To be honest and hopefully helpful, a hardboiled detective is a matter of roleplaying. The player either plays his as a HBD or he doesn't, the system is largely irrelevant as to whether or not you get a HBD atmosphere.

Quote from: Cylonophile;410885To be honest and hopefully helpful, a hardboiled detective is a matter of roleplaying. The player either plays his as a HBD or he doesn't, the system is largely irrelevant as to whether or not you get a HBD atmosphere.

Agreed, it's more about attitude than anything... maybe some rules for intimidation and bluffing... and a general knowledge of the local criminal networks.

Quote from: stu2000;410861I can't think of anything better than MSPE, which you mentioned in your original post. It's perfect.

Sadly I sold it recently figuring I'd never use it.

I'll probably use CoC, incorporating my intimidation rules (based on a post of Kyle's actually, I'll set them out later).  That's worked well in the past.

Thanks for all the comments, one of the players said he'd read a couple of Sam Spades or hire a movie, which suggests that the atmosphere should be ok and as noted that is the key thing.

Quote from: Cylonophile;410885To be honest and hopefully helpful, a hardboiled detective is a matter of roleplaying. The player either plays his as a HBD or he doesn't, the system is largely irrelevant as to whether or not you get a HBD atmosphere.

Actually, most "Hardboiled detectives" have little to any personality, particularly in the classic pulp stories (the famous "detective with no name" springs to mind).  You know almost nothing about them, they rarely if ever grow or change in any way.

So what makes it a detective story is actually everything going on AROUND the detective.  Its the ambiance, the gruesome crime, the knowledge of mob life, all the sexy and lurid details of the criminal underworld.

So really what you need is something that is a good sourcebook of information about that sort of thing, because a Detective campaign will have little if anything to do with how people play their detectives (which could easily have less personality than your typical dungeon-crawl D&D character) but how well the GM creates the WORLD of noir/pulp detective stories.

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