Esoterrorists by Robin D. Laws

Background
This is a complete RPG in an 86 page paperback.

The players are part of a benevolent international conspiracy, the Ordo Veritatis, which protects the world from the Esoterrorists, power mad occultists trying to breakdown the barrier between reality and the supernatural.

Rules
This game is the first to use the Gumshoe System, which was created to power all kinds of investigative games. The ideas behind the system is that most investigative games come to a shuddering stop if a player fails a roll, and misses out on an important clue. The GM then has to let the player re-roll, or fudges the roll to make sure the player gets the clue, so the adventure can continue.

The Gumshoe system splits skills into investigative, and general. If you are using an investigative skill, and there is a clue which you could find using that skill, then you find the clue. There is no rolling of dice. You just get the clue. Every scene has a core clue, which will lead the players to the next scene. This means the adventure never bogs down, it just keeps on flowing.

The characters have ratings for their skills, and these provide a pool of points the players can spend to get additional information. For example, if a character finds a photograph, they can say they are using their Photography skill to analyse it. This would allow them to find that it had been digitally altered. The GM could then say, “If you spend a couple of points then you might find some more info.” The player then spends two points, and the GM can tell them what additional information they uncover. However, the player can’t just spend points to get info if there isn’t any to be had.

A problem investigative games often have is, there may be a clue to find, but nobody has the appropriate skill. The Gumshoe system gets round this by having the players checking with each other during the character creation process to make sure that none of the investigation skills have been missed out. With a small group this might mean that a character has some skills that don’t exactly mesh with the players character concept. However, there are a couple of ways to get round this. The player can try to explain why his Indiana Jones style Archaeologist character has Forensic Accounting, and in the process give him a bit more background, making him less of a one dimensional movie rip off. Alternatively, they can just assume that this is something he picked up during his years with the Ordo Veritatis.

This is a combat light game. There aren’t screeds of stats for guns, and weapons. There are two ways of running fights, one is used where there are just two combatants, and the other is for groups fighting each other. Both are quick and deadly. For taking out large concentrations of cultists or monsters the players can call in the Ordo Veritatis’ military wing, or just call in an air strike. Though, they will always have to come up with a way of covering up the true nature of their actions.

Recommendation
This feels like the intellectual equivalent to Robin D Laws great action RPG, Feng Shui. Like that game, the emphasis is on taking the players from one scene to the next in the most efficient way. Where Feng Shui was inspired by action movies, The Essoterrorists feels like a TV show. It encourages GM’s to come up with adventures where events, situations or characters have been “ripped from the headlines” in the way that TV shows like Law & Order or CSI do.

While the system may sound a little odd, in practice it works very well. The players get to a scene, and immediately start checking everything out. Since they know they’ll find everything that could be there, they leave no stone unturned. Once they have all the clues, then comes the tricky part of interpreting them.

In the wake of the X-Files, there were a slew of occult investigation RPG’s that came out. It looks like we had to wait until now for one that really delivers.