Re: Orlanthi and looting of the dead.

From: David Weihe <blerg2_at_uSoZj_6qiSuj0NHZZ1w25VUVYUG0rq8zvTMHgp2ZLWm6-NHQMbAC4Bn79l0EaO9GzBQqj>
Date: Sat, 14 Apr 2012 14:02:52 -0700 (PDT)


> This long legal development reminds me, again, of the different
> mindset

between anglo-saxons and latins. Very few people in a
> latin culture

today would even think about lawsuits and fines and
> "legal niceties".

I've never seen such topics included in any RP
> game, even sophisticated

ones. Revenge, fleeing before avengers
> from afar, hired killers, yes, we have all that - but no legalese stuff.

Read some Icelandic sagas.  Lawsuits and fines up the wazoo.  This is what my answer was based upon, not seeing Perry Mason growing up, or LA Law as an adult.

In fact, the less there is "official" law enforcement, the more that it is either the strong killing the weak and taking their stuff or free people getting together and handling it in a very lawsuity fashion, hence blood and honor prices as in Germanic and Celtic law.  Of course, the Icelandic lawsuits that are in the sagas sometimes degenerated into which side can get the bigger "army" to overawe the other side of a case.  This eventually ended Icelandic independence, when one side in the 1300s invited the Dane King for help, and his soldiers stayed until WWII.

Finally, Marcus Tullius Cicero was a lawyer, and he was a Latin.

> In latin cultures, breaches of contracts (of which there are as many
> as

in anglo-saxon lands) are solved outside any court as often as
> possible.

Actually Icelandic lawsuits were often settled before the jurors made a verdict, before they were chosen, even before the Thing met and the lawsuit could be announced, but those cases are boring.  If the bandit has something from hundreds of miles away, unless it is very famous it is likely that no one will ever turn up to claim the item, but someone might, and this is what you have to plan around.  It might well proceed like things did in the movie Silverado:  Man (X) rides into town on the horse he took from men (Y) who died trying to kill him, friends of Y point out that the horse belonged to an employee of the X's enemy (Z), they check the brand and are right, and X gives the horses to Y's friends, who also rode for Z.  And at the end of the movie, X and his friends shoot Z and most of his men dead, ending the pre-existing feud the Humakti Way, because Z wasn't willing to let bygones be bygones.  BTW, letting bygones be bygones is how the  Hatfield McCoy feud ended (well, sort of ended - the two families still had a bunch of lawsuits between them over the years, but no killings, anymore), so that does happen -- it is just boring to play (at least all the time).

I would think, from asking the question in the first place, that you expected the answer to be more than the D&D way of killing people and taking their stuff with no negative consequences.            

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