Where Do They Get Their Laws?

Today I discuss establishing a setting's law enforcement and judicial system. Historical sources indicate examples of organized court systems - Aeschylus' Oristeia depicts the foundation of Athenian law and trials, with a jury of 12 citizens, and wise magistrates are a common feature of Chinese parables. A court will require some infrastructure,which will inform how one develops the rest of the justice system in the setting proper.

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Are the courts religious and backed by a god of justice? Then perhaps clerics are trained also in litigation, and paladins serve as police officers. What is the bureaucracy like? Can the parties in a case settle with blood money or compensation? Or are judicial punishments rather more eye-for-an-eye?

How does one imprison a magic-user, anyway? Or a high-level rogue? A government may choose to exile such individuals instead of attempting to confine them, giving PCs a great reason to be out adventuring -or they may be marooned on an isolated island instead, which also gives a PC party a great reason to get together. After all, they have to work together since they’re each other’s best chances of getting out of their predicament.

The presence of a law enforcement system of course implies its opposite - that there is also organized crime, and thieves’guilds are a common feature in many fantasy settings. How the two coexist can inform an entire adventure arc of itself. If the PCs are all law-abiding types,then a GM could set up a campaign quite like the Untouchables, where they hunt down evidence required to try a powerful, shady individual in a court of law.

Thief and scoundrel PCs - well, they’d be experiencing the law enforcement system from the other end of it. Scott Lynch’s Gentleman Bastards series begins in a city where the nobles and the Right People (organized crime) have arranged a Secret Peace, where the city guards ignore the actions of the thieves as long as the thieves don’t steal from nobles. Violations of this Peace are punished by unpleasant death, and it’s a threat hanging over several characters’ heads that drives a good amount of the initial plot.

In a setting with a petty and venal government,the thieves’ guilds themselves may become the only source of law enforcement and protection on the streets. Protection money becomes a de-facto tax, since the guild would be upset if their merchant cash cows’ shops get destroyed by rivals in a convenient accident.

When discussing law enforcement we also have to consider what the people of the setting consider crimes - it was not illegal to expose unwanted infants in classical Rome, for example. The PCs’ expectations clashing with those of the local authorities is an excellent way to grab them by the plot hook.

The penalties for crimes can be similarly colorful and varied. A state could tattoo or brand criminals, covering larger sections for more severe crimes, with the criminal executed when they finally run out of space for more markings. Not feeling quite so bloodthirsty? Well,the pillory could be an option for petty crimes. Who wants to brave the rain of rotten turnips to talk to the NPC contact who just got pilloried for public drunkenness and nudity?

Last but not least: the existence of magic makes for interesting takes on the justice system. Divination spells could smooth trials and help in evidence gathering, and geas spells could help enforce restraining orders and anti-social behavioral orders. Magically enhanced interrogation could be more reliable than torture, in a coercive state, and a prison staffed with unbribable summoned jailers would prove an obstacle for rich inmates attempting to bribe their way out.

contributed by M.W. Simmes

 

[Cergorach]

Atlas Games did a nice book on it: Crime & Punishment (Penumbra)
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/145754/Crime-and-Punishment

They had a couple of other interesting titles in that series: Love & War, and Dynasties & Demagogues

 

[Celebrim]

Do these questions have answers, or is this just a lot of open ended questions and random disjointed thoughts?

My advice. Next time you try to write an article, address just one of these questions. You could probably fill five pages trying to answer each of them.

 

[Sunseeker]

Do these questions have answers, or is this just a lot of open ended questions and random disjointed thoughts?

My advice. Next time you try to write an article, address just one of these questions. You could probably fill five pages trying to answer each of them.

I think it's just supposed to be thought-provoking.

 

[Jacob Lewis]

Where do you get your topics? How long do you plan to use this headline for a theme? Who is your target audience? These are the real questions you need to be asking, and they are only slightly more interesting than these articles. Slightly.

 

[Jhaelen]

My advice. Next time you try to write an article, address just one of these questions. You could probably fill five pages trying to answer each of them.

No he couldn't. These guest articles have a rather short word count limit. They aren't supposed to discuss anything in detail. They're meant to spark some ideas about things you may not have invested a lot of time or thought when creating your campaign (setting). I rather like these articles, especially since they almost always address topics that aren't covered well in D&D-like RPGs, while for RPGs like 'Ars Magica' they're the lifeblood of the setting. There's a lot of merit in thinking about potential sources for adventures beyond killing monsters and taking their stuff.

 

[Imaculata]

In my pirate campaign I involved the players in a scene where a criminal had to be put to death, and all the pirates got to vote (with the vote of any captain being worth two). The various pirate factions all favored different forms of historical execution methods as were common during the age of sail. Each pirate had to drop one token into a basket of their choice. Of course there was an opportunity to cheat here, if the players were willing to risk it, which made it all the more fun.

Methods of execution involved: Keelhauling, walking the plank, tying the criminal to the highest mast and having him shot by a large group of pirates simultaneously, firing him from a cannon, having him torn apart between two ships, and having him slowly bake in the sun while tied to a mast until he was dead.

 

[Celebrim]

Ok, fine, I'll fisk.

Today I discuss establishing a setting's law enforcement and judicial system. Historical sources indicate examples of organized court systems - Aeschylus' Oristeia depicts the foundation of Athenian law and trials, with a jury of 12 citizens, and wise magistrates are a common feature of Chinese parables.

Personally, I would have stopped right here and listed every single example of a historical judicial system.

As a bonus, you might pay careful note to how each different system might fit into a D&D setting and where you might fit such a system into D&D's simplified 9 alignment philosophical system.

A court will require some infrastructure,which will inform how one develops the rest of the justice system in the setting proper.

Actually, no, a court doesn't require infrastructure. This is the sort of statement in error you might have avoided if you'd done the first thing and listed out all sorts of historical judicial systems. One example might be the wandering judge or wise man who is paid to listen to and decide cases as a neutral arbiter. That judge could be a recognized profession with entry requirements other than appointment by some recognized civic authority. There are a lot of examples of this, but the institution of judges in pre-Monarchy Judea would be a more familiar example. You could get into the profession by civic appointment, public reputation, by religious office, or by apprenticeship or any other common mode, but it doesn't require infrastructure.

Similar, a council of elders doesn't require any sort of special infrastructure to hear civil or criminal complaints within a community. They can just meet wherever is convenient. The actual infrastructure is something that tends to evolve over time as a special set apart space, sacred in some sense even if not overtly religious. But that happens only to the extent it is convenient and solves some problem (like needing a neutral site to meet at). And even then, it's not guaranteed that they have a building or infrastructure in the traditional since in order to have a judicial tradition. In medieval Iceland, when they wanted to resolve a civic or criminal dispute, they just all met at the big rock.

Are the courts religious and backed by a god of justice? Then perhaps clerics are trained also in litigation, and paladins serve as police officers.

Maybe, but what are all the alternatives here. Even though courts might be explicitly secular, there is a vast range between exclusively secular and actually religious where the court even if secular still draws its authority from religious tradition and conducts its office as blessed by some religious sovereign. It's unlikely that if an active observable God of Justice exists, that any court, however 'secular' in the modern sense conducts its business entirely without the blessing or hope of blessing by that deity. For one thing, they don't want to get smited for violating his notions of Justice.

Can the parties in a case settle with blood money or compensation? Or are judicial punishments rather more eye-for-an-eye?

Again, these aren't mutually exclusive. In addition to missing the opportunity to list out all the sorts of judicial punishments and procedures for determining guilt that have existed, you neglect the fact that "eye-for-an-eye" typically establishes the maximum judicial penalty and not a hard and fast rule. In other words, "eye for an eye" is maximum applied penalty, in the same way that maximum incarceration terms are a maximum applied penalty in a modern familiar system. Almost invariably ancient systems encouraged injured parties to negotiate the sentencing. "Eye for an eye" prohibited any party - including the state - seeking a penalty that was greater than the crime involved and established some sort of scale for judging how bad a crime was. It didn't prohibit using restitution or blood payments. It just prevented things like cutting off hands if someone stole a loaf of bread, or killing someone for killing a chicken.

How does one imprison a magic-user, anyway? Or a high-level rogue?

A very interesting question worthy of its own essay. Unfortunately you don't really answer it beyond suggesting exile. However, it turns out that ancient confinement techniques actually work really well at confining most D&D magic-users. While a modern jail cell with its limited freedom in order to not be overtly cruel or inflict 'unusual punishment' doesn't constrain a magic-user very much, pillories, stocks and other binding methods actually do because they prevent the use of components. And equally, rather than inflicting a lesser penalty on a dangerous magic-user, a society may well decide that the rational thing to do faced with a magic-using criminal is to inflict harsher penalties - kill them just to be sure.

The presence of a law enforcement system of course implies its opposite - that there is also organized crime...

Actually, no, that's not true. The two things are independent of each other. You can have both, neither, or one or the other. If you tried to list out all the historical situations you might have noticed that. For example, you can have a society that is so authoritarian that crime per se basically doesn't exist, especially on an organized level. In those societies, the law enforcement system often is the organized crime in the society in that it's much easier for a criminal to exist inside the system and abusing the authority there of than it is to exist outside the system in a police state with broad authoritarian power and an organized informant network. Likewise, you can have organized crime existing precisely because there is no law enforcement to speak of. And you can have crime existing but not on an organized level because the criminals don't trust each other and operate as independent agents, which is fairly common when you don't have a large enough population to support crime as a business.

If the PCs e all law-abiding types,then a GM could set up a campaign quite like the Untouchables, where they hunt down evidence required to try a powerful, shady individual in a court of law.

Again, you could have wrote an entire essay just listing all the different plot hooks that might be generated by investing in world building to create a detailed judicial system. After all, I'd think the whole point of an essay like this on world building is trying to get people to recognize that the world building involved has an actual payoff at the game table in terms of more enjoyable play. World building for its own sake is fun, but probably not worth it for a GM that is actually running a table unless it makes the game better. The part here where you list 4 or 5 plot hooks is probably the best part of the essay, but there is not nearly enough meat here to really inspire the creative juices of anyone reading this that didn't already have those creative juices flowing.

When discussing law enforcement we also have to consider what the people of the setting consider crimes - it was not illegal to expose unwanted infants in classical Rome, for example. The PCs’ expectations clashing with those of the local authorities is an excellent way to grab them by the plot hook.

This is a very good point, but again you miss the opportunity to list out many examples of varying views of what constitutes a crime that could become plot hooks. Maybe more to the point though, for a DM it's not really the PC's expectations clashing with those of local authorities you have to worry about - it's the clashing expectations of the players. While having a culture that shatters the player's cultural expectations may have merit, you are potentially going to run into big problems if the player takes offense at the very existence of the culture and treats you as endorsing the behavior that violates their cultural norms. As a hopefully not triggering example, if a culture accepts slavery as a cultural norm - as virtually every ancient culture did - then you are dealing with a potential minefield as to how players and their PC's are expected to interact with your culture. The same is true of cultures that are distinctly not modern with respect to the treatment of women and any number of other things that people take for granted.

The penalties for crimes can be similarly colorful and varied. A state could tattoo or brand criminals, covering larger sections for more severe crimes, with the criminal executed when they finally run out of space for more markings. Not feeling quite so bloodthirsty? Well,the pillory could be an option for petty crimes. Who wants to brave the rain of rotten turnips to talk to the NPC contact who just got pilloried for public drunkenness and nudity?

Again, you could put together a lengthy essay on just the widely varying ways societies have chosen to punish wrongdoers (or at least, people that they thought were wrongdoers).

Last but not least: the existence of magic makes for interesting takes on the justice system. Divination spells could smooth trials and help in evidence gathering, and geas spells could help enforce restraining orders and anti-social behavioral orders. Magically enhanced interrogation could be more reliable than torture, in a coercive state, and a prison staffed with unbribable summoned jailers would prove an obstacle for rich inmates attempting to bribe their way out.

All of that is true, but the reverse is also highly plausible. It could be that divination and magical evidence is not admissible in court, precisely because such evidence is too easily faked, or because they gives the erroneous impression of infallibility when in fact the methods have some chance of failure. If the society is not in fact ruled by the spell-casting caste (whatever that is), it's highly unlikely they'll rely on them wholly to determine guilt or innocence. Moreover, the society may find ritual evidence admissible that has no relationship to what D&D normally thinks of as magic. For example, you managed to get through this whole essay on where laws come from without once mentioning Trial by Combat or Trial by Ordeal or all the many other historical ways guilt and innocence were determined before we assumed some quasi-scientific rational investigation, presentation of evidence, and verbal debate got the best results.

 

[Celebrim]

Methods of execution involved: Keelhauling, walking the plank, tying the criminal to the highest mast and having him shot by a large group of pirates simultaneously, firing him from a cannon, having him torn apart between two ships, and having him slowly bake in the sun while tied to a mast until he was dead.

Given how harsh most ancient systems were (eye for an eye sounds harsh to us now, but originally in the context of Hammurabi it was clearly meant as a mercy), it wouldn't be that unusual for nearly every crime to be punished by death, with the distinction being who the particular method of execution was meant to fit the crime. For example, in my campaign, the usual penalty for looting in the aftermath of some tragedy is death by exposure.

One of the rights generally incurred by being a noble in my game is that regardless of the prescribed method of execution, you can request death by beheading as a right of your station.

Speaking of, it might be interesting to spend an essay discussing how the law applies differently to you depending on your social station.

 

[Ed Laprade]

Can I give Celebrim about a zillion XP? He really addresses the article in a most thoughtful and insightful way.