If you've ever played in a mystery, horror, or Call of Cthulhu-style horror-mystery game, you may have encountered out-of-game frustration when something as simple as a single failed die roll has left you without a vital clue needed to keep the story rolling. Either players are forced to fumble around in the dark for ages, or the GM has to risk
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A player will create a character with a number of investigation skill points and a number of action skill points to allocate to the skillset appropriate for the character. The trick is that action skills and investigation skills run on two completely different scales and systems.
For action skills (ex recto here, as I don't have the book in front of me), you'll put anywhere from 8-16 points into a skill for solid competency. When you use the skill, you spend points (temporarily removing those points from your available pool), adding a number equal to the points you spent to your die roll. You can opt to spend more points, and increase your chances of success (theoretically to 100% although Robin notes that in a horror game, he never tells players what the target numbers are), at the cost of uses of the skill later.
Investigative skills get you the base benefit the moment you mention that you want to use the skill. This will give you the barest minimum clue to continue on with the adventure. The clue may have additional information available if you choose to spend one, or possibly more, of your skill points. You never have to roll, and your skill levels will be much lower (3-4 points in Evidence Analysis, for example, is pretty damned high).
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And, how do points refresh?
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Your fighting skills do the same, which means you lose the fight when you can no longer expend points to hit or shoot the other guy. One's Health score is the rating that lowers as you take physical damage, and one's Stability score is the rating that goes down as you take mental damage (from seeing unspeakable horror, for example).
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BTW, I ordered a couple of things from Endgame - Green Ronin's "Mythic Vistas" books The Trojan War and Eternal Rome. I don't s'pose I could prevail on you to pick them up for me when they come in?
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Also, the cover of the Rome book is tweaked, so they're giving me 20% off (I decided to take the refund rather than have them reorder it).
Thanks again!
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Thanks again!
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http://www.dyingearth.com/gumshoe/esoterrorists/demo.html
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