D&D Ideas — Crime
Welcome once again to the weekly newsletter. This week’s topic is crime, which we discussed in our weekly live chat. We hangout every Monday evening at 8 p.m. EST on Nerdarchy Live to talk about D&D, RPGs, gaming, life and whatever nerdy stuff comes up. Speaking of crime it’s one half the equation in our very own Zoo Mafia RPG. We’re developing this game where you play zoo animals who secretly run criminal organizations under the noses of caretakers and tourists. You can get Nerdarchy the Newsletter delivered to your inbox each week, along with updates and info on how to game with Nerdarchy plus snag a FREE GIFT by signing up here.
Nerdy News
Surrender to the week that was! Weigh in on the mightiest monster battle ever, bling up with the best magic rings and game system worlds collide plus our weekly hangout and a live chat with an industry pro round out this week’s Nerdy News. Check it out here.
Delving Dave’s Dungeon
Crime was a blast to talk about with Nerdarchist Ted on the live chat. There are tons of ways to incorporate it into your Dungeons & Dragons game. Some games like Wise Guys, Cartel, Leverage and Blades in the Dark are all about being part of a criminal gang.
We’ve always discussed playing a thieves game in our home D&D games, but before fifth edition it wasn’t so easy. 5E D&D brings with it backgrounds as part of your character. Both the criminal and urchin backgrounds give you access to skills to help your character be more rogue-like without actually being a rogue. It would be a ton of fun to run around in a fantasy setting pulling off heists against dragons, demons, angels, giants and other fantasy creatures. Or you could stay completely urban with it and enact your heists on wealthy merchants, wizards, temples and nobles. Perhaps the campaign is all about being in a gang and you are either trying to stop, start or win a gang war. The city might have an assassin’s, beggar’s and thieves’ guilds all jockeying to control the underworld of the city. Will the adventurers take sides? Maybe they’ll act as freelancers working for the highest bidders. One day they work for one guild and are performing a heist against that same guild the next day.
Even without running a straight up crime focused game of D&D there are ways to incorporate criminal elements into your campaigns. Crime represents opportunities to introduce interesting and colorful NPCs into your game. They might have information the adventurers need or access to resources the characters don’t. They know the secret ins and outs of the city and how to evade notice. This could come in super useful for characters who need to keep their movement inconspicuous.
Imagine a city gets overrun and falls under the control of a hostile neighboring monarchy. The city’s criminal element might become invaluable allies in moving around, in and out of the controlled city. In an evil tyrannical setting the “good guys” might be considered criminals by the authorities.
Speaking of playing as a criminal in an RPG we are developing our own game — Zoo Mafia RPG. Not only do you play as criminals trying to work your way into one of the prominent crime families during a mob war but you are also a zoo animal. You can check out the live game play trailer here. Our first session is on Tuesday, April 26 when we go live at 8 p.m. ET with our first ever Zoo Mafia RPG game play. It’ll be an actual live playtest of the game as we design it and develop it further. You can visit the Zoo Mafia RPG website to learn more about all things Zoo Mafia RPG. You’ll be the first to know when we launch the free Quick Start rules as well as updates to the RPG where you Go Wild and Do Crime!
From Ted’s Head
Crime is an easy element to work into a D&D game. Crime can be shown in so many ways. Theft, murder, kidnapping and so much more easily can happen in fantasy. Planning a theft or acquiring something from another creature includes everything from a simple snatch and grab all the way up to a multistage heist requiring a severe amount of planning.
All of the Oceans movies provide great inspiration for the kinds of games and stories you can run. You can easily supplant the technical stuff for magical stuff. Experts do the groundwork of getting the right spells and magic items to prevent certain traps and obstacles. Pickpockets are rather plentiful in D&D so being able to walk by another and make a grab for a coin purse or take a particular piece jewelry can be fun and even nerve wracking. In the current season of Critical Role there is even a session heavily favoring the Sleight of Hand skill to take a ring from a noble and replace it with a fake. The players were all tense throughout the whole exchange, which only made it more fun.
Murder is rather commonplace as a back drop, because player characters are frequently having to kill their opponents. But, if you were to take it to the next level of having to hunt down a superior foe, find their weakness, exploit it and overcome someone far above their weight class it could be one of the most memorable sessions or story arcs. Imagine a foe who has significant backstory. If you want to play the long game, have the targets name keep coming up in the early part of the story. Making them a feared element could easily unsettle the PCs, but maybe even the players themselves. If removing this target is the only thing they can do to get out of some other trouble they get in could also up the ante as well and force them down this difficult road.
Kidnapping, or bounty hunting, they have enough similarities that I am lumping them together. Bringing in a target alive is a lot easier in 5th edition that in some earlier rule sets I remember by just declaring I am doing non-lethal damage. In addition to that a simple administration of a medicine kit allows one to auto stabilize the target. I think the fun elements here would be the hunt or chase. If you are going for a bounty having a foe that is superb at getting away it will cause much issue with the players that the target keeps getting away, but once they finally catch them it will feel so relieving that I would be shocked if there were not serious exclamations at the table. Those are the moments that create great drama and memories at the table.
From the Nerditor’s Desk
Perpetrating crimes in D&D seems to be one of the most appealing draws to the game especially among new players. Usually this manifests in the form of theft in my experience. Players love the feeling of getting away with something they know is wrong without crossing a line into too dark of territory (although the term murder hobo didn’t emerge from a vacuum!).
The important thing about incorporating crime into a D&D campaign is making sure everyone is on the same page. For starters players ought to be aware what constitutes a crime in whatever region their characters find themselves. It can be easy to assume the laws of your D&D world mirror the real world laws you’re familiar with but this could get incredibly noodly. Here in the US there’s approximately 30,000 laws.
Considering the laws and hence the crimes in your own D&D games presents a great opportunity for worldbuilding.
Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (one of my favorite 5E D&D adventures) includes The Code Legal to help really make the city wherein the adventure takes place come to life. The relatively short document shows how there’s four main categories of crimes depending on who or what is affected by such behavior. There’s Crimes Against Lords, Officials and Nobles; the City; the Gods; and Citizens. As these crimes regard worldbuilding you can see what things are important to lawmakers. Several crimes fall under both the Citizens and Lords categories only with stiffer penalties against the latter. The Code Legal is a terrific example of introducing concepts of crime and punishment. It’s not overly long or complex, covers a wide range of activities and hopefully easy enough for players to grasp so they have some expectation when their characters violate a law.
Our D&D games take place in a fantasy world where magic permeates everying, monsters exist and gods are not only real but explicitly interact with the world so crimes can reflect these touchstones. I thought it would be fun to check out our own world’s medieval times and the big crimes of that time. Here are five of the most common crimes along with the penalties they carry from History of Yesterday.
- Disturbing the peace: Brawling, revelry, violent arguments and the like could be considered disruptions of the status quo. The pillory and stocks were typically used to punished those who commit these crimes.
- Theft: Incredibly common, which is not surprising considering even with today’s forensic capabilities people still steal stuff all the time. Punishment for theft ranged from fines many times higher than the value of whatever was stolen all the way up to death.
- Poaching: Without a grocery or convenient store on every corner and industrial farming producing an abundance of food people had to hunt. If they did so on owned lands without paying a special fee was often maiming the perpetrator.
- Blasphemy: Clergy may not have been channeling divine power to perform miraculous deeds but God and the church were incredibly important and church figures held tremendous power. This severe crime often resulted in removal of the tongue of blasphemers. Sometimes they’d go easy on the violator and hang them instead.
- Treason: The punishment for disloyalty to one’s government of attempt to harm or kill a sovereign leader might have been perhaps the harshest crime and consequently the punishment was death.
*Featured image — Go Wild. Do Crime. Don’t Get Caught. Visit the Zoo Mafia website to learn more and be the first to get news, playtest information, Quick Start rules and more right here!
Subscribe to Nerdarchy Live and get notifications for live RPG game plays, chats with creators and industry professionals and new video series and content on our second YouTube channel here
No Comments