Good Cop/Bad Cop

[Anthony]

In Beat the Streets: A Police Simulation Mark Johnson asked

4) Are you going to have the players directly address the deep moral issues involved?

Which gave me the quick idea for a the game Good Cop/Bad Cop.  Here's what my brain has come up with so far.

Players are cops in a major metropolitan area, (I suppose it could be rural cops, but I'm thinking along the lines of NYPD Blue here.) trying to keep a balance between doing their jobs and the temptations inherit in having so much power.

There are two stats, Good Cop and Bad Cop.  Generally the game is diceless, with some resource system for narration rights.

When a player is trying to solve a case the Chief (GM) can at anytime, once per crime, ask for a good cop roll.  If the player fails the roll, something goes wrong.  Maybe they bungle the arrest and the evidence has to be thrown out, or they fail the interrogation and can't get a confession, and don't good enough evidence to make the charges stick.  Whatever.  The player can give up then and let the criminal go free, or they can choose to take a bad cop point and bend/break the rules to make things work out.  They fake some new evidence to make up for the stuff they had to throw out.  Or maybe a little force will help make someone talk.

Bad cop points tend to feed on themselves though.  Once you have them you need to roll higher than the number of bad cop points you already have in order to not use a bad cop point in the future.  You get used to bending the rules.

If you have more bad cop points than good cop points, you are corruptible.  How that works is different for the player.  Does it mean you might shoot someone down in cold blood?  Maybe go on the take if offered?  I need to think about how to go about this.  

Using a bad cop point should also bring the possibility of an investigation, not sure if it needs a rule or not.

There needs to be some way to gain good cop points, but SLOWLY.  Also there should be some way to lose bad cop points.  That would probably have to be quicker.

Some way for the player to have screwed up and arrested the wrong person, maybe even after they spent a bad cop point to arrest them would be cool.  (In fact maybe it is more likely if they DO take a bad cop point.)  The player might get the choice of letting the arrested man go free.  Say they know that getting an arrest is important, and will get the Chief off his back for all those bad cop things he's done, and hey the guy is scum and did SOMETHING to deserve being in jail, you know.

Thoughts?

[Kryyst]

One possible way to get rid of bad cop points would be that whenever they are faced with a situation that could be a good cop/bad cop thing.  Like they find some evidence that would put someone away but to use it they'd have to break the law.  If they resist temptaion (require some roll or resource expenditure) then they would lose a bad cop point.

[Daniel Solis]

Have you ever seen The Shield on FX? You should check out how the main character, a vicious narcotics task force leader, deals with his own sense of morality and duty.

EDIT: With regards to the mention of the mechanical effects of having witnesses at the scene of a police action (in the Beat the Streets thread), I think it would be interesting if having witnesses around made doing Bad Cop things more difficult. Or rather, more costly in some way. On the other hand, having witnesses around may make doing Good Cop things easier. Or rather, more profitable in some way. Just a couple thoughts.

A few months ago there was talk of making a trilogy of rules-lite over-the-top RPGs based on the three most common TV drama subjects: Lawyers, Doctors and Cops. I called the trilogy "Real Tales of Human Drama!" or something cheesy like that. I had also suggested calling the games "Objection!" "Stat!" and "Freeze!" respectively.

Someone wrote an article, on RPG.net, I think, detailing ten things everyone should know if they're playing a lawyer, but that was a little different than the kind of yahoo drama I was imagining. I've got zero time to work up the concept, but you might be able to develop it further.

[Mike Holmes]

Check out the game Unsung, and our current playtest of it. Posts can be found in Actual play. Right now, we're playing a SWAT team that's going through all this sort of stuff.

Mike

[Anthony]

gobi metiontions

Someone wrote an article, on RPG.net, I think, detailing ten things everyone should know if they're playing a lawyer, but that was a little different than the kind of yahoo drama I was imagining.

Yeah, let's face it, if cops acted like they act in cop shows there would be major police scandals every day.  Who cares how cops really act, I'm interested in "gritty crime drama" cop action.  Homicide, NYPD Blue, etc, these are what I want.

Just like in an ER type game I'd much rather the characters were acting in ways that would get them arrested/kicked out/sued for malpractice by the second session if they were real doctors.

Oh and Mike, you mentioned Unsung and I took a look at it.  Looks interesting and I'm going to read the transcripts online.  Thanks for the heads up.

[Doctor Xero]

I like the basic premise.

The system reminds me a lot of Deplorable (which I can not find the link
to right now), in its use of Respectable vs. Deplorable traits for its
depiction of a *League of Extraordinary Gentlemen* sort of RPG.

Doctor Xero

[james_west]

I rather think 'Bad Cop' and corrupt are very different things. I've a job that involves handling investigations for the courts, and it has frequently occurred to me that if the perps had decent lawyers, nothing I did would ever stick.  I perform warrantless searches, I question people who really shouldn't be talking to me, I tell people to give me what ought to be priveleged files, etc.  

It's because if you followed the letter of the rules, you would never get anything done - and I've got better access to warrants than most investigators have. The extent to which I do this is nothing compared to some of my peers.

I realize that your game isn't supposed to be realistic, but I think that even within genre, there's a drastic difference between being corruptible, which no-one I know is, and being more zealous than the law allows in getting your job done, which everyone effective is.

If you're interested in gritty, then, you need a motivation for people to be corruptible. Real perps are pathetic losers, in general, but in game they might be the sort of people worth making deals with.

- James

Oh - one more thing. Charging someone with something totally unrelated to what he's guilty of, but easy to make stick, is completely routine. It's, in my opinion, the sole reason for draconian drug laws; something easy to prove.

[clehrich]

I like this concept very much.  Simple, but ugly.

Seems to me that the way to get Good Cop points is to do something really quite noble.  I don't mean helping old ladies across the street, but maybe passing up the chance to nail some creep because there's something else going down right now that needs attention, like maybe a bad car crash or something.  I don't really know what cops get up to in terms of general keeping the peace, but maybe when there's a really ugly domestic dispute, you could clearly nail the one with the knife in hand, but instead you decide to have a long conversation with the couple, and then help them get counseling of some kind.  You don't get an arrest for this, and there's always the chance that it won't have any effect, but you're generally spreading goodness instead of doing it the easy -- and perfectly legitimate -- way.

For me, that would be the point: you'd have to do something the hard, legitimate, and truly decent way, when you have a legitimate "bad cop" way to do things.  By "legitimate" here I mean legal, aboveboard, acceptable, not strongarm tactics and bending the rules.  It's not a choice between Good Cop and Bad Cop, but between Good Cop and efficient (but not terribly likeable).

Chris Lehrich