As an Over the Edge Gm, this issue hits close to home. it's a setting full of violence, craziness, facism, and black humor. One of my favorite phrases from thebook: "The Peace Force has the same relationship to peace as the Fire Department has to fire." In island nation with a ruthlessly enforced firearm ban, the Peace stand alone in flaunting their submachine guns and riot gear. They represent a huge hammer, so how to hit the PCs with it just hard enough and not harder?

The setting does have an out in that the Peace are corrupt as hell and perfectly willing to let the local street gangs, or enterprising PCs, do their dirty work for them. But still, there would have to be limits to the Peace's unresponsiveness, right? They couldn't just ignore, for instance, a group of armed tourists cutting gang-bangers in half at dusk in the hottest Red-light neighborhood in town, could they? (In other words, our first session, lo these eight years ago.)

The GM section has some advice on using the Peace-hammer as a "teaching tool," in keeping with the "that'll show the dirty little powergamers" subtext that creeps into the text in general. And as much as I like the "give 'em enough rope to hang themselves" philosophy, I've come to abhor the "punishing GM" model in general.

This is what I've ended up doing, though I can't say it's the result of any conscious methodology. First of all, the Peace as an on-the-street presence are a cleanup crew, and by and large a signal to the players to high-tail it. In the incident I alluded to above, the Peace sirens were heard as the fight concluded, and everyone went "oh shit" and fled with some urgency. The merchant who they were defending from the gangers covered for them, so nothing big came of it, it was only Satanist trash anyway, blah blah. One PC did have trouble when he attempted to return to his hotel which was right by the crime scene, and found a Peace cordon and brusque officers asking uncomfortable questions. But overall, the PCs "got away with it."

In this function, the Peace serve as a minor mitigating factor on the Ultraviolence--you at least have to keep moving. The local gangs are similar, but easier to negotiate with; most of the PCs are in good with the Satanist gang's rivals. Generally speaking, gang presence is a possibility from mid-to post-battle, whereas the Peace can show up directly or shortly after the dust-up, adjusting for the neighborhood and the severity of the disturbance, and so on.

At a higher and more long-term level, local law enfocrement's detective branch, the Democratic Bureau of Investigation (DBI) is what I use to put pressure on PCs for their actions. I try not to wield the hammer to heavily, though. The movie-actor PC from the above incident got grilled and released. It's hard to judge how far to go with this, 'cause if you have the power to squish the PCs utterly, which is no fun, but if you're too light, the players stop respecting law enforcement and the danger it poses. This was definitely the case with the player of the actor PC, who just laughed off the detective's "we'll be watching you!" posturing. The player had effectively called my bluff: had no desire to have his character arrested, at least not two sessions in.

In another plotline of the game, one that's still playing out, I seem to have hit on something effective: thepsychic fugitive PC has caught the attention of the Center for Paranormal Control, the DBI's freak beat. So there's an agent on her trail, but instead of having her trailed or question directly, the agent is approaching her less elusive associates, like the abovementioned actor, or the mousy young professor--that is, the other PCs. So by putting pressure on these characters on the fringe of the mystery ("You were seen at the site of this paranormal event, do you know the person repsonsible?" "Have you seen a person matching this description?"), I tighten the noose around the central character, but slowly. And since most of the peripheral PCs have secrets of their own, it's got everyone sweating, while simultaneously flashing that "wow, cool!" glance or whisper to me across the room. Great fun.



As an aside, I thought I'd point out that this sort of thing can crop up in, say, fantasy as well, at least if it's not totally lawless or something. And players can indeed get in the habit of acting with violent impunity there, too; in fact, I'd argue that possibly it's the "kill monster, get treasure" paradigm of fantasy that bleeds over into modern settings and results in ridiculous levels of violence for an urban environment. I recall an incident where I was playing a city-rat con artist rogue who wormed his way into a motley group of (rich!) out-of-towners as a guide (i.e. joined the party:D ). . .then out in the city streets we encountered the fellow-PC they were pursuing on grounds of petty theft--and that goddamn sociopathic hick ranger put two arrows in him! My character response was basically "what the fuck are you doing? There's a city watch, you know!"

Anyway. Tricky issue; I'm kind of attracted to the idea of having some kind of predure in place to govern law enforcement intervention, to tone down the arbitrariness. Maybe some sort of "evade police" roll, modified by relevant factors? On the other hand, it'd be interesting to compile useful GM procedures like my noose-tightening example. Anyone have any ideas not already mentioned?

Peace,
-Joel

Quote from: JimBobOzEver roleplayed out a trial?

I was thinking of this today... if only I could find a jury of twelve roleplayers - their "peers"

Yeah its a lot of fun actually. Did it in a Technocracy game. The Symposium held the trial of the amaglam/party post action. One character was a full conversion cyborg who served as both a witness and evidence.


Oops... back to lurking.

EDIT anyway to the OP: The best games IMHO tend to involve consquences, police are often one of them. What are the players' characters willing to do to avoid police entanglements? If they're sociopathic killers, isn't it in a sense believable for them to be the targets of an investigation.

Quote from: jhkimMy current Call of Cthulhu campaign is Victorian London rather than modern-day, so they have a police force but it lacks many modern qualities.  The PCs are all reasonably upstanding middle class gentlemen, and I gave them a friendly contact fairly highly placed on the police force.  (Inspector Craig, who believes in the unknown to a fair degree, though they aren't sure of his loyalties.)  So while they have had troubles with the law, they haven't had any trouble over little stuff.  When they got in trouble, it was for big things rather than petty charges.  

One of their adventures included that the Deacon of Rochester Cathedral was being controlled by an evil power and involved in dark magics.  To stop his evil plan, they snuck onto the cathedral with guns and dynamite -- planning to stop him and blow up the clay statue of Christ which he could animate.  When two of them were caught in the aftermath -- now that's getting in trouble.

John,

Could you give us some more details of that game in a new thread?  It sounds interesting and it's a setting I personally have never got quite right.