Hello folks,

Inspired by this thread, I thought I'd ask a more general question: What are people's thoughts about the place of the police in modern-day games, and games in a setting with a highly visible police force?

Specifically, it's actually quite difficult to know when to have the police start sniffing around after the PCs in these games. If the police are too competent, it becomes a) too dangerous for the PCs to get involved in the sort of lawbreaking activities that your average adventure demands, and b) kind of unrealistic that the PCs have to deal with the problem at hand in the first place - if the police are shit-hot investigators, after all, shouldn't they be handling things?

On the flipside, if the police never connect the characters to their misdeeds, reality can get seriously bent out of shape, to the point where the PCs are living in a world which resembles a war zone instead of 21st century Britain/New York/wherever.

Personally, I like the system Nephilim came up with - an excellent use of the BRP resistance table. You got two numbers - one based on the severity of the crime (more severe crimes are going to be scrutinised more carefully by the police), one based on the difficulty of finding evidence, and the GM uses those to roll on the resistance table on behalf of the police. If the roll is a failure, the police don't find enough evidence to launch an investigation, or get caught up chasing after red herrings, and the PCs are free and clear; if the roll is a success, the police have enough evidence to start investigating the PCs. (Note that this doesn't mean they have proof that the PCs were responsible, just that they have reason to want to talk to or investigate the PCs. Naturally, the investigation itself should be played through to give the players a fighting chance of exonerating themselves - or not.)

If the PCs linger too long after noisily committing a crime (gunfight in a city street, frex), the cops will probably start showing up.

If they've committed a crime like murder or robbery, there is going to be an investigation.  They might even read about it in the local paper or see it on the evening news.  If the group left behind any major clues (e.g. didn't bother to wear gloves to pull off a burglary, got wounded and left a blood trail, didn't check to see if there was a witness hiding in the closet), they might be approached and/or brought in for questioning (doesn't mean they're caught, of course).

Otherwise, an investigation goes on in the background.  The effectiveness of that investigation is determined randomly or by whim (using as a guideline the fact that an average of 1 in 3 murders are never solved and far less than that when considering robbery or burglary; I usually give my PCs better chances than that).  They might cross paths with an investigating officer, but they'll only become targets of the investigation if they either screw up big time and let the cat out of the bag or I think it would be a neat change of pace to have them deal with law enforcement.

I enjoy police procedurals and true crime books like David Simon's Homicide, so I like to sneak in the law enforcement angle when I can.

Well, as you saw in the other thread, I'm grappling with this a bit myself.

What actually works well in making everyone have fun, I'm not sure. But my instincts are...

• make the game world a nasty place, so that the PCs can get away with minor shit, one more scream in the night, who'll notice?
  
• let the PCs get away with major shit, if they're more or less smart about it.
  
• if the PCs are going after someone who has the clout to bring down the law, give them fair warning
• if the PCs are going after someone who is far nastier than they can be, give them fair warning.
• if after all that they're still charging ahead, let 'em have it!

Those are my instincts, but I don't know if they're good for making the whole group have fun, and anyway I might wuss out :cool:

I keep track of each game we play in my log book. This includes the mistakes they made-evidence left at the scene, murders with witnesses who lived, and of course the true evil of a modern setting: cameras. (They're EVERYWHERE and TINY, and worse: LIVE.)

When I run out of ideas, or I feel like enough has built up (For instance a PC who mass murdered twenty people in a bar for the hell of it with his Vindicator.) I send the Police after them. Sometimes it's a detective who followed the leads, and sometimes it's a Fast Response team and an FBI HTR team. And the game then becomes dealing with these mistakes.

We've had some fun with this. I've had games dedicated to people who lost a loved one to collateral damage in a game, who've spent months tracking the PC's down, and do anything from attempt to gun them down in a emotional rage (This one almost worked.) to elaborate revenge schemes.

But for me the rule is fun. Whatever is the most fun is what wins.

Thinking about this more: part of the reason why I like the Nephilim system is that it delegates at least part of the decision-making to a dice roll. Effectively, the dice decide for me whether a particular crime is going to end up becoming a big deal later on in the campaign. If it's a very minor crime, it's unlikely to unless the PCs were very, very stupid about how they went about it and how much evidence they left behind. If it's a major crime, but the PCs came up with a clever plan, they will probably get away scot-free, and if they are unlucky and the police are interested the investigation itself will still be more difficult for the police.

That said, letting the dice decide when the police are going to get involved in the intermediate cases (and most cases will be intermediate) is a wonderful way to reassure the players that the police are turning up because of the dictates of verisimilitude, not because I'm trying to use the police as a means to control the PCs. (Assuming the game takes place in a country where the police aren't used widely by government NPCs as a means of societal control, that is.) It feels less like "punishing" the PCs and more like, well, refereeing a game. As a GM, I don't really have much stake in whether a particular crime committed in my campaign is punished or not; the police NPCs do, of course, but whether they have the skills to solve the case is another matter.

Ever roleplayed out a trial?

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

Bringing in outside gamers to be the "jury" in the trial is actually a good idea. I wouldn't necessarily get 12 gamers in (if only the foreman of the jury speaks in court, you only need one), but having someone without any emotional investment in the situation to judge whether the character's actions were reasonable would be good. (It would also mean that I-as-GM wouldn't have to pull my punches on the prosecution case.)

Oh wow I would be careful about that.

This could so easily degenerate into "You've been stupid, but don't just take my word for it, this disinterested bystander agrees with me!"  Does that ever turn out well?

Well, the point of the exercise would be that both the PC(s) on trial and the prosecuting NPC (played by the GM) would present their case to said disinterested bystander. It'd be up to them to decide who's right.

Actually, I was picturing the GM as the judge! Let someone else prosecute.

I think the PCs would need a representative, a defender. I mean, think of the people in your group, think of how they argue with the GM. Now imagine these guys representing themselves in court.

Imagine that for a moment.

...

It'd be easier just to hang them without the trouble of a trial.

Quote from: WarthurPersonally, I like the system Nephilim came up with - an excellent use of the BRP resistance table. You got two numbers - one based on the severity of the crime (more severe crimes are going to be scrutinised more carefully by the police), one based on the difficulty of finding evidence, and the GM uses those to roll on the resistance table on behalf of the police. If the roll is a failure, the police don't find enough evidence to launch an investigation, or get caught up chasing after red herrings, and the PCs are free and clear; if the roll is a success, the police have enough evidence to start investigating the PCs. (Note that this doesn't mean they have proof that the PCs were responsible, just that they have reason to want to talk to or investigate the PCs. Naturally, the investigation itself should be played through to give the players a fighting chance of exonerating themselves - or not.)

That sounds cool.  I've been thinking about assembling something like that from crime statistics on police response times and percent of crimes solved (broken down by type of crime).  I'm waiting until I run a modern-day game before I put it together.  Do you (or anyone else with a copy of Nephilim) mind posting a more detailed sketch of their system for this?

I think the important thing is to make playing cat-and-mouse with the police fun.  I think that too often, the police are used by the GM as punishment for the players, and they deliberately make the game less fun.  Sometimes the police will only show up if the PCs commit crimes which aren't part of the intended plot -- while they fail to pursue crimes which are necessary to the adventure.  

What I generally try to do is to establish clearly that what the police think and want is different than what I the GM think and want.  (Instead, I may comment out of game what I think of the PCs, but that's different than how I'm playing the NPCs.)

Quote from: WarthurPersonally, I like the system Nephilim came up with - an excellent use of the BRP resistance table.

It's been a while since I've had a look at that system (and, admittedly, it's a feature I never really paid close attention to).  It seems to me that, with a fairly minimum amount of effort, you could come up with a system of bonuses and penalties that the players could affect upon the roll -- efforts to hide the crime, particularly careless actions or unfortunate circumstances, etc.  In this way, the results of the roll are not entirely out of the players' hands.

!i!

Quote from: jhkimI think the important thing is to make playing cat-and-mouse with the police fun.  I think that too often, the police are used by the GM as punishment for the players, and they deliberately make the game less fun.  Sometimes the police will only show up if the PCs commit crimes which aren't part of the intended plot -- while they fail to pursue crimes which are necessary to the adventure.

Aye - If in doubt, leave em out.

In my experience, bringing in the cops only means a lot of dead cops due to the ways that the rules of many games work.  Actually producing results that ought to come of such an intervention often requires severely bending of the rules, if not outright breakage.  Autonomy is a big gamer culture issue, often assured by personal power, and when threatened (let alone violated) produces massacres.