Skip to main content

Society and Law 'n' Order

D&D promulgates a fairly modern, liberal democratic attitude to its laws, usually on top of an idealised Western European quasi-Feudal society. 
To say the two don't match is an understatement. Without doing a deep dive, you might like to consider how recently your country abolished slavery, and also made it illegal. The two are not synonymous - in the UK, slavery was abolished in 1833, but it wasn't actually made illegal until 2010. If someone owned slaves and came to the UK they were ok for 177 years... but now they face up to 14 years in prison. You might also like to look at the pattern of emancipation, that is giving people the right to vote. For example, in 1780 you had to own property (which didn't automatically mean you were a man, but inheritance laws and property laws made it very hard to be a woman and own property) worth £10 (£1,807 in today's money) but before you think this is not a huge bar to voting, it should also be noted the electorate was actually only about 3% of the population and expanding industrial cities were poorly represented (Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester had 0 MPs between them) while rotten boroughs - places that had formerly been thriving places, might have a lot. One rotten borough had 36 residents but 2 MPs! Britain underwent several reform acts that gradually extended the franchise to more and more men, then to women. It's most notable in Europe for avoiding a revolution to achieve this.
If we look back further, the abolition of serfdom, which was essentially slavery in all but name, came about because of the Black Death. When plague caused the crash of the population, there weren't enough peasants to maintain serfdom, and possibly not enough lords to enforce it, so the rise the yeoman peasant class, freed from the ties of serfdom and able to work and earn a wage arose. This led to the class D&D structure of craft guilds and the like. However, the laws of the time were far from fair. Courts were typically capricious and ruled over by the local noble. Penalties were severe - amputation, branding and execution was common - and anyone that could claimed benefit of clergy, because clerical courts were more lenient. This involved being able to write your name.
Think of how, today, we have phrases that imply there is one law for the rich and powerful, one for everyone else. Well, back then, if you were rich and powerful, you were probably related to the judge... This is your classic aristocracy
Over history, other societal structures have existed as well. The church has had massive influence, and there have been theocracies. Iran today is a theocracy. While we look at Iran and protest its policies of suppression of opposition and following drives for specific forms of power, such as nuclear weapons, historically the Catholic Church conducted such activities - look at things like the Albigensian Crusade and the Spanish Inquisition, plus the various Crusades to recapture Jerusalem. While it's also not politically correct to say so, there is a papal bull ruling that you weren't allowed to use crossbows in wars against people, because it was inhumane - but it was ok to use them on crusades, but the muslims were not human, having turned their backs on Christ. Not an attitude I support or condone in any way shape or form, but something to bear in mind if you create a theocratic state. Even states that represent what you might consider a lawful good God, tend to act in repressive, totalitarian ways when they are theocracies.
Kraterocracy is rule by the strong. This is most likely a Chaotic Evil society, but not necessarily. Any society that values trial by combat, status by combat and prowess on the battlefield has the potential to go down this route. Arguably this is the forerunner of an aristocracy - aristocrats are the inheritors of the people who were the best fighters, most often.
Plutocracy is rule by the rich. This is not quite the same as rule by the aristocrats, who derive their power from a title. If you turn up with £1,000,000,000 but no title, in one system you're directly powerful, in the other, you have to buy your influence. That doesn't mean you can't have power, but you're the power behind the throne, rather than the power yourself.
Why am I mentioning all of these? The laws in these different societies are going to be different. Take, for example, theft. Pretty much all societies have laws against theft. But if you're a society where you rule by might, it's possible you don't: if you can't protect your stuff, you don't deserve it. If you're a society where you rule by the size of your bank balance, you probably have stricter laws to prevent the riff-raff stealing and going up in social status, whereas if you're an aristocracy you have weaker laws about it - it doesn't matter if Johnny Peasant steals a million ducats, he's still a peasant with no title, and no idea how to get about in high society. If you're in a theocracy, it depends on the nature of the deities in the pantheon.
History has lots of systems of law, many of which we look at and consider deeply unfair or unjust but with some tinkering they can be used in your game and give it a totally different flavour. And with a bit of thought you can add flavour to your game to make it really resonate. For example, in the UK and the US, if you are injured in an accident there is a process to work out how much compensation you are due. Although it gets a bit hazy in places, you can trace this back to Saxon England and Weregild - the compensation that was due for injuring or killing another based on the extent of the injury and their status. You paid the price and avoided a blood feud with the family of the injured. This system can easily be transported into a D&D campaign and make it feel different.
I still remember, although it is many, many years ago (in the 1980's in fact, so at least 30) a session in which we had been transported across the world against our will. We found a town where everyone seemed to be LG and heaved a sigh of relief. They turned out to be a bunch of religious zealots and it was terrible. We had to break half the party out of prison because they worshipped banned gods and so on. No one was evil, ironically the LN character got on the best, but the TN druid ended up in jail, the CG wizard ended up in jail and someone else ended up in jail as well. Needless to say we blew that joint!
There isn't a single right answer here. If you imagine a Japanese-based society, where a lot of things are built from wood and paper, laws banning the use of fire-based spells are perfectly reasonable. If you've got a theocratic state that preaches respect for the dead, outlawing speak with dead and animate dead is equally reasonable. But there are countries and cultures that have rituals to speak to their ancestors and the like, so these spells would be more common there and totally accepted. Classically dwarves and drow live in caves, as do others, Mold Earth, Earthquake and Transform Rock might banned for them. In a city where the nobles rule from stone fortresses, Earthquake and Transform Rock might be tightly controlled as well...
All of these add flavour to your campaign. But, of course, if you make a spell illegal, that just drives it underground. Consider, for example, when America banned alcohol. Whatever your feelings about drinking and prohibition, speakeasies and bootlegging are a huge part of American history of the period. Think of modern history and illegal drugs. Again, regardless of your feelings, think about how easy it is to get hold of a wide variety of illegal drugs. I don't know how to here, I moved about a year ago, but in all the cities where I lived for more than a year as an adult, even if I was in my 50's for one of those cities, I could have found illegal drugs if I'd wanted to buy them. Given I work with students, I'm pretty sure if I tried, I could manage it here too. I just don't have the desire. Banned things are always available, for a price, and there is always a blackmarket. 
I am seriously not suggesting you make your cultures treat women as second class citizens. You should not persecute people on the basis of gender, race, sexuality or anything else in your game. However, you can take inspiration for historical cultures, power hierarchies and legal systems, adapt them to adjust for those biases, and sprinkle a bit of fairy dust of them to make them suit your specific needs. And this will help make your campaign distinctive and more memorable to your players. Isn't that what we're all after? And it will help, as your players explores, to make different countries feel different to each other as well.
If you want to read a bit more:

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Move over spell slots, here come Magic Points

We're all familiar with the spell slots system. If you're a primary caster, you start with 2 first level slots at first level, at third character level you add two more second level spell slots and so on, basically at every odd character level, you get to cast another higher level spell. At various levels you get to add more lower level slots too. It gets a bit weird with your high level slots and you don't get tenth level spells and so on, but there's a neat pattern. Semi-casters, like paladins and druids, get a different progression, where they get spells later and slower. Warlocks are technically full casters, but get a different progression and rule system, but they access their spell levels on the full caster progression.  There's also an issue. Some spells of a given level are just better than others. Take, for example, Fireball and Lightning Arrow . Both are third level spells, both are AOE damage spells. It seems reasonable they should have similar effects.

Skill Points, Level 0 and RP aids (like sex aids, but more PG)

I outlined in  this post  that I was leaning towards to a skill points system. Im brief, I outlined the idea that you'd get a fixed number of points + Int modifier for free spend, and then your Initiative modifier for a more restricted spend. Your free spend points can go on skills, tools, vehicles, languages, weapons or spells, your restricted spend ones generally must go on weapons or spells. Your skills, tools, vehicles, weapons and spells (and I guess for completeness it should apply to languages) would have five tiers of skill, giving you a +1 to +5 bonus. Expertise for a few classes (or via feats) would let you extend that, possibly at high as +10, certainly to +7.5 (which would round to +8). A couple of things need to be shaken down fully here. If we have the current 18 skills, and you can get 21 raises, and we say you get 3 points, + Int mod + another mod, that could be 63+30+24+120=237 points to spend on skills, but only 90 points worth. Of course a chunk will be restricte

Advancement in 6e: Awarding XP.

I’m not, in this instance, talking about doing away with levels. I’m not really talking about changing the pattern of XP for each level either. I’ve discussed removing levels before , and while I stand by that discussion, I don’t think it’s going to happen. There are ways to make levels more evenly spaced, in terms of xp and while that’s an interesting meta-discussion about game design in and of itself, it’s not really vital to designing 6e. What I’m talking about here, instead, is properly discussing how 6e awards xp. In 5e, you either award xp for combat encounters. The DMG advises, for non-combat encounters, that you compare the event to the combat encounter table and award experience on that basis. That isn’t quite verbatim, but that is the total guidance you get. The alternative approach is just to set chapters, in effect, milestones in the official parlance, and at each point award the characters a level. Each of these approaches has issues. Milestones are good if your party f