Disregard the Constabulary

[name_here]

Or the emperor really likes that nephew, and the eating is metaphorical.

[Dogbert]

Eating or being the emperor's nephew?

Because if you get to positions of power by eating the children of those more powerful than yourself, you're either in a fucked up world or Greek mythology.

Who cares? That sounds like a totally metal way to power. I approve.

[virgil]

Eating or being the emperor's nephew?

Because if you get to positions of power by eating the children of those more powerful than yourself, you're either in a fucked up world or Greek mythology.

Who cares? That sounds like a totally metal way to power. I approve.

Courage is in the heart. Nepotism is found in the spleen.

[Dean]

The big problem with the police is that they are boring. Once the police get involved, things turn into procedure. Then they either solve something (which is boring and unheroic), or the don't (which means that a bunch of screen time was used up to not accomplish things, which is also boring).

Working in the police to a detective or action narrative is really hard. Usually it's just minutes of storytelling you can't get back.

-Username17

Alright Frank I've been pondering this for days so I gotta ask you to elaborate on this a bit. I accept everything you've said there as basically true and I understand that the protagonists in almost any fantasy story act above (or below) the law. Still I think that there must be a way to include law enforcement in stories with PC's and have it be a positive so any ideas on that? I feel like the Police are clearly things people want in their fantasies but they just want to slide their schemes under their noses or possibly just gun them down once in a while like in the Matrix. At the same time it's hard to sell to your average person that they are playing the good guys when they're killing the boys in blue.

I'm really in a pickle here. Any thoughts on how we could make the police show up and it not suck? If everything is on the table as acceptable what could be done?

[K]

It seems like police are going to fit naturally into many kinds of fantasy narratives.

Sometimes it's going to the bad police who are just basic bad guys. They'll be burning a witch, beating a peasant, or otherwise kicking a dog and that is the adventure hook because it leads to something as obvious as a corrupt noble to something as interesting as a mind flayer who has secretly taken over the town.

Good police are going to be the friends to adventurers. Hiring powerful adventurers to serve as strike forces to eliminate threats that have been investigated seems natural since attacking a wererat lair or ghoul grotto is going to be far too dangerous to do with your own forces. Dead adventurers don't need to be paid even if they kill off some of the threat.

There is a even a role for neutral police. For example, having the police competing to solve the same mystery leads to a number of stories that highlight the outsider status of adventurers and creates tension to race to the next clue rather than be Tomb-of-Horror-cautious.

[name_here]

There's some things you could do with them.

For one thing, if the police are seriously capable of fighting adventurer-level threats, they could terminate a fight inside city limits. Whoever doesn't feel they can explain themselves to the police runs away when they show up. If the conditions are right, it won't take long before the PCs can leave on account of clearly not being the ones to start shit.

Alternately, there's the classic PI story use. The police will seal off the scene of a crime, so the adventurers investigating need to sneak or talk their way in to get clues.

Finally, they can be used to close out low-level adventures. Basically, if they're being pressured to not investigate something, the PCs can look into it for them and get irrefutable evidence, at which point the police come in and arrest a dude.

[infected slut princess]

Two options, both are good for RPG storytelling adventures:

Keystone Cops. The police are idiots who can't get anything useful accomplished. Similar to real life. Thus necessitating some real heroes to get shit done.

Evil enforcers. The police are bad dudes. Maybe they work for the evil king or the evil burgomeister or whatever. They beat innocent people, throw innocent people in stinky jails, sexually assault innocent people, shakedown innocent people, etc. They especially abuse the community's racial minorities, which in a fantasy city might be lizardmen or gnomes. Again, similar to real life. These are great antagonists for PCs, like in an old Western where a heroic gunslinger comes to a town and deals with the corrupt sheriff and his goons.

[deaddmwalking]

What makes the guards interesting (good or bad) is that PCs generally don't want to just slaughter them all. They're recognized as the authorities of the town, so even if the PCs could conquer the place, that might be a headache they'd like to avoid.

So, when the PCs realize that Evil McFuck is actually a Doppelganger they need to get pretty solid evidence while avoiding the wrong side of the law. It's not that they might not be able to kill them all - it's that they'd rather accomplish their objective without resorting to that.

Keeping your activities off the official radar and scoping out 'honest cops' when you're ready to involve the authorities is important.

Batman gives a bit of a good model here. He's nominally on the same side as the police, but he's clearly breaking the law. He needs to avoid them until he can convince them that there is a bigger threat that requires ignoring him.

[tussock]

killing the boys in blue

If you mean the men-at-arms who came to put down your insurrection, well, they're the army. So you're at war with the entire establishment now. Enjoy the Chaos.


And, again, THERE ARE NO POLICE IN MEDIEVAL TIMES.

[virgil]

And, again, THERE ARE NO POLICE IN MEDIEVAL TIMES.

BECAUSE RAELIZM

[angelfromanotherpin]

I love not-quite-police. In GURPS Goblins, such order as is kept in London is kept by the Metropolitan Constabulary (previously King's Dragoons), who are very knowledgeable about dressage, and rather vague on fine points of law. They travel in groups of about twenty, take exactly as much guff as they give fucks, and are not helpful in any way; unless perhaps you were suffering from a deplorable excess of not being extorted.

Those guys contributed an immense amount of hilarity to my campaign, partly as a roving reservoir of potential mayhem, partly because even relatively upstanding citizens didn't want to get the authorities involved, and were forced to rely on early 19th Century shadowruns for redress of grievances.

[Dean]

I was actually talking about the police. Like in a WoD game or something.

Based on what K and infected said I think Police might work best in a pyramid structure. At the base most cops will be thugs who've been given guns. They're corrupt, they do what they're told by the corrupt people who got them there and they have a lot of pull in the system. In the middle are the working joes. Just regular time-card punchers who happen to have a badge. They do the desk work and a lot of the routine investigation so if you run into a cop "just doin his job" it's probably one of these guys. They don't really have any power but they do their work. Then there are just a few diamond in the rough real hero cops. Boys in blue who are good through and through but their lives are hard as hell because the system their is actively fighting against them but these are the down on their luck guys that would ally with the PC's to bust another cop for drug trafficking.

Basically I think you have to paint the police as generally the bad guys, but with enough average guys just making a living and an occasional hero cop to make the entire organization something you would morally prefer to avoid than fight. But if you DO get in a shoot out you don't feel too bad because anyone who's trying to shoot you is basically some villain's henchman.

[tussock]

BECAUSE RAELIZM

You want the long version? Because yes. The reason people are having problems with their stories of violent homeless swords & wizardry style wanna-be nobility and their interactions with city police forces is because those two things never existed together in the real world. Not by about three centuries.

I keep pointing out that the monopoly on force thing in armoured knight days was solved with actual wars and armies (and excommunications, and crusades of genocide, and just generally killing every motherfucker who got in your way), all the time, as competing nobles tried to kill each other and take their stuff (being the local rights to levy taxes and raise armies, or degrade their ability to do the same by killing the local serfs).

Which actually suits D&D's ethos way better than trying to think in terms of calling the police. You can have bad guys (orcs, humans, dragons, flayers, whatever) slaughtering people and be the good guys offered title and lands for dealing with the problem and bringing peace back to Gondor or whatever. Or be the bad guys sent in to conquer the frontiers from the Orcs for the Emperor. Either way.

And in D&D you don't have to bother raising armies because you are an army, and so is that titanic thing you're cutting your way out of.

[PhoneLobster]

... people are having problems with their stories of violent homeless swords & wizardry style wanna-be nobility and their interactions with city police forces is because those two things never existed together in the real world. Not by about three centuries.

I too absolutely INSIST that everything in my D&D games be within a MINIMUM of three centuries of contemporary to real world historical wizards.

Within 3 Centuries of real wizardry or I fucking WALK man.

[ishy]

I keep pointing out that the monopoly on force thing in armoured knight days was solved with actual wars and armies (and excommunications, and crusades of genocide, and just generally killing every motherfucker who got in your way), all the time, as competing nobles tried to kill each other and take their stuff (being the local rights to levy taxes and raise armies, or degrade their ability to do the same by killing the local serfs).

And that is still false and not what actually happened.

[deaddmwalking]

BECAUSE RAELIZM

I keep pointing out that the monopoly on force thing in armoured knight days was solved with actual wars and armies (and excommunications, and crusades of genocide, and just generally killing every motherfucker who got in your way), all the time, as competing nobles tried to kill each other and take their stuff (being the local rights to levy taxes and raise armies, or degrade their ability to do the same by killing the local serfs).

Most of the cities we posit in a D&D world are nothing like medieval cities. But even if they were, because the rise of cities was tied to preferential treatment by the laws, there were other ways of solving problems inside the cities than outside the cities. Cities were given power to regulate their own affairs far beyond the standard for agricultural based feudalism.

Since we're talking about a fantasy world, the rise of a militia really does make sense.

If I am a high-level murder-hobo who has become king, I don't want to enforce the laws that I myself pass. I'm going to be too busy playing in my succubus-harem to rescue cats that get stuck in trees. I'm going to delegate some of these 'law and order' tasks to someone else, and as long as they're done well enough that I don't get bothered by that crap, I'm not going to murder-hobo all the authorities and start over.

Once my successor who is not a unilateral force to be reckoned with is promoted to power, the establishment of the 'boys in blue' will be traditional enough that it won't just disappear.

[Chamomile]

I keep pointing out that the monopoly on force thing in armoured knight days was solved with actual wars and armies (and excommunications, and crusades of genocide, and just generally killing every motherfucker who got in your way), all the time, as competing nobles tried to kill each other and take their stuff (being the local rights to levy taxes and raise armies, or degrade their ability to do the same by killing the local serfs).

And that is still false and not what actually happened.

It's really not even that I don't believe you so much as that you fail to elaborate on what did actually happen. I mean, some actual evidence would be nice so that uninformed observers could determine who was telling the truth, but you seriously haven't even provided an alternative.

[ishy]

It's really not even that I don't believe you so much as that you fail to elaborate on what did actually happen. I mean, some actual evidence would be nice so that uninformed observers could determine who was telling the truth, but you seriously haven't even provided an alternative.

Mostly because what did happen varies by region to region. And honestly I don't know all that much about the period, just enough to know that Tussock is spouting bullshit. Here an example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parish_constable
Constables were introduced in 1066 according to wikipedia.

But don't take my word for it, if you really want to know, do some research.

[infected slut princess]

Q: How many cops does it take to change a light bulb?

A: None, they just beat the room for being black.

[tussock]

I am aware that modern people have issues understanding a world without police, what with them being so ubiquitous to the modern world, but FFS.

You're mostly USians. Heard of a well regulated militia? Redcoats? You'll notice even 220 year old documents don't talk about "police" at all? Even though your later Sheriffs and their duly deputised hanging mobs did eventually get regulated into a police force on the British Empire model. Wanted posters? Bounty Hunters? State Marshals? Ringing a bell?


You can think of it as the history of who holds the claim of monopoly on force, and it totally wasn't a bunch of peasants in blue suits for most of history. At all. The very idea of a body existing to provide regulations didn't for most of it.


So the words we use today for Constables and Sheriffs and Courts and Prisons were also used for positions and places in the middle ages. But they are not the same fucking thing. Like how you don't go to a Barber to get your broken leg cut off any more.

Constable of 1066: the dude who calls up the local men-at-arms for service as needed. Seriously. It's not a full-time job, it's like being your building's fire marshal. "Vikings? No? Scotsmen?!? God save us!! Someone tell the constable, I'm getting out of here."

Constable of 1280: By the 13th century they're also the guy in bigger towns who tells people to stop being bad, on account of he'll call up the local men-at-arms if they don't. You can imagine how having the right and duty to raise an army lead to the strict regulation of that particular threat.

Constable of 1600: Armies don't work that way any more, at all, and they're not doing police work because "police" exist now, as private thugs working for rich families in cities to keep the poor in their place.
You know how the King has the Musketeers and the Cardinal has the guys in red? That sort of thing, only fucking everyone with enough money had their own gang of armed thugs to settle disputes (or at least drag the loser to the courts). Shakespeare, with the family feuds and actual soldiers still turning up from the local barracks when things went sour.

Some countries around that time set aside a portion of their new standing armies to "keep the peace" by killing everyone who looked at them funny, and these units also share names with modern police forces, even though it turned out to be a super-bad idea to have weakly regulated army units with nothing to do but extort rents from the citizenry.

Constable of 1880: Police forces are progressively being nationalised and regulated, finally, and will take the title of Constables in England (or coppers, kin-word to capture), as the original constables don't exist any more, and haven't for a long time.

Constable of 1980: Many police forces around the world get a round of purges to get rid of what is essentially a mobster culture where the police are just the best-funded gang in town, and secretly run the black market. This even works in some places, in practice if not attitude.


Want to go into the history of Reeves too? How Shire-Reeves became Sheriffs. The Reeve's the guy with the duties of the Baron while the Baron is not available. But not actually holding court, because only the top dog can normally do that. Also not the same thing as a modern court at all. Also not the same thing as a common-law court at the time.

[PhoneLobster]

For fuck sake you moronic "realism" spouting nutter who thinks there is a time period at least 300 years either side of WIZARDS existing in real history.

Take FIVE SECONDS to look up "Police" on wiki-fucking-pedia. Look at the History section. It is the first big sub section right under the one paragraph entomology section.

Notice how it STARTS in Ancient China and Ancient Greece. Notice how it is very long and very elaborate and full of lots and lots of different civil, military and vigilante bodies charged with keeping order in various societies.

My favorite is Augustus who levied a tax to pay for an elaborate and very large force of urban night watchmen charged with fighting fires and catching burglars, thieves and runaway slaves. In SIX FUCKING AD.

So before you keep on spouting how "we have never known the like of any form of paramilitary body charged with keeping civil order in urban places until YESTERDAY, and certainly not within 300 years of totally for realz time period A-WIZARDS IN IT!-D", lets just make sure that everyone knows that like all too many realism/anti-anachronism morons you don't fucking have a clue about real world history. Not that it is even relevant.

[Prak]

This floated up on my facebook feed and I felt the thread needed its image

[Darth Rabbitt]

The thread also needs this.

[Neon Sequitur]

Another thing:

Does your fantasy setting have at least one deity in its pantheon devoted to Law, Justice, or anything remotely similar? Congratulations, you've got CHURCH POLICE! (With apologies to Monty Python....)

They are all Lawful Neutral, and extremely zealous. They have a Holy Mission to hunt down the lawless, unjust, chaotic, and anyone who threatens public order. They have obnoxious Domain Spells like Command, Hold Person, and various other "control freak" favorites. They really like manacles, especially enchanted ones like anti-magic shackles. And of course, they have Detect Lie as a granted power in place of Turn Undead.

Of course it goes without saying that they are watching the PCs very, very closely....

[PhoneLobster]

Congratulations, you've got CHURCH POLICE! (With apologies to Monty Python....)

You forgot to enumerate the weaponry in their arsenal.