We Be Cops

[hiiamtom]

My next game is a fantasy police force game, and I have loads of ideas for adventures to go on. The problem I have run into is the police force itself and how a fantasy FBI/non-local law enforcement proxy might work.

I thought maybe it should be a private organization offering investigatory services, which appeals to me because it gives a little noir feel and the players have something to invest their cash into to grow and improve. It could be something as contrived as an adventuring guild or even a tavern with a side business since it is a bad tavern. Then the government would be more of a feudal fiefdom system with a monarch or council where there are competing lords wanting their problems hush-hush.

The other idea is to have it in he frontier, where an organized service with a wide range would be more natural. Something like the Dogs in Dogs in the Vineyard if you know that setting, where the police work to establish order above all else in a chaotic wilderness. The problem with this one is that they will grow out of the range of a regional force like this that is such a community, but I can deal with that when it comes. This would be more of an authoritarian state with a central government.

Any other ideas are more than welcome.

[SmiloDan]

Check out the Pinkertons.

They were a private security force that worked the frontier, the railroads, and the cities back in the late 1800s and I think early 1900s.

Pinkerton detective agency

[Jeremy Mac Donald]

I've run an investigation-heavy campaign and my general take on most of the questions here are that the answers are going to depend a lot on what your looking for in a D&D campaign.

So I went with the 'investigators' are essentially sub-contractors of The Watch version but there is definitely a possibility of making the players more like a group within the bureaucracy. Though for that to work your probably looking at a pretty heavy role-playing campaign because 'fighting the bureaucracy and its issues' is presumably a sub-theme of the campaign. This also only likely works if the main stage of the adventures is a large city.

Another element you will need to decide in a 'we be cops' type campaign is the style of the adventures. Are you playing Murder on the Orient Express or Justified? In other words are the adventures generally actual investigations. heavy on the problem solving and role-playing or is this more of a background theme to exciting action-packed adventures. Obviously, in either case, one can dip into the other style of play but you should know what your going for and what your players are interested in.

Might be different for your group but since I did focus on more investigative type adventures I found that I had to switch things up quite a bit. Anything even close to a who-done-it is really mentally taxing for the players and I would not run two of them in a row.

If your making investigation type adventures for your campaign I can offer some more specific advice based on the things I learned from running them. They can be very satisfying but they come with some unique pitfalls.