Investigation and Interaction as Role-playing

[wyrdlyng]

This crosses over with a post I made at GO inquiring about how to a game which focused primarily on investigation and npc interactions.

The short and sweet is how you would do a game in which players took the roles of police officers investigating a crime. They would be investigating crime scenes, interacting with witnesses and following trails of evidence while trying to amass enough to build a case and arrest the suspect. Occasionally there would be some action thrown in as suspects don't always comply.

I was just looking for suggestions/ideas on how to model something to do this in a game.

I was also thinking about then taking what the officers have assembled and playing out the trial. The better the investigation went the easier the trial might be. This would also draw in more npc interaction as characters would examine suspects on the stand and try to sway the jury to their side.

I can see some basic ideas forming in my head with successes from the investigation being carried over to the trial as extra dice but not much else too clearly. (My job--travel the state and change out old PCs with new ones--doesn't encourage much creative thought. Factor in not getting a good night's sleep 5 out of 7 nights and I'm barely able to form coherent sentences.)

So, any thoughts?

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Alex,

Unfortunately, I can't tell what you're asking. There are so many variables about the general issue ("role-playing") that I can only say, "Depends." It also looks like you left a verb out of the most important sentence in the first paragraph, so I can't tell whether you're asking about play, prep, design, or what.

How does the investigation relate to the decisions of the players? Using the terms of my essay, is the scenario Roads to Rome, or relationship-map, or any of the others listed?

Is the conflict at hand really about the crime, and exposing it legally, or about justice per se? Or is it more about the interactions and feelings of the people engaged in the investigations, with the investigation essentially being context (as in most cop shows)?

I really need a lot more context and a clearly defined question.

Best,
Ron

[contracycle]

Wyrdling, you may want to check out some of the interesting discussion on "procedurals" as RPG, explicitly aimed at things like ER, LA Law and Hill Street Blues.  In general terms, the conclusion was that at least you would need someone pretty familiar with the precedures in question to be able to write mechanics in an appropriate manner.  Even then, there is the huge difficulty that actors only have to speak lines written for them by someone else who knows what to say, while RPGers have to say the lines themselves and, more or less, have adequate knowledge for decision-making.  This suggests that such a game would also have to effectively teach those procedures to the players to allow them to act purposefully rather than just rolling a Legal Argument skill; that would rob them of much of what gives the procedural its interest.

Anyway, that may or may not be what you meant.

[wyrdlyng]

Unfortunately, I can't tell what you're asking. There are so many variables about the general issue ("role-playing") that I can only say, "Depends." It also looks like you left a verb out of the most important sentence in the first paragraph, so I can't tell whether you're asking about play, prep, design, or what.

Sorry about that. Many of my posts end up being piecemeal with sentences being strung together with 5 minute gaps between them.

I was asking for advice on running and or designing a game which focuses on criminal investigation and prosecution along the lines of a show like Law & Order.

How does the investigation relate to the decisions of the players? Using the terms of my essay, is the scenario Roads to Rome, or relationship-map, or any of the others listed?

The players would take the roles of the investigating officers and the prosecuting attorneys. The players would choose what leads to pursue and therefore would control the direction of the investigation.

I don't know which essay you're refering to but I'd be thankful if you pointed me towards it. :)

Is the conflict at hand really about the crime, and exposing it legally, or about justice per se? Or is it more about the interactions and feelings of the people engaged in the investigations, with the investigation essentially being context (as in most cop shows)?

For the players the conflict would be determining the truth of the crime and exposing it legally while trying to see justice done. The feelings and motives of the characters would be what determines how far each one is willing to go to resolve each element of the conflict. (A straight-laced investigator would want everything done by the book. A more frustrated cop would be willing to bend the law if it meant that justice was done.)

The feelings and interactions of the investigators would come out but not in an melodramatic manner. Nothing like "I can't focus on the case because my half-sister slept with my boyfriend." Personal problems outside of the investigation would surface but that would act more to influence the investigator's behavior during the case rather than draw the focus off into their personal life.

I hope this is a bit clearer.

[wyrdlyng]

Actually, this is what I am talking about.

I agree that players would need knowledge of such procedures but that can be passed on relatively simply (if people can memorize charts of to-hit probabilities then some general rules on what would be allowable during an investigation should be no problem). Of course keeping investigations simple at first and letting later ones grow more complex also serves to ease players into this different type of thinking.

As for things like interrogation and prosecution I have always been a proponent of a player's role-playing influencing rolls in a positive manner. If they do a great job acting out an interrogation then that should add a large bonus to their skill/stat/thing. I believe in keeping a stat/skill/thing in order to not penalize those who are not as comfortable acting out such things.

Can you point me towards those posts you mentioned, btw?

[wyrdlyng]

How does the investigation relate to the decisions of the players? Using the terms of my essay, is the scenario Roads to Rome, or relationship-map, or any of the others listed?

Ah, I reread the essay. Scenarios would more than likely start out as linear, branched as players became more familiar with how investigations are conducted and evolve into relationship-map.

[Mike Holmes]

You're talking about a Law & Order RPG, aren't you. I've thought about it myself a lot. One suggestion that I'd have is that each player should have one investigator, and one prosecutor. Then rank them in importance from highest to lowest, and the players get the inverse character on the other side. So if I have the number one prosecutor in a four player game, I then have the number four cop. Actually, to follow the show, you'd always want either two or three players, which would be perfect. In a three player game, the positions are 1), veteran 2), rookie 3), supervisor. This rates their screen time, not their actual job rank.

Just some thoughts,
Mike

[Mithras]

I was just looking for suggestions/ideas on how to model something to do this in a game.

This made me think 'building a case...'. If you treat it in this manner you might run a game where evidence (of whatever value) is gathered and a case is 'built', I'm thinking of the wonderful Research/Construction table here from Rolemaster, with the result on the table being a % chance showing you how close you are to your goal. Imagine that as a case against a murderer. You go to court with a 50/50 or a 120% case. Whatever.

How that gets kicked about in court is a different game!

[contracycle]

Can you point me towards those posts you mentioned, btw?

I'm afraid I cannot remember the thread header; I took a wade, but didn't see anything that rung a bell.  Anyone else?

[GB Steve]

This crosses over with a post I made at GO inquiring about how to a game which focused primarily on investigation and npc interactions.

The short and sweet is how you would do a game in which players took the roles of police officers investigating a crime. They would be investigating crime scenes, interacting with witnesses and following trails of evidence while trying to amass enough to build a case and arrest the suspect. Occasionally there would be some action thrown in as suspects don't always comply.

I was also thinking about then taking what the officers have assembled and playing out the trial. The better the investigation went the easier the trial might be. This would also draw in more npc interaction as characters would examine suspects on the stand and try to sway the jury to their side.

A lot of thoughts of the top of my head whilst eating my lunch.

This sounds more like a board game than an RPG. The problem is procedure is dull in RPGs. I'd say that you need to abstract the procedure so that players don't have to swallow a Police Manual and a Legal Dictionary to play.

What do police officers do in investigations that are less prone to procedure that PCs can also do?

I mean, look at Alien, there's the bit where they land the shuttle on the planet. Things go wrong the pilot has to do clever things, as do the engineers. It's exciting and atmospheric. It's also not very good in an RPG. It would probably end up as a few dice rolls and the spending of some fate points. You could squeeze some tension into it but you'd be working quite hard. You also wouldn't want to repeat it too soon.

Consider a policeman's lot. It's not a happy one. Full of repetitive and dull tasks. Law & Order works because it is fiction which is a whole. RPGs are not made in the same way.

So your game in primarily about the PCs getting information from either people who don't want to give it up or hidden places. To make this interesting you need some kind of pay-off between how the information is retrieved and what the PCs can do with it. Fortunately you have the trial and the fact information wrongly obtained is Inadmissable Evidence.

Another aspect is about getting the information on time. The PD has other needs so the old cliché of "you have 24 hours" can be used, the suspect has rights (habeas corpus) and sometimes you can use the info to stop something else happening ("Where's the bomb!").

I think also that the interaction between PCs and NPCs need to be quite carefully designed. In D&D, only alignment stood between questioning prisoners and torturing them. You need to make sure that NPCs have weaknesses to which PCs can apply pressure. Part of the game then is finding out what that weakness is.

Cheers,

GB Steve