Justice Pageant: Judge, Rule ... Profit

[agentsr]

Since time immemorial clan leaders, nobles and kings would sit on chairs and pass sentence. These are men known for their great wisdom, their moral grounds. Their word make law and they never, ever, take bribes... or do they?

Justice play has to be related with morality choices. The first approach i could think off was to have a system that tracked, justice/goodness/profit from one hand, and somehow the decisions you would do would do jurisprudence, where you couldn't change your word, so a ruling now can have unforseen consequences later.

Obviously making such system and coming up with the "cases", "options" and "consequences" would be the tricky part.

I will give it more thought. Thank you Terry for twitting about this site. Much interesting theme indeed.

[agentsr]

I was thinking on this concept and was thinking, what if morality is based on public opinion.

If you're judge and prossecutor, you might ask the right (or wrong) questions so you have the public opinion on your side, so you can maximize your profit...

[agentsr]

I know that noone cares, but here's more on the concept (when i got home i went to play shogun2 instead of working on the game, but i thought about it on the train instead of reading storm of crows :D)...

Game will be some sort of Justice RPG. You know when in old RPG you would have a lot of questions to determine your characters morality? That seems perfect for a game about Justice.

So game will be divided in 2 parts. The first part you will be passing judgment, but you will not have to decide if either they are guilty or innocent (we will assume that everyone is guilty). You will have to legislate though, that is, for every case you will have to decide the punishment: (so far i thought on 4: kill, maim-relevant part of body, fine, absolve). You will also be able to take bribes to convict or not people. The decisions you make will increase or decrease your popularity.

After playing a few scenarios (i would say no more than 4?), story will take an unexpected turn of events and you will be forced to flee...

Now you are fleeing for you life and you will encounter people on the way, that will either help you, or dificult your life depending on the decisions you made before. So all the popularity, coin you will inherit from the other part of the game. The game will also try to lead you to make the same things than you convicted before.

E.g. It might be that you end up finishing your game without your hands if you were forced to steal in the second part of the game. This would show in the game final where a list of all the things you've accomplished. (Sam the maimed, formerly known has Sam the wicked, killed by a jealous husband on the good year of the lord 1535)...

I will have to run the sketches i did on paper through a machine state so i can check if the options are playable... What you guys think?

Might be the name of the game should be called: "A man reaps..."

[Jonathan Whiting]

This sounds pretty interesting, but worryingly ambitous.

Do you have a plan on how to complete it within the month?

[agentsr]

This sounds pretty interesting, but worryingly ambitous.

Do you have a plan on how to complete it within the month?

I am pretty sure i can do a text only prototype that noone wants to play that would prove the concept... as for graphic and levels designing and stuff like that, i don't even know where to start... did my first tutorial on stencyl yesterday... my wife can draw pretty well (digital and non-digital), but i don't really think i could do a graphical version by the 1st August, any suggestions?

[Jonathan Whiting]

If you think you can make the text only version work then I'd suggest you try for that. Focus on the things that makes your game unique, don't waste time on boilerplate graphical rpg code or level design unless you've time leftover. I'll certainly play it, and if you do interesting things I'm certain I won't be the only one.

[Ian Snyder]

I like your ideas, please keep posting as you go :)

And there's nothing wrong with text, in fact, there's a lot you can do with text that you wouldn't be able to with a 'regular' game.

[Ed K]

Yeah man, don't be disheartened, this sounds really interesting!
If you did a text only version, you (or a collaborator) could potentially at some static images later, in a Phoenix Wright style.

I especially like the idea of playing a judge-king-priest, and courting public opinion as you issue judgements.

[agentsr]

Thank you for your words of support. Unfortunately i am very lazy and therefore this has failed as you can see... for now. I still would like to do it, alone, pageant or no pageant, so when i work on it i'll update this thread.

One of the things that made me quit was that i got stuck on trying to think on the scenes on phase 2 of the game. Also i could think on a text interface that i liked (opened flex and was playing with buttons and labels). I also didn't feel that the game was turning to be fun (the concept). I still would like to do something about it in the future, specially now that i revive it it looks like promising again.

Last things i had like 1 month++ ago was:

Coin / Popularity / DeadorAlive - probable public meters

1st phase scenes:

Small theft
kill -> pop -2
maim -> pop 0
fine -> pop 0
do nothing -> pop +

Murder
kill -> pop 0
maim -> pop 0
fine -> pop -1
do nothing -> pop -2

Adultery
kill -> pop -2 -> coin +2
maim -> pop 0 -> coin +1
fine -> pop 0 -> coin 0
do nothing -> pop + -> coin 0

Rapist
kill -> pop +1
maim -> pop +2
fine -> pop -1
do nothing -> pop -2

2nd phase scenes:
During this phase if you ever get to 0 coin or 0 popularity end of game

Scene1

Buy -> Coin -2
Steal -> Pop -1 if smalltheft=kill you die end of game.
Kill -> Pop -2 If murder=kill you die end of game

etc...