[DF] PCs in town with thieves stealing their loot

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by DanHoward

In the DF universe a town doesn't seem to be anything other than a plot device to let the players dispose of loot, buy more gear, and to help them get started on their next expedition.

Just so. Some future supplement may well make town a place where stuff besides selling, buying, looking for work, and drinking actually happens. Right now, though, town is so stacked against PCs who get shirty (just about none of the stuff done by the Town Watch or the King's Men in DF 2 offers a "saving throw") that making it worse would be grossly unbalanced. It should be a safe haven relative to the dungeon, provided that the PCs mostly obey the law.

[b-dog]

Originally Posted by Kromm

Just so. Some future supplement may well make town a place where stuff besides selling, buying, looking for work, and drinking actually happens. Right now, though, town is so stacked against PCs who get shirty (just about none of the stuff done by the Town Watch or the King's Men in DF 2 offers a "saving throw") that making it worse would be grossly unbalanced. It should be a safe haven relative to the dungeon, provided that the PCs mostly obey the law.

I agree with what you have stated but just consider my point that realistically a town near a dungeon filled with monsters would likely be a dangerous place with all sorts of people coming and going and only those folks hard enough to live there. There would likely be a lot of lawless behavior as well. It would be quite different than a town in a very safe location.

[DanHoward]

A topic about "realistic" towns probably shouldn't start with [DF] in the header. Do you want to know about realistic towns or do you want to know about DF towns? It seems to me that you can solve most of your problems by not giving the PCs so much loot in the first place.

[Kromm]

In DF, the people in town are soft – that's why they have to hire adventurers to kill monsters and clear dungeons! Townies owe delvers their lives. Sure, there are laws to keep delvers from doing more harm than good in town, but there are presumably just as many laws to keep townies from messing with the heroes who fight off the zombies and wolves and orcs for them. These laws are enforced by authorities whose power is sharply peaked in town; that odd power distribution explains why those people don't do the monster-killing and dungeon-clearing themselves, but by virtue of their power, the authorities can keep the peace in both directions.

Consider a party of PCs: The thief is assumed to belong to the Thieves' Guild; the wizard, to the Wizards' Guild. The knight may actually be a knight – that's spelled out in DF 1, and Status and Wealth are omitted because DF doesn't really "do" polite society. The cleric is of course a representative of a temple, and more important, the gods. Delvers are in effect the ruling class . . . they answer only to guildmasters, high priests, and the King. Thus, the folk of a typical town won't mess with them because if they do, they'll suffer similar punishments to those spelled out in DF 2, the difference being that 25- and 50-point townies aren't as likely to survive them as 250-point heroes.

This is not realistic at all. Neither are dungeons full of monsters, cash-based economies in medieval towns, or miraculous magic. So it goes. You can't have that stuff and realistic . . . it's either/or.

[b-dog]

I just feel that in any town with a source of huge cash near a dangerous place would attract a lot of organized crime running bars, gambling saloons, brothels, drugs dens and so on.With loads of transient people and monsters nearby it does not seem like a place for good folk. Sure there would be an armed guard making sure the monsters from the dungeon don't invade and that would keep people in line and maybe the organized crime might not want any hassles so they would "take care of" any problem PCs or townsfolk.

I guess that the town is supposed to be a sleepy town because that is the genre convention. Still the town of Nulb was one of the first detailed towns in a module (Temple of Elemental Evil) and this town was chock full of criminals, scammers and spies.

[Loukas]

Originally Posted by b-dog

I just feel that in any town with a source of huge cash near a dangerous place would attract a lot of organized crime running bars, gambling saloons, brothels, drugs dens and so on.With loads of transient people and monsters nearby it does not seem like a place for good folk. Sure there would be an armed guard making sure the monsters from the dungeon don't invade and that would keep people in line and maybe the organized crime might not want any hassles so they would "take care of" any problem PCs or townsfolk.

I guess that the town is supposed to be a sleepy town because that is the genre convention. Still the town of Nulb was one of the first detailed towns in a module (Temple of Elemental Evil) and this town was chock full of criminals, scammers and spies.

In that case, in DF terms, maybe the City of Thieves would qualify as a sort of dungeon itself? A high-mana high-danger place, just in the open air?

So then the real DF-style town, as a safe haven, is yet one step removed from this criminal town.

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Kromm

You can't have that stuff and realistic . . . it's either/or.

While this is true, DF source material offers plenty of scummy towns, and I feel we are perhaps getting too close to calling "hurting wrong fun" on b-dog, who is, after all, the OP.

b-dog: As you are no doubt aware, Kromm will not break into your house and revoke your GURPS privileges if you add town schtuff to your DF campaign. (Well, maybe on a really bad CF on hobby skill:GURPS)
Many folks here think this probably won't be fun for the players. If you are pretty sure it will be, go for it.

[Pomphis]

Originally Posted by b-dog

I just feel that in any town with a source of huge cash near a dangerous place would attract a lot of organized crime running bars, gambling saloons, brothels, drugs dens and so on.

If you don´t have a prohibition all those businesses may be run by law abiding merchants.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Loukas

In that case, in DF terms, maybe the City of Thieves would qualify as a sort of dungeon itself? A high-mana high-danger place, just in the open air?

That's definitely what it would be. It would not be a standard town . . . it would be an adventure in itself. Until we have GURPS Dungeon Fantasy ??: Town Adventures, I'd counsel against throwing PCs built on the standard DF templates into such a place. That would be like grinding them down with the bad extraplanar and psionic stuff from GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 14: Psi without using the rules given there for assessing, resisting, and fighting such threats.

Originally Posted by Loukas

So then the real DF-style town, as a safe haven, is yet one step removed from this criminal town.

Yes, exactly.

Originally Posted by martinl

While this is true, DF source material offers plenty of scummy towns, and I feel we are perhaps getting too close to calling "hurting wrong fun" on b-dog, who is, after all, the OP.

I think you're missing the source of my concern, which I've spelled out above. My view is that town adventures are great fun and that there should be cities of thieves and hives of scum and villainy . . . but that these aren't what DF assumes for "town." Rather, DF would consider them dungeons, and I'm trying to warn b-dog (and others) that without rules to give dungeon-based characters the tools for town adventures, it's needlessly adversarial to dump them into town, suspend the polite society promised by DF 2, and more-or-less sneer, "Haha! Your Broadsword skill won't help you here. Too bad your template doesn't include Streetwise, sucker."

I respond to "[DF]" posts with advice for by-the-book gaming using what's published in the GURPS Dungeon Fantasy series. In that series, characters built on the standard templates are truly unprepared for town adventures, save perhaps for the bard, thief, and innkeeper – and even the stock thief is less a canny urban criminal than a well-armed field technician for locks and traps. Thus, a conceit of the series is that town plays by strict rules, given in DF 2, that constrain everyone to follow laws "or else." For instance, PCs who break those laws lose money, reputation, HP, and important body parts . . . "no saving throw." It's fine to make things grayer, so that town is friendlier to PC and NPC criminals alike, justice offers a saving throw, and solutions involving broadswords and Fireball spells aren't simply ruled out of the question, but there's no canonical support for it as yet.

[martinl]

Originally Posted by Kromm

It's fine to make things grayer, so that town is friendlier to PC and NPC criminals alike, justice offers a saving throw, and solutions involving broadswords and Fireball spells aren't simply ruled out of the question, but there's no canonical support for it as yet.

Maybe b-dog is here for heretical support?