So I love what I call my alphabet soup TV shows - CSI, CSI: NY, NCIS, NCIS: LA, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, Law & Order: CI, etc. Good viewing as far as I am concerned and possibly the best of American TV shows from what I have seen.

Now why haven't we got an RPG about them?
Not just the licence for the setting and title but for the whole genre?

The setting is good for role-play as we have an ensemble team with multiple roles and archetypes, a mystery to solve, action scenes as you chase after suspects, tense courtroom drama, personality clashes, bad guys, good guys, corrupt officials, dodgy bureaucracy, etc.

Is it just there are no fantasy or supernatural or sci-fi elements to the stories?
A bit too close to real life?

Are there some RPGs out there that I have missed?  :?:

I believe there were a few PDF offerings about the subject.

I imagine the reason they aren't all that common is--lets face it---fantasy is predominant in RPG's. It's the big mover. It's easier to run, create owned properties for, and get people interested into the rules for such games.

Police Procedural lack the ease of use, the common grounding in concepts of (vanilla) fantasy, and is difficult for most people to GM, as normal mysteries within other games are hard for a number of people to run.

That's why you get games like Esoterrorists/Mutant City Blues, and that series of "Trail" games which have rules for clue gathering that stand out from the rules for other tasks--in order to help ease the PC's along the clue finding trail. Even then, I suspec the reason they have fantasy/sci fi/horror games using those rules is because out and out a police procedural won't sell without a hook.

I've my own desire for running such a game, although I like the fantastic hooks myself, because mundane crime solving has been done to death.

There was a French game named COPS, but it's not exactly the same as Law & Order.

You're right. A game like this would be awesome.

Dunno whether I agree with your analysis, Silverlion. If anything, more people are familiar with the conventions of cop shows than with D&D-style fantasy these days. And whilst investigative games might be tricky to GM, they're also enduringly popular - Call of Cthulhu is a classic game partially because it was the original horror game, and partially because it was the original investigation-themed game.

I think it's simply a matter of genre blindness. Geeks tend to like SF and fantasy and horror and tend to dislike crime - or at least, that's the common stereotype. I fully believe that there's a great print RPG to be made in the genre - and whichever firm cracks it first will make a mint out of it.

Regardless of your system preferences, for a US setting Gurps Cops is bloody good, Gurps SWAT's good too but less generally applicable.

Similarly, Gurps Mysteries is excellent.

But yeah, it is odd isn't it?  There's a Spanish language rpg called sLAng, which is basically The Shield the rpg, but as a rule it's light on the ground out there.

It's the lack of magic and cool powers, games without those don't tend to get made and when they are made don't tend to sell.  The lack of them being made may be linked to the lack of sales when they are of course...

There was a sourcebook for Cyperpunk 2020 called Protect and Serve that was basically about running futuristic police procedural campaigns in the mode of Hill Street Blues, Homicide: Life on the Streets, Ed McBain and Joseph Wambaugh novels, etc. Sort of a weird fit with the flashy gearhead ultraviolence that most of the rest of that game-line centered around.

There probably aren't any successful RPGs in the genre because the genre embodies all the worst possible qualities for an RPG to have: little to no character development, adventures are essentially unrelated to each other, and each adventure is basically a railroad.

Quote from: Darran;364398So I love what I call my alphabet soup TV shows - CSI, CSI: NY, NCIS, NCIS: LA, Law & Order, Law & Order: SVU, Law & Order: CI, etc. Good viewing as far as I am concerned and possibly the best of American TV shows from what I have seen.

Now why haven't we got an RPG about them?
Not just the licence for the setting and title but for the whole genre?

The setting is good for role-play as we have an ensemble team with multiple roles and archetypes, a mystery to solve, action scenes as you chase after suspects, tense courtroom drama, personality clashes, bad guys, good guys, corrupt officials, dodgy bureaucracy, etc.

Is it just there are no fantasy or supernatural or sci-fi elements to the stories?
A bit too close to real life?

Are there some RPGs out there that I have missed?  :?:

Yet you can complain in another thread that the Dresden Files rpg is not set in WWII, but in a "series of cheap fantasy novels?

There's several licensed boardgames based on Law & Order and CSI.

Don't know how a CSI rpg would be made.  For one thing, there would have to be many different routes to solving a murder.  A railroady investigation with a player rolling too many failed dice rolls, would pretty much turn an adventure into a total failure.  A diceless or a "free form" ruleset with a lot of DM discretion would probably be better than a crunch heavy ruleset.

A stereotypical murder mystery game would probably be better, than an rpg rules heavy system with a lot of dice rolling.

Quote from: 837204563;364406There probably aren't any successful RPGs in the genre because the genre embodies all the worst possible qualities for an RPG to have: little to no character development, adventures are essentially unrelated to each other, and each adventure is basically a railroad.

Agreed.

Most murder mystery type games tend to be on the railroady side.

Even the Law & Order and CSI video games weren't much better.

Quote from: 837204563;364406There probably aren't any successful RPGs in the genre because the genre embodies all the worst possible qualities for an RPG to have: little to no character development, adventures are essentially unrelated to each other, and each adventure is basically a railroad.

Have you ever seen The Wire or The Shield?

Quote from: Warthur;364415Have you ever seen The Wire or The Shield?

I certainly wouldn't describe them as police procedurals.  On the other hand, House probably belongs in this genre, despite having nothing to do with crime.

My first d20 Modern campaign was The Streets of Seattle, inspired by Seventies cop movies and teevee shows like The French Connection, Serpico, Dirty Harry, and pretty much anything labled, "A Quinn Martin Production."

My dad was a huge Joseph Wambaugh fan back in the day, so I picked it up by osmosis.

I tinkered with this after I finished Vice Squad: Miami's Nights but never could get the gameplay right. I think bigger than railroading is the lack of understanding of the law. One of the cooler elements to these shows is the loopholes that are used and finding creative charges to bring the bad guys up on. A GM might research the nuances of the law for an adventure but will a player?

Plus u have the gameplay factor. All my groups have been 4+ people. You never have that many investigators together which means a lot of hanging around waiting for your turn to play. Plus forensic specialists are essentially useless from a gaming perspective as they spend most of their time in a lab.

A police RPG geared toward the Wire or the Shields strike team (which I included in vsmn) would be perfect, but finding players for such ridiculously hard IME.

Pete

I suppose it is possible to make a parody type police game, with the "keystone cops" battling the "gang that couldn't shoot straight".  

Criticals and fumbles would make it even more humorous.