Unarmored in town?

[Steve Jackson]

Thumbs up to Chris' answer there. I had not thought of that, but yes.

And "an armed society is a polite society" is attributed to Robert A. Heinlein.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by Steve Jackson

... And "an armed society is a polite society" is attributed to Robert A. Heinlein.

It may be attributed to him, but it was a fairly common saying in the midwest as I recall, and a lot of people who said it never read any science fiction! ;-) My grandfather died in 1967, and he wasn't known as being much of a "reader." (Quite the reverse, in fact; Gramps was the cliche version of a redneck good ol' boy. Plus, my Dad used that phrase too, and he never read a science fiction book in his life!)

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by JLV

It may be attributed to him, but it was a fairly common saying in the midwest as I recall, and a lot of people who said it never read any science fiction! ;-) My grandfather died in 1967, and he wasn't known as being much of a "reader." (Quite the reverse, in fact; Gramps was the cliche version of a redneck good ol' boy. Plus, my Dad used that phrase too, and he never read a science fiction book in his life!)

The quote is Heinlein's, the idea is attributable much earlier. A close variation is this one:

""The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good"
-- George Washington

[JLV]

Originally Posted by ak_aramis

The quote is Heinlein's, the idea is attributable much earlier. A close variation is this one:

""The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference - they deserve a place of honor with all that's good"
-- George Washington

Even more likely, since it was a common saying in the Midwest at the turn of the last century, he heard it growing up in Kansas City, MO and just used it in one of his books. Thus making him one of the earliest people to actually publish it in that form. I'm guessing that if anyone did an exhaustive survey of newspapers from say, roughly 1890 to 1930 or so in a north to south swath of the US from say, Kansas to Ohio, you'd find that phrase written in several of them; but no one has the time or inclination to do so. Back home, we just called it "common sense." ;-)

[zot]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

I like the Mercenaries or Adventurers guild for that. You can store gear and loot with them, have stuff repaired and characters healed, hire replacement warriors etc.

Great answer! I haven't paid enough attention to all the guilds...

[JohnPaulB]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

Well, that is why when I design a city or city-state for Cidri, I consider the cultural types and prevailing attitudes to reflect the expressed specific morality of a given place; and that includes the question of the open carrying of arms by the civil (or not so civil population), the level of corruption or honor of the government, fairness in trade, etc. Each City or City-State takes on it's own personality; just like any other NPC you would design to expose your players to. In fact, quite a long time ago, I discovered the joy of designing *interesting* cities for the PCs to travel through - variating the local laws, customs, and governmental/political structure - if only for the color and fun of it all.

JK

I agree with you Kane. The civilized city I was thinking of were the ones of the Italian Renaissance. Lots of trade, wealth, and hostilities towards rivals, but not a lot of the residence or itinerants walking around in metal armor.

In Shakespeare's version of Verona, the young studs went around with rapiers and daggers and wore their fineries or possibly Cloth armor. There were laws in Italian cities that limited what one could wear (sumptuary laws) and that I believe extended to weapons out in public.

Their "bodyguards" (family's thugs) might have been a little more armor and slightly heavier weapons (truncheon-type).

[lemming]

I think a lot of PCs needing to carry everything with them comes from the old days of adventuring where the GMs would pounce on any weakness and steal everything not nailed down. Or always have the PCs attacked if they weren't in armor and having all their weapons handy.

If the PCs take reasonable precautions, don't penalize them and they won't act as paranoid.

I'd semi-treat it like modern society. If you flash your wealth and then leave it unprotected, you might have problems. Don't leave valuables in your saddlebags...

I like the idea of safe places for storage. A Merc Guild or Bank area. A magical lockbox similar to a safe deposit box.

[David Bofinger]

Originally Posted by JLV

the "wild west" that most people mentally envision was nothing whatsoever like the reality. People walked around armed, but so what? Violence was actually rather rare

"Rare" meaning what? IIUC it was high compared with cities on the east coast, certainly high compared with today ... maybe it was rare compared with somewhere else but I'm not sure where that would be. Obviously low compared with movies, role-playing games, or Westworld.

[Jim Kane]

Originally Posted by lemming

I think a lot of PCs needing to carry everything with them comes from the old days of adventuring where the GMs would pounce on any weakness and steal everything not nailed down. Or always have the PCs attacked if they weren't in armor and having all their weapons handy.

I know exactly what you are referencing, and your point about the old play-styles of "killer GMs", "killer Labyrinths", and "and an enemy around every corner" is well made. However, as I posted before, I like when people use a *wide mix* of cities and city-states - some refined and dedicated to law, order, and civility; and others, nefarious, dark and seedy places where even the city-guard will gladly look the other way... in exchange for only a few blood stained pieces of silver.

So, the *need* to be armed or not, truly should be a direct reflection of the environment an Adventure Party finds themselves in.

JK

[JLV]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

"Rare" meaning what? IIUC it was high compared with cities on the east coast, certainly high compared with today ... maybe it was rare compared with somewhere else but I'm not sure where that would be. Obviously low compared with movies, role-playing games, or Westworld.

Actually, given that population densities in the old west were a heck of a lot lower than modern ones are, I'd say there was LESS violence in the old west than there is now. Living in Chicago must be like living in Saigon during the Tet offensive most weekends. Living in Dodge City during the 1870's and 1880's, there would probably be some shooting going on at night when the cattle drive ended, but it was pretty much what our Arab friends call "happy fire" with cow hands blowing off steam by shooting into the air. Deadly shootings were very rare and treated very seriously by all involved. But even then, the classic "gunslinger" of our western movies was a very rare bird indeed. There are stories of full on gun fights that broke out across a poker table in a saloon, where the involved parties completely emptied one or even two revolvers across the table at their opponents without either side getting a scratch. Shooting a pistol is harder than it looks.

There were a couple of towns that had some issues, but frequently those were mining towns when a rich strike was on, and every thief and highwayman from hundreds of miles around congregated in those towns with the express intent of robbing and shooting people. Your average western town didn't see any more murders than places back east did; and remember, most people considered guns a tool, and used them commonly to shoot things like rattlesnakes, or maybe a buffalo for dinner (with a rifle, obviously). People back east were allowed to carry guns in public too -- they mostly just didn't bother since you seldom ran across a rattlesnake in New Hampshire. Generally, people in the old west were too busy working to have much time for shenanigans (you try doing everything by hand on a ranch or a farm and let me know how much you feel like riding out at night to shoot someone... ;-) ) Plus, since they were all familiar with guns, they knew just how dangerous they could be, and exercised safety pretty well. So accidental shootings were way fewer. You were much more likely to get trampled in a cattle stampede, die in a range fire, die from Cholera, break your neck falling off your horse, get scalped by a raiding Indian party, drown trying to ford a river, or die from septicemia from an untreated and unprotected bug bite or scratch, than you were to get shot in a gunfight.

One of the most realistic movies I ever saw, had these two gents as a Sheriff and a Deputy who got ambushed by three or four bad guys (typically, that's how a gunfight started) and both they and the ambushers got shot to rags in less than a minute. The Deputy crawls over to the Sheriff after the shoot-out to see if he's still alive, and then says; "That didn't take long." The Sheriff responded by saying; "Everybody knew what they were doing."

Originally Posted by lemming

I think a lot of PCs needing to carry everything with them comes from the old days of adventuring where the GMs would pounce on any weakness and steal everything not nailed down. Or always have the PCs attacked if they weren't in armor and having all their weapons handy.

If the PCs take reasonable precautions, don't penalize them and they won't act as paranoid.

I'd semi-treat it like modern society. If you flash your wealth and then leave it unprotected, you might have problems. Don't leave valuables in your saddlebags...

I like the idea of safe places for storage. A Merc Guild or Bank area. A magical lockbox similar to a safe deposit box.

It's also probably worth pointing out that it's pretty hard to make a fast get-away from a robbery when the loot is 80 lbs of plate armor -- my guess is that a sensible burglar would be far more interested in liberating small, easily concealable things of value than stealing someone's great helm... (Unless, of course, it were magical -- all bets are off if it's magical.)