Justicar is a tabletop roleplaying game of legal drama.
The physical book is 78 pages with a clean layout, subdued color palette, and fun, character-focused illustrations.
Contents-wise, Justicar is a collaborative storytelling game. It devotes its first few pages to safety techniques. It follows with communication about spotlight sharing, bleed, and working together to tell an adversarial story.
This focus on presenting the structure of the game continues into a step-by-step procedure for creating and playing through legal cases, starting with the vibes and then moving forward by detailing the facts of the crime and its surrounding circumstances via a corkboard.
During gameplay, players take on the roles of various elements of the legal system, including the judge, the defense/prosecution, and all of the witnesses. The player who plays all of the witnesses is sort of like a GM in that they have a lot of lateral control over the facts of the case, but this is ultimately a game that leaves its narrative extremely loose until the group collectively nails down hard facts during play.
Once play begins, there *are* pbta style Moves and Blades style Clocks and there is a complex game structure to the trial itself.
I think groups could easily abstract this all into Belonging Outside Belonging style play, but for those who prefer to play the game as written it's probably worthwhile for everyone to read the book fully beforehand rather than having one player try to hastily explain it at the table.
Overall, I think Justicar is a really solid ttrpg for groups that want to play legal dramas and that consist primarily or exclusively of collaborative storytellers. Its legal structure is solid, its safety tech and principles of play are strong, and carving the legal system up into five playable roles that all work together to establish the facts of an interesting case is a neat way to approach legal storytelling.
There are plenty of other legal ttrpgs that treat cases as competitions, and Justicar stands out for having its primary focus be on the truth.
You'd think that creating an elaborate, twisting mystery/courtroom plot takes a lot of planning. Apparently not--my group played this and the story was incredible, even though we were all making it up on the spot. It really did feel like something out of Phoenix Wright, a complex web unfolding piece by piece.
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Justicar is a tabletop roleplaying game of legal drama.
The physical book is 78 pages with a clean layout, subdued color palette, and fun, character-focused illustrations.
Contents-wise, Justicar is a collaborative storytelling game. It devotes its first few pages to safety techniques. It follows with communication about spotlight sharing, bleed, and working together to tell an adversarial story.
This focus on presenting the structure of the game continues into a step-by-step procedure for creating and playing through legal cases, starting with the vibes and then moving forward by detailing the facts of the crime and its surrounding circumstances via a corkboard.
During gameplay, players take on the roles of various elements of the legal system, including the judge, the defense/prosecution, and all of the witnesses. The player who plays all of the witnesses is sort of like a GM in that they have a lot of lateral control over the facts of the case, but this is ultimately a game that leaves its narrative extremely loose until the group collectively nails down hard facts during play.
Once play begins, there *are* pbta style Moves and Blades style Clocks and there is a complex game structure to the trial itself.
I think groups could easily abstract this all into Belonging Outside Belonging style play, but for those who prefer to play the game as written it's probably worthwhile for everyone to read the book fully beforehand rather than having one player try to hastily explain it at the table.
Overall, I think Justicar is a really solid ttrpg for groups that want to play legal dramas and that consist primarily or exclusively of collaborative storytellers. Its legal structure is solid, its safety tech and principles of play are strong, and carving the legal system up into five playable roles that all work together to establish the facts of an interesting case is a neat way to approach legal storytelling.
There are plenty of other legal ttrpgs that treat cases as competitions, and Justicar stands out for having its primary focus be on the truth.
You'd think that creating an elaborate, twisting mystery/courtroom plot takes a lot of planning. Apparently not--my group played this and the story was incredible, even though we were all making it up on the spot. It really did feel like something out of Phoenix Wright, a complex web unfolding piece by piece.
+1EXP Actual Play part 1
Actual Play with Roll For Felicity