(06-30-2015, 11:23 AM)Lilia Lia Wrote: This is more feasible than you might think. Law students actually do this as a way of learning courtroom litigation, they call it "moot court."
The actual story of what happened is something taken from "police reports" but you have to supplement it with witness interviews the way a real lawyer would. So each side gets a basic version of events, but their sides have differing information which (theoretically) comes from the police reports and witness interviews. You also get "dirt" on the witnesses and you can choose whether or not to use that in cross-examination.
Also, the way these work is that the Judge is ignorant of most what the parties are privy to, so they can only make their ruling on the basis of what actually goes on in court. You can also do these with juries but it would probably be boring for people to RP a jury since they'd mostly be taking a passive role until the time where they discuss their verdict.
What I would suggest doing would be to have the perpetrators and victims be the ones who come up with the actual story, but have the lawyers only know what they're told by the people who were actually there. Then the witnesses could decide whether they crack under the pressure of cross-examination and let on more than they'd like to.Â
Keeping the Judge in the dark prior to the actual trial is important so that the merits of the case are decided fairly. It would be boring if the Judge had already made up their mind ahead of time or, worse, knew what actually happened OOC.
The only people who should know what really happened are the witnesses and the perpetrators.
Hmm. I suggest the rolling of dice for reactions to getting close to found out. Simply because it seems like a LOT of role players try to go for the stone faced bad ass trope. And one of the biggest signifiers and ways to get your case solved in Phoenix wright was to get a reaction from the bad guy whenever things definitely stopped going his way lol. The dice roll allows stone faced badassery. But does not completely hinder a case because there is always a chance they will show some reaction.
As for keeping the judge in the dark. I see your point. However someone needs to create the crime scene and police report for the attorneys to go off of. So it would actually probably be better if there was a person playing the police that did not take part in the case, but was given the full information of what happened and created the autopsy and room map of what happened for the attorneys to utilize. Going off words alone isn't always enough. Without physical evidence Phoenix wright would have lost most of his cases.
