How often do you enforce laws in your games?

[DrunkonDuty]

Why shouldn’t there be NPCs who are on par with the PCs? I find it quite interesting to have people that the PCs need to either be careful around, create alliances with, or plan for a confrontation with.

I don’t have players that tend to go murder-hobo, though, so maybe I’m missing something?

Sorry, I could have been clearer in my post.

Absolutely no reason why there shouldn't be NPCs on par with the PCs. I'm all for the sort of scenarios you outline. In fact they're my favourite. I feel we get the best drama out of closely balanced conflicts. And I like drama in my RPGs.

I was just responding to the implication that PCs* can present a narrative problem if they decide to flip the script. Not that that means it must be a problem, just that it can be. It all comes down to campaign, play styles, group expectations, etc. etc.

I haven't had to deal with murder-hobos in a long ass time. I think the last time I had someone (1 player out 5) who was that way inclined was more than a decade ago. I handled it by saying "Sorry, we're not playing that sort of game." But back in my youth I struggled with how to deal with it and did err on the side of bigger NPCs laying the smackdown. It was unsatisfying all round and I recommend not doing it.

* I was thinking specifically of high level PCs in DnD et.al. but honestly it can happen in any game where the PCs are expected to be the best of the best.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Sorry, I could have been clearer in my post.

Absolutely no reason why there shouldn't be NPCs on par with the PCs. I'm all for the sort of scenarios you outline. In fact they're my favourite. I feel we get the best drama out of closely balanced conflicts. And I like drama in my RPGs.

I was just responding to the implication that PCs* can present a narrative problem if they decide to flip the script. Not that that means it must be a problem, just that it can be. It all comes down to campaign, play styles, group expectations, etc. etc.

I haven't had to deal with murder-hobos in a long ass time. I think the last time I had someone (1 player out 5) who was that way inclined was more than a decade ago. I handled it by saying "Sorry, we're not playing that sort of game." But back in my youth I struggled with how to deal with it and did err on the side of bigger NPCs laying the smackdown. It was unsatisfying all round and I recommend not doing it.

* I was thinking specifically of high level PCs in DnD et.al. but honestly it can happen in any game where the PCs are expected to be the best of the best.

Okay, that makes sense.

 

[aramis erak]

Whenever the player actions and attendant consequences suggest that I should. Not enforcing consequences is lazy DMing. That said, the minutae of things like tolls and taxes need to be used sparingly. Like many other things they are annoying in great quantities. So murder, theft, and destruction of property are laws almost everywhere. Things like taxes and sumptuary laws are things I would introduce an evocative detail for a particular culture, at which point it gets enforced fully.

In a magical society, a zone of truth is an ideal method for tax checks. Enter the market, and you're asked if you paid your whole assessed tax. Get caught lying, get branded and barred from the market, after as much of what's owed is seized.
Otherwise, yeah, much the same.

In re the D&D levels of locals issue... 3.X has pretty explicit rules for what level NPCs can be expected by the size of the local population center.
I found it useful enough to use the a similar mechanic in my 5E homebrew.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I enforce laws when it matters for story or setting.

In a supers game, one PC had his super-gun confiscated after a battle because he didn’t have a permit. In England. In the early 1900s. (And I had reminded him of the setting during ChaGen.) He got it back...eventually. After he got a permit.

Same group, different GM, different player: NPC quasi-theocratic ruler warned party about prosetlizing in his domain. Player’s cleric PC started “spreading the good news” with vigor, and got exiled for his trouble.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Obviously every group has their own taste for such mundane and boring things, but I am wondering how many groups actually enforce laws in their games, as far as it is appropriate, and how many simply ignore laws or let it slide to keep the game going.
Most RPGs are after all power fantasies (at least thats my impression) and PCs often end up in the role of vigilantes or judge, jury, executioner which is not quite compatible with being a law abiding citizen, no matter what your alignment says (In D&D, but I wanted to keep it a bit more open, thus I post in the general forum).

So, do you enforce laws in your games? And which ones? Only the big ones like murder or do you have bridge tolls, taxes, sumptuary laws, etc.?

Depends on the setting entirely. Anywhere from barely-interacting to constant issue.

Historically legal systems tended to be enforced to incredibly varying degrees with wild levels of flexibility. Stuff which people take for granted often absolutely wasn't. For example, when the police were introduced in London, they were not greeted with open arms by any segment of society, not even the Establishment. People kept killing them (sometimes whilst they were trying to make arrests) and getting off with "justifiable homicide" (a total defense). Some societies had basically little-no temporally-bound enforcement mechanisms - they weren't built for dealing well with people "just passing through" who were heavily armed and armoured. Tax systems tend to strongly oriented towards land-usage or land-ownership, and to living in a specific place and having a specific profession. Booty/looting was often simply outside the scope of such systems. Where it wasn't, it tended to be still extremely hard to enforce and more like ensuring the ruler of the land got a big enough bit of loot that he wasn't inclined to look into it further. Laws themselves were often extremely flexible even when, on book, they were inflexible (you can see this basically wherever both a legal code and actual punishments are listed before the 1700s or so - often people will be getting penalties that are simply not what the law says). Except sometimes they aren't. The very notion of a "law-abiding citizen" is in many ways a pretty modern one.

So it's all about the specifics. And specific places may have very specific laws, too. Which they may well be reluctant to attempt to actually enforce on the sort of people who are adventurers, but there is usually a limit. Anyway, re: specifics, if for example, you look at the Code of Hammurabi, you see it has an awful lot of laws which are clearly aimed at specific societal ills, or forcing prices to stay in a certain range for goods and services, or ensuring that laziness and greed didn't cause their agricultural system to collapse (they even basically invent squatting because it's more useful to them, as a society, than having a house or land go empty/unused).

I mean, if you're playing CoC 1920s and in Chicago or something, laws will be a constant issue (as will organised crime and corrupt or just really violent police), but if you're playing D&D in a Dark Ages-ish setting, most of the laws societies will have aren't likely to interact with adventurers much, unless people are dumb enough to get in their way, and even those are generally likely to end up with "just pay a fine" (or the adventurers fleeing).

 

[Grendel_Khan]

Just a quick note on the Heat mechanic. This is essentially a value that can be assigned to a specific area that measures how much the PCs have come to the notice of the authorities. The more heat you have, the harder a lot of actions become, especially those involving avoiding notice. It’s an easy mechanic to incorporate into any system — in a PbtA system you might use clocks to represent heat, for example. Reasons why you might want to use this or a similar mechanic:

I've been using a version of the Heat mechanic from Blades in the Dark in another system (that's not PbtA-related at all), and it's really amazing how it nudges the gameplay in a slightly more realistic direction. Just the existence of Heat points means the PCs are incentivized to cover their tracks, to avoid using guns where possible, and to generally be a little more cautious, but without being paralyzed. It also makes it feel less arbitrary when one situation generates more Heat than another, because they've been told that certain factors (like killing people) up that count.

It's hard for me to imagine not using Heat, in some form, in future games where law enforcement is a thing, and where the players aren't law enforcement themselves (the latter being less and less appealing as things go).

 

[Jd Smith1]

Always.

I don't welcome players who need power trips, and having to stay within the rule of law and social expectations add a layer of interest and depth to the setting.

Of course, it cuts both ways: in civilized areas, the NPC enemies are under the same constraints.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Mostly it is a plot/story point in my games as there are SO many types. I have city/town, country, religious and guild laws, which overall is just too much for the players, they just know the basics; don't murder (without reasons) and don't get in trouble and don't get caught.

 

[Tun Kai Poh]

I run Blades in the Dark, so the Bluecoats and the legal system are a constant threat. We've even had a situation where the players ran back-to-back heists of the same prison which was pretty audacious.

The system uses Heat and Wanted Level to track how much the law is pursuing the PCs, and it's a good abstraction that makes consequences a thing that is always om the table. "Yes, you can have an extra die from the Devil's Bargain, but the consequence is that some bystanders witness the attack and your Heat goes up by 2. Does that sound like something you want to push?"

Keep in mind that there are supernatural authorities (the Spirit Wardens) who know when deaths occur in the city, making murder a much more risky proposition. The party's Hound finds it a safer task to engage in a sniper duel with a gunship during a high-speed chase at sea than fire at a living human (although she's still killed plenty).

 

[Bedrockgames]

Obviously every group has their own taste for such mundane and boring things, but I am wondering how many groups actually enforce laws in their games, as far as it is appropriate, and how many simply ignore laws or let it slide to keep the game going.
Most RPGs are after all power fantasies (at least thats my impression) and PCs often end up in the role of vigilantes or judge, jury, executioner which is not quite compatible with being a law abiding citizen, no matter what your alignment says (In D&D, but I wanted to keep it a bit more open, thus I post in the general forum).

So, do you enforce laws in your games? And which ones? Only the big ones like murder or do you have bridge tolls, taxes, sumptuary laws, etc.?

It depends on the setting. But laws are pretty important in my campaigns. I like to know what the laws are, who enforcers them, etc. In my current campaign, officials can come up on random encounter rolls and when they do I generally assume it is to do things like check for passports, inspect goods, etc. I know what magistrates are responsible for adjudication of what types of crimes, what the penalty ranges are for crimes. I make rolls when crimes committed by players are investigated