The Midnight Watch

So Hoagie and I have been talking, and disagreeing heavily, about the whole stealing issue for a while now. The crux of the matter is that this is an RP shard, first and foremost, and as such, we try to keep things as realistic as possible. However, with 20 minute nights, and varying levels and times of activity between player playing across continents, well, absolute realism is impossible and, as such, things that are possible in real life, like spotting a criminal in the act in a small and heavily populated village like Blackwell, is essentially impossible.

As a tradesman character with interests myself, I do not like the idea of re-locking chests, mainly because it makes it a good deal harder to tell when your chest has been looted, especially since the lock-picking seems to happen when offline.

Obviously, those who steal should skim rather than devastate, and those who steal in-character should be punished IC, once they have been found out IC. By

I assume you mean the gold taken by Craystor and Derek right infront of Jake Jeckel, whilst he was in disguise. As I see it, Jake has chosen to be a criminal, and has set his sights on terrorising the town without reason, and so IC reaction is reasonable, and the things taken by the militia as a pretty brutal police force, has been taken with IC justification. Personally I see this as a scenario that should be RP'd out. How you choose to do that is up to you, though. Still, if you hae aims to prove Jake's innocence, the sooner the better. If this is not possible online, leaving a note slipped under a door, as has been done previously on the IC boards, is always an option. It's definitely a shame that a large amount of gold is lost without return, as the shard's gold sinks usually provide but, like in real life, thievery isn't exactly a fair game.

I've always felt that, though smiths can get a lot of money through creating full armour for citizens, the characters are, on average, reasonably poor, and don't need armour changes all that often and so, with the increased competition from more and more smiths joining the shard, the incredible wealth gained by those in the trade needed to come down to reasonable levels after a while. I appreciate that Althy is very magnanimous with his pricing.

As far as re-locking chests goes, I have seen it as a tinkering skill, and whilst discussing these things with Hoagie, GM Tinkering allowing the re-making of keys for an unlocked chest was thought of as a possibility. Obviously, Hoagie isn't a slave to the code and will get around to it in his own time, if he so chooses. Also, going back to the realism theme, doors, safes and lockboxes that are tampered with don't tend to relock themselves.

Would be an idea to reduce the effect on the victim, but it's also reasonably unrealistic, so I'm torn. Obviously, I'd rather people be law-adibing citizens, but human greed is unavoidable.

*A scrap of paper tacked at the bottom with a small nail*

Could always use another hand around the Midnight Watch. See me to discuss. - Aly

*An arrow points to Hew Phella's writing*
I have heard a rumour that you are dead. If not, please respond.
*Signed* Reinhard Fruehauf