Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="doctorbadwolf" data-source="post: 7533924" data-attributes="member: 6704184">First, we must establish what a given society views as just. In fantasy worlds, we regularly inject out own ideals of justice, and quite rightly so, because 99% of us aren't experts on medieval justice, and anyway Faerun and Eberron aren't Medieval Earth. So, do we just run with that, do we lean in to the perception of incredibly harsh and brutal "justice" in pre-modern times, or do we research like the dickens to try to get something similar to a given period and setting of our real world? Let's say we assume the following about a nation that we'll call, Al Barone: THere is a criminal justice system. Not just knights and lords who decide what justice means and carry it out, but an actual system. There are judges, appeals, laws that can be referenced, and solicitors. SUch systems go back at least to the pre-Christian Brithonic Celts, so it's not a wild idea. The purpose of our hypothetical nation's criminal justice systems is to seek an ideal form of unbiased justice, for the good of the social order. Individuals have rights in Al Barone, as individuals, and the social order and justice system, at least on paper, cares about those rights and the good of individuals. The point of trial and sentencing is not primarily to punish the criminal as harshly as the law allows, but rather to mete out fair sentences based on the harm done. Al Barone is a diverse nation, run by gnomes, with a large elf population, as well as many humans, goliaths, dwarves, dragonborn, etc. It's major cities are trade hubs, so people from the entire region have settled there, and been part of the society for many generations. So, how does justice look, in Al Barone? If an elf, a gnome, a dwarf, and a goliath are all on trial for murder, on a given day. Each murder would a crime of passion, and each is at the cusp of maturity by the measure of their own people. Thus, will their sentences be of varying lengths based on their life expectencies? I would argue that no, they will all receive, if convicted, similar sentences, and those will be based on a system of determination that focuses on the offense, rather than the offender. If the crime was premeditated, there would be more time. WIth a violent past, more time. It would be rare for a life sentence to be handed out, and death sentences would be reserved only for the most heinous of crimes. To waste the life of a person that can change and be an entirely different person in a 100 years is anethema, and as a result, the shorter lived races share in the grace that the hyper intelligent and long lived gnomes share.</blockquote>

Verification