Trials

[The Grumpy Celt]

How do you handle criminal cases that involve the PCs in your game, presuming they come up?

Hypothetically a player is charged with a crime. How is it handled? Is there a trial or does the local lord simply hand down a verdict? If there is a trial, is it handled like American courts are portrayed on TV (the real thing not being theatrical and moving slow)? Can a PC get legal representation? Can magic be used to verify the facts?

So, how do you handle criminal cases that involve the PCs in your game, presuming they come up?

 

[davidschwartznz]

One of my best sessions ever involved the PCs on trial. However, this was a Planescape campaign and the judge was a nalfeshnee demon, the prosecutor was a bigoted eladrin, the PCs' defense lawyer was a Xaositect, and the witnesses included an intelligent talking planar horse the PCs had stolen for someone in an earlier adventure and an unintelligent nontalking planar boar.

My best advice is: because there's going to be a lot of back-and-forth discussion, make sure you have a clear way of indicating who's talking. I'm not great with voices, so I blew up pictures of all the main NPCs and a generic witness and glued them to tongue depressors; then I just held up the picture of whoever was talking at the moment.

 

[Evilhalfling]

From the player perspective, we had a fun trial last session. We had council, but they were only marginally competant, suggesting we try and cut a deal by all blaming the party cleric, or pleading insanity. It was far more peoples court, than american court.
We all got a chance to state our case, and the prosecutor stated his case - occasionally interrupting each other. At the end of each players speech they rolled a diplomacy check.
a pair of 1's later I summed up my characters effort as follows:
"Note to self - the court does not appreciate puns, and mooning the judges is rarely a good idea."

To be honest we did cut the guys ear off, and bash the captain with an axe,
but the fact that 3 patrollers had already commited sucide was SO not our fault.

3 judges and 6 jurors voted 7-0 for our deaths, with 2 abstaining
various NPC highjinx insured we survived, to flee the city on a pirate ship.

 

[GAAAHHH]

If the characters are nobles, they could always call for trial by combat.

 

[Fifth Element]

It's never come up in my games, but I've always wondered about the effect of divination magic on this type of thing. Who needs witnesses when you can use magic to determine what happened?

 

[Dan Bell]

I wrote a mini-adventure that had a trial in it: http://www.lythia.com/modules.php?o...viewdownloaddetails&lid=159&ttitle=Cyre_Manor (See the last 4 pages).

"Hallmoot" is another great little senerio: http://www.lythia.com/modules.php?o...etails&lid=109&ttitle=HârnCon_2003_Adventures

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

The PC's weren't charged, but were involved in this one...

I had a session where the PC's, who were mostly low-level wizards in a magical school (think Hogwarts) had caught their teacher in a very bad plot, and he was going on trial. Rather than go through the entire trial, I made it closed, so the PC's could only wait outside. The teacher acted in his own defense, and called all of the PC's and some of the related NPC's as witnesses, trying to make it look like they were at fault. The players were getting quite nervous - they thought he was going to get away with it, but in the end justice triumphed. I created the rules of the trial, and then a witness list, and a list of questions. I limited the number of questions that could be asked, more from a game perspective than anything else. I have my notes on the court system (Wizards Court) and the questions if anyone is interested.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

It's never come up in my games, but I've always wondered about the effect of divination magic on this type of thing. Who needs witnesses when you can use magic to determine what happened?

Well, the key thing is: How do you know the diviner is telling the truth? And the person verifying that diviner? You could go down the line - casting a divination doesn't mean that the caster will tell you what the divination revealed! I can definitely see a strong reason to want to have good, non-magically achieved evidence.

Of course throughout history, most courts weren't much on objective truth, so mileage will vary from culture to culture. In my games main culture, arcane magic isn't particularly trusted, so it's disallowed, and there is no state religion (officially) so that's disallowed as well.

 

[an_idol_mind]

I don't think I've ever had a PC on trial, although I have had PCs defend or prosecute before.

I'm pretty sure that the next time I do any sort of trial, I'm going to model it after the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney video games. I even plan on writing up evidence cards to use for a court record.

 

[the Jester]

Inspired by Piratecat, I once used a guest player as the judge, briefing him on the interests involved in the trial. Then I let the players be the defense, and I played the prosecutor.

Great fun.