Are there any courtroom drama / trial simulator RPGs that are specifically about the trials of super villains and heroes?
Court room games about super heroes?
2 Likes
I don’t know about about superheroes & villains but there was one about supernatural creatures. I haven’t played it but it was a free RPG called Trial & Terror: Supernatural Victims Unit.
@sa_liberty, I don’t know of any. Ghost Court might be a good starting point. That or maybe Burning Wheel’s Dual of Wits. Those are two totally different angles, but depending on what you are going for one might be better than the other.
Do you have a vision of what you are looking for? If there aren’t any that exist, it’s possible that an existing game could be hacked, or a scenario for it could be written. What kind of story beats or conflicts are you looking to emulate? Or is there a piece of media that is inspiring this question?
2 Likes
Isn’t Ghost Court a larp?
Yes. I still think it might be a useful thing to look at if you are trying to create a court/trial experience. But it totally depends on what type of experience you are going for.
Sea Dracula is another game (also another LARP), you might look at, but it might be further from your inspiration.
What would be different about a court room drama for superheroes / -villains from a less otherworldly court room drama?
I think I would just add a custom move or two to a superhero pbta game like Masks: One for the preparation, like the labyrinth move, to generate hold the players can spend in the court room to introduce evidence, witnesses, special wards agains mind control and so on. And one for arguing the case itself, maybe with one of these Blades in the Dark clocks I’ve heard about that advance (or don’t) as the trial progresses? (I’m super unfamiliar with Blades in the Dark, though. Maybe there’s better mechanic.)
1 Like
Cool. I’m reading through Trial and Terror now. I will check out Ghost Court next!
Cool! Can you give us a quick summary once you are done? Court room drama is really interesting to me!
Sure - watch this space.
1 Like
OK I have completed my read through of Trial & Terror: Supernatural Victims Unit.
This is a neat game that was designed and produced very quickly as part of a gamestorm before Jiffycon in 2008. It is very much a Law & Order simulator + Spookums, and hits that tone well and quite hard.
It’s trial mechanics are not very strong, unfortunately (all due respect to Epi and company). Basically, in the latter half of the game your play out the trial, which is just a collection of random trial-type scenes a’la law and order which include everything from talking to the judge, to reading case studies and law books, to questioning witnesses. When a DA character successfully makes a roll with one of their atributes, they gain a die, and when they fail, the GM gains a die. At the end of the hour, you roll off to see if you got a conviction and then have a coda scene.
What the game does very well is transition from the police characters to the lawyer characters and directly ties the police’s detective work to the DA’s outcomes.
The mechanics themselves do not touch on the Spookems, it’s only content found primarily in a list of traits, and in the flavor text of the writing. If you wanted a strait up Law & Order: Superhero Victims Unit game, you could play this with no modifications at all (just give your characters super hero traits instead of spooky traits).
2 Likes
Just read through Ghost Court’s rules as well. It was very short, and I think a lot of the content is on the cards.
This is a Ghost small claims court where the players enact court hearings rapid fire (in like 5-10 minutes per hearing). You just shotgun through them and there is a sand timer to keep order. The Judge hears the evidence and then rules at the end. Very simple and fun.
Like Trial and Terror, the ghost stuff is just flavor, and you could play this with any theme attached to it, including super heroes, or no theme at all (basically playing Judge Judy larp).
2 Likes