Welcome! And questions?

Okay, so here's my quick take on character creation because I can't find a complete cheat sheet and I can't get you a selection of the .pdf without, like, taking screencaps of each individual page.

There's this, which gives some info about the Gumshoe system. This is mostly for GMs, but I think the first page will be a helpful read.

From the book:

Sleuths begin with build points distributed among four areas: Investigative, Interpersonal, General, and Relationships. For all but General abilities, the number of points depends on the number of players:
# of Players: 4
Investigative Build Points: 6
Interpersonal Build Points: 9
Relationship Build Points: 13

All Sleuths begin with 40 General build points. You receive 4 points in Cool for free.

Character Creation Checklist
Based on number of players, assign Investigative, Interpersonal, and Relationship build point totals. Assign each player 40 General ability build points (refer to table page 9).
□□ Spend Investigative and Interpersonal build points on your
chosen abilities. Make sure all the abilities are covered by at least one Sleuth (page 13, 15).
□□ Spend points on General abilities. Take 4 free points in the Cool ability (page 18).
□□ Spend at least 5 of your Relationship build points on Relationships. If you take a Hate, you get 3 more Relationship build points (page 23).
□□ Define your Class, Clique, and Club (page 34).
□□ Decide how your Sleuths know each other.
□□ You might want to wait until after Town Creation for these last two steps. Or not (page 130).
□□ Choose your Drive (page 36).
□□ Decide on a compelling story arc.
□□ You’re done!

If you’d like, you can start defining how your characters befriended each other now, or you can play the process out in your first few episodes. You must spend at least 5 build points defining Relationships during character creation.

You can absolutely positively save build points to use later, defining abilities or relationships (mostly Like, one assumes) on an ad hoc basis in play. These don’t represent the sudden gaining of knowledge or techniques or parents—although Relationships do tend to pop up out of nowhere at weird moments. Instead, spending a build point during play shows the Sleuth revealing an ability or friend she has always had, but didn’t bother to mention until now. You can’t move points from one box to the other, though: Relationship build points have to be saved for Relationships, for example.

Soooo, Aphelion, when are we going to know in which house our kids have been sorted? 😁

When your characters get to the Great Hall and not a second sooner! 😂😈

In my defence, after spending my night reading up I'm feeling pretty good about the system, so I'm hoping we can get underway some time in the next week.

Noooooooooooooooooooooou :c

WELL, so I'll be pushy and ask what's missing for us to start?

Oh, nobody has uploaded their characters yet. Welp. No pressure, friends. (But like, yes pressure)

I just submitted mine!

I've submitted my character sheet. Relationships are still missing and I don't have a character portrait yet but I'll add the portrait as soon as I have it, but it would be useful to know my character's house for that

Finishing up now to the best of my ability in an unfamiliar system.

Absolutely is allowed, though very illegal (not that that matters!) and also it's highly advanced magic for a mostly untrained first year. Although if his father's an Animagus Bex would probably have been taught some of the basic concepts. Luckily Bubblegumshoe provides guidelines for challenges that'd be a longterm undertaking, like becoming an Animagus:

Continuing Challenges
Some tasks take a longer time than a single test represents, whether that test takes a round or a day of effort: trying to drill through a wall with Repair, or shove a heavy industrial freezer across the door with Athletics. Or they’re tasks that that should be played out narratively over numerous scenes or even numerous adventures: trying to hack a military database with Computers, trying to restore a Shelby Mustang with Repair, trying to weaken the head cheerleader’s social position with Throwdown.

The GM sets a total Difficulty (usually very high: 15+) and a minimum number of tests, and says how often the players can test (once per day, once per session, once per adventure, etc.). The Difficulty for each test is always 4. The Sleuths succeed when they’ve succeeded at the total Difficulty. "Extra" success does add to the total. Failed tests don’t add to the total.

EXAMPLE: You’re trying to take down the University’s web server so you can hack into the frat’s email when the system reboots. The GM sets the Difficulty for this hard and time-consuming DDOS attack at 20, sets the minimum number of tests at five, and says they can test once every two days. Tyler sets his Difficulty at 4, spends 2 points of Computers and rolls a 4, making the Difficulty. Elizabeth uses the school computer lab, but spends nothing: she rolls a 4 and succeeds—the total is 10. Jessica tries to help from home, spends 1, but only rolls a 2. Her points are wasted. The remaining 10 points of Difficulty have to wait for two days and at least two more tests.

Let me think on it, and I'll definitely come up with a framework for Bex developing his Animagus ability. But I'm obviously very into it.

That sounds like a really cool idea for a long-term plan. And it'll also provide some interesting character moments, I'm sure

Yep, that's what I was going for, His father was one. Although I thought if you registered it was legal. (It has been about 6 years since I've re-read the books.)
His parents were also involved in Ministry work keeping an eye on other Animagi...
His lost Uncle and the uncle's Twin sister were characters I played in another game, though it was very rules light, and I only got to play them a few times. Looking forward to playing him.

I'm really looking forward to working all of these relationships into the game. There's so much potential here.

I loooooooove that you've played the Uncle/Aunt before! If you want them included in some way feel free to shoot me a message with details about them.

Can you tell I'm bored at work? I think I've worked more on this campaign this morning than I've spent actually thinking about work.

As it should be xD

Same here! I'm a high school librarian and it is my open period right now, so I am totally not writing a journal from Bex's P.O.V. right now...nope not at all.....

Nice! Librarians rule! Full disclosure: I am not a librarian, I can only admire them from afar.

Personally, I'm looking for avatar pictures to avoid having to think about a department meeting in an hour and a half that is bound to be a miserable experience.

I manage the bookstore side of a little bookstore/cafe, so book people unite! (Quietly, hoping no one will talk to us.) I used to be a humble bookseller but then slowly took over the bookstore in absence of a responsible adult. So now I just send a lot of e-mails and cry to myself.

I'm assuming we will be able to improve the classes that we have a 0 in at some point? (I'm pretty sure Bex is a Ravenclaw, thought that is up to you. The idea of failure irks him something mighty)

Awn, look at this group! We're awesome, you guys. I'm also looking very forward to the game!

Librarian, at least rules-wise, we get 3 XP every time we finish an "adventure". One of the things we can do with it is to increase our abilities. And, hm, according to the hack we're playing, having a 0 in one of the Classes means we're terrible at them(As in, Charms blow up on our faces and that kind of stuff). So... Keep that in mind. x(

is it better if i spread the stats a bit then?

Dunno if necessarily better, but you might for roleplay reasons. 1st years shouldn't be having all these subjects though, so maybe most of them are more like if we've learned them on our own?