NO ...YOU are paying attention to the politics of it all . The rest of us might just be watching a show with characters we like to re-visit

...OR playing a roleplaying game where our Private detective character is trying to solve a mystery and stay alive in a 1980s setting....and it doesn't matter if the character voted Democrat or Republican or has even heard of Karl Marx. What matters is that the character is backed up by the other player characters and that all the players are having fun.


- Ed C.







 (oh if you don't see a reply for awhile - its because I went to my job and maybe grabbed something close to normal sleep afterwards. )

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine: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.

Sam Waterston's liberal speechifying is so notorious that it's often been parodied.  

Most of the original Law and Order shows are all about politics, and many of the stories are ripped straight from real trials, with commentary added by everyone's favorite liberal spokesperson.  

Honestly, it's one of the things I like about the show.  And probably the only thing now that Jerry Orbach has passed on.

Fuck me. Yes, of course police procedurals are concerned with the law and to a certain degree, politics. I don't give a flying fuck what political message a couple of t.v shows are touting though.

This is not about politics. That's a side show, tucked at the back behind the flea-bitten old sofa someone just dumped. This is meant to be fun, not a fucking debate on the politics of t.v shows. This is Jim Rockford getting beaten up in his old mobile home as a helpless Rocky looks on. This is about Columbo looking like a piece of garbage in the rich man's manshion, flicking cigar ash all over the furniture and muttering "oh, one more thing!" This is about Sherlock Holmes is disguise, scoping out the baddies den. Fuck, it's even about Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd struggling to pay the rent while on crackpot cases. It certainly ain't meant to be about the politics. YMMV, but if it does, start another fucking thread and arse fuck each other there.

(out of character rant now over. normal service resumed)

One Horse Town,

 I LIKE the idea of Columbo, Rockford and the MOONLIGHTING agency characters  teaming up on a case together.


 Maybe they stumble across twisted plans of the Illuminati and have to save the state of California as we know it ?? (And the U.S. gets saved as well as a side benefit....now about those pesky aliens....)


 OR just a major crimes ring thats gone interstate.


- Ed C.

Quote from: One Horse TownFuck me. Yes, of course police procedurals are concerned with the law and to a certain degree, politics. I don't give a flying fuck what political message a couple of t.v shows are touting though.

This is not about politics. That's a side show, tucked at the back behind the flea-bitten old sofa someone just dumped. This is meant to be fun, not a fucking debate on the politics of t.v shows. This is Jim Rockford getting beaten up in his old mobile home as a helpless Rocky looks on. This is about Columbo looking like a piece of garbage in the rich man's manshion, flicking cigar ash all over the furniture and muttering "oh, one more thing!" This is about Sherlock Holmes is disguise, scoping out the baddies den. Fuck, it's even about Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd struggling to pay the rent while on crackpot cases. It certainly ain't meant to be about the politics. YMMV, but if it does, start another fucking thread and arse fuck each other there.

(out of character rant now over. normal service resumed)

What you want is a detective game, not a police procedural then. There are already plenty of detective games on the market. You are welcome to put another drop in the bucket, but it's nothing new.

Quote from: PseudoephedrineWhat you want is a detective game, not a police procedural then. There are already plenty of detective games on the market. You are welcome to put another drop in the bucket, but it's nothing new.

Mate, did you even look at the poll? PI game. Detective agencies and all that.

As to originality, it's over rated anyhow!

It's possible to have a police procedural that features a detective. It's also possible to have a detective story that stars the police. You need to be more clear about these things.

Course i do.

Anyhow, now that the fucker has fucked up yet another fucking thread, i'm making like the Skarka. *vanishes* :blahblah:

Fly from Evil is being developed by Cumberland Games, S John Ross in other words.

It's probably still at least a year away, but it's S John Ross, I expect it to be the definitive word on hardboiled detective gaming.  Incidentally, although I agreed with most of Pseudo's comments I don't think detective gaming is well served at all in rpgs, there are hardly any.

Police procedurals, which are a separate genre but which to be fair weren't the subject of the thread, I'd also love to see.  87th Precinct would make a kickass rpg.

Lastly, although Pseudo is right that CSI is inherently political, I still love it and I can't say it bothers me when I watch it.  Sometimes a badly decomposing body found tucked inside a grandfather clock by kids playing in an old abandoned house is just that...

Maybe we should add Criminal Minds to the mix.

Edit: From what I have seen the specialized characters interact with society on a more "grassroots" level.

Regards,
David R

Quote from: BalbinusFly from Evil is being developed by Cumberland Games, S John Ross in other words.

It's probably still at least a year away, but it's S John Ross, I expect it to be the definitive word on hardboiled detective gaming.  Incidentally, although I agreed with most of Pseudo's comments I don't think detective gaming is well served at all in rpgs, there are hardly any.

Police procedurals, which are a separate genre but which to be fair weren't the subject of the thread, I'd also love to see.  87th Precinct would make a kickass rpg.

Lastly, although Pseudo is right that CSI is inherently political, I still love it and I can't say it bothers me when I watch it.  Sometimes a badly decomposing body found tucked inside a grandfather clock by kids playing in an old abandoned house is just that...

I think our disconnect on the commonality of "detective" games might come because I count all that "occult investigator" stuff as detective games. There is, to me at least, a great deal of difference between a detective game and a detective story and a police procedural, even if the former stars the cops and the latter has a detective as the hero.

Detective games to me are the sort that tend to focus on "solving mysteries", by getting lots of "clues" and then weaving a plausible story out of them. Police procedurals are all about building cases by accumulating evidence. The two activities are not identical. I think the former is done often enough in RPGs that it's old hat. I may have missed counter-examples, but I'm not aware of any RPG out there that makes PCs build cases.

BTW, this thread is pretty useful in that I'm starting to get an idea for how to design a really neat police procedural RPG. More on that some other time.

*ahem* I'm all better after my hissy fit now.

I think there's room in either genre for both gathering clues and building a case. The difference being that generally in a detective type game, you're not likely to be involved in the prosecution of the case, bar being a witness or somut.

Yes, but that's a key difference. It shapes the whole story. For example, Philip Marlowe never needed to worry about the "fruit of the poisoned tree" doctrine, but it's a key plot point in the movie Seven. Auguste Dupin just has to eliminate the impossible until only the improbable remains - an orangutan was responsible. The DAs in Law & Order could never get away with doing that.

Yep, sure.

I think that one of the main stumbling blocks to a strict police procedural game is the constraints on what the characters would be able to do. You have to abide by the law and play it by the book to gain a clean conviction. That's alignment constraints turned up to 11. In PI games, you can at least choose whether to play it by the book or bend the rules a bit.

Also, i suspect that few game writers have the legal chops to do justice to a strict police procedural, thus the focus on PI/detective games.

I'm going for as little structure as possible, as far as constraints go, and i've come up with a 'mini-game' for interrogations. I suspect that to do things justice in a pure procedural game, you'd have to have a gazillion 'mini-games' to get through the process of crime>motive>evidence>trial>conviction. Just like the real deal! Takes years from the crime to conviction in many cases.

You could probably simplify it like they do on TV. I think you're right that few game designers do have the legal knowledge for it though.