Too late to get it free, but it's only $2.00.

Too late to get it free, but it's only $2.00.

Originally shared by Richard Williams (Epistolary Richard)

This post is shareable
*Teen Detective released (and free for a short time)*
Delighted to announce that this teen detective genre game is now up on DriveThru, designed by myself and with cover art by the talented Aviv Or.
Follow this collection to read more about the design over the next few days:
https://plus.google.com/collection/M-yMSE

Why should I care?
Teen Detective is my take on adapting my favourite investigative game (Cthulhu Dark by Graham Walmsley) for the teen detective genre. If you're down with Cthulhu Dark's ultra-light ruleset, its fundamental trust between players and GM, and you like Veronica Mars or other teen detectives then you should give this a look (and download it, because it's free, but not for very long).

Wait, didn't you release this game about a month ago?
That was Teen Noir (which is still available here: http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/222346/Teen-Noir ) it's in the teen mystery genre but a very different game. TN is GMless, designed for one-shots, and really about the strain of a friendship group where one friend is guilty and another is going to take the fall. Teen Detective is far more your classic GM brings a mystery, the players investigate, they find the culprit (or they don't) and then put things right however they think best. They're both teen games, but they scratch very different itches.

So this one is like Veronica Mars?
Yeah, right down to the differing motivations between the teens, dark secrets in the families, and maybe even occasionally destroying evidence to protect themselves at the cost of the investigation.

You've heard of Bubblegumshoe right?
Absolutely, but just as there's Call of Cthulhu, Trail of Cthulhu, Cthulhu Dark and dozens of other horror investigative games I'm hoping there's room for both Bubblegumshoe and Teen Detective in the teen mystery genre.

What's this about three different playstyles? Puzzle, Pulp and Collaborative? How can the same game support all three?
The basic levers in the game are Edges, Lightbulbs and Taking Risks (which may trigger your Dark Secret). The different playstyles are all about the emphasis the GM gives each lever and how she encourages their use. I also write about the basic structure of the mystery and advise GMs about how to weight that structure for the different playstyles.

I couldn't have written Teen Detective for just a single playstyle, there are too many players out there who are into investigative games but enjoy very different approaches to them. I want GMs and players to be up front about the way they want to play this game and then support them in that choice. I know from experience that if a puzzle player, a pulp player and a collaborator all try to play with each other their own way they just piss each other off.

Say, hypothetically, I was writing a systemless teen mystery scenario, could I include the Teen Detective rules in the back of my book so buyers could play my scenario without necessarily having another game system?
That's a highly unlikely scenario, but almost certainly yes! Please talk to me first.






http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/225578/Teen-Detective