Yesterday I spent a few hours watching the History Channel where they put on yet another great program, this time about the fourth voyage of Christopher Columbus. And yes gentle readers, that is yet another plug to get you hapless game masters who have run out of adventure ideas to watch the History Channel. At the urging of some people I know, and because it was Columbus Day this past week, I was inspired to write this edition of D&D adventure ideas.
One aspect of D&D that many players may feel a bit uncomfortable with is how to deal with issues of law and justice in a fantasy world. Some of this undoubtedly has to do with the fact that many game players are under the age of 21 and therefore have had little or no first hand knowledge of how legal systems actually work. The rule books offer little or no guidance on the matter, other than to say that game masters and players should assume that "normal common sense laws are in effect."
Legal systems are a must. The general idea behind laws and governments are that they are necessary for societies of more than a few hundred or few thousand people. In small groups, everyone knows each other. If there are disputes, then they usually can be worked out in one way,shape, or form. However, as the number of people in a society grows, then you run into issues where people have to interact with many people on a day to day basis whom they may not know. People know who their family members are, as they know their friends, their co-workers and colleages from their job, as well as acquaintences from the interests that they may share with others. If anything wrong happens within that circle of people, then chances are that one might be able to work something out reasonably amicably with them.
However, what happens when you are dealing with people outside that circle of people you know? We now live in societies with millions of people. So how does a society deal with positive and negative interactions of strangers? How does a society promote commercial transactions between relative strangers which help promote economic growth? How does a society resolve conflicts between people whom have no blood kindreds or where parties have no friendship ties? What large complex societies do is that they form governments and codes of law to deal with such matters.
Before going any further, I should state here that I am not an attorney. However, I did read some law and economics courses as an undergraduate student. I also have been involved in some legal cases because of my political activism. As such, I can give hapless game masters (especially younger game masters who have not reached adulthood) some insight as to how our own legal system operates. That in turn can give game masters some means of sketching out a legal system for their own fantasy worlds.
Another place where game masters can look for some insight is to study this wiki entry on comparative legal systems throughout the world. It should be noted that some places in our own world run the legal traditions based on religious law, such as the sharia, while others use Civil law. In France, the Napoleonic Legal Code as adopted during the rule of Napoleon, which in turn was partially based on old Roman codes.
In America, we use the common law system which we inherited from the United Kingdom. As is noted in the wiki entry, we set down and follow precedents from days gone by, which are not supposed to be nullified by acts of legislation.
More to the point, the common law is largely recognized to have three main aspects to it - those laws regarding the disposition of property (read here for property laws in other legal systems), laws governing the disposition of contracts, and those of tort (i.e. negligence, accidents, or libel). There are many other specialty areas of legal expertise, including constitutional law, Corporate Law, Admiralty Law (and also Laws of the Sea), and so forth. Game Masters can search for other aspects of law, but RPG players should understand that as part of their legal training, all lawyers have a general reading background in torts, contracts, and property regardless of what they end up doing with their legal careers.
It seems to me that when the D&D books refer to "common sense" laws, they are probably referring to issues like laws against burglary, tresspass, murder, rape, robbery, fraud, and so forth. These acts would fall under torts in the Anglo-American common law. In general, there is a distinction between civil law and criminal law.
One idea to consider is what may happen if a trial takes place. What more or less happens in the real world is that a suit will be drawn up and filed where charges are made and the wrong doing is stated. Procedures are followed, which may involve what is called discovery before arguments are made by prosecution and defendants. Parties may litigate, judges (or political bodies like our Congress) may subpeona persons who are of interest to the case. In a world where magic works, GM's may consider granting magistrates and judges the power to compel parties to appear in trials via magical means.
Another thing to consider is that we in America have a state sponsored prosecution service. In other words, the government hires prosecuting attorneys to go after wrong doers. However, not all societies have done this. In ancient Rome, private citizens could bring charges against another person or group if they felt that they could prove that the other person or group had in fact been the ones who wronged them. In general, one might consider the consequences of wrongful prosecution or outcomes. Usually in civil laws, one of the things prayed for in relief (page 278) by the parties is that the other side will be compelled to pay for the legal costs of their side.
Game masters and players may find contract laws to be of interest. In particular, whenever contracts are entered into by both parties, there are issues of completeness and of information to consider. A contract may be set aside or nullified by a judge if it does not cover all terms. Also, it is generally recognized that parties to a contract should have perfect information or nearly perfect information in order to enter a contract. If one of the parties to the contract does not have full grasp of all the information detailed therein, then a contract may be set aside. The reason why information is so important to contracts is that parties need to have a grasp of all of the known facts so that everyone's interest is aligned properly when considering the offering and accepting of the contracts in question.
One example of a contract whose outcome was under question can be seen if you watch director Ridley's Scott's film, The Gladiator, starring Russel Crowe and Joaquim Phoenix. In the film, a slave trader named Proximo, played by Oliver Reed, complains to a Roman Senator about the fact that he has a contract to deliver slaves for entertainment purposes and that is wasn't in his interest to see it broken.
As an example, say you are a Game Master and you have set up an adventure for your players where the Sovereign of a nation state has commissioned the players to go and discover a mysterious island thousands of miles away. The King or Queen is sponsoring the expedition, but the players have been contracted so that (perhaps amongst other terms of the contract) they can can keep 25 percent of all treasures (gold, silver, precious metals, jewels or natural resources, etc) discovered and exploited in return for risking their lives.
Now then, let us consider this arrangement. Neither the Sovereign nor the players know what's out there, nor does either party fully understand what risks are to be faced. However, it is understood by both parties that there is a risk involved. The players can accept or refuse the offer of the contract - presuming that the Sovereign is not a tyrant, nor are the under some kind of magical compulsion such as a Geas spell.
And that idea brings me to the issue of magic use and legal issues. The whole point of D&D is that it is a game where magic works. This presents some very real problems when conducting a game. Just try considering conducting a murder trial where the either the defendant, the jury members, the prosecution, the defense, or the judge (or indeed all of the parties involved) could be magically influenced via charm spells or other methods to alter the outcome of the case! What about the idea that evidence for legal cases can be made to disappear via magical means? Clearly the presence of magic causes a conundrum which needs to be dealt with.
One idea would be to have law courts where there are powerful anti-magic spells in place which hinder the obstruction of justice via magical means. Another might be implementing laws where if parties are caught tampering with justice or legal matters, then they would be prosecuted by authorities. There are other ideas players out there might consider when devising forms of law for their fantasy worlds, but be aware that laws are, by their nature, a form of compulsion! Laws are meant to be enforced even though for various reasons they often are not - such as for reasons of not having enough manpower to enforce them or because the law breakers may know people of considerable wealth and power. Yes, laws are bent sometimes and GM's and players should be aware that societies never apply their laws to everyone equally.
Laws and their application can be used by creative Game Masters to come up with entirely new kinds of adventures for players to play, such as campaigns which emphasize adventuring in cities or which have a political flavor to them rather than have a boring hack and slash feel to them. As such, the Wizard encourages GM's to spend at least a few weeks of time reading and studying legal codes and forms of law, as their general outlines can now be found online. If imaginatively used, all kinds of interesting possibilities can pop up and may make your campaigns much more fun.
Enjoy!
Wizard
Posted by The Mighty Wizard at October 14, 2007 12:26 PM