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| 2-6 | 13+ | 2-8 hr | $25 |
Bubblegumshoe
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.
In this stand-alone game, you’ll find:
- Rules to create your Sleuth’s web of relationships and make the most of GUMSHOE’s resource-management
- A simple setting system designed for large scale town creation all the way down to scene locations, plus extensive information on Drewsbury, a ready-to-go setting
- A variety of short mystery starters, including a full introductory mystery: Hey! That’s My Bike!
- Extensive support to help GMs create their own mysteries using pre-established characters and settings
- Rules for social Throwdowns as well as physical altercations to reflect the drama of high school noir
- A slimmed-down list of investigative abilities vs GUMSHOE’s default to make for faster decision making
Bubblegumshoe. The secrets will out.
Winner of the 2017 Gold ENnie for Best Family Game!
GAME INFORMATION
Number of players: 2-6
Age of players: 13+
Length: 2-8 hours
Type of Game: Roleplaying Game
Languages Available: English
Product Number: EHP0015
ISBN: 978-1-61317-117-2
Page Count: 272
Format: Hardcover black and white interior and Digital formats.
Suggested Retail: $25 USD
Availability: Out of Print. Still available in PDF.
Game Designers: Emily Care Boss, Kenneth Hite, and Lisa Steele
Release Date: June, 2016
Yeeessssss!!!!
I’m looking forward to this!
This looks amazing!
…and I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids!
Can’t wait to have this!!
When can we buy this? Take my money!
Stay tuned for some preorder news in the next week or so.
Yass! Been waiting for this for a while!
I know a couple of meddlesome young elementary school kids who love Scooby doo and Encyclopedia Brown. So why is the age recommendation 13+ for this? The Young Centurians looks fun but the setting is certainly more removed from what they’ve read or seen. It sounds like they would like this BubbleGum Shoe but as the designated grownup, why the 13+ age recommendation?
This isn’t a Scooby Doo game, it’s more of a Veronica Mars game. If you’d be on board with them watching Veronica Mars (which was undeniably high school focused, but dealt with murder, underage sex, drugs, and other grown-up problems) then there’s no problem with this game for them. But we felt a 13+ age recommendation was solidly indicated. It’s about teenagers, presented in a fairly real way.
(This is not to say you can’t *run* a Scooby Doo game with the book & system. Probably tho, you might want to keep your Scooby Doo aged players from reading the book.)
Thanks for the quick reply. Sounds too grownup for my kids, but a ‘Scooby Doo’ style variation might make a good supplement/ spin-off.
We have several alternate playsets called “drifts” in the book, a young investigators (Scooby Doo-ish) included, but as Fred said, the content of the book as a whole has some mature content.
Finally I can role-play Hardy Boys style!
That’s quite a few posts already thinking Scooby Doo, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Secret Seven, etc… If this was for an 8-13yr bracket I would be all over it. My wife and I have been looking for that gateway game to introduce the new generation to narrative based RPGs. So close… I think you might want to consider a low-cost linked product for the younger crowd and ladder them in. You might get me interested in your other products too. I’ve never played fate or gumshoe (loads of d&d in bygone ages of yore). I’m looking for my kids to open up creative storytelling all over again in a game format but the bug is there but needs to be family friendly.
We’ve got plenty coming for that age category on the Fate side of things. Keep an eye out for Do: Fate of the Flying Temple, and Young Centurions.
Will definitely keep an eye peeled and give them a go. Thanks for the heads up.
So how extensive is the “Drewsbury” info, roughly? I know nothing about small American towns. Are there maps, lots of locations, the overall impression, that kind of thing?
No town maps in the town hall is two blocks from the high school sort of way. There are several locations like stores, restaurants, clubs, and other places where teens might venture. There’s more specific material about themes and trouble that might affect the town, and creating the town and the police department (the sleuths are likely to deal frequently with the police). There is also a discussion of how to map the town by how the PCs and NPCs are inter-related.
That’s helpful, thanks!
Will this be available through game stores soon?
Shortly after June 20th, assuming the game store you’re thinking of places an order for the game. 🙂
And an ETA for the backers who ordered through the More Fate campaign ?
Shipped out last week and should be arriving very soon 🙂
Kudos to the PDF production!
I have a very slow ebook reader and this is by far the snappiest RPG PDF I’ve ever seen. Even the full-page pictures load fast, I don’t know how you guys did it.
The layout and font is also great to read both on my 6″ reader as well as on the computer.
Can’t wait to play it!
Any word on shipping out to UK distributors? Have boxes of books been sent in our direction yet? 🙂
@BeePeeGee, so glad to hear that! Tiara Lynn Agresta did the layout on the book and is responsible for that snappy page loading!
@Rel Fexive, just checked with Ops and Esdevium hasn’t placed their order yet (they’re the primary distributor to the UK), but folks who preordered from us directly should have their shipments well underway already.
@Sean, thanks. For anyone who is interested, Esdevium has told me “Bubblegumshoe should be available to UK retailers in the next 3-6 weeks. Please ask your local retailer to place a pre order now.”
Having looked at the PDF, is Evil Hat aware that the table of contents isn’t right? It looks like some of the chapter titles don’t appear, which has ‘promoted’ some of the sub-headers to chapter status…
@Rel Fexive, Hi. Which chapters are you noticing missing and which sub-headers were promoted? In some cases (like the Rules chapter) we intnetionally promoted sections (clues, tests, contests, conflict, etc.) because they were large enough subsections that we wanted them to stick out.
Well @Sean, for example, to my mind ‘Drifts’ should be a chapter with the actual drifts as sub headers. Similarly ‘The Town’, as a chapter, to me should have ‘The People In Your Neighborhood’ as more of a sub header, rather than them having equal standing in the table of contents.
I guess the issue is that there’s only two levels to the table; to highlight those important sections you mentioned it sort of requires that some sub headers be promoted ‘up a level’. With another, third level it might be clearer but would require smaller text and, I guess, more space, maybe more than is available.
It’s more feature than bug, then, I suppose.
Looks great,
How best would be able to obtain a copy in the UK?
Lambert
Through a game store. We’re distributed in the UK by Esdevium Games, so the supply-line should be running. Make sure to explicitly ask the store to order you a copy if they don’t have one since they might not be aware of its existence.
It can now be ordered from the Leisure Games website in the UK.
Just ordered this from the UK (from a UK supplier.)
Really looking forward to having a read and running a game- should be a lot of fun!
This looks great!! Thanks for the contest..
Looks interesting,Veronica Mars, The Hardy Boys,etc. One nitpick. The examples for pc’s. The Black guy is named Tyler Lincoln. I am a Black guy. I went to a HBCU and worked in Social Services. I have never encountered anyone with the last name of Lincoln, except in works of fiction. The way you can always tell the Black character, is they have the last name of former presidents, Lincoln, or Washington. We have a lot of last names from different countries. Please be more creative in the name dept. Thanks!
Noted, and thank you for the feedback!
Just want to chime in and say how much fun I’m having running Bubblegumshoe right now. I’m a middle aged guy, but my group consists of three young ladies who have found themselves utterly enraptured by the drift campaign I created for them, specifically to appeal to their fandom. I never in my life would have thought I’d be running a game for teenage girls. Just shows that the hobby can appeal to the ladies quite nicely if you do it right. Apparently, running a game that’s a cross between the movie Brick, Supernatural, and Monster Hunter International is just the thing fangirls appreciate. Who knew?
Hi Hats. Adrian ‘Unremitting Horror’ Bott here with some rules queries. Our group is loving Bubblegumshoe (we had one of our most fun sessions in a very long time last night) but we need to clear up some issues about Throwdowns.
Firstly, do points spent from the Throwdown pool count as +2 to the roll or +1 (assuming the Sleuth’s Cool is above 5)? The reason for asking is that the one-page flowchart on page 59 gives +2, but the Throwdown play example starting on page 72 gives +1 consistently, and the Throwdown rules on p70 also only appear to give +1.
Secondly, on p75 the play example says Jessica would have failed without Tyler’s help. This doesn’t seem to be correct; Jessica rolled a 2, her own spends give her +3, so her result without Tyler would be 5, equal to the target number of 5 she needs to ‘hit’ Kaitlyn.
Finally, we can’t understand why Kaitlyn spends points to give herself a +4 total on p76. Her target number to ‘hit’ Jessica is presumably only 3, since Jessica’s class/clique is lower than hers. Kaitlyn only needs to spend enough points to give herself a +2 and a guaranteed ‘hit’. A +2 spend would also ensure that Kaitlyn crushed it in the event that she rolled a 6, since 6+2 gives 8, 5 above her target number of 3. So spending all the way up to +4 seems like a waste of valuable pool points.
Thanks, and congrats again – it’s a magnificent book!
@Adrian Bott – Thanks for the kind words! We’re looking into your questions and will get back to you!
@Adrian Bott – Thanks for the kind words!
Answers:
Yep, spending points on Throwdown should give +1 (not +2)
And you’re correct on all the examples. We went through lots of revisions of the examples and it looks like a few of them didn’t get updated. Thanks for catching them!