We've talked a lot about crime, law, and conviction for crime in games, but mostly it's been about creating a rigid system of law that is automatically enacted as soon as a crime occurs. I'm reminded of a MUD I used to play in which you were immediately executed by "the Gods" if you broke the law and murdered an innocent little baby (hey, the little snot head was asking for it). Morrowind addresses this to an extent, but it's one sided, you really only ever play the criminal, and it's still somewhat contrived in that guards in a completely different town will sometimes attack you for crimes that you committed elsewhere. Since there is no apparent means of communication between the two cities (the player knows that he is the only one travelling between the towns), this starts to fall apart. One of my theories about society in general is that crime itself is not deemed "wrong," only getting caught for the crime. We can see it in our cinema, the various heist movies such as "The Thomas Crown Affair," "The Italian Job," or "Ocean's Eleven." We see it in our culture, the glorification of characters like Billy the Kid, and so on. Barring heinous acts like peadophilia or serial murder, we secretly admire an intelligence so great as to outwit the authorities. Murder is not exempt from this, specifically murder based on vengence of some type. Games like Grand Theft Auto have it wrong, though. There are practically NO consequences for your actions, and whatever they are, they are immediate. I'm talking about crime being a key element of game play in that the investigation of that crime is not hidden from the user. Instead of having the game decide if a crime has been broken, put the choice in the hands of the player. Have the players track the clues, find the criminal, and bring them to justice. Now, we've created two new gameplay elements, investigation, and planning of the crime. In most games with a crime element, the only evidence of the crime is a body, and some games give the option to completely destroy the body. At any rate, the evidence is always ignored, the game judges the crime based on it's intimate knowledge of your real actions. In the game of investigation, the criminal leaves behind clues, and it becomes the criminals job to minimize those clues. I'm reminded of a story related to me by a friend that played Ultima Online (or some other MMORPG). In the game there was a particular user that was quite adept at hacking into the game server and doing whatever he pleased. The admins role played his capture and punishment in the game, but he was so good he escaped their custody. Eventually, they were able to lock him out and even mocked a town square execution when they deleted his account. This is amazing! It's certainly not exactly what I had in mind, I don't want the crime extending to real crime with users hacking the servers, but look at the events from the perspective of the players. Imagine how exciting it must have been to watch this unfold in the context of the game. Here they essentially had a criminal master mind, a real super-villian. Though his theft and eventual escape from custody took place outside of the context of the game interface, they were still part of the game world. It finally culminated in a very real display of justice. It is the dynamic of the criminal versus the investigator that creates the excitement. If the admins were able to stop his actions the first time they found out it happened, it wouldn't have been so exciting, he would have just been another hacker and that was it. But because they brought their punishment *into* the game world, they made the crimes a *part* of the game world, and the "escape" only helped to solidify this fact.

I think first you need to specify what types of situations you want to portray? That is, what specific events can happen?

Once you have this, what factors drive those situations? Alibis? Lying vs. truthfulness? Ability to weather interrogation or perform it? Chance of being ratted out by allies vs. backed up by allies in stressful situations (both for criminals and going "above the law" to get information)

Then, you need a rules system for approximating how they work. How is an alibi broken, upheld or disproved? Is it a stat check, a process, a strategy, or a semi-random event? Then you'll need to fold in any other co-efficients that apply, such as whether or not the player can check times or somehow see through a lie.

Then, it's time to test, tweak and refine. [smile]