Always Give Them The Clue (GUMSHOE) with Tristan Zimmerman

Transcripts available at diceexploder.com

My friend Tristan Zimmerman is currently crowdfunding Ballad Hunters, a GUMSHOE game, meaning it’s based on a core mechanic built for investigation games and gathering clues. That mechanic goes like this: “always give the players the clue.” Simple! And I think so astute as to what the actual fun part of investigation is in RPGs: it’s not “can we roll high enough to progress,” it’s “once we have all these clues, how do we put them together and what do we do with them?”

Further Reading

Ballad Hunters by Tristan Zimmerman, now on Kickstarter

GUMSHOE by Cat Tobin, a list of resources for and articles about GUMSHOE

The Rule Book: The Building Blocks of Games by Jaakko Stenros and Markus Montola

Socials

Tristan on Bluesky.

Molten Sulfur Blog, Nations & Cannons, and Shanty Hunters from Tristan

Sam on Bluesky and itch.

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Credits

Our logo was designed by sporgory, our ad music is Lilypads by Travis Tessmer, and our theme song is Sunset Bridge by Purely Grey.

This episode was edited by Em Acosta.