If I stab someone in the throat, I don't see how they'd be able to call a guard. I also don't see how anyone else can telepathically sense when I do said throat-stabbing from outside the victims house.
In short, no more telepathic guards please. Unless you are actually seen or heard by someone who could realistically do either of those things, then report it, I should not be getting a bounty on my head.
Of course, if you're in a village of farmers who own no weapons and only have one guard to report them, it wouldn't take the detective skills of Batman to figure out who chopped farmer Bob's head off, but you get my point.
I wrote something about this a couple of days ago.
Criminal Activities
Here were the main points
-Guards don’t draw swords unless it’s a major crime (murder, you know really bad stuff), for minor crimes they try and subdue you; give them a truncheon or something to try and knock you out. If the guard knocks you down you get put in irons and hauled off to jail.
-Regional crimes, no more every guard, everywhere, knows you’re a shoplifter 3 seconds after you do it, maybe by implementing some couriers going from town to town on occasion, petty crimes get sent along with other news and may be disseminated within a week, but mass murder and major heists get their own special messenger and people hear about it in a day or two.
-If a guard thinks you are being suspicious (sneaking around town, out at night with a sack marked “loot”) they should try to question you, giving an opportunity for some sort of speechcraft challenge, if you win, they leave you alone, maybe slightly more vigilant, otherwise you are asked to come to come to the guardpost for further questioning.
-Better detection of stolen goods, why would anyone care that you stole that particular apple six months ago? As said elsewhere, some items (food, forks, random junk) no one should care if it’s stolen or you simply can’t tell one from the other. Larger things that people care about, but may not be able to distinguish (a vase, a sword) should be tracked as stolen but the risk of carrying it should vary by time and location and have some sort of indicator, while important and unique items are always considered stolen and you have to rely on a fence to sell it for you. A possible method of how stolen items should be tracked is by using a hand indicator like in oblivion and changing the color to indicate how likely you are to be caught.
Something like:
Red: people are on the lookout, confiscated if arrested, only sellable to fences.
Orange: moderate vigilance, may have problems selling locally or to honest types.
Green: no one looking, should have no problem selling.
White: item not reported yet, can sell, but likely to have problems if reported later.
With the progression of white to red to orange to green and then the theft marker is removed.
The speed of the transitions should be something like a week for little cheap things, to maybe a month or two for the lager stuff that isn’t that unique.
Anyway, those were my thoughts on the matter.
This sounds good, but I have some thoughts.
Even an item that is unique and highly prized should be sellable to a merchant in that very city, provided you can convince him to take it off your hands or the merchant in question doesn't know that anyone owns this artifact and values it greatly. In any other city you should have no troule at all selling this, unless you happen to stop by the store of the owners cousin who visits him once a month to admire the artifact in question. In short, make it real.
If i was to walk into the Louvre and somehow steal the Mona Lisa, nobody would buy that from me. I refuse to believe anyone would be that stupid and somehow make enough money to pay for it in the first place. However, if I was to break into a museum and steal some ancient vase, then I could realistically sell it to some collector or art dealer rich enough to buy it without much trouble, provided I could convince them or they left their ethical code at home that morning.
Items that are essentially junk should not be suspicious in the least, a fork is a fork and unless it's engraved with the family emblem of the Count of Forksville then I don't see why anyone would give a crap. Food should follow roughly the same logic, an apple is an apple and nobody is going to care, though I'm not sure why someone would buy an apple or any food off some random schmuck walking into their store.
EDIT: Oh yeah, I'd also like to se guards sleeping on the job, drunk on the job, abusing their power and generally being human beings. Bribing a guard too look the other way or let you off the hook should absolutely be possible and if you're imposing enough you should be able to intimidate them, is catching some criminal really worth being horribly murdered? No, not really.
» Fri Feb 18, 2011 11:38 pm 
