No Police Procedurals RPGs? (1 Viewer)

[Darran]

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?

 

[Jason D]

There's no reason you can't do them with Primetime Adventures, and unless I'm remembering incorrectly, the 2nd incarnation of Hogshead Publishing did a number of d20 books specifically aimed at crime/forensics/etc... the Crime Scene line.

There's also Crimes People Play, located here for free.

I think a part of the problem is that the licenses for those would be prohibitively expensive, and GMing them would seem to be extremely painful... keeping a whole team occupied for the duration of a session.

 

[Gareth-Michael Skarka]

You don't see police procedural RPGs for the same reason you don't see medical drama RPGs -- most of the story is driven by expert knowledge (whether police procedure or medical expertise), which is not largely present in the player base -- so would end up being a series of dice-rolls to see if your character can get the expository info-dump from the GM.

Not too exciting.

 

[Ace]

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?

Gumshoe is basically the CSI RPG with several flavors of power you can easily remove

There is also Vice Squad from PIG but thats Miami Vice the RPG

A combo of GURPS Cops and GURPS Mysteries (and High Tech if you like) will cover the genre

Also long ago there was police patrolman type RPG called Crime Fighter but it was rather 80's think Adam12 or Hunter not CSI

 

[selenite]

There's GURPS Cops and GURPS Mysteries. The links are to PDFs but you can probably find a used copy of the former and the other is available as paper at Warehouse 23.

 

[Paka]

http://ipressgames.com/SHUpreorder.html

It isn't hard-core procedural but it treads that kinda ground.

Fair disclosure: Michael Miller is a friend of mine and I have not played this one yet.

 

[Ace]

You don't see police procedural RPGs for the same reason you don't see medical drama RPGs -- most of the story is driven by expert knowledge (whether police procedure or medical expertise), which is not largely present in the player base -- so would end up being a series of dice-rolls to see if your character can get the expository info-dump from the GM.

Not too exciting.

This an excellent point. I've tried to pitch "police procedural" RPG's on a number of occasions till I realized I was the only one in my group that had any knowledge whatever of the genre.

The only game I have seen that makes clue hunting fun is Gumshoe -- its "free clue" system works but it has the minor flaw of not offering a "reality driven" version -- its also horror and supers and Cthulhu

 

[Craig Oxbrow]

Any mystery drama game with a decent action system can do this job by stripping out the monsters and superpowers and such, and real-world content doesn't generate unique sellable background, so there aren't sourcebooks to write.

A unique and clever system for procedurals came along recently in Gumshoe - and it was sold primarily with a setting involving monsters and superpowers and such.

 

[Jesse]

The closest you get with GUMSHOE is Mutant City Blues.

For Brew Your Own, I'd go with Primetime Adventures.

If you're interested in the societal aspects of those shows then I recommend Dirty Secrets.

If you like the "reality" aspect then I recommend Serial Homicide Unit.

Jesse

 

[Aida]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say they wouldn't be particularly fun. Translating CSI to an RPG means pixelbitching, then interrogating the suspect until they reveal the real criminal, then pixelbitching, then interrogating the new suspect until they confess everything.

You don't see police procedural RPGs for the same reason you don't see medical drama RPGs -- most of the story is driven by expert knowledge (whether police procedure or medical expertise), which is not largely present in the player base -- so would end up being a series of dice-rolls to see if your character can get the expository info-dump from the GM.

Not too exciting.

I think you overestimate the actual amount of expert knowledge in most police procedurals and medical dramas. You can just make like House -- find a cool (real) case, shuffle some facts around, add in some seizures and vomiting blood, and make sure every test reveals a newer, more dangerous symptom.

And shock the flatline.

That said, there's very little difference between rolling for an info-dump whether it's real or fiction--

There's an idea. A medical drama RPG in which the players are expected to blatantly use dramatic editing to introduce plausible-but-bogus medical "facts" as they go.