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Lie Detection in Gumshoe
Apr. 2nd, 2019 12:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mnemeI've been having/seeing a lot of conversation regarding Assess Honesty and Bullshit Detector in gumshoe games recently. It seems to me from all of these (as well as reading this thread), that there are many wrong answers to the general question of how to handle a "spot lie" ability and as many right ones.
One of the wrong ones is that if someone has Bullshit Detector or Assess Honesty they should automatically get told explicitly about every dishonest statement that occurs in their vicinity. You don't tell the player with Archaeology the details of every building they enter (only the ones with something interesting in them or the details that are core clues), and similarly, you don't do so here.
Another is that they should have to declare every use of Assess Honesty, even core clues. Again, you don't require someone to say "I'm using Photography" if they're examining photographs with core clues in them, so why should you do so if they're participating or listening to a conversation?
And, of course, the last way to mess this up is to lie to the player about whether their investigative ability worked. In the end, GUMSHOE isn't a game with rolled investigative skills, and there's an assumed transparency and clarity that's not present in other systems.
The primary thing that was missing from the (otherwise excellent) conversation on Yog Soggoth (linked above) is that there are really three investigative uses of an investigative skill in Gumshoe, even though we tend to think of it as two:
1. The skill uncovers a core clue. You need to be in the right place and time and doing generally the right thing, but you don't have to explicitly invoke the skill (and in some situations the GM might engage escape hatches of one sort or another to leak the clue a different way if you miss it the expected way, because core means core).
2. The player makes a spend to get information. This can happen either because the player noticed a detail and decided to attempt a spend (in which case the GM refunds the spend if the information isn't there to get), or because the GM indicated that more information was there to be had—if an appropriate spend was made.
3. That last thing. You have a skill, so the GM indicates that there's more information to be had if you make a spend. It's even possible that the spend you make isn't from the skill that allowed you to notice the opportunity—you notice someone's lying about their movements the previous night, and use interrogation to get them to admit the lie and fess up to where they really were (Lisa and I watched all the Thin Man movies a couple of weeks ago, and there's a great example of this when Nick is interrogating the movie's Bad Girl (Claire Porters, played by Stella Adler in one of her few film appearances)). You could consider this a core clue in a way, because the GM wants the handle they can push to get more information to be visible—but it isn't, really, because the adventure works fine if the PCs don't see the handle and don't get the information—it's just that having this bit of transparency; possible clues they can either follow up on or not—makes the game work much better and keeps the players moving forward.
That last is where passive instances of Assess Honesty come in; when the GM wants to flag that there's more information from a conversation, the presence of someone with a good voice/face reading skill is a great opportunity to do so. A key here is that if it isn't a core clue, and there isn't a handle, the GM should -NOT- volunteer that the NPC is lying, even if they are. Assess Honesty is a way to find clues--not a passive ability that makes the world free from falsehood.
If the player wants to, well, assess the honesty of a NPC who wasn't flagged this way, then that's an attempt to spend—and the GM has a choice. If they can come up with something they think is worth the spend, then great; accept the spend and reveal the information; maybe the character is honest as the day is long and can be a useful asset later in the adventure, or maybe they're lying and that too is useful in some way. If they can't come up with something worth the spend, just say they can't get a read on them; mysteries are founded in the idea that lots of people don't read "honest" or "lying" all the time, and Assess Honesty isn't a magic bullet past that idea; just an indicator that the character gets clues by reading people's honesty.
Of course, if an NPC is lying through their teeth and the GM doesn't want that lie to be directly readable because the NPC is defined at being good at lying ,the GM should also indicate (only when the player tries to spend) that they can't get a read on the NPC. But by not giving a read on every NPC except this one, it's not immediately obvious that -this- is the target; maybe it's the coroner you're talking to right now, but maybe it was grocer earlier you couldn't get a read on (because I didn't have anything to give you), or heck, maybe it was the Madam who was obviously lying (but about more than you knew). You don't know until you've investigated further, which is why this is a mystery game, not a shoot-and-slug game.
One thing that I think merits a special merit here is red herring characters. I know there's a lot of thought that red herrings are a bad idea or overdone in mysteries—and this isn't entirely wrong; it's too easy to have a chain of red herring clues that lead the game way outside its intended zone and don't get things any closer to the real ending, and a few bad experiences can go a long way. But particularly in the social zone, red herring characters — people acting suspiciously in the situation who might be involved in the big mystery, but, it turns out, aren't, their skulduggery being only part of a larger clue or even independent — are crucial to pacing a mystery.
If you structure a mystery in a very linear way — the PCs will find clues A, B, and C, which will lead them to location 2; clues D and E off location 2 will lead to location 3, etc, it can be very predictable and in an odd way hard to pace, because if the players are having a problem finding a clue there isn't a great way to keep things moving. And for a group with more than one or two investigators, you're going to have them going around in a big clump because there's only one thing to investigate at a time.
But elimination puzzles — the players know that person or location 1, 2, OR 3 are the only appropriate answers but don't know which one, allow for a lot more variation. Anything that indicates a location (or person), adds one to the list, OR eliminates one from contention progresses the mystery, so characters can be effective without knowing the final answer, and there's more scope for people to split up and steal the spotlight.
Or to bring things back, if you make sure that some liars are just red herrings (but ones it's important to eliminate because it makes the rest of the mystery easier) or are suspicious but not the final answer (and once you know their deal can be persuaded to reveal useful clues that do help directly), then the presence of those red herring people can make Assess Honesty part of a healthy game rather than a problem that needs to be dealt with.
One of the wrong ones is that if someone has Bullshit Detector or Assess Honesty they should automatically get told explicitly about every dishonest statement that occurs in their vicinity. You don't tell the player with Archaeology the details of every building they enter (only the ones with something interesting in them or the details that are core clues), and similarly, you don't do so here.
Another is that they should have to declare every use of Assess Honesty, even core clues. Again, you don't require someone to say "I'm using Photography" if they're examining photographs with core clues in them, so why should you do so if they're participating or listening to a conversation?
And, of course, the last way to mess this up is to lie to the player about whether their investigative ability worked. In the end, GUMSHOE isn't a game with rolled investigative skills, and there's an assumed transparency and clarity that's not present in other systems.
The primary thing that was missing from the (otherwise excellent) conversation on Yog Soggoth (linked above) is that there are really three investigative uses of an investigative skill in Gumshoe, even though we tend to think of it as two:
1. The skill uncovers a core clue. You need to be in the right place and time and doing generally the right thing, but you don't have to explicitly invoke the skill (and in some situations the GM might engage escape hatches of one sort or another to leak the clue a different way if you miss it the expected way, because core means core).
2. The player makes a spend to get information. This can happen either because the player noticed a detail and decided to attempt a spend (in which case the GM refunds the spend if the information isn't there to get), or because the GM indicated that more information was there to be had—if an appropriate spend was made.
3. That last thing. You have a skill, so the GM indicates that there's more information to be had if you make a spend. It's even possible that the spend you make isn't from the skill that allowed you to notice the opportunity—you notice someone's lying about their movements the previous night, and use interrogation to get them to admit the lie and fess up to where they really were (Lisa and I watched all the Thin Man movies a couple of weeks ago, and there's a great example of this when Nick is interrogating the movie's Bad Girl (Claire Porters, played by Stella Adler in one of her few film appearances)). You could consider this a core clue in a way, because the GM wants the handle they can push to get more information to be visible—but it isn't, really, because the adventure works fine if the PCs don't see the handle and don't get the information—it's just that having this bit of transparency; possible clues they can either follow up on or not—makes the game work much better and keeps the players moving forward.
That last is where passive instances of Assess Honesty come in; when the GM wants to flag that there's more information from a conversation, the presence of someone with a good voice/face reading skill is a great opportunity to do so. A key here is that if it isn't a core clue, and there isn't a handle, the GM should -NOT- volunteer that the NPC is lying, even if they are. Assess Honesty is a way to find clues--not a passive ability that makes the world free from falsehood.
If the player wants to, well, assess the honesty of a NPC who wasn't flagged this way, then that's an attempt to spend—and the GM has a choice. If they can come up with something they think is worth the spend, then great; accept the spend and reveal the information; maybe the character is honest as the day is long and can be a useful asset later in the adventure, or maybe they're lying and that too is useful in some way. If they can't come up with something worth the spend, just say they can't get a read on them; mysteries are founded in the idea that lots of people don't read "honest" or "lying" all the time, and Assess Honesty isn't a magic bullet past that idea; just an indicator that the character gets clues by reading people's honesty.
Of course, if an NPC is lying through their teeth and the GM doesn't want that lie to be directly readable because the NPC is defined at being good at lying ,the GM should also indicate (only when the player tries to spend) that they can't get a read on the NPC. But by not giving a read on every NPC except this one, it's not immediately obvious that -this- is the target; maybe it's the coroner you're talking to right now, but maybe it was grocer earlier you couldn't get a read on (because I didn't have anything to give you), or heck, maybe it was the Madam who was obviously lying (but about more than you knew). You don't know until you've investigated further, which is why this is a mystery game, not a shoot-and-slug game.
One thing that I think merits a special merit here is red herring characters. I know there's a lot of thought that red herrings are a bad idea or overdone in mysteries—and this isn't entirely wrong; it's too easy to have a chain of red herring clues that lead the game way outside its intended zone and don't get things any closer to the real ending, and a few bad experiences can go a long way. But particularly in the social zone, red herring characters — people acting suspiciously in the situation who might be involved in the big mystery, but, it turns out, aren't, their skulduggery being only part of a larger clue or even independent — are crucial to pacing a mystery.
If you structure a mystery in a very linear way — the PCs will find clues A, B, and C, which will lead them to location 2; clues D and E off location 2 will lead to location 3, etc, it can be very predictable and in an odd way hard to pace, because if the players are having a problem finding a clue there isn't a great way to keep things moving. And for a group with more than one or two investigators, you're going to have them going around in a big clump because there's only one thing to investigate at a time.
But elimination puzzles — the players know that person or location 1, 2, OR 3 are the only appropriate answers but don't know which one, allow for a lot more variation. Anything that indicates a location (or person), adds one to the list, OR eliminates one from contention progresses the mystery, so characters can be effective without knowing the final answer, and there's more scope for people to split up and steal the spotlight.
Or to bring things back, if you make sure that some liars are just red herrings (but ones it's important to eliminate because it makes the rest of the mystery easier) or are suspicious but not the final answer (and once you know their deal can be persuaded to reveal useful clues that do help directly), then the presence of those red herring people can make Assess Honesty part of a healthy game rather than a problem that needs to be dealt with.
