Quote from: The Butcher;364432I was going to mention GUMSHOE myself, though I've never played it. Care to elaborate?

Sure!

GUMSHOE takes all the tension out of finding the clues, which means the challenge is all in what you do with them -- and there's no railroading in that.

The last time I played GUMSHOE we discovered that the backers of a Shakespeare festival in New Hampshire were planning to summon the Greek gods back into the world in order to destroy technology. But it's not like we showed up and got all the information on index cards; we decided where to go, who to question, what to look at, and so on. And we had to figure out what we could do in order to stop it, or even if we wanted to.

You might want to check out Serial Homicide Unit:

http://www.ipressgames.com/serial.html

Might not exactly be what you're looking for, though.

I have some experience in the field becuase I run a murder mystery company that hosts them for hotels.

I have also tried to run some cop games based round the oWoD rules. I opted for those because of the flexibility and the degrees of success you could garner from the dice pool mechanic. You coudl easily used a d20 system with effect numbers to measure degree of sucess.

The games I have tried were moderately sucessful (the MM hotle nights are exceptionally successful but that is off topic).

Clue wise I let the Pcs find them or not but behind the PCs is a Soco (CSI to you Us types) team that will find all the other clues eventually. So teh PCs walk the scene but role crap and miss the key clues in a couple of days the Soco guys give the PCs a report that includes all the stuff they missed this will be all the clues the PCs still need to put them together to come up with the answer.

The problem for my group I think was a lack of combat/fear/the unknown. To counter this I made the team a crack FBI group of Serial Killer hunters. Having said that there is still a lack of action. You investigate you identify the perp there is a final conflict. The Bad Boys style cop game where you have a series of running battles against a drugs cartel, street gang etc have a lot more action and thereofre I htink are more appealing.

In addition there is an isuse with the law. If you want to keep the game real then the PCs need to stay inside the law. This limits their activities and though you can roll into the bad cop game it doesn't provide a very strong resolution.

Modern System: Police Procedural
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=28008&it=1

FBI: d20
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=1345&it=1

Modus Operandi (XPG)
http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=18241&it=1

Quote from: jibbajibba;364493The problem for my group I think was a lack of combat/fear/the unknown. To counter this I made the team a crack FBI group of Serial Killer hunters. Having said that there is still a lack of action. You investigate you identify the perp there is a final conflict. The Bad Boys style cop game where you have a series of running battles against a drugs cartel, street gang etc have a lot more action and thereofre I htink are more appealing.

In addition there is an isuse with the law. If you want to keep the game real then the PCs need to stay inside the law. This limits their activities and though you can roll into the bad cop game it doesn't provide a very strong resolution.

Berlin XVIII worked very well for us because it wasn't just all about the investigation. First each team had several cases to deal with at a given time. And on top of that we could be called for reinforcement randomly, for whatever emergency (riot, hold up, suicidal guy etc...) The game tried to emulate the different aspects of law enforcement and could let us fail one investigation every now and then, and still be a fun game. Since the settings takes place in the future we didn't have issues with modeling real legal systems either. Berlin XVIII gave us a lot of fun. I don't think it was ever translated in English alas.

I agree that the big thing standing in the way of pure police-procedural games getting popular is the lack of wish-fulfillment potential... no magic powers, no uber-weaponry, no big monsters to conquer... and the flavor of such shows is usually pretty gritty and fatalistic.
But actually, our CoC games have had a number of scenarios that were pretty much straight up crime investigation... no overt occult elements at all... they played well but they were not the norm.
The same goes for fantasy campaigns I've played in, and our current Deadlands games... lots of mundane crime-fighting adventures scattered amongst all the monster bashing and fireball slinging.

Maybe Settembrini has something of a point... I don't think I need or want a whole game centered on such things... but running occasional sessions like that is fun and keeps the weirder stuff in perspective.
I love the old Dragnet shows... very procedural... but I don't know that I'd want to play it that often.

I highly recommend PIG's Vice Squad: Miami Nights. Pete included a section called "No Dead Ends: Handling Investigations" that I can say helped me immensely in dealing with investigations. I especially like the idea that even failed rolls point the PCs towards the right info, just perhaps not as easily or as directly. It worked really well in-game.

Quote from: Simlasa;364650I agree that the big thing standing in the way of pure police-procedural games getting popular is the lack of wish-fulfillment potential... no magic powers, no uber-weaponry, no big monsters to conquer... and the flavor of such shows is usually pretty gritty and fatalistic.

I think this is a major point. Most gamers seem to like having 'cool powers' - or at least games that offer these seem to sell the most. Sometimes even the fact that your character might be competent and bad ass from the get go doesn't seem enough for some people.

And then there is the low level of combat. If you think of even the most violent cop shows (and currently games seem to be referencing TV and films more than books) the action scenes are far fewer than 'talky' scenes. Players like a rumble - especially if they have cool powers.

And have you notied how difficult it is in most game systems to knock seven bells of shit out of someone? The default combat is assumed to be to the death, and it's all too easy to kill NPCs. And because that's the way games are built, that's how players approach combat - opponents are there to be killed.

So cop games are a different flavour than what the majority of gamers regularly imbibe.

Now don't get me wrong. I like a bloody slaughterfest as much as any other bookish, overweight gamer who spends too much time indoors. But variety is the spice of life after all.

Quote from: Gruntfuttock;364855I think this is a major point. Most gamers seem to like having 'cool powers' - or at least games that offer these seem to sell the most. Sometimes even the fact that your character might be competent and bad ass from the get go doesn't seem enough for some people.

And then there is the low level of combat. If you think of even the most violent cop shows (and currently games seem to be referencing TV and films more than books) the action scenes are far fewer than 'talky' scenes. Players like a rumble - especially if they have cool powers.

And have you notied how difficult it is in most game systems to knock seven bells of shit out of someone? The default combat is assumed to be to the death, and it's all too easy to kill NPCs. And because that's the way games are built, that's how players approach combat - opponents are there to be killed.

So cop games are a different flavour than what the majority of gamers regularly imbibe.

Now don't get me wrong. I like a bloody slaughterfest as much as any other bookish, overweight gamer who spends too much time indoors. But variety is the spice of life after all.

I agree to an extent, but this doesn't fully explain why games like Top Secret and Spycraft are at least a little popular and yet Police games apparently not. I definitely agree about variety though. I would love to get another group together for Miami Nights, some 80s cop/PI action is fun as hell, but it doesn't seem to go over with folks as much. I like the pre-cell phone, pre-internet eras though, gives the PCs more motivation to pound the pavement.

Quote from: Sigmund;364874I agree to an extent, but this doesn't fully explain why games like Top Secret and Spycraft are at least a little popular and yet Police games apparently not. I definitely agree about variety though. I would love to get another group together for Miami Nights, some 80s cop/PI action is fun as hell, but it doesn't seem to go over with folks as much. I like the pre-cell phone, pre-internet eras though, gives the PCs more motivation to pound the pavement.

Modern and Mundane can be a hard sell for some players. But I have found the combo increasingly common around here. I think fantasy, Horror and Sci-Fi, will always be the most popular. Personally I like the idea of a campaign based around something like Miami Vice or Lethal Weapon. I also like the idea of a cop drama RPG. Just not sure how many players I can wrangle up for either.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;364875Modern and Mundane can be a hard sell for some players. But I have found the combo increasingly common around here. I think fantasy, Horror and Sci-Fi, will always be the most popular. Personally I like the idea of a campaign based around something like Miami Vice or Lethal Weapon. I also like the idea of a cop drama RPG. Just not sure how many players I can wrangle up for either.

I'm with ya, plus I suppose the spy bit has some cool factor to boost it's interest. I think players are surprised how much fun some cop action can be once they try it though, so to me it's worth the effort

Quote from: Sigmund;364879I'm with ya, plus I suppose the spy bit has some cool factor to boost it's interest. I think players are surprised how much fun some cop action can be once they try it though, so to me it's worth the effort

I think you are right. Once people give it a try, it can be lots of fun.

Fun - you bet!

One game I'm running occasionally is set in late 1920's New Orleans. The PCs are an ex-USN, ex-NOPD detective, private eye; and his niece who acts as his secretary - who is an ex-librarian, and reads every detective novel going.

His attitude is "If it moves, punch it." She is very smart but naive. And as the saying goes: 'They fight crime'.

Perhaps a PI set up would be more popular than a cop story?

However, one advantage of investigative games (cop story, PI story, or even occult investigation) is that they are a good fit for smaller groups. Currently I'm down to two players < cue KA saying "Recruit, you lazy fucker!"> and we play mostly investigative games. But we don't just do that because of the small group - it has sort of become our preference.

And by the way, just because you play episodic games rather than an ongoing campaign, it doesn't mean that you can't have themes that carry over from episode to episode - just like a good TV series.

Quote from: Gruntfuttock;364898Fun - you bet!

One game I'm running occasionally is set in late 1920's New Orleans. The PCs are an ex-USN, ex-NOPD detective, private eye; and his niece who acts as his secretary - who is an ex-librarian, and reads every detective novel going.

His attitude is "If it moves, punch it." She is very smart but naive. And as the saying goes: 'They fight crime'.

Perhaps a PI set up would be more popular than a cop story?

However, one advantage of investigative games (cop story, PI story, or even occult investigation) is that they are a good fit for smaller groups. Currently I'm down to two players < cue KA saying "Recruit, you lazy fucker!"> and we play mostly investigative games. But we don't just do that because of the small group - it has sort of become our preference.

And by the way, just because you play episodic games rather than an ongoing campaign, it doesn't mean that you can't have themes that carry over from episode to episode - just like a good TV series.

The 20s is a great period for campaigns. It works really well for investigation. Another thing people often overlook about modern/near-modern games is, in many ways, they are easier to run. After all, we all live in the present, so we know how long it takes, to travel from point a to point b, and what is like. If you set the game locally, it can be even easier, because you know the layout of the region. Also, there are tons of movies and books to rip from.

Spy games are decent for small groups too, but I like Cop/PI games even more... smaller sandbox (usually), great opportunity for developing contacts and other fleshed-out npcs, and the players seem to like having some "turf". I've been thinking of putting together an Interpol level game though, where the cops operate on more of a "James Bond" level. I've also been thinking a "Burn Notice" style spy game would be cool too. My Miami Nights game turned out good playing it like Miami Vice, where the characters were given loads of leeway in how they did things. The players really played up being under cover, and did really well at keeping the violence and collateral damage to a minimum. These are folks who in Star Wars d20 immediately went rogue (including the Jedi) and ended up getting thrown (or chased) off several planets before dieing in an elaborate and hair-brained scheme, so I thought it went really well.