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Bubblegumshoe: A Teen Detective Story Game
A tabletop RPG book for running games about teen detectives solving mysteries.
Someone stole my kid brother's bike . . .
Someone sabotaged the pep rally . . .
Someone destroyed the homecoming queen's reputation . . .
The world is full of mysteries. It's up to your group of intrepid teen sleuths to solve them. In Bubblegumshoe, players step into the shoes of high-schoolers solving mysteries in a modern American small town. Discover clues, solve problems, and throw down with enemies in this streamlined RPG based on the GUMSHOE system.
Someone stole my kid brother's bike . . .
Someone sabotaged the pep rally . . .
Someone destroyed the homecoming queen's reputation . . .
The world is full of mysteries. It's up to your group of intrepid teen sleuths to solve them. In Bubblegumshoe, players step into the shoes of high-schoolers solving mysteries in a modern American small town. Discover clues, solve problems, and throw down with enemies in this streamlined RPG based on the GUMSHOE system.
- GenresRole Playing Games
272 pages, Hardcover
Published January 1, 2016
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26 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
January 23, 2018
Bubblegumshoe is the first game using Robin Laws’ gumshoe system that I have read. I can’t say the system does anything for me, at least not on paper. Having never played with the system, I can only speak from the perspective as a reader with an active imagination.
The gumshoe system was designed for investigative RPGs as a way to make sure investigators never had to leave the discovery of a clue up to the roll of the dice. To do this, the investigators have 3 different sets of skills: investigative, interpersonal, and general. The players are then given a number of points for each set to invest in the particular skills they want their character to have. Once those points are spent, the character is said to have that rank in that particular skill (so 5 points spent gives you a 5 point rank in that skill). During play, those points are spendable to improve your ability doing a thing or to improve your chances for success at doing a thing.
If you have any rank at all in a particular investigative skill and there is a clue to be found in a scene, you automatically get the clue, no rolling, no spending, no debating. You can spend extra points if you choose in order to get more detail or to be cooler in the act of getting the clue, but that is entirely optional. Sounds cool, right? Automatic success for the thing you need in order to continue the storyline means that your game never stalls out because of a bad die roll.
The upshot of this setup is that points are the foundation for the whole of the game—every mechanic is fueled by these points and every reward comes in the form of more points to replace those spent or to increase your original rank in a skill. In this way, a gumshoe game becomes a game of resource management. Should I spend the points now or save them for later? How many points should I spend to be able to get this victory but still have points for our big confrontation later? Some people get really jazzed to manage their resources, but it doesn’t do anything for me. I always feel like I’m just making the wrong decision no matter what I do.
The effect of this system in terms of the rulebook is that I felt like I was constantly walking ankle deep in a swamp of numbers. Give points here, use points for that, pull points from this category and then you can use points over her. It is both confusing (at least on a first read through) and entirely uninspiring. Being able to spend a point as a player or reward a point as a GM doesn’t do anything to get me excited to play a game.
Let’s just agree that I won’t be picking up any more gumshoe games.
That said, there are a lot of things this game is super smart about. The game has a whole system for character relationships. Because the PCs are teenagers, they don’t have a lot of specialized skills (some of the skills they do have are beautifully conceived, like Grownup Face and BS Detector). If they want to do something specialized, they need to rely on their adult relationships (family members, friends on the police force, etc.). It’s a great way to keep the characters realistic, allow for the need of some advanced skills, and populate the town with adults and people that matter to the PCs not only personally but professionally. To call on an adult with special skill is simultaneously to invite them into your investigation where they are likely to cause as many problems as they solve.
The other thing relationships do is they allow you access to certain parts of the town that would otherwise cost you “cool” to enter. (Cool is the games hit point system, and they are specifically social hit points—when you lose your Cool, you’re out of the scene for a while.) Locations in the game can have a certain “threshold,” meaning they cost you so much Cool to enter if you’re not of the right social class, or age, or whatnot. Having a connection means that you can get in there without that cost.
Locations are part of the other cool part of the game: town construction. There are a lot of blank charts and tables that allow you to keep track of your NPCs and the locations around town, because in any teen detective story, the town itself and all its inhabitants become the world of the drama. The book does an excellent job of telling you about the ideal features you might want to work into your town. It was in reading the town section that I got most excited to play the game. There were no points to worry about—it was all about the dramatic possibilities.
The last neat idea I want to point out is that the big mechanical event in the game is not a physical fight, but a social “Throwdown.” You pit your Cool against your opponent’s and hope to get them to yield before you are forced to do so. Throwdowns are the crux at which the two halves of the game meet up, those two halves being the investigation and the social world of the characters. In the game, these two halves exist in tension; too much drama and there’s not enough investigation; too much mystery and there’s not enough interpersonal drama. Throwdowns try to bring those two aspects into one scene.
I like that Throwdowns are able to bridge that divide, but I feel like the game should do more to bridge it mechanically. In an ideal game, it is clear that the personal and the mystery will be intermixed in some way so that you can’t get one without the other. The game essentially advises you as the GM to make this happen, but nothing in the mechanics of the game are set up to help you. You could argue that relationships and Throwdowns do, but if that were sufficient, the game wouldn’t need to warn you to moderate the balance.
What the game does for Throwdowns—telling you what to do without giving you the tools to do it easily—it does for a lot of things. There is great advice near the end about what should be involved in mysteries and what kinds of clues you’ll want to have, but it never tells you how to take that knowledge and make an actual mystery. There is a lot of telling you what to do and not enough telling you how to do it. For some players, that won’t be a problem; they’ll dive in and make it work. But if you want to give players every reason to take the leap from reading your book to playing the game at the table, you need to make that transition as easy as possible. While the GM section has great advice and insight, it is short on tools to turn that advice and insight into a playable session.
My final critique of the game is that while it is well organized at the level of chapters and subjects, the individual sections are full or references to other parts of the book and other rules that make the text feel disorganized and messy. A second read made a lot more sense, and I could see what the authors were doing, but even then I found myself needing to take a ton of notes to cover all the suggestions and references. The first read was simply overwhelming halfway through the book.
So my feelings are rather mixed at this point, as you can undoubtedly tell. It is the first game I have read in the last two years that made me want to create my own game in order to play it, if that makes sense. I want to create all kinds of GM tools for mysteries, and I want something other than resource management to be at the center of play. But if I create something similar to play with my friends, I am going to want to incorporate the game’s ideas about relationships and town construction and all its insights into the elements of an effective mystery.
Now I’m off to watch Veronica Mars and take notes!
The gumshoe system was designed for investigative RPGs as a way to make sure investigators never had to leave the discovery of a clue up to the roll of the dice. To do this, the investigators have 3 different sets of skills: investigative, interpersonal, and general. The players are then given a number of points for each set to invest in the particular skills they want their character to have. Once those points are spent, the character is said to have that rank in that particular skill (so 5 points spent gives you a 5 point rank in that skill). During play, those points are spendable to improve your ability doing a thing or to improve your chances for success at doing a thing.
If you have any rank at all in a particular investigative skill and there is a clue to be found in a scene, you automatically get the clue, no rolling, no spending, no debating. You can spend extra points if you choose in order to get more detail or to be cooler in the act of getting the clue, but that is entirely optional. Sounds cool, right? Automatic success for the thing you need in order to continue the storyline means that your game never stalls out because of a bad die roll.
The upshot of this setup is that points are the foundation for the whole of the game—every mechanic is fueled by these points and every reward comes in the form of more points to replace those spent or to increase your original rank in a skill. In this way, a gumshoe game becomes a game of resource management. Should I spend the points now or save them for later? How many points should I spend to be able to get this victory but still have points for our big confrontation later? Some people get really jazzed to manage their resources, but it doesn’t do anything for me. I always feel like I’m just making the wrong decision no matter what I do.
The effect of this system in terms of the rulebook is that I felt like I was constantly walking ankle deep in a swamp of numbers. Give points here, use points for that, pull points from this category and then you can use points over her. It is both confusing (at least on a first read through) and entirely uninspiring. Being able to spend a point as a player or reward a point as a GM doesn’t do anything to get me excited to play a game.
Let’s just agree that I won’t be picking up any more gumshoe games.
That said, there are a lot of things this game is super smart about. The game has a whole system for character relationships. Because the PCs are teenagers, they don’t have a lot of specialized skills (some of the skills they do have are beautifully conceived, like Grownup Face and BS Detector). If they want to do something specialized, they need to rely on their adult relationships (family members, friends on the police force, etc.). It’s a great way to keep the characters realistic, allow for the need of some advanced skills, and populate the town with adults and people that matter to the PCs not only personally but professionally. To call on an adult with special skill is simultaneously to invite them into your investigation where they are likely to cause as many problems as they solve.
The other thing relationships do is they allow you access to certain parts of the town that would otherwise cost you “cool” to enter. (Cool is the games hit point system, and they are specifically social hit points—when you lose your Cool, you’re out of the scene for a while.) Locations in the game can have a certain “threshold,” meaning they cost you so much Cool to enter if you’re not of the right social class, or age, or whatnot. Having a connection means that you can get in there without that cost.
Locations are part of the other cool part of the game: town construction. There are a lot of blank charts and tables that allow you to keep track of your NPCs and the locations around town, because in any teen detective story, the town itself and all its inhabitants become the world of the drama. The book does an excellent job of telling you about the ideal features you might want to work into your town. It was in reading the town section that I got most excited to play the game. There were no points to worry about—it was all about the dramatic possibilities.
The last neat idea I want to point out is that the big mechanical event in the game is not a physical fight, but a social “Throwdown.” You pit your Cool against your opponent’s and hope to get them to yield before you are forced to do so. Throwdowns are the crux at which the two halves of the game meet up, those two halves being the investigation and the social world of the characters. In the game, these two halves exist in tension; too much drama and there’s not enough investigation; too much mystery and there’s not enough interpersonal drama. Throwdowns try to bring those two aspects into one scene.
I like that Throwdowns are able to bridge that divide, but I feel like the game should do more to bridge it mechanically. In an ideal game, it is clear that the personal and the mystery will be intermixed in some way so that you can’t get one without the other. The game essentially advises you as the GM to make this happen, but nothing in the mechanics of the game are set up to help you. You could argue that relationships and Throwdowns do, but if that were sufficient, the game wouldn’t need to warn you to moderate the balance.
What the game does for Throwdowns—telling you what to do without giving you the tools to do it easily—it does for a lot of things. There is great advice near the end about what should be involved in mysteries and what kinds of clues you’ll want to have, but it never tells you how to take that knowledge and make an actual mystery. There is a lot of telling you what to do and not enough telling you how to do it. For some players, that won’t be a problem; they’ll dive in and make it work. But if you want to give players every reason to take the leap from reading your book to playing the game at the table, you need to make that transition as easy as possible. While the GM section has great advice and insight, it is short on tools to turn that advice and insight into a playable session.
My final critique of the game is that while it is well organized at the level of chapters and subjects, the individual sections are full or references to other parts of the book and other rules that make the text feel disorganized and messy. A second read made a lot more sense, and I could see what the authors were doing, but even then I found myself needing to take a ton of notes to cover all the suggestions and references. The first read was simply overwhelming halfway through the book.
So my feelings are rather mixed at this point, as you can undoubtedly tell. It is the first game I have read in the last two years that made me want to create my own game in order to play it, if that makes sense. I want to create all kinds of GM tools for mysteries, and I want something other than resource management to be at the center of play. But if I create something similar to play with my friends, I am going to want to incorporate the game’s ideas about relationships and town construction and all its insights into the elements of an effective mystery.
Now I’m off to watch Veronica Mars and take notes!
July 1, 2016
It's Veronica Mars, the roleplaying game! Or, if you prefer, Nancy Drew / The Three Investigators / Encyclopedia Brown. All three authors are RPG veterans of very different kinds of games. Their strengths really come together in this handsome, accessible book. It uses the GUMSHOE system from games like Night's Black Agents and Trail of Cthulhu, but this is a standalone--no other rulebooks or supplements required. Teenagers solving mysteries is a long-established genre but it feels entirely modern and relevant here. If you enjoy RPGs with a mystery plot or are just a big Veronica Mars fan and want to try out roleplaying games, absolutely check this out.
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November 26, 2020Another inclusion of the 7th Indie Cornucopia from the Bundle of Holding.
Logline: Bubblegumshoe is teen detectives solving teen mysteries while managing their relationships. (Or: Teens managing their relationships while solving mysteries. Those two player actions -- maintaining/stressing relationships and solving mysteries -- really are about equally prioritized.) In other words: Veronica Mars, seasons 1-2, Nancy Drew, etc.
A little more info: this is an adaptation of Robin D. Laws's Gumshoe rules, which takes as its organizing principle that something happening is always more interesting than nothing happening, especially regarding mysteries. So rather than make players roll for finding out the crucial clue they need in one scene to get to the next scene, players will always get the clue they need (with little fillips like "the skill you know will color how you get the clue" and "if you spend to get the clue, you may get additional information that will help later"). This game system has been adapted for horror, vampires vs. spies, Cthulhu, superhero cops, time travelers, and Jack Vancian space adventure.
And now: Teen detectives.
What's the best thing here: the relationship stuff -- I don't get fired up by the idea of solving crimes like "my little brother's bike got stolen," but reading through the sample characters and their cast of supporting characters -- the widowed mom who suddenly has money problems, the cop who can't look away from police corruption, etc. -- had me salivating over the story seeds here and how those relationships could be used and tested.
What's the worst thing here: well... the book is plainly laid out, with b&w art of, like, teens driving cars. It's not exactly inspiring. Then there is the purely personal note that, again, I don't think this game is for me with its straightforward, non-metaphorical premise. There are a few alternate settings in the back of the book that do catch my eye a bit more, like the John Bellairs horror setting.
Curious: I remember being excited about this book when it was coming out but I really don't think I've heard a lot about it since. Did it land with a splash that I missed or just sink like a stone?
Logline: Bubblegumshoe is teen detectives solving teen mysteries while managing their relationships. (Or: Teens managing their relationships while solving mysteries. Those two player actions -- maintaining/stressing relationships and solving mysteries -- really are about equally prioritized.) In other words: Veronica Mars, seasons 1-2, Nancy Drew, etc.
A little more info: this is an adaptation of Robin D. Laws's Gumshoe rules, which takes as its organizing principle that something happening is always more interesting than nothing happening, especially regarding mysteries. So rather than make players roll for finding out the crucial clue they need in one scene to get to the next scene, players will always get the clue they need (with little fillips like "the skill you know will color how you get the clue" and "if you spend to get the clue, you may get additional information that will help later"). This game system has been adapted for horror, vampires vs. spies, Cthulhu, superhero cops, time travelers, and Jack Vancian space adventure.
And now: Teen detectives.
What's the best thing here: the relationship stuff -- I don't get fired up by the idea of solving crimes like "my little brother's bike got stolen," but reading through the sample characters and their cast of supporting characters -- the widowed mom who suddenly has money problems, the cop who can't look away from police corruption, etc. -- had me salivating over the story seeds here and how those relationships could be used and tested.
What's the worst thing here: well... the book is plainly laid out, with b&w art of, like, teens driving cars. It's not exactly inspiring. Then there is the purely personal note that, again, I don't think this game is for me with its straightforward, non-metaphorical premise. There are a few alternate settings in the back of the book that do catch my eye a bit more, like the John Bellairs horror setting.
Curious: I remember being excited about this book when it was coming out but I really don't think I've heard a lot about it since. Did it land with a splash that I missed or just sink like a stone?
May 29, 2019
The writing is bad (at times hilariously so), the art is awful, the information is barely organized, but for all that I do like the system.
This is a system based almost entirely around resource management in a way DnD just isn't in practice. Where your connections are important, and where social combat is more prevalent than physical combat. In DnD combat is so lethal and violent that attacking another player is taboo. The potential for nonviolent confrontations in this ruleset makes interpersonal conflict more possible mechanically, and I can see this system being adapted to many different settings, so few of which are in this book. Jane Austen RPG, anyone?
The Gumshoe ruleset is available online for free so this book isn't really worth it, but I would encourage you to look into the system if, like me, you like thinking about how to design stories via game mechanics.
This is a system based almost entirely around resource management in a way DnD just isn't in practice. Where your connections are important, and where social combat is more prevalent than physical combat. In DnD combat is so lethal and violent that attacking another player is taboo. The potential for nonviolent confrontations in this ruleset makes interpersonal conflict more possible mechanically, and I can see this system being adapted to many different settings, so few of which are in this book. Jane Austen RPG, anyone?
The Gumshoe ruleset is available online for free so this book isn't really worth it, but I would encourage you to look into the system if, like me, you like thinking about how to design stories via game mechanics.
July 18, 2017
Have you ever wanted to play as a teen detective? This book has all the rules you need to run role playing campaign based on that theme. The gaming system strongly focuses on relationships rather than combat, and the combat that occurs is primarily social. It also provides different settings for teen detective dramas, so you can play with supernatural, superhero, or prep school settings as well. There's even an option to play a version of Scooby Doo (no copyright characters included of course). If you're a role player and you'd like to try something other than combat, this is a great option to choose.
August 15, 2017
I liked the ideas, but prefer a system like Young Centurions for actually playing with kids. Something about the Gumshoe system doesn't resonate with me I guess.
Great content in terms of ideas. Love many of the sample settings, like the John Belaires setting, the Buffy-type setting, and so on. Pretty great!
Great content in terms of ideas. Love many of the sample settings, like the John Belaires setting, the Buffy-type setting, and so on. Pretty great!
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews