Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheFindus" data-source="post: 6686032" data-attributes="member: 75791">I get the feeling that running the trial itself will not be too engaging and fun for the players. No matter how intricate and historically accurate your framing of the court system will be, as witnesses the PCs will just be bystanders and the players will have to listen to the DM telling how the trial develops without engaging the situation directly. The background info on the court system is just color, really.To me, D&D is more about PCs turning events around with their actions. And in this scenario, this will happen if they leave the courtroom. You have a evil symbol that is hidden somewhere. You may have allies who will try to find it too. You have a corrupt inquisitor that will not be convinced by everything the PCs wwill have to say, so they need convinving evidence and the people of the community on their side.So you should rather conceptualize the backstory of the evil cult itself and leave the courtroom. Focus on the hidden symbol (where is it? are there guards?) and the allies of the evil priest (are there any left? who has seen them?). You can even focus on the inquisitor (how corrupt is he? are there witnesses?). This is stuff the players through their PCs can engage with. this is where the fun is IMO. Let the PCs be detectives, find the hidden evil temple, fight against the remains of the evil cult the priest belonged to (or whatever you had in mind with the evil priest). Then, when the PCs find out that the inquisitor is corrupt (how can they find out?), what do they do about it? What about the people of the community? Can they be turned against the priest they liked and the inquisitor, who is a figure of authority? This seems fun and engaging to me, much more so than a mere court trial, which makes a good movie but if the only role the PCs can play in it as it is right now is a pure witness, is running a high risk of being boring.But if all you want to do is run a court trial, more power to you.</blockquote>

Verification