D&D Police Drama

[Jack7]

the players were commissioned to hunt criminals all over the city and in the environs, a kind of very local "federals". We had a wizard, a bard/monk homebrew, and a cleric.

I think depending on how Bards and Monks are constructed and arranged then they can be awfully good law enforcement agents as well. Bards make excellent undercover operatives (because of their ability to influence others), infiltrators (like thieves) and vadders, and monks make good investigators and infiltrators. Both make excellent interrogators and interviewers. We have some of both in the player's group. Wizards can make very good detectives, investigators (forensics - using magic), inventors, and surveillance and reconnaissance agents (with the aid of magic and familiars). Plus a clever one can be an excellent interrogator as well.

Clerics can be very good "good cops" to the hard/bad Ranger or former Thief cop. Because of that they can be good interrogators, and handlers (turning criminals into informants and double agents). Plus with well-established networks in both religious and political circles, they can be very good investigators of difficult or hard to reach subjects and suspects.

And I like the idea of city-wide "open jurisdiction" and localized Feds.
This allows your team to target both low and high crimes. And perhaps both high and low subjects and UNSUBS.

Perhaps the greatest change is the social aspect - no longer are you outsiders without connections, instead you have to take care of your reputation.

That also is a good observation. Law enforcement, like the military, is often only as effective as the reputation they carry, and the networks they establish, maintain, and exploit. It's hard to go wrong establishing a good reputation, even among certain criminal elements.

 

[Trench]

I've been running a police campaign set in Ptolus for a while now and I and the PC's love it.

I wholeheartedly agree with making a list of crime families and figuring out what happens when the PC's work their way up the chain.

Another bit of advice is, if you're planning on mystery adventures, be prepared for the PC's to not notice the clues you're placing. I read very good online advice that you should follow the "three clue rule".

<a href="http://www.thealexandrian.net/creations/misc/three-clue-rule.html">Your players are not Sherlock Holmes nor will they ever be.</a>

One of our most successful players is a bard/illusionist who manages to infiltrate and knows a LOT more about what's going on than he lets on half the time. We have an Investigator (Let me second and third the Crime and Punishment sourcebook. Really invaluable.) A cleric who's thinking for running for public office. A factotum who is also a very very strong player in the game, and a bevy of rogues/ranger/ and swashbuckler types.

Also, I suggest - depending on how complicated you want things to get - to keep track of which cops are dirty, which watch captains have relations to noble families and are willing to look the other way and the like.

I use HBO's "The Wire" as a model. The higher up the food chain the PC's go, the more complicated it gets.

As for magic in the campaign, I would consider making much of it inadmissible as evidence. It can certainly be used to track down people - but a Speak With The Dead spell or evidence found via high-level divinations may not be used in the courts. Because the wizards casting it may be lying...

 

[Jack7]

A factotum who is also a very very strong player in the game

Such a character would make a great agent of almost any kind; law enforcement, military, intelligence, governmental, broker, researcher, corporate, espionage. A very good idea.

I'm also gonna suggest agents with specialized skill sub-sets, or multiple skill sets. Such as the Vadder, Acers, Sharpers, and Polyprofessionals - or different kinds of multiclassed.

You might also consider developing, as I have, specialized skills and skill sets such as manhunting, urban tracking, vadding, group infiltration, coding/decoding, detection, analysis, reconnaissance, surveillance, cover story/identity/amplified disguise, document examination, disaster response, fire-fighting, buildering, tunneling, etc for your law enforcement/military/special forces/agent characters.

 

[Achan hiArusa]

Also, any city adventure can give you plenty of fuel. And there is always:

Troops (Star Wars COPS Parody)

 

[Hand of Evil]

Chart your day-to-day crimes! Think of this as your random encounters, they are happening all the time in a city and odds are the City Watch will happen on them. This is not just the activity but a possible result from the activity and builds an investment with the players in the city.

Example:

• Runaway - Party meets a runaway, who grab some bread and then ran stright into them (random encounter: hue & cry). Kind party member pays the merchant for the bread and takes the kid to the Clerics of the Red Lantern. Later, the kid is found murdered.

Random Encounters:

• Hue & Cry - Stop thief, stop!
• Argument - Merchant vs vendor, vendor vs customer, customer vs customer, someone vs drunk, wife vs husband, etc. there can be a lot!
• Drug Deal - drugs being passed
• Road Blockage - cart breakdown mostly
• Directions - Tourist asking the Watch for directions

 

[Drammattex]

Inspired by Terry Partchett's Discworld novels and the plethora of cop shows I've been watching I've been thinking about running a D&D campaign in which the players are officers of a City Watch, or some other kind of local law enforcement organization. Before I started though I thought I'd post here for some feedback on the concept. Has anyone here tried this? Did any find it worked particular well or badly? Any pitfalls or tips I should be aware of?

Thanks in advance.

P.S I also posted this topic on RPG.net. I apologize if cross posting isn't permitted.

My first 4e campaign (and current favorite of all games I've ever run) is this kind. The PCs are members of the the watch, and naturally this gives them similar goals and interests, even if the PCs themselves are pretty different.

For me, I think the key to success was writing thumbnails of several NPCs throughout the town; this allowed me to push and pull the PCs around, give them lots of allies, enemies, and neutral parties. They began by dealing with labor/tax/class riots and it was neat to watch the PCs' popularity rise and fall throughout the town depending on what they did and how they handled it.

The way I saw it, the only real pitfall to avoid was tying them too closely to the town. My campaign had a strong fey element in the background, so I changed things up by having them drift into a fey crossing for part of the campaign (where they also learned the true nature of some of the town's problems and resolved some personal issues).

Due to scheduling problems we took a year off from it, but when we return I'll likely promote them to a different "department" where they'll be dealing with a lot of the local bigwigs instead of the commoners. Those kinds of shifts keep me interested and the players engaged. I guess what I'm saying is, casting the characters as police worked well as long as I continued to change the circumstances and settings in an interesting way. Maps, summaries, and stuff are here.

Edit: Hey Ian, here are some of the articles I used when sketching out the law and the feel of the town. It's probably important to note we play in a medieval low magic setting, and flavor things accordingly.
Feudalism
Medieval justice
Medieval justice system
Some actual accounts

 

[blargney the second]

We ran a rotating-DM investigation game in which the PCs were members of an FBI-like organization. It was really quite cool!

 

[coyote6]

I've always wanted to run a campaign based on the Hand of Michael framework, from GURPS Tredroy. The Hands of Michael are, in most places on Yrth, part of a religious order (the Order of the Archangel Michael) that investigate crimes. In Megalos, they're basically the Emperor's secret police, but in Caithness, they're more like the FBI (that happens to nominally work for the church). Tredroy's a city of multiple faiths, though, so the Hands there are purely secular street cops, and can be of any or all faiths and origins.

They work in teams of five, so they're just about perfect as a PC group.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Adding support to supplementing TP's work with Simon Green's Hawk & Fisher stories. One detail I especially liked was his version of SWAT- Special Wizardry and Tactics.

Another look at a gritty watch can be found spread out in the Darkness books of Harry Turtledove. This series is Turtledove's transposition of WW2-type stories & machinations into a low-magic fantasy world, and is told from multiple viewpoints. One viewpoint is that of a middlingly corrupt, bigoted fat watch patrolman- the kind of guy parodied by Pratchett's Watch Sergeant Colon.

OTOH, watching reruns of COPS- on any of a half-dozen channels in any given city- would provide you an endless supply of NPC's, plotlines, settings and so forth.

 

[MichaelSomething]

If you're looking to add some dark comedy to your police campaign, then Reno 911 is the show for you! I would link to some clips but that would violate the "don't offend Eric's Grandma" rule.