Quote from: Bradford C. Walker;451788They're dead now in US media, at least in Anglophonic media.  ABC just canceled the last two.

I think they still have 'General Hospital'... and the other 'Big 3' channels still have at least one each... but yeah, they're too expensive since they require actors and writers and sets... reality shows and chat shows are much cheaper and easier to put on.

Quote from: Koltar;451551No thank you.

Forever.

- Ed C.

Its ok we don't have to like the same games. I like Chthulu too

Quote from: Sigmund;451705I'd also love to see a game tailored more towards modern espionage/crime/con type of action. A game that could handle Burn Notice, Oceans Eleven, or White Collar all the way up to something approaching near-future sci-fi Minority Report, or perhaps even go so far as Inception.

Its already out there, Leverage based on the TV show and its rather excellent.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;451539Cops. Clash & I bantered a bit about it a while ago, and I think the concept roughly fits the mold of some of his other games, but he hasn't done anything with it so far as I know. There's Gangbusters of course but it's very old, and focused on the Prohibition era. I think a good game could be made of contemporary cops, including fighting street crime, tracking down murderers, taking on gangs, SWAT situations, etc. Some nod to genre could be included--60s and 70s shows, Starsky & Hutch, Kojack, Jack Lord, Streets of SF, etc.

Absolutely this. For me it's a core genre that's almost entirely ignored.

Quote from: AikiGhost;451811Its already out there, Leverage based on the TV show and its rather excellent.

Haven't seen the show or the game, how is it (the game that is)? It seems awfully tailored to the specific show, but even the quick start is $2 and I'm not willing to pay for quickstarts.

I guess one thing that turns me off of the 'police' idea is that I don't think of police as having all that much freedom of movement/self-direction... even at the detective level. The same sort of thing puts me off games about military characters. You pretty much go where you're told and always have a lot of oversight regarding your activities. Plus the vast majority of their time is spent waiting for something to happen. Just how I see it.
I can still enjoy cop shows because the boring/bureaucratic stuff gets truncated... but a game like that seems like it would be a series of unrelated vignettes.
Am I looking at the bark and missing the forest?

Quote from: Simlasa;451878I guess one thing that turns me off of the 'police' idea is that I don't think of police as having all that much freedom of movement/self-direction... even at the detective level. The same sort of thing puts me off games about military characters. You pretty much go where you're told and always have a lot of oversight regarding your activities. Plus the vast majority of their time is spent waiting for something to happen. Just how I see it.

Playing criminals or freedom fighters would be easier?

Some earlier discussion on police games: http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=16623, where I learned (and promptly forgot) that there is a GURPS Cops and GURPS Swat...

Then there's a brief back & forth with Clash, in another thread, which might give some idea of how a cops (or military) game still can have freedom: http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?p=330793#post330793

Another related possibility, I think, is that "the action" occurs on several levels--not just the case, which indeed may be highly circumscribed in terms of options, but the inter-character stuff that happens during the case.

Also, something that may have been mentioned in one of those threads, if you have a broader perspective of the campaign, so that players are dealing with a case load and nonspecific stuff on "the street" (like staying in touch with contacts/sources), there's more freedom. You don't run a session as a scenario that has to be completed before you can go to the next crime. Cases can stay open and may never be solved, etc. See: early days of Homicide, for example.

More generally, for military games, especially, it could still be fun to just play tactical games with firefights and have your characters gain experience.

And another angle, something I've particularly seen in British crime dramas such as Red Riding or Midsomer Murders, is to embed the crimes in an engaging web of relationships, where various individuals have secrets and backstory that may or may not relate to the crime itself. This is getting a bit more into the detective/investigation genre, though--something that may well be handled by (for example) Call of Cthulhu or Gumshoe, depending on the quality of the modules/scenario/GM guidelines.

Streets of San Francisco actually did a nice job of mixing victim/criminal backstories with police procedural action/resolution.

Quote from: ggroy;451879Playing criminals or freedom fighters would be easier?

Yeah, I think they might...

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;451883More generally, for military games, especially, it could still be fun to just play tactical games with firefights and have your characters gain experience.

I guess that's the sort of thing I play wargames for.

I could see an ongoing undercover operation being varied and interesting... or playing in some era where the police were much more loose, with fewer restrictions on them.

Quote from: Simlasa;451888I guess that's the sort of thing I play wargames for.

Right, the RPG-ish aspects would be (a) use of a GM who can handle limited intelligence, devise scenarios, and who will play the opponents in a fair fashion instead of competitively. (b) Character development over time.

If you've seen Inquisitor, from the 40k universe, I think it might be a bit like that. The designer's notes in Inquisitor called it "narrative wargaming".  (In the print edition at least; GW hosts a free set of the rules on their servers that I think have been re-edited, but see p. 34 of the second rules PDF). The definition doesn't really matter, though, if it's fun.

RECON was very similar. Most of the game is in the combat, and PCs die often enough that you're not wasting time coming up with shit like "backstories" for some FNG who's gonna step on a mine in the first five minutes of play. When I ran it, I refused to let anyone tell me their characters' names until they had survived a mission (no one ever did).

Edit:

QuoteBack When I Played Recon

Someone's foot fell onto a bunch of punji sticks with a mine buried amongst them.
The party died.

Someone was chasing Viet Cong through a jungle when two logs smashed them "like an AT-ST in Return of the Jedi".
Then he fell on a mine and the party died.

Once, the party ambushed some Viet Cong on bicycles who were shipping dynamite in boxes. One of the rounds punctured the box of dynamite.
The party died.

Once, the party had to guard someone from assassination by the Viet Cong.
The man lived in a mansion, and the party staked out the house really well, so that no one could get inside.
So the Viet Cong crept in the night while they slept, and planted mines outside all the entrances to the house.
Then in the morning, once the PCs were up, someone threw a molotov cocktail at the house and got shot. The PCs ran out of the house b/c it was on fire.
The party died.

Once, the party ambushed some NVA regulars who were driving construction vehicles.
They leapt atop the vehicles, fought the NVA to a standstill in brutal firefight, disabled most of the tanks, and went home to enjoy a job well done.
Except they'd laid mines to disable the vehicles, and forgot they were in the middle of the minefield that had just blown the treads of the vehicles off.
The party died.

Then we stopped playing Recon.

Whimsical fantasy.

In particular, I'd love to see an RPG based on James P. Blaylock's Balumnia novels.

Quote from: D-503;451859Absolutely this. For me it's a core genre that's almost entirely ignored.

Here in Spain we have sLAng, a game that tries to emulate the movies of Guy Ritchie, Tarantino, Spike Lee and the like. It is pretty good, but even the authors think it is more approppriate for one-shots and short campaigns than for the usual long campaign.

I think its odd to say that there can be no character development in a cops game likewise that you have a limited range of activities.

In a world where TV shows like The Wire, Dark Blue, Life on Mars not to manetion the whole CSI thing. Movies from Dirty Harry through to Bad Boys.
I think a cop Game has a lot of legs.

Then with Crime stuff fromt eh Sopranos and Brotherhood through to Oceans 11 - 19 or whatever, Usual suspects and of course Heat that combines them both.... I reckon a moden Cops and Robbers game woudl fill a real hole.

Is there a game that does the gonzo superscience and over-the-top comic-book action crossed with a perverse Johnny Quest vibe of The Venture Brothers?

Because if not there needs to be one.

I'm thinking Hero System could probably do the trick.