The RPG Geek One Sheet GUMSHOE Contest 2015

by Yohann Delalande

[Editor’s Note: Yohann ran the the One Sheet GUMSHOE competition on RPG Geek, which had an extraordinary 18 entries. Congratulations to all the entrants .You can download all the entries here.]

One of the recurring obstacles every GM has met at least once concerns time vs preparation work. After all, it is usually considered that a good session relies heavily on the amount of details they have gathered upstream in order to create an engaging plot.
However, one among many of the advantages the GUMSHOE system offers to any GMs lies on its flexibility and versatility. As we can see with sandboxy campaigns like The Armitage Files for Trail of Cthulhu and The Dracula Dossier for Night’s Black Agents, most of the investigative work is done in-game, by the players themselves, thus lifting some of the prep work off the GM’s shoulders.
So, what about reducing all that prep work to make an adventure that would be easy and ready to run in a 10-minute read, especially in configurations like pick-up games or con games?
This is actually the idea behind Gareth Ryder-Hanrahan’s adventure The Haunting and Robin Laws’ The Frosh Week.
So when Simon Rogers asked me if I’d be interested in running a new contest on RPG Geek, I immediately saw how useful a handful of new scenarios would be for GUMSHOE GMs like me.
However, it turned out that the handful I expected became a score of amazing submissions sent to the RPG Geek One Sheet GUMSHOE Contest 2015. The instructions were simple: write a two-page adventure for the GUMSHOE game of your choice and send it to the contest organizer. Then when the time comes, cast your vote.
And among our 18 submissions, three really stood out:

  • Our 1st place winner: The Keepers of the Woods, written by Frederick Foulds, for Trail of Cthulhu. This murder mystery in a Devonshire village will lead the investigators to the discovery of a cult worshipping an ancient god.
  • Our 2nd place winner: The Barreville Flap, written by Michael Grasso, for Moon Dust Men. In the town of Barreville, Montana, strange UFO sightings prompts agents of Project Moon Dust to collect intelligence and technologies, but also to disinform its inhabitants.
  • Our 3rd place winner: Monster Squad Control, written by Tom McGrenery, for the GUMSHOE SRD. Monster Squad is an internet-based monster hunting start-up with control room administrators (the players) working from home while their agent (the GM), is on the field doing all the dirty work.

However, I would also like to highlight the fantastic quality of the other 15 submissions which truly deserve some praise – you can find the whole list here (registration to RPG Geek is 100% free).
Obviously, we at RPG Geek, would all love to see you read, run, play, enjoy, and comment all the submissions that catch your interest. But most importantly, we really hope they will incite you to write your own One Sheet GUMSHOE adventure and share them with us.
Now it is your turn to amaze us and enthral us with your own trail of clues.

You can download all the entries here.

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