Recently I ran an adventure with one of my home gaming groups--my bi-weekly Friday group, several members of which had never played the game before. It was a really fun and eye-opening experience. The majority of my running SIEGE Engine games has been with my Sunday group, who (often unknowingly) were playtesting elements of it while I was working out the rules for Amazing Adventures.
In any case, the advenure ran very well and we had a great time. It did, however, reveal one element of the game that may perhaps not be as clear as it should be in the rules as written. That element is the Gumshoe's Cat and Mouse ability. I thought I'd do a deeper dive here regarding what exactly the Gumshoe's Cat and Mouse represents.
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Supernatural Investigators Extraordinaire
Gumshoes are built to be outstanding investigators of both mundane and paranormal crimes and events. This is all tied up into their Cat and Mouse ability. Many people--and rightly so--view "Cat and Mouse" as simply the ability to follow physical signs when looking for a target. Are there footprints in the dirt outside the window? Did they break a vase while running out of the room and trail bits of ceramic down the hall? Cat and Mouse certainly covers that. In truth, however, it covers far, far more.
Urban Cat and Mouse and CSI
Cat and Mouse, as the Gumshoe uses it, encompasses just about every way you can think of to conduct an investigation into a mystery. Gumshoes are in many ways like Sherlock Holmes...or Batman. They're ace detectives, and Cat and Mouse is their ability to case a crime scene, pick up clues, and put the pieces together so they can figure out what's going on, whodunnit, where, and with what. It is, in short, their crime scene investigation ability as well as their perceptive logic skills. If Col. Mustard did it in the Ballroom with the Lead Pipe, it's the Gumshoe who wins the board game by putting all the clues together.
From finding that lone matchbook in a pile of garbage with the name of Club Khalsa on the cover to calling upon a police contact to run a license plate number caught by a witness to taking fingerprints and looking for powder traces on a gunshot victim's hands, Cat and Mouse lets the Gumshoe find the necessary pieces of the puzzle to put everything together. A Survivor can find the clues with their Perception ability, and an Intelligence check might allow them to connect the pieces. A Gumshoe, on the other hand, makes a Cat and Mouse check and finds the clue, which leads them to the next piece of the puzzle.
What Cat and Mouse Is Not
Cat and Mouse, while it represents the Gumshoe's ability to put together disparate pieces of a complex puzzle, should never be a magic bullet to let the heroes wind their way through a scenario with simple die rolls, with the Game Master doling out the answers in detail. A successful Cat and Mouse roll should allow the investigator to find puzzle pieces and clues, should point them to the next location or clue, and so on. It should always be left to the players to put together what's happening, A Cat and Mouse check can help provide hints and inspiration if they're missing something, but it shouldn't substitute for role playing and player ingenuity, nor should any class ability.
On the other hand, it's likely that unless they are private investigators or police detectives in real life, your players probably aren't ace investigators for real. There's a thin line that GMs have to tread when running a game--making your players think is one thing, but you have to remember that they're not actually real-life Gumshoes with uncanny detection skills, superpowers, and vast knowledge of the occult. Class abilities let their characters do things they can't do in real life.
In the end, don't let them get over-reliant on their class abilities to do everything for them, but as GM or CK, allow them to use those class abilities to represent their character's expertise. Drop hints to lead them to the proper conclusion, but don't just hand it out. It's also okay to send them off on a red herring every so often, just so long as eventually they hit a proper wall with that red herring which puts them back on the proper path. You can use Cat and Mouse for your own purposes, to move your story forward, as well as it being an invaluable aid to your players.
If you haven't checked out Amazing Adventures yet, what are you waiting for? Even if you're a fantasy gamer, AA adds a wealth of tools, options, and character classes to your Castles & Crusades games, including the official psionics rules for the SIEGE Engine! Grab your copy today!
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