Keeping the Peace (Or Not)

I was reading this story a couple weeks ago, about ways to keep the murder hobos at bay in D&D. I've thought about that before - we've touched on some of the things that handle it - so I thought I'd write about it.

The game has taken a couple approaches through the years. The linked post notes a few. The game discussed in the post - The City State of the Invincible Overlord - did it by giving almost every NPC adventurer levels - not to mention deals with Orcus and such. here's also a link to a post about a couple Gary Gygax designed towns with legal and social systems intended to hold the characters in check. In later editions of D&D, things changed to steer PCs away from evil - limiting alignment, things like that... Or the way 4E just scaled everything to match the Characters - so in a 10th level adventure, you would run into town guards with an AC 26. That kind of thing strikes me as nonsense (and typical of the ways 4E obliterated any kind of actual world building) - 5E certainly seems to have adapted things like the flatter bonuses ("bounded accuracy") to address that. (A nice exchange about this is in the comments...)

I worry about this myself sometimes. Both questions in DM David's post: how to stop characters from going on a spree; and how PCs are supposed to relate to the general public in these worlds. But I don't think the problems are all that hard to solve. You can see it by reversing the terms: how do you stop an NPC party from sacking a village? that's what PCs are for! And that would work the other way. We've talked about this - PC's are not the only adventurers in the world. They are always a subset of the set of adventurers. I think PCs would be exceptional in their world, but not unique. From the start, they are probably tougher than most of the public - but there are always a few people around who are tougher than they are, and wherever they are, they are almost certainly not the only people at their approximate level. As they rise - maybe they become the strongest people in an area - but their presence there draws other adventurers, draws attention. If they start to abuse their power - what happens? Probably they get away with it, in the short term - the way the Orcs get away with their depredations, the way a dragon gets away with his - but they draw enemies worthy of them, by virtue of their actions. Just as an evil NPC party would draw PCs to fight them.

Still: for most campaigns, I think, PCs are probably going to fit, more or less. Take an example - the Clamdigger Cove/Dwarf mine adventure. How do PCs fit into this environment? This is a dangerous area - but it's a fairly low level danger. it's a relatively barren stretch of coast, rocky, with few inlets, with moors coming fairly close to the coast, making this uninviting for farmers - there's not a lot of people hanging around, not a lot of wealth in circulation. That makes it uninviting for powerful groups - inviting for less powerful groups. The threats out in the wilderness are significant for low level characters - orcs and goblins and bandits and so on, scaling up to ogres, giants, probably trolls - but not much more than that. The civilized population is similar - if you explored the towns and settlements, you would run into some character classes - but about the level of the monsters. The bandits and smugglers you are likely to find are 2L, 3L - not much more. I think that context provides the balance against PCs (or NPCs) getting out of hand - if the PCs decided to sack Whelker's Deep, they would find enough opposition to make it very hard, at mid-level anyway. By the time they could start to wreak real havoc, a couple things are going to come into play - on one hand - this part of the world simply doesn't have enough wealth to make it worth their while to lay it waste. And second - if they got the idea, they would start to draw opposition from people their own size.

Some of this dynamic was at play in the story of Clamdigger Cove - the idea that it was sacked by pirates gave it a couple features. I suppose the shameful truth is that it let me clear all the civilians out so I didn't have to run them just yet - but that's only part. But it also helps create the balance in the place: it creates that power vacuum, a place where crooks and monsters can operate - but it does it in a context where you know there are forces out there strong enough to wipe a town off the map. But those forces are absent for now - creating a place where low level PCs or bandits and crooks or monsters can hang around - but carefully. It should work like that - to offer a setting for adventuring that people can operate in, but with the awareness that there are bigger, stronger, darker forces just out of sight. And if you do something that attracts attention - get too rich, too powerful, or start behaving too badly - or in some cases, too nobly - you will start to draw those people in.

I think this sort of thing works even more clearly in larger towns and cities - we haven't really played in those kinds of places, but it would be fun to try. But it does require a lot more attention to these questions. First - the larger the town or city, the more adventurers there are going to be, and the more range of levels. A place like Whelker's Deep might not have anyone more than 5th or 6th level, and they are probably running part of it - but a large city can have anyone. You walk into a bar in Waynesburg and order a drink, see a tough looking old guy at the end of the bar with a longsword and the long bow and leather armor, and you think, A Ranger! but you don't have a good way of telling, at a glance, how much ranger it is - maybe he looks 5th level - maybe more or less - but the truth is, there's not going to be a huge difference between a 7th level ranger and Geronimo, Aragorn, Simon - and people like that might just turn up at the end of a bar in Waynesburg.

And more than that - most businesses anywhere are going to have muscle on hand: the owner might have a level or two, or be a veteran soldier (thus a Veteran in 5E terms) - or they might have a couple retired soldiers or rangers or such on staff. Or they have a deal with their neighbors, a neighborhood watch type thing. This is all more true in cities, and especially in the adventuring quarters of cities. In those kinds of places: bars and inns and businesses are even more likely to be owned by people with levels; to have guards on hand; to have powerful friends. They are also going to be more likely to be associated with a group - owned by the thieves guild; or paying protection to the thieves' guild. Or a member of the merchant's guild - which is almost certainly going to provide its own protection. Finally - in a city, especially in a pleasure quarter of some kind, the sheer number of establishments is going to serve to keep a kind of balance in operation. A fight starts, and everyone is going to come out into the street to watch the fun - so fights stay contained, or the mob takes out anyone who goes over the line.

So putting it together - I think that is how you can make this work. Especially in cities, though the same principals work outside cities - though probably a bit slower, and maybe more predictably. So start with the basics: why don’t PCs (or NPCs) go on killing and robbing sprees? Well -

1) sometimes they do - but see below.
2) in a city there are always people around - and in a city with adventurers, there are always people around ready to fight with you. If you start a fight, you will attract attention, and people may jump in, especially if things start to spread - if you start killing people, they are likely to do something to stop the killing.
3) in a city with adventurers and regular instances of violence, bars will have guards - most shops will have guards - if not by themselves, they will be part of guilds and the guilds will have guards. And in an area with thieves, the thieves guild will provide security. You should assume, in a big city especially, that bars and inns and brothels and gambling houses are owned by the thieves guild, or someone who had a deal with the guild. You should assume similarly than any merchants will have deals at least with their merchant guild, and possibly with the thieves guild. Etc.
4) Plus there is always the fact, in cities at least, that you don't know who you are talking to. It might be as simple as someone who looks like all the other 3rd level rangers or fighters, but it really 10L; it might be more deadly - someone who looks like a common thief or low level ranger who is actually a 12th level Bard; a common prostitute who is really a 7th level sorcerer. That kind of thing. This is, I think, far less likely to happen outside of cities - I'll come back to that...
5) The point is - if you start acting badly, you will draw attention - low level at first, but higher if you prove too much. And - as the threat or reward scales, so would the level of attention. If you start taking out the thieve's guild lieutenants, their hired killers will come after you; if you steal a vorpal sword, you will get attention from the kind of people who think they deserve a vorpal sword.

Now some of this changes in smaller towns, or outside of towns. But a lot of the principals are the same. Even in small towns, or rural areas, there will be others who can fight - even small towns will have guilds; anywhere with large landowners, there will be men at arms, to keep the peace (or maintain control). In frontier areas, things start to go back toward what they are like in cities - there will be even more adventurers around. There will be significant monsters, who may have dealings with whoever lives there. That dirty old prospector might be a 10th level fighter. That sort of thing. And drifting through it all, you will have powerful factions or people - take Clamdigger Cove again - isolated and barren as it might be, it is a nice harbor, and the offshore waters are thick with pirates, pirate hunters, all sorts of things. And any of them could turn up at any time. You could find some poor sap washed up on the beach, and think they are a lowly smuggler, an unlucky fisherman - but they might be part of a pirate crew. And the rest of the pirates might be looking for them. Or a naval ship. Or they could be an adventurer themselves, separated from their party - and the rest of the party might be looking for them. Being too quick to resort to violence can have consequences...