Justicar
A downloadable game
Justicar is a role-playing game about romanticized courtroom drama, intrigue, and comedy inspired by the likes of Phoenix Wright and My Cousin Vinny. Players each embody a unique key Role as they collaboratively tell the story of a crime and its mysteries.
Physical copies available at Dinoberry Press!
As a game without a traditional "game master" role, everyone shares authorship over the story and its twists and turns as they learn the truth of the crime they've crafted together.
Whether you're a fan of dramatic procedurals, twisting conspiracy stories, or comedic underdog journeys it'll give you exactly what you're looking for.
Craft a mystery with your friends; tie facets of a crime together with hints of truth!
Catch Justicar in action and on podcasts!
- Plus One XP's 2-part Actual Play
- Draw Your Dice interview with Nevyn.
- Nevyn's interview on Coffee Break.
- Setup with Nevyn and Jeff on Party of One.
Guided Collaboration
In Justicar, players are working to uncover the truth of a mystery you've outlined together. You start by following steps to decide on your story's tone and create a crime web with a few plot holes together. During play, you roleplay in the courtroom and in flashbacks to establish facts and tell lies, to make the story and truth change together.
It's loose, but guided, and collaboration is constantly encouraged.
Player & Character roles
Each of the 4 roles in Justicar take on a unique perspective of the case. While every player has the shared goal of telling an interesting story, the characters have their own motives and ways to affect the truth.
- The Judge is responsible for overseeing the trial. They prompt and hint the other players, nudging them to make interesting narrative decisions.
- The Stand’s job is to play all the witnesses in the case, and they most directly affect “the truth” of the situation. They’re capable of not only lying, but also making a show of an intense outburst that reveals a new truth.
- The Prosecution & The Defense are the attorneys at hand, and they’ll be taking turns asking every Witness questions to gain and shape information about the case.
Required for play:
✦ 4-6 of players, no GM
✦ Pens, notecards, sticky notes
✦ Tape, red string, scissors
Credits
Game design by Nevyn Holmes
Law consulting by Kevin Merritt
Editing by Will Jobst
Layout by Julie-Anne Muñoz
Character artwork by Sam Fisher
Cover art by Riotbones
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $15 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Exclusive content
Support this game at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Community copies
If you are enduring financial hardship, feel free to reserve a copy.
How to contribute to the pool of Community Copies:
- Rating the game adds 1 Community Copy
- Telling us about your game of Justicar in the comments adds 1 Community Copy
Comments
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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