T.M.I.

So I was at the SF game this weekend. We played the in-book scenario from Ken Hite's ink-still-wet new Trail of Cthulhu. This is C-O-C using Robin Laws' Gumshoe System. I recently bought Fear Itself, and have been having some difficulty with the system. Thought perhaps it was just reading 20 minutes at a time, days apart. Doesn't help, but the GM running T-O-C had a bit of struggle also and he'd been in a playtest of it. The Player's review at the end didn't give the system very high marks. It does work to eliminate possible missed clues, which is one of the primary goals of the system, but the mechanics remained a bit unclear. But this ain't a review of Gumshoe. I'll do that once I've had a 4-hr block to read Fear Itself.

This is about character backgrounds. In SF we run monthly 1-shots where the GM hands out characters w/backgrounds, like a convention game. We've had some great character interaction because of many of these. In this game, one of the character's background involved them in action outside of the central plot of the game. This meant that he and the GM had to run off sometimes and do things on the side. At one point I even joked about whether or not this character was going to join us in the investigation.

Ultimately it all came together, but it put that Player and his character at a distance from everyone else. The drag is that the character was an Army buddy of 2 of the other characters. This could have led to a number of interesting moments, but since he wasn't always around...

In the post game analysis (what is this, freakin' sports!?) the GM revealed that he'd put that stuff into the character background to make things more interesting. They were, but also very distracting. Note to self: design 1-shot character backgrounds to feed into the central storyline, or to add color. Beware of possible character sidetracking. 'Character Sidetracking' have I just invented a term?