Survival Horror and detective fiction go hand in hand. When you're only equipped with whatever sword or six-shooter (one-shooter if you're the illusionist with Chromatic Orb) and you can go down in one hit, you have to count on your wits to make up for it. Both systems put an emphasis on resource management: OSE with items and refills-every-day abilities and gumshoe with refills-every-adventure investigative pool points. It's a tense combo that maybe put too much strain on the players who I didn't prepare properly for what they were getting in for system-wise.

 I hate mechanical stress-systems generally. Call of Cthulhu's is *okay* because it's gradual enough to feel semi-realistic. I just never knew how to tell players "okay, now you *have* to roleplay like your character is on the verge of a psychotic break". I think two things spiritually replaced it. First is a ticking clock as the players tried to track down the jack-the-ripper style serial killer before they kill again. There was a push-your-luck aspect to being down half of your health but knowing that if you went back to the inn to replenish your 1d3 health a night, someone innocent *will* die. The second is the knife that Jack has that does 1d4+4 (the tankiest character had 8 hp) and inflicts *cause fear* on its victim. Giving the impression that you're (a little bit) adversarial to the players really sets in that they don't have plot armor. I'm sure stress systems can be done well, but OSE and harsh failure states is stressful enough for me. Honestly introducing Old-School Essentials to players of heavier and less lethal systems was decisive. I wouldn't have gotten away with it if I didn't promise it was only a four-session series. I learned a lot about the importance of setting expectations and cluing players in on what the system encourages. They definitely would've spent more time buying equipment. But now we get to the important stuff.

 If you don't know what the investigative system for Gumshoe is, here's a really good quote from the SRD:

 It's largely automatic and almost passive. Rolling to see if the players find the murder weapon is replaced with the players finding the murder weapon. It's faster and the characters feel more competent. They won't go into the finale with only half of the needed context. Its implementation into GumOSE (and will be for gumcairn) was a very brute force ripping out of everything except the core investigative system and slapping it into the ose chassis. It's probably not the cleanest design as having the Visual Calculus ability made most wisdom checks not happen, but the last straight fantasy version of Gumcairn came out in 2009 with the pathfinder add-on book that slaps the investigative system onto that. I wholeheartedly recommend reading the rules section of the Gumshoe SRD and cannot wait till Pelgrane Press makes a Trail of Cthulhu 2nd edition.

 In the end the players defeated Jack and stopped the waking of The Dreaming King. Which is good because 1000 years ago the king went to the crystal spires of the Atlantic Ocean and recorded his resurrection as the last thing to ever happen. His resurrection would've meant the end of time. The city of Paridon is still fucked (being run by illithid and heavy industrialization will cause that) but at least the players leveled up to 2.