I AM THE LAW!

[gentleman john]

A campaign set in a future city would not be unsustainable. A Judge Dredd campaign would be, imo.

Superficially, the Judge Dredd setting has everything you need - cyborgs, mutants, supernatural menaces, alien creatures. However, there are a few things that are necessary to a Judge Dredd setting. First off, Mega City 1 is a huge place. What happens in one sector does not necessarily affect another. Thus, unless you are doing some major strangeness, it is restricted in its scope. Second, what strangeness there is, is usually stamped on hard by the Judges. They maintain an effective surveillance system and employ heavy duty firepower, with serious backup. Which brings us to the third matter: the Judges themselves. Either you are one, or you are going to come up against them.

If you are playing Judges, then your job is to maintain law and order. That's all there is to it. You will be playing high-powered paramilitary cops whose purpose is to investigate crime and enforce the law. If you are up against Judges, you need to be able to take them on or you are toast. Eventually the law will catch up on you, and it will punish you hard. In both cases, the Justice Department has the resources to do it. Panopticon surveillance, flying tanks, psychics ... If you have ever read Judge Dredd, then these are just a sample of what the Judges have access to. To coin a phrase, when the Judges turn up, the party is over.

Of course, you could set stories outside Mega City 1. Helltrekkers, Cursed Earth mutants, troggies in the Undercity. But then this isn't really a Judge Dredd game. It's just a game that uses an aspect of the Judge Dredd universe. Such games could be placed in almost any post-apocalypse setting with very little changes. Playing a game in Mega City 1 means you need the Judges and everything that implies.

Finally, I have run and played in games using all three incarnations of gaming systems optimised for Judge Dredd: the Games Workshop version, the d20 version and the Traveller version. My experience is that playing Judges is great for short bursts, as is playing perps. However, eventually you run out of cases to throw to the PCs, or the PCs make one mistake that you cannot justify the Justice Department ignoring. For long-term campaigns you need to move beyond the confines of the Mega Cities.

Of course, all this is based on my experience. Other people's mileage may vary, and I would love to hear whether anyone has actually succeeded in running a long-term campaign in Mega City 1 or its like.

[1970]

I know I kind of flip back and forth between this, but I could see using the Protect & Serve book for CyberPunk 2020 as a good basis for a Judge campaign. It had something like 30 or so sample missions for Cop PCs to indulge in. Also, a short campaign could grow around some of the earlier storylines, such as the First Robot War or the Judge Caligula serials. Regardless, there's plenty to do as a Judge. The problem being is that it wouldn't look very much like a Mutant Future game after you were done with it, if you used the setting as written. Most of the character types would be outlawed and would eventually run into heavily armed opposition from the Judges, like gentleman john said. Then the game's over and you were probably better off using a different inspiration for your game in the first place.

As loose inspiration the setting is fine, but whole cloth there are better games to use with it than Mutant Future.

[seneschal]

As someone who hasn't read the comics but has only heard about Judge Dredd third- or fourth-hand (so take my opinion with a truckload of salt), it seems like a campaign in which the player-characters weren't judges would be short and pointless. PC leaves dwelling to get milk to go with his cereal. Assuming he survives descending his own doorstep, he's confronted by a Judge as he steps off the curb. The charge: jaywalking, i.e., endangering public safety. Since the officer is cop, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner, there's no appeal, no courtroom drama, no negotiation. PC is vaporized as a threat to others. End of conflict, end of plot hooks, end of campaign. Where's the fun in that? It might work in Paranoia, but at least in that game you've got a limited supply of backup clones.

[1970]

Judge Dredd isn't quite as hopeless as all that, but it's true that that the bad guys are meant to be disposable, as far as I know. It's good for a one-shot, like gentleman john said, but a non-Judge campaign would be pretty difficult to pull off without damaging the credibility of the source material.

Unless you're Walter. Dude gets to serve drinks and drive a cab.

[gentleman john]

Walter the Wobot Wules!

A camapign with non-Judge PCs in Mega City 1 has other drawbacks. For a start, what are you going to do? 99% of the citizens are unemployed (at least in the classic era) and need something to keep themselves occupied. Most of them take up hobbies, some of which are bizarre but not criminal. A few end up committing crimes inadvertently: very easy given the complexity of Mega City 1's laws. As Judge Dredd has remarked "Everyone's guilty of something, even if it's a late library book." Some end up as career criminals.

So, you could play the ordinary citizen just trying to get by, but that's more Halo Jones than Judge Dredd. So, most non-Judge campaigns gravitate towards playing criminals. A short life - usually - but an interesting one from a gaming point of view.

Just to correct things, the Judges of Mega City 1 are not that arbitrary. They also have to obey the law. The punishment for jaywalking would be a caution or a fine. Any Judge who exceeded those limits would soon find themselves investigated by the Special Judicial Squad and facing 20 years on Titan. The Justice Department is very harsh on rogue Judges.

Seneschal - I could suggest you pick up some of the collected editions. The real classics are The Day the Law Died, The Cursed Earth Saga, Luna 1, The Judge Child Saga, Block Mania and the Apocalypse War. I'm sure 1970 could make some suggestions of his own as well. The shorter stories (usually about 16 pages) are good for setting the atmosphere that is the insanity of Mega City 1. Just remember: at its best the comic strip is social satire, while Judge Dredd is generally regarded as a fascist bastard. But we still love him here in the UK.

[seneschal]

If Dredd is a fascist, what does that make Batman?

Related to our Metropole thread, if 99% of Megacity 1's population is unemployed, just how is the city maintained? You say, "Everybody's on some form of government assistance." Fine, but that government money has to come from somewhere. If nobody's working, or almost nobody, there aren't any productive, income-generating citizens to tax. Dredd and company would become unemployed just like everyone else, chaos would ensue (even moreso than it already is), and the city would cease to exist. The megacity would become just another mega ruin, like the rest of the Cursed Earth.

[1970]

gentleman john probably knows this stuff better than I do, but from what I've read people in Mega-City 1 do work, but rarely for more than two hours a day. Most of the hard labor and some soft labor is done by robots, which have gone amok more than once. I don't know the cost of living vs. wages that goes on there, but people in MC1 do have tons of time to indulge in pretty much whatever they want.

[seneschal]

See, that's the problem. They don't need more heavily armed Judges. They just need to re-institute a mandatory 16-hour work day. Then the citizenry will be too busy and exhausted to cause trouble. In addition, the expanded labor force would enable Megacity 1 to finally get its act together: tearing down festering ruins, clearing away rubble, cleaning out sewers, re-opening abandoned places of business, building Habitats for Humanity (and Others), restocking store and library shelves, transforming cleared lots into parks and community gardens. Give 'em a few months of hard labor and the cyberpunk cesspool will become Metropolis (Fritz Lang or Superman, either way it's an improvement).

[gentleman john]

Economics of science fiction societies? Here we go ...

And not surprisingly, Mega City 1 is an absolute hole, and has only got worse since the series began. After the wars, plagues, visitations by the Dark Judges, zombies, robot rebellions and more plagues, the city is down to something like 20% of the size it started out at. The Justice Department is fighting a losing battle to keep control.

Of course, in the past, it only ever policed with the consent of the citizens. If they had ever decided to rise up, the Justice Department would have been toast. In the Block Wars arc, when a single sector was engulfed by the Block Mania virus it took the entire resources of the Justice Department to keep it under control.

As for its economy - yup. It was a mess. It was all kept going by hideous taxation and fines. For example, Otto Sump's Ugly range was subject to a tax of 1000 credits per item and soon became luxury items. Sales tax was in the order of 25%, and income tax was somewhere about 90%. City housing was small and scarce. Rations were available (Justice Department foodstuffs A, B and C), but you didn't ask what went into it.

Yup. Mega City 1 is a definite dystopia with a gaping void between the haves and the have-nots. Kind of the point behind it, really.

Like I said, try getting hold some of the Titan Books collected editions.