June 5th, 2020:

	I went back to work on Monday... or perhaps more appropriately, 
returned to my workplace after working at home for three long months.

It's been a pretty hectic week, and today I *finally* had my first quiet 
lunch break since returning.  So, I spent it playing GURPS.  I'd been 
meaning to playtest a GURPS Cops scenario for a while, and used my 
lunchbreak to visualize a hostage situation.

I went with the standard "jilted lover takes former partner hostage at 
her workplace" trope and ran with it.  The thug kept his hostage in front 
of him, so the cops couldn't get a clear shot at him.  The 
detective/negotiator took the lead, with two officers directly behind him.

At the other end of the room, another officer covered the entrance, 
watching the thug while simultaneously holding a trigger-happy SWAT team 
back.

Opting to try a peaceful solution first, the lead detective quickly 
de-escalated the situation and, after several wildly successful skill 
rolls in a row, got the thug to let the girl go and give up.

In an ideal world, this is how it ought to be.  Of course, I was playing 
the scenario as it would have unfolded in the old days of TV cop shows, 
where the good guys got the bad guys, and everyone went home at the end 
and had dinner with their families.

But next time, what if I played it differently?  Let's explore some 
possibilities:

The lead detective is jaded and doesn't care anymore.  One of the officers 
backing him up is two months pregnant and a little timid today.  The other 
officer has a cocaine addiction and is coming down, and is jittery and 
paranoid.  The officer guarding the rear is weak-willed and can't hold the 
SWAT team back for long.  The SWAT team commander has a Patton complex and 
is about to run roughshod over the situation.  The thug is a meth addict 
and is belligerent, and the hostage is having a severe panic attack.

Tense and tenuous...

Or, what if I played it like Police Academy?  Mahoney keeps the thug 
distracted with fast talk while charming the pants off the supermodel-like 
hostage, Jones makes a bunch of crazy noises that sound like helicopter 
gunships releasing SWAT Commandos, while Tackleberry crashes through the 
rear entrance.  While the thug is trying to make sense of it all, 
Hightower breaks through the (concrete) wall behind the thug and 
apprehends him, sending the hostage into Mahoney's arms...

Or, how about playing it like a modern "gritty" police drama - after a 
long, tense standoff, one of the officers backing up the detective gets a 
clear shot at the perp and takes him out with a bullet to the chest.

So many possibilities... but I only get an hour for lunch!