Editing FederalSpace:Peoples (section)

== Law and Politics ==

=== Commentary ===

'''Wolfwood2:''' If it's an FBI game, let's talk about crime.

It's already difficult enough to hide in modern society. Anywhere not on the fringes, and everything you do gets logged somewhere. The FBI tracks crimes across interstate boundaries; presumably the sci-fi FBI tracks them across interstellar boundaries. But how do we give it that Star Trek twist? What can be done with a crime story that justifies all this setting work?

1) 'Is it a crime' crimes. The PCs are presented with a legal system sufficiently from the one they're bringing in that they aren't happy with it, and jurisdictional issues are unclear. Do they try to subvert local laws, live with them, or figure out a clever end run within the system?

2) 'Fled to Brazil' crimes. The criminal they're after has taken refuge with a local ruler and the PCs have to show why he should be extradited.

3) 'What just happened' crimes. The crime involves an alien type (as opposed to a modded human) and difficulties in communication are such that the PCs are having trouble understanding what the testimony means.

Any of that strike any inspiration? I'm trying to get at what makes an FBI game in Federal Space different from running just an FBI game.


'''Shadowjack:''' These are exactly the sorts of details I need to work out. 

One of Matt Howarth's Keif Llama stories has a good setup: Keif herself, a "xeno-tech" (inter-alien relations facilitator), had the unpleasant job of escorting a bunch of alien kids on a field trip. Human kids, it would've been way below her pay grade, but alien kids, she gets stuck with it. The field trip is attacked by an assassin; she holds it off until it makes a mistake and is destroyed. After the debriefing, she's informed that she is "innocent of all charges"—what were the charges, she asks, puzzled? Turns out that one of the kids was nobility, and it's tradition on its world to assassinate the heir to the throne, so that the planet can remain a democracy. If she'd interfered ''intentionally'', she'd have been guilty of a crime…

In another story, she's called in to find out whether a crime was committed by a human against an alien. The alien lacks the cultural and language context to explain what happened. The human seems nice, and insists he doesn't understand. It's not until she obtains video of the crime that it all comes together. (Child rape, as it turns out.)



The exact relationship of the Federation to its worlds is important. 

Perhaps varying levels of interaction: Full membership, where you agree to abide by all Federal laws and grant all citizens particular rights. Partial membership, where you benefit from Federal defense, but aren't full participants. Trade partners only, where there's just an embassy. Contacts, who are left alone unless they request assistance. Various restricted zones. 

Which crimes the Feds can investigate—what's considered a crime?


With as wide-ranging as the Federated Worlds might be, I could imagine that a team of troubleshooters essentially ''has'' to include diplomatic staff and legal staff. Is the local law at odds with Federal law? Or is it legal, and we now have to work around it? Are we caught by the language barrier? Perhaps they have limited diplomatic immunity, but have to obey certain restrictions to keep it. Perhaps they get granted temporary rank within that planet's rank structure—congratulations, Detective, today you're a General. Hmmm.



One idea I had for developed worlds, borrowed from ''Transhuman Space'', was extremely rapid processing of certain paperwork. You could get a routine search warrant on minutes' notice, and public video databases are likely extensive. It could be a setting where there's more information than can easily be searched or scanned—the trick is knowing ''what'' to find. And, come to think of it, is video admissable evidence or not, given how easily it could be faked? (Perhaps it's permissable to start an investigation, but not sufficient to get a conviction.)

The courts are important, too. It might be fun to play with inquisitorial courts, rather than adversarial courts… a Judge who gets interested might request information from all angles of a case, bringing to light things that many people might wish hidden. 




Hmmm. Federal-level crimes: brainstorming. Stuff like piracy, of course, though I suppose the Fleet handles that. Interstellar smuggling, kidnapping, terrorism. Corporate crime. Espionage. Government-scale crimes, like genocide or civil rights violations. Trafficking in restricted technologies, whatever those may be—WMD are the most obvious. Ordinary crimes committed on government property? Incidents involving diplomatic personnel? Any foreign incident involving Federal citizens? Crimes involving citizens of more than one world?

'''E.T.Smith:''' "Planet-crashing" comes to mind, outsiders sabotaging a world's infrastructure to artificially create a market for goods or eliminate competition. Sort of the reverse version of banned tech. "If the damn Feds wont let us sell fusion-powered toasters to the natives, we'll just have to bring 'em down to where they'll be desperate for a pack of matches. Should only take a couple rocks lobbed in from orbit, and we'll be able to unload two or three shipments before anyone back in the core notices." Sadly, I can easily imagine unscrupulous traders callously inflicting wide devastation just to turn a quick buck. Such tactics might be the hidden cause behind all the sudden plagues the ''Enterprise''-type ships keep having to run shipments of vaccines to.

'''Shadowjack:''' You are an EVIL BASTARD. I LOVE YOU.

Suddenly, I've got villains for a ''great'' cops game.

Especially if they're ''smart'' and ''sneaky'' nasties—how do you tell if the planet is falling apart naturally, or because of outsider action? Time for some undercover action… wow.

'''Fringe Worthy:''' Actually: They don't have to collapse the planet. All they have to make sure they are first there, or prevent other people from finding out early enough. 

So they are villains.. not by their actions, but by their timing.

Hey, you can even have the Socialist Menace! A bunch of anti-capitalists who do their best to find failing planets and delivering aid, and/or helping them help themselves before those bastards can do it themselves and charge for it. :)

'''Shadowjack:''' Marvellous! Applause!



'''s/LaSH:''' Speaking of anti-piracy measures, which governments are most likely to sponsor privateers, and how do their rivals react to this? I imagine that tremendous amounts of drama can be generated with a few 'neutral zone' areas and competing imperial interests...

'''Susanoo Orbatos:''' My thoughts ar the Imperials and League seem to have the individualic mindset to do so vs Federals or Repulicers who'd have similar groups but they are actively deniable agents of the government.

You'd also probably have many little "third world" types areas of a few worlds strung together that don't have the power or reach of the major guys but taking them out would be problematic those I'd think would be a hot spot of pirates.


'''Punkey:''' First, for your main Federation police agency, I think that it would make more sense for them to be structured more like the Naval Criminal Investigative Service or NCIS than the FBI. NCIS, despite being the primary investigative agency for the US Navy, is mainly staffed by civilians rather than military personnel, with people being hired from other federal agencies, military criminal investigative services and state and local police. They do more than just investigate murders and other felonies on naval bases, they're involved in anti-terrorism (NCIS were the first responders to the USS Cole attack) and counter-intelligence operations (many foreign agents have been caught as a result of NCIS operations). The FBI is a purely civilian law enforcement agency with no direct jurisdiction over military-related cases, and seeing how much of the setting involves militaries of one kind or another, it would make sense for the primary Federation-level law enforcement agency to have jurisdictional control over the Federation military. It gets players in on more Top Secret kind of incidents, plus, given how wide-ranging military operations and bases can be, it gives players and GMs more options when it comes to interesting interactions and confrontations with other nations.

On the flip side, I think that a more "gray hat problem solver" setting would work just as well as the Federation Cops. Think of them as a mix between your Splinter Cell-esque spy and heist group and a police investigative unit. They could work for any number of groups, a nebulous Federation-level diplomatic agency like their State Department or UN, an intelligence agency like the CIA or NSA, or some shadowy governmental conspiracy. At any rate, they work for a group that doesn't technically have jurisdiction over criminal investigations, but they're their organization's investigative group, looking into crimes, espionage or other threats to whatever group they work for. They're more willing to break the law (seeing as they're probably already doing so just doing their jobs), and quite possibly run into our NCIS-esque team on occasion. They're sent in when legitimate police would be unable to investigate, don't have the right tools or too many scruples to do the job, or when something needs solving and it kept hush-hush.

'''Shadowjack:''' Since this is an ''optimistically'' realistic setting, when black ops units appear, they get discovered after a while and shut down by the good guys. :D 

I love the NCIS idea, though. Extending it into the Trek realm, you've basically got a group of after-the-fact investigators who double-check the actions of Starfleet explorers. The guys who have to clean up the mess when the planetary computer was phasered, who have to confirm whether or not it really was necessary to upend the entire caste system, who have to resolve the issues of a botched first contact. The mood of the Temporal Investigators from DS9 fits: "Kirk?! The man was a ''menace.''"