Dozens and Dragons

D&D Ace Attorney Courtroom Legal Drama

Objection! Hold it! Take that!

2025-09-24

Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Research
  3. Mystery
  4. Prep
  5. Pushing Back
  6. Legal Procedure

Introduction

After slowly building up to it over several sessions of plot advancement, I finally ran my “Ace Attorney” D&D courtroom legal drama this week.

It was super fun!

The setup was this: my players’ favorite NPC was framed for the murder of the leader of the local Adventures Guild. They were named by the defendant as their Legal Champions. So they were thrust into the role of private investigator and also defense lawyer.

My main inspirations were:

Research

When I first thought of running an Ace Attorney style game, I did a little reading and a little asking around. I was curious whether there was some kind of a mini-game that could be tacked on top of D&D for this. (We had great success, for example, adding a fishing mini-game that uses poker dice.)

The first thing that happened was a brigade of extremely online people told me to stop trying to fit every square shape into the D&D shaped hole, that D&D wasn’t designed to support this kind of gameplay, and to choose some other system that would be a better fit.

This was extremely unhelpful! Especially considering that I fully expected this reaction because this response is practically a meme at this point, and I tried to avoid it by explaining that I am in the middle of a D&D campaign and don’t have the luxury of choosing some other system. But nevertheless. Some people are rude.

Secondly, I read some anecdotes about running this type of encounter with straight up plain vanilla D&D rules. That is, with ability checks. This is ultimately what I did, and I’m here to tell you that yes, you can indeed just play D&D about it.

The only thing I did was add a few progress clocks to provide the players with some feedback and a little tension.

(I have always thought of “clocks” as a Blades in the Dark invention, but allegedly they were introduced in Apocalypse World! I do think that Blades did a lot of work in mainstreaming the concept though.)

Mystery

This was not a mystery! The players knew who the murderer was pretty much from the beginning. Their job was not to discover who did it, but to gather enough evidence and enough witness testimony to clear their client’s name.

In the end, they did not successfully implicate the real killer. But they did get their client declared not guilty. That’s a win!

This is a great outcome for me, because now they can take the fight directly to the killer in the future.

I think this was a great way to set up this session because already knowing who did it, the players were able to really focus their energy and attention on the characters and locations that would have the most payoff for them. There was never any groping in the dark or grasping at straws.

Prep

Here’s what I knew at the start of the session:

The guild leader, Loden, had been poisoned and also stabbed through the heart. His body was found in his office. The cup he had been drinking from was on the ground near his hand. The knife was missing. He wrote the name of his killer, Durr, in blood before dying. The real killer was an assassin that the players had met before, disguised as Durr.

That’s about it!

Everything else we figured out together through play. Their questions and their investigation lead to finding out that Loden’s stash of favorite mushroom tea had been laced with giant spider venom in the breakroom. They found the murder weapon stashed in the back alley. They determined that there was a surprise witness who saw the assassin fleeing the scene, and they ultimately secured an alibi for Durr.

The murder weapon was obviously used in religious rituals, but none of the local clerics would claim it as theirs, suggesting that it might belong to the cult of some illegal god. (Illegal gods are a thing in this world.) This is a good future hook.

None of this was planned out ahead of time.

Pushing Back

I did have to steer my players a little bit to keep things moving.

“No, you think you’ve found everything there is to find here.”

“No, there are some background, unnamed NPCs running around, but there’s nobody else here you think would be helpful to talk to.”

And because I was being super permissive and collaborative with clues, I didn’t already have an airtight timeline. There were one or two times where I had to be like, “You’re right, you just found a plot hole. Let’s rewind and do that differently.” Or, “Let’s retcon that.”

Finally, here are the notes I made for myself when I was developing a procedure for this game. Now you have them too!

For a “Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney” game experience. (It’s just D&D with a few FitD-style clocks.)

You are a Defense Attorney.

  1. By law the case must be closed in 3 days. Prove your client’s innocence by then, or they will be found guilty.

  2. Each day will have 2 phases: the INVESTIGATION phase, and the TRIAL phase.

  3. During INVESTIGATION, you can wander around interviewing people and looking for clues and evidence. Use Insight, Intimidation, Perception, Investigation, etc. You can only do about 3 “things” during the investigation phase.

  4. On Day 1 Trial, start with OPENING STATEMENTS

  5. During TRIAL, you will cross-examine witnesses, present evidence, point out contradictions and lies, and try to prove your client’s innocence. Use Persuasion, Insight, History, Performance, Intimidation, Deception, etc. You can roll against witnesses and/or the Prosecution. Keep each trial phase to 1 - 2 witnesses.

  6. There is no jury, only the judge. You must convince them of your client’s innocence.

  7. OPTIONAL: Witnesses have a 4-segment COMPOSURE clock. If you catch them in a lie or find a contradiction, fill in a segment. When the clock is full, they lose composure and stop resisting, lying, etc. They come clean, and start to cooperate.

  8. OPTIONAL: Represent the judge’s favor with an 8-segment Tug-of-War clock. Start half-full. Defense wins if it empties. Prosecution wins if it fills up. (Label the two sides “Defence” and “Prosecution.”) Add and remove ticks when either side makes a decisive move or e.g. crits, or wins an opposed role by ten or more.

  9. OPTIONAL: To speed things up, on a success roll d6: 1-3 = 1 tick; 4-5 = 2 ticks; 6 = 3 ticks.

At the top of your playsheet, draw a 2x3 grid to track time: Day 1 Investigation and Trial, Day 2 Investigation and Trial, Day 3 Investigation and Trial.

Then draw the 8-segment Tug-of-War clock, and mark 4 segments. Label the left side “Defense Wins” and the right side “Prosecution Wins.”

Draw the 4-segment clock for witness composure.

My playsheet was my battlemap, so clocks are rows of squares drawn in marker that can be filled with extra dice. The COMPOSURE clock starts all the way full with four dice, and the witness slowly loses dice as they lose composure. This goes nicely with the Tug-of-War clock where the more dice you lose, the closer you are to winning.

Take that!