[3.P] Help Me Make a Police Campaign

[Chaosvii7]

Okay, so after fondly reminiscing on a number of similarly themed one-shots with my friends, we agreed that it would be interesting to revisit the idea, but this time I put myself in the driver's seat and I want to give it just a little bit more structure(the originals were basically sandbox police comedies, after all).

So I've made a few premature executive decisions:

The approach to Law Enforcement in the nation they're in is similar to adventuring companies - you start a police squad up of your own volition, and if you get good, you get noticed. If not, you'll basically be wrestling with the lower-rep groups until you die of neglect or get your break. This also makes it easy to give them rivals, ongoing or otherwise, based on other references to police dramas(for example, Xeno 911! - The Astral Sea's wildly dumb law enforcement group).

Instead of drugs and weapons, magic is the fuel of the crimes, though slowly at first. It isn't necessary illegal to be a spellcaster or use magic, but it's easily acknowledged that the big criminal organizations and the high-op crimes are usually packing magical heat behind them. Thusly, all full casting classes are banned - only 2/3 and half casters are allowed for magic. This also gives me the ability to use creatures that get spells and SLAs as they reach higher CRs without them having to be full casters to stop being relevant. Trying to level the playing field and keep them relevant without gimping my encounters, and giving it a bend that I can defer to when I want to get a large-scale plot rolling along.

I'm still trying to decide the relative power level of the game, overall. I am interested in trying P6, but I don't know if it's right for this. To that effect, if I did do P6, it allows me to give it a more lax approach to giving them encounters and XP, and puts a cap on the influences of magic(which also means I can open tiers 1 and 2 back up, if I did decide on this system).


What do you think? I am in no way worried of being able to pull material and making a fantastic plot(Trust me, I have the complete Wikipedia list of Police Dramas, and I'm going to go through every page on TV Tropes until I can compile enough relevant tropes to make a lot of tongue-and-cheek jokes) - my conflict lies in the initial concepts of the game and the changes to the system it makes therein, and also ideas on structuring some new gameplay elements for them(Chase scenes, formally solving mysteries, sleuthing, undercover work, etc.) that may not be regularly addressed in the rules.

What do you think? Weigh in on the Full Pathfinder vs. P6 argument, specifically, and then from there I'll take suggestions of ways to handle this kind of a Light-hearted police squad adventures campaign.

[Dayaz]

I'm not sure how you'd do it, but maybe use the fame subsystem that some of the bard archetypes use?

[Chaosvii7]

I'm not sure how you'd do it, but maybe use the fame subsystem that some of the bard archetypes use?

Do you have a reference you can point me to? I'm pretty good and handing out some party-wide bonuses, and that sounds like it might work for what it's worth. I would like to know what it accomplishes and how it scales with level, if at all.

[Dayaz]

http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/ultimateMagic/spellcastingClassOptions/bard.html

go down to the celebrity and demagoge

[Fouredged Sword]

Two balances define the crime drama system

Mystery vs Discovery and Rules vs Rebellion

The crime in the city needs flavor. They need to be able to feel like the groups they are facing down have character. The crime families are to a large extent knowable and have a public face. The balance between knowing things and discovering unknowns is the key. The big reveal is hard to pull of in a group setting that you can't control all the actors, but it tends to be worth it in the end.

Second

You need to define rules that they must follow. They call them crime procedural for a reason. Cops have procedures and rules that define and constrain their actions. If the group breaks the rules they need to be aware that they are doing so and that they must not get caught. This adds conflict and tension to a situation.

[Chaosvii7]

Of course, of course. I expect to be creating nothing but the finest parodies and caricatures of popular crime solving groups AND criminal organizations. The only conflict with what you're saying is that the dramatic reveal will most likely not be used dramatically, or to encourage dramatic acting; It'll definitely be the tool to reign in the sillier aspects of the game I hope to accomplish, and it will certainly still be hard to piece everything together, but the undying suspense is what I think would deter from the light-hearted and spirited nature of the game I'm trying to establish.

And of course there's rules - it's a formalized society, but they don't want to have to pour resources into criminal justice beyond what they have to, so they have a sector of town where you can formally sign up as a crime-fighting/crime-solving organization. You get a nifty handbook and a badge, and then you get to make your cop party and have cop adventures in cop town. There's laws, and you're the law enforcement.

Of course, just remember I'm trying to approach this as lax as possible. I totally hear and understand everything you're saying, I just want to make sure there's no confusion in the fact that this game is going to be hammering its player base with jokes, and I want to be sure the game is still structured and coherent enough to survive constant bombardment.

[Magatsu Izanagi]

If full-casters are banned, definitely look into the inquisitor as an alternative to the cleric; it's a 2/3 caster, and a lot of its class abilities would be perfect from a flavor standpoint for law enforcement characters. There's also a nice assortment of prestige classes for PC and NPC use; off the top of my head, there's Gray Gardener/Gray Warden (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/e-h/gray-gardener), Justiciar (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/i-m/justiciar), Master Spy (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/i-m/master-spy), Shieldmarshal/Grand Marshal (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/s-z/shieldmarshal), and Sleepless Detective (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/s-z/sleepless-detective). Of course, prestiging would necessitate using full Pathfinder as opposed to P6, but at least the options are still there on the table.

On that note, anyone who uses Reno 911! as a source of inspiration is awesome in my book. If you've got some time to kill and are somehow in need of more inspiration, you should totally check out Inferno Cop (http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8Vd-cvqk4GtPGk2K8yfiEcWxy6nt3VZY) and read some Double K (http://captainosaka.deviantart.com/gallery/704630) if you haven't already.