The Lands of Nandêmē: GURPS Content Posts

[Rasputin]

And lo, they fought an ibathene. And I babble about it and encounter distances.

[Rasputin]

The stork delivers. Just a goofy idea.

[Rasputin]

A game log, wherein my players choose the appearance of an NPC.

[Rasputin]

An adventure that I started this spring. Guys, if we want some new players, we want to make things easy for them, and making adventures makes things easy for them. Please make more! Some of you are likely better at than I.

[Rasputin]

A quick guide for punishment in GURPS. Feel free to point out where I screwed up.

[fredtheobviouspseudonym]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

A quick guide for punishment in GURPS. Feel free to point out where I screwed up.

One thing to consider: most TL-3 or 4 governments don't waste a lot of national resources on prison. Keeping/feeding a prisoner costs money.

So many major felonies would receive sanctions that do NOT cost the crown (or other national authority) money. Enslavement, mutilation, exile, execution -- all a low cost punishment.

IIRC it wasn't until the early nineteenth century that long prison terms were standard punishments. (See Australia, transportation, etc.)

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by fredtheobviouspseudonym

One thing to consider: most TL-3 or 4 governments don't waste a lot of national resources on prison. Keeping/feeding a prisoner costs money.

Yeah, I've got notes somewhere to that effect, but thanks for reminding me. Only Status 2 and higher fellows should get jail. Everyone else would be exiled.

Historically, many crimes were civil crimes, making them civil cases, with the victim or his family suing the offender. Hence there weregeld for manslaughter.

[jason taylor]

Law should allow for ascribed status. For instance sumptuary laws, while they never really "take" will be a big deal in ideology. Other's have greater effect. I read Christopher Duffy say that one reason the French aristocracy was so unpopular was that they were so ridiculously bureaucratic about it keeping meticulous records to check up on for anyone recommended for promotion. Whereas in other countries the rule often seemed to be that if you were generally accepted as a noble you were a noble because the king mainly wanted an officer even if he said he was descended from Odin. That is kind of a silly example. A rather outrageous one was that rape of a servant was often considered a venial offense in many parts of Europe.

The point is that law has to allow for the mindset a society is based on and most societies at that level had an elaborate array of ascribed statuses(that is statuses neither earned nor purely functional) which the law deliberately reinforces.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Rasputin

Yeah, I've got notes somewhere to that effect, but thanks for reminding me. Only Status 2 and higher fellows should get jail. Everyone else would be exiled.

Historically, many crimes were civil crimes, making them civil cases, with the victim or his family suing the offender. Hence there weregeld for manslaughter.

Weregild comes from a time when every family was a little state and made the same calculations a state will. Think Godfather.

As no one really wants a vendetta and no one can afford to let offenses pass under this circumstance the substitute was and in many places still is, weregild.

[Rasputin]

Originally Posted by jason taylor

Law should allow for ascribed status.

Three points:

1. This is quick-and-dirty, mostly based on the fact that GURPS has rules for trials but little in the way of punishment guidelines. Some of the punishment guidelines given (p. B508) are either meaningless in game terms or incredibly harsh and will thus take over the game. In a world with the Major Healing spell, a beating isn't too big a deal, and neither is torture, unless you give the poor schlemp a disadvantage from either. By contrast, sending them to jail or to the gallows take the character out of the game. I'm not big on that for many reasons unless the player is acting in a way that warrants taking his character and thus the player out of the game.
2. Something like a violation of a sumptuary law is actually handled—pick a felony level. It's an example of the principle of cocaine and heroin possession being branded hideous crimes, that being of societal outrage and fear for the social order above and beyond the actual damage done, which is pretty small. Throwing the book at some peasant for wearing purple or at some teenager in the ghetto for shooting up heroin punishes both for transgressing the social order. This is a GM's call; I'm not going to write up a legal code for someone else's game world when I'm largely winging my own's.
3. GURPS explicitly mentions Status already as a modifier in a trial. Back on p. B508 again, in the modifiers graf under "Trial by Judge" that's under the Don Henley quote, you have what modifies the reaction roll, which includes "Reputation, Social Regard, Social Stigma, and Status of the accused." I would assuredly add it to reaction rolls in adversarial trials as well. It's already there; I'm adding to what's already there, not recapping it. (Though I see that the reaction penalty for jumping bail is already there, and slightly less than what I pegged: -2 instead of -3.)