Crime in the Poor Part of Town

Many of you may recall our earlier edition, All About Organized Crime.  In thinking through the neighborhoods of Garnock and the neighborhoods of Brinston, you might think that the poorer neighborhoods in Garnock are far worse to live in than the poor neighborhoods of Brinston.  That isn’t the case.

Even the poorest neighborhoods of Garnock have structure and rules.  The various families and gangs abide by these rules knowing that in the end, it’s better for everyone.  One of the reasons for this is that there really isn’t enough money to fight over.  When there isn’t any money, dying for something other than just trying to survive becomes silly.

In Brinston, there is always going to be some money.  Even in the poorer neighborhoods, there are ways to come by money.  There are criminal enterprises that can be performed for the wealthy, and there are rich homes that can be robbed.  While this seems like it might be the same in Garnock, Garnock is filled with experienced and lethal killers.  Brinston just doesn’t have the same level of infrastructure within its criminal enterprises.

In Brinston, things are far more chaotic.  A small gang of idiot kids can do a home invasion and profit enormously, but within a week, they are going to get jacked by another rival group of idiot kids.  The poor neighborhoods are cesspools of this dog-eat-dog violence, and there just isn’t a safe place to hide.  The only hope is to get enough coin together to get out of the neighborhood before it kills you.

To be clear, there is far less violence on the sands of the river shore.  Again, there is far less money to make violence worth it, plus these people are more of a small town community.  Certainly there are strangers everywhere, but the river shore communities typically know each other well enough that a young gang cannot hope to get away with chaotic crime.

We typically like these things to have a point, so here it is:  If you have not thought through how well established the criminals in your world are, then you probably should.  They might all be independent forces out there just trying to steal a buck, or they might be one enormous guild of thieves and robbers all reporting up the same structure, or hopefully somewhere in the middle.  But even once you do establish the infrastructure of crime, you also have to think through how those structures might change when you are talking about the different social classes.  The organization of criminals who prey on the poor, may be quite different from those who prey on the wealthy!

Civilian Authorities on the wiki

So it's Thanksgiving weekend.  Your tummy is full, and you you are looking for something to do that doesn't require much energy.  Why not check out the Fletnern wiki?  We've updated a number of the Civilian Authority entries, so you can get a jump on the Small Bites edition coming out at the end of the month (end of the month for Patreon patrons - later in December with the shorter World Walker edition for everyone else).

Don't know where to start?  Try here:
https://fletnern.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Civilian_Authority

Urban Adventures - Equipment

Your character arrives in a new city and immediately heads to the tavern.  You sit down, have a drink and the next thing you know a bar fight erupts.  What do you do?

If you pull out your magical sword and your large shield and wade into battle, you and your GM have done something enormously wrong!  It is entirely inappropriate for anyone to walk into a bar decked out for battling dragons.  or demons or whatever it is you fight.  Let’s think through a modern example:

You’re at a semi-nice restaurant on a date having dinner.  Just after the waiter brings out the salads, six SWAT officers enter the building.  They are wearing their Kevlar jackets and riot helmets, and carrying sniper rifles and automatic weapons (actual assault weapons, not what the news idiots want you to think are assault weapons).  What would you do in real life?  I’d leave.  I think most people would leave, unless they were afraid that this might attract the attention of said SWAT officers.

You see, people don’t go to restaurants wearing armor and carrying battlefield weapons unless they are there to arrest or possibly kill someone.  The fantasy tavern is no different!

When your character enters a new town, can we suggest something to you?  Go find an inn.  Know where you will rest your head for the night, and leave your kit there.  Now some adventurers may not be willing to do that.  They may think it is too risky to leave that much value in weapons and gear sitting unprotected in a hotel room.  Fair enough!  You should then take your meals at the inn, and never take your eyes off your room door.  Paranoia is nothing to be timid about!

But what you still cannot do is walk into a neighborhood tavern wearing metal armor including a helmet, carrying a battle weapon, and loaded with your standard array of healing potions and fire bombs.  If you do, several things will happen, including but not limited to:  The bouncer will ask you to leave your weapons at the door.  Someone from the establishment will go off to find the city guard to arrest you.  The other patrons will flee as soon as you clear the doorway for them.  The bartender will tell you last call was 20 minutes ago, and he doesn’t want any trouble.

Why would they react this way?  Because people who carry as many weapons as your adventurers do are typically only there to kill people.  Simply said - You are acting in a socially unacceptable manner.

So what is acceptable?  That really depends on the culture.  But here are the things we typically think in these situations:  A long sword is a battle weapon.  All two handed or hand and a half weapons are battle weapons.  Battle weapons are not appropriate for wearing while walking around a peaceful city.  Culture will dictate whether a saber, rapier, dirk or short sword is a battle weapon or might be allowable in public.  (We typically think these smaller swords are OK.)

Metal armor is not going to be acceptable.  Bigger bulkier non-metal armors are likewise not acceptable.  In some cases, some of the leather armors might be OK, but far less so in the summer months and less if they look like armor as opposed to looking like warm clothing.  A decent set of fur armor might be perfectly acceptable in a cold season, as it might appear very similar to what everyone is wearing.

Shields are going to be seen as battle gear and therefore not be acceptable.  Bucklers on the other hand are actually named for the ease at which they can be buckled on - to a belt or weapon, etc.  Bucklers are acceptable in most urban environments where they are seen as semi-appropriate personal defense.

But what happens if a group of city guards walks into a restaurant dressed in chain mail and carrying spears and shields?  Most likely, they will leave their shields and spears up against a wall, hopefully out of the way and not immediately ready to jump into combat.  They would likely remove their helmets and gauntlets as well.  They are sitting down to a meal, so they will leave as much of their battle kit off as is reasonable for the amount of time it takes to dress.

But this is entirely different for mercenaries!  City guards are most often seen as the good guys.  If strangers attempt to act in the same fashion, they are still going to cause unrest and concern for the people in the establishment.

We went over a lot of this in out last edition All About Fantasy Entertainment, so we’ll stop drilling so hard on this, but it is vitally important to recognize that there is a different dress code for when you are adventuring and when you are at home!

How Much is Safety Worth?

Let’s think through a couple of FRPG tropes:  In most cases, some powerful person or organization is able to pay a group of “adventurers” enough money for them to risk their lives performing some task.  Granted - the adventurers are expecting to be able to loot their enemies and make a bigger profit, but that’s beside the point.  The point is - Someone has enough money to get powerful people to do their bidding.

So, OK, what else might these powerful, rich, quest givers want?  Well, they’re going to want safety.  They want to make sure that “the bad guys” (their enemies whoever they are) cannot harm them or steal their stuff.  For this they hire guards.  And here in lies the big question:  How much are they willing to pay in order to get the best guards who might actually keep them safe?

The last post discussed taxes and this is why.  If you want your world to make sense, you need to tie some things together.  If you know what the tax base is, you can assign a percentage of that to the defense of your cities (or powerful people).  Now this does get tricky.  Take Brinston for example.  Even if we knew exactly what the budget of the military was - how much is army vs. navy?  How much handles facilities, like the city wall or the naval port?  How much is required for defense of the city?  the Port of Brinston?  the countryside?  the river?  And that defense of the city - what’s police vs. wall guards?

OK - but let’s focus on our actual subject:  How much is safety worth?  Let’s change the focus slightly:  how do you spend money on safety?  One aspect of this is what they are willing to pay for their “castle” or other building that will help keep them safe.  That’s an upcoming edition!  So the two aspects that really seem to matter here are:  people and gear.  You can hire the best people.  You can equip your guards with the best gear.  You might even be able to do both.

So this is where the balancing act comes in.  How much money are these powerful folks willing to spend?  How much do they need to spend?  If massive dragons come flying over the city every week, they need some pretty awesome defenders!  If the worst thing to be found in the city is a couple of pickpockets, then you probably aren’t looking for superheroes and colossus golems.  But appropriately gauging that threat level can be difficult.

So assume that a “normal” powerful person is going to try to err on the side of a little more than they need.  But if we’re talking about the people aspect, there really are two sides:  number and ability.  Since we’re mainly talking about cities and policing units, the number is going to be high.  In nearly every case, a large number of people is necessary, because no matter how good they are, the city guards cannot be everywhere at once.  In so many circumstances, the number is going to be determined by area and not choice.

So we’re back to ability and gear.  If you have people who are extremely well equipped, they may not need to be the best trained.  Conversely, if you have the best trained troops, you may not need to spend as much to equip them.  So what we’re trying to get you as the GM / world builder to do is to think through this choice:  How good do they need to be and therefore how do you get there?  Because (not knowing the rules you’re using), there may be a point at which it is cheaper to hand a mid-ranged guardsman a minor magic item than to pay for a better guardsman.  Does the magic item bring the guardsman up to the level of that better guy?  It might be that much cheaper to buy equipment instead of paying a higher salary every day.

Afraid that we might be beating around the bush, here it is:  Your PCs need to be afraid of the police in your city.  If they aren’t, then they have no worries about what the laws are or being held accountable.  That’s a very dangerous position for a GM to be in.  If the PCs can effectively battle against the entire city guard and come out on top, then they are going to do whatever they want.  Actions need to have consequences.

We’ve been talking about “powerful people”, and we’ve been talking about governments, specifically city or city-state governments.  This is your world that you’re building.  How do you want to establish a powerful enough force in your city(ies), but still make it reasonable?  We think, if you start thinking in terms of how much money your larger cities would have to spend, this might open you up to having vastly more powerful policing forces - whether they choose to focus on numbers, abilities or gear!

Taxes in FRPG

We are going to do everything we can to make this thought provoking and not dull!  We cannot make it exciting, but let us give you a couple of ideas about taxes in FRPG and how to make them very easy on you as a GM and on the PCs.

 

They always say that nothing in life is certain except for death and taxes.  In FRPGs, death isn’t all that certain, and it certainly isn’t permanent.  So it’s just taxes then!  What taxes do we pay in the modern age?  Being a U.S. citizen, I know ours best, but I have a feeling that even our friends and supporters in Canada and the UK will see very close similarities.  Beyond that, I admit, I don’t know.

 

One last intro note - Governments also make money by selling currency and through fines.  We’re not getting into those right now.

 

In the USA, we pay federal income tax, state income tax (most do), FICA/social security (retirement), unemployment, and medicare - all of which are withheld from our pay checks.  OK, the employer pays half the social security and the unemployment, but it is still tied to your pay check.  Anyone who owns real estate pays property taxes, and in some states, you pay it on far more than just real estate.  You pay sales tax:  state, county, city and then all those cute little ones they tack on like taxes on cigarettes, alcohol, and gasoline.  Don’t forget the “sales taxes” that they force on hotels because it is always better to tax the people who don’t vote for you.

 

That’s a lot!  But there’s more!  We haven’t included some of the tougher to see taxes, things like the fee on your license plate, in many areas the fees for garbage, water, and sewers, and what about the death taxes?  You might want to argue if those are all taxes, but they are money paid into a governmental agency.  You pay for your water, but your taxes pay for the police?  Yeah - we’re counting both as taxes.

But that isn’t even close to everything!  What about tariffs?  Whatever your opinion of tariffs in general and the latest round of tariff disagreements, tariffs have been around forever!  You have every right to have an opinion about the latest news, but people need to stop pretending that arguments about tariffs is something new.  But you don’t directly pay tariffs, right?  Correct - You pay them indirectly!  Every tax paid by someone who supplies you with a good or service is a tax you eventually pay.

OK - That was the dull part.  What do you do as a GM?  Do you mimic this labyrinth of taxes and fees?  Probably not!  In the same vein that no one understands the current federal taxation code, you don’t want to create for yourself a bureaucratic nightmare.  Even more importantly, you don’t want to try and explain this to the players and then start computing sales tax every time they go to buy a sword or a healing potion.

So what can you do?  First off, if you have feudal lords with peasants, they don’t pay taxes.  Instead they work them off.  At least in some points in time in some regions, a peasant worked about 60 days a year on his lord’s lands.  Because that peasant has 365 days in the year to work, that’s roughly a 16% tax on that person’s work.  Notice, we didn’t try to factor in religious holidays, but instead went with 365.  Establishing the population or universe of what can be taxed becomes pretty important.  Even if religious requirements prevent the same peasant from working 52-104 days a year, the peasant is “choosing” not to work those days, and the government probably doesn’t care.

OK, but this 16% number is a good one to start with!  Just as in Grain Into Gold, we started with the cost of a pound of grain and therefore the cost of a one pound loaf of bread, the farmers are the base unit that most governments will begin with.  History typically shows that in normal times, tax rates are considered to be between 15-25%.  But let’s stick to 15-16% as the “base”.

Once in a fantasy city, the government has a difficult time tracking the things that we take for granted nowadays.  Sales taxes don’t really work in a fantasy environment, because their accounting practices are not that precise.  Plus, how does a grocer figure the sales tax when he is bartering for some of his stock?  This can be similar for income taxes, as few employers keep great records of how much they paid each employee during the year.  They just pay them at the end of the night or week and send them home.

 

So the government wants to tax the regular folks at about 16% of their pay.  There can be a poll tax - a tax on every adult or every worker.  These are flat taxes and as such they impact the poor far more than the rich.  Ignoring the “fairness” of such a thing, few governments are willing to tax a wealthy earner at <1% of their income, just because the poll tax needs to be fair.

 

What we think works best for FRPGs is to have the governments set property taxes that can cover the lion’s share of the taxes they need to collect.  If they can collect 15-16% of a person’s pay by taxing the home they live in, then then can still collect more money from things like tariffs on foreigners, fines, and coinage.

So - for all of you who stuck with us this far - thank you!  Here is the easy thing to do:  Multiply the average monthly wage by 15%.  This is now the property tax on a single family home.  Assume that the government has people whose jobs are to make that (as a base) work for the entire city - meaning they adjust for apartment buildings, slums and mansions.  Also assume that they charge a 15% tariff on all manufactured goods.  By manufactured, we are attempting to exclude things raw materials, mainly farm goods.

 

And that should be it.  If your PCs own their home, they need to pay property taxes.  If they rent, the property taxes will be added into their rent payments.  If they buy something from a store or market, the tariffs and a share of the property taxes will be factored into the price already.

 

To us, this is the starting point, but for many this might be the end point.  If you want the details on what this actually means for your fantasy city, join our Patreon project typically known as Small Bites (How to Create Your Fantasy World in Small Bites).  We’re getting deep into the workings of city guards and other policing units, and to do that, you have to understand the taxing of your cities.

Looking for some entertainments?

Forsbury After Dark aka All About Fantasy Entertainments

Looking for some entertainment?

So are your player characters!

If your local taverns are feeling a bit predictable and you need some ideas on how to take them up a few levels in the city, then this is the perfect book for you!  It’s also the perfect book if you just want to get some more ideas - ideas you can make your own.  But it’s not just a book.  Our Small Bites editions take a fantasy RPG theme and give you as much content as we can fit in a book.  This one’s 30 pages long - our longest World Walker edition to date.  So if you want more but still for free - you have to grab this book!

https://www.rpgnow.com/product/258467/Forsbury-After-Dark-aka-All-About-Fantasy-Entertainment