A Procedure for Criminal Courtroom Dramatics
Up until very recently, I was running a game of Skerples' wonderful Magical Industrial Revolution, where circumstances had aligned such that the player characters of my game had been accused of the crime of Dread Necromancy (among others). While the claim was false, it was very possible, then inevitable, that they would go to court over this. Naturally this resulted in asking for suggestions and advice, then a procedure for the process of the criminal jury trial (as the defense). In the interest of not making this like a modern digital recipe I'm not going to put a huge life story up here, and instead get to the meat of it. I've put my thoughts on how it went for me and my game below that. I will immediately caveat that the structure of this trial procedure is directly influenced by how trials in Endon specifically are described, which I will also comment on more below.
Procedure
- Setup
- Determine charge(s)
- Determine starting disposition for each juror
- Presentation of Arguments
- Defense presents case
- Prosecution presents case
- Verdict
- Jury convenes
- Total argument values for each charge
- Roll reactions for each juror to determine vote on each charge
- Sentencing (if guilty)
- Jury convenes
1. Setup
1a. Determine Charges
If you haven't already, determine exactly what the defense is being charged with. It makes the most sense at this point to worry less about really specific charges, and more breaking down each individual accusation such as arson, individual murders, individual thefts, etc. When I used this system, it was broken down into raising one of the characters as an undead, commanding a separate undead in a different scenario, conspiring to hide other participants in both those events, and inciting then participating in mob violence. At this time, it is also helpful to determine what the potential outcomes are for each charge if they're found guilty of it in a vaccum (e.g. raising the dead party member would carry a penalty of death, mob violence may be exile or imprisonment).
1b. Determine Starting Juror Dispositions
If you haven't already, determine the quantity of and identity of the jurors. Each juror should be assigned a disposition rating to determine how for/against the defendants they are before the presentation of arguments. The default juror, who does not know the defense personally or maybe not even what they did, will have a rating from -1 (against) to 1 (for), depending on societal norms and predispositions towards those in the general position of the accused. E.g in Endon, where those already in a courtroom are presumed more guilty than not, the blank-slate juror will have a -1 starting disposition representing the presumption of guilt while not precluding the possibility of innocence.
Jurors who already know of, or know the defense directly instead should get a number based on their relationship/understanding of the group. One of the defense's ruthless business rivals might have a -3 (if they're willing to vote not guilty if it's obvious they're not) or even lower. A simple acquaintance that remembers them neutral or positive may have a 0 or 1, and friends may have 1-3 depending on how willing they are to let presented arguments supercede their feelings.
2. Presentation of Arguments
Both sides present evidence, ask questions of witnessess, make arguments aloud, say "Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury...", etc. This part is more freeform, but having one side control the floor at a time keeps it more understandable. During this process, the arguments were both made as individual points, as well as more-structured questioning of witnessess/experts/etc, displaying of evidence. If a lawyer is hired, they will (most likely) make the points on the group's behalf.
During each point/witness questioning/etc, individual arguments should be tracked and scored against each charge separately, using the chart below based on the strength of the argument, using the modifier as a positive number if it is in the defense's favor and negative if against). It goes without saying some arguments may not help at all, or be counterproductive for either side (such as in the case of saying "I did in fact murder that man")
| Strength | Modifier |
|---|---|
| Weak | 1 |
| Solid | 2 |
| Strong | 3+ |
Sample items that could be tracked against a charge:
- A witness account placing the defendant(s) away from the scene of a crime (+2, +3 if very credible)
- Showing that a methodology the prosecution is using for evidence is falliable (Variable)
- General testimony from a character witness or reference (+1)
- Proof that a weapon of the defendant's was used in a murder (-3) I trust your judgement here.
I allowed for a system of "Objections", and really any interjections, which had a chance of being overruled/interrupted/ignored outright. In general, I had objections/interjections go through on a 4-in-6, until the judge got annoyed, thereupon going through on a 2-in-6. These could either diminish the quality of arguments being made, negate them outright, or provide a separate argument that would be scored separately.
In Endon as described in MIR, court cases have the defense present their defense until they rest, and then the prosecution presents their arguments until they also rest. Naturally nothing prevents swapping the order, or interleaving the two parts, but for simplicity it is helpful to have one "side" control the floor at a time.
3. Verdict
If you haven't already, for each charge sum up all modifiers accumulated to use as that charge's final argument value.
For each juror, roll 2d6 as their reaction roll. For each charge, add the intial disposition for that juror, the roll, the argument value for that charge, and any other cirucmstantial modifiers that may have come up during the trial (e.g. threats/bribes). If the total is 8(?) or higher, they vote Not Guilty on that charge, otherwise voting Guilty.
Total the votes for each charge, and a majority determines guilty/not guilty. Ties indicate guilty/not guilty depending on the leaning of the society the trial is taking place in (In Endon, due to their harsh stance against criminal defendants, they would have it break Guilty).
The judge determines punishment for each crime the defendants are found guilty of. If different punishments are possible of different severities, a reaction roll or referencing the final modifier of the charge can be used to determine relative severity.
Thoughts
I ended up making this based on suggestions/advice from the ol' discord machine, which was very helpful in actually getting past the initial hurdle of "how might I do this" and some of the more fun details that came out of it. Havoc of lonely-star suggested bringing back in everyone who has ever been wronged by the players as jurors, which is a great suggestion of which my only regret was that I did not have many such people to use in that role. I have many thoughts on recurring NPCs that shall perhaps be written up in a proverbial "later post". Having a reaction roll per juror was inspired if not directly suggested by the good fellow over at pressthebeast, and I thought would be most interesting as a long-term piece of knowledge. It seems like if you get out of whatever consequences are against you, or they're not that bad, it might be nice to know how your friends/enemies/people you've never met voted when you were on the chopping block for the purposes of future drama. Nothing quite like confronting your "friend" who votes "guilty" against you. Skerples also has a blog post on the Endon legal system that I didn't exactly use but is relevant.
On the topic of supplemental things, having individual jurors with individual ratings also gives a good concrete way to handle bribes/threats/similar in the form of modifiers against that specific juror. In my game, I had one juror who explicitly sought out the PCs for a favor during a break as the trial was going poorly, but was snubbed, cementing a strong malus. I briefly toyed with having one juror (an enemy of the PCs) spend extra effort in deliberation to reduce the opinion of other jurors, but ended up dropping it due to it feeling a bit more difficult to track.
I didn't codify it in the procedure, but I included breaks in the court schedule during arguments/during deliberation, since it gave good time to reflect, a natural break point for the session, and a chance for the PCs to maybe do something underhanded, which my players did not do. But it was possible, and allowed other things to shift in the courtroom.
I didn't include closing remarks intentionally since I felt it would just be rehashing what was covered at the table. I think this was the correct choice for me but I could see it working out fine at the table as well.
This procedure is modified slightly from the version I used at the table, but not practically. I used 12 jurors, but instead of using a strict majority to determine guilt, I required 9+ jurors to all agree for the guilty/not guilty to stick one way or the other, potentially requiring multiple rounds. In retrospect, and as I have written this out more formally, it is clearly hard to determine what to do when some charges are solidly decided and others are not, and it seems unlikely that there will be leftover arguments to be made in a second round of presentation, so it is more likely to stalemate. The original intent was that there could be a larger gap where potentially the players (the defendants) could make more desperate maneuvers, potentially finding last minute witnesses and evidence or "convincing" jurors in a few hours or one day gap between rounds. In the end, the result had 3 charges found guilty, and one ambiguous on a tie. For simplicity, since the 3 guilty charges were the most severe, they were just sentenced to death and the trial convened. If we did multiple rounds, I didn't have a plan for if it kept seeming to drag on or neither side had anything to say, but probably would have erred towards making it just a majority either way. Multiple rounds would have used the same reaction rolls as previous rounds though, to represent the solidifying of juror's opinions or something to that effect.
Target number for guilty/not guilty was 8. I waffled on this a bit and still feel like maybe it should have been 7.
Running this for 4 charges ended up taking 2 entire sessions (around 3 hours each), which made sense for this particular point in the game as a climactic event with the final fates of the player's characters as the game was wrapping up on the line. Arguments were only partially abstracted, and witnessess had (most of) the questions asked of them explicitly done. With more abstraction, fewer charges, and/or fewer arguments it probably could have gone faster, but I suspect this won't produce a particularly speedy outcome.
The players also hired a NPC lawyer, which for the level of abstraction that I did (only a little), it meant that I was the one delivering both sides of the arguments during the session itself, barring interjections from the players. I did have them inform the potential angles for the lawyer to go down argument-wise, which meant it wasn't just me doing everything as they watched, but it very much increased the amount of mental load I had over the sessions. Pre-writing arguments for both sides was helpful but a bit inflexible, and ended up taking up quite a bit of dead tree compared to my other notes from other sessions (and I have tended to write what I feel is too much for other ones). At this level of detail, running this again, I'd probably make the PCs either represent themselves, or give them control of the lawyer they hire (and maybe give them a bonus for the general eloquence of the lawyer to represent them doing their part).
Objections felt a bit flimsy in-practice, and I had originally written up a more-complex table of chances they'd go through but didn't end up using it in practice. That said, objections were incredibly important in keeping the players all involved in the proceedings, especially as the prosecution was taking their turn, since that ended up taking up a large chunk of time as previously described. I'd want to have some more rough codification around what exactly is/isn't allowed as an objection if I did this again, but I don't have an immediate idea of what I would have wanted that to be.
All-in-all, I'm happy to produce the line "We have been found guilty of the crimes we did not commit, and innocent of the one we did." in my player's game notes. If I used it again, I'd probably try to condense it a bit more or abstract it more heavily, and it would be for a more important situation. Anything of "lower-stakes" would probably be better handled as a single reaction roll, or as one reaction roll per juror but skipping the above system (when it could be interesting).