CSI: Waterdeep

[Silveras]

Other tidbits... I remember the "Death of an Arch-Mage" adventure. I don't remember what issue it was in, though. I do know that the premise of the adventure (which was an RPGA tournament-style module) was that local laws prohibited the use of magic to find criminals or convict people, thus the PCs had to do regular investigative work. This was mostly interviewing suspects and establishing alibis, IIRC.

I can't recall the specific issue number, it was *around* 100 (goes WAAAAAY back). I ran the adventure recently for friends, updated to 3.0, and it worked pretty well.

There were other limits at work, too.

• The PCs were a Fighter 7, a Fighter 2/Cleric 5, a Fighter 2/Rogue 5, and a Fighter 2/Wizard 5. They did not have access to many of the higher-level divinations.
• The laws said you couldn't just go around using spells on everyone. You could use spells to confirm an accusation once you had enough other evidence to justify it.
• The PCs had 4 hours of game time {clocked along with the real time of the play session} to solve the case. After that, the suspects would go their separate ways.
• The murder was discovered after the PCs had prepared their spells for the day, so the adventure told you what spells they had available.

That's a pretty mind-numbingly stupid idea.

InterPol are called into to investigate a murder in a small town. The coinstable tell them:

"Forensics? Nope, we don't use that here. Or flashlights. Or surveillance cameras, Lordy no. In fact, you might aswell hand in your guns, clothes, evidence bags and notepads... in these parts, we use sticks and rocks to do our detective work!"

Actually, it goes hand-in-hand with the premise. The same social forces that eventually led to the creation of the police as an investigative body also gave rise to the idea of right to privacy. I am not saying that they would be 100% the same, as D&D is set in a fantasy universe with a lot of deities that each have an agenda to advance. However, there would likely be some regulations about what you can, and cannot, do with spells -- both in a public order sense (licensing arcane casters, etc.) and in terms of the limitations that will bind the investigative forces.