Quote from: Kyle AaronIn Harm's Way: A Dame and a Dick?

 Yep - those two always seem to come together.

CSI, for all that it's mediocre authoritarian propaganda, does show how you can have a core "team" of main characters who investigate and solve crimes. Everyone gets certain specialties, but the specialties overlap a great deal. The characters' technical skills are interchangeable, and instead the character of the case itself determines which personalities are appropriate to which part. Sometimes it's Joe who talks to the suspect because Joe's mom was raped when he was young, and the case involves confronting an unrepentant date-rapist. Sometimes it's Pete because Pete has a daughter he worries could end up in the clutches of the date-rapist.

It seems like the important thing here is to differentiate the characters by personality, and only minimally by their skill sets.

I voted against fantasy, but just because "grafts" sound a wee bit ridiculous for a hard-boiled game. I would give you my left kidney for a Dirk Gently game, though. And maybe a slice of my liver for a game based on Glen Cook's Garrett....

Authoritarian propaganda???

WTF??

 Its a TV show version of the classic mystery novel form known as the Police Procedural.

 Not everything is some kind of "politics". They are just folks going to their jobs who became teammates and friends.


- Ed C.

Koltar> You've got to ignore or misunderstand a lot of the CSI franchise to say that it's not political. I'm sure you're up to that task though.

Quote from: PseudoephedrineKoltar> You've got to ignore or misunderstand a lot of the CSI franchise to say that it's not political. I'm sure you're up to that task though.

 NO...


 you're just being insulting.

Its a cop show and sometimes a mystery show.

 I bet you see political acts in your house pets when they just want their food changed too....

Quote from: Kyle AaronIn Harm's Way: A Dame and a Dick?

Close enough for bocci.

-clash

Quote from: KoltarNO...


 you're just being insulting.

Its a cop show and sometimes a mystery show.

 I bet you see political acts in your house pets when they just want their food changed too....

Of course I'm being insulting. You pull this know-nothing routine every chance you get. You're anti-intellectual scum, and I've got no patience for it. Go post pictures of cats on the internet and leave the discussion to the big kids already.

Well, that was an efficient threadcrap. :mad:

I contributed substantively. Now that the wanker is gone, hopefully, let me repeat it.

CSI is a useful model for police procedurals involving groups. The characters are distinguished by minor personality quirks and the responsibility they take on within each case rather than by drastic skill differences. The assignment of responsibility is therefore done with an eye to interesting character conflict rather than having "a tech guy" and "a face" and so on.

Quote from: PseudoephedrineI contributed substantively. Now that the wanker is gone, hopefully, let me repeat it.

CSI is a useful model for police procedurals involving groups. The characters are distinguished by minor personality quirks and the responsibility they take on within each case rather than by drastic skill differences. The assignment of responsibility is therefore done with an eye to interesting character conflict rather than having "a tech guy" and "a face" and so on.

Yeah, thanks for that. Already in my thoughts! If we can keep politics out of it though, it would be cool.

Quote from: PseudoephedrineI contributed substantively. Now that the wanker is gone, hopefully, let me repeat it.

CSI is a useful model for police procedurals involving groups. The characters are distinguished by minor personality quirks and the responsibility they take on within each case rather than by drastic skill differences. The assignment of responsibility is therefore done with an eye to interesting character conflict rather than having "a tech guy" and "a face" and so on.

 No the so-called wanker just had to get a normal amount of sleep....

 All of what you just said about character conflict works fine in RPG campaigns as well....

...and has nothing to do with politics.

Quote from: One Horse TownYeah, thanks for that. Already in my thoughts! If we can keep politics out of it though, it would be cool.

Politics is key to the police procedural though. Law & Order, CSI, and so on all have distinct viewpoints on how the legal system and justice interact with one another in the practice they depict. Deciding what kind of political attitude you want your depiction of the police to have is an important choice.

The CSI franchise, for example, considers the law and justice to be identical, and so the agents enforce justice and are therefore good people who are justified in what they do.

There are other police procedurals where these assumptions are not in place, but other assumptions are. The Wire, Law & Order, Da Vinci's Inquest and CSI all have different relationships to the law, and these give the shows different feels, allows them to tell different kinds of stories in different kinds of ways.

The decision to sideline the politics of the police and the legal system as a whole in a police procedural is not an automatically sensible decision, but actually runs counter to the genre as a whole. The politics of policing and man's relationship to the law are recurring subjects throughout it.

I think therefore, that you should reconsider your decision to sidestep the politics.

We're talking RPGs here - NOT a thesis or seminar in college.

 My mother has a crush on Grissom and likes watching the show...especially whenever Lady Heather shows up.  I doubt very much the average viewer notices or even worries about implied politics.

Lady Heather = interesting NPC that would rattle a player character in a possible "good way". Unless, TWO of the player characters have started a relationship since Lady Heather first made an appearance.


 Next you'll be telling us that the dramatic way that David Caruso puts on or takes off his sunglasses is a statement on capitalism vs. socialism dynamics....when it just might be that his eyebrows itch or that the sun is really bright that day.

Quote from: KoltarWe're talking RPGs here - NOT a thesis or seminar in college.

 My mother has a crush on Grissom and likes watching the show...especially whenever Lady Heather shows up.  I doubt very much the average viewer notices or even worries about implied politics.

Lady Heather = interesting NPC that would rattle a player character in a possible "good way". Unless, TWO of the player characters have started a relationship since Lady Heather first made an appearance.


 Next you'll be telling us that the dramatic way that David Caruso puts on or takes off his sunglasses is a statement on capitalism vs. socialism dynamics....when it just might be that his eyebrows itch or that the sun is really bright that day.

:rolleyes:

Anyhow, One Horse Town, pace Koltar, people do pay attention to the politics of the police procedural, even if they don't explicitly talk about them in a rigorous, theoretical way.

For example Law & Order, the longest running of the police procedural shows in North America, has tons of debates about the morality of the law, how it should be enforced in practice, and whether particular judgements were just or unjust. It manages to do this in a dramatic and interesting way, every week for over a decade now. Episodes of Law & Order do kick off water cooler discussions about politics, not in the least because the cases in L&O are "ripped from the headlines" as often as not, meaning that the particular interpretation of the case in the show colours real opinion about real cases.