Ace Attorney D20? - Downloaded from the Wizards Community, all coding removed by Solauren

Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 markermage Apr 16, 2008 3:56:02	Before I go any further, I'd like to say that I don't yet trust myself to come up with a good D20 system, so I'm just putting this idea out there for whoever wants to try making it. Has anyone here actually thought of the possibility of an Ace Attorney D20? ... Anyone? ... OK, I guess I'll have to explain why I think it might be worth thinking about. For those of you who don't know, the Ace Attorney videogames have had you play the role of a lawyer. The games featured two modes, investigation and trial. During the investigation mode, you would collect evidence and talk to various people who might have information or evidence you'll need. The trial mode consists of witness testimonies which you have to find contradictions in. You think I'm crazy for even suggesting such a boring D20 game be made, don't you? Consider the following thing about the games: Unlike real defense attorneys, the main goal is not to just reasonable doubt that the defendant did it, but to point out the real criminal. Now I'm sure that you some of you out there may have tried running an adventure that involved the PCs having to solve a murder mystery. Maybe there's a few of you who like making those kind of adventures. Well an Ace Attorney D20 would be the kind of system for such a thing. The investigation portions of the adventure could revolve around roll-play, having PCs make search and spot checks to find clues and diplomacy checks to question witnesses. The trial portions would revolve around role-play, giving PCs a chance to question the witnesses without making any rolls. However, during the trial portions, the judge NPC would be able to assign a penalty to the PC if he/she does something unacceptable (badgering the witness, going too far off-topic, making a witness who's only a child cry, making fun of the judge's bald spot, etc.). These penalties could come in the form of damage to the leading PC. If the leading PC runs out of HP, then they lose the case. OK, so maybe you don't want a game like that, but there are plenty of interesting things from the Ace Attorney series that might be worth trying to create for a D20 game. Just think about the following things that can be taken from the game. Kurain Spirit Medium Class: Just imagine a class that allows a PC to temporarily change into a character that has died. As the PC would gain levels in it, they would go from being able to become controlled by the spirit (wouldn't have any control or memories of what happened during the time), to actually physically changing into what the spirit's body looked like while it was alive, to becoming able to have some sense of what's going on while channeling the spirit, to eventually being able to have complete control while channeling the spirit. Magatama: This amulet resembles half of a yin-yang symbol. Whenever someone lies directly to the wearer, the wearer sees chains and a number of locks (the GM decides how many) appear that indicate how determined the person is to keep the secret they're hiding. If the person is lying to people besides the wearer or considers their statement to be true in some way, then the wearer won't see those chains and locks appear. After seeing the chains and locks, the wearer may activate the Magatama. Doing so allows the wearer to try to prove that the person is lying through the use of role-play. As the wearer proves that the person is lying, the locks will disappear. If all of the locks disappear, the person tells the truth about the thing they lied about before. If the wearer comes to the wrong conclusion (as determined by the GM), they take 1d6 magic damage. Faint divination; CL 4th; Craft Wondrous Item, Discern Lies; Price 32,000 gp I am just posting this to get the ideas out there. I don't really want to make an entire system myself yet. I barely have any experience with such a thing. This was even my first time trying to create a magic item by myself, and I still have a feeling I didn't do too well with it. So let me know if you want to take those ideas and make rules for them. I would also like some feedback on the Magatama magic item as I'm sure I screwed up somewhere with it.
#2 elliott20 Apr 16, 2008 10:54:51	it's not a bad idea, but you're gonna have a huge problem with implementation. the D20 system, unfortunately, is not very suitable for games that have a very strong emphasis on social situations. They give you a couple of social skills to run with but give you no further guidance, which means that with the wrong GM, the game could end with a single good gather information roll. If you want to make this work, you need to have some kind of system that measures how effective your characters argument beyond just letting the GM arbitrarily decide your effectiveness. Why? Because it places way too much work on the GM to do it that way. What, beyond just getting creating the storyline, the plot, the characters, every single set piece, he also now has to be proficient with legal jargons, ethical issues and court procedures too? If you want, I can post my social encounter rules for you to try out. btw, it's roleplaying, not rollplaying.
#3 markermage Apr 16, 2008 17:54:14	it's not a bad idea, but you're gonna have a huge problem with implementation. the D20 system, unfortunately, is not very suitable for games that have a very strong emphasis on social situations. They give you a couple of social skills to run with but give you no further guidance, which means that with the wrong GM, the game could end with a single good gather information roll. If you want to make this work, you need to have some kind of system that measures how effective your characters argument beyond just letting the GM arbitrarily decide your effectiveness. Why? Because it places way too much work on the GM to do it that way. What, beyond just getting creating the storyline, the plot, the characters, every single set piece, he also now has to be proficient with legal jargons, ethical issues and court procedures too? If you want, I can post my social encounter rules for you to try out. btw, it's roleplaying, not rollplaying. As I said before (twice I might add), I am only posting this to get the idea out there and have no plans to make it into a system myself. I'd like to at least wait until I feel I've gotten the hang of being a GM before I even begin taking on such a task. If someone else wants to take the idea and make a system out of it, then that's fine with me. The Gather Information skill could probably be left out of the system because the investigation portions would focus on the PCs doing just that. The Ace Attorney series is known for being so different from how trials are actually done that they had to put a disclaimer in the instruction booklets that says so. I'm sure that a good 70% of the stuff that happens in the games wouldn't be allowed in a real court. The differences from how the courts in the games differs from real courts tend to be more about making things simpler. Oh, and I had spelled it "roll-play" for a reason. I have seen the term used a couple of times to differentiate between handling social situations with skill checks and handling them by having the player decide what his character says. In other words... Roll-Play = dice decide what characters say Role-Play = players decide what characters say So the intention is for the investigation portions rely heavily on skill use while the trial portions rely on skills as little as possible.
#4 elliott20 Apr 17, 2008 8:25:58	Well, it wouldn't be an entirely new system, just a little add on to the existing system for courtroom scenes. But I can understand the sentiment of not wanting to get bogged down. I think if I were to run such a game, obviously the social skills will come in very handy. The only wrinkle in this is what skill to roll at what time. After all, some skills are more appropriate for the situation than others. (kind of going along with the whole roll-play thing you mentioned) In courtroom scenes though, I would probably have some kind of scale thing to measure your arguments success. Say I have a scale from 1-10, maybe each piece of evidence introduces 1 point on the scale. (2 if it's a particularly strong piece of evidence, 5 if it's very incriminating) Depending upon where they are on that scale, you get a different verdict.
#5 markermage Apr 17, 2008 19:40:26	One interesting thing about the series was that you not only had to prove your client innocent, but you had to find out who the real criminal was and prove it. This made the series be more about solving a mystery than just answering the question of whether the person on trial is guilty or innocent. Sure, the games had a screwed up legal system that would be a nightmare in real life, but that's one of the things that kept the series interesting. So with that in mind, having a scale to measure your argument's success would mean that the game would no longer require you to go so far as to expose the real culprit, which would take away one of the things that made the series great. What I've been thinking of would involve whatever skills the character has being able to be used to help with gathering evidence and information during the investigation portions that could make the trial portions easier. There could be classes made that would focus on different ways of getting information. Maybe a few of them would get abilities that could be useful during the trial portions by allowing the character to do things such as convince the judge to let a parrot testify (actually happens in the first game). It might be very well possible to come up with a good list of classes and feats for such a game with enough time. A couple of possible classes that I can think of would be... Lawyer: Basically a class that would be the system's version of the fighter class and focus on gaining feats and being able to take more penalties. Kurain Spirit Medium: I've already given a description of what this one would be like in the first post. Martial Artist: One of the few classes that would actually gain any decent fighting ability. There have been a few times when the main character in the series has been physically attacked. One time had the character have to be rescued from the mafia by a cop. There was also a fight with a monkey to retrieve something that was needed to get another character to talk about something. Although combat should be rather reduced if a whole system is to be made and based on the Ace Attorney games. Maybe having it as a skill or something. Forensic Investigator: A class that would gain abilities that would involve examining evidence for more clues and possibly creating useful gadgets. There are probably plenty of possible feats that one could come up with for a possible Ace Attorney D20 system. Maybe one could allow a character to get a hint once per day. Maybe another could allow a character to convince the judge to allow penalties for certain things (one cross examination in the series gave you a penalty whenever you allowed the witness to tell one of his terrible jokes). Another one could allow you to have the penalties to the opposing side being worth more (Franziska and her whip come to mind). Another one might simply give the PC a friend who works in the police department and might be willing to give a few details about the case before the trial actually starts (Dick Gumshoe comes to mind here). The biggest obstacle that I can see for this is that we are used to our role-playing games focusing on combat. We almost never think of having a role-playing game without combat. The first things we tend to notice when we look at a character class are HP, attack bonuses, and saving throw bonuses. What happens when we try to have a role-playing game that had rules and classes that focused more on solving a mystery though? And if it's impossible to come up with such a system, we could at least try to come up with ways to include stuff from the series like the Magatama from the second and third games, which I think is rather close to how it worked in the games.
#6 elliott20 Apr 18, 2008 8:37:52	the answer to your last quandry would be: "create class skills that revolve around social skills and social aspects of the game." I think so, i.e. a lawyer class (a tad redundant if you ask me) could be rogue/cleric who has invested lots of skill ranks in his social skills (diplomacy, intimidate, bluff, gather info), and loaded up on cleric spells focusing on divination or fact finding spells like Zone of Truth. (Incidentally, Spellcraft would take on new importance as Magic Forensics could become very interesting. with the current D&D system, I don't actually foresee needing new classes for the investigator, the lawyer, and in some cases the medium. (Well, the medium I can see making a full class out of) I think a lot of it will revolve around the style in which you construct your adventures. Maybe a portion of the adventure will involve you going back to the scene of the crime in a different city, or visiting the home city of the criminal, or all that other good stuff. But you're right, there are lots of really cool materials that you can just pull from the game even IF you're not running an Ace Attorny game.
#7 markermage Apr 18, 2008 14:54:22	Spellcraft and cleric spells? Oh, I guess that might have said something that might get one to think that the games might take place in a setting that's high in magic. While the spirit medium and the Magatama from the series are clearly magical, the series takes place in a setting that is rather low on magic. The first game even refers to a case where a spirit medium was used by the police but the person that the spirit medium found to be the criminal was proven to be innocent. This of course led to the courts not accepting any information gained through supernatural means (although there was a good reason why the spirit medium from that case being wrong). So the only actual magic that is seen over the course of the series has been that used by spirit mediums. The Magatama was even something that had to be given it's power by a spirit medium in the second game (though it didn't require a discern lies spell). And the lawyer class would be as redundant as D&D's fighter class (cause all of the D&D classes can fight, although in different ways). Another thing from the series that might be interesting to stat out would be Godot's visor from the third game. From what I can tell, the visor can grant a blind person dark vision but still leaves the person unable to tell the difference between the colors red and white. It also glows in the dark. If you're interested in finding out more about the Ace Attorney series, you might find http://court-records.net/ to be a useful source of information about the series.
#8 markermage Apr 23, 2008 3:42:35	OK, so I've finally got and beaten Apollo Justice Ace Attorney, and I think I can come up with a way for Apollo's special power to work with D&D 3.X rules. However, since how his power works is explained during the last case in the game, I feel that it should be put into a spoiler block. Show GRAMARYE SENSE Your body responds to the nervousness of those around you. Prerequisite: Wis 13 Benefit: You get a +1 bonus to your Sense Motive check for every 3 people who are listening to someone using a Bluff to a maximum bonus of +10. GRAMARYE VISION You notice the nervous habits of others. Prerequisites: Wis 15, Gramarye Sense Benefit: If your Sense Motive check beats a Bluff check by 10 or more, you may make a Spot check against the Bluff check. Succeeding on this spot check will give you a hint to the truth in the form of an action the bluffer unknowingly performs and a phrase they're saying while that action is being done. If the check fails by 10 or more, you get an incorrect hint. A couple of examples that could be used for the Gramarye Vision feat can be found in walkthroughs for Apollo Justice Ace Attorney. And now onto the bracelet Apollo uses in the game. Gramarye Bracelet: This special bracelet is made from a material that changes size with body heat, allowing it to always fit perfectly and help the wearer notice if their body has become tense. If the wearer has the Gramarye Sense feat, they receive double the bonus from it to a maximum bonus of +20.

Post/Author/DateTime

Post

markermage

Apr 16, 2008 3:56:02

Before I go any further, I'd like to say that I don't yet trust myself to come up with a good D20 system, so I'm just putting this idea out there for whoever wants to try making it.

Has anyone here actually thought of the possibility of an Ace Attorney D20?

...

Anyone?

...

OK, I guess I'll have to explain why I think it might be worth thinking about. For those of you who don't know, the Ace Attorney videogames have had you play the role of a lawyer. The games featured two modes, investigation and trial. During the investigation mode, you would collect evidence and talk to various people who might have information or evidence you'll need. The trial mode consists of witness testimonies which you have to find contradictions in.

You think I'm crazy for even suggesting such a boring D20 game be made, don't you? Consider the following thing about the games: Unlike real defense attorneys, the main goal is not to just reasonable doubt that the defendant did it, but to point out the real criminal.

Now I'm sure that you some of you out there may have tried running an adventure that involved the PCs having to solve a murder mystery. Maybe there's a few of you who like making those kind of adventures. Well an Ace Attorney D20 would be the kind of system for such a thing.

The investigation portions of the adventure could revolve around roll-play, having PCs make search and spot checks to find clues and diplomacy checks to question witnesses. The trial portions would revolve around role-play, giving PCs a chance to question the witnesses without making any rolls. However, during the trial portions, the judge NPC would be able to assign a penalty to the PC if he/she does something unacceptable (badgering the witness, going too far off-topic, making a witness who's only a child cry, making fun of the judge's bald spot, etc.). These penalties could come in the form of damage to the leading PC. If the leading PC runs out of HP, then they lose the case.

OK, so maybe you don't want a game like that, but there are plenty of interesting things from the Ace Attorney series that might be worth trying to create for a D20 game. Just think about the following things that can be taken from the game.

Kurain Spirit Medium Class: Just imagine a class that allows a PC to temporarily change into a character that has died. As the PC would gain levels in it, they would go from being able to become controlled by the spirit (wouldn't have any control or memories of what happened during the time), to actually physically changing into what the spirit's body looked like while it was alive, to becoming able to have some sense of what's going on while channeling the spirit, to eventually being able to have complete control while channeling the spirit.

Magatama: This amulet resembles half of a yin-yang symbol. Whenever someone lies directly to the wearer, the wearer sees chains and a number of locks (the GM decides how many) appear that indicate how determined the person is to keep the secret they're hiding. If the person is lying to people besides the wearer or considers their statement to be true in some way, then the wearer won't see those chains and locks appear. After seeing the chains and locks, the wearer may activate the Magatama. Doing so allows the wearer to try to prove that the person is lying through the use of role-play. As the wearer proves that the person is lying, the locks will disappear. If all of the locks disappear, the person tells the truth about the thing they lied about before. If the wearer comes to the wrong conclusion (as determined by the GM), they take 1d6 magic damage.
Faint divination; CL 4th; Craft Wondrous Item, Discern Lies; Price 32,000 gp

I am just posting this to get the ideas out there. I don't really want to make an entire system myself yet. I barely have any experience with such a thing. This was even my first time trying to create a magic item by myself, and I still have a feeling I didn't do too well with it.

So let me know if you want to take those ideas and make rules for them. I would also like some feedback on the Magatama magic item as I'm sure I screwed up somewhere with it.

elliott20

Apr 16, 2008 10:54:51

it's not a bad idea, but you're gonna have a huge problem with implementation. the D20 system, unfortunately, is not very suitable for games that have a very strong emphasis on social situations. They give you a couple of social skills to run with but give you no further guidance, which means that with the wrong GM, the game could end with a single good gather information roll.

If you want to make this work, you need to have some kind of system that measures how effective your characters argument beyond just letting the GM arbitrarily decide your effectiveness. Why? Because it places way too much work on the GM to do it that way. What, beyond just getting creating the storyline, the plot, the characters, every single set piece, he also now has to be proficient with legal jargons, ethical issues and court procedures too?

If you want, I can post my social encounter rules for you to try out.

btw, it's roleplaying, not rollplaying.

markermage

Apr 16, 2008 17:54:14

it's not a bad idea, but you're gonna have a huge problem with implementation. the D20 system, unfortunately, is not very suitable for games that have a very strong emphasis on social situations. They give you a couple of social skills to run with but give you no further guidance, which means that with the wrong GM, the game could end with a single good gather information roll.

If you want to make this work, you need to have some kind of system that measures how effective your characters argument beyond just letting the GM arbitrarily decide your effectiveness. Why? Because it places way too much work on the GM to do it that way. What, beyond just getting creating the storyline, the plot, the characters, every single set piece, he also now has to be proficient with legal jargons, ethical issues and court procedures too?

If you want, I can post my social encounter rules for you to try out.

btw, it's roleplaying, not rollplaying.

As I said before (twice I might add), I am only posting this to get the idea out there and have no plans to make it into a system myself. I'd like to at least wait until I feel I've gotten the hang of being a GM before I even begin taking on such a task. If someone else wants to take the idea and make a system out of it, then that's fine with me.

The Gather Information skill could probably be left out of the system because the investigation portions would focus on the PCs doing just that. The Ace Attorney series is known for being so different from how trials are actually done that they had to put a disclaimer in the instruction booklets that says so. I'm sure that a good 70% of the stuff that happens in the games wouldn't be allowed in a real court. The differences from how the courts in the games differs from real courts tend to be more about making things simpler.

Oh, and I had spelled it "roll-play" for a reason. I have seen the term used a couple of times to differentiate between handling social situations with skill checks and handling them by having the player decide what his character says. In other words...

Roll-Play = dice decide what characters say
Role-Play = players decide what characters say

So the intention is for the investigation portions rely heavily on skill use while the trial portions rely on skills as little as possible.

elliott20

Apr 17, 2008 8:25:58

Well, it wouldn't be an entirely new system, just a little add on to the existing system for courtroom scenes. But I can understand the sentiment of not wanting to get bogged down.

I think if I were to run such a game, obviously the social skills will come in very handy. The only wrinkle in this is what skill to roll at what time. After all, some skills are more appropriate for the situation than others. (kind of going along with the whole roll-play thing you mentioned)

In courtroom scenes though, I would probably have some kind of scale thing to measure your arguments success. Say I have a scale from 1-10, maybe each piece of evidence introduces 1 point on the scale. (2 if it's a particularly strong piece of evidence, 5 if it's very incriminating) Depending upon where they are on that scale, you get a different verdict.

markermage

Apr 17, 2008 19:40:26

One interesting thing about the series was that you not only had to prove your client innocent, but you had to find out who the real criminal was and prove it. This made the series be more about solving a mystery than just answering the question of whether the person on trial is guilty or innocent. Sure, the games had a screwed up legal system that would be a nightmare in real life, but that's one of the things that kept the series interesting.

So with that in mind, having a scale to measure your argument's success would mean that the game would no longer require you to go so far as to expose the real culprit, which would take away one of the things that made the series great.

What I've been thinking of would involve whatever skills the character has being able to be used to help with gathering evidence and information during the investigation portions that could make the trial portions easier. There could be classes made that would focus on different ways of getting information. Maybe a few of them would get abilities that could be useful during the trial portions by allowing the character to do things such as convince the judge to let a parrot testify (actually happens in the first game).

It might be very well possible to come up with a good list of classes and feats for such a game with enough time. A couple of possible classes that I can think of would be...

Lawyer: Basically a class that would be the system's version of the fighter class and focus on gaining feats and being able to take more penalties.

Kurain Spirit Medium: I've already given a description of what this one would be like in the first post.

Martial Artist: One of the few classes that would actually gain any decent fighting ability. There have been a few times when the main character in the series has been physically attacked. One time had the character have to be rescued from the mafia by a cop. There was also a fight with a monkey to retrieve something that was needed to get another character to talk about something. Although combat should be rather reduced if a whole system is to be made and based on the Ace Attorney games. Maybe having it as a skill or something.

Forensic Investigator: A class that would gain abilities that would involve examining evidence for more clues and possibly creating useful gadgets.

There are probably plenty of possible feats that one could come up with for a possible Ace Attorney D20 system. Maybe one could allow a character to get a hint once per day. Maybe another could allow a character to convince the judge to allow penalties for certain things (one cross examination in the series gave you a penalty whenever you allowed the witness to tell one of his terrible jokes). Another one could allow you to have the penalties to the opposing side being worth more (Franziska and her whip come to mind). Another one might simply give the PC a friend who works in the police department and might be willing to give a few details about the case before the trial actually starts (Dick Gumshoe comes to mind here).

The biggest obstacle that I can see for this is that we are used to our role-playing games focusing on combat. We almost never think of having a role-playing game without combat. The first things we tend to notice when we look at a character class are HP, attack bonuses, and saving throw bonuses. What happens when we try to have a role-playing game that had rules and classes that focused more on solving a mystery though?

And if it's impossible to come up with such a system, we could at least try to come up with ways to include stuff from the series like the Magatama from the second and third games, which I think is rather close to how it worked in the games.

elliott20

Apr 18, 2008 8:37:52

the answer to your last quandry would be: "create class skills that revolve around social skills and social aspects of the game." I think

so, i.e. a lawyer class (a tad redundant if you ask me) could be rogue/cleric who has invested lots of skill ranks in his social skills (diplomacy, intimidate, bluff, gather info), and loaded up on cleric spells focusing on divination or fact finding spells like Zone of Truth. (Incidentally, Spellcraft would take on new importance as Magic Forensics could become very interesting.

with the current D&D system, I don't actually foresee needing new classes for the investigator, the lawyer, and in some cases the medium. (Well, the medium I can see making a full class out of)

I think a lot of it will revolve around the style in which you construct your adventures. Maybe a portion of the adventure will involve you going back to the scene of the crime in a different city, or visiting the home city of the criminal, or all that other good stuff.

But you're right, there are lots of really cool materials that you can just pull from the game even IF you're not running an Ace Attorny game.

markermage

Apr 18, 2008 14:54:22

Spellcraft and cleric spells?

Oh, I guess that might have said something that might get one to think that the games might take place in a setting that's high in magic. While the spirit medium and the Magatama from the series are clearly magical, the series takes place in a setting that is rather low on magic.

The first game even refers to a case where a spirit medium was used by the police but the person that the spirit medium found to be the criminal was proven to be innocent. This of course led to the courts not accepting any information gained through supernatural means (although there was a good reason why the spirit medium from that case being wrong).

So the only actual magic that is seen over the course of the series has been that used by spirit mediums. The Magatama was even something that had to be given it's power by a spirit medium in the second game (though it didn't require a discern lies spell).

And the lawyer class would be as redundant as D&D's fighter class (cause all of the D&D classes can fight, although in different ways).

Another thing from the series that might be interesting to stat out would be Godot's visor from the third game. From what I can tell, the visor can grant a blind person dark vision but still leaves the person unable to tell the difference between the colors red and white. It also glows in the dark.

If you're interested in finding out more about the Ace Attorney series, you might find http://court-records.net/ to be a useful source of information about the series.

markermage

Apr 23, 2008 3:42:35

OK, so I've finally got and beaten Apollo Justice Ace Attorney, and I think I can come up with a way for Apollo's special power to work with D&D 3.X rules. However, since how his power works is explained during the last case in the game, I feel that it should be put into a spoiler block.

Show

GRAMARYE SENSE
Your body responds to the nervousness of those around you.
Prerequisite: Wis 13
Benefit: You get a +1 bonus to your Sense Motive check for every 3 people who are listening to someone using a Bluff to a maximum bonus of +10.

GRAMARYE VISION
You notice the nervous habits of others.
Prerequisites: Wis 15, Gramarye Sense
Benefit: If your Sense Motive check beats a Bluff check by 10 or more, you may make a Spot check against the Bluff check. Succeeding on this spot check will give you a hint to the truth in the form of an action the bluffer unknowingly performs and a phrase they're saying while that action is being done. If the check fails by 10 or more, you get an incorrect hint.

A couple of examples that could be used for the Gramarye Vision feat can be found in walkthroughs for Apollo Justice Ace Attorney. And now onto the bracelet Apollo uses in the game.

Gramarye Bracelet: This special bracelet is made from a material that changes size with body heat, allowing it to always fit perfectly and help the wearer notice if their body has become tense. If the wearer has the Gramarye Sense feat, they receive double the bonus from it to a maximum bonus of +20.