Thursday, February 26, 2015

Freeport February Final blog of the month


Freeport is not my creation,it is the creation of the brilliant minds over at Green Ronin games. I have borrowed from a lot of great sources in my story’s that I have told.
Lets take a moment to reflect. We have looked at the idea of a fantasy city and how it works as well as the sewers that bubble under the city. Before we close our February visit to Freeport lets take a look at one more thing that any decent fantasy city needs. Especially a city populated and run by thieves, pirates and adventurers and that’s law enforcement.
A few First level guards can handle themselves against a drunken bar brawl or a simple shop robbery but how does a city like Freeport deal with the amount of weirdness an average adventuring party can bring.
When the wizard summons 15 giant apes what are the options? The city could just let them run rampant and then charge them. They could employe a special forces of individuals who have the same powers and skills as those meddling adventures but then that would just mean Two wizards summoning 15 giant apes. They could ban them from the city, but lets face it when adventures are drooping $50.00 GP gems to pay for a 3CP dinner, its a good idea to keep those wacky adventures in the city. Plus, how many times has the city had the adventures solve a problem for them.
So the conundrum for the law enforcement of any fantasy type city is how do they deal with the adventures and still capitalize on the adventures?
Give them a job!
Why do you think so many campaigns end with the party being given land and a castle and some position within the city government? Because the Authorities WANT the adventures running things?
No of course not, would you give a 5 year old the keys to the death star?
No they give them jobs because they know that once that wizard has to deal with a G-w-TS 36 report (in triplicate) for the 75th time, any thoughts he might have had of destroying the city are soon replaced with thoughts of “i just want to go home for the day”
No foe the heroes has ever faced is more dangerous or insidious then a well run GOVERMENT! Bureaucracy and litigation will soon become names the party fears more then Orcus (hail orcus).
After a few months of having to pay the city various funds and taxes and fines out of there own pockets will soon lead the party to find that they no longer have that endless supply of 50GP gems to use to buy dinner, they may have to start actually being smart about there investments?
Soon after that the daily drudgery of the Government will either drive the party into a mindless worker bee fugue or send them running from the city to the nearest death pit because they would rather face Orcus (hail orcus) then another day of complaining citizens and paperwork.
So the adventures are gone or dealt with and things return to normal in the city, until the next band of Heroes arrive!
While I am being somewhat silly about this the fact of the matter is the greatest threat any fantasy city’s faces is the heroes and we all know it,. Paying for simple things with 50GP gems would soon ruin the economy as money would become pointless when the Wizard is buying bread with platinum and the cleric never pays for anything because he can just make food appear
The amount of damage and injury’s a typical bar brawl between two high level heroes would be staggering
Its is in the city’s best intreist to milk the party dry of there funds as soon as possible and then get them out of the city as fast as they can or give them jobs.
So now we take our leave of freeport and perhaps we better understand when Lord Ulric sadly talks about how things were in his day. Back when he was still a Warrior of Might and not the assistant minister of the Haberdashery

Next month is march and march is MEGADUNGON month.
Till then, Beware the great and powerful BUACRAYCY and LITAGATION

and, Be excellent.

No comments:

Post a Comment