[Hellstrom]

Yeah - that raises the old question of who is mature enough for a server were most pc's are of evil alignment. This won't carry us far I think. What we need is to give players who are relatively new to server and setting time to adjust to it. Some may be used to play bullies or thugs and get away with it after being scolded by to pansy elven magistrate. Well this won't happen here so lets implant some 'middle rules' so not all quit in frustration after being killed for wearing red clothing.

KTA

KTA has an excellent point here IMO. There needs to be a balance between the harshness of rule and punishment that the setting needs and the fact that we don't want to discourage new players from joining the server.

That said, I need to disagree some with Animayhem.

Slavery and more so being a slave can go against a person's personal belief system and yet there are people who do not mind being slaves. So keep the possibilty of a being a slave voluntary or a result as a failed save from slavers.

Permanent death for a crime should not mean death of the character. Mayhap if the death is do to a captial offense, sanctioned an witnessed by a dm, then mayhap the character can only be returned via the fugue not by the friends or by a temple. The xp and noterity loss should suffice and allow the charcter options for interesting follow up rp.

Jail time- As player availblity is dependent on rl, this should be modified to maybe one rl day and maybe a fine.

This world is awesome and kudos to the creators however it is fantasy and people come here to escape.

I play on another PW and if people are in jail or prisoners, supplimental rp is done in forum so player still active but overall out of game is usually no more than two rl days. mayhap utilization more of forums to bridge gaps in punishment, trails would help.

Yes, people play NWN for fun and to escape, and yes, we've all invested a lot of time and effort into characters that are mid-level or higher, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be IC punishments/penalties for IC actions. Just as players should expect some bad results for their characters for disrespecting a Red Wizard, they should expect punishment for other IC actions. And, to keep the server consistent with Thayan law/custom/whatever those punishments sometimes MUST include perma-death or enslavement of the character. One of my characters (no names please :) ) has broken a number of the fundamental laws of Thay and were he to be caught, I'd expect no less than one of those two fates. The only thing I'd ask for is to be given a nice public, RP-able execution scene.

Jail-time would be nice, especially if members of the legion had some way to enforce it (i.e. there's currently no way to force an unwilling PC to march to the jail and walk into a cell). On another server I played on long ago, the town watch had a special club that would automagically transport chars to the jail once they were down. The only downside to it was that they could be forgotten there, so I think it would be necessary to also implement an automatic time-limit on it somehow. (And sorry if I'm getting off track of the purpose of the thread, which I think is more about the actual laws than enforcement of those laws, but the two do go hand-in-hand)

So, getting back to that...

While I am an 'official lore' fanatic, the problem with that lies in the often-conflicting statements from the lorebooks. (see Thayvian vs. Thayan, for example), and sometimes the difficulty to effectively and realistically implement them in a game that does not constantly have a DM watching over it. For example - the idea that Thay has no codified set of laws is supported in the very first sourcebook with "Thay has no code of laws that rules its life". However, one of the more recent sourcebooks somewhat contradicts that and states "The tharchions and zulkirs consult a set of tomes known as the Library of Law when faced with a serious problem."

I think if you look at those two statements right, they're not necessarily conflicting or contradictory. "Thay has no code of laws that rules its life" - true, because the word of Red Wizards is the ultimate law and they're not bound to follow any codified set of laws. If two Red Wizards came into conflict and for some reason that conflict required the intervention of other Reds, those Red Wizards would also not be rule-bound in their decision-making on the problem. I don't think that point conflicts with having a set of tomes that the "tharchions and zulkirs" (or even others) could consult with when faced with a serious problem. It's just that the Library of Law is considered a set of guidelines for what's worked well in the past or recommendations on how to handle something. Also, I think the number of situations that would require that sort of consultation would be pretty small.