I am sharing this thoughtful post from my friend Matthew Farr as our monday group approach running a Mega City One Judge Campaign.
As we build up to starting a Mega City One Judge Campaign one of the things I’ve been turning over my mind is what sort of character I want to play – and what sort of character I want to play alongside. And this is the sort of thing I think about in games, because ultimately I believe these games are about character, and character is where story happens, and good characters – not good stat blocks – is the foundation of much of what makes this hobby so unique and interesting.
But I’ve always leaned heavily in trying to build parties of misfits and losers. Its my “go-to” set up; from inter-dimensional refugees turned secret agents, to crime-solving evacuees in a strange town, to talented outcasts signing up fight facism in the Pacific, I like the idea of oddballs and weirdos brought together in common purpose. I mean, that’s most gaming groups at heart anyway, right?
But this is different, this is Mega City One Judges. They’re not misfits and weirdos. They’re not outsiders. They are – to steal a phrase – The Law. They’re not even regular cops, they’re super-cops, trained and indoctrinated from a young age and held to rigorous standards. They don’t have pets, or friends, or hobbies, or….well, lets come back to that and talk about Space Marines.
Space Marines are the poster boys for Games Workshop’s popular line of d6-powered War Dollies and like a lot of people I’ve painted my fair share of them. Warhammer 40k is an expansive and often evocative universe full of horror and unpleasantness and you can interact with it in pretty much any way you fancy – Books, Games, Painting, there is even a streaming series on the way. Hell there are even whole communities dedicated to performatively hating it if that’s what floats your boat. And at the heart of all this is the Space Marine.
And good god are Space Marines dull.
I cannot imagine playing an RPG where you get to play a Space Marine. They’re a big slap of genetically engineered, ceramite armour clad murder machine with the personality of a ceiling tile. They don’t talk, they intone. They’re incurious by design. Even the “interesting” chapters are things like “dull but yellow”, “dull but vampires” or “dull but in robes”. There just isn’t a lot you can do with them as characters not least because part of the relentless dullness of them is part of what makes them work as a concept. A Space Marine doesn’t have a favorite ice cream, or go home and walk the dog, or write to his mum. Emperor Forbid they have doubts, or fears. They just are. Thats the point (and the horror) of them.
And this makes them terrible long-form protagonists. With apologies to Black Library, I’ve always struggled with their books around the Horus Heresy or the Beast War because they’re so Marine centric. I care about the normal characters caught in this shit-storm of a universe because they feel human in a way Marines simply do not. I’m sure there are exceptions, I cannot be bothered to wade through all that Marine-ness to go find them and “Dull but Fallen To Chaos” doesn’t count. (For the Record I really enjoyed the Eisenhorn/Ravenor series because it engages a fucked-up universe through fucked-up Human Beings, as it should be)
So this brings me back to Judges, those Paragons of Mega City one (and lets be honest, there is more than a little 2000AD in Warhammers DNA). They have a lot of the same problems. They’re big armour-clad oppressors that are indoctrinated into righteousness and live monastic lives in the service of The Law. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of tolerance for infractions. And of course, you’re the Bad Guys. Sort of, mostly. So this is a challenge for me; not the sort of characters I usually want to play, not the sort of characters I want to run for. Right?
But…
Judges aren’t like Space Marines because if there is one thing the fiction really supports it that they can fall short and often do. There is a whole storyline – The Pit – about corruption in Sector Houses and the lives of street-level judges. Judges are raised to be paragons but unlike Space Marines, they remain human at their core. And that feels like the crowbar into them for me – not what is your Judge good at, not what is your Judges best skill, but how do they fall short? In what way do they not meet the standard? Who do they love? What do they dream of? What keeps them awake at night? Because the competence is a given, the training is assured.
Judges, I think, will live in the areas that they’re not Judges.
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