Laws in your campaign

[Andor]

I was reading, with some amusement, this article and in it I was surprised to read that to even discuss the issue of succession is illegal in Thailand. This is even harsher than the European Lèse majesté laws I was familiar with. On further reading it seems likely that the laws are being interpreted more harshly now that that their is a succession issue brewing, but still.

Out of curiosity how many people use laws that are surprising to modern western player to highlight the foreignness of your game worlds? What kind of laws?
Lèse majesté?
Sumptuary laws?
Prima nocta?
Trial by combat? by Ordeal?

In a lot of the ancient world the law was often circumscribed in ways that seem bizarre to us. Frex in Ancient Greece a charge of murder could only be brought by a family member of the victim. Or the spiderweb-like patchwork of accountability under the feudal system, which could make even a simple appeal for justice into a minor quest in it's own right.

 

[Dandu]

I like to throw in slavery, indentured servitude, and blatant corruption.

 

[Celebrim]

I generally assume that any legal system ever invented somewhere in real world has some sort of corresponded in the fantasy world somewhere. The really interesting questions to me are how does the legal system differ to deal with things like magic, multiple species of sentient beings, and so forth.

Lèse-majesté: Pretty much everywhere. Free speech is basically unknown, though some places are more tolerant than others. Actually uttering a curse, because it can actually become real, against the government or a noble can and often will be considered assault. And if the person dies for any reason, it will probably be considered murder.
Sumptuary Laws: Pretty much everywhere, although seldom detailed in the campaign.
Prima Nocta: Pretty much nowhere, or at least nowhere I've ever detailed. The curse of a virgin or newly raped virgin were she unwilling is just potentially too powerful of a thing to let this custom flourish, and there are just too many supernatural beings that take umbrage at this sort of thing. Also, it wasn't even that common in the real world as far as I can tell and is more common in literary works than history. I can't see a society where this is common being all that stable. Concubines, harems, and various forms of polygamy are the more common cultural solution to male ego.
Trial by Combat/Ordeal: Optional for civil disputes most places. Allowed for domestic disputes and available as a remedy for criminal accusations in some of the hinterlands.

Some additional things:

The use of mind altering spells such as charm person are universally considered rape. Punishment is generally to be esmasculated, sodomized with a stake, and drawn and quartered. Even the charge or accusation can draw a lynch mob not willing to wait for the legal authority.

Looting or arson generally is punished by death by exposure, usually in a gibbet.

It's usually illegal to bury your own dead, in the same way that its usually illegal to bury radioactive waste on your property without a permit.

In most places, sorcerers are considered inhuman monsters undeserving of legal protection. Sorcerers that are discovered are usually killed, have their fingers broken, their tongues cut out, their eyes gouged or scalded out, and then are burned to ash. Not necessarily in that order.

In most places, it is illegal to raise a man from the dead if he has a legal heir. A man so raised from the dead is not considered to be heir of his own property, and the death nulls all contracts such as marriage and the like.

In most places, it is illegal for a wizard to enter a city unless he first announces himself to the municipal authorities and obtains permission. Once obtained though, it's rarely denied, because again, curses. Generally, if a wizard of the city kills a visiting wizard, it will not be considered the cities business to become involved. It would be a really rare circumstance where a charge of self-defense by a wizard against another wizard wouldn't be accepted as valid. Conversely, a wizard that used any sort of nonlethal magic against a non-wizard, better hope that the dead man was a known bandit or assassin as there will tend to be presumption of guilt.

A wizard is convicted of a crime not related to their craft (such as murder, excepting mind rape, diablerie, necromancy, etc.) is generally entitled to a noble's death - usually beheading.

In most places, it is illegal to speak ill of a deity by their sacred name. You are also generally forbidden to try to discourage worship of a deity that is formally patronized by the city, and you may not publicly preach the doctrine of a deity that is foreign to the city. You may provide a blessing in exchange for begged alms. In some places, all of the above is illegal, but you first must obtain a license.

If a cleric turns up dead in a city, it's considered an ecclesiastical matter. If it is a visiting cleric, the secular courts probably won't get involved at all unless asked, and will leave the matter up to the cities temples.

It's illegal in most places to carry swords when outside of a town unless you are a noble, in the service of a temple or noble with a right to arm followers and can so prove it, or have a license to form a mercenary company. Right to bear arms beyond a dagger or staff or similar 'tool' is generally not assumed, though it varies widely by custom. If found in violation, you can be executed for banditry.

 

[Andor]

In most places, it is illegal to raise a man from the dead if he has a legal heir. A man so raised from the dead is not considered to be heir of his own property, and the death nulls all contracts such as marriage and the like.

That's an interesting one, although it seems to me like it might vary by religion. For those where marriage is a sacrament in addition to being a contract the 'until death do us part' might not apply. Particularly if you had a race like Tolkein's elves who seem to be more strongly monogamous than men, and for whom death is more of a zipcode change than a true separation. Plus of course things can get amusing when you throw in reincarnation. "Annoucing her Grace the dowager Duchess Cymbeline and her husband Mr. Carruthers, the badger.

Right to bear arms beyond a dagger or staff or similar 'tool' is generally not assumed, though it varies widely by custom. If found in violation, you can be executed for banditry.

Assuming of course you're not better armed than the authority attempting to execute you. One must be practical about these sorts of things. Although that's an addition dependent thing as well. A decent militia or patrol is a much bigger threat to a high level party in 5e than in 3e, say.

 

[Celebrim]

That's an interesting one, although it seems to me like it might vary by religion.

It's not motivated much by religious reasons, as it is practical ones. As a very simple example, consider the end of the movie "Castaway". When someone is declared dead, someone else is generally free to remarry. Then if the person is ever brought back, what do you do? Is the old marriage invalid? Is the person the spouse of both partners? As the person been guilty of adultery this whole time? I suppose groups would have periods of mourning and perhaps prohibitions against remarriage precisely to avoid these sorts of problems, but there are limits to that sort of thing as well.

A reincarnated being would not be recognized as being legally the same person. You might have some stature on the basis of the soul that was inhabiting your current body, but the legal person would be the body and not the soul.

There are a few possible complexities. There is a nation on the opposite corner of Sartha from where I usually campaign, that I know virtually nothing about except that ancestor worship is very important to the culture, it is an ancient decadent and byzantine nation, and it is ruled by a parliament of 'ghosts'. Coming back to life would be an actual demotion. Exactly how this country deals with power not being inherited, and the extent to which the ancestors can claim property rights over the society isn't something I've ever worked out. It's most just part of my general musing on, "If anything were immortal, then almost certainly there would arise situations where that thing perpetually ruled." and my general fondness for hypothetical systems of government.

Assuming of course you're not better armed than the authority attempting to execute you. One must be practical about these sorts of things. Although that's an addition dependent thing as well. A decent militia or patrol is a much bigger threat to a high level party in 5e than in 3e, say.

When dealing with bandits, the ability to resist arrest is assumed. But in general, it would require a fairly high level party to not be biting off more than they could chew in my homebrew, even if they managed to kill off the patrol. There is no assumption of NPC incompetency in my world, militaries tend to be highly skilled and professional, and the general ruthlessness with which crimes are punished ought to suggest something of the 'under siege' survival oriented nature of the world. In a very real sense, this is a world that has survived innumerable zombie apocalypses and is prepared for more. The party would in general be better off trying to offer bribes to magistrates, begging clemency of the Knight of the Road, or such. How successful that would be would depend on whether Charisma was treated as a dump stat.

Conceivably, yes, a 14th or higher level party of PC's couldn't really be detained by a city or nation regardless of their crimes, and most small nations would have difficulty resisting such near demigods. On the other hand, it would be almost unthinkable for a party to hit 14th level and not have at least some amount of social capital that would prevent minor misunderstandings. Exactly what would happen if a PC party high level and then decided to turn against society, I'm not sure. Most nations have some emergency once in a 1000 year resources of various sorts - treaties with storm giants, favors reserved from djinni lords, 100 oath sworn spirit warriors who swore they'd defend the nation even after death, etc. But in general, I think that unless a PC was notoriously cruel or insane, if he was 14th level and wanted to run the country not many people would get in his way and more than a few would flock to his banner - even if cruel or insane.

 

[Andor]

There are a few possible complexities. There is a nation on the opposite corner of Sartha from where I usually campaign, that I know virtually nothing about except that ancestor worship is very important to the culture, it is an ancient decadent and byzantine nation, and it is ruled by a parliament of 'ghosts'. Coming back to life would be an actual demotion. Exactly how this country deals with power not being inherited, and the extent to which the ancestors can claim property rights over the society isn't something I've ever worked out. It's most just part of my general musing on, "If anything were immortal, then almost certainly there would arise situations where that thing perpetually ruled." and my general fondness for hypothetical systems of government.

There is a computer game called Dominions 4, where one of the nations (loosely based on Inca mythology) is ruled by the Mummies of their Nobles/Priests. Death is indeed a promotion for this culture. The dead also get large stipends. A few people have tried pointing out that adding more and more people to the rolls, in perpetuity, is not a sustainable model, but the priests are not interested in hearing criticism. Oddly enough they don't have a succor culture in the next age of the game.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Generally, it is unacceptable to teleport (or other such magic) into a country or city without prior permission. Those who show they are good guys, not bad guys will have no problem getting this permission--anyone who has kept their nose clean to the point of being able to use such magic is unlikely to change their spots. (Teleporting in without permission would be considered the same as entering a modern country and bypassing the immigration controls.)

Many of the most advanced places impose a tax on casters living there--they owe the city one day in seven of spellcasting, or they can pay someone to provide such casting (note that this option is pretty expensive!) You're told what's needed, the city provides any components you might need and never asks for spells which will harm you or spells you don't know. With long term residents they will sometimes provide training in desired spells.

Note that this is based on actual presence, not merely having a house. A wizard who spends a month out adventuring and then comes back for a week of R&R owes the city only one day worth of casting even though he owned a house there.

Such cities are easy to identify due to the high level of life-improvement magic that has been used. Wall-of-stone streets are common, continual light streetlights are widespread, etc.

The dead have no rights in legal agreements other than those that specifically address death for a period of time (an agreement may specify that it persists through <x> years of death) but neither are agreements cancelled by death. To the extent nobody else is harmed things are unwound upon being restored to life.

Thus if someone dies his widow is free to remarry but if he's brought back before she does they are then still married. His property that became hers is restored to him, but if it was otherwise transferred (even in use) he doesn't get it back as that would mean taking it from the third party. (Thus he owns a house that he and his wife live in. He dies, she remarries and her new husband moves into the house--for him to reclaim the house would throw him out and thus it doesn't happen, the house remains hers.)

 

[delericho]

Out of curiosity how many people use laws that are surprising to modern western player to highlight the foreignness of your game worlds?

Sure. Though it certainly varies from place to place - the laws you'll find in (mostly) civilised Sharn are rather different from the laws you'll find in Q'barra, for instance!

I do find it important to remember two things, though:

- D&D, despite its trappings, is not even remotely historical (by default). In fact, in many ways it resembles the Wild West (during a gold rush) rather more than medieval Europe. So while modern legal and ethical codes aren't necessarily appropriate, neither should those of medieval Europe necessarily be assumed either.

- D&D is played by players living in the modern world - be that the USA, Scotland, or elsewhere. That means that the players are going to bring a whole load of assumptions to the game, some of which they may well not even realise are assumptions. And they're not wrong to do so.

So...

I do indeed use all sorts of odd laws and odd customs to establish the foreignness of the game world, but I do so in big, bold ways and I do so sparingly. Most regions have a handful of key defining features (just enough to establish it; not so many as to overwhelm the players) which may include some odd laws, or they might be aspects of clothing, or odd use of language, or something else.

And I don't, as a rule, do subtle. If it's not big enough to be a defining feature, it's not big enough to bother with at all.

 

[Celebrim]

So while modern legal and ethical codes aren't necessarily appropriate, neither should those of medieval Europe necessarily be assumed either...D&D is played by players living in the modern world - be that the USA, Scotland, or elsewhere. That means that the players are going to bring a whole load of assumptions to the game, some of which they may well not even realise are assumptions. And they're not wrong to do so.

I'm going to quibble with "And they're not wrong to do so.", since this point seems to contradict the first one. At the very least, they should be expecting that a quasi-feudal, quasi-frontier fantasy world should not conform to modern assumptions about law and order. They probably should also expect that modern moral and social sensibilities aren't necessarily in place either. That isn't to say that they can't bring their assumptions that the modern ways and moral beliefs they actually hold and think them superior to what actually is there, but it does mean that they shouldn't expect it to be a world in broad alignment to modernity or even a particular epoch of history. Expecting to be surprised should be the expectation, and when in doubt they should ask questions: "Do they have newspapers?", "How do you go about advertising?", "Would people find it odd if I wasn't religious?", "What is the normal legal stance on homosexuality/women's rights/abortion/democracy/freedom of speech/right to bear arms?", "Do nominally good people tolerate or even approve of slavery/the death penalty/sex out of marriage/charging interest on a loan/capitalism/colonialism/etc.", "Is it ok for nominally good people disagree over these things, or is there general 'word from on' high by all the lords of heaven?", "Are orcs considered people or monsters, and more to the point is it ok to just kill monsters even if they are sentient, and if so how do people justify that morally?", "Is casting an evil spell ok if you do it for a good reason, or is it always evil?"

Different settings and DMs are going to have very different answers. For that matter, you can't even assume uniformity of opinion on all that among 'modern people', so it's dangerous to assume anything.

I have at least three purposes in having 'alien' laws.

1) First, I want to raise big red flags on any player that may have unquestioned assumptions about how things work. I try to never play 'gotcha', but sometimes players tell me what their characters do while keeping in their heads an unstated assumption about what they want to accomplish and its only after they've gone a certain ways down a plan that I realize they've been making assumptions.

2) Secondly, I really don't want it to just feel like a pastiche of the modern world, or worse a pastiche of the modern world with anachronistic medieval elements. I want the setting to feel a bit alien, especially at first. I want it also to feel logical, which pastiche's of the modern world seldom do in a world with magic, monsters, multitudes of alien creatures and strange and often questionable technological development.

3) Thirdly, particularly with the laws regarding magic and the like, I want to very much impress on the PC's from the beginning that if the use their powers to 'fool around' with NPCs thinking that it's funny and generally try to bully NPCs, the NPCs aren't likely to think it very funny and just sit back and take it. Casting charm person on the barmaid to try to get her to sleep with you, or casting charm person on the merchant to try to get free stuff won't be treated as an amusing joke.

There is a general rule of the world I'm trying to convey to players that they aren't nearly as clever as they think they are, and that any obvious thing that they would try - like using an illusion to turn copper coins to gold, or using enchantments to make a merchant want to give you all his stuff - are things that are more ordinary and understandable of crimes as identify fraud or writing bad checks are in this world. One thing that almost all 'zombie apocalypse' movies have in common is they occur in worlds where there isn't a lot of 'zombie apocalypse' fiction, so that when the zombie apocalypse breaks out everyone is baffled what to do about it. Likewise, in vampire fiction set in this world, when the vampire shows up, no ones mind first leaps to vampires except maybe that one guy in the know. But this is a world where vampires and zombies and magic is all ordinary to them as cars and the internet are to us. When a door opens by itself, no one in this world is baffled and thinks, "Maybe I didn't shut it and the wind blew it open." They think, "Gods help me, something invisible just walked into the room.", and even if it's just a 6 Int commoner, he know at least much about what to do about it as your average modern person knows about the weaknesses of fictional vampires. One of the most frustrating things to me as a DM is players that assume that because their powers are new to them the player, that they are new and novel to the setting as well. Equally bad is the player that thinks that they are armed with special knowledge and are just going to upset and overturn everything.

"No, seriously, the army is trained to deal with fireball. Every professional army on the planet recognizes a guy in a robe waving a twig around is potentially dangerous, in the same way a modern professional army would recognize a guy with an RPG launcher."
"Believe it or not, they build castles armed with the knowledge of what a 6th level wizard can do."
"Believe it or not, you can't overturn the entire economy by using a simple spell."
"Believe it or not, you aren't the first person who has tried to invent a firearm and equip an army with it, and the reason you don't see armies of guys with muskets isn't because people are stupid and haven't thought of it."
"Believe it or not, in a world with dragons flying around and similar hazards, cities generally are capable of reasonably defending themselves against mid-level PC's and other such hazards."

Granted, this wasn't always true, but it has been true for at least 25 years of my DMing. Society got well ahead of the PCs when I realized I the DM needed to, else my setting didn't make the slightest bit of sense if the PC's could just throw it into turmoil by obvious application of spells.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

3) Thirdly, particularly with the laws regarding magic and the like, I want to very much impress on the PC's from the beginning that if the use their powers to 'fool around' with NPCs thinking that it's funny and generally try to bully NPCs, the NPCs aren't likely to think it very funny and just sit back and take it. Casting charm person on the barmaid to try to get her to sleep with you, or casting charm person on the merchant to try to get free stuff won't be treated as an amusing joke.

While I don't try to make the spells themselves crimes the first scenario here would be treated as rape, the second as theft.