# Would a typical D&D town allow adventurers to walk around?



## Lalato (Aug 19, 2014)

In another thread I mentioned that the existence of adventurers would probably change how towns and villages interact with them.  I mean... would you want people that could literally kill everyone you know without a lot of effort roaming around your town square?  Probably not.  Maybe over time the culture would change in obvious and non-obvious ways.

I proposed that strangers wandering into your town would likely need to present themselves to the elders or leaders or whatever... and maybe customs would have evolved that they might keep you out of town until you, the adventurer, gained their trust.  And this would likely be true of any strangers with weapons and magic that happened to walk into town.

Anyway... [MENTION=2011]KarinsDad[/MENTION], [MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION], [MENTION=1165](Psi)SeveredHead[/MENTION]... have at it.  We can discuss the finer points of how merchants do or don't get around this.  Or better yet, how do you think cultures would evolve with magic and adventurers (aka murder hobos) wandering around?


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## The Crimson Binome (Aug 19, 2014)

Are you specifically talking about the scenario where high-level adventurers are common? Because I figure that, for the most part, high-level characters are too rare to have a significant impact, just from passing by. Even if Ruby the Multi-Faceted (level 12 Eldritch Knight) is wandering through town, the vast majority of her interactions will be as a normal person. That she _could_ level the town if she really wanted to is not something that matters, since she pretty much never does. (And if a high-level evil character does that, then they quickly draw the attention of equal-level heroes, who deal with the situation.)

Really, it's a lot like the Marvel Universe - you don't need to regulate mutants, because they police themselves.


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## GSHamster (Aug 19, 2014)

How would you stop them?

If you can't stop them from causing a disturbance in town, you can't stop them from simply walking around. In fact, by trying to stop them entering, you might trigger the very disturbance you are seeking to avoid.

I think the best strategy for dealing with adventures is to first treat them as though they are normal, and hope that they follow the regular norms of behavior. If they don't behave, the best policy is probably appeasement, and give them whatever they want until they go away or you can summon someone powerful enough to deal with them (the local lord, etc.).


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## Lalato (Aug 19, 2014)

Saelorn said:


> Are you specifically talking about the scenario where high-level adventurers are common? Because I figure that, for the most part, high-level characters are too rare to have a significant impact, just from passing by. Even if Ruby the Multi-Faceted (level 12 Eldritch Knight) is wandering through town, the vast majority of her interactions will be as a normal person. That she _could_ level the town if she really wanted to is not something that matters, since she pretty much never does. (And if a high-level evil character does that, then they quickly draw the attention of equal-level heroes, who deal with the situation.)
> 
> Really, it's a lot like the Marvel Universe - you don't need to regulate mutants, because they police themselves.




You're right... in the fiction of the D&D universe this is true.  Or at least that's how we typically play it at the table.  But I'm not talking about how it gets played at the table.  Most people in your typical D&D town don't have giant battle axes strapped to their backs.  So when someone comes into town loaded for bear it will likely be quite intimidating... unless the culture has evolved to accept these sorts of people walking around.

What I'm asking is how would a culture evolve to either accept these adventurers or mitigate the problems they represent so that people in a small town could sleep better at night.  According to most versions of D&D, adventurers are kind of rare to begin with.  Magic, outside of some settings, is supposed to be rare to the common townsfolk.  In such a world, what happens when a 1st Level Wizard wanders into town.  How about a 5th level adventuring party that looks seasoned and ready for action?

How do people and their communities deal with the idea of Druids or magical Bards?  How would the culture evolve around the idea that someone could just one day express their magical talents by blowing up the town square with a fireball?  Making the town matron grow a beard that one time was funny, but everyone stops laughing when you kill a dozen people at the market.


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## The Crimson Binome (Aug 19, 2014)

Lalato said:


> What I'm asking is how would a culture evolve to either accept these adventurers or mitigate the problems they represent so that people in a small town could sleep better at night.  According to most versions of D&D, adventurers are kind of rare to begin with.  Magic, outside of some settings, is supposed to be rare to the common townsfolk.  In such a world, what happens when a 1st Level Wizard wanders into town.  How about a 5th level adventuring party that looks seasoned and ready for action?



If it's rare enough, then the townsfolk won't even notice it. There's no way to tell a level 1 Wizard with a staff from an old guy with a walking stick, unless he starts doing magic. If something is doing magic, then I imagine the normal response is to either run away or try to kill it. (Rule #1 of arcane magic: Do not cast spells where you might be seen.)

I would imagine that clerical magic would be different, though. Since clerics have to follow the ideals of the relevant deity, and since priests tend to be trusted figures within the community, then you _know_ that the lady brandishing the sun disk isn't going to (intentionally) burn down the town.

And of course, a level 5 Fighter doesn't necessarily look any different than a level 1 town guard. They probably even shop at the same place. As long as they don't do anything to attract attention, they should be fine. Although, wearing plate armor is bound to give you some strange looks, since it's a huge advertisement of your wealth (and likely nobility).


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## Whizbang Dustyboots (Aug 19, 2014)

I think "how do you stop them" is the basic answer here. And if they become a nuisance, other adventurers will decide to kill them for the price on their heads and all their magic items.

More globally, A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe does a great job at looking at how D&Disms would deform the "realistic" medieval world. It uses 3E numerical assumptions, but unless you have a bunch of historians or statisticians in your group, no one's likely to notice.

I would go so far as to say it's all but a must-have for DMs running typical D&D campaigns.


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## ephemeron (Aug 19, 2014)

This is an area where I like to take inspiration from Westerns (or samurai movies, if you prefer ). 

When somebody who is dangerous, and famous for being dangerous, comes to town, some of the locals will hide, some will try to ingratiate themselves, and maybe a reckless individual or two will try to test themselves against the legend. And the local authorities might fall into any of these categories.

Things will be different in real cities, not least because those will have other people with levels in character classes, but adventurers in my games tend to spend most of their time on the fringes of civilization and beyond.


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## Andor (Aug 19, 2014)

I don't think there is a single answer. It depends on the town, it's history and the adventurers in question. 

A large city generally won't care about anyone short of an Elminster.

A trade town is going to see enough traffic to have evolved appropriate responses. Which generally means jogging up the prices and pointing them at local trouble. If they cause problems there will be a coordinated response involving whatever the local resources are. Probably including the rest of the adventurers passing though town.

A small towns response will depend more on the exact circumstances. One plagued by orcs will probably react poorly to a half-Orc barbarian, a drow necromancer, and Dragonling Bat-paladin. One without local troubles will probably think an eleven illusionist, dwarf monk and human Cleric to be the next best thing to a circus.

Speaking of circuses, an angry elephant is more than capable of wrecking a small town, but who worries about that when they see colorful wagons?

Likewise IRL any truck could be carrying a fertilizer bomb capable of leveling a skyscraper, but to "logically" insist on examining every passing lorry would cripple society. Life involves taking risks, including living with armed people, trucks which could be bombs, and for many in Italy, Japan and Mexico City, living on or next to active volcanos.

Yeah, the bearded guy might blow up the town square, or you could be eaten by a bulette the next time you step off of a paved surface. So what? You can't worry about every possibility or you'll never get out of bed, and then you die from bed sores.

As for small towns dealing with Adventurers? Poison. Bribes. Or give them what they want and pray. For a historical parallel look up an old film called "The last valley" starring Omar Sherrif and Michael Caine.


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## Hand of Evil (Aug 19, 2014)

It all comes down to your setting.  Some town would offer up the welcome wagon, others the people would hide, others the law would be watching.  My games, some towns cause the characters to hide.  Think about what the town's income and what the people do for a living, mining towns and border towns are rough places, farm towns not.


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## Celebrim (Aug 19, 2014)

Lalato said:


> In another thread I mentioned that the existence of adventurers would probably change how towns and villages interact with them.  I mean... would you want people that could literally kill everyone you know without a lot of effort roaming around your town square?  Probably not.  Maybe over time the culture would change in obvious and non-obvious ways.




Yes, though I should first say that 'adventurer' is not a recognized profession in my world.  The closest equivalent to adventurer as you use the word is 'mercenary' or 'sellsword'.  Adventurer as D&D players use the word carries the connotation of hero or problem solver, and is positive in the way that the English word 'Knight' is (and not in the negative way that Ritter is in German).   The word adventurer isn't in common parlance in my world.  You'd never say, "We should hire adventurers."   To the extent that the word is used, it means the same as the modern 'tourist'.  An adventurer is a wealthy dilettante that explores the world at his leisure, and this sort of figure is as suspect as he is romantic - the idle rich, a sort of rich vagrant.   'Vacation' is not a word that would be readily understood either, nor would 'holiday' outside of its connotation of a 'holy day'.  Life is too brutal for long vacancies from ones employment without cause.   

So mostly the PC's in my game are either considered to be mercenaries or else actually are mercenaries.   This both simplifies and complicates travel.

Most PC's begin the game without noble rank.  As such they may or may not be entitled to carry weapons depending on the starting nation.  Or their rights to carry weapons may be limited.  In Hulshen only nobles can carry swords.   In Talernga the only weapon a citizen is permitted to carry in the street without a license is a sword.   Most PC's begin as citizens of a city, and so have papers indicating their residency and the rights that go with it.   However, even if they have the right to possess weapons for their defense in the city, that generally doesn't extend to traipsing over the countryside armed.   Armed individuals on the road will often be assumed to be bandits, and diplomacy checks/reaction rolls are in order if a patrol of the guard or a knight of the road finds an armed company moving on the road without permit.   

There are several common exemptions.  Nobles, clergy, and laity in the direct service of a temple generally have rights to go armed, and staves and knives are generally over looked as weapons unless the guard is feeling particularly abusive.   So a good early excuse is that the group are all retainers of whatever cleric or knight happens to be in the party (if any).   Once the group has a bit of money they can generally organize themselves as an official mercenary company under the protection of the local lord, and travel about and hire themselves out without getting in trouble (provided they pay their taxes).   Also in more rural and wilderness areas, these laws tend to be rather laxly kept as people need to defend themselves from bandits in cases where the law doesn't have sufficient presence to do so.

Regardless of their ability to travel, getting into another city is an entirely different matter.  They will be challenged and need to present papers identifying themselves, and explain their business in the city.   They will likely have their goods subject to inspection, and certainly will if they have baggage, carts, mules, or a train of horses.   As mercenaries, they may be forbidden to enter the city at all unless a good reputation proceeds them or they are here on business from some authority figure the locals respect.   Or they may be restricted to only a certain number entering the city and then unarmed.   Of course, if the city happens to be in great need, mercenaries on the other hand might be just the thing.

Wizards are special circumstance everywhere.   By common law, wizards of any rank are entitled to honorifics - Your Potency.  In practice, if you insist on your honorific though, you better be a darn good wizard  - by which I mean some unthinkably high level like 5th or 6th.    They also have rights to privacy and dignity normal travelers don't - you don't paw through a wizard's baggage!  On the other hand, they absolutely MUST declare themselves to the guard and register when arriving in the city.  Failure to do so is generally punishable by death.  A wizard cannot legally conceal his ability.  In many places they must adopt dress that unmistakably identifies them as a wizard at a distance.   A city will not bar entry to an unknown wizard.   Ever.   It's too risky.   They may plot his death when he falls asleep, attempt to drug him, or otherwise plan subtle murder but they aren't going to risk a wizard's curse by denying him hospitality.

Clerics are likewise a special circumstance.  Generally speaking, for similar reasons, no city ever bars entry of a cleric - it's not worth risking angering some god.   However, in general, the rights of a cleric who is not a servant of one of the 6-20 official divine patrons of the city which the city officially supports and engages in communal worship and offerings to are rather limited.   In most cases, you aren't allowed to spread 'an alien doctrine' to a city.  Trying to win converts will get you politely shown the door by some Templars at best, and executed by the cities' existing clergy at worst.   If you want to openly preach your faith, you need the approval of the city.   In most cases, by custom however a cleric is allowed to beg for his substance and bless those that give.   In a few cases though, hostility between two sects is so great that there exists basically an ecclesiastical war between the followers of two deities.   If you go into a town where your rivals sect is openly supported, they'll nod at you politely but you are basically declaring war on the local temple and they will respond in kind.  Your death (our theirs) will be considered to be a matter between the gods and not really a matter falling under the cities jurisdiction.   

Presently, the PC party has one player that obtained noble rank in play.  He previously had some freedom to go about armed as a Templar of the Order Hospitallers of Aravar, but now as Sir Gorinthar, Templar of the Order Hospitallers of Aravar, Knight of Amalteen, famed dragon slayer and rumored saint he has considerable freedom.  He could pretty much say something like, "I'm on a sacred quest.  Stand aside and leave me to my business.", and most people would do so - though they'd send word up the chain of command concerning the unusual behavior.   Likewise, the party cleric has obtained the robes of a full priestess of Showna, and is properly addressed Reverend Mother.   Since she has the favor of the High Priestess, if she really wanted to challenge authority she probably could do so - no one really wants to see Showna upset.   The other party members are basically free agents, but society treats them as variously the retainers of Sir Gorinthar (or perhaps his Gentlemen-in-waiting or Gentlemen in Arms), or retainers of His Potency Master Aden of Amalteen, or of His Excellency Falster Dikelgard, the Most Benevolent Despot, Sovereign Prince of Amalteen on the assumption that they must be somebodies servants.   As such, they inherit some measure of the authority and respect of whatever person its presumed is actually commanding them - even though the reality is they've basically been told 'you are on your own'.   And finally, since the party is known to have been shown the favor of Their Majesties, the Hurin and Hinga of Talernga, there is a general assumption by everyone of low rank that these are Important People and its best to show some diffidence and give them the benefit of the doubt.  

It's not always been like that.  

And if they were to leave and come back with about twice as many levels, it wouldn't be long before everybody was deferring to them out or respect or fear or both.


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## Mishihari Lord (Aug 19, 2014)

This makes me think of feudalism.  D&D characters of mid level and above are basically superheroes.  Even a large group of common men at arms don't have much chance of stopping them, and losing men in a medium sized regular town hurts.  They aren't really replaceable - losing them leaves essential jobs unfilled and families that need to be provided for.  In this situation I expect the person in charge would be a levelled NPC that has either seized power or been appointed by the king because he has the power to control the region, much like a feudal knight.  Such leaders would have a reputation, and the PCs should know they're playing with fire if they cause trouble in such an NPC's town.  The leader would come after them personally with as many mooks as he feels he needs.  And I don't think he'd be interested in taking prisoners.  Far better to set an example so the next people through won't want to start something.


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## tuxgeo (Aug 19, 2014)

It depends on the situation. Some towns will require peace wires on weapons brought in by strangers; other towns will invite well-spoken armed persons into town with open arms, and ask them to stay around and defend the town from monsters. 

The 4E "Points of Light" setting was somewhat like the Wild West: any people there who went from town to town _without_ being armed, or accompanied by armed guards, would be taking their lives in their hands. For that reason, the guards at the city gates would expect random strangers to show up with weapons; any who bore _no_ weapons could easily be up to skullduggery.


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## Jan van Leyden (Aug 19, 2014)

I hadn't given much thought to this, but do think that the most sensible approach is like the one shown in Western/Samurai movies: have the people react extremely careful, ushering children in, closing the windows, and so on. Then someone official or brave confronts the newcomers to check the situation out.

This actually lends some sense to the permits issued by the Cormyrean administration in the Forgotten Realms. If I recall correctly each adventuring party there has to be registered. The mayor or headman would ask the party for their license and perhaps take note of it. Each party not shoing their license or not owning one would be considered armed and dangerous.

Following from this thought the government might entertain a mobile troupe to engage unlicensed and/or dangereous parties. Add some carrier pigeons to each village and this troupe will follow and engage the miscreants.

Or replace the official troupe with some organization of good adventurers, the Classed Characters Society, which takes care of the deviants.

Neither of this approaches will stop some parties to wreak havoc on unsuspecting communities, but if your adventurers come to such a scene, the next adventure writes itself.


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## pemerton (Aug 19, 2014)

ephemeron said:


> This is an area where I like to take inspiration from Westerns (or samurai movies, if you prefer ).
> 
> When somebody who is dangerous, and famous for being dangerous, comes to town, some of the locals will hide, some will try to ingratiate themselves, and maybe a reckless individual or two will try to test themselves against the legend. And the local authorities might fall into any of these categories.



Just adding to this - in the real world, there were social practices adapted to the presence of wandering, dangerous people. Westerns and samurai movies draw on those real practices in presenting their fictionalised versions.

There is also inspiration to be had from how Conan is treated in the REH stories, or how Aragorn, Gandalf and others are treated in LotR.

I think the default attitude that is both plausible, and easy to work with from a GMing point of view, is healthy respect combined with underlying suspicion. Players can lose the respect (but perhaps have it replaced by fear) by having their PCs confirm the suspicions! (Or vice versa.)


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## pemerton (Aug 19, 2014)

tuxgeo said:


> The 4E "Points of Light" setting was somewhat like the Wild West: any people there who went from town to town _without_ being armed, or accompanied by armed guards, would be taking their lives in their hands.



For "the Wild West" we could substitute a wide range of human societies. (Including most of pre-19th century Europe.)

For instance, Hobbes in the Leviathan, in defending his characterisation of the state of nature as a war of all against all, points to (i) our tendency to lock our houses when we leave them, and (ii) our tendency to arm ourselves when travelling. For a contemporary Australian audience, at least, (i) still resonates - at least for town and city dwellers, most of us still lock our houses when we go out - but (ii) is somewhat jarring. (Australia, especially urban Australia, is a largely gun-free society other than some criminals and police.)


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## delericho (Aug 19, 2014)

They'd probably be treated the same way Batman was in the most recent film trilogy - officially, they're vigilantes to be stopped; unofficially they're generally useful to have around, and anyway the local authorities can't really stop them anyway.

Either that, or they'd be treated like rock stars.


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## Derren (Aug 19, 2014)

Once a town or city has a wall it will control everyone who goes in (and taxes). Most likely, more heavily armed persons will not get into the town. Instead they have to camp outside (if they have luck there is an inn there, too). If they want to go inside the town they not only have to present a reason of why, they also have to leave their weapons and armor behind.


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## N'raac (Aug 19, 2014)

I'd say it depends on the town, which depends a lot on the setting. If heavily armed travelers attract little or no attention (positive or negative), then they cannot be all that uncommon. That means it's pretty routine to see similarly armed and armored people in the town (any of whom could be as, or more, powerful).  If the PC's are unusual, then  the town will react in some way, with all those suggested being reasonable possibilities.

One option not mentioned - maybe some kid is attracted to the romance of the stories he has heard, and latches on to one of the PC's.  Or a star-struck ten quickly develops a crush on a PC.  Now they have some neophyte who wants to leave with them, or perhaps sneaks off after them.

The PC's matter as well - are they weird and scary, or normal looking?  Did they all dump CHA, or do they have some charm, tact and diplomacy and make an effort to be friendly and reassure anyone who's nervous?  Are they reasonable and respectful, or do they charge belligerently about like they own the place? All of these should impact the reaction of the locals.


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## Halivar (Aug 19, 2014)

Adventure hook: "WANTED -- Adventurers to rid our town of adventurers we hired to get rid of some other adventurers. No bounty, but you can keep their stuff."


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## Ruin Explorer (Aug 19, 2014)

I think this is a bit of self-answering question - if it's D&D, then yes, it's going to allow D&D-style adventurers to walk around, as a default. That's going to be the norm. They might get the evil eye from the town guard or the like, but they're not going to, as the norm, be turned away or the like.

If you want to do something else, you're kind of moving away from default D&D to a more specific setting of your own, which is fair enough, but the "D&D" assumption is certainly that you can.

The problem with demands that people present themselves to elders or the like is that adventurers are likely to be vastly more powerful than the town elders or the like. Immediately attempting to push the adventurers around and force them to conform to your demands, means you're sowing the seeds of hostility.

On the contrary, a more likely scenario is that the elders will politely request the presence of the adventurers, feed them, quite likely give them somewhere to sleep, and so on, in order to set a positive tone from the start, and to help control and direct them into behaving. Trying to bully them or force them to conform is just going to be counter-productive. Unless they're maniacs, you want to start with the "honored guests" approach.

You might not "want" them there, but you don't "want" the King's Tax Collector, or a rowdy band of mercenaries who work for the merchant's guild, or a powerful NPC wizard there, either, but what are you going to do, start shiz with them? Why would you do that? It's perversity itself. These people are, as you've said, more powerful than you. On top of that, most of them are pretty much wildly rich, and will blow serious chunks of change on stuff without even blinking, which could massively benefit your town.

So you have to do what people always do - attempt to have some sort of passive control over them, rather than active control, by directing them positively, because as you've noted, if the town behaves in a hostile way, it's likely to end up in a very bad state, whereas if the adventurers like it, it's likely to end up being able to make $$$ off them.



delericho said:


> They'd probably be treated the same way Batman was in the most recent film trilogy - officially, they're vigilantes to be stopped; unofficially they're generally useful to have around, and anyway the local authorities can't really stop them anyway.
> 
> Either that, or they'd be treated like rock stars.




Treating rich-ass, superhumanly powerful adventurers as "vigilantes to be stopped" seems like cruising for a bruising to me, so I doubt that'd even be the official line. Historically, whenever someone gets rich and powerful enough, they start getting titles thrown at them in an attempt to buy them off and integrate them into the power-structures of various factions. I think it's very likely that any adventurers who survive for long and are open with their cash are going to have people desperately trying to co-op them, bribe them, and so on, rather than pretending that they're "vigilantes". As for rock stars, yes, that is more likely - even all their deeds are done far from civilization, their gold coins and magic items will quickly make it clear that they're not just making this up.


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## Mishihari Lord (Aug 19, 2014)

Halivar said:


> Adventure hook: "WANTED -- Adventurers to rid our town of adventurers we hired to get rid of some other adventurers. No bounty, but you can keep their stuff."




I'm reminded of a plotline from Schlock Mercenary.  The protagonists had a mission to extract some data from a computer system at a city library.  When things went south, the authorities put out a bid for someone to come take care of the "terrorists" at the library.  The main characters accepted the bid and sent down a second to to extract the first in the guise of capturing the first.  The completed their primary mission and the addon succesfully and got paid twice.

...  Now I want to try that as a D&D adventure.


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## delericho (Aug 19, 2014)

Ruin Explorer said:


> Treating rich-ass, superhumanly powerful adventurers as "vigilantes to be stopped" seems like cruising for a bruising to me...




So, like in the most recent Batman films, then?



> so I doubt that'd even be the official line.




The thing is that if the society pretends to be governed by the rule of law then that really has to be the official line. Because while Batman might be well-meaning, he's pretty much poison to the running of a lawful society - he very publicly shows utter contempt for the local laws and those charged with enforcing them. He makes the GCPD a laughing-stock, meaning that they couldn't clean up the streets even if they wanted to. Plus, he's responsible for more crimes, and more destructive crimes, than just about any of the criminals he hunts down.

I suppose the exception is if the adventurers were persuaded to wear a badge and to uphold the law themselves. But that's not exactly common behaviour for PCs.


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## WayneLigon (Aug 19, 2014)

Ruin Explorer said:


> The problem with demands that people present themselves to elders or the like is that adventurers are likely to be vastly more powerful than the town elders or the like. Immediately attempting to push the adventurers around and force them to conform to your demands, means you're sowing the seeds of hostility.




That's really a player expectation problem than a world-building problem. Unless the players are specifically playing psychopathic amoral murderhobos, then they're going to recognize and respond to civil authority despite their own personal power. In general, it's been my experience that the higher level adventurers tend to travel incognito as much as possible, because by the time they are at the town-destroying stage they also have made some powerful enemies that they'd just as soon not be able to track their every movement.

I can't really give any advice if the players insist on playing psychopathic amoral murderhobos and react to any curb on their desires by thinking people into the cornfield. That way lies the madness of 20th level guards and every town having an Elminster clone simply for the purpose of dealing with psychopathic amoral murderhobos.

Magic does pose a problem to civil authority. In most worlds I've run, I generally use one of two approaches.

1. Most wizards don't bother with normal people. Once they get about fifth level or so, they go off in the wilderness and build their tower and stay there for the most part. Wizards that go a little power mad and screw with mortal society are usually the type of things that adventurers deal with by sticking them with swords until they stop moving.

2. The Wizard's Guild. A good idea of this sort of thing can be found in Lawrence Watt-Evans' Ethshar books, where wizards and spellcasters of various types can be found running shops and are treated like any other profession. And like any other profession, all wizards are members of the Wizard's Guild. You don't get a choice in that. Your master inducts you before you're released from his service. Country boys who somehow get trained are expected to join when they go into a town of any reasonable size for the first time. Wizards that do not join disappear, simple as that. The Guild knows the reputation of all wizards everywhere would suffer if wizards were to engage in mass unlawful activities, so the civil authorities simply trust the Guild to take care of problems before they become problems. The Guild, like all guilds, has the authority to try it's own members, etc, and the Guild considers all wizards, everywhere, to be 'members' whether they are or not.

They do have occasional problems, like with the Warlock of Vond (who was, for all practical purposes, Superman), but those are exceptions to the rule.


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## Umbran (Aug 19, 2014)

There isn't going to be one generic answer - it depends upon realities of the world, and the cultures involved.  How large the village/town/city is matters - a smaller place is unlikely to have a workable defense, for example.

My original response in the other thread was concerning guards for merchants.  In the real world, where there were bandits and thieves between towns, but no monsters, caravan guards and bodygaurds for merchants were pretty regular things around the world.  If that same merchant has to deal with orcs and such, I don't see how you you can expect them to travel without protection.  And asking them to walk around any sizable town (with its expected burden of thieves and muggers) without a bodyguard is going to make them think twice about doing business within your town - and can the elders really afford to have that happen? Rich and important people in our world have armed bodyguards.  Why not in the fantasy world?

Moreover, do remember that a large chunk of the PC classes can be very dangerous people without wearing overt arms and armor.  The party monk is just going to look like this guy.  The bard can look just like any other musician.  Going after the guys who are visibly in armor and weapons means leaving the people with fireball wandering around!  In 5e, at least, where magic items are apparently not supposed to be central to a character's power, using detect magic as a way to ferret out dangerous people is failure prone.  So, these ways of trying to keep the town safe would be "security theater" - for show, because when it matters, it isn't going to work against an intelligent foe.


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## Lalato (Aug 19, 2014)

The one thing I don't understand is the idea that people are forced to react positively because its D&D. Society doesn't necessarily work that way... and society wouldn't evolve to simply appease these powerful beings.  Countermeasures would be devised over time. Customs would evolve to account for these powerful people.

As for countermeasures, either the town elders or officials would be powerful people on their own, or they would be operating under the protection of more powerful people.  This would go a long way toward ensuring that murder hobos would be hunted down should they disrespect town customs or citizens.

Customs might evolve in various ways around such things...  

Maybe everyone gets a little bit of weapons training, and every man, woman, and child carries a dagger in case of trouble.  In the new edition a mob of dagger wielding townies is still a threat to a party of PCs even into mid levels.

Maybe every town has several rookeries and alarm bells that will warn not only the citizens to hide in their cellars but send word to all the other nearby towns that there is trouble (Right her in River City... and that starts with T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Player Characters!)

Or maybe customs are that magic users cannot enter towns without the consent of elders.  And this has been negotiated by some powerful group of magic users that will hunt down anyone that breaks this custom.

Anyway... just some riffs on the concept.


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## Stalker0 (Aug 19, 2014)

You could use the analogy of the mafia or yakuza.

If a group of them were in my town what would happen?


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## Umbran (Aug 19, 2014)

Lalato said:


> As for countermeasures, either the town elders or officials would be powerful people on their own, or they would be operating under the protection of more powerful people.  This would go a long way toward ensuring that murder hobos would be hunted down should they disrespect town customs or citizens.




Note that countermeasures require wealth.  Why is a rural town official a powerful person?  He has all the power of a murder hobo.  Being a murder hobo pays pretty well, right?  So, why is is a civil servant, getting payed diddly to protect a town?

There will be some few who do it for good reasons.  But not many.  We have ample evidence of what happens when the "protection" forces aren't really good people.  Who watches the watchmen?  



> Maybe everyone gets a little bit of weapons training, and every man, woman, and child carries a dagger in case of trouble.  In the new edition a mob of dagger wielding townies is still a threat to a party of PCs even into mid levels.




Yeah, but how many of them are going to die in the process?  Is that cost of life really worth the damage the murder hobos are going to do?

And, what damage is that, exactly?  In a big city, they may rob rich people, sure.  But those rich people can hire their own darned security.  In a rural village, what, pray tell, is the murder hobo doing there?  There's no darned gold to steal.  No magic to find.  There's just a bunch of farmers.  There may be the occasional group of sociopaths in it for hurting people just 'cause, but by and large, murder hobos stay alive by being smart.  Is it smart to mess up a fishing village just for giggles?  No. So, will they frequently do so?  Probably not.

This kind of feeds into an important point - security is developed in response to rare events tends to be *bad*.  Expensive and ineffective, more for show that, "we are doing things to keep you safe" than to actually keep you safe.  Thus the phrase "security theater".

We are not actually very good at creating proactive shields against normal, real-world harm.  We usually work with retroactive security - if a bad guy does act, we catch 'em, and do something to 'em to teach them a lesson and provide a deterrent to others who might be tempted to try the same.  I am unconvinced that the fictional world should somehow be better at security than we are.


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## Ruin Explorer (Aug 19, 2014)

delericho said:


> The thing is that if the society pretends to be governed by the rule of law then that really has to be the official line.




No, _modern Western society_ does. Not "society" historically. Nor is the rule of law consistent. We constantly see people who are a raider/pirate one minute and an official lord the next. As much as we have one law for the rich/powerful, one law for the poor/weak, in the past it was vastly greater (and often LITERALLY the case).



delericho said:


> Because while Batman might be well-meaning, he's pretty much poison to the running of a lawful society - he very publicly shows utter contempt for the local laws and those charged with enforcing them. He makes the GCPD a laughing-stock, meaning that they couldn't clean up the streets even if they wanted to. Plus, he's responsible for more crimes, and more destructive crimes, than just about any of the criminals he hunts down.
> 
> I suppose the exception is if the adventurers were persuaded to wear a badge and to uphold the law themselves. But that's not exactly common behaviour for PCs.




None of this applies well to medieval/renaissance societies, particularly ones under constant threat. Medieval law enforcement was selective, biased and arbitrary in the extreme.



WayneLigon said:


> That's really a player expectation problem than a world-building problem. Unless the players are specifically playing psychopathic amoral murderhobos, then they're going to recognize and respond to civil authority despite their own personal power. In general, it's been my experience that the higher level adventurers tend to travel incognito as much as possible, because by the time they are at the town-destroying stage they also have made some powerful enemies that they'd just as soon not be able to track their every movement.




No idea where this murderhobo business is coming from. I'm talking about the realities of power imbalances and how powerful people who were outside the "official" power structure were treated historically.



WayneLigon said:


> I can't really give any advice if the players insist on playing psychopathic amoral murderhobos and react to any curb on their desires by thinking people into the cornfield. That way lies the madness of 20th level guards and every town having an Elminster clone simply for the purpose of dealing with psychopathic amoral murderhobos.




Nothing I've said has anything to do with that, so I guess you're talking to someone else at this point?


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## Andor (Aug 19, 2014)

Celebrim said:


> Yes, though I should first say that 'adventurer' is not a recognized profession in my world.  The closest equivalent to adventurer as you use the word is 'mercenary' or 'sellsword'.  Adventurer as D&D players use the word carries the connotation of hero or problem solver, and is positive in the way that the English word 'Knight' is (and not in the negative way that Ritter is in German).   The word adventurer isn't in common parlance in my world.  You'd never say, "We should hire adventurers."




For what it's worth the modern connotation of adventurer as a positive thing is recent. Go back 120 years and the word meant something closer to bandit or maybe highwayman.   



Celebrim said:


> *snippy snip*
> And if they were to leave and come back with about twice as many levels, it wouldn't be long before everybody was deferring to them out or respect or fear or both.




I want to play in your game.  Your world is better thought out and shows more historical nuance than most.

Historically, most noble houses got their start as basically bandits (or adventurers) that settled down and gave themselves airs. When it was less trouble for their neighbors to play along than to kick them out they succeeded and a noble house was born. 

And attitudes and laws vary by place. In europe you has an unarmed (mostly, there's always flails and pitchforks) peasantry that was down trodden and a fairly brutal aristocracy. In the UK you had an armed yeomanry and the nobles either used a lighter hand or discovered that formenting a rebellion amoungst people who are required by law to practice the longbow is a bad plan.

Now where D&D departs from history is in the personal power of high level characters. In the modern era it's pretty easy to aquire weaponry equivilent to mid-level D&D magic, as a society we're still trying to work out exactly how to deal with that. A lot of places in the world have rather spectacularly failed to deal with the fact that with commonplace weaponry you can't crush your populace for very long. There are some exceptions, which mostly run as brutal police states which put most of their energy into crushing the populace while simultaneously telling them how good they have it. It's worth noting that if a band of 'adventurers' showed up in a police state they would very, very rapidly have to make a choice between working for the state, or trying to bring it down. Either way they'll probably be killed. 

The point is, that you need to, as Celebrim has, think about your world and the people in it. How have they been shaped by their geopraphy, history and culture? What is the basis of the laws? (There are two basic systems: What is not permitted is forbidden, or What is not forbidden is permitted.) Are you using the medieval model where you sort of have a net of different power structures which police their own and get prickly about jurisdiction? (The craftsman was making a statue for the Bishop. Is his murder a guild matter, a church matter or a city matter?) What are the local monsters and how has their presence impacted society?

Suggested reading: 
Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
The Night of Madness by Lawrence Watts-Evans
A medieval reader
The Judge Dee novels translated by Van Gulik


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## Umbran (Aug 19, 2014)

Ruin Explorer said:


> None of this applies well to medieval/renaissance societies, particularly ones under constant threat.




This stretches back to the question of the world, the culture, and the individual locale.  What threats does the town face?  What threats have they faced in living memory?  Are murder hobos really an issue that's high on their list of priorities?


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## Lalato (Aug 19, 2014)

[MENTION=177]Umbran[/MENTION], I agree.  Context is very important.  And I also agree with your earlier post that we can't expect a D&D society to be any better at countermeasures than we are.  

However, it's interesting to explore the possible outcomes.  One area will react differently than another based on the same contextual inputs.

Anyway, I find it all fascinating.


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## Halivar (Aug 19, 2014)

It depends on whether we're talking about medieval or renaissance societies. In a renaissance-era town, all men of age are in the militia, excepting very few, and each provided his own weapons. A traveling band entering town with weapons is simply not a big deal. 

In medieval times, all men were technically required to serve in the militia, but no one could actually afford weapons, so towns would pool their resources and outfit one or two people to serve in their stead. So people walking around with weapons are a very big deal, indeed. Such people are probably nobility of wherever they're from, and accorded respect by anyone in the serf class. (from Medival Warfare: A History of the Art of War by Delbruck & Renfroe, a most excellent, if voluminous, resource for historical and fantasy world building)


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## delericho (Aug 19, 2014)

Ruin Explorer said:


> No, _modern Western society_ does. Not "society" historically.
> 
> None of this applies well to medieval/renaissance societies...




Despite some of its trappings, D&D has virtually nothing to do with history. Partly, this is due to the presence of magic. Mostly, though, it's because D&D is played almost exclusively by modern Western players.

For the rest of it: yes, you're probably right.


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## Celebrim (Aug 19, 2014)

Ruin Explorer said:


> The problem with demands that people present themselves to elders or the like is that adventurers are likely to be vastly more powerful than the town elders or the like. Immediately attempting to push the adventurers around and force them to conform to your demands, means you're sowing the seeds of hostility.
> 
> On the contrary, a more likely scenario is that the elders will politely request the presence of the adventurers, feed them, quite likely give them somewhere to sleep, and so on, in order to set a positive tone from the start, and to help control and direct them into behaving. Trying to bully them or force them to conform is just going to be counter-productive. Unless they're maniacs, you want to start with the "honored guests" approach.




There is a lot of truth to that, but I think you are confusing 'adventurers' with high social station.  This recognition that we have 'Important People' is based not on the status of the PC's as 'adventurers' but on their social role as priests, mercenary captains, knights, wizards of some renown or at least the comrades and retainers of same.  Now, my current PC's are steadily climbing up the social ladder (in large part, as they get used and sometimes abused by people of even higher social stature).  But that's not necessarily the case with every group, and most of all if you don't carry those markers of social status and conform to your expected social role don't expect to be treated as an honored guest.   You present yourself as a travelling wizard to the Corporal of the watch at the gate, and sign a register and state your business and generally act like you aren't here on nefarious purposes, then the city will play its part and treat you like an honored guest even though you may be making them really uncomfortable.   But if you don't play along and conform to expectations, then you get treated in blunt terms like you are a monster.   You'll be killed if they think they can get away with it, or politely asked when your business will be finished (hint, hint), or if neither of that seems to be working, they'll call for reinforcements.  In the case of wizards, this probably means a band of NPC clerics, inquisitors, and a small force of Templar witch hunters show up in 1-2 days and try to capture or kill you in your sleep.



> Treating rich-ass, superhumanly powerful adventurers as "vigilantes to be stopped" seems like cruising for a bruising to me...




Agreed.  That is certainly not the default position the town takes with anyone of unknown rank.  Most NPCs treat heavily armed individuals with great deference on the assumption that when you don't know someone's rank, it's best to guess on the high side than risk not showing enough respect.   When the PC's stop in an inn, the ostler and the host and the servants usually engage in very exaggerated subservience to the PCs and did so from a quite early point (when it wasn't actually necessary).  But early on there was also some pretty tense negotiation between a mayor and the PC's where the mayor was trying to smooth things over without having a war break out in his streets with PC party after the PC's got a little too big headed and a little too free with the law.  The PCs backed down, and the mayor breathed a sigh of relief.   If the PC's didn't have a positive reputation in the town prior to that (they'd basically just saved the town), and if the PC's hadn't backed down, it would have gotten really nasty in a hurry.



> Historically, whenever someone gets rich and powerful enough, they start getting titles thrown at them in an attempt to buy them off and integrate them into the power-structures of various factions. I think it's very likely that any adventurers who survive for long and are open with their cash are going to have people desperately trying to co-op them, bribe them, and so on, rather than pretending that they're "vigilantes". As for rock stars, yes, that is more likely - even all their deeds are done far from civilization, their gold coins and magic items will quickly make it clear that they're not just making this up.




Yes, pretty much.  When one of the PC's was knighted, it wasn't in the mind of the NPC doing it for the PC's benefit.   He was doing it to extract an oath of loyalty from the character.   The PC hasn't yet realized the extent that creates a conflict of loyalty, though at may be now dawning on the player that he's just sworn loyalty to the man who is his own families worst enemy.  In the long run it will probably force the PC to become either an oathbreaker or a traitor to his blood.  Fortunately, he's probably about to head off into the wilderness for a few months were such problems aren't that relevant.


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## Halivar (Aug 19, 2014)

delericho said:


> Despite some of its trappings, D&D has virtually nothing to do with history. Partly, this is due to the presence of magic. Mostly, though, it's because D&D is played almost exclusively by modern Western players.



It doesn't necessarily _have _to be this way. I like the trappings of historicity because then most of the "world building" is done for me. I justify it in the face of magic by simply saying that magic, like any other power in medieval times, is aggregated and concentrated by the powerful elite, just as military and economic power was in real life. I daresay that the power structures and societies of medieval D&D land should not be too terribly alien to a real life medieval person, at all.


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## Celebrim (Aug 19, 2014)

Umbran said:


> My original response in the other thread was concerning guards for merchants.  In the real world, where there were bandits and thieves between towns, but no monsters, caravan guards and bodygaurds for merchants were pretty regular things around the world.  If that same merchant has to deal with orcs and such, I don't see how you you can expect them to travel without protection.  And asking them to walk around any sizable town (with its expected burden of thieves and muggers) without a bodyguard is going to make them think twice about doing business within your town - and can the elders really afford to have that happen? Rich and important people in our world have armed bodyguards.  Why not in the fantasy world?




All entirely reasonable, but my one word response to the direction you are going is: taxes.  

Most D&D world's have fantastically fewer taxes than the real world.  The fact that the merchant must pay for a license to travel the road armed or to enter a city with his guard, addresses two fundamental goals of civil society - how do we extract money from people (particularly rich people), and who are you any way?  That is, "Are you rich and can we trust you to behave yourself reasonably well?"   The short answer is, "A typical D&D town (at least in my world) allows adventurers to walk around if they a) pay a small fee, b) positively identify themselves, and c) obey the normal social conventions of the town."


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## delericho (Aug 19, 2014)

Halivar said:


> It doesn't necessarily _have _to be this way.




Sure, I understand that. But for the vast majority of tables, it is that way.



> I like the trappings of historicity because then most of the "world building" is done for me. I justify it in the face of magic by simply saying that magic, like any other power in medieval times, is aggregated and concentrated by the powerful elite, just as military and economic power was in real life.




Yep, all of which is fine.

But the presence of magic is actually the smaller of the two stumbling blocks. The bigger issue is that the people coming to the table have a collective understanding of how things work that comes from having lived their lives in a relatively free country, with such modern notions as equality, and due process, and the like. It is _possible_ to put all that aside to do a simulation of a medieval or renaissance , but it's not easy.


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## Ruin Explorer (Aug 19, 2014)

delericho said:


> Despite some of its trappings, D&D has virtually nothing to do with history. Partly, this is due to the presence of magic. Mostly, though, it's because D&D is played almost exclusively by modern Western players.




Definitely agreed, but I think even most of said players realize this world they were in doesn't run the way modern Western society does. It may not run the way medieval/renaissance society does, either, but the smaller and far less even role of the rule of law is one place where they line up a bit more.

Underneath it all, humans are humans, and appeasing people more powerful than you is generally easier and, in the short term at least, far smarter, than confronting them or otherwise trying to "put them in their place".

Of course one should mention the good old "Be nice to the adventurers whilst one guy rides off to tell the local lord and see if he wants to send anyone to 'deal' with them or not"!

I don't actually agree re: "most tables" being unable to wipe the modernity from their eyes. My experience is the contrary. "Most" tables I've played at _largely_ can. Obviously some is intentionally retained (less racism, sexism, societal creepiness in general, etc.), but my experience is that 8/10 D&D players loved history at school, regularly read history books, and/or the better class of fantasy/historical novels, and have a much firmer grasp on "the past was different" than the average reasonably intelligent person.

The exceptions I have seen were all people whose eyes glaze over when history is mentioned, and kids who just don't know much history. I've seen such tables, esp. when I was younger, and if D&D was super-super-mainstream like WoW, I'd totally buy "most", but it isn't, and my experience is that "most" tables are fairly okay at this. YMMV etc.!


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## delericho (Aug 19, 2014)

Ruin Explorer said:


> I don't actually agree re: "most tables" being unable to wipe the modernity from their eyes. My experience is the contrary. "Most" tables I've played at _largely_ can. Obviously some is intentionally retained (less racism, sexism, societal creepiness in general, etc.), but my experience is that 8/10 D&D players loved history at school, regularly read history books, and/or the better class of fantasy/historical novels, and have a much firmer grasp on "the past was different" than the average reasonably intelligent person.




I'm sure they get that the past was different, but I doubt they grok just _how_ different it really was. It's like a foreign country - except that where someone could go an live in another country, immerse themselves in the culture, and perhaps come to understand it, that option really isn't possible with the past.


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## Umbran (Aug 19, 2014)

Celebrim said:


> Most D&D world's have fantastically fewer taxes than the real world.  The fact that the merchant must pay for a license to travel the road armed or to enter a city with his guard, addresses two fundamental goals of civil society - how do we extract money from people (particularly rich people), and who are you any way?  That is, "Are you rich and can we trust you to behave yourself reasonably well?"   The short answer is, "A typical D&D town (at least in my world) allows adventurers to walk around if they a) pay a small fee, b) positively identify themselves, and c) obey the normal social conventions of the town."




"Positively identify"?  Sure, if you want to speak directly to a local lord, a letter of introduction may be required from some other personage of note.  And governmental types who wanted their people to travel might give letters of safe passage, to tell others that getting in the way might have consequences.  Henry V seems to have invented the thing we consider a "passport" to identify his important people when they were in foreign lands.  But these are less about "are you who you say you are?" and more about "are you important enough to worry about?"

But identity documents for the masses - what we think of these days as "positive ID" - didn't really become common until around WWI, if I recall correctly.  Before that time, you don't really have the information infrastructure to support such.  And photo IDs, kind of obviously, require photography....

So, yes, if you need a reason to support a forgery plotline, by all means introduce the idea of positive ID.    But I don't think this matters for merchants - it doesn't matter if they are who they say they are, except insofar as they say they are somebody with stuff to sell or a desire to buy.  You can call yourself by whatever name you want to use, so long as you have the goods or the cash to dump into my local economy.

Pay a fee?  Sure - that may work if your town has a wall, and we are talking about merchants.  For PCs, we have to set aside how frequently murder hobos can climb things really well, sneak past wall guards, and, you know... fly and stuff.  Obey normal social conventions - of course.


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## MichaelSomething (Aug 19, 2014)

This is how a small town deals with adventurers...


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## Mirtek (Aug 19, 2014)

Ruin Explorer said:


> They might get the evil eye from the town guard



 Ah, they are just jealous. You know, they used to be adventurers too, but then they took an arrow to the knee


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## The Black Ranger (Aug 19, 2014)

I would say it all depends on the group and the campaign. 

In my games, you aren't the most powerful people around. There are circles of mages, religious orders, powerful thieves guilds, fighter's guilds etc... If you were to stroll into a city like Waterdeep, you could be watched depending on your status and/or party make up.


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## Celebrim (Aug 19, 2014)

On the counter-measures front, a typical small town that is serving as the urban hub for a 8-12 villages and hamlets has the following resources to defend itself.

a) A garrison of the guard:  Usually 10-20 mounted soldiers, together a number of pages, messengers, and grooms.  They are generally 1st-2nd level fighters, and are in service to whomever is the local liege - often the sovereign but depending on how feudal a particular nation is possible a local feudal lord.  They'll be lead by a 'Captain' who is a capable fighter of 3rd-5th level.  The closer the town is to the border, the more capable such garrisons tend to be.  There primary job is to deal with small external threats like individual highwaymen, and relate up the chain of command any potentially larger threat.  Somewhere in a 1-2 days march is usually a small castle with a larger garrison of 100 or so troops, with a commander who can call together all the distributed forces if needed.  By switching horses or riders at every smaller garrison, a messenger can generally send a message 60-70 miles in a day and further in emergencies (pony express style).  
Each garrison has a small supply of emergency items for dealing with unusual problems - for example, lycanthropes.  This will generally include silver arrows, magical arrows, specialized poisons, and thrown weapons of various sorts (grenades, if you like).  
b) A town watch: Generally 8-12 individuals who operate as thief catchers and in modern parlance 'police'.  They are generally 2nd-3rd level hunters (they get more work than the guard), with a smattering of rogue levels (takes one to catch one).  They generally have a number of well trained dogs or similar pets.  They are led by a Reeve who is generally both a tough guy and a fairly shrewd politician.  In general, they tend to be a rather sneaky ruthless bunch of individuals, and in addition to the usual skills are fairly adept at using nets, lassos, mancatchers and the like.   They are pretty adept at ambush, subduing things, cutting out tongues, gouging out eyes, and generally rendering things helpless.  'Due process' means ensuring a potential spellcaster can't do bad things to you before the judge arrives to give you permission to execute him, or feeding everyone the same poisoned feast and ensuring you have enough antidote or clerics on hand to cure the innocent.  Most of them take the opinion that hard ruthless individuals are necessary for good men to sleep in their beds at night.  Some of them are serious about that.  Others just use it as an excuse to be mean, sadistic, and extract bribes or engaged in legalized banditry.
c) An ecclesiastical counsel:  Generally 4-8 clerics of 3rd-5th level, commanding a collectively a force of 10-20 Templars with various capabilities but often 1st-2nd level fanatics, and assisted by a variety of initiates, novices, and non-combatant laity.  Note that, as is fitting in a society where the gods play such a huge and active role, in an average town this might well be the most capable single battle force.   More importantly, the local temple can generally send a message to a parent temple in the big city were in essence awaits an NPC party specialized in dealing with problems like undead, werewolves, witches and warlocks, or whatever uncanny problems might plague a town.  Or in other words, they can call 'Paladins' down on you.
d) Local Hedge Wizards: Generally 2-4 wizards of 3rd-5th level who are residents of the town.  They aren't necessarily directly useful in battle, but will generally make themselves useful in whatever capacity they can if the town is under threat.  Most are fairly capable craftsman, experts at potion making, and know a fairly wide range of utility spells.
e) Improvised Line of Battle: This depends on the town, but generally each town has some additional resource of some sort that in an emergency can be called on.  In a port town, this might be those hill giant laborers who work as stevedoers in exchange for full bellies.  In a forest town, this might be calling down out of the hills the lumberjack crews with their mastadons.  In an ancient town, this might be calling on the towns own 'small gods' - the various fey and spirits who normally live invisible lives along side the town.  It might mean that the towns ancestors have sworn some potent oath witnessed by the gods to protect the town in the event of utmost disaster, and suddenly a force of supernatural beings appears from the lands of the dead.  It might mean that the city has pact or convenient with an outsider, and there is a sphinx, or genii, or archon that shows up whenever the town is in mortal danger - perhaps animating that big statue in the town square where gifts are offered every year.  In a town along a major caravan route, it might mean that the PC's probably aren't the only sellswords in need of work.  In a town with a less savory past, this might mean opening that sealed crypt of your long dead great-great-great grandfather and dripping some blood into his skull, or sacrificing one of the town's children on that particular altar in that grove no one normally goes into.  
f) The Militia: Worse come to worse, you can call in every franklin, yeoman, esquire, and knight within 10 miles and make a small army.  

Bigger cities will have comparably bigger resources to draw on.

Generally speaking, I've never had a problem with 'murderhobos' and never had to resort to 20th level town guards and Eliminster.   The assumption of my setting is that since there are generally functional and stable societies somewhere in the setting, they've long ago figured out how to deal creatively with murderhobos of every sort, including the PCs.  The general answer is, "We don't stand and fight on their terms."   

Now of course, this isn't the default approach.   Lots of people can get killed and property destroyed if you have to go all in versus some high level characters.  And in general, a village of 80 people really couldn't do anything immediately about high level characters pushing them around.  But generally speaking, no one likes getting pushed around either, and towns prefer to go to war before discovering just how dystopian life can get under the reign of some amoral terror.   Or conversely, if the powers that be are immoral or amoral terrors, they prefer to act before they are replaced.   And remember, no matter how ruthless the PC's are, these are towns that have to live with and deal with threats that are potentially far more ruthless - that is they see the inhabitants only as a food.  There are monsters out there.  Most of the time towns have to deal with such threats without having a uniquely powerful band of heroes around.

If the PC's really get to be so powerful that societies can't protect themselves from the PC's, well, someone makes the rational decision to just let the PC's lead until a better arrangement can be found.  These probably will only happen though after the PC's have made a few examples and sufficient demonstrations either of ruthlessness or real leadership ability.   The PC's defeat of higher level NPCs, usually with some aid and assistance from the local town can be considered an example of what would happen if town went after the PC's.


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## GSHamster (Aug 19, 2014)

Celebrim said:


> All entirely reasonable, but my one word response to the direction you are going is: taxes.
> 
> Most D&D world's have fantastically fewer taxes than the real world.  The fact that the merchant must pay for a license to travel the road armed or to enter a city with his guard, addresses two fundamental goals of civil society - how do we extract money from people (particularly rich people), and who are you any way?  That is, "Are you rich and can we trust you to behave yourself reasonably well?"   The short answer is, "A typical D&D town (at least in my world) allows adventurers to walk around if they a) pay a small fee, b) positively identify themselves, and c) obey the normal social conventions of the town."




And what happens if the adventurers refuse to pay the tax?

Just because a law or tax exists, doesn't mean it will be obeyed or paid. Laws must be enforced. The problem is that adventurers are often more powerful than the law. At that point, they are effectively beyond the law.

Of course, if you have a world where the law regularly has high-level people capable of putting the beatdown on adventurers, that's different. But then you have other problems where every town has multiple high-levels running around.


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## Haffrung (Aug 19, 2014)

Celebrim said:


> So mostly the PC's in my game are either considered to be mercenaries or else actually are mercenaries.   This both simplifies and complicates travel.




That's the approach I take. How mercenaries are treated depends on the locale. If they're in a community firmly under the control of a powerful lord, they better have a seal or letter from someone explaining their fealty. Or they have to surrender their arms at the gate. If they're in a community with less authority, they're treated like well-off bandits who may or may not be looking for a fight.



delericho said:


> Despite some of its trappings, D&D has virtually nothing to do with history. Partly, this is due to the presence of magic. Mostly, though, it's because D&D is played almost exclusively by modern Western players.




True. However, the roots of D&D were much more historical than the game (and the pop culture) that we have today. Early players were much more like to be historical wargamers, and have some knowledge, if not a passion, for medieval history. So while modern D&D settings have little foundation in history, older supplements, and individual home-brew campaigns, still do.



Celebrim said:


> All entirely reasonable, but my one word response to the direction you are going is: taxes.
> 
> Most D&D world's have fantastically fewer taxes than the real world.  The fact that the merchant must pay for a license to travel the road armed or to enter a city with his guard, addresses two fundamental goals of civil society - how do we extract money from people (particularly rich people), and who are you any way?  That is, "Are you rich and can we trust you to behave yourself reasonably well?"   The short answer is, "A typical D&D town (at least in my world) allows adventurers to walk around if they a) pay a small fee, b) positively identify themselves, and c) obey the normal social conventions of the town."




The AD&D DMG has a lengthy section on taxes, customs, fees, and other ways to separate PCs from their wealth. It's one of those elements that changed the feel of later editions when it was dropped. I always used taxes in my D&D campaigns. Entering a city gate jingling with gold? Better hand a portion over. Same with crossing any kind of manned bridge, port, gate, etc. 

Communities too poor to have a wall are probably too poor to have any permanent standing militia. In those cases, yeah, it's Yojimbo-world. 



Ruin Explorer said:


> I don't actually agree re: "most tables" being unable to wipe the modernity from their eyes. My experience is the contrary. "Most" tables I've played at _largely_ can. Obviously some is intentionally retained (less racism, sexism, societal creepiness in general, etc.), but my experience is that 8/10 D&D players loved history at school, regularly read history books, and/or the better class of fantasy/historical novels, and have a much firmer grasp on "the past was different" than the average reasonably intelligent person.
> 
> The exceptions I have seen were all people whose eyes glaze over when history is mentioned, and kids who just don't know much history. I've seen such tables, esp. when I was younger, and if D&D was super-super-mainstream like WoW, I'd totally buy "most", but it isn't, and my experience is that "most" tables are fairly okay at this. YMMV etc.!




Given the dearth of interest in history, historical fiction, and historical wargaming among the under-40 crowd, I suspect it's a generational thing. Fantasy has largely taken the place of historical knights and sagas in the popular imagination. And precious little fantasy these days gives more than a passing nod to the gritty reality of medieval society. George RR Martin is the big exception, but part of his popularity comes from the fact a gritty medieval world is actually a refreshing change from most other mainstream fantasy over the last 20 years.

Judging by the most popular D&D settings and supplements out there, few players have any interest in the game world being anything more than superficially medieval - basically, no steam-powered or later technology. Socially, most published fantasy worlds are a cross between late 19th century American homesteaders and early 21st century suburban Seattle.



Umbran said:


> Pay a fee?  Sure - that may work if your town has a wall, and we are talking about merchants.  For PCs, we have to set aside how frequently murder hobos can climb things really well, sneak past wall guards, and, you know... fly and stuff.  Obey normal social conventions - of course.




If armed PCs are sneaking or flying over walls, at that point I would expect them to treated the same way a foray of hobgoblins, gargoyles, or ghouls is treated.


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## Andor (Aug 19, 2014)

Umbran said:


> "Positively identify"?  Sure, if you want to speak directly to a local lord, a letter of introduction may be required from some other personage of note.  And governmental types who wanted their people to travel might give letters of safe passage, to tell others that getting in the way might have consequences.  Henry V seems to have invented the thing we consider a "passport" to identify his important people when they were in foreign lands.  But these are less about "are you who you say you are?" and more about "are you important enough to worry about?"
> 
> But identity documents for the masses - what we think of these days as "positive ID" - didn't really become common until around WWI, if I recall correctly.  Before that time, you don't really have the information infrastructure to support such.  And photo IDs, kind of obviously, require photography....




Depends where you are talking about. China certainly had formal travelling papers, and god help you if you were a peasant without them if you caught the attention of the powerful. While it's true that photo ID requires photography, recall also that forgeing hand writing and signatures is not a simple task when your 'mark' has an experienced eye and knows the writing of the person you're trying to forge. The governing classes, even in a place as massive as China, tend to be fairly small and to know each other. In fact the Chinese beauracracy would rotate officers throughout the empire, both to ensure they knew each other and to prevent them from building local power bases. Plus modes of speaking and writing vary by social class, and it's very hard to fake your way up or down. Frex in "The Hidden fortress" when the princess traveling in disguise had to pretend to be mute, as there was no way she could fake speaking like a peasant. 




Ruin Explorer said:


> I don't actually agree re: "most tables" being unable to wipe the modernity from their eyes. My experience is the contrary. "Most" tables I've played at _largely_ can. Obviously some is intentionally retained (less racism, sexism, societal creepiness in general, etc.), but my experience is that 8/10 D&D players loved history at school, regularly read history books, and/or the better class of fantasy/historical novels, and have a much firmer grasp on "the past was different" than the average reasonably intelligent person.




I think it depends on where the table is located.  Here in the states a lot of people seem to have a very hard time indeed grasping the concept of showing respect and deference when speaking to others. See the "Mouthing off to the BBEG" thread.


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## Loren Pechtel (Aug 19, 2014)

It depends on where they are.


Adventurers will generally go where the action is.  That means they'll rarely be in fully peaceful lands.  Travelers normally go armed because of wild animals (not to mention bandits), those lacking combat capability generally follow those that have it (and within reason those who can fight are expected to help those who can't.)  It's expected that travelers will retain their arms & armor in town.  The fact that adventurers are far better equipped than the average traveler will cause some to worry but they won't be kept out.

In sufficiently civilized lands the average person is not allowed to bear weapons--but by the time adventurers are of a level where there might be stuff that draws them into such areas they'll normally have official permission.  Unknown adventurers in such areas can present themselves to the local authorities and get permission--expensive as they'll have to pay for the local caster who does things like check that they're not evil.  Truly high level adventurers will normally find their reputation precedes them.

Most cities require casters of all types to register and they are subject to being pressed into short term service in the face of disaster.  Many tax casters--typically one spell level per caster level per week.  This takes the form of non-hazardous casting of something that benefits the city.  Components are supplied.


While adventurers are not common neither are the unheard of.  Most places will recognize adventurers for what they are and understand the difference between them and bandits.  They'll generally get the sort of reception rich tourists would get.  (The cartoon above got it right.)  Expect some locals with problems they can't solve to plead for help even though they have nothing to offer in payment.

Clerics are expected to avoid preaching unless the place already recognizes the cleric's faith.


Many realms like to keep some tabs on adventurers.  Teleporting into an area is generally unacceptable if you do not already have permission from the local authority.  Newcomers (generally even if they're accompanying somebody known) are expected to follow the road and stop at any checkpoints along the way, although it's permissible to fly above that road rather than walk upon it.


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## Celebrim (Aug 19, 2014)

Umbran said:


> "Positively identify"?  Sure, if you want to speak directly to a local lord, a letter of introduction may be required from some other personage of note.  And governmental types who wanted their people to travel might give letters of safe passage, to tell others that getting in the way might have consequences.  Henry V seems to have invented the thing we consider a "passport" to identify his important people when they were in foreign lands.  But these are less about "are you who you say you are?" and more about "are you important enough to worry about?"
> 
> But identity documents for the masses - what we think of these days as "positive ID" - didn't really become common until around WWI, if I recall correctly.  Before that time, you don't really have the information infrastructure to support such.  And photo IDs, kind of obviously, require photography....
> 
> So, yes, if you need a reason to support a forgery plotline, by all means introduce the idea of positive ID.




Heraldry is an example of a medieval means of positive identification.  It's regulation has to be understood in that context, and its elaborateness functions as a barrier against forgery.   An equal barrier against forgery is the rigor with which you had to protect your identity.  

But 'positive identification' exists as a ritual even before objects were used as the most trustworthy marker of identification.  Good example would be the means by which Beowulf identifies himself when challenged, or the ways in which Odysseus and others are identified in the Odyssey.  That is, "If you want to be welcomed, I better have heard of you, or at least we need to share a contact, and you and I have to share common knowledge about that person.  This establishes you are at least potentially a friend."   Tolkien, being a scholar of the relevant literature, returns to this repeatedly in questions of establishing identity in Lord of the Rings.   Aragorn is caught in Rohan without a passport.  How do we establish he isn't an enemy?  Frodo is caught in Gondor without a passport.  How is his identify to be established?



> But I don't think this matters for merchants - it doesn't matter if they are who they say they are, except insofar as they say they are somebody with stuff to sell or a desire to buy.  You can call yourself by whatever name you want to use, so long as you have the goods or the cash to dump into my local economy.




Trade in the middle ages was not understood in that 'fair trade' free market context.  Guilds were an example of reaction against free and unregulated trade, and they would provide the means of identifying who was legally allowed to trade in the city in various commodities by validating their members.  There were considerable barriers to trade even between two cities, and often particular families had paid the rulers of the two cities to have legal monopolies on that trade.   So, in that case, identification would come down to 'not who we are used to seeing'.  As trade begins to open up, you start to see the emergence of external forms of identification.  

Forgery was of course widespread.  In fact, I'm fairly sure that my ancestor entered America on forged identification.  There actual country of origin was Ireland.  The two brothers seem to have successfully passed themselves off as Scots, with commiserate higher social status and better marriage opportunities, to the extent that we (their ancestors) believed they were Scots for the last 200 years or so.  There own children didn't know their real history.

You are probably right about Henry V, since it's the right time frame, but by the 16th century even beggars carried passports proving that they had the license to beg.  Identity papers go back to the 12th century, but they weren't in wide use before then.  Since my default D&D culture is a blend of early modern/medieval, 'papers' of some sort don't feel anachronistic to me.  Generally, in my game, if you leave town you are expected to carry proof that you are a citizen of a particular town, your passport as you were, and you are expected to have proof that you came through the gates if you are walking around in the town.  This goes double if by your accent and appearance you wouldn't appear to be a local.  If your claiming to be from somewhere, your papers will probably not be believed unless you look and sound it and you'll be questioned about the city you claim to be from.  If you are claiming to be a someone, you are expected to have the heraldry and panoply of being that someone, and at the least have a letter of introduction.  So for example, if you are a minor functionary of some religion, you are expected to have a letter from the priest stating who you are and what you are about.  If you are claiming to be a major functionary of some religion, you better look like one.


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## Lalato (Aug 19, 2014)

Note to self...  Move to Columbus.  Play D&D with Celebrim.


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## Umbran (Aug 19, 2014)

Andor said:


> Depends where you are talking about. China certainly had formal travelling papers, and god help you if you were a peasant without them if you caught the attention of the powerful.




Yes, but that's in a *completely* different cultural context than the typical D&D game.  The Qin dynasty, in which that sort of thing started in China, was an outright rejection of feudal systems, and was attempting to establish stability and conformity and direct governmental control on a scale not previously seen on Earth.

In such a situation, "adventurers" would not be a thing.



> While it's true that photo ID requires photography, recall also that forgeing hand writing and signatures is not a simple task when your 'mark' has an experienced eye and knows the writing of the person you're trying to forge.




Yes, and that makes it all the more profitable, and therefore all the more certain that some will study it.  Remember - making something illegal creates a tidy profit for those willing to risk breaking the law!  Heck, right on my e-reader, I've got a fine novella by Brandon Sanderson, titled, "The Emperor's Soul", which is about exactly that - how forgery (mystical forgery, at that) becomes a major thing in such a culture.  



> The governing classes, even in a place as massive as China, tend to be fairly small and to know each other.




The common man doesn't interact with the higher-ups of the ruling class.  He interacts with underlings, low-paid functionaries.  It isn't a high magistrate himself checking papers at the gates, you know.  

Oh, hey, that brings up something else, in addition to forgery.  Bribery!  Oh, goodness, was the Qin dynasty loaded with *that*!  Woohoo!



Celebrim said:


> Heraldry is an example of a medieval means of positive identification.  It's regulation has to be understood in that context, and its elaborateness functions as a barrier against forgery.




No, the barrier to forgery was the extreme cost of the equipment such a person was expected to have.  Anyone can paint a shield, sew up a banner.  I know a dozen people who do it on a regular basis, even today!  The armor, however, was another matter entirely.  That you couldn't get just anywhere.



> But 'positive identification' exists as a ritual even before objects were used as the most trustworthy marker of identification.  Good example would be the means by which Beowulf identifies himself when challenged, or the ways in which Odysseus and others are identified in the Odyssey.




Which is to say, *poorly*, and in an ad hoc manner. Odysseus has to prove his is who he says he is by way of scars on his feet, and stringing a bow nobody else could draw, and remembering that one leg of his bed (that presumably nobody but his wife and loyal servants gets to see) is a living olive tree.  Clearly, no *SYSTEM*, or accepted general method, of positive identification exists if he has to resort to these sorts of contortions to prove who he is.  It required a pre-established relationship between the people in question.  It demonstrates that proving identity between strangers is nearly impossible in Odysseus' world.


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## Celebrim (Aug 19, 2014)

Umbran said:


> I've got a fine novella by Brandon Sanderson, titled, "The Emperor's Soul", which is about exactly that - how forgery (mystical forgery, at that) becomes a major thing in such a culture.




It is a fine novella, but that's not what it is about.  



> No, the barrier to forgery was the extreme cost of the equipment such a person was expected to have.  Anyone can paint a shield, sew up a banner.  I know a dozen people who do it on a regular basis, even today!  The armor, however, was another matter entirely.  That you couldn't get just anywhere.




It's not like people ran around 24/7 in mail.  And there is a reason robbers generally stole a person's clothes - it was generally the most valuable thing they possessed.  The regalia of nobility in cloth was just as much beyond the means of a peasant as the mail was.



> It demonstrates that proving identity between strangers is nearly impossible in Odysseus' world.




Yes, it does.  Which demonstrates that prior to the introduction of passports and other positive means of identification, strangers and particularly strangers across cultural boundaries simply didn't trust each other.  Odysseus, Frodo, Beowulf, Aragorn and the like are not trying to establish that they are strangers - they are trying to establish that they are not strangers.  Much of the free commerce - and I mean that in the older sense of the word and not merely the modern - of modern society is built on the idea that we don't need to establish trust.  We don't worry over much about our honor and our reputation because we don't need these things to function in the society.   We don't worry about being shunned.  We assume our money is good everywhere.  People don't care who we are or who they are doing business with.   In a world of unstable currency, no financial institutions, no credit ratings, no criminal background checks, no means of establishing identity or a person's history, being known is essential to ordinary relationships.  The markers of ones identification is the tangible witness of ones body.  If someone can't vouch for you - "I know him, he has a scar on his shoulder" - what can you do?   That's why branding was such a terrible, effective, and arguably needed punishment.   It let someone imprint an identity on you that a stranger could recognize.

If two strangers had to establish their identity, they had to do so through a mutual acquaintance.  Who do you know?  Beowulf isn't known to the border guard.  So he proves his identity by recounting the experiences someone who was Beowulf would have to know.  "You can believe I am Beowulf, because I know who Beowulf is, and you can trust me because someone has shared with me the intimate details of the lives of people you trust."   Aragorn does the same thing.  "You don't know me, but you can believe I'm a friend, because I know things about you and your people only a friend would know."  It's like saying, "I'm a friend of a friend, and I can prove it because I've been reading your facebook feed."   Faramir asks the same thing of Frodo.  "If you really knew my brother, describe him to me.  By what signs was Boromir known?"

So the world without passports is hardly easier for the game of D&D to handle than the Qin dynasty.  That's why I don't really do a fully medieval game.  Not only is it just about impossible for players to mentally handle, but the entire concept of 'adventurers' as its usually done in D&D doesn't make much sense in a society were almost no one has the right to travel or bear arms.   You could do it, and it might be interesting, but the social roles the PC's would initially find themselves in would be constraining.


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## Andor (Aug 19, 2014)

Umbran said:


> Yes, but that's in a *completely* different cultural context than the typical D&D game.  The Qin dynasty, in which that sort of thing started in China, was an outright rejection of feudal systems, and was attempting to establish stability and conformity and direct governmental control on a scale not previously seen on Earth.
> 
> In such a situation, "adventurers" would not be a thing.




Well, adventures in the sense of Murder-Hobos who wander around killing the ugliest people in any given area would not be a thing. Adventurers in the sense of a small band of competant and powerful people who solve problems could still be done. Those rotating beaurecrats took small teams of people with them as support staffs. Functionally the same as the adventuring party tailing after the Knight in Celebrims game.

As a model I'll point to the "Judge Dee" mystery novels, which as an added bonus often had supernatural elements. 



Celebrim said:


> It's not like people ran around 24/7 in mail.  And there is a reason robbers generally stole a person's clothes - it was generally the most valuable thing they possessed.  The regalia of nobility in cloth was just as much beyond the means of a peasant as the mail was.
> 
> Not only is it just about impossible for players to mentally handle, but the entire concept of 'adventurers' as its usually done in D&D doesn't make much sense in a society were almost no one has the right to travel or bear arms.   You could do it, and it might be interesting, but the social roles the PC's would initially find themselves in would be constraining.




Well to be fair, as you just pointed out simply having arms and a horse was proof enough that you were a knight. Proof enough to let you enter a tourney or get a nights lodgings with the local lord anyway. Although if you spoke like a peasant you'ld get challanged to a duel pretty quickly, and if you weren't a trained combatant the sword and chain isn't going to do much to save you from someone equally well armed and actually skilled.


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## Lalato (Aug 19, 2014)

Celebrim said:


> So the world without passports is hardly easier for the game of D&D to handle than the Qin dynasty.  That's why I don't really do a fully medieval game.  Not only is it just about impossible for players to mentally handle, but the entire concept of 'adventurers' as its usually done in D&D doesn't make much sense in a society were almost no one has the right to travel or bear arms.   You could do it, and it might be interesting, but the social roles the PC's would initially find themselves in would be constraining.




I agree, and that's why I'm looking for ways in which society and culture might evolve with these types of people around.  I don't just want to handwave it.  I want the culture to have it built into its DNA... and for that DNA to express itself in weird and wondrous ways.  The world of D&D is a fantasy world after all.


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## Umbran (Aug 19, 2014)

Andor said:


> Well, adventures in the sense of Murder-Hobos who wander around killing the ugliest people in any given area would not be a thing.




Correct.  That's what we were talking about.  Mind you, the Qin Dynasty didn't put up their paperwork for security.  It wasn't, "There are dangrous peope about, and you need to prove you aren't them."  It was, as noted above, about taxation and economic control.  The Qin Emperor had gotten rid of the middle-men feudal lords, and was trying to manage a large empire without them.  The paperwork was about keeping people put doing the jobs that needed doing, and making sure the Imperial Throne got a cut of everything.  It wasn't so much about giving positive identification as it was about providing receipt of purchase.



> Adventurers in the sense of a small band of competant and powerful people who solve problems could still be done. Those rotating beaurecrats took small teams of people with them as support staffs.




Yes.  But now heaven help your game if the PCs don't really want to work for the government.  As soon as you institute paperwork ID, the first thing in the player's mind will be "How do I get fakes?"  See previous notes about bribery and forgery.  And outright theft of documents, too.

Basically, as soon as you say, "people must present ID", the issue of false ID will come up, in a big way.  Is that something you want to bother with in your game?  Is that *fun*?  If yes, good.  If not, then I question its inclusion, however "realistic" it may be.


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## Andor (Aug 19, 2014)

Umbran said:


> Yes.  But now heaven help your game if the PCs don't really want to work for the government.  As soon as you institute paperwork ID, the first thing in the player's mind will be "How do I get fakes?"  See previous notes about bribery and forgery.  And outright theft of documents, too.
> 
> Basically, as soon as you say, "people must present ID", the issue of false ID will come up, in a big way.  Is that something you want to bother with in your game?  Is that *fun*?  If yes, good.  If not, then I question its inclusion, however "realistic" it may be.




Fun? Sure. In fact faked documents and imposters are a runnng theme in a lot of asian dramas. It was a major element in Iron Monkey as I recall. One of the Barry Hughart novels had the scroll "which should have been placed on the altar of the god of forgery." The Mission Impossible series basically ran on forged papers and the "alter Self" spell. 

In "The Warriors Apprentice" by Lois BuJold our hero tried to pass his ragged group of wanna be merchants off as mercenaries to avoid being robbed by another group of mercenaries. Things ... snowballed until he really was running a mercenary company and had essentially conquered the system. With no one left to oppose him he happily went home, where a political enemy pointed out that having more than 20 private troops was treason with an automatic death sentence. Miles was forced to improvise again.


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## Ruin Explorer (Aug 20, 2014)

Andor said:


> Depends where you are talking about. China certainly had formal travelling papers, and god help you if you were a peasant without them if you caught the attention of the powerful. While it's true that photo ID requires photography, recall also that forgeing hand writing and signatures is not a simple task when your 'mark' has an experienced eye and knows the writing of the person you're trying to forge. The governing classes, even in a place as massive as China, tend to be fairly small and to know each other. In fact the Chinese beauracracy would rotate officers throughout the empire, both to ensure they knew each other and to prevent them from building local power bases. Plus modes of speaking and writing vary by social class, and it's very hard to fake your way up or down. Frex in "The Hidden fortress" when the princess traveling in disguise had to pretend to be mute, as there was no way she could fake speaking like a peasant.




Japan and various parts of Europe in calmer times had similar levels of "lockdown" at certain times, with papers needed to go anywhere and so on. They functioned quite powerfully in times without war, significant rebellions, and so on, where a largely unified bureaucratic empire was able to impose control.

However, that is not at all the default/normal D&D situation. In virtually all D&D settings, the world is in chaos or semi-chaos, with roaming bands of humanoids, dragons, monsters of all descriptions and so on meaning that there is _absolutely no way_ that the place in that level of lockdown. In the FR, for example, there is no unification across most areas, no real bureaucracy, just dozen and dozens of city-states (or smaller units, even!), or partially-broken countries, and there is absolutely no way they are running a setup like this. There may be individual nations which manage a degree of lockdown, but even they are pretty pathetic compared to the peak of Chinese bureaucracy.



Andor said:


> I think it depends on where the table is located.  Here in the states a lot of people seem to have a very hard time indeed grasping the concept of showing respect and deference when speaking to others. See the "Mouthing off to the BBEG" thread.




"Mouthing off at the BBEG" has nothing to do with historicism or understanding history. It has everything to do with drama and so on. If you are running a game where the PCs have to bow and scrape before the BBEG who they know is the BBEG, that's a pretty specialist game, and one that eschews what is dramatically appropriate and exciting for a certain kind of tension. You absolutely need player-buy-in for that, and you need to make it clear beforehand that it's "that sort of game". It really has nothing to do with whether people understand real history.

Further, if you expand "not understanding how respect and deference work", then, both in my personal experience and reading about/hearing about other people's games, and indeed from this thread, it seems to me that _Dungeon Masters_ are actually the _prime_ offenders here (if we exclude hormonal teenage boys), frequently creating situations where NPCs are abusive and disrespectful towards PCs who are vastly more powerful than them on every possible level, and then expecting the PCs to "just take it", because the DM has decided that they must, or where they expect PCs to behave in a certain manner, but totally fail to clue them in to it, or give them a reason to behave that way. Back in 2E I saw a lot of pre-written TSR and Dungeon adventures which seemed to involve some NPC being horribly rude and disrespectful towards a powerful (i.e. 7th level+) group of adventurers who he wanted to do something for him, too, when he obviously was only hiring them because he didn't have the resources to deal with the issue in a more direct manner. That's pretty silly stuff. Anyway, short of it is that if you expect the PCs to be respectful and so on, you need to have NPCs treat them with appropriate levels of respect, which are actually rather _higher_ than D&D typically skews. Obviously things can go downhill, but if you start out with NPCs sneering at the PCs (as a lot of DMs have, ime), trying to demean them, trick them, and so on, you're setting up a more disrespectful, "Wild West"-ish world, rather than a more medieval one. Insults, sneering, and NPCs looking down on the PCs should be a cause for comment in such a setting, not the norm.

There are obviously situations where an NPC will regard himself as so high and mighty that he would sneer to deal with such "mercenaries" (though this breaks down when you consider many PCs are going to men of the cloth, bards/minstrels, and others who are, by societal tradition, typically treated with respect), but in that case he should send an underling of appropriate rank who can deal with the PCs respectfully.



Haffrung said:


> Given the dearth of interest in history, historical fiction, and historical wargaming among the under-40 crowd, I suspect it's a generational thing. Fantasy has largely taken the place of historical knights and sagas in the popular imagination. And precious little fantasy these days gives more than a passing nod to the gritty reality of medieval society. George RR Martin is the big exception, but part of his popularity comes from the fact a gritty medieval world is actually a refreshing change from most other mainstream fantasy over the last 20 years.




Hmmmm. I see absolutely no evidence that this is an "under-40" thing, except with historical wargaming. There is an issue were over-40s are always more interested in history than younger people, as a whole, but that's no more or less true now than in 1980, AFAICT.

I'm 36, and it's easy for me to see that there is VASTLY more historical fiction and quasi-historical fantasy on TV now than there was 15 or 25 years ago, yet if it was a 40+ thing, that wouldn't be true, because you're on the edge of the main group for TV at 40+. Actual history and archaeology shows are a huge part of the British TV schedule (I can't comment on America there). Movie-wise, there are just as many historical movies now as there were two decades ago, and indeed the situation is certainly improved from the '90s, not degraded.

Looking at books, fantasy and historical fiction continue to do very well. I don't see any evidence of a decline there.

As noted though, historical wargaming? Yeah that's on the way out, for a few reasons - it was on the way about by the 1990s, though, if not the 1980s. Financial cost, space required, time-cost-vs-reward, plus the availability of computer games which fill many of the same needs (whether the Total War series or Mount & Blade or Crusader Kings II or whatever) mean it's just not viable. Particularly in the UK, where, to do _proper_ miniature painting and games, you basically need an entire room devoted to it (and not a tiny one), something few people have to spare in this era. None of that is to do with less interest in history. 

As for your " a gritty medieval world is actually a refreshing change from most other mainstream fantasy over the last 20 years.", sorry, no that appears to be completely wrong. You mean, perhaps, the 20 years before 1995? Which was when GoT came out. Or the 20 years before 2000, perhaps? By 2000, the fantasy market had changed vastly. Tolkien-esque and quasi-Arthurian/Celtic settings which were non-gritty were long on the way out by then. Since 2000, we've seen more and more gritty, grim, scary fantasy, to the point where it's certainly the core of the non-merchandised fantasy market, and even the lightest stuff is pretty gritty compared to, say, Terry Brooks or Tad Williams. In fact, for the last 5+ years, the standard whine from people who actually read a lot of fantasy is "It's all so dark!". So yeah, no, definitely NOT "the last 20 years". Perhaps "fantasy from people's childhoods" or "fantasy from before 15 years ago".

I mean, GoT is 1995, Assassin's Apprentice is 1995, Gardens of the Moon is 1999 (Malazan), Perdido Street Station is 2000, Prince of Nothing is 2004, The First Law trilogy is 2006, KJ Parker has been writing super-grim fantasy since 1998, and so on. GoT was the vanguard of a grim and gritty revival that continues to this day. It was published 19 years ago.



Haffrung said:


> Judging by the most popular D&D settings and supplements out there, few players have any interest in the game world being anything more than superficially medieval - basically, no steam-powered or later technology. Socially, most published fantasy worlds are a cross between late 19th century American homesteaders and early 21st century suburban Seattle.




I agree, but this absolutely no different now to 1990, say. When 2E launched, it was with two settings - the FR, via FRA, and Taladas. Taladas was vastly more true-to-history in a way completely relevant to this discussion than, well, any D&D setting since and arguably before (certainly vastly moreso than Greyhawk or Mystara). Which of those flopped, and which did great? We all know the answer. So this is nothing new.


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## Umbran (Aug 20, 2014)

Andor said:


> Fun? Sure.




The point is that the question has to be answered on a campaign-by-campaign basis.  You cannot answer for everyone.

For those who want to get into that sort of thing, go to!  However, it is quite a different game than, "kill things and take their stuff," which a lot of people are also into.



> In fact faked documents and imposters are a runnng theme in a lot of asian dramas.




Yep.  But, D&D isn't built with those in mind.   Given that the term "forgery" appears only in the equipment section of the 5e Basic rules (in describing the forgery kit, and *nowhere* else), and "bribery" appears not at all, I think it safe to say that the game design doesn't include these as a major elements.  You can ad hoc it, or write your own rules, of course.  But when the question is, "In a D&D world, does X happen? one of the first thoughts should be, "In the D&D rules, does X happen?"


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## Andor (Aug 20, 2014)

Umbran said:


> The point is that the question has to be answered on a campaign-by-campaign basis.  You cannot answer for everyone.




Wasn't trying to speak for everyone. I assume that people understand the word "fun" is personal.



Umbran said:


> Yep.  But, D&D isn't built with those in mind.   Given that the term "forgery" appears only in the equipment section of the 5e Basic rules (in describing the forgery kit, and *nowhere* else), and "bribery" appears not at all, I think it safe to say that the game design doesn't include these as a major elements.  You can ad hoc it, or write your own rules, of course.  But when the question is, "In a D&D world, does X happen? one of the first thoughts should be, "In the D&D rules, does X happen?"




Two places. It's also listed as a possible Int check in the skill section. 

I would use Investigation as the logical skill to detect a forgery, but oddly enough they don't mention that under the skill. Which is weird since they have explicitly introduced the concept of forgeries into the game in two places. Which, as you say, is not a major element, but still.

Bribes are not mentioned at all. Personally I'd run a bribe as granting advantage on a Persuasion check, but if you fail you have offended the target. Similar to the 'raising the stakes' rule discussion thread.

Although probably the reason we don't see more about forgeries and bribes is that it's sort of a DM purview area, and will hopefully be addressed in the DMG. Or maybe not. We'll see.

Although come to that forgeries and bribes can both play into the whole "How does the town react to adventurers?" question in this thread. They could deal with hostile villagers by forging a document showing the party to be some sort of officials from the King/Parliment/Council of Elders/Whatever. Or they could simply buy their way into peoples affections. With cash for the high-ups, or if they'd rather have grassroots support a few restoration spells and a purify food/water could go a long way towards convining people that the heavily armed wanderers are allright.


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## pemerton (Aug 20, 2014)

Derren said:


> Once a town or city has a wall it will control everyone who goes in (and taxes).





WayneLigon said:


> That's really a player expectation problem than a world-building problem. Unless the players are specifically playing psychopathic amoral murderhobos, then they're going to recognize and respond to civil authority despite their own personal power.



In the contemporary world, many people with personal power don't recognise and respond to civil authority (eg tax evasion). I don't see why we should expect the PCs in a fantasy world to be radically different.

This also speaks to the issue of "control". How is a town/city going to "control" high level PCs.

From an inword, sociological point of view the key to stability is integrating powerful people into the social system. This is a mixture of structrual features (eg making the powerful people officials or rulers) and value features (ie morally/ethically integrating the powerful into enduring social institutions - making them officals/rulers can be a way of doing this too!).

From a real world, game play point of view, a GM who wants the players to play their PCs as respecting civil authority, and subjecting themselves to its control, needs to give the players a reason to do so. [MENTION=18]Ruin Explorer[/MENTION]'s comments upthread about NPCs being respectfl to PCs is one way of trying to achieve this.



			
				delericho;6364266the people coming to the table have a collective understanding of how things work that comes from having lived their lives in a relatively free country said:
			
		

> possible[/i] to put all that aside to do a simulation of a medieval or renaissance , but it's not easy.



My personal experience is that a lot of people have a relatively limited understanding even of their own society and social system! So what we get is some sort of bowdlerised mixture of the present and the (historical) past.


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## GSHamster (Aug 20, 2014)

pemerton said:


> From an inword, sociological point of view the key to stability is integrating powerful people into the social system. This is a mixture of structrual features (eg making the powerful people officials or rulers) and value features (ie morally/ethically integrating the powerful into enduring social institutions - making them officals/rulers can be a way of doing this too!).




I was thinking about this, and it occurs to me that the strongest tool real-world societies had for this doesn't work in D&D. That tool, of course, is marriage.

Marrying into the social structure and having children be part of that structure is a very strong incentive in the real world. As well, marriage adds you into the kinship networks. A spouse is also a restraining factor on behavior, especially one who wishes to maintain social standing.

But attempting to co-opt adventurers into the social structure through marriage doesn't seem to work as well from a playable perspective.


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## MarkB (Aug 20, 2014)

For what it's worth, Eberron has ID documents and travel papers baked into the setting, and provides sufficient mundane and magical backup to their enforcement to make forgery both difficult and profitable.







Ultimately, a society which doesn't allow overt adventurers to operate openly within it will breed two things: Covert adventurers, and outlaw adventurers. Neither of those are likely to be healthy for any society.


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## Haffrung (Aug 20, 2014)

pemerton said:


> My personal experience is that a lot of people have a relatively limited understanding even of their own society and social system! So what we get is some sort of bowdlerised mixture of the present and the (historical) past.




Fair point!



MarkB said:


> Ultimately, a society which doesn't allow overt adventurers to operate openly within it will breed two things: Covert adventurers, and outlaw adventurers. Neither of those are likely to be healthy for any society.




_A_ society, sure. But then we run into the issue of how socially integrated the game world is. An English ship's captain in the age of exploration may have a writ from Queen Elizabeth, but how much goodwill does that buy him when he's forced onto the shores of Madagascar? Or in D&D terms: 

"Outlander, you say this seal from Queen Madouc gives you authority to carry and purchase arms. But the writ of that wanton born of fiends carries no weight in the Free City of Karsh. And we regard any armed party approaching the city through the Wastes of Vaa-Kaa-Kaa as hostile cutthroats, and likely cannibals.


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## pemerton (Aug 21, 2014)

GSHamster said:


> Marrying into the social structure and having children be part of that structure is a very strong incentive in the real world. As well, marriage adds you into the kinship networks. A spouse is also a restraining factor on behavior, especially one who wishes to maintain social standing.
> 
> But attempting to co-opt adventurers into the social structure through marriage doesn't seem to work as well from a playable perspective.



Good post.

I think this is one of those areas where imaginary, ingame reasons and real-world reasons for game participants just don't fit together. Of all the features of the ingame social situation to get players invested in, family can be one of the hardest. Even when players engage in romance with their PCs, at least in my experience it will more often be modern-style individual romance rather than romance with an eye to its social consequences.

In one of my campaigns two PCs were cousins. The senior cousin was trying to consolidate his hold over a town that he had "liberated" on behalf of his lord, and over which he had therefore been made ruler. He tried to marry the younger cousin off to a powerful local widow. The younger cousin, however - in this case very much played by the player with an eye to what he wanted rather than focusing on the ingame situation - refused. The PC - again under very self-conscious direction from the player - went on to initiate his own romance with an unattached, socially irrelevant NPC.


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## MarkB (Aug 21, 2014)

pemerton said:


> In one of my campaigns two PCs were cousins. The senior cousin was trying to consolidate his hold over a town that he had "liberated" on behalf of his lord, and over which he had therefore been made ruler. He tried to marry the younger cousin off to a powerful local widow. The younger cousin, however - in this case very much played by the player with an eye to what he wanted rather than focusing on the ingame situation - refused. The PC - again under very self-conscious direction from the player - went on to initiate his own romance with an unattached, socially irrelevant NPC.




Sounds pretty much like any period romance novel.


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## pemerton (Aug 21, 2014)

MarkB said:


> Sounds pretty much like any period romance novel.



Would you care for some bathos with that?

But seriously, there's nothing wrong with mixing a bit of melodrama into an action-adventure game!


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## Lalato (Aug 21, 2014)

In a campaign I played in, the local Duke offered the PCs some land and titles in order to pay them... and more importantly to keep them around in time of need.  It worked well and became an important part of the campaign at higher levels when the PCs were essentially commanders in the army trying to repel an invading force.

I love all of the campaign specific details people have brought up... as well as some of the historical artifacts that have been dug up.  Keep 'em coming.


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## Janx (Sep 4, 2014)

GSHamster said:


> How would you stop them?
> 
> If you can't stop them from causing a disturbance in town, you can't stop them from simply walking around. In fact, by trying to stop them entering, you might trigger the very disturbance you are seeking to avoid.
> 
> I think the best strategy for dealing with adventures is to first treat them as though they are normal, and hope that they follow the regular norms of behavior. If they don't behave, the best policy is probably appeasement, and give them whatever they want until they go away or you can summon someone powerful enough to deal with them (the local lord, etc.).




I'm late to the party, but I think this early post is noteworthy.

If as a GM, you hadn't put any thought into weapons vs. society (the opposite of Celebrim's well thought out world), then this is the very simple logical response.

On first contact of the PCs with the town, the GM should look at the situation from the town NPC's perspective.

And the chain of logic is the path of least resistance.  Unless the GM wants to cause problems for the PCs with the town, the simplest solution is as GSHamster defines.

Now if the GM wants to get fancy and spend more serious thought on weapons vs. society, Celebrim and RuinExplorer's early posts show logical chains that would be plausible for the introduction of restrictions.

But if you just start making the town NPCs try to bar the party entry or jack with them, then expect to get the MurderHobo response.  It's stupid NPC behavior if you don't spend the effort to think it out and define the nuances of weapons laws BEFORE the party collides with it.


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## Primitive Screwhead (Sep 6, 2014)

Jumping in late here as well.. my initial forays into this question started back in 1e days with the 'settlement gp limit' table, and the realization that a +1 sword cost as much as a war Galleon.


Doomed Slayers by Jurgen Hubert is the best method I have seen. The crux of the society is that most people are normal and lots of bad things are outside. So a new social class is born, the professional adventurer,  in which life expectancy is very short. So short in fact that inductees to this class tend to have funerals for themselves before leaving home. And some even hold wakes each night just in case.

The rest of society follows the 'norms' of the world. Paying taxes, not able to carry weapons, etc. The adventurer, however, can get away with pretty much anything they want and the local authority is always glad to hold a feast on the day they arrive... and quickly identify the location of a dangerous threat to the town that the party can go 'loot'.

 "Tis better to leave by dawn I think!, just let my butler know what you need and he will get it for you if we have it!"

Woe to the town leader who doesn't have a 'dangerous monster den' up his sleeve when adventurers come to town. They might just decide to hang out and wait for something to happen!

For me this solves the population gp limits and likelyhood of a barter-market and gives the adventurers reasons to keep moving on.

It also means that if you want to keep a low profile....it better be a really low profile!


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## APGM (Sep 6, 2014)

I say this with all the love and understanding I have, but you guys are all idiots. If you wouldn't ascribe historical accuracy to The Silverlinings Playbook, High Noon, Gladiator or Gone With the Wind why the hell would you base any of your assumptions upon what is depicted in any other cinema? Akira Kurosawa, whose vision is almost singularly responsible for the Samurai film aesthetic, was largely inspired and entranced by American westerns and considered himself honored when his depiction of the 47 Ronin was re-imagined for western viewers as the Magnificent Seven. That sort of nepotism and inbreeding is rampant in film, movies are never influenced so greatly as they are by other movies.

Historically speaking, whether you are talking about Huns, Vikings, Visigoths, Mongols or Bedouins, there have always been cultures which thrived upon predation and exploiting the assumptions of security amongst their more industrious neighbors. This is also true even if you are speaking of mercenaries, displaced soldiers, brigands, revolutionaries or any other artificially created threats bent on economic opportunism which naturally follow the cessation of long standing hostilities in martial or feudally centered societies whether one is talking of the Punic Wars, the Crusades or the American Civil War. The former is usually met with the ire of whatever power is interested in the sovereignty of its domain and the latter usually handled locally by those the most threatened by it, however, there have been ample cases of exceptions to both of those general observations over time.

Economically speaking, progress requires stability and peace. In cultures where there is no rule of law by which to establish a reasonable expectation of personal and profit protection, such as in the Middle East where for centuries neither property nor enterprise were recognized and were subject to arbitrary seizure from magisterial authority without justification or due process, technological and social advancement came slow even in spite of being in an advantageous geographical location situated between two rapidly and differentially progressing hemispheres and gave rise to traditionalism and nomadic inclination. This is also why the European Dark Ages after the Fall of Rome saw significantly fewer, although that is in in no way to suggest lesser, innovations than the period of unparalleled stability preceding it. 

Fear gives way to anger even as oppression invariably leads to revolt. The Chinese have been historically unique in being resistant to such cycles, having chosen to simply outlast any would be conquerors and show stoic indifference to what would otherwise be perceived as existential threats, but even they have employed means such as burgeoning bureaucracy and passive intransigence to undermine contested rulership. Their history is one I find fascinating in being utterly alien to everywhere else on earth and in recorded history. Alexis de Tocqueville observed in his American travels that Ohio and Kentucky showed great disparity in wealth and infrastructure, though there was no difference in the land, seasons, or cultural values and composition of its people. After intent observation and reflection he came to sobering conclusion that the only element of significance which separated the two states were their economic foundations, one relied upon slavery the other free association and this been shown to be historically true. China has been an exception to this simply because they refused to be see themselves as slaves regardless of the tyranny and injustice inflicted upon them, though even their progress was staggered by constant aggression and a lack of internal consistency.

In closing, you guys aren't looking for realism. There are ample annals of reality recorded for your contemplation and perusal if that were your inclination. What you searching for is an fantasy reinforcement of your ideological aesthetics. There are common assumption rampant in most of these arguments embracing things like central authority, which is a relative latecomer if not in concept at least in implementation, unquestioningly embracing caste and aristocratic elements without understanding their role and necessity (the Romans had a saying, a Caesar can be made somewhere other than Rome and one need look no further than the example of Septimius Serverus for an example of that that means), the regulation of arms and a lack of individual autonomy, accomplishment and responsibility. People were capable of their own survival before governments, and when governments fail people find a way to carry on. You do humanity a disservice to treat the common folk of your campaigns as hapless and perpetual victims.


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## Primitive Screwhead (Sep 6, 2014)

APGM said:


> In closing, you guys aren't looking for realism.
> <snip>
> You do humanity a disservice to treat the common folk of your campaigns as hapless and perpetual victims.




Not quite on the mark.. and welcome to the board BTW.

I am looking for a way to present the standard DnD adventurer festooned with weapons and dripping gold from his over-full pockets with the fictional medieval barter/coin/feudal world of DnD.

So you are right, not looking for realism at all. 

The common folk are simply that. Common folk. As a dragon would say, they are very nice and crunchy with ketchup. Common folk in DnD need uncommon folk to fight back against all the magical/supernatural/aberrant things that exist. If the Common folk were not helpless in the face of the unknown, the PC's would be 'Heros'. So yes, they tend to be hapless and perpetual victims of the big nasty powerful things that live around them.


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## Lalato (Sep 7, 2014)

I saw a lot of words.  And a couple of insults.  If you want me to read your words...  Maybe try to start without insulting people.


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## GSHamster (Sep 7, 2014)

APGM said:


> You do humanity a disservice to treat the common folk of your campaigns as hapless and perpetual victims.




You are ignoring the power disparity between adventurers and common folk.

Let's say a dragon came to your village and wanted something. Do you know what common folk do in this situation? They offer up their daughters as sacrifices to appease the dragon.

Now, adventurers are the people who kill dragons. How much further would the common folk go to appease them?


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## Sunseeker (Sep 7, 2014)

It really depends on if they had the armed might to say "NO" to 4-5 well-armed, arguably much more well trained, much more wealthy persons than themselves.  

They could try the "cold shoulder" approach, but lets face it, some small town of <50 people is still going to have a few outcasts, stupid children and greedy jerkwads who are going to see the party as a way for them to gain wealth, power and status within their town.  

They could try to fight the party, but I suspect that wouldn't end well.

They could attempt to treat the party poorly in a passive-aggressive manner, raise prices on them, say the inn is always full even when obviously not.  Tell the adventurers they're out of food when the harvest is just coming in, etc...

And of course it depends on the party.  If a villager comes up to you and says "before you enter our town and use our services, you must speak to the village elder and perform great tasks of taskiness!" you are left with three basic responses:
1: agree.  Kill some sewer rats, get town favor.
2: threaten/assault the villagers until they give you what they want.
3: leave.

What action is preferable depends on your DM.  If every town you come to demands you perform tasks to gain their favor and every villager would rather die than help you find out how far it is to The Rock of Awesome, then options two and three aren't going to be much use, unless you would like to become a roving band of marauders.  It's probably also your DM's way of telling you to do what he says or go find a different game.

In the end I think it's about balance.  Most towns are going to be happy to do business with travelers, especially well-armed ones, because good weapons means good money.  You're only really going to find towns demanding you preform tasks in very cloistered societies.  You need to learn the Special Code to enter the Vault of Secrets, and the Special Code is only taught by the Cryptic Order.  You want to find out how far it is to the city of Cliffwall, Timmy the Butcher probably isn't going to raise a fuss that you didn't talk to the village elder when you just dropped 10gp in his face on meat worth half that much.  

It really depends on what you want to know and who you're asking.  Secret knowledge is secret for a reason.  General information is likewise general for a reason.


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## Umbran (Sep 7, 2014)

APGM said:


> I say this with all the love and understanding I have, but you guys are all idiots.





This is *all* the love and understanding you have?  With *all* of it, you still start the post with an insult?  Really?  

You realize that opening with an insult, you engage the audience's emotions and ego, rather than their rational minds?  If you're looking to get folks to listen to your logical points, this is a bit of a blunder in your rhetorical structure.

Moreover, you realize that EN World's Rule #1 is, "Keep it civil."?  Insulting folks is not civil.

Ineffectual, and getting moderation attention just for the first sentence.   Please don't use this kind of approach next time.


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## APGM (Sep 7, 2014)

Primitive Screwhead said:


> The common folk are simply that. Common folk.





Not so! Adventurers are not made of finer clay than other mortal men. What one man can do another may emulate equally well.  That was the entirety of my point. Consider the American frontier during the westward expansion. Separated from settled lands by more than mere time and distance, individuals by necessity had to be capable of performing feats of engineering (windmills, housing, wells), agricultural cultivation (planting, nurturing, harvesting within appropriate times and conditions) medical treatment (you would have to foal your own livestock and help bear your young), carpentry (if you didn't bring, you wouldn't have it otherwise) all in addition to the skills necessary for basic survival and sustainability coupled with the fortitude and ability to fend off the many threats to lives and livelihoods they would doubtlessly encounter. Most sought to increase their odds by traveling in numbers, but there was no guarantee of success either way and they each knew individually their ultimate success would rely upon the strength of their own minds and hands. In any cataclysm you will find survivors, and their stories will delight you with the sheer indomitable spirit of our species.

Specialization is for insects.

As to the few of you whom objected to the language of my very mild rebuke. . .Take offense if you wish. Challenges come in many form: some are to your ego, some to your ability some may even be mortal. If you are honest you will admit there is something odd about individuals whom crave the excitement of contending with dragons, gods and great adversity but whither before mere words. You should know before you say anything further, the etymology of the word comes from the Greek and denotes individuals of common origin, their prejudice like that shown here, suggested a certain inherent ineptitude -specifically an unrefined intellect for such individuals were believed to be bankrupt of cultural currency and general education. What you identify as slander is in fact irony. The feeble arguments and ideas offered here were very much lacking, I found the word very applicable and I am saddened for those whom could not appreciate it. I say it with love and understanding because being human, and subject to the same flaws, foibles and imperfections of my brothers, I too am often an idiot.  If there is a difference, I suppose, it is in that I would rather know when I am being an idiot.

There are worse things to be I think, like a humorless prat in a position of nominal authority seeking to censor expression for the sake of protecting people from unkind ideas.


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## Lalato (Sep 7, 2014)

I take no offense from ideas.  I take offense from being called an idiot.  The irony is rich that you don't seem to understand that very simple concept.


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## Remathilis (Sep 7, 2014)

APGM said:


> As to the few of you whom objected to the language of my very mild rebuke. . .Take offense if you wish. Challenges come in many form: some are to your ego, some to your ability some may even be mortal. If you are honest you will admit there is something odd about individuals whom crave the excitement of contending with dragons, gods and great adversity but whither before mere words. You should know before you say anything further, the etymology of the word comes from the Greek and denotes individuals of common origin, their prejudice like that shown here, suggested a certain inherent ineptitude -specifically an unrefined intellect for such individuals were believed to be bankrupt of cultural currency and general education. What you identify as slander is in fact irony. The feeble arguments and ideas offered here were very much lacking, I found the word very applicable and I am saddened for those whom could not appreciate it. I say it with love and understanding because being human, and subject to the same flaws, foibles and imperfections of my brothers, I too am often an idiot.  If there is a difference, I suppose, it is in that I would rather know when I am being an idiot.
> 
> There are worse things to be I think, like a humorless prat in a position of nominal authority seeking to censor expression for the sake of protecting people from unkind ideas.




I say this with all the love and understanding I have; you're an idiot to argue with the moderators when he tells you to knock it off, and refusing to do so is a ban-able offense. You're post has been reported, and you can go find another messageboard more open to your debate technique.


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## Morrus (Sep 7, 2014)

APGM said:


> There are worse things to be I think, like a humorless prat in a position of nominal authority seeking to censor expression for the sake of protecting people from unkind ideas.




Oh, go away. 

Sincerely, from an idiot and humourless prat. [Edit - turns out it's not an alt of another poster.]


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## Brian M (Sep 8, 2014)

I was enigma5915 until my account was banned. I did not make the above posts or in any way have anything to do with them. I can only assume I was banned because I share an IP address. The offender in question is a friend of mine. And uses my internet regularly. I however took no part in this debacle other than to warn him to watch his comments and be polite. But banning me for another's offense is as rude as it gets. I've been a fan of this site and user for 14 years.  I was not even asked if this was me, it was an assumption and was in error.  I find it ironic to tell someone to be polite and then treat me this way when I was not involved. Feels crappy man. Sorry for the language. But I thought this was a cool place.


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## BigVanVader (Sep 8, 2014)

All this assumes that adventurers are in any way common, which could be cool in like a Planescape situation. But I dunno. I think Seven Samurai really handled this the best, at least for smaller communities: The people are fearful and distrustful at first, but ultimately they have much worse problems, and quickly understand that the 'adventurers' who came there are good things.

I also echo many here that it seems to largely depend on the world. If it's a mainly realistic place where goblins and demons and stuff like that are rare, well then all these are valid questions. But if it's a world where dragons are soaring through the sky all the time, and Trolls are slaughtering miners up in the hills and stuff, well it might make sense to regularly see people with weapons walking around.


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## Emerikol (Sep 8, 2014)

Lalato said:


> In another thread I mentioned that the existence of adventurers would probably change how towns and villages interact with them.  I mean... would you want people that could literally kill everyone you know without a lot of effort roaming around your town square?  Probably not.  Maybe over time the culture would change in obvious and non-obvious ways.
> 
> I proposed that strangers wandering into your town would likely need to present themselves to the elders or leaders or whatever... and maybe customs would have evolved that they might keep you out of town until you, the adventurer, gained their trust.  And this would likely be true of any strangers with weapons and magic that happened to walk into town.
> 
> Anyway... @_*KarinsDad*_, @_*Umbran*_, @_*(Psi)SeveredHead*_... have at it.  We can discuss the finer points of how merchants do or don't get around this.  Or better yet, how do you think cultures would evolve with magic and adventurers (aka murder hobos) wandering around?





My solutions to these problems are many fold.
1.  The whole world is not 1st level to start with.  It is routine for veteran members of the army to be 5th level and guards 2nd or 3rd level.  Knights are often 7th to 12th level.   I never bought a predominantly 0th/1st level world that was full of monsters from the monster manual.  

2.  The good guys are a lot more organized.  Even if at higher levels, you could wipe out a village, you can be certain the long arm of the law will be after you and they won't quit.   If necessary it will go all the way up to the King and he'll send really high level guys after you in force.

3.  Even evil PCs know that the real wealth is in the dungeon.  Killing villagers for coppers is not profitable.   That is not to say evil doesn't happen.  There will always be crimes of passion and those who think they can steal.  I'm just saying that adventurer types will be more likely to think the dungeon is the place to go.


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## Ilbranteloth (Sep 9, 2014)

Interesting thread (I'm ignoring the off-topic stuff).

Obviously it's going to depend on your campaign. As I run mine in the Forgotten Realms adventurers and high level characters are fairly common. There's a definite feeling that just about anywhere there could be somebody stronger than you.

Having said that, the idea of adventurers running rampant in any town is not likely, at least not for long. I remind players that in a regular society, crimes against others are not just unlawful, but also frowned upon by society. Morality is part of what you grow up with, and for the most part these beliefs are fairly strongly ingrained in people. There will always be some that challenge that, but societal pressures can be very strong.

Another thing that I point out is that in many (most) civilized lands, simply drawing a weapon may be illegal. Self defense is one thing, but being the first to draw is generally not a wise thing. I also beefed up the rules on unarmed combat to encourage them to use nonlethal combat more often than lethal in towns and cities.

Many (most?) players are predisposed to combat, and don't really seem to consider that killing other civilized people is a difficult thing to do. Ed Greenwood described Shandril's first killing very well, as she found the whole thing abhorrent. In particular, if the characters are of good alignment, and really even most neutral alignments, killing another intelligent creature shouldn't be something taken lightly. Neutral alignments see death as a natural part of life, but not necessarily unnecessary death.

Randy


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## Loren Pechtel (Sep 9, 2014)

Emerikol said:


> 2.  The good guys are a lot more organized.  Even if at higher levels, you could wipe out a village, you can be certain the long arm of the law will be after you and they won't quit.   If necessary it will go all the way up to the King and he'll send really high level guys after you in force.




I don't think you even need the organization.  A band of adventurers that does evil deeds will find their information circulated as here's-a-group-of-bad-guys-please-kill-them.  Adventurers have lots of nice loot, somebody's going to hunt them down.

They'll also have to deal with assassination attempts from local low-life wherever they go.  Sure, the chance of success is low but when every two-bit hood around knows that they can make a fortune (the gear) by landing a successful CDG sleep is going to be a pretty dangerous thing.



> 3.  Even evil PCs know that the real wealth is in the dungeon.  Killing villagers for coppers is not profitable.   That is not to say evil doesn't happen.  There will always be crimes of passion and those who think they can steal.  I'm just saying that adventurer types will be more likely to think the dungeon is the place to go.




Agreed.  A necromancer might go after commoners to animate, a sadist might go after them but no adventurer is going after them for loot.


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## AntiStateQuixote (Sep 9, 2014)

Halivar said:


> Adventure hook: "WANTED -- Adventurers to rid our town of adventurers we hired to get rid of some other adventurers. No bounty, but you can keep their stuff."






Mishihari Lord said:


> I'm reminded of a plotline from Schlock Mercenary.




And I'm reminded of an all-to-common conversation in some games I played and DM'd:

Dude hiring adventurers: I'll give you (some high amount of gold) if you'll (kill, capture, steal, etc.) and report back to me.

Party leader: Do you have (some high amount of gold) on you now?

(short fight)

Party leader: Where's that next guy looking to hire adventurers?


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## MartyW (Sep 9, 2014)

*Adventurers == Open Carry Licensees*

I like to think of adventurers along a similar line as people with open carry permits.

1) It would likely make the "normal" population uneasy, but it might be tolerated regionally.

2) Localities that are uncomfortable with armed mercenaries walking might pass "Check your weapons at the door" laws. If the town is gated, adventures may need to leave anything more deadly than a dagger with the local constabulary. There is likely no NRA equivalent, so weapons laws make sense in game.

3) At the very least, peace-bonded weapons may be the norm (a length of wire that prevents one from drawing quickly from a scabbard). 

While this doesn't prevent mass carnage, people don't perform mass murder because a "dead or alive" reward would be posted fairly quickly. Any King worth his salt is going to have a trusted group of his own assassination squad to take care of adventurer terrorists.


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## Celebrim (Sep 10, 2014)

I had a request to add to this discussion the social role and status of 'druids' in my world.  I'll oblige as best as possible, but the question is actually a bit harder to answer than the asker may suspect because... there are no druids in my world if by 'druids' you mean the D&D class 'druid'.

However, if by druid you mean animistic priest conforming the characteristics and beliefs in our imaginations attribute to pre-Roman northern Europe, well, then there are still no 'druids' in my world because there is no Rome nor Northern Europe.

What there are in my world are shamans.  And by that I mean 'shaman' in the usual loose sense the term is used, rather than specifically the animistic nature priests of Siberia.  Mechanically, shamans use a very minor variation on Green Ronin's Shaman class (from the Shaman's Handbok an excellent work that I highly recommend).   

The minor changes I've made to the RAW Shaman basically revolve around two things.  First, as written the Shaman is a 'barbarian priest'.  I generally reject the ethnocentric assumptions around 'barbarian', and just as my 'barbarian' is replaced with the non-baggage carrying 'fanatic', my shaman carries no cultural assumptions.  I reject that a technologically primitive tribe is some how less inherently lawful than a technologically advanced one on the grounds that this misunderstands the core ideas of law and chaos.  It's entirely possible that the technologically primitive tribe has greater respect for law and tradition, and values the group over the individual, to a far greater extent than their technologically more advanced city dwelling neighbors.  As such, I similarly impose no alignment restrictions.  The other major change is that since I don't have Druids, I don't have to go as far as the writers at Green Ronin had to in order to protect the Druid's unique shtick.  I basically killed the Druid and gave the Shaman his stuff.  So much of the Druid's spell list is now on the Shaman's spell list, and some of the Shaman's spell list that was replacing the Druid's spell list is no longer needed.  There are also now considerably more spells that are only on your spell list if you have the actual domain, which in turn makes clerics a little more like the old 'specialist priests'.   It's now possible to play a Druid in my game using the Shaman class as a base, albeit, you'll probably lose a tier in the conversion (since among other things, animal companions are weaker, wildshape is a spell not a class ability, and natural spell doesn't exist).  

Conceptually, 'Shaman' is used to donate any mystical practice that primarily involves communing with, controlling, and bargaining with various spirit creatures and thereby gaining magical prowess either by bestowed power or by having the spirit act on your behalf.  This particular notion of a spell-caster actually has far more basis in history than the D&D notion of a 'Wizard', which is almost purely a D&Dism.  The D&D 'Wizard' as it has developed is basically a scientist or natural scholar which has been largely sanitized of the occult, and whose source of power is almost entirely his own self by way of long training and knowledge.  This sort of magical tradition is almost entirely unknown to the ancient world and has very few sources, most of which are modern media of various sorts where there was a wizard which for whatever reason needed to be sanitized of the occult.   Far more typically in real world magical traditions, the source of a wizards power (here wizard in the sense of someone performing magic, not in the D&D) was (more reasonably) said to be something actually magical in a way that humans self-evidently are not.   Combined with the extreme flexibility of the mechanics in the Green Ronin, I used it for a very broad range of pastiches - witch, bard (the actual Finnish bard, not the D&Dism - remember that the 1e version was actually a Druid), shaman, warlock, diabolist, adepts, druid, witch-doctor, and well pretty much any sort of traditional priest or wizard.   Indeed, pretty much any spell-casting class in D&D that has ever been imagined and designed to be specific to a particular culture - from Al Qadim's Sha'ir to Oriental Adventures Wu Jen - is basically assumed in my game to be a Shaman (if it's not a Wizard).  

So, with that in mind, for most of the human world the Shaman is considered a monster and must in some way hide or subordinate themselves in order to avoid being executed.   This is because the Shamanic tradition is a rival to both socially approved spell-casters, the clerics and the wizards.  The cleric is a necessary intermediary with the true powers of the universe - the gods.  The wizard is a controllable, understandable, figure who can be neutered by removing his books and implements, who is constrained by long social convention, whose knowledge is inherently reviewable, and whose role is understood and defined in both directions.   The Shaman however is unpredictable, unreviewable, and suspect.  You can't easily review the compact that the shaman has with the spirit world, since it is a verbal agreement with the unseen.  The spirits have inhuman motivations and make inhuman demands on those that bargain with them.   The Shaman detracts from the proper worship of the gods and loyalty to them, by offering an independent (albeit) weaker alternative source of power and magic.  The Shaman is seen as an inherently subversive character prone to witchcraft such a diablerie (communing with or summoning fiends), mind control, necromancy and other illegal, immoral and forbidden lore.  The Shaman is seen as potentially undermining the social order.  Thus, at least on paper, shamanism carries the death penalty through probably 80-90% of my campaign world.   And that's on top of the fact that casting something like 'charm person' also generally carries the death penalty - it's considered violent rape.   For that matter, monster summoning I - if used to conjure a fiendish rat - also carries a death penalty.

The practice though is a bit different.  While the law might consider the practice to carry the penalty of death, most people in the campaign world are a bit more pragmatically minded (neutral) and generally feel the best policy is to provoke dangerous things if and only if they are immediate threats.   This allows shamans to practice locally so long as they stick to the fringes of society, don't cause trouble, and avoid drawing attention to themselves.   Most villages have some sort of 'wise woman' or 'doctor' living on the social edge of society with a social status roughly similar to that of a known prostitute or bootlegger - or at least a known prostitute that can probably kill you if you attract her attention.   So in practice, rural societies tend to have a de facto truce with shamans, and in more urban settings a shaman is effectively a member of the black market - selling unregulated or contraband magic.  As such, they live lives similar to black market alchemists that deal in poisons, narcotics, love potions and other unsavory materials.  Many will have ties to local thieves guilds, particularly in cities where there isn't a temple that is sympathetic to the thieves and their associates.  This truce of course can break down, particularly in situations where mysterious things are happening that can be blamed on the shaman.   The law enforcers themselves might observe the truce, wielding the actual letter of the law only if they believe the person to be a considerable threat but otherwise tolerating low level law breaking as a superior outcome than outright war.

The fact that the shaman is a marginal figure in the society probably contributes to the fact that most shamans tend to live up to the stereotype as practitioners of black magic.  Probably 80% of the NPC shamans in my game are in fact evil, and almost none that aren't evil aren't chaotic, just because the sort of person attracted to the 'career' tends to be a less savory, antisocial, or more rebellious sort.  

However, it's a big world and there are always exceptions.  Individual cultures tend to be quite welcoming of shamans, and in a few isolated cultures shamanistic traditions are more important than clerical ones (and in those, clerics tend to be the marginalized figures).   The Mokoheen are one such culture - many of their tribes execute any one of their own that begins worshipping the gods, and even the ones that don't treat clerics and shamans as being the same thing.   Many of the Orine have similar beliefs.  The elves by virtue of being inherently in greater communion with the natural world than the other races have considerable tolerance for shamans, as they view shamanistic magic as just an extension of their own natural abilities to communicate with animal spirits.  Fey are even more tolerant, since they are themselves actually 'small gods', and certain powerful fey might well be themselves a shaman's spirit guide.   And to the extent that a culture openly tolerates fey in their midst (most do), a fey shaman would not be recognized as such and would basically be judged by the same standards as any fey (ei, is it eating babies?  Is it otherwise gross?  If not, it's probably ok or at least, best not to inquire...).   Some particular deities are more open to the idea of shamans, and it is believed that certain deities actually organize and use various 'small gods' as their intermediaries.   Where such deities hold sway, shamans have less marginal social roles.

But where a Wizard is treading dangerous to not let it be known he's a wizard, a shaman is living dangerously to let it be publically known he's a shaman.   If you can't actually hide the fact that you are a magician, then its probably best to at least pretend you are a wizard and make a show of it by owning some spellbooks and appropriate robes.  This is actually pretty dangerous though, because while your average commoner can't tell wizardry from witchcraft, the same is not true of your average wizard so you better hope the local hedge mage is a tolerant sort.

There is currently a PC shaman in my group.  And I have to say that the PC is currently finding it really hard to not get pushed down the path to evil within the social and magical constraints of being a shaman.   The character started out with all sorts of noble intentions, but with each passing session is increasingly 'witchy' and frankly scary - not the sort of person you'd normally want to have walking around and which you'd have every sympathy for a town wanting to kill.   (For example, she recently threatened to bind the souls of children in her servitude if the minion of the BBEG didn't cooperate with her.  She's also weaponized the ghost of a murdered domestic servant, and has been relying heavily on an almost certainly evil magical fetish in combat.   And it isn't helping that most of the magic items she can use that she finds are trinkets own by evil shamans, and that the spirits that invest those items with power don't have noble inclinations.  I'm going to be offering her the XP for alignment change to evil bargain pretty soon...)  If she wasn't in Talernga and didn't have some social standing conferred on to her by being the companion of figures that are socially acceptable, she'd almost certainly be looking at a stake and a bonfire in her future.  As it is, it would be something of a tight race between whether the priestess and the knight can keep her out of trouble, and whether she will ultimately pull down their social standing.  For that matter, it's going to be something of a tight race between her wild power hungry descent and whether the knight and priestess decide maybe a stake and bonfire is the best solution...


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## Desdichado (Sep 10, 2014)

Nevermind... this post was obsolete before it was even posted.  Should've read more of the thread before wading in...


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## Desdichado (Sep 10, 2014)

WayneLigon said:


> The Wizard's Guild. A good idea of this sort of thing can be found in Lawrence Watt-Evans' Ethshar books, where wizards and spellcasters of various types can be found running shops and are treated like any other profession. And like any other profession, all wizards are members of the Wizard's Guild. You don't get a choice in that. Your master inducts you before you're released from his service. Country boys who somehow get trained are expected to join when they go into a town of any reasonable size for the first time. Wizards that do not join disappear, simple as that. The Guild knows the reputation of all wizards everywhere would suffer if wizards were to engage in mass unlawful activities, so the civil authorities simply trust the Guild to take care of problems before they become problems. The Guild, like all guilds, has the authority to try it's own members, etc, and the Guild considers all wizards, everywhere, to be 'members' whether they are or not.



The solution to wizards is to have a wizard mafia?

That's intriguing, but a bit unusual.


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## Desdichado (Sep 10, 2014)

Haffrung said:


> Given the dearth of interest in history, historical fiction, and historical wargaming among the under-40 crowd, I suspect it's a generational thing. Fantasy has largely taken the place of historical knights and sagas in the popular imagination. And precious little fantasy these days gives more than a passing nod to the gritty reality of medieval society. George RR Martin is the big exception, but part of his popularity comes from the fact a gritty medieval world is actually a refreshing change from most other mainstream fantasy over the last 20 years.



Don't kid yourself.  Martin's not really doing anything any more realistic than Ed Greenwood, he's just striking an opposing and therefore different version of unreality, in which almost everyone who is successful in any way whatsoever is completely amoral.  Martin's approach is to make grittiness gratuitous to the point of absurdity.

Joe Abercrombie and a few others do it too, but I suspect the novelty value of such grim nihilism can only support so many successful authors at a time before it wears pretty thin.


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## prosfilaes (Sep 10, 2014)

APGM said:


> Not so! Adventurers are not made of finer clay than other mortal men. What one man can do another may emulate equally well.




In the real world, it's not that simple. There's many people who try to be the next Usain Bolt, Tiger Woods, Albert Einstein or Kurt Gödel, but not many people who even come close. In a lot of fantasy worlds, you either have the magical spark or you don't; Dudley could never have made it at Hogwarts. In a D&D setting, I wouldn't find it at all unreasonable to think that you have to be born with a certain something to take a level in a PC class.


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## Zaran (Sep 12, 2014)

Think of the American Wild West.  When it was common for a gunfighter to come into town people avoided them, the sheriff asked for their weapons, barber's hands shook when they tried to give them shaves.  

When it was rare, people might give them the benefit of the doubt.


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## Halivar (Sep 12, 2014)

Zaran said:


> Think of the American Wild West.  When it was common for a gunfighter to come into town people avoided them, the sheriff asked for their weapons, barber's hands shook when they tried to give them shaves.
> 
> When it was rare, people might give them the benefit of the doubt.



This is largely mythical. The "Wild" West was not nearly as violent as we romanticize it to be. Carrying guns into town was routine and universal. Shooting in the streets, of course, would be very much illegal.

Now, larger, more cosmopolitan cities like Dodge City and Wichita actually had stricter guns laws than we do today, but I feel these are models that fit squarely outside of any medieval context.


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## Zaran (Sep 12, 2014)

Halivar said:


> This is largely mythical. The "Wild" West was not nearly as violent as we romanticize it to be. Carrying guns into town was routine and universal. Shooting in the streets, of course, would be very much illegal.
> 
> Now, larger, more cosmopolitan cities like Dodge City and Wichita actually had stricter guns laws than we do today, but I feel these are models that fit squarely outside of any medieval context.




Don't we want the game to be mythical and romanticized?


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