How often do you enforce laws in your games?

[Emerikol]

Generally speaking, I don't "enforce the law" when it comes to PC behavior-- this isn't because I'm lazy, though I certainly am, but because my worldbuilding is based on NPCs behaving rationally unless otherwise specified.

Law enforcement is inherently a form of violence, and PCs inherently, practically by definition, have a greater capacity for violence than lawful authorities. If the local militia could take down the PCs without losing half the town, they could have taken out the nest of trolls themselves instead of hiring the PCs to do it. And if the king sends his armies against a force that can tear his armies apart, he knows he'll have new enemies and no new armies.

The law is no longer a concern for heroes, but reputation is everything. Heroes who help the common folk and seek justice are beloved by the populace and just rulers. Heroes who prey on the weak may not be subject to the king's justice... but they can expect no accolades, no gratitude. Heroes may not be under the law, anymore, but they are also outside of it-- noble or corrupt, they don't enjoy the law's protection, and must rely on the value of their word and the honor of their name to move in society.

Wow. My PCs have never gotten that high level. In my world there are adventuring bands all over the place and if a King felt threatened he'd call in his archmage advisor and ask him to send a force to kill these upstarts. And if the PCs don't clear out a nest of trolls any number of other groups passing through town will do the job. Humanity is surviving. This "everyone is 0 level" nonsense (and yes I'm looking at you Gygax on this one) doesn't really work and no world I've ever seen developed would ever develop that way with such an assumption.

So sure if the group is high level, then the local village elders are not going to be able to handle them. If they act with impunity though, eventually someone will come for them.

 

[meltdownpass]

The premise that mid-high level adventurers are incapable of being threatened by conventional challenges is definitely at-odds with the type of game & fiction I'd like to run. That might be true if the totality of the game world comes down to numbers on a sheet, or if you run a campaign for literal demigods, but for other styles of game I feel like that really does a disservice to roleplaying and the integrity of the game world. Even Batman takes off his suit, can be caught unawares, and is otherwise vulnerable.

 

[Grogg of the North]

I know the 3.5 DMG said to assume that the king or local lord had some champion or mage on retainer that could deal with uppity/misbehaving PCs.

And if the PCs get too powerful for mere mortals, there's always the divine. Perhaps some lowly farmer calls out for the goddess of justice and law to avenge him. Now the PCs have inevitables, angels, and more after them. And there are plenty of tales of powerful individuals being cursed and losing their abilities, only to regain them after redeeming themselves. I'm not sure how well that would work in an RPG. Level loss I guess. But there's nothing stopping your PC from just switching sides and making a pact with the bad guys.

 

[zarionofarabel]

Well, I don't do the D&D thing, so, all the time!

A dozen town guard is a substantial threat. PCs tend to tread lightly in places where the law is enforced.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Well, I don't do the D&D thing, so, all the time!

A dozen town guard is a substantial threat. PCs tend to tread lightly in places where the law is enforced.

Good point. The concern of "PC's as high level demigods" is not a universal constant of RPGs. I too prefer a game where this sort of thing isn't baked into the system. It allows for certain types of games that DnD et.al. does not.

But Tantavalist brings up a good point. Either have high level NPCs who can smack down "uppity" PCs (which I feel is a bad design choice and to be avoided if possible) or just let them have the power and influence that a demigod should.

 

[pemerton]

Traveller PCs will never get to ignore the Imperium

I GM Traveller for a group that would dissent from that assertion!

Their ship took a hit from an imperial vessel fleeing interdiction on the world of Ashar, and they took shelter in a secret Psionics Institute outpost on a nearby moon.

Subsequently to that they took possession of an abandoned alien space ship in disregard of the direction being issued to them by an approaching Imperial cutter.

They then suborned an Imperial official who joined them - somehwat unwittingly - in the exavation of an ancient pisioncially-attuned site on a frontier world, and are now tin the process of hiding from an Imperial patrol cruiser that is looking for them.

A lot of GMs fall into the trap of assuming that "Of Course" there will be some powerful NPC in the same leagues as the PCs that will suddenly appear out of the woodwork to slap them down for upsetting the Status Quo but as you point out- not always.

It seems to me that the point of playing PCs in a RPG is to upset the status quo, but in any event I don't think there is any issue having peers of the PCs in a D&D-type game. It's just that when the PCs become archmages or demigods and the like, the NPCs in question are not mortal.

This is how D&D 4e works, for instance, and it produces pretty good play in my experience.

 

[Tantavalist]

I GM Traveller for a group that would dissent from that assertion!

OK, so perhaps it was badly worded.

Traveller was used as the example because PCs don't tend to become superhuman with experience. As in real life, they can absolutely evade the law. It's just that they have to use a combination of quick wits and good luck to do so. At no point do Traveller PCs become powerful enough that they can turn around and tell the Imperial Navy where to stick it.

As in real life- maybe they can take down a lone patrol ship just as criminals can kill off a single car's worth of police. But that results in escalation that the criminals can't match forever.

In D&D or Pathfinder? If law enforcement can take down a high level party then why the hell didn't they also take down every single threat that the PCs have dealt with throughout their adventuring career up until this point? There is no answer that doesn't just boil down to "Because this is how we want things to work, so that's how it does work."

It's like in superhero settings where somehow anything that would change things from the real world are plot-hammered away. Why isn't the reaction of someone as powerful as Superman to being given demands by a government to reply with, "Or What?"

That should in fact be something that all settings worry about. At any point the GM should have an answer to what happens if the PCs are told to obey the law and they respond with "Or What?" And more important, this answer should be consistent. It should also apply to NPCs. Why didn't the GM's answer to "Or What?" also apply to the bandit gangs, roaming monsters or evil wizards that the PCs have fought?

I tend to play games where PCs are larger than life but not superhuman. Hence my original post in this thread. In those games, the PCs would inflict a lot of damage before they went down but could probably be handled by the authorities eventually. But said authorities also tend to consider just how badly they want to take the PCs down before doing so. In many pre-industrial settings the local lord is likely to start cltivating the PCs as an ally if he doesn't crush them as a potential threat.

 

[John Dallman]

The law is no longer a concern for heroes, but reputation is everything. Heroes who help the common folk and seek justice are beloved by the populace and just rulers. Heroes who prey on the weak may not be subject to the king's justice... but they can expect no accolades, no gratitude. Heroes may not be under the law, anymore, but they are also outside of it-- noble or corrupt, they don't enjoy the law's protection, and must rely on the value of their word and the honor of their name to move in society.

In the high-level D&D I've run and played, which is not so much Old School Revival as Old School Never Went Away, characters have usually acquired some sense by the time they get very powerful. They don't go around wantonly killing or robbing; they tend more towards building and ruling the countries, temples or colleges they've founded. Some find crime irresistible after a while, but if their crimes become large-scale, other PCs tend to step in.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

Doing the "not fantasy" answer that I do so often to these types of questions.

We mostly play superheroes, and we tend to play goody two shoes supers in general. So really the only laws that get broken are the ones that are part of the genre - vigilantism and such - which really do not have repercussions.

If a hero does something extreme (like kill a villain) they get arrested, prosecuted and sentanced (if guilty).


When we play fantasy - if the characters are in town/city and break laws they get the appropriate reactions (thieves stealing stuff, any murder or major assault). The stuff that goes on in the wilderness, ruins or at war are not generally looked at like that. In fact when I GM D&D ish stuff, I tell everyone that I only allow Good aligned character (as per 3.x/pathfinder) not even nuetral. And as we mostly play supers, that kind of attitude tends to go with us into fantasy.

 

[meltdownpass]

In D&D or Pathfinder? If law enforcement can take down a high level party then why the hell didn't they also take down every single threat that the PCs have dealt with throughout their adventuring career up until this point? There is no answer that doesn't just boil down to "Because this is how we want things to work, so that's how it does work."

It's like in superhero settings where somehow anything that would change things from the real world are plot-hammered away. Why isn't the reaction of someone as powerful as Superman to being given demands by a government to reply with, "Or What?"

That should in fact be something that all settings worry about. At any point the GM should have an answer to what happens if the PCs are told to obey the law and they respond with "Or What?" And more important, this answer should be consistent. It should also apply to NPCs. Why didn't the GM's answer to "Or What?" also apply to the bandit gangs, roaming monsters or evil wizards that the PCs have fought?

I tend to play games where PCs are larger than life but not superhuman. Hence my original post in this thread. In those games, the PCs would inflict a lot of damage before they went down but could probably be handled by the authorities eventually. But said authorities also tend to consider just how badly they want to take the PCs down before doing so. In many pre-industrial settings the local lord is likely to start cltivating the PCs as an ally if he doesn't crush them as a potential threat.

Do PCs in your game world ever sleep?
Do they put down the vorpal longsword +3 to eat meals?
Do they have hobbies or interests or obligations other than whatever specific issue is at hand?

While there is a lot to be said about the social contract & expectations of players, your particular objections seem to be driven by extrapolating a powergaming playstyle of D&D should be applied to fictional settings of D&D. This is a fairly fundamental question: What comes first, the rules or the fiction?

I don't really find a rules-over-fiction gaming style to be particularly compelling or even well-evidenced. Every D&D rulebook, setting, novel published over the history of the game features quite a lot that contradicts the view that rules should take priority over fiction. In fact, this is itself a social contract issue that should be hammered out prior to a game. A game "set" in an established world like Eberron, Forgotten Realms, etc. has certain elements to it that players can and should expect to be present. Local & national powers in these worlds must have some means of keeping control over their territory over years, decades, centuries. If players can easily upend the existing order this is almost breaking the social contract of the game since, regardless of what the specific numbers & rules may say, this isn't something that is in accordance with the common expectation of the setting.