So in Dark Albion, you have to be a knight to carry a sword (in town, city, or civilized areas).

In my current game, the Scotsman carries a claymore (great sword).  He's a barbarian outside of the social norms, of course, but... how would he be treated, traveling in the company of a Cleric, carrying his claymore on his back?

You might find this video useful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H36aXSdSIS4

I did a little bit of research on this for my Dragon Warriors campaign, as I was trying to do the whole medieval-authentic thing with that one. The right answer is probably that we don't really know, and it varied widely across time and place, but here's my basic sense of it.

First off, you have to qualify what you mean by a "civilized area". The local rules in a big city would be very different versus a small town, vs. a village, or just out in the countryside. In cities, they would have had specific restrictions (seemingly by blade length), and the ability to enforce them. In smaller towns or villages, they may or may not have had those kind of rules, but in either case there's a real question about whether there's anyone around to enforce them. There's no regular police in the middle ages, after all. I could see a local lord imposing restrictions on what weapons are carried in his domain, but unless you happen to bump into the local reeve or the lord himself, there's probably no one enforcing that rule.

A good general distinction which I think works for RPGs is whether the PC is "armed for war". One trend you might notice in the sources is that going around armored is more frowned on than going about armed. That poses a specific problem for D&D-derived games, because wearing armor is pretty much what makes a fighter a fighter in D&D, and players will push endlessly to try and wear their armor as often as possible. But you also see a general trend of sidearms (swords and daggers) being permitted where main battle weapons (poleaxes, halberds, crossbows, muskets etc) are not.

Specific to your Scotsman and his claymore: (the sword pedant in me has to point out that the use of "claymore" to refer to a greatsword is controversial, and  a lot of people say the term more properly refers to the basket-hilted Scottish swords of the early modern period). I think it'd be fair to say that in a city, he'd only be able to carry it to and from whatever inn he was staying on the way in and out of the city. Out in the countryside, carrying it is probably legal. Purely socially, I would say that if he is carrying it on his back, where it would not be quick to draw and might be treated more as luggage, it might raise just some eyebrows. But like luggage, he would be expected to leave it with his other things if he was staying in a town or a castle. If he was transporting it (as greatswords often were) by just carrying it in hand, that's more likely to cause concern and/or suspicion.

As an analogy, maybe think of it as the difference between being out in the woods and running into someone with a rifle in a travel case on their back, versus running into someone with a loaded rifle in hand.

EDIT: that wasn't a great analogy. Here's a better one: I've carried a folding knife for most of my life. I stopped a couple of years ago, because my job requires me to regularly go into government buildings, but I still don't bat an eye when I notice someone carrying one, even if it's obviously a tactical/fighting knife. Some years ago I was at a strip mall in a very safe neighborhood in northern Virginia, and saw a guy walking around with a massive bowie knife strapped to his hip. I remember my first thought was "what a dickhead", and my second thought was "I'm going to keep an eye on that dude, because someone who feels the need to flaunt how heavily armed they are probably doesn't have the best social skills". As far as I know, carrying that knife is totally legal in Virginia, but he stuck out like a sore thumb because the weapon was inappropriate to the context.

You could look up the account of the preacher George Wishart and his claymore carrying bodyguard John Knox. That's from the early modern era and the religious conflicts surrounding the Scottish Reformation, but you can adapt the core of it back to a medieval period of Scottish instability. For example, in the twelfth century there was the long running dispute (not necessarily violent) between Thurstan, archbishop of York and John, Bishop of Glasgow concerning Thurstan's demand that John submit to the jurisdiction of the see of York. Bishop John, as the appointee of the Scottish king, refused submission to Thurstan, despite the displeasure of the Papacy. You could spice up that type of political conflict and, in that context, a two handed sword wielding body guard a la Knox in the sixteenth century might not be out of place.

Watching that video now!

Really appreciate the help guys.  Been a DM since 1980, but this is my first stab at really running a "historical" type game - at least for the medieval period.

I was just wondering what the extent of these laws really was just the other day. I know sumptuary laws are a thing Dark Albion as well being late Medieval (but wouldn't be in a game set in say the High Middle Ages in most parts of Europe so your richly garbed lower class adventure would perhaps be safe in S&C's Outremer).

Quote from: Brigman on December 17, 2023, 07:33:34 PM
Watching that video now!

Really appreciate the help guys.  Been a DM since 1980, but this is my first stab at really running a "historical" type game - at least for the medieval period.

No worries. As you may have guessed, this is a subject near and dear to my heart. Going around heavily armed in what is ostensibly a peaceful situation is seriously antisocial behavior in pretty much any culture (not to mention being impractical), and the fact the PCs are never punished for doing it is one of my biggest verisimilitude bugbears with most RPG settings.

Players tend to be extremely attached to their equipment, and you can't blame them. In a lot of RPGs, equipment defines a character to an equal or even greater degree than things like stats and level. They also tend to get resentful very quickly when the GM tries to get them to take it off. What happens a lot of the time is the DM just plays the world so that everyone goes around in full battle gear, to keep things even. It works, but you end up sacrificing the the authenticity of the setting.

A lot of this comes down to picking your battles, I think. If you want to go hard on the simulation, you could not just impose social penalties on your Scotsman for wearing his greatsword on his back, you could also make it take a full round to draw it and penalize all his running, stealth, and climbing for the awkwardness of going around with a 6-foot iron bar hanging off of him. But that'd probably be going too far.

One thing I didn't do for Dragon Warriors, but I would suggest would be appropriate for Lion and Dragon, would be to impose a standard penalty to reaction checks for any PC who is "armed for war" (that is: wearing any armor more than heavy clothing or carrying any weapon other than a dagger, arming sword, longsword, staff, buckler or hunting bow), when meeting any NPC not in an area of active conflict. If you just want something to keep the setting faithful, I'd suggest a -1; if you want to really incentivize more realistic play from your characters, then a -2.

One thing I did in Dragon Warriors, more for practicality reasons but it works to get people to diversify their equipment as well, is restrict what weapons can be used from horseback. In my game, pikes, halberds, poleaxes and longbows could not be used from horseback, and I really should have included greatswords and greataxes in that list. I also put a penalty on using other kinds of bows and longswords from horseback, and ruled that you couldn't reload while the horse was moving.

EDIT: A couple of other youtube channels that are worth a browse if you want more on the "life in medieval times" front:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rp3nve9CJk
https://www.youtube.com/@ModernKnight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdguh1D-fOk

Would the social stigma for carrying weapons exist in a world where a dragon, chimera, or hippogriff could swoop in from the sky at any moment?

I'd say on the road it would be fine and expected. Bandits are dangerous, announcing you are well armed, and ready to use those weapons, is prudent.

In town? Carry it wrapped. Walking around with it on your back is equivalent to the brainlets that wear their AR-15 to McDonalds (and I say this as a supporter of the 2nd Amendment,) except you don't have a constitution protecting you.

Would you get hassled by the Watch/Militia? It would depend on where you were, but at the least you'd make people nervous, and not in the cool-scary-lone-wolf way.

Quote from: hedgehobbit on December 17, 2023, 09:17:08 PM
Would the social stigma for carrying weapons exist in a world where a dragon, chimera, or hippogriff could swoop in from the sky at any moment?

Excellent question. But if you're going to ask it, you might as well ask a bunch of other questions. Just how frequent are these attacks? If they're as frequent as the random encounter tables in some games suggest, then yeah, it might be justified to travel in full combat gear. But then what else changes? How much of the population is kept permanently under arms to deal with these threats? Do small villages still exist, or does everyone have to be kept sheltered inside the castle walls? Does the entire agricultural system change, because it's now unsafe to have farmers out working in the fields? You can do the setting that way, but you're rapidly moving away from anything that nearly replicates medieval Europe.

I haven't looked at the Dark Albion book in a long time, but my memory is it's not that. The monsters exist on the distant fringes and wild areas of the country, and a hippogriff attack on, say, the roads outside of London would be an exceedingly rare thing. 

Anyway, my point was specific to PCs going around more heavily armed than the situation calls for. No one's going to argue that you wouldn't get into battlefield gear when going into a known troll cave. I don't think it'd be odd for people to go heavily armed in a setting like Dark Sun. Throughout history there have been plenty of times when it was accepted that people would travel armed, including in medieval England. But there's generally an upper limit on what people consider reasonable. So yeah, carry a sword and buckler or have a crossbow amongst your belongings, probably no one cares. Go around in full armor with a battleaxe or a loaded arbalest in your hand, and people are likely to assume you're looking to start trouble rather than avoid it.

If you take the idea that Gygax's intention for D&D's implied setting was a medieval equivalent of the Wild West, then things change. That's one of the few times in recorded history where we know that going armed with the best weapons available was widely accepted (and even that's historically controversial when it comes to towns and cities), but in my experience that's not how most people run the game. The idea that you could walk around in full arms & armor in a place like Waterdeep is absurd. Even if you imagine a fantasy-medieval equivalent of a frontier town, I expect that sitting in the local tavern in your plate armor is going to at least draw some suspicious looks.

This is often forgotten in later D&D - In The Keep on the Borderlands, the players are required to put their weapons away when they enter the Keep, so Gygax fully recognised that you don't just stroll around peaceful habitations armed to the teeth.

Quote from: Brigman on December 17, 2023, 04:15:17 PM
In my current game, the Scotsman carries a claymore (great sword).  He's a barbarian outside of the social norms, of course, but... how would he be treated, traveling in the company of a Cleric, carrying his claymore on his back?

Probably with suspicion. He's a barbarian. He's carrying a weapon of war around. The weapon in question is one that is beyond his social station. The fact that it's on his back might help a bit, since a sword of that size in that position will look more like "transporting the weapon" rather than "ready to use the weapon." But he'd still be drawing the wrong kind of attention, in my opinion.

Quote from: ForgottenF on December 18, 2023, 12:16:34 AM
... there's generally an upper limit on what people consider reasonable. So yeah, carry a sword and buckler or have a crossbow amongst your belongings, probably no one cares. Go around in full armor with a battleaxe or a loaded arbalest in your hand, and people are likely to assume you're looking to start trouble rather than avoid it.

^This^

In the medieval era nearly everyone carried a knife of some kind. So carrying an edged hand weapon on top of that is not too outrageous.

Quote from: ForgottenF on December 18, 2023, 12:16:34 AM
... but in my experience that's not how most people run the game. The idea that you could walk around in full arms & armor in a place like Waterdeep is absurd. Even if you imagine a fantasy-medieval equivalent of a frontier town, I expect that sitting in the local tavern in your plate armor is going to at least draw some suspicious looks.

I wonder to what degree that is driven by the fact that D&D uses an AC system?

In skill based systems where there is a Defensive Roll, and armor is Damage Reduction, losing your heavy armor is not the end of the world when you are walking around town.

But in AC based systems, where your armor is a very big factor in not only how often you take damage, but the game presumes certain types of armor, for certain classes, in any combat - players are naturally much more reluctant to cast it aside for any reason.

Sure, making PCs remove their armor and stow their weapons might (or might not, I'm no expert) make realistic medieval sense. For me the most important consideration is that, in the context of the game, such a social rule hampers fighters specifically.

Quote from: Jaeger on December 18, 2023, 09:41:55 PM

Quote from: ForgottenF on December 18, 2023, 12:16:34 AM
... but in my experience that's not how most people run the game. The idea that you could walk around in full arms & armor in a place like Waterdeep is absurd. Even if you imagine a fantasy-medieval equivalent of a frontier town, I expect that sitting in the local tavern in your plate armor is going to at least draw some suspicious looks.

I wonder to what degree that is driven by the fact that D&D uses an AC system?

In skill based systems where there is a Defensive Roll, and armor is Damage Reduction, losing your heavy armor is not the end of the world when you are walking around town.

But in AC based systems, where your armor is a very big factor in not only how often you take damage, but the game presumes certain types of armor, for certain classes, in any combat - players are naturally much more reluctant to cast it aside for any reason.

Oh that's definitely a big contributing factor. Running Dragon Warriors, which has a separate defensive stat, I got noticeably less pushback on PCs not always wearing full armor. Another thing that I think helped was ruling that each tier of armor contains the lower tiers within it. So, my Knight could choose to leave off his plate, but still throw on his gambeson and mail shirt if he had to get dressed in a hurry.

So much potential to make PCs feel vulnerable and force them to fight unarmed or to grapple. Sounds like something they'll remember even if it goes bad. Disarming the populace (especially foreign mercs and adventurers) gives the local thieves guild a chance.