The Hook (GUMSHOE All)

 

Casablanca Opening Scene

What makes a good hook?

In GUMSHOE and in most investigative games the hook, or opening scene, is used to lure the characters into the plot. It alerts them that something is going on; it gives them a rough (and possibly misleading) idea of what is to come; it may even give a hint (again, possibly misleading) of the kind of opposition they will face. 

Take a look at the opening scene of Casablanca. In less than two and a half minutes, you know where you are, when you are, how serious the situation is, and the broad strokes of the kind of narrative you're about to witness. You even know the name of one of the main characters, M. Renault, the prefect of police. 

But you don't see M. Renault, nor do you see any other main character. You see two minor characters, and one recurring character, briefly. NPCs, all. You see the signage for Rick's Café Américain, but you don't see Rick. 

In any RPG setting some of this heavy lifting is done for you. You always know when you are: Cyberpunk is a game of the dark future, not 1890s London. Trail is a 1930s setting, Call a 1920s setting (for the most part) and so on. The rest of it is up to you.

But that gives a clear indication of the nature of a good hook. It tells you how serious the situation is, and the broad strokes of the kind of narrative you're about to experience. It should also give you a clear indication of where to go next since, unlike Rick and M. Renault, your players don't have a script to work with.  

I'm going to borrow the example I used last week for Night's Black Agents:

An apartment in a Wandsworth council house exploded thanks to a mistimed suicide vest, which the powers that be are covering up under DORA as a gas leak. There's an official investigation; the agents are parachuted in as 'experts' by whichever agency sponsors them. Edom, why not.

As Director you already know that this is a modern spy game set in London with supernatural opposition as the major players in the shadowy underbelly of Europe. You know where you want the agents to go. The question is how to get there.

Some of an opening scene is setting rather than information: you set the tone. 

Rain spits from grey skies as you pass the police tape line. Nobody looks you in the eye. Not the plod, not the people. They don't know who you are, but they know what you are. Only the CCTV, sprouting like fungal growths off every wall and corner, doesn't look away. The electronic eye sees all. 

Inside, the apartment is meat feast mixed with brimstone. Forensics in their noddy suits are going over every inch and you watch their progress as you get into noddy suits of your own. At least three people lived here, according to the police report. Two of them accounted for; that would be the pile over there, and the plonker who set off the bomb by accident whose constituent parts now decorate the walls. Nobody knows where the third, the brother, Marcus, is.

The scene lead, Inspector Dawkins, is conferring with one of the forensic techs. He pretends not to notice you.    

You could add more but that's enough to be getting on with. That's the tone set. The Casablanca moment.

The next thing to think about is the clue trail. You want the agents to find clues that lead to the next scene, or at least lead to a scene which is interesting. 

Key point, that. You can have as many red herring trails as you like but they all have to be interesting. Either they lead to an action moment of some kind, or they introduce something unique to the plot. 

For example: brother Marcus might not be involved in the main plot at all. He might have taken to his heels when he saw the bombs go off. Following him doesn't lead to main plot. But he almost certainly knows something useful and the OPFOR know he knows something useful, so chasing that lead gets to either:

• an action moment where Marcus has to be saved from certain death, or,
• a horror moment when the agents find out what hideous atrocities the OPFOR inflicted on Marcus. Eaten by ghouls, say, or turned into a zombie, or used as a ritual sacrifice.

The next question is, what clues to leave? Where do they go?

It's useful for any hook to have at least one Clue per specialty, and one Clue for Rome. 

In Night's Black Agents there are three specialty pools: Technical, Academic, Interpersonal. The geek skills, the scholar skills, the talky skills. Other systems follow similar lines. If we were talking about D&D, for example, it would be STR based, WIS based, CHA based and so on. All GUMSHOE systems follow broadly the same Technical, Academic and Interpersonal principles. 

In this particular setting there are also Network contacts that the agents can call on if there's a skill pool that they lack. So even if none of the agents have significant Technical pools, say, they can call on someone who does.

Now, in each heading there are various different possibilities. Technical, for example, includes Astronomy, Forgery and Pharmacy, among others. Does that mean you have to have a Clue for all three? For all Technical possibilities?

Of course not. If you know the agents' capabilities from the start you can tailor the Clue trail to those capabilities but assume for the sake of this example that you don't know what the agents are capable of. In that case, just assign an Academic, a Technical and an Interpersonal skill, and let the player choose how they got there. They can use any Academic pool they like to get the Academic Clue, and so on.

There are two advantages to this. One is that it allows creative players to make use of pools that don't often see play. Astronomy is my personal bugbear; I can't imagine a use for it outside of a particularly restricted set of circumstances. However, a creative player might come up with an idea I haven't thought of, and if it's not completely Scooby Doo and fits the narrative, why not use it?

The second is that it allows easy jump-off to the next scene. If, say, you planned it so that only Forensic Science would work, and nobody has Forensic Science, nobody thinks of a way to use it in the scene, or nobody uses the magic words 'I'd like to use Forensic Science, please, Director,' then the Clue trail stops dead. Which is the very last thing you want to happen, especially in the opening scene of the scenario.

Understand, I'm not suggesting that you do this in any other scene but this one. Nor am I suggesting that you only have four clues in the opening scene. What I'm saying is that, in order to guarantee smooth passage from here to the next moment, have at least four clues and don't worry about assigning particular pools for these clues. Just make sure there's one each for Technical, Academic, and Interpersonal, and one for Rome so the agents get a sniff of what they're dealing with.

Put it this way: James Bond fails all the time. He never fails in the opening scene. Later on, sure, he might be captured, bungle a rescue, whatever. But in the first ten minutes Bond does nothing but shine. Occasionally he wears a seagull on his head. But he shines.

OK, so let's put this to work.

We already have the opening moment. We know what Casablanca looks like. The agents are on the bomb site poking through the debris. We need at least four clues to propel them from here to somewhere else. 

• Academic: there's information here about someone's medical history over the past two years; their last appointment was four months ago, for a consultation at London Bridge Hospital - the Shard, where they keep their fertility clinic. How did this lot afford it, and why were they keen to see a fertility specialist?
• Point spend: the doctor at the Shard, Felicity Pocock, is a suspected Conspiracy asset, but it's never been clear whether she has any status or is just a cog in the machine.
• Technical: the explosive vest is fairly low-level tech; even so, it's beyond this mug's technical capability. It must have been put together somewhere else and brought here.
• Point spend: there's a terrorist group, Groupe Islamique Combattant Marocain or Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, known to have 'acquired' C-4 exactly like this from USAG Benelux. The GICM have links with a London coke and hash smuggling group, the Fassih Collective. Is that how the C-4 got from Belgium to London? 
• Interpersonal: Inspector Dawkins is a known face, and a dogged investigator. However, his career has taken some pretty serious alcohol-related dings in the last few years. There are other candidates just as skilled as he; why is he assigned to this case?
• Point spend: Dawkins has an angel in his corner. Someone high up the chain has taken an interest in his career and is pushing him forward, which means Dawkins has politics on his side. Someone at Assistant Commissioner level in the Met, at least. 
• Rome: the people who lived here went to a lot of trouble to protect their electronics against EMP damage. It didn't work; there's a pile of discarded watches and portable electronics, completely fried. 
• Point spend: damage to electronics is a possible indication of supernatural or vampiric activity. There have been a few other crime scenes with similar markers, and three out of the five were in the Greenwich area. There's an informant down that way, runs a phone shop on Powis Street; Babichev, aka Fat Bob. Links to Russian criminals, Turkish - a very popular lad, is Bob. 

There you go.

You can have more clues, of course. I encourage that. But with this little trail the agents have two defined places to go (the Shard, Fat Bob) and two potential lines of enquiry (the Fassih Collective, Dawkin's angel in the Met). Plenty to be getting on with. 

That's it for this week. Enjoy!