In case you haven’t read the first part, read this first.
Ok, that didn’t go quite as planned, but that’s fine, since we didn’t really plan it.
The situation: We had just finished a game and there were people hanging around with nothing to do. Since I was going to cook some food, and others as well, I thought it would be better to use this idea right then, so players can participate as much as they want or are able to.
With seven players, I knew it was going to devolve quickly, but as a small “side event”, it would be fine. I decided against NPC-jurors, because there was already seven people pushing things around and I was hungry.
Therefore, I asked the players the following questions (one question per player):
1. What was the crime? Apparently it was arson-rape-murder. Don’t really know what that is, but that’s not my problem. Its the players problem.
2. Where are we? Medieval times.
3. Our world? With a twist (which was apparently that there was a werewolf among the players, as well as strange edits to the Bible and strange artifacts used in the process)
4. Who’s the accused? The bastard son of the king, which was later changed to the king of Francs.
5. Who was the victim? A local barmaid / prostitute named Hulda.
6. Did the accused do it? No.
7. Why do you want the accused convicted despite his innocence? To keep the royal blood only part of the royal family.
Then I pretty much left the players on their own devices. I actually left the area where the players were. So, once in a while, I’d get all these weird tidbits like one player decided he was the actual guilty party, the player who was the king (who was for some reason on the jury), wasn’t the actual king, some characters may or may not have been brothers of the accused… you know, stuff out-of-control players come up with.
I can’t really say this experiment was successful, but I did manage to eat and everyone was occupied for about an hour. I can’t say I’d run a game quite this freeform again, but maybe close to it. I might even try the jury thing again. Probably will.
NOTE: Just noticed that one the players had already commented on the previous posting. You should probably read that too.