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Lazy Cops
Another exhaustion point

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Law enforcement should be investigating crimes, not just responding to them when they happen. How else is a society supposed to function?

Edit: When you make your character, the game defines itself as a "serious roleplaying game", but then doesn't take it's roleplay seriously. Doesn't make itself at all immersive or in anyway rational or logical in any capacity except as a mechanism to answer the question, "How can we get a player to pay a solo to kill someone?"

(Edited by BlackSoul at 6:28 pm on 9/7/2026)

By BlackSoul at Sep 7, 2026, 6:12 PM | 1
Yeah this is sort of an issue of lacking forensics and surveillance systems to support "investigating" crimes. I think it's probably easy to deduce why we don't have DNA and fingerprint matching as readily available systems as well as long-term recording backups that allow you to see everything a camera caught in its view over the last 24 hours (unless it saw like… three things total).

The mixture of coding and resource allocation is, I imagine, a logistical nightmare. Without those systems, though, your only real means of finding things out is from asking around to get testimony from whoever was around when something happened, whether PC or NPC. From the PC side this is a mixed bag with how many people play what I feel is an overly antagonistic anti-law-enforcement stance from the moment they enter the Dome. Regardless of whether you can get some PC's to talk, though, they often don't have firsthand eyewitness experience with the crime.

At this point you'd probably go to the NPC's, but this is (in my experience) basically useless unless it was planned ahead by staff for some plot. No one is legally obligated to comply with your inquiries. Medical professionals aren't required to report injuries they suspect to have been gained by committing crimes. Retailers can't be compelled to tell you what they sold to whom, assuming they're even a publicly known vendor in a semi-governed part of the world. Nearly every NPC unless directly abused by someone's actions will tell you to kick rocks and that will get you nowhere.

There is essentially no trail of breadcrumbs to follow outside of getting people to yap what they know to you, which is easier said than done. Hence you have the current loop of...
pay as many people as you can to talk to you -> take a guess at who done it and pay a solo to gank them
…for the vast majority of people.

By ZedBanger at Sep 7, 2026, 9:50 PM | 2
The reality is, I imagine, much simpler. My only interactions with law enforcement in game has entirely placed the evidence collection for a crime as something the victim is required to complete.

So imagine, your neighbor breaks into your house, kills your child and leaves and the police arrive and ask you what evidence you have. You are responsible to collect all of the forensics, and do all of the criminal investigation and only once the cops are satisfied you have enough evidence, then they will respond to the crime.

What's more, they WILL investigate grid crimes, from my understanding. But not murder. Because hiring a solo is the protected game play loop. Nothing may infringe upon this unrealistic game cycle.

By BlackSoul at Sep 7, 2026, 10:27 PM | 0
Right now there's a lack of Judge PC's, so it's harder to get individualized roleplay around crime investigations. Also, law enforcement most certainly will investigate murder, though perhaps more often on topside sectors.

If a crime investigation is important to you, reach out to PCs who might be willing to help you investigate.

Or frame somebody for it.

(Edited by svetlana at 11:38 pm on 9/7/2026)

By svetlana at Sep 7, 2026, 11:36 PM | 3
Right, so it's on the victim of a crime to investigate said crime; Not law enforcement, is what you're saying. Very immersive.
By BlackSoul at Sep 8, 2026, 1:47 AM | 0
Realistically, a lot of crime happens in Withmore, and the lack of GMs and GM availability does sometimes mean that they can't record or investigate every isolated incident. I think the game IS probably a lot more fun when there's WJF PCs who can and do investigate independently like this, but from a logistical standpoint, it may just be difficult for GMs to actively conduct investigations into every crime without eyewitness testimony/presented evidence. It's probably /not/ how things would work in a more realistic scenario, but it's something that there's no instant fix-it for.

If this is specifically about the WJF, while there aren't any Judge PCs, there're also TERRA (for crimes committed in red sector) and corporate security within each corporation (for crimes occurring in corporate towers and crime done to corpcits on topside sectors) to contact about helping to investigate different types of crime, if it applies! Which it /may/ not, but I find that looping in another PC who's got /some/ position to investigate from helps a lot when GMs are spread thin.

By cata at Sep 8, 2026, 2:31 AM | 1
Corpses are literally just being thrown out because law enforcement does nothing to investigate crimes. Particularly murder. They're just collected by wicks before any law enforcement agency even bothers to look at them.
By BlackSoul at Sep 8, 2026, 3:48 AM | 0
WCS workers are PCs and it is an issue to be addressed ICly if you don't want a corpse to be incinerated. Maybe a criminal bribed an individual WCS worker to get rid of a corpse to hide evidence of their crime. You need to RP with other characters and make it more valuable for WCS characters to let corpses sit, or hell, even deliver recent corpses directly to you for your personal investigation. Bribe them with favors or services if you don't have a lot of Chy.
By svetlana at Sep 8, 2026, 4:55 AM | 2
When I played in a law enforcement lite role (TERRA) I investigated crimes all of the time. It was mostly because the preferred method people have of playing TERRA is to hide and pretend you are not TERRA, which is boring and pretty cheesy in my opinion. It's hard. It can be done, but it's hard. Most of the hangups I ran into were witnesses not really being witnesses but guessers and the PC Judges not being interested in charging anyone unless you brought them a photo of the person in the act of the crime while holding a newspaper with the date and time on it or something. I get OP's frustration there.


Edit: My time with TERRA predates the TERRA tac-comp and any recent changes to TERRA which I think were cool additions to TERRA, but TERRA should have some more beat cop sway that matters.

(Edited by Mindhunter at 5:42 am on 9/8/2026)

By Mindhunter at Sep 8, 2026, 5:38 AM | 3
Again though, for Svetlana, why would the victim of a crime be expected to investigate the crime?

Imagine someone breaks into your home and kills a family member, and the response from law enforcement is that YOU need to investigate the murder. I've never seen law enforcement investigate from my own play time here. Topside or in Red, PC or NPC. Which is not to discount Mindhunter's account of the situation, since that likely predates my playtime.

It'd be one thing if there were a ton of investigations on going and law enforcement were actively working on investigations but were ultimately overwhelmed with the amount of work. At least then there would be some interface there and roleplay opportunities. But as it stands, from what I've seen, these things are entirely waylaid and ignored.

By BlackSoul at Sep 8, 2026, 5:50 AM | 0
Most PC Judges won't require that level of detail, Mindhunter, I think that isn't a fair representation. If they're not being bribed, have a vendetta, or any other secondary reasons, they will require some tangible information. Because PC Judges are trained to do their best to create RP for others and also not smallworld.

If you come to a Judge, PC or NPC, and tell them person A must have killed you because they used weapon B and wore poncho/hoodie Y, that isn't going to get any type of immediate Judgment. You will get told that there's far more people using weapon B and using poncho/hoodie Y in the city that you're implying. They will note down that weapon B was used and collect the smaller details, hiring people in most cases to gather more data for them while they question others. They'll note and remember you suspected person A, but they'll also include others and put people on it to investigate around person A and those others to bring back more data. But that's far more realistic to expect from a PC Judge than an NPC Judge. Although the latter can and does happen.

None of this will have anything to do about protecting combat archetypes, it's a measure done as a layer of protection for any and all type of crimes. There's also corporate politics in play, personal relationships and politics in play, bribery, hatreds, kinder Judgers, harsher Judges. Judges that follow the Law to a T, others who don't. Lazy Judges, hardworking Judges.

By crashdown at Sep 8, 2026, 5:59 AM | 3
"Most PC Judges won't require that level of detail, Mindhunter, I think that isn't a fair representation. If they're not being bribed, have a vendetta, or any other secondary reasons, they will require some tangible information. Because PC Judges are trained to do their best to create RP for others and also not smallworld.

If you come to a Judge, PC or NPC, and tell them person A must have killed you because they used weapon B and wore poncho/hoodie Y, that isn't going to get any type of immediate Judgment. You will get told that there's far more people using weapon B and using poncho/hoodie Y in the city that you're implying. They will note down that weapon B was used and collect the smaller details, hiring people in most cases to gather more data for them while they question others. They'll note and remember you suspected person A, but they'll also include others and put people on it to investigate around person A and those others to bring back more data. But that's far more realistic to expect from a PC Judge than an NPC Judge. Although the latter can and does happen."

I respect your take on this, I am just posting from my point of view from someone who actually collected evidence, would present evidence, and be mostly told by most judges that it wasn't worth their time or that it was not enough. I'm not saying all judges. I'm hoping judges do things, but from my narrow window that was my experience.

By Mindhunter at Sep 8, 2026, 6:42 AM | 4
At the very least, it would be a much more interesting story if law enforcement, with the advanced forensics technology, relatively easily scanned and collected all evidence regarding crimes, particularly on Gold and above and then engaged in silent bidding wars with the related data, pursuing their own profitability. They could balance between public perception, what criminal fines they could collect, and how much they could get with bribes.
By BlackSoul at Sep 8, 2026, 7:23 AM | 0
Judges are corrupt and don't care about you.


Dredd: Twelve serious crimes reported every minute. Seventeen thousand per day. We can respond to around six percent.
Anderson: Which six percent?
Dredd: Your show, rookie. You tell me.

By villa at Sep 8, 2026, 10:45 AM | 5
I think it's a mistake to aim for crimes being 'solved' as much as someone being credibly -blamed-. The idea is that in lieu of actual evidence, which given both coding and player culture is very hard to get, you latch onto the story that your character benefits the most from and manufacture evidence to support it. This generates RP both in the set up and in the aftermath.

No one really cares if justice is done in the dystopia.

By Thrillimanjaro at Sep 9, 2026, 11:29 AM | 0
Thrillimanjaro makes a great point, my only caveat is that it would be cool if forensics had more practical use. There are definitely situations when it's called for and needed, but in general it feels like the most niche case of all the medical skills.
By meowlorde at Sep 9, 2026, 1:05 PM | 0
Don't expect crime to be investigated in the mix unless it bleeds over. Topside. I'm not saying it doesn't happen. I'm just saying it should not be the expectation either in character or out of character.

As for law enforcement investigating topside crimes that requires players in the role of judge. The GMS will do it as time allows and especially if something especially egregious happens. However, we also have corporate security to handle things on corporate property. Everyone needs to recognize that the majority of the game is player driven.

Also having really effective law enforcement can be bad for role-play. We have had several judges in the past who have single-handedly eliminated 90% of the crime in the game. Because they did a really good job at being a judge. That actually isn't as difficult as some might think because pretty quickly you can identify who the actual criminals are because despite the city having 100 million people or whatever, there are only actually five or 10 characters at a time that are actively committing crimes, so it's super easy to finger a person and be right

We strive to make the game realistic in some ways, but we also strive to make it fun in others. It's a hard thing to balance. If we make it too difficult to commit a crime then no one will do it. That isn't just a hypothesis it's a reality that we've seen play out over and over and over again.

If you're interested in changing the dynamic in a fun and interesting way, consider playing a judge character. I think you'll find it both more rewarding and more difficult than you would expect.

(Edited by Slither at 5:04 am on 9/11/2026)

By Slither at Sep 11, 2026, 5:03 AM | 2
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