Sell me on The Esoterrorists

For #1, they'll reconsider saving points for later the first time you offer them a chance to spend and they don't have any left. Also, players can suggest spends, so it's really more dynamic than that. Also, there is an alternate way of doing optional clues that doesn't use spends at all. Instead, you simply give the clue to the person with the highest rank in that skill, and then go down from there until you reset. Really, you want players to have the clues. Gumshoe investigations are less about whether or not you have the clues you need, and more about what you do with the clues you have (and figuring out which clues are important and which ones are not). As for whether it's player agency, my players usually have to consider how likely this "thread" of the investigation is going to lead them where they want. If not, spending a point wouldn't be a very good idea, even if it might make things a little easier in the short term.

For #2, it's best not to think of a character's points in a skill as their level of competence. It's more along the lines of a narrative control to make sure one character doesn't just use the same skill for everything throughout an investigation. Even the best shots don't hit every time. The system is designed to let the players decide when it is that their abilities will shine, though. You don't really want the players to just use the abilities they have the highest rank in all the time. In other games, if you are good at shooting, you are probably going to be shooting every round of combat, and that doesn't really sound like options to me. With Gumshoe, you are going to want to creatively use your other skills as much as possible, that way your spend points from other pools. If your character dies with only two or three of their pools spent, you didn't really use your full potential. Combat is meant to be fast, intense, and pretty evenly dispersed throughout an investigation, and players need to decide when it's important to bust out their "star power".

/r/rpg Thread