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!