Play@YSDC

My condolences as well :/

Sorry guys, I got ill and the last week is a blur...

This scene split the group and some of the players didn't have the chance to participate much (I'm thinking especially of ghill). Sometimes, it goes like this. I hope you didn't get too bored, time to jump back in

Nope, I don't feel a need to be in every scene, had no issues with it and am happy to watch. It didn't make any sense for Francois to go in. Had I been quicker thinking I would have, had him walk into the cafe imediatly after events unfolded but Cest la vie.

A quick Q about skills arising from tea analysis and the question of which skill is appropriate. I thought the whole point was not to worry about what skills you had but simply how to use them, so I could use spend streetwise to get a chemist friend to tell me what the composition was or Bureaucracy to get someone int he school Biology department? Is this not how it works?

ghill wrote:A quick Q about skills arising from tea analysis and the question of which skill is appropriate. I thought the whole point was not to worry about what skills you had but simply how to use them, so I could use spend streetwise to get a chemist friend to tell me what the composition was or Bureaucracy to get someone int he school Biology department? Is this not how it works?

Well, this is an interesting point. Technically, you need the correct skill to perform the analysis yourself, and this has the additional advantage that you can be 100% sure the results weren't tampered with. That said, obviously you can always find someone to perform the analysis if you lack the proper skill - especially if the game is set in a large city as it is the case for this one.
I would probably say that it's difficult to find an expert available to perform the analysis with the urgency you require. Most people aren't available to pick up an unexpected job and complete it in 24-48 hours, postponing anything else they were doing. So, if you rely on someone else, you might have to wait longer or make a spend to speed things up (this case is different since Jacques is a high ranking officer and there's an open investigation ongoing - if it was a personal request, I could have requested a Credit Rating spend to use his rank to speed things up with the gendarmerie's laboratory).
The whole concept of GUMSHOE is that the players will always find the core clue they need, and the Keeper should always allow the players to come up with a clever solution. On the other hand, there's always a right ability for the job, and the players should be rewarded for having created a balanced party that covers most of them. Otherwise, we would only need 3 or 4 skills, and the game would be poorer.

I've been trying to see if I can find out anything about the Gendarmerie's powers

It is a branch of the French Armed Forces which I believe at this point in time is still under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Defence.

This is about all I can find;

The powers of French police and gendarmerie forces are constrained by statute law. The rules of procedure depend on the stage of enquiry:

1) Crimes committed in flagrante delicto (in the act), in which a suspect was found committing the crime, or pursued by witnesses, or found in possession of objects from the crime or other probable cause.

2) Preliminary enquiries: it is unclear whether a crime, or which crime, has been committed, but there exist good reasons to believe this might be the case.

3) Judicial information: an investigative magistrate (a judge, external to the police) supervises an inquiry on a case where it is certain, or at least very probable, that a crime has been committed.

In particular, outside of crimes in flagrante delicto, law enforcement forces may not conduct searches or arrests without a specific commission from the investigative magistrate. Depending on legal status of cases, not all law enforcement officers are able to act; some powers are restricted to those with special legal qualifications (see next section). - Which basically means we can't kick the door in without a good reason.

So, apart from Mr. Handy, are the others alive?

I am. I'm just following his lead for now

Alive just waiting to see how matters develop.

Just posting to say I'll open the new topic on the weekend

And I'd like to apologies for not being active. I've went to visit my family. In effect I've lost one week to jet-lag, three to parties, now I'm recuperating xD

Updated the section with NPCs and clues.

Overlord how do you want us to handle this conversation with Juliene. I'm hoping no word by word


Also Cearlan congrats on the new grand-kiddy, (whilst hoping I have at least another 10 years before I need to think about hearing the patter of little feet again)

Well, you can skip some parts, for example:

Francois tells Julien what happened in Verchanne. (Without actually writing down everything that happened).

Or something like that. You might want to ask him something, I don't know.

If you wish to cut it short and tell him nothing, well, that's fine by me, too. We'll close it in a few posts.

Won't be able to follow the forum for a few days. See you on friday

Sorry guys, gonna try to use the internal dice roller here Tried that a second ago, failed, tried to edit the post, didn't work as all my consecutive "dice" entries got added to each other and I could not remove any of them

[dice]0[/dice]

[dice]"1d6"[/dice]

The dice roller instructions are here.

Basically, what you need to do to roll 1d6 is this: The results should look like this:
[dice]0[/dice]

[dice]0[/dice]