Ace Attorney/Mystery Genre in roleplay form?

[Ignitedstar]

For those of you who don't know what Ace Attorney is, click here.


I mean... even roleplays that center around mysteries in general. Does anyone have any information on something like this can be handled? I just thought that it would be interesting if we could do something like that here at RPDom, because well... I've never seen it before.


You know... Crime scenes, evidence, the court room... etc.

 

[Grey]

GUMSHOE is a light system devised with much of that in mind, popularly used with the Trail of Cthulhu game. The Mythos is ripe for mysteries like that.


The tricky thing about a mystery is the ST has to plot EVERYTHING in advance and the points of intersection for PCs to find. Find the balance between solveable, intriguing, and believable.


I'm also planning to run a game set in a modern police station in a couple of months.

 

[Miz]

I don't know any systems that you can use that specialize in a court setting or a mystery setting. I would have to agree with Grey on this one, it would probably be best to utilize a lighter system possibly even a custom based system if you have to.


Though as for a mystery roleplay in general, I don't know if a system has to be used. A free form could accomplish the same task but as Grey said as well, you would have to plot out everything.

The tricky thing about a mystery is the ST has to plot EVERYTHING in advance and the points of intersection for PCs to find. Find the balance between solveable, intriguing, and believable.

Nevertheless, what is also important to look at is whether or not you get the Storytellers involved in the crime and helping you make up the mystery. You could let them in one what happens and let them add to it. I mean there is suppose to be a fourth wall after all between player and character knowledge. The Storyteller doesn't have to hold the player's hands the entire way, they could let the story also be told by the character s and the players as they plan with the ST.

 

[solyrflair]

The difficulty when running these is when the players take a set of clues and make the WRONG conclusions. If you let them play that, they follow down the wrong path to a point where they just completely lose the thrill and just build frustration. Once that happens a few times, they lose interest quickly in a mystery system.


Also, most general systems (D&D, WoD, GURPS) tend to abstract the investigation piece with a single or a limited set of all-encompassing skills. Those who have the skills are much better than those who don't, even if they aren't the best at deduction.


Finding a good combat-light system that heavily abstracts the combat, but works out a lot of social and investigative skills might be good. I don't know of any, but if you build something around a free-form system, you might be able to get what you want. Actually, one of the games that I played that did it well, was an old D20 Star Wars system, or D20 SpyCraft. Combat could get a little deadly for those unfamiliar, but it was pretty realistic. If you got shot, you normally went down quickly.