhears us and shares the gossip that the footman was always flirting with the nobleman's son. From the GM's side of this, the fired footman is a suspect, and the core clue was that the footman was fired-- I want the players to go interview the footman in a future scene, so this sets them up for that. The gossip about the footman is an extra clue, and may even give them leverage when they talk to the footman. When they go talk to the footman, I can still use my interpersonal approach and tags, but I no longer have a point in Interpersonal to spend and get extra clues or benefits. I can still use the ability, but I don't have extra points to spend. In a Gumshoe one-shot, your investigation approach points will not refresh, so use them wisely!

In addition to the investivative approaches, you have General Skills, and for this game, the players had 50 points to spend on the general skills. General skills are for actions that don't fall into clue-finding. They're things like athletics and driving, but also include your health points pool. Everyone starts with one point of health and stability. In Pocket Gumshoe, the GM can decide which skills to include or exclude. For our adventure, I excluded Shrink and Stability, as those are for mental health consequences and fit more into a horror investigation rather than fantasy action. I also added a Magic skill to give a general-purpose skill for Firebreathing Kittens who have magic abilities or knowledge. In this case, I also made a special rule that you cannot use a magical ability without spending a point, which we will talk about next.

When I want to do something that has a decent chance of failure and is not gathering a clue, I use one of the general skills and roll for it. For most skills, you do not need to have points in the skill to attempt to do it-- my custom Magic skill is an exception to that rule. Health and Stability skills are also not rolled-- they represent your physical and mental health points, and you lose them when you take damage.

When I roll in a test-- that's a static check to see if I succeed at a task, the GM usually tells me the difficulty, and I can spend some of my skill points to add to my roll. I roll one d6, and for each general skill point I spend, I add a point to the dice result. The skill points all must come out of the skill I'm using.

Let's say my character is inside the treasure vault at the castle, looking for clues. Just after he found a clue, the GM says "hey, roll Sense Trouble for me." I have a lot of points in that, but I decide that I'm a little cocky and hey, I just found a clue, so I only spend one point of Sense Trouble. I know that most of my general skills will not refresh in this one-shot. In a campaign, they refresh between adventures, or for physical abilities they refresh once per day. Health is regained when someone uses the Medic general ability, or at 7a rate of two Health points per day of rest.

I erase the point from my character sheet. Sense Trouble is another skill that works a little differently-- the GM tells me the difficulty after I spend the points, and in this case it's 3, which should be very easy, but wouldn't you know it? I roll a one, and even with my plus-one, I fail in my roll.

Now my character hears the ominous sound of the door clanging shut! Someone has shut him in! Now he needs to try to get out of here-- and he does so by looking at the general skills and saying "well, if I were a younger man, I'd use my strength to try and push the door open, but, alas, time has taken its toll. So instead, I am going to say that I PREPARED for this possibility, and I have a key to get out of here." The GM tells me the difficulty of that-- since it also now requires there to be a key and a keyhole on the inside of the vault-- is 5. That's VERY hard to do, but I have a few preparedness points, so I spend 3 of them. I roll my d6 and get a 3, but with the +3 from spending my Preparedness points, I succeed in the test. I open the door with the key and step out of the vault!

Unfortunately, the footman who had locked me into the vault is standing right there, with a cudgel, and he takes a swing at me! We're in combat!

Combat in Pocket Gumshoe goes like this: The GM decides which character acts first in the combat. In this case, the footman surprised me, so he'll go first.
When someone acts in combat, they use a relevant skill-- if they're in melee, it might be scuffling. If they're ranged, it'll be shooting. They can spend points from their skill pools to add to their to-hit numbers.
The difficulty to hit, unless there's a special circumstance, is 3. If the character has at least 8 ranks in Athletics, it increases to 4.
When you hit, you roll a single d6 for damage, and modify it based on your weapon and if the target is wearing armor. Armor reduces the damage, but does not prevent you from getting hit.
At the end of the character's turn, they decide who goes next in combat. The last person to act in the round gets to pick the first person to act in the next round-- which can be themselves!

I don't have much Athletics, but the footman's no fighter, either. Because I have fewer than 8 ranks in Athletics, the difficulty to hit me is 3. He spends an adversary point, and with my bad luck, he rolls three, which turns into a 4 with his +1. He hits. I don't have armor, and he's using a club, which gives a -1 to damage. He rolls a single d6 and subtracts one from the roll-- he rolls a three, and I remove two points from my health points. Ouch!

Now it's my turn to fight back. I'm really bad at fighting-- I have no ranks in it, and the GM describes the footman as being quite spry. But I do have magic, and I decide I'm going to teach this young punk a thing or two. I tell the GM I'm going to shoot bolts of lightning from my fingers, which we agree normally does +1 damage. I decide it really matters to me that I hit, so I spend three of my Magic skill points, which means I will definitely hit. I hit, and when I roll my damage, I get lucky and roll a 6, for 7 total points of damage. The footman's hair stands on end as I essentially taze him with magic. The GM says he's pretty dazed by that. Since it's the end of the round, I get to pick who goes next, and I decide to take the next turn and finish him off. I use my Preparedness again to declare that I have a set of manacles, and I'm going to use them on the footman, since he's at a disadvantage right now. The GM rules that since he's dazed, the footman isn't putting up much of a fight, and the difficulty is three. I spend the rest of my Preparedness points to ensure success. I roll a 1 on the die, but with my plus 3, I am guaranteed to succeed, and I have captured the footman in manacles!

The GM now gives me a chance to investigate him, perhaps by rifling through his pockets or interrogating him. I decide to rifle, and find the missing necklace! This is a core clue, so there's no dice roll involved. Success! I return the necklace to my employer, and turn the footman over to the city watch to face justice.

Finally, since I know it's going to come up, you might be wondering about what happens when characters want to help each other. Piggybacking is when one character takes the lead and the rest spend one point from their own pools to share the results. For example, let's say the footman escapes the manacles and runs away. I team up with my pals, Harry the spry rogue, and Richard, the armored knight. When we finally catch up to him, he's inside a hideout, and we need to sneak in to catch him. The GM tells us the difficulty is four. Harry has a bunch of points in Infiltrate, so he's ready to take lead. I have Infiltrate points as well, so I spend one to share in his result. Richard, wearing heavy armor, is not sneaky and doesn't have points in Infiltrate. He's still in the group, but because he can't be sneaky, the difficulty goes up by two. Harry needs to roll a 6 to succeed, so he spends four of his Infiltrate points, gets a 3 on the dice, and we all sneak into the hideout.

Later, Harry and I are trying to disarm a trap together. Richard's no good with mechanical things, and is standing watch, and Harry spent his skill points in other stuff, so I'm on the spot for disarming this trap. Harry has two points to spend on the attempt, and when the GM says it's a very difficult trap, with a difficulty number of 7, he spends all of them. I get to add all those points, minus one, to my dice roll, plus all the points I want from my own pool-- I spend all four of my Mechanics points, so between the two of us, I have a +5 on the roll. I roll the die and get a 1. The trap goes off, snaring both Harry and me in it, and Richard, who stood far enough back to stay out of range of the trap, laughs heartily, and then comes over to help free us.

Thanks for listening to this overview of how to play Pocket Gumshoe. Each Gumshoe game is a little different-- some add custom rules to give a particular tone to the game, or to support a specific genre. For example, in high power games, it's a common rule that the number of points you spend to attack is the minimum damage you can deal in damage. Pocket Gumshoe doesn't have that rule, so we will not be playing with it in this episode.