Disregard the Constabulary

[Chamomile]

You must have Shadzar on ignore, and clearly you weren't here for Tzor.

[PoliteNewb]

D&D from the start seeks to model combat from 1960's medievalist movies where an heroic Robin Hoode personally fucks up the Reeve of Nottingham in extended man-on-man sword combat, plus fantasy Wizards and Orcs because it was the latest big thing at the time.

A bunch of bobbies arresting Robin and his friends for highway robbery doesn't really work there, does it. Doesn't suit. Because the story of Robin comes from before there were police. When the King or his Reeve had to personally deal with that shit by taxing up enough money (from a severely depressed economy and half-starved peasants) to raise an army and then find the fucker with it still in tow, pillaging for food as they went.

What are you, nuts?
Robin Hood is full of stories about how the Sheriff's men arrested one of Robin's guys for whateverthefuck, and planned to hang him or throw him in the gaol, and Robin and his other buddies busted him the fuck out. If that is not "heroes fighting the police", I do not know what you think it is.

Seriously, how is this hard to understand?
a.) Robin Fucking Hood and all his merry men are outlaws, because they break the law.
b.) The Sheriff's job is to enforce the law, and he has a bunch of armed dudes to help him do this.
c.) The Sheriff's guys try to nab Robin's guys whenever they can.
d.) Robin's guys are legitimately afraid of the Sheriff's men (at least somewhat), because they live in the fucking forest to avoid them.

So how the hell are the Sheriff and his men NOT 'the police'? Because they don't have regulation books and handcuffs? No shit, sherlock, they don't have prowl car and mirrored sunglasses either.

[DSMatticus]

Can you, again I ask, perhaps read for comprehension, and consider that if you've read something impossibly stupid that you might be reading it wrong?

No, because you say impossibly stupid things all the time, and this is one of those times. I don't know if this conversation is just going completely over your head or if you are desperately struggling to find a leg to stand on, but you are clearly fucking floundering.

Let's walk you through this real slow.
1) You made argument A: "police can't exist because mindflayers."
2) Argument A is stupid, and I told you so, and I told you why.
3) You responded with argument B: "low-level problems can't exist if police do."
4) Argument B is not a defense of argument A, and you didn't actually respond to me at all. It's a non-sequitur. I told you so. Also, argument B is also stupid, and I told you so, and I told you why.
5) Your brain stopped fucking working entirely, and you offered no defense of either argument and tried to call excluded middle on someone telling you that your arguments don't fucking reach the conclusion you think they do.

Your arguments seriously imply that we can't have police because stealthbombers and/or we don't have crime because police. Both of those are obviously bullshit. Police don't have to deal with stealthbombers, and D&D police don't have to deal with mindflayers. Police don't prevent every crime/catch every criminal, and D&D police don't either. The "excluded middle" is to admit that police, mindflayers, and crime can all exist simultaneously, at which point you don't even fucking have an argument anymore! Police exist, high-level threats for PC's to handle exist, and low-level threats for PC's to handle exist. You have conceded every claim you staked out, and the only thing you have left is "POLICE BADWRONGFUN." That's not being an excluded middle. That's an "oops, I'm full of shit and take back everything I just said, but refuse to admit that's what I'm doing."

[tussock]

Robin Hood is full of stories

Yes it is.

Man, I love it when people take a minor example and build a massive strawman out of it. Dude, there's a Romeo and Juliet movie where they have guns, but it's anachronistic too. M'kay.

@DSMatticus.
1) quote marks are for quotes, which that isn't.
2) So you're attacking a strawman.
3) I explained how you were misinterpreting me.
4) So you complained that I didn't defend your strawman.
5) and here we are.

But I continue to take some amusement in you building extreme positions that I do not hold to argue with and thereby claiming victory. So whatever, as long as we're both enjoying this.


NB: I continue to be correct. The police did not exist in the settings for D&D, and having them exist is bad for your game because it strongly interferes with the setting assumptions required for adventure (and as Frank said, is boring). Feel free to build another hilarious strawman out of that.

[Avoraciopoctules]

The police don't exist in the "settings for D&D"?

I'm pretty sure Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun, Eberron, Golarion, and Sigil are all D&D settings that have police.

[vagrant]

Are you saying, Tussock, that not a single DnD city you run has an equivalent of the city guard or city watch? At all?

[PhoneLobster]

Just to get the Robin Hood thing in proper context, and prove quotation marks have LOTS of uses...

Tussock "I mean fuck if anything proves me right about no police ever existing it's how totally fucked over Robin Hood stories would be if he were arrested!"
Polite Newb "Are you fucking crazy? That happens ALL THE TIME in Robin Hood Stories, it's almost ALL they are about."
Tussock "Waaaah! STRAWMAN WAAAH!"

And Tussock has also pulled about the same thing on everything else he has said about No-True-Police-Man ever existing in history, fiction, and gaming.

[DSMatticus]

what the fuck is wrong with you

1) You made argument A: "police can't exist because mindflayers."
2) Argument A is stupid, and I told you so, and I told you why.

1) quote marks are for quotes, which that isn't.
2) So you're attacking a strawman.

Having modern police patrols doesn't fucking work in D&D because the villains aren't first level nobodies, they're doppelgangers and mindflayers and 8th level PCs with a bad attitude, and the police will just die. And if you have police tough enough that they don't just die there's no fucking point in having PCs in the first place.

It is right there. You cannot pretend it did not happen. Now, it looks like you tried to muster up a really dishonest, really disingenuous defense that amounts to "okay, I didn't mean it doesn't fucking work even though I said it doesn't fucking work. I meant it results in nebulous, ill-defined bad things that are bad, nebulous, and ill-defined and I have no argument or explanation as to what those are and it's totally your fault for not understanding that I would disagree with myself and walk back my position to a claim I refuse to even define, and that means you can't criticize me for the things I said EXCLUDED MIDDLE, STRAWMAN HELP HELP HE'S GOT A STRAWMAN!"

But the fact is that if you walk back from the claim "police which would get their ass beat by mindflayers cannot exist in the same world as mindflayers because the police will just die" to the weaker claim that "police which would get their ass beat by mindflayers can exist in the same world as mindflayers because 99.99...% of the things police do involve turnip farmers and not mindflayers and the police will be fine," then your conclusion that police have to be so powerful as to make PC's irrelevant is fucking unsubstantiated. It does not follow. You can't walk back to some middle (and then accuse people of excluding it to hide your full retreat) because this is an if P then Q argument and P is not true so your argument is just fucking dead.

Man, I love it when people take a minor example and build a massive strawman out of it.

Wait, you brought up Robin Hood as an example of a story that doesn't work with police, and when someone pointed out that there are bajillions of Robin Hood stories about a (well-intentioned) gang of criminals evading and fighting (corrupt) police, you called... strawman?

Do you have any idea what the fuck you're doing at this point?

[PoliteNewb]

Hold on, what the actual fuck? Your argument is twisting around so much it just disappeared up its own asshole.

Are you claiming that all the Robin Hood stories are anachronistic (in regards to old England)? Because if so, I'm not sure why the fuck you brought them up!.

Or are you just claiming that all the Robin Hood stories where Robin and/or his dudes get arrested are anachronistic? Because I just got done reading Pyle's stories (The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood), which are a lot less modern than the 1960's Robin Hood movies that (once again) you referenced...and they are still full of 'cops and robbers' scenarios.

Just a handful...
--Will Stutely gets arrested and sentenced to be hanged, Robin and his boys rescue him.
--Wat the Tinker gets a fucking warrant to arrest Robin Hood, tries to serve it, ends up joining up with Robin.
--Will Scarlet leaves home after killing a guy accidentally, out of fear of being arrested, and joins up with Robin.
--After embarassing the king a bit, Robin and a few of his chief dudes are on the run, lest the king's men arrest them.
--At one point (I think during the Guy of Gisborne story), Little John gets caught by the Sheriff and his men, and instead of killing him on the spot, they plan to haul him back to the city to hang him publicly.

Hell, at one point Robin swaps clothes with a guy, and the Sheriff's men arrest that guy, thinking he is Robin...honestly I thought this was kind of a dirty trick, because the Sheriff's men might have just shot him full of arrows...but nope, they arrested him and marched him off to the Bishop of Hereford (who knows what Robin looks like and realizes they got duped).

Now: ANY of those are scenarios where the Sheriff and his men are recognizably "the cops" and Robin and his men are recognizably "the robbers", and if anyone says different, I say they are a lying asshole. So if your game can do Robin Hood (which you earlier admitted D&D can and does), then it has police. QED.

[Krakatoa]

NB: I continue to be correct. The police did not exist in the settings for D&D, and having them exist is bad for your game because it strongly interferes with the setting assumptions required for adventure (and as Frank said, is boring). Feel free to build another hilarious strawman out of that.

It's not a strawman, it's just wrong.

It's 'anachronistic'? No it's not. D&D doesn't take place in actual history and the Dungeon Master decides whether or not police exist in their setting or not. There are clear analogs, if not direct equivalents, to police in some ancient and medieval societies.

It interferes with the setting assumptions. The setting assumptions are not constant across all games. Forgotten Realms has vastly different assumptions than Dark Sun and that is vastly different still than Eberron. Even within the settings, different DMs will bring different assumptions to the table.

It's boring. How is it boring in and of itself? Any setting element misused can make a game boring or otherwise bad. Assuming that there are trained professionals that can handle policing street crime does not affect the ability of adventuring parties to find adventure. There's a difference between a drunk orc at a tavern being belligerent and an army of Bane-worshiping Orcs marching on the town to make war.

[tussock]

The police are an invention of the Victorian world.

Medieval cities had watches, but they were basically glorified tax collectors at the gates. They also had summoners, who are effectively bounty-hunters working directly to bring witnesses and plaintiffs before the courts. Anyone who troubles the watch or the courts is a problem for the actual nobility and their armies, because you are usurping their position of being above the law and they will murder you for it.


So my D&D is basically a murderocracy. There's petty officials who collect tithes and count windows and acres for rates and stuff, who are all 1st level, or maybe 2nd. And if you give them trouble then bigger and bigger NPCs will feel a need to reassert your proper position in society by killing you. Once you become hard enough to kill, they give you a title and let you join their club instead, often in place of whoever you just killed if you mind your manners along the way.

If you offend enough people before that though, kill enough properly appointed knights and so on, eventually the Emperor and Pope and local Oracle will come and personally kick your ass, because they're all damn near 20th level. If you win, well done, your party is the new Emperor, Pope, and Oracle. Bravo. Also, there's trouble in the west provinces and rumours of armed rebellions, and a lot of people don't like you for some reason. So good luck with that.

NB: Sometimes even the Gods take offence, but they're not all that high level, and the same principle of killing them and taking their office applies.

Someone seemed to be asking what I used, there it is.

D&D from the start seeks to model combat from 1960's medievalist movies where an heroic Robin Hoode personally fucks up the Reeve of Nottingham in extended man-on-man sword combat, plus fantasy Wizards and Orcs because it was the latest big thing at the time.

A bunch of bobbies arresting Robin and his friends for highway robbery doesn't really work there, does it. Doesn't suit. Because the story of Robin comes from before there were police. When the King or his Reeve had to personally deal with that shit by taxing up enough money (from a severely depressed economy and half-starved peasants) to raise an army and then find the fucker with it still in tow, pillaging for food as they went.

Various complaints about my use of Robin Hoode. By talking about how the Reeve and the Bishop and their personal gangs of thugs personally rampage about the countryside upsetting all the peasants and ... it just all agrees with what I said in the first place.

I give up. You're all fucking idiots.

[name_here]

I do not consider the Sherriff's hired thugs going about enforcing the law meaningfully distinct from police. The only time the difference really matters is when you get a new Sheriff. You can complain to the sheriff's boss regardless.

And no, they didn't get to do whatever the hell they wanted. I've been spending the past month reading medieval law codes for class. They're a lot more straightforward than modern ones, but definitely include rights for freemen and servile laborers. Hell, by the time Robin Hood was set, they had grand juries and mandatory public prosecution.

[PoliteNewb]

D&D from the start seeks to model combat from 1960's medievalist movies where an heroic Robin Hoode personally fucks up the Reeve of Nottingham in extended man-on-man sword combat, plus fantasy Wizards and Orcs because it was the latest big thing at the time.

A bunch of bobbies arresting Robin and his friends for highway robbery doesn't really work there, does it. Doesn't suit. Because the story of Robin comes from before there were police. When the King or his Reeve had to personally deal with that shit by taxing up enough money (from a severely depressed economy and half-starved peasants) to raise an army and then find the fucker with it still in tow, pillaging for food as they went.

Various complaints about my use of Robin Hoode. By talking about how the Reeve and the Bishop and their personal gangs of thugs personally rampage about the countryside upsetting all the peasants and ... it just all agrees with what I said in the first place.

Jesus H Christ!
It's not "their personal gangs of thugs" any more than the Chicago police was Mayor Daley's "personal gang of thugs" (which actually, is kind of apt, really).
That is: the Sheriff's men are personal thugs to the exact same extent all police are the personal thugs of whatever bureaucrat is in charge of them. The two are fucking indistinguishable.

I do not consider the Sherriff's hired thugs going about enforcing the law meaningfully distinct from police.

That's because they fucking aren't. Everyone except Tussock seems to get that.

Tussock, if you give up, fine. If you want to take one more stab, please provide a list of the features that distinguish the Sheriff of Nottingham's men from "police" (for which you might provide a definition, while you're at it).

[Fuchs]

Tussock doesn't seem to get that the Sheriff's men might have been thugs, but they followed procedure.

[deaddmwalking]

There's also the issue of accepted recognition of authority.

For myself personally, if I'm pulled over by a police officer and given a speeding ticket, I'm not going to be happy. But on some level, I agree that having police is a good thing, and agree that they should be 'in charge'.

When two groups of thugs interact (like a gang war) neither side tends to have some level of 'accepted authority'. When the police and a gang fight, people know that the police are the 'lawful authority'.

If the level of conflict escalates, you call it a civil war, and at that point the authority of the police is called into question.

Robin Hood doesn't claim to be 'a new sheriff'. He recognizes the lawful authority of the sherriff (though he disagrees with the manner) and chooses to be an outlaw. He removes himself from the 'lawful power structure' because he disagrees with its operations. Eventually, the sheriff ends up being removed from power and lawful authority is vested in someone more deserving.

Once you accept that a group of thugs has the right to administer the law, you've pretty much got a police force.

[name_here]

Now, there is one way in which modern police are importantly different, but not one that's terribly likely to come up except possibly in highly political games.

With modern police, their salaries are provided by the government bureaucracy, but historical law enforcement was usually paid by a private citizen. This arguably does include the watchmen provided by Augustus, with the private citizen paying them being the Emperor, because Rome was kind of weird when it came to how governmental functions were funded and taxes were collected. This only really matters when the person who is in charge of the police gets replaced. However, in medieval Europe, generally the person who funded the police would serve for life and the job would pass to his heir anyway, and there wasn't really a solid line between public and private affairs to begin with. If the sheriff is not holding a semihereditary lifetime appointment, probably he works for someone who is and who provides most of the money.