[Discussion] Crime and Punishment in Stormwind

Explaining:

Restoration: the criminal shall fix all the damage done. For instance if he breaks an arm, he will pay for the doctor. if he burns a house, he shall build a new house. If he kills, he will pay for the funeral and huge reparations to the family.

Rehabilitation: The criminal is a poor lost soul in dire need of aid. The authorities will try their best to return the criminal back into the society and reconcile him with the victim

Retribution: eye for an eye. If you killed, you will be killed.

Pacification : the Law is there to preserve peace and stability in the Kingdom. The judges will choose the most appropriate punishment based not on the needs of the victim, rights of the criminal - but solely on the needs of the community for Peace, Justice and Stability.

Am I the only one having issues seeing the poll options? Maybe my browser that's effing up a bit.

Anyhow...

Voted Pacification, I think that's what will provide the best RP environment and gives good contrast when compared to the shadier people. I also think it's the hardest to do though, but well worth the effort.

(yes Forum-style makes polls hard to read)

Agreed, Pacification is probably the best when it comes to providing RP. Because then we can have demonstrative justice! Shame racks and other dirty practices. Restoration is boring, all you do is emote paying x-gold. Rehabilitation is impossible - people roll evil characters to be evil, not to be redeemed. Retribution is a good call as well.

Indeed, Retribution can quickly become painful for the offending character though. Consider if your character might have murdered some farmer in Westfall in his background story. If this ever comes up, should the character be executed?

To me, it'd be a complete mess, especially considering the characters currently active in the RP on the Alliance side.

I voted Retribution, as I think that would be the best option for ze RP.
*Cowers before Ataris* Dont destroy me for voting different to you Q_Q

Well.. I'm a bit torn. Personally I'd pick Pacification, however Retribution is something I believe in too AND the way Saihna believe is the right one most of the times.

Then also if you consider it OOC as to preserve roleplay, Pacification I think is also the best way to go. However again, even if you go for Retribution, it doesn't really mean that the evil guy needs to be actually -caught-, right?

I think I'm just gonna pick Retribution, just to be a bit different! XD

Imho when Bad Guys are 'never caught and never punished' it creates a nastily tense situation of desperate lighties willing to cut corners IC as well as OOC to punish at least one,no matter how small. On the other hand, bad guys never be allowed to do evil and get away with it, is bad for the evil guys.

Well I'm sure there could and should be some sort of balance. For example, you agree with a cultist that he/she get to murder your character, however if so he/she will have to take some sort of blow from lighties. Not necessarily that they knew he killed that person, but perhaps a punishment for some minor crime in the past. I suppose it just really requires communication really, and people willing to be a bit realistic. One cant run from the law constantly. Even the best crooks get caught now and then.

Well.

Clay would take Retribution ONLY if the guy have taken a life.
If he only robber, beaten etc its Pacifiction.

So I can't quite pick.

Retribution Imo, unless proven innocent. Would also mean people perpetrating a crime have to be alot more careful, depending on what their doing.

I picked rehab, but only because I have a unatural fetish for the old Joker and Arkham asylum.
Now tell me if that aint something for rp?

Personally I think it all depends on the circumstances. Who are the players involved (the guard, the judge, the offender, the victim, the witnesses etc) what is the crime they have committed and what concessions are they willing to make?

Restoration: the criminal shall fix all the damage done.
Restoration as in paying gold is indeed boring as Imanuel said. However in minor offences it's sometimes a easy sollution especially when the players involved are in a hurry and not on one line. However there is also another option concerning restoration that is not mentioned. In the past in coopertion with back then Lyta we did community service punishments for minor crimes like pick pocketing. A guard would take a criminal and have them clean the streets, paint the orphanage clean out the latrines rebuilt a building or anything else one could come up with. Which proved to be a amuzing way of rp. It basicly humilates the criminal and makes him giving something back to the community. Although I must admit it depended on the criminal, the guard rp-er and the by-standers on how much fun it was to do.

Rehabilitation: The criminal is a poor lost soul in dire need of aid.
This would only apply in a first offence. But yes in practice I don't think there are many if any rp-ers that would switch their evil char to good. The best you would get is a evil/criminal rp-er pretending to have turned good. Which can in some cases be interesting for rp I guess. However as a IC punishment I guess it indeed it would be rather ineffective. I can imagne a naive and/or idealistic person give out this kind of punishment though.

Retribution: eye for an eye. If you killed, you will be killed.
Although my char prefers restoration and rehabilitation he sometimes believes this solution is the only one. Examples are a old member of the syndicate being burned in front of the cathredal for murder. This man was insane and beyond redeption. However this was all agreed and arranged ooc as the players in quistion were quitting wow. But also in cases like Rovena Ravenblood and Ataris my char believes there is no other sollution then to kill them. The ammount of damage and hurt they caused is beyond restoration making them beyond rehabilutation. Their death in his eyes is the only solution. In practice this will mean that both ataris and Rovena have to stay out of the hands of the law if they want to survive. Forcing them not to show themselves openly in public. And use henchmen instead. Or lure people out to remote places

Pacification : the Law is there to preserve peace and stability in the Kingdom.
This one I find a bit confussing. I also think that in some cases the right punishment sometimes is in both the victim and communities benefit. Anyway I really think this is just the ic thoughts of the IC judge and how he comes to his choice of punishment.

Anyway I think all punishments can be practice really. I mean even in real live sometimes judge A will give out another punishment then judge B. I think it would make rp more diverse and fun if you had different kind of judges with different idea's.

So therefor I won't vote for a one in perticular.

Retribution won't work simpily because the majority of people won't want their characters killed or even harmed, but then again this much will be obvious to you lot already so I don't know why I brought it up - Moving on..

Personally I'm stuck between restoriation and pacification for the simple fact they provide the most RP.

To clarify about pacification

For instance a criminal steals money from a royal tax collector. Pacification-approach will say: this behaviour is unacceptable, this person must be made an example of! and they will do something very evil to him IN PUBLIC which might actually be way out of measure compared to the severity of his crime. Pacification-judge is interessted in preserving peace in the city and will therefore make examples out of criminals to scare others from doing the same crime. You will see a lot of brandings, humiliations, public lashings and so on.

I've said Pacification, since my paladin would most likely choose such an option. It's also obviously the one that would create the most roleplay, even if those particular events aren't easy to gather and run. I've seen quite a few successful ones over the years, so it should be quite easy to gather some smaller ones if we need to.

Of course I also approve of that option from Ledgic's point of view, since he'd much rather have a judge throw something at him than be killed or forced to build a house.

Imanuel wrote:Imho when Bad Guys are 'never caught and never punished' it creates a nastily tense situation of desperate lighties willing to cut corners IC as well as OOC to punish at least one,no matter how small. On the other hand, bad guys never be allowed to do evil and get away with it, is bad for the evil guys.

You often end up with the situation of people being openly evil since they know there is no real come back. There's no way to make the everyday (NPC) guards attack them on sight or ban them from the city. It would be nice if it could happen, but unfortunately it can't...

"Evil" characters need to be aware that their actions should have long-lasting consequences not just with other player characters but the cities as a whole. Hiding behind the "I want RP freedom to be evil" it just a bit like sticking two fingers up to all those people who are role-playing the reverse, as without agreement there is no real lasting punishment available that really would actually happen. I'm not saying that everyone should be thrown into the Stockades the moment they push past someone in the bank, but the same as people shouldn't be wandering around openly flaunting their "I'm a big bad-ass" card without anything happening.

A middle ground would be Rehabilitation. Skipping past the idea of years in jail, but potentially some more medieval or harsh punishments. As has been suggested - community service could work like cleaning the streets and doing all the dirty jobs like dredging stormwind canal. But one step further than that would be something like a "Penal Legion" where the most dangerous criminals are given some basic armour and a rusty weapon, then shipped out to a battlefield somewhere. If they survive a few battles, then they get their freedom. Most will not survive unscathed or unaltered but just a few will come back worse than before - giving the opportunity for character development after seeing people being forced into a massacre. There's also the very amusing suggestion of some kind of stocks or public cage. Some of the more brutal crimes might also warrant eye-for-an-eye punishments of public lashings.

And what about the worst of the worst, like murder or treason? Well death is the one everyone bandies around, but there are very few people who will be willing to stop roleplaying with their character. There is the option instead of being banished from the city (again, though, this results in essentially stopping your roleplay with existing people).

Other forms of punishment might be an option though, depending on if the character is willing to change. A "Life-Debt" or something to that effect - i.e. you do something really bad to someone, then you become their slave until they are willing to release you from their service. It allows continued capacity for being evil, but in a diminished way. There's also things like lobotomy, electro-shock or arcane-alteration as very crude ways to correct someone's behaviour - not to the point of making the character mentally deficient, more to reduce their capacity for plotting and scheming - or removing their anger issues. All mean the person should change - if it's only temporary then the punishment issue will crop up again the next time the person is seen and anything but execution might not be an option.

Most interesting results.

On another note I highly doubt rehab' will work for the simple fact people have trouble with developing their character past their original intentions (Very few 'BIG BAD EVUL WARLOCK' characters are going to just pack and up and genuinely not take it up) making the whole thing feel pointless.

Voted for pacification.

Wouldn't mind retribution for some of my minor characters though if they commit a murder or such, since they can be easily replaced.

Dharum though... has 4,5 years of action behind his back and I am too fond of him :< but he is not that bad!

I demand more retribution! The more the better!

I voted restoration, but I'm not a citizen of Stormwind

Pacification. In Umptie's opinion this seems the Draenei way of dealing with crimes. It's Umptie's opinion that the criminal is also a victim. Perhaps he's/she's plane evil.. But still. In all hearts there's evil, and in all hearts there's good.

Well, is there a court, actually? The point is, Retribution reminds me Middle-East in Dark Ages (you know, Babylonia 'n so on). So it just doesn't fit the human society.

Pacification is the most suitable option, I'd say make it Precedent law, quite efficient + will suit many players in the majority of cases.

I think there should be a global well-specified law. With clear rules guards cannot avoid. As it is now I sometimes run into guards that have some personal grudge against you(r character) and try to arrest for self-made-up reasons!

Being a dick isn't a crime, last I checked! (Lawyers, anyone?)

And you should keep the punishments RPable.
As in, sure, you'd be locked away for weeks/years.. but of course that cannot get done, no-one wants to delete their char. And the victims agree upon having their characters attacked/robbed/murdered, else it wouldn't happen. So I suggest something like that humiliation, yes, or fines or punishment to a maximum of 48 hours.. (for crazy cultists). And execution if they agree.