How to Handle Legal Dramas

[John Kim]

Van Buren and Adam aren't big enough characters to be made PCs, and they're both authority figures the PCs (Briscoe, Curtis, McCoy and whatsername -- the one with the nose) have to persuade. Adam never appears in court either, so he wouldn't be very interesting to play. Likewise, the defendant and the defense attorney are different every week and therefore can't be PCs (In a traditional campaign format anyway).

Well, OK.  I guess the question is: what is the reason behind sticking with tradition, other than because it is tradition?  What do you see as the contrast between your approach and the more divided-role approach?  

From my point-of-view, it seems like a huge burden on a single participant to handle all those major roles (judge, jury, DA, police captain, defendant, and defense attorney).  So my thought would be that it would be more playable if this were spread over several people.  What is your take on the contrast?

[M. J. Young]

If I'm going to get started seriously on writing this, and it sounds like I may be, I'd better set out some stated aims for a concrete project. Otherwise this is going to be another "all things to all players" discussion that nods and agrees "something must be done...."

Actually, I've already written something, and I think it answers a lot of the problems afloat on this thread. I just haven't gotten it published yet, but since it's intended as an article for Internet publication, it's just a matter of deciding to which site I should submit it. I am currently thinking RPGnet, and have a few tweaks in it that suggest this, but am still considering.

I mention it because I've got it posted on an unpublished URL on my site so that a couple people can comment. (Bruce Baugh has promised to take a look, as he was the one on the other thread here who encouraged me to make the attempt). If anyone would like to preview it and give me feedback, particularly on whether it would work, contact me by PM or at mailto:MJYoung@mjyoung.net?subject=Lawyer Article">MJYoung@mjyoung.net (my current registered e-mail account is suffering from some temporary domain problems) and I'll send you the URL so you can read it and let me know your thoughts before I send it.

I should specify that this is not a game I've written; it's an article which in essence provides a core summary of everything you need to know to fake being a lawyer or judge well enough to create the kind of dramatic arguments we see in dramas which have real and viable legal content. How the resolution mechanics would work is not considered.

One option might be to make all of the players the jury. That is, no one plays the jury during the trial. But then at the end of the trial, everyone switches and plays a jury member. They debate the merits of the case, perhaps for some fixed time, and then vote for what the outcome should be. This is similar to, say, the "bests" voting system in "Shadows in the Fog". The prosecution player could vote for his own side, but he might also be convinced otherwise. To minimize bias, you could have the players evenly split during the trial between prosecution characters and defense characters.

For what it's worth, most Common Law jurisdictions (the ones with which English-speaking peoples are familiar, modeled on the British system, with oral testimony before juries) require unanimous agreement by jurors for any verdict. Either they all agree that the defendant is guilty, or they all agree that he is not guilty, or we have a hung jury. That's one reason why they often deliberate so long. It is also generally believed that if the jury is back quick in a criminal case, they probably returned a not guilty verdict, because enough of them were unpersuaded by the case that the others had to admit the case unpersuasive. There have been efforts to study the psychology of the jury process, but courts have rather consistently forbidden any taping or observation of real case jury process, as it is thought this might prejudice the results.

Someone observed that in Law & Order the prosecution is always the same but the defense attorneys change. I'll note the counter example that in L. A. Law the defense attorneys are always the same and the prosecution is different. Perhaps the quintessential courtroom drama is still Raymond Burr's portrayal of Earle Stanley Gardner's character Perry Mason; and it is arguable that Matlock was modeled on this format. In both of these, the defense attorney, being the character whose cases we follow, was always the same, and the prosecutor, being the head prosecutor for the district in charge of all capital crimes, was always the same (at least until someone else took over the job). There was a recurring stable of judges in these shows as well. There is no reason why players can't have regular roles in this regard, or even why they can't have multiple characters for the same or different roles in the case.

--M. J. Young

[James Holloway]

Van Buren and Adam aren't big enough characters to be made PCs, and they're both authority figures the PCs (Briscoe, Curtis, McCoy and whatsername -- the one with the nose) have to persuade. Adam never appears in court either, so he wouldn't be very interesting to play. Likewise, the defendant and the defense attorney are different every week and therefore can't be PCs (In a traditional campaign format anyway).

Well, OK.  I guess the question is: what is the reason behind sticking with tradition, other than because it is tradition?  What do you see as the contrast between your approach and the more divided-role approach?  

From my point-of-view, it seems like a huge burden on a single participant to handle all those major roles (judge, jury, DA, police captain, defendant, and defense attorney).  So my thought would be that it would be more playable if this were spread over several people.  What is your take on the contrast?

I'm not "sticking with tradition." I'm just using it as an example. It's the only legal drama I watch. I figured people would be familiar with the show and characters, so I could use it as an example. My bad, apparently.

The only reason I can't see spreading out those roles is that my players would never stand for not getting to play their "own" characters -- or at least most of them wouldn't. You won't have the same judge each session, or the same jury, or the same defender or defendant, and my players would, for the most part, not be interested in playing non-recurring characters. If you shift it to a smaller venue (or do something like Night Court -- hey, that could be fun!) you could have the same judge and defense every time, but I think that would start to get implausible (how come all these weighty moral issues keep coming up in Arcata?).

[pete_darby]

I think my differences with John are that I want a more directorial or writer stance during court scenes, whereas John wants more of an actor stance.

I'm sticking with traditional RPG roles (and more involved numerical mechanics) mainly because it fits the source material of following a team of lawyers better. Spreading the roles would necessitate a completely different set of rules, and under something like Universalis it would, I expect, run like a dream. So, if I'm going to produce a product supporting this as a genre, I'd ideally want to put in 1) a standalone system , 2) conversions for other systems (mostly conventional RPG mechanics) and 3) Staging tips for Law Stories as a whole, supporting law stories with any system, including Universalis, Godlike, etc.

So I'm looking at supporting the traditional RPG "party plus GM" model because the material produced would be more useful for immediate use, model the source better, provide more crunchy systems for those that like it and still have all the material for people running less traditional games.

It's not just mental inertia!

[ScottM]

I'm sticking with traditional RPG roles (and more involved numerical mechanics) mainly because it fits the source material of following a team of lawyers better. Spreading the roles would necessitate a completely different set of rules, and under something like Universalis it would, I expect, run like a dream.
...
So I'm looking at supporting the traditional RPG "party plus GM" model because the material produced would be more useful for immediate use, model the source better, provide more crunchy systems for those that like it and still have all the material for people running less traditional games.

Here's my niggling question- what do you do with the extra players?  Is this something that will only work with extremely small groups (2, maybe 3 players?).  I suspect that we don't want a pack of six lawyers on every case.  Are you thinking multiple parallel trails?

I know the question is from left field, but since we're talking about pitching it like a standard "party plus GM", what good are the extra people?  In class systems, "one of each" is a good idea, cause they all contribute something necessary.  But if everyone's a lawyer, what role do the extra players take?

Scott

[On Multiple Parallel trials- I think this would be rough on the GM/Jury; extensive & good notes would be necessary to keep the case points distinct for the jury phase.  A fillable sheet seems necessary.]

[contracycle]

Hmm, how about the one set of characters who do necessarily vary - the plaintifs and defendants - get rotate through the players.  So if your default setup had 6 players in a defence council, one would play the actual defendant with a set of any 5 lawyers from the firm.  Not having a fixed set would lend genre verisimilitude I think.

[pete_darby]

Here's my niggling question- what do you do with the extra players?  Is this something that will only work with extremely small groups (2, maybe 3 players?).  I suspect that we don't want a pack of six lawyers on every case.  Are you thinking multiple parallel trails?

I know the question is from left field, but since we're talking about pitching it like a standard "party plus GM", what good are the extra people?  In class systems, "one of each" is a good idea, cause they all contribute something necessary.  But if everyone's a lawyer, what role do the extra players take?

Scott

[On Multiple Parallel trials- I think this would be rough on the GM/Jury; extensive & good notes would be necessary to keep the case points distinct for the jury phase.  A fillable sheet seems necessary.]

Of course, good question: splitting the party... In a conventional RPG, with players I'd trust, I'd parcel out Roles for the witnesses, Judge, opposition lawyers, etc to players whose characters weren't in session. Of course, you can also run it in the tradition of Movie Law, where the plucky junior member of the law team is heroically persuading the vital witness, researching precedent, get shot at by the real killer, etc. while the trial is progressing...

Trial control sheets... damn good idea. For real life courts as well ;-)

Perhaps a move slightly away from the traditional party to more AM style troupe play... Everyone creates a lawyer with a speciality, and a number of supporting staff (in terms of the game, the senior partner who never actually goes to court any more is as much a supporting character as the bitchy receptionist and retained PI...)

But, as you say, that's for large groups. The larger the gorup, the more of a tendency towards freeform play, as you no longer need to abstract the reaction of humans in mechanics or GM fiat.