Entry: Crime & Punishment - Submitted!

[spaceanddeath]

I really can't believe I'm even considering this... but it looks like I might be in.

Here goes:

In world of criminal investigation dramas, there are two separate yet equally important groups:
The writers, who dream up the episodes and the actors who bring them to life.
This is their RPG.

Time: 1 session of 2 hours
Words: Law, Actor, Team

The session is broken down into two acts:

In the first all players take the role of a writing team to create the framework for a single, one hour long primetime criminal investigation drama. Using conventions and tropes of shows like Law and Order, Without A Trace, CSI,and Homocide, Life in the Streets, and a collaborative, democratic process, the writers create a complete framework for the episode's story, complete with considerations of intensity and directoral notes.

In the second, the players are the actors in the drama, working to breathe life, drama and colour into the story that they have communially created.

Haven't had a chance to look everybody's else's over yet. Hopefully I'm not making an ass of myself, or biting someone else's idea. I wanted to work alone until I got enough to base a write-up on, at least.

[Graham Walmsley]

This is fascinating. The idea of dividing it into two hours will create a lot of time pressure: and I like the idea of writers under pressure.

Would you post some mechanics, once you get them worked out? I'd really like to know how you handle this mechanically.

Graham

[matthijs]

[MPOSullivan]

[adgboss]

[spaceanddeath]

I'm not so accustomed to doing game summaries, so bear with me here...


The game is for 3 or 5 players, and is currency based. In the first half of the game you earn chips by enticing other players with appealing story elements that are invested in to create the framework of the story.

In the second half of the game the resources that are earned in the first half to bid for control of elements in the play of the story.

There are three different types of resources that you can use: generic story elements, personal intensity resources and political resources which are valued on a sliding scale that is set at the beginning of each game to determine how much the story focuses on politics (RIPPED From the Headlines!) or the personality of the investigators (Is Jack Malone going to cross the line again?) or just on the specifics of the case at hand (Is Stone married? Who cares - what's the case?).

Each episode will contain 6 scenes which give the structure of the procedural. Each scene will have a list of generic elements that must be present (I.e. each witness must have a valuable piece of info, a reluctance or difficulty to their testimony and a means to overcome the reluctance (inspired by Robin D. Laws's "Pardon Me, I must be going" () but done to give structure to the whole show, not to just for NPC witnesses).

In writing these, the writers are given resources to invest in each other's ideas which are used to make the generic guidelines into specific scenes, and when their ideas are invested, they earn resources for their actors.

When the actors play out the episode, everybody knows the general outline of what will happen but during the play of the episode, the actors are able to use their resources to push the spotlight on or off their characters (I.e. we know the killer is going to confess in the Interrogation scene, but which detective manages to extract it, and what does it cost them?) The resources are bid against each other auction style, with the ability to use the different types of chips to escalate from elements, to political badness to personal trauma (according to the sliding scale set at the beginning of the game).

Throughout all points of the process (both writing and acting) there are time limits imposed. During the actual episode one player, Steele, who is both an actor and a director, works to keep the actors on schedule and pushing towards culmination.

In the three player game, the episode has 1 pair of detectives and their superior officer (Steele) who also plays all NPC witnesses/suspects. In the five player game, two teams of detectives work to solve the crime under Steele. The game will include several quick-sheet detective pairs that will be from different kinds of investigative units (Homicide, FBI, SVU Etc) and that are chosen at the beginning of the game to determine the kind of crime that will be featured. The last thing that happens in the Writer's half of the session is to have a casting call, where actors will be assigned to roles in the episode. Where there are disputes, players will bid resources to resolve them.

I'm starting to find a little bit of my confidence.

So what do you all think?

[Joshua BishopRoby]

This sounds AWESOME, Mo! Welcome to the free-for-all. :)

Does steel get a gavel that he hits the table with when the scene is done? BONG BONG!

[spaceanddeath]

Heh. That's the funny. Once I started going through all the posts, and I saw your "what I'm not doing" thread and went: Doh!

Bong Bong!

I'm surprised that nobody's tried to do a 24 kind of thing. If I had, I would have wanted a "tic tic tic" thing like the one that plays on 24 every time they cut to the commercials.

[Brand_Robins]

I ran the first playtest of Crime and Punishment tonight, and it was a lot of fun. We found a couple rough patches, and some things that needed serious clarification, but the overall impressions among the group were pretty solid.

We'd been a little worried that the first half of the game (writing/brainstorming) would be booring, but it turned out to be excellent. It did a lot of work on getting us onto the same page and cranking our energy and focus to the boiling point, so that by the time we got to the actual game we were ready to tear it up.

Then there was the worry that playing a "pre-written" game wouldn't be fun. I admit to being one of those kind of macho nar yangers who isn't happy unless he can get his push on -- and so I was seriously worried about this aspect. However, in play you're working so damn hard and so damn fast to keep all the shit in the air and keep the spotlight where you want it to be that you don't have time to worry about it. You do get to push, and you do get to yank shit around and surprise folks, and the pregenerated aspects of the game (which aren't really a plot, and more like elements you assemble into a plot) don't get in the way at all. In fact without them putting it all together in time wouldn't be possible.

All in all the game was crazy fast and a constant crazy ride towards personal and political meltdown, with everyone paddling as fast as they could to meet the increadibly tight deadlines of the procedures before the Statute of Limitations ran out. After game everyone was laughing and bubbling and full of a million ideas, and any RPG that leaves you charged rather than drained has to get a nod from me.

[DevP]