Quote from: ForgottenF on March 13, 2025, 02:19:09 PMA lot of historical bandits were basically part-timers, and would have had homes and families they went back to in the winter or when the pickings were bad. It sounds crazy, but in the premodern era an isolated rural community might be functionally untouchable by law enforcement, especially since in backwater and border areas, the minor gentry who would be responsible for justice were often the ringleaders of bandit gangs themselves.

Always remember the ballad of bold Captain Cully who robbed from the poor because they were weaker than him and gave to the rich so they wouldn't destroy him.

Quote from: ForgottenF on March 13, 2025, 02:19:09 PMA lot of historical bandits were basically part-timers, and would have had homes and families they went back to in the winter or when the pickings were bad. It sounds crazy, but in the premodern era an isolated rural community might be functionally untouchable by law enforcement, especially since in backwater and border areas, the minor gentry who would be responsible for justice were often the ringleaders of bandit gangs themselves.

Following up on this earlier comment, it occurs to me there's a fun scenario in that, too:

Some duke hires your players to neutralize a gang of bandits preying on travelers along the high road near the borders of his domain. So the players head up there and march off into the hills expecting to find the bandit lair. After days or weeks of wandering around in the wilderness, getting soaked to the bone and fending off random monster attacks, they start to get suspicious. They haven't seen hide nor hair of the bandits the whole time. When they ask local peasants, they get information that wastes their time only to turn out to be inaccurate. The lord of the manor doesn't seem to care about this outlaw band. What's going on?

Well it turns out there is no bandit lair, The local peasants are the bandit gang. Every once in a while they put down their pitchforks and take a few days camping out by the road to supplement their income. The manor lord arms them, leads the  expeditions and takes a small tithe of the proceeds. They know the PCs are here, and they can afford to just give up banditry until they leave. What now? Who's going to believe a bunch of landless mercenaries against the word of one of the duke's vassals? No one in this close-knit rural community is going to testify against their neighbors at the behest of an outsider. You haven't got the numbers for this many prisoners and you might get into trouble if you go around killing off everyone in the district. There definitely are solutions, but the players will have to get creative.

I confess, I typically abstract loot out to special items, currency, and "Loot Worth X" which players can cash out when they get back to town. With the exception of some intentionally tight sequences like a long dungeon crawl or a game with a general survival-horror feel, players rarely if ever actually want to pick up and use weapons or items from a monster, so it's usually better to handwave it and to change over to more precise accounting when that's part of the tone I am aiming for.