RPG Thoughts: Mean Streets

The last time I yelled in your general direction, I was commenting on my dislike for the ‘points of light’ concept in RPG adventures. That was focused mostly on a specific kind of high fantasy or sword-and-sorcery type game. While I do run those kinds of games, I am generally more partial to urban adventures—as might be clear from the adventures I’ve done for Sword Noir.

If you are aware of my Sword Noir adventures, you will also be aware that invariably the PCs are part of the criminal underworld—to a greater or lesser degree. And that’s because as a ‘point of light,’ most cities were also bastions of elite privilege and underclass suffering. Were the criminals as bad? Probably. But at least there, one would have a change of rising through merit. Among criminals, what does it matter your family?

Now, someone with a family connection to a criminal leader would likely have an advantage over the average criminal, but leadership and the higher echelons of the criminal underworld were likely more accessible to those born among the poorest and least advantaged than the nobility. There were certainly ways to buy one’s nobility, but that also wasn’t always about merit—best way to get richer was to be born rich.

Being part of the criminal underworld does not necessarily mean that the PC will prey on the vulnerable. Just as one can pretend that the nobility actually cared about the common people—like that fantasy movie The Last Samurai—one can play a criminal with a very specific code. Like a good comedian, your character can punch up instead of punching down.

Through history, many of the entities that became organized crime started as protection societies. Certainly not all, and most quickly reverted to extortion, but they were much more attentive to the needs of the general population than the nobility, probably because their interests aligned more directly with the commons. Even criminal leaders generally lacked the wealth of the hereditary nobility.

At least part of my focus is due to my enjoyment of hardboiled fiction, and while the protagonists of these pieces are usually not criminals, they are often a part of or linked to the underworld and definitely find themselves the victims of police more often than they are allies.

All that to say, I’m not a fan of points of light, and I’m more interested in the wrong side of the tracks in almost every genre. The status quo is rarely good for the most people rather than the people with power, and those protecting it aren’t necessarily civilized or points of light.