Crime Drama RP

I'm really into the detective stories and crime drama Tv shows and movies, like Law & Order, Dexter, CSI, etc. and would like to do an original story based on this genre. Something kinda gritty and serious but with enough room to be funny as well. I like working together with others to make the story, so that is pretty much open, but basically something along the lines of a high-profile killer is on the loose and we'll be focusing on not only his crimes as he commits them but also the efforts of the detectives on his case and their personal lives as they attempt to track him down and catch him. If people wanted, we could even add a bit of an X-Files element to it as well. The setting is to be decided among us and I'm completely open to making it an original location, but it will be centralized in a city of some sort.

I just want a small group of 3 people other than myself so we can go a bit faster than your usual group role-play. This is a story I'd like to end up finishing at some point, so please consider your activity here and ability to dedicate yourself to a project for the long term before you sign up for interest.

Code:

[b]Name:[/b]
[b]Age:[/b]
[b]Gender:[/b]
[b]Appearance:[/b] (picture or description is acceptable)
[b]Personality:[/b]
[b]History:[/b]

OH! OH! PLEASE PICK ME!

I love Crime Dramas.

Yes. So much yes. I don't see enough of these, and I love everything about them.

I need to get some basic idea of whether or not I have too much on my plate for the amount of time I'm on FOG right now (I don't want to leave you one short), but let me submit a tentative "Interested".

Yes! Woohoo! I love them too, Kail and I thought it'd be a really fun idea for a role-play.

And that's fine buzz. If we get all three slots filled, and you're able to join later, we can open another spot for you. ^_^

Can I still join?

alright, I'm officially changing from "maybe" to "yes".

Alright, since there is definite interest in this, I would ask that people start submitting their character sheets and we'll start going over ideas about where to take this.

This will be centralized in an original location, a random city on a coastline preferably in the United States(we'll come up with a name for it and I or someone else can even draw up a map - any ideas?) and all characters will be members of the same squad - we can have a person or two be new additions so there might be a little friction as the detectives get to know each other and get used to working together. Old loyalties die hard and all that.

As for the killer here is what I have so far(Kail also helped me with a bit of input about his killings):

This is the image I had in mind for our perp: https://2img.net/h/i942.photobucket.com/albums/ad268/timeoftheeye/joaquin1.png?t=1281775524

I was thinking along the lines of someone mild mannered yet sociable and even well-liked in his daily life. Someone quiet and bookish, maybe working at a library or a movie rental place, somewhere he can engage with a lot of people on a regular basis.

As far as his killings go, he is a bit of an artist and restrains his victims as he drains them of blood, using it to mix with paints which he then paints a picture with while talking with them and keeping them alive until it is finished - a way to collect a memento from the bodies, each piece of artwork commemorating the event of a kill. He knows a lot of people in his daily life, but he often feels like a fraud, like he's wearing a mask for society and that nobody really knows him, even the "regulars" that he sees and converses with more than once. The time he spends with his victims is the only time he really feels like he can be himself and let someone see who he really is, and that mixed with the release of creative energy is therapuetic to him.

He then disposes of the bodies by chopping them up and dumping them into the nearby bay. By the time one of the bodies floats up and our squad starts digging into his burial ground, he will have killed up to 7 or 8 people this way.

He chooses both male and female victims. Haven't decided how he chooses them yet or what his real motivations for killing them are or any indepth history yet.

And that's all I really have so far. Feel free to add your own ideas.

Here's my character.




Name: Jensen Everett

Age: 32

Gender: Male

Personality: Fairly calm, likes to joke, and is very detailed oriented.

Bio: Jensen became a Police Officer fresh out of High School in Los Angeles. He had grown up in the rough streets of Watts but was able to stay out of the Gangs by applying himself to school and football. His dreams while in High School were to play for the NFL. Unfortunately for him the college scouts never thought he was big enough or good enough to play in the NCAA.

Instead of the NFL Jensen joined the men in blue and was assigned to the South Bureau, the part of the LAPD that covered his former home in Watts. Jensen proved himself as an effective officer who would get the job done. His service record shows that he is smart, loves his job, and is willing to put his life on the line to get the bad guys. From the South Bureau Jensen was accepted as a SWAT Trainee. He passed the examines and served on the LAPD SWAT for 2 years until he was promoted as a detective and transferred to the Narcotics/Gang Unit that covered the greater South Central area.

He spent 7 years as a Detective working the Ghettos and Projects until he was witness to some form of corruption. Jensen, although he tends to bend the rules slightly to get the job done, had to turn his fellow officer in for corruption. The details are still unclear as to what Jensen was a witness to but he was required to transfer to a completely new Police Department to protect himself and his small family.

Well, you might consider that since he's a serial killer, he's a psychopath. (I study criminology, so I kinda learn about stuff like this). Psycopaths often - if not always - have a disfunction in their brain, especially in the part (I don't know the english name for it) where a conscience is regulated. In other words: psychopaths have no guilty conscience over what they do. Most of the time they're very intelligent and know damn well that what they're doing is against the law and not according society norms. He can perhaps also suffering from what is called low arrousal. This means he has a lower heartbeat than 'normal' people, causing him to have an uneasy feeling, because it doesn't feel good to have such a low heart beat. Your body knows it isn't normal and therefor you seek out events that get your heart beat up. In this case this would mean our perp starts killing people.

Although it's logcial to assume something really traumatic happened in his life which triggered him to kill people, it's not really necessary if he really is a psychopath. If you wish to call it like that: psychopaths get born being a psychopath and thus some killers get born being a killer. That doesn't mean everyone born with this disfunction in their brain becomes a killer.

I'll come up with my sheet later tonight

Hmm, very interesting suggestions Shekinah. I don't really want to give him a traumatized past - that seems like a cop-out to me - so we could go with the lowered heart rate thing. When he's killing his victims and disposing of their bodies, it fills him with a rush of energy? It could work.

In the meantime, here is my character sheet:


Name: Bryce Scoda

Age: 29

Gender: female

Personality: She has a generally upbeat demeanor and can be fairly feminine but often tries to make up for her weaknesses and be "one of the guys" and putting on a tough front. She very rarely gets personal or real with people, preferring to keep everybody at a distance. Despite this, she has a lot of empathy for victims and can connect with them well.

History: Her father was a detective for Homicide and she idolized him while growing up and followed in his footsteps. Even in highschool, she always wanted to be a police officer, being taught how to shoot a gun by her father and groomed to eventually precede him. Emil Scoda, her father, was a decorated detective who retired after 30 years on the force, and he committed suicide when Bryce was 20 years old. It is something she still has not gotten over and can be very sensitive about. She spent three years in patrol and then another two years in vice before being promoted to Homicide in the squad where her dad use to work.

Shekinah is right. Not all psycopath's were "made". Dr. J Blair wrote this on Psycopaths (or anti-social disorder)

"The amygdala is crucial for stimulus–reinforcement learning and responding to emotional expressions, particularly fearful expressions that, as reinforcers, are important initiators of stimulus–reinforcement learning. Moreover, the amygdala is involved in the formation of both stimulus–punishment and stimulus–reward associations. Individuals with psychopathy show impairment in stimulus–reinforcement learning (whether punishment or reward based)and responding to fearful and sad expressions. It is argued that this impairment drives much of the syndrome of psychopathy"

I think (although I'm definitely not intelligent enough to really understand the majority of this) he is saying that it is a 50-50 chance with the deciding factor on the Psycopaths.

And yes, I do think saying that our killer's mommy "didn't love him" or daddy "beat him" is a complete cop out.

Kail puts it way nicer than what I said, but that's what I meant yes Indeed, psychopaths are little to not at all sensitive to punishment (or rewards for that matter indeed), which is why these people, as children, are near to impossible to correct in their behaviour. Although most of the time psychopaths (and for that matter: every other killer) does have some traumatic event in his/her life occured, it doesn't always have to be like that. I believe Ted Bundy didn't experience any traumatic event at all, unless he classifies being turned down by girls (which was, if I remember correctly, his 'motive' to kill) as being traumatic. He was a psychopath too.

But indeed, having a killer with just any other traumatic event happened in his life, is way too easy!

But I'd like to point one thing out anyway: assuming we'd go with the idea of him being a psychopath without a traumatic event in his life, who's suffering from low arrousal, we'd still have to come up with a motive as it's highyl unlikely that our killer will say (it's even highly unlikely that he'll know or recognizes it as being so) "I'm suffering from low arrousal and I'm a psychopath, that's why I kill". We still have to find a more 'humane' motive/reason for him to kill. In my opinion anyway.

Now, for my sheet as promised:


Name: Solamon "Sole" van der Zandt
Age: 28
Gender: Female
Personality: Sole is very straight forward and strong-willed. Some people may call her egocentric, but it's not a matter of being egocentric, but a lack of faith in people. As she's been betrayed so many times before, Sole has difficulties with just trusting people. This is why she doesn't get people too close too soon. But once she does, she's very loyal to you. Sole never breaks a promise and she's a girl of her word. Once she goes for something, she puts in a 100% effort.
History: Sole's Dutch and she grew up in The Netherlands in a normal family. Having an older brother, at a learn age she learned how to be 'one of the guys' as she'd spend a lot of time with her brother's friends. Being a wild one, she soon had a reputation build in high school, but when she grew older she realised she was hanging out with the wrong people and she was afraid that if she wouldn't completely change her life, she'd end up on the street, as some of her 'friends' highly romanticized that image.

Then she met her then boyfriend who helped her to turn away from all the bad influences and she finished her high school, though at a much lower level than she could've done. Still, as she had always been fascinated to (as some said) a sick level by murderers, rapists, pedophiles and any other serious crime offender you can think of. Thinking there's only one thing she really wanted, to work with criminals, she started to study Law at the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. When she finished her degree to get into university, she dropped out of the Hogeschool and started studying Criminology at the University of Rotterdam.

She finished Criminology with a thesis about pedophiles and then finished a master of Criminal Investigation with the Dutch police force. Knowing, as she always had known, that if she wanted a true career in crimonology she had to leave The Netherlands, as they were only focussed on policy criminology, she decided to travel to the country where the most things happen in the field of criminology: America.

But things turned out differently. Instead of working in the pure field of criminology and developing a (new) theory as Sole planned to, she got the chance to get a job at the Homicide squad. Now she had to choose between two loves: either coming up with a theory, or working with the persons she'd always been fascinated with. She chose the latter, figuring that if she really wants to work on a theory, she can do so in her spare time as no one had told her it had to be done in a few years time.

(I apologize in advance for my English, as I'm Dutch myself it's not my first language )

How about something like this? Remember, he doesn't just kill: he paints. I think that it would make sense for him to be perhaps from a fairly normal family, with normal values and normal ways of expression. Additionally, even from an early age, he expressed himself with his art, rather than speech or otherwise. Unfortunately, his art was of disturbing things: maybe the innards of a cat, or people being hung. Something like that. Instead of seeing this as indicative of sociopathy, as we might today, they simply persuaded him to stop his art altogether.

That's your damaging event. Coupled with his low heart rate, he went into a downward spiral. On the surface, he appeared to become more or less normal. He went to high school, graduated college with a respectable bachelors, and got a fairly comfortable job. However, his self-loathing began to reach uncomfortable levels quickly, and he began to fantasize. He began reading on the things he had been curious about as a child: pain, domination, and fear (something like 90% of killers are fascinated with these same things).

And once again, he tried to paint. And he found himself incapable.

Maybe this became a large point in his life. Maybe he was married, or had a girlfriend, and when he found himself unable to paint, he also found himself unable to perform sexually. The relationship devolved and eventually broke down. He blamed himself, but more than anything, he blamed the doctors who had taken his painting away from him. Without any kind of outlet, rage and anger began to stew within him.

His first kill was messy. Reading incessantly about other serial killers and their operations (another trait many killers share), he planned and created his first elaborate staging. He lured his victim (perhaps a prostitute or drifter. Someone no one knows) to an area where he felt secure and proceeded with his work. Still, he found himself unable to paint. There was no imagination or heart to what he put on the canvas, just flat images.

So he mixed in the blood of his victim, and it awakened a whole new world of red. His vivid imaginings created nightmare worlds that he awakened with his brush, recording as perfection. Everything from that was simply a downhill slide.


But that's just my interpretation. I don't get a whole lot of chance to go online, so I kinda just felt like I wasn't contributing. That's what I think, though.

EDIT: I'll probably have my character up late tonight or early tomorrow. I need to finish another project before I can really work on it. He'll be second-generation Japanese, though.

Very nice character Shekinah and you English is fine (probably better than mine). And in Ted Bundy's case he also blamed (along with thousands of other things) the "addiction" of violent pornography. In fact before he was executed in Florida he did an interview with a evangelical pastor and said that although porn addiction didn't "make him" do the stuff he did say the visuals of violent porn helped mold and shape him into the monster he was. Anyway, the bastard deserved everything he got in the end and much more.

To go along with what Buzzwolf said I think that the killer would also view his "art" as a way to feel accepted in the world. Considering no one knows what he really is, the victim being kept alive would be away to have his art shown in its full extent. He could tie that it, even subconsciously, to having his parents/doctors viewing and accepting his art.

I really like these recent additions to the killer's mentality. It's absolutely brilliant. Maybe that's how he chooses all his victims? That they're tourists/homeless/prostitutes/hitchhikers, nobody knows or cares about them.

Also, great character Shekinah! Love it. As soon as buzzwulf has his character sheet up, I'll make the OOC. I'm making the city map now - is there anything in particular we want included in it? And any ideas for a name?

Hmm at any rate there should be good spots for picking up victims. And since he's a serial killer it's only logical for him to choose people he doesn't know, as most serial killers do so. The ones that kill people they know, are hardly ever a serial killer. So yes, prostitutes/homeless/tourists/hitchhikers/drug addicts are perfect! That way, you might want to add a highway or some other road that forms a critical 'stationary' for our killer, as almost each of his victims are picked up easily alongside a road. Perhaps a bar would be good too. Of course a police station, but I'm sure you thought of that yourself already And maybe the homes of our characters? I dunno.

Thanks for the compliments all, by the way I'm really looking forward to this rp. I've never joined something like this before, but I like the subject very much!

Oh, I just thought to something else. A lot of serial killers also have an extreme superiority or even messianic complex. Perhaps the reason he picks up these "dirfters" is that he feels they're worthless, and he wants to turn them into something beautiful? Could make for an interesting "victim-killer" moment.

also, does he leave his paintings behind for people to find, or does he collect them?

EDIT: hate to double post, so I'll put it here instead.

Name: Martin Landly

Age: 25

Gender: Male



Personality: Martin is a practitioner of the “incessant smile”. He is almost never caught without a massive grin on his face, enormously pleased with something or other. He is easy-going and often has a joke to tell, not reserved in the least. He speaks fluent Japanese and English, but tries to stick to English so as not to alienate anyone. He also has a need to absorb as much information as he possibly can, which sometimes makes him at best interested and at worst annoying. He looks much younger than he is, and often is annoyed when he has to show his ID to people.

History: Martin was born in Hawaii, on Maui. From an early age, he was taught both his mother’s Japanese and English in the normal school system. His parents pushed him to excel in school, and he quickly did, becoming the class president in his senior year of high school and graduating fourth from the top of his class. It was not grades that interested him- rather, he pushed himself to learn and absorb as much information as he possibly could.

Upon entering college, however, Martin’s education stalled. He was on the way to becoming a general practitioner, and he suddenly realized that he wasn’t interested. Despite his parents warnings, he flunked his first year in college. Leaving Hawaii, he moved to Portland and took up residence at a much less prestigious school. He quickly learned that there was really only one area that interested him: criminal psychology. He quickly moved through four years of college, obtaining his degree seemingly without effort. His friendly nature and general approachableness earned him many friends in college, but he surprised all of them when he left criminal psychology to become a police officer, moving once again.

His parents had given up trying to convince him to move his life in a direction that made sense, so they were somewhat unsurprised by the second sudden change. The police department welcomed him with open arms, and Martin worked in patrol for three years. While he was doing so, though, he returned to college and pulled nights obtaining a criminal justice degree. He moved up to vice for a single year, but found it not to his areas of expertise. Now 25, Martin began taking the necessary promotion tests, and has only recently become a homicide detective.

Martin brings to the table his experience not only as a police officer, but also as a criminal psychologist. He can enter a crime scene and “feel” the general emotion connected with the place, and he takes great pains to understand criminal behavior and what causes it. However, he is somewhat of a newbie as a homicide detective, and does not understand some of the more basic procedures yet. He learns quickly, though, and rarely needs to repeat lessons.

Other Notes: Martin is extremely afraid of guns. He carries one because of regulation, but has never, ever used it. Additionally, he’s not a particularly physical person, preferring to talk his way out of situations.


If I messed anything up, just make sure to PM me, and I'll do my best to fix it.

Love the character Buzz. I think the best part about these 4 character are that they are complete opposites. It's great.

Yes, definitely to a major highway running through the town. I would also suggest these few minor things as well:

First- Some sort of transportation depot. Maybe a greyhound bus stop, or a local city transit station where buses, street cars, or whatever else stop and drop people off. I know Portland, Oregon and New York City have things like this. Its a great place for drifters to be found (ok, so that sounds creepy but everyone who has lived in a big city knows that the public transportation stations house all the weird homeless people).

Second- I would also think a section of town where there is government housing would be good. With government housing comes drug problems.

Thirdly- What about a Mission for homeless people. That would be a perfect place to find all of societies "castaways" (again, sounding creepy but I've lived in big cities and soup kitchens are jammed packed with homeless people....for obvious reasons).

Anyway, those are my final thoughts.

Yes, all those places make perfect sense

seconded (and thirded, I suppose). I'm not really a planner of cities, but perhaps an old construction site that was never finished? It could be sort of a "killing ground" for the guy, if you want to take it that way, and would have all sorts of convenient walls and iron rods for falling off of and on to (maybe in a finale kind of thing)?

Also, the government housing seems like a particularly good idea. Not only for the killer to search for victims, but also theoretically for use to mine for information.

Perhaps also a park? It's easy to pick up homeless and/or drug addicts there as well, especially since I can imagine our killer doesn't wish to always pick up victims from the same spot.

Awesome suggestions! I'm marking them all down and gonna add them to the map - I LOVE that final showdown in an old construction site idea! And I'll have the OOC up sometime tonight!

Here's a question: detectives generally work in pairs, right? Are we going to be partnering up? That's at least in accordance with everything I've ever seen on TV and in books.

They should, as 'one witness, is no witness'. That's one of the reasons why cops in general pair up. Also because of safety issues of course. But I'm not the GM

Yes, I think we should split up into partners - something I'd forgotten about until now. I don't really mind who my character is partnered with, so I guess you guys state a preference and we'll go from there.

I don't think it really makes sense for Martin and Sole to partner up, them being the two new to the force. All our characters are great, though, so I really don't mind who gets partnered up with who other than that. I guess I'm content to leave the decision to Time.

I think it would be a good idea to work out how our characters interact with each other via PM after we've actually been partnered. Obviously, they've been working with each other before this case came along, so it makes sense to have established images of each other.

Alright, finally, I've got the OOC up. Sorry that took so long.

Inspired to Murder (OOC)