(Interest Check) Perjury

Game Discussion
#1

Perjury

Perjury is the indictable offence of lying or obfuscating the truth in a court of law.

The purpose of the law is to achieve justice. This reasonably means that nobody should be convicted of a crime without sufficient evidence of their guilt… but can an irrefutably guilty individual be found innocent? A recent high-profile criminal case has attracted enough media attention that significant alternations have been made to trial proceedings to manage it, but certain details have slipped through the cracks. There might be whispers in the shadows.

Someone has been charged with committing a crime. Maybe they did it, maybe they really didn’t. Either way, the accused is on bail and the jury is still out on this one.

Players take the place of one of the following roles: the Defendant, who may or may not have committed the crime; the Defence or Prosecution, who debate the case in the courtroom; Witnesses, who may either support or condemn the defendant; the Jury, who decides the final outcome; and Journalists, with the power to influence the public’s opinion.

Responsibilities of Roles

  • Defendant:
    A criminal case begins with the arrest of an individual accused of committing a crime, known as the defendant. All players know who the defendant is. This person has the right to give their version of facts under oath or to remain silent. Lying or obfuscating the truth in court constitutes an indictable offence known as perjury.
    The defendant is not responsible for proving their own innocence.

  • Defence Attorney:
    The defence attorney is the lawyer who represents the defendant in court and is responsible for convincing the jury that the prosecution is unable to prove their case against the defendant beyond a reasonable doubt.

  • Prosecution:
    The prosecution is the lawyer who is responsible for proving the defendant guilty of their crime. The prosecution will succeed if their case is supported by the evidence and a jury is satisfied that this has occurred beyond a reasonable doubt.

  • Witnesses:
    A witness is a person who claims to have information which may be relevant to a court case.

  • Jury:
    The jury consists of everyday folk. Their responsibility in a criminal case is to evaluate the evidence from both parties and to deliver an unbiased verdict.

  • Journalists:
    The purpose of journalism is to provide a public service by informing citizens about current events and issues. This may involve the act of exposing crimes, or preventing the public from being misled by an individual or organisation. Journalists must be trusted by the public to provide accurate information, although certain writers might misrepresent the truth.

The purpose of this roleplay would be to provide a casual environment where players can improve their debating skills. Every player (with the exception of the jury) is assigned a win condition for the defendant to be found either innocent or guilty.

8 Likes
#2

Oh my god ace attorney but it’s a VLDR, finally!

#3

I feel like this is an odd roleplay.

The standard [Defendant, Defence, Prosecutor, Witness] makes sense, but the other two roles don’t. The four I mentioned make sense because they are the core roles in the recreation of the actual trial of a defendant. Defendant and Witness talk about their POV, Defence defends, Prosecutor attacks. Simple enough.

The part which I don’t get are the other two roles; Jury and Journalist, both of which are (in my opinion) better off as one-time characters (e.g. Travellers in BotF/BotC) rather than roles that persist throughout the game.

The issue with the Jury role is that they literally do nothing but judge. From my own (lacking) experience, Jury never actively participate in the debate, so… what’s the point of this role, when it comes to the roleplay aspect?

The issue with Journalist is that their existence is totally irrelevant to the trial itself, or rather “should be” irrelevant. I understand that a trial can last for multiple days, and that the public opinion may influence the investigation between each trial, but… I feel like this would overgeneralize how the general public behaves.

Aside from that I guess the Journalist can also influence the mental state of the Defendant, but I don’t think this is something you would want? It’d be better to call them “flavor text writers”, but considering they are expected to somehow be active throughout the entire game and “have a win condition”, this role still does not make sense to me. Like, why are they here?

#4

The Jury exists for any players that feel like they would slank most of the game otherwise, so it’s a traveller slot. The Journalist role is there to interact with the Jury.

2 Likes
#5

So
Mock trial

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#6

Will you be the judge to carefully manage what is allowed or what isn’t? I know a friend who is part of this sort of court sheninigans on some sort of RP and it’s kind of important.

Anectodal evidence

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#7

I’m interested in jury duty :3

3 Likes
#8

o.o

#9

I agree with Zone. Journalism would be great if this was like a more expansive world where it had a better grip over the courtrooms and would influence public atmosphere, otherwise it sounds like flavor filler

2 Likes
#10

If I would be the jury in order to do my wincon right, I would just ignore the journalists.

And it would be weird to take the journalists in consideration at all.

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#11

The judge isn’t a player role because in a criminal trial, they don’t do as much as you think they do. Their main role is to interpret and apply the law, assist the jury and assess the admissibility of evidence, and manage trial procedures.

3 Likes
#12

Yeah, that.

#13

Wait. So…

  • this game’s slankers become Jury, and
  • Journalists are basically echoes / parrots with agenda?
2 Likes
#14

Have you ever heard the phrase “trial by media”? The implication is that the journalists are meant to be the jury’s main source of information, since you know that both the defence and prosecution have skewed perspectives, and so might the witnesses.

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#15

The jury is there for any players that feel like they’d be willing to listen, but don’t want to spend however long playing a game. I wouldn’t want to forcerand anyone as jury because that’s not fun.

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#16

Technically speaking, the defendant could be just another witness outside of roleplay.

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#17

I feel like there ought to be a distinct difference between the two. There is “the actual Jury”, who are supposedly obliged to partake in the suffering by listening attentively to the entire debate, and then there is “the Media” (I wanna call them the faceless people) who just listens to whatever the Journalists have to say.

Not all Media only listens to the Journalists; they are welcome to watch the recordings of the trials as they please, but it personally makes no sense to let “people who don’t want to spend time into the game” in as Jury.

1 Like
#18

This is going to get a bit spicy but. Let me explain to you what the media can do. The media in general gets more profit from getting clicks from angry viewers so they straight up lie about it to make something look traumatic or unfair than it is, however to avoid getting sued for defamation they put the truth at the bottom of their article (because apparently people don’t read beyond headlines) or do something like ““McBeth definetly has the tendencies of a serial killer”, coroner says” (they put the words in someone else’s mouth to make it look like it doesn’t reflect the press’ stance).

What is the result of doing something like that? You get 2 divided parties that publicly protests against one another over misleading information because they forget that news outlets can be misleading and it further influences courtrooms.

One example of that it’s the Rittenhouse case where a fleeing person is trying to defend themselves from ravaging protesters so you gets news outlets trying their hardest to… well you already know where this is going.

You’re modelling it like this? Though I guess my sentences above are kinda bleak lol.

#19

In the Ace Attorney roleplay I am on when I play as defendant I try my best to assist my lawyers. Here it will exactly work because the defendant supposedly knows what’s up because they experienced it first-hand.

#20

Also in RPs like this I really really really recommend a map, otherwise it’s going to be hard to imagine.