Investigators Gamebooks: Continuing the Adventure…

If you’ve played the first Investigators Gamebook, The Darkness Over Arkham, you’ll know that your Investigator can experience quite a few changes over the course of the adventure. An Investigator’s skills – their Intellect, Willpower and Combat – can increase or decrease as a result of the choices you make and your success or failure in tests of skill. Health and Sanity, likewise, can go up or down (usually down…) over the course of the adventure, while Investigators also acquire clues and resources and, ominously, accrue Doom.

The upcoming second book in the series, The Tides of Innsmouth, introduces rules for experience, permanently altering your Investigator’s skills and other stats, based on how you’ve fared in your adventures so far.

Not all of the changes your Investigator experienced in their last adventure will necessarily carry over (so, don’t worry – you won’t be starting Tides of Innsmouth with 1 Health because of a rough time dealing with the [REDACTED] in The Darkness Over Arkham). Most of the stat changes an Investigator incurs over the course of a gamebook will be temporary. An Investigator’s Intellect might go up, reflecting what they’ve learned about how to deal with a particular enemy, but that won’t necessarily help them when they come up against some new, unimagined monstrosity the next time. Similarly, their Combat or Willpower might go down, reflecting physical fatigue and injuries picked up along the way, but the time for rest and recuperation between adventures should help them recover. So, by default, skills, Health and Sanity will reset to an Investigator’s original starting values after each adventure. However, with the new experience rules, some changes will be permanent…

Success in an adventure earns your Investigator a number of stars, which reflects how successful you were and which of the book’s many possible endings you reached. The experience rules allow you to roll a dice for each star you earned in your previous adventure, and for each that rolls a 6, you can increase one of your Investigator’s stats permanently. For each dice that rolls a 1, however, you must decrease one of your Investigator’s stats permanently. You can choose which stats to apply these changes to, but if any of your stats changed temporarily during the previous adventure, you have to pick those first, so your actual experiences in each adventure will be reflected in how your Investigator develops over time.

Existing players will also know that Investigators acquire new abilities and weaknesses, and pick up new items, over the course of an adventure, too. These also form part of the experience rules. Like with skills, most abilities and weaknesses are gained only temporarily, but you can pick one of each to add to your Investigator’s character sheet permanently. The trick is choosing an ability that’s likely to be useful again in future, while selecting a balancing weakness that isn’t going to make life too tough. You can also keep one item you picked up along the way – Detective Harden’s Card seems like it might come in handy again in future, but if you really want to keep the Bread Knife or even your Inky Fingers, you can.

You can download the full rules for experience below. You’ll also find them in The Tides of Innsmouth, which is available to pre-order now (and you can find a list of retailers here).