GURPS: Miami Vice

I am binge-watching the Miami Vice Blu-Ray collection, and wow, this was a great TV show. Forget all the pop culture, NBC, MTV, and other influences—just as a cop show, this is amazing. It also defined a generation, bringing the 1980s to every corner of America (and the world), and redefined the cop show in a way only Hill Street Blues did for the other, more gritty, 1980s side of the genre.

And I grew up in the 1980s, so this speaks to me.

All the technology, cars, fashion, and weapons are classic 1980s icons. Tubbs uses a 0.38 5-shot S&W Model 38 bodyguard revolver and Crockett's 0.45 8-shot Bren Ten automatic. These aren't your modern, high-capacity guns—these were the 1980s classics, where shots were limited, and the look and style for the show were king.

Even the phones in the first season were mobile radio phones—not tablet-like cell phones; these had pull-out antennae and flip microphones and only worked in large population centers. You could be out in the swamp, wilderness, small towns, or sea and out of range of a tower, so you had no mobile phone. You called dispatch or the station for a records check. And records? City records, police files, real estate records, tax records, prison records, or the library. You had to call or go to these places to get information (if they had it or it wasn't missing), which took time. They were just starting to computerize crime and court records, but those searches still needed a mainframe in an office.

Part of the fun of this setting is the 1980s technology and living without cell phones and the Internet. And no, you can't slam the X card to magically have it since it disadvantages you.

Conceptually, this is the same game style as the classic Gangbusters game. This time, in Florida, in the 1980s, where they have radio phones. It is not booze but drugs and vice. Otherwise, policing is still that gumshoe, hard-boiled detective work where clues have to be noticed, informants need to be talked to face-to-face, and getting information takes time from records frequently in file cabinets. You need to maintain cover identities. Science - if it comes to that - is done in a lab. Things often go wrong.

It has the flash and music of the 1980s, South Miami culture, and lingo. Still, it is the same story of rough streets, ambition, corruption, immigrants, broken dreams, big money, government plots, and a new era in America.

Change.

GURPS does this game style well since disadvantages frequently come into play. You get a straight 3d6 down-the-line OSR game with no system for mental and possibly physical disadvantages, and there is very little to work with to make characters come alive. D&D-style games are combat since they only do combat - so you won't get that tense, making social skill rolls, having your weaknesses used against you, conning the bad guys, setting up traps, and noticing hidden clues with a good roll style of play.

In 5E, one detective always builds for passive perception and expects all clues to be told to him once he enters the room, like he has a clue-detecting radar mounted on his head.

There are mechanics in 5E that ruin entire genres of play.

I'm sorry, but life and policework do not work that way. Tell me what you are looking for and where you are looking, and I will decide if a dice roll is needed and what skill applies. This is still an old-school game; the referee can say, "You guessed exactly it," and forego the roll. Fingerprints on the shot glass? They are there; make a skill roll to copy them into evidence.

Again, you still see a lot of the Gangbusters policing tropes here. There is more science here (no DNA testing yet, but yes, on blood types), but the nuts and bolts of investigations are mostly the same.

I could do this with a lower point limit on characters and a focus on role-playing and drama. These won't be your complicated Dungeon Fantasy, list of spells, and 250-point established heroes. I could do this with 100 or 150-point builds and still have capable officers. And those social and investigation skills will be beneficial! This won't be all combat and shooting, though tossing some martial arts on a character would be entertaining (and valuable for going undercover and those times without a weapon).

Martial arts will be your "magic" in this type of game, just like the classic Ninjas & Superspies game. Want to take down a suspect without a gun? Find a dojo and start training. Spend a lot of free time working out. You will need it. But you will be fantastic.

The game will only get complicated when modern guns and martial arts come into play since those areas are more rules-heavy. Everything else will be straight skill rolls, role-playing, gathering evidence, following suspects, filming and photographing illicit activities, and looking for clues. These cases must be proved in court, so ensure you build that case with an evidence trail. It won't be all "D&D combat encounters in a room" and some lame; read the text box aloud, and the adventure assumes you did the evidence-gathering part.

As a referee, I will hold players accountable for what they gathered and expect them to keep a list of the evidence and cases they build. In classic D&D, players drew a map. In a crime game, they create a case to prove guilt. Sometimes, it will be cut and dry, but they must do that homework if they take down a slippery money launderer. This could be as simple as a "list of evidence" on paper; you don't need to go all out. Ultimately, that evidence will be a positive modifier to convict, while the bad guy's legal team will use their skill roll to contest that all. You don't need to roleplay the case, do the contested skill roll, make the determination, and tell the players the outcome.

If you fail, well, get them next time.

GURPS makes this game easy, and I don't need to buy a game off DriveThru and mod it to play this genre and time. And if you want genre support, excellent 3rd Edition sourcebooks are still perfect—like GURPS Cops. This will give you all that gritty police procedure that will help make your game more authentic. Miami Vice is listed in the Bibliography.

Why play another game for this? The sourcebooks are here. Why learn a new rule system? To have YouTube or social media cred? To have a book of art? Give me a break. I keep one system in my head. It has excellent sourcebook support and works. No extra money was spent. It doesn't need to be (let's just play D&D instead of this) 5E. I have many 5E games that make the mistake of thinking the game is about genre and story instead of providing compelling character builds - which takes more playtesting and money than most small companies have.

GURPS is not the best system for everything, but it is the best system for anything you want to do.

Don't fool yourself into thinking the "officially licensed system" is the one you are waiting for. I have been burned by too many of those, and they all go out of print and become unsupported - never to be sold again or put in PDF.

If you want a more action-oriented game, pick up the 3rd Edition book for GURPS SWAT and play a tactical team fighting drug runners. They could even work alongside the Vice team and be the big guns they call in when things need serious firepower to resolve. Remember, the equipment will be mostly the 1980s vintage guns and protection, and you may be using M-16A1s with 20-round magazines, no drones, no computers, and working with spotters and walkie-talkies - but that is a fun limitation that sets the game apart. While Miami Vice is not listed in the inspirations here, playing a tactical team in that era alongside the Vice Squad would be a fantastic campaign.

Also note that in a tactical team campaign, you won't be gathering evidence or doing detective work; this is a game primarily about takedowns and combat. It may not feel different from a modern tactical team game since the 1980s will mostly be window dressing to the battles, and you won't interact much with the suspects and witnesses. The more meaningful game is the footwork and detective part, but playing a second set of tactical characters may be fun, too, to add to the mythos and world. Two sets of characters could also free detective characters from becoming "combat specialists," leaving those large gunbattles to the experts.

You could even play the SWAT raids as tactical minigames, with no role-playing focus, and possibly the PCs on the board. Let the PCs play the SWAT team and their characters.

Of course, this is always a vigilante game to be played in this setting, which my brother and I did during the early 1980s. That is out of scope, but we played in this world then with a fun renegade soldier vibe. It was always fun to run those takedowns and hustles and disappear before the good guys showed up. It was like a Batman meets the Punisher game, and it was fun.

That said, I want to play a game like this. GURPS lets me jump right in and do it.