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[pixl97]

I never used the 'convict somebody' option in the justice system before, but I had a guy fight with a large number of people and destroy some stuff. The dorfs were getting a little pissy that no justice had been dispensed so I decided to deal with the issue in one way or another.  The issue I had is the dwarf in question is rather useful to me and I didn't want to chain him up for a while. In my infinite wisdom I noticed I could dispense judgement to some innocent, but already dead third party. For one of his crime in which there were six witnesses I convicted a dead fox. For the destruction of a building a dead bear caught the blame. Thinking I had done well I went to other tasks.

WRONG

The fights broke out almost instantly. "Derp McUrist was outraged at the ridiculous conviction on an animal recently." So it looks like I started a downward spiral that I will be lucky to survive. Guess I should have built a waterfall first.

[smjjames]

You should have convicted a live fox and a live bear.....

[vjek]

and that... is why I never use the justice system, nor appoint a Hammerer, nor a captain of the guard, nor any similar position.

It's just not worth the hassle.  It's also why I developed all the scripts I have to brainwash/adjust dwarves, so I can have a semblance of stability while I try to check for/replicate bugs.

[IcyTea31]

Considering in real life cows have been burned at the stake for witchcraft...

[Art]

Dwarves know justice. Let that be a lesson to you.

[LMeire]

I usually abuse the system by convicting people who hate authority, since upset dwarves will go to the mayor for a meeting and if they hate authority that'll just piss them off more- making tantrum spirals more likely rather than less. In DF2012 I could compound it with arming the guards with lethal weapons and letting them murder people with "beatings" to generate more "justice" trials, snowballing it into a purge of every Undesirable in the fort while everyone remained happy to be consoled by a pillar of society; but with the new combat mechanics I figure that probably won't work right anymore, oh well.

[Illogical_Blox]

Heh, I usually don't abuse the justice system, so... I'm fine.

[Skullsploder]

The trick with abusing the justice system is to have chains but no hammerer. How I do it (can't remember who first did this but I certainly can't take credit) is I just put the single chain in the middle of my dining hall, next to a free bed. Convict the vampire for a murder, and in the abscence of a hammerer, he gets assigned to the chain. Got undeirables? Assign them the bed next to the chain. They'll sleep there, the vamp will drain them, they'll die, you convict the vamp of the murder your whole fort witnessed, everyone gets happy thoughts from justice being served. Also it will harden your dwarves to death if you have enough undesirables.

Also have your captain of the guard be "unqustionably weak," squadless, never train, and equip him with nothing but a featherwood crossbow, so that his beatings are as ineffective as possible. I find that general admin dwarves, i.e. Bookkeeper+manager, make the best (worst?) Captains of the guard, provided they don't do any hauling in their free time.

[khearn]

The fights broke out almost instantly. "Derp McUrist was outraged at the ridiculous conviction on an animal recently." So it looks like I started a downward spiral that I will be lucky to survive. Guess I should have built a waterfall first.

I can just picture Toady reading this and saying "Gotcha!" 

[escondida]

So while it's true that dwarven cops will straight up murder people for minor crimes (and thus aren't worth it, imo), in other ways they're way more reasonable than humans...because in real life, we have a long and presumably proud history of accusing animals of crimes. Go us?