Unarmored in town?

[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.)