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© 1998-2001 Dru
Pagliassotti
All rights reserved.
Wergild
 I love addressing law
in a roleplaying game. Nothing startles adventurers more than being slapped
with a fine or prison sentence for brawling in public, for evading "salvage"
tax on the loot they've pulled from the dragon's lair, for breaking and
entering the villain's legal residence. Law makes things trickier, whether
it's law in a fantasy setting or law in a futuristic setting. After all,
most adventurers live on the edge of legality—their hats tend to
be grey more often than they are white or black.
But, strangely, most
GMs who develop laws for their campaigns model their justice system after
modern bureaucratic forms, with a sense that crime is an offense against
society and individual, and often with a system for trial by one's peers.
In a game system that takes place in modern Earth, that's fine ... but
in fantasy campaigns or campaigns that involve nonhuman races or other
worlds, why assume that all law has evolved the same way? This essay addresses
the use of wergild as an alternative to physical punishment (e.g., flogging,
enslavement, imprisonment, execution).
Wergild is a Nordic
term for blood-money, or a sum that is paid to a victim or the victim's
surviving relatives in reparation for a crime. The practice, however,
crossed many cultures and took many forms. Here I provide a simplified
version that can be used in most campaigns.
Traditionally, a wergild
system existed in a society with extended kinship ties, and in its usual
form it called upon those ties for reparation. The
mindset behind the wergild system was, in part, that all kinsfolk are
responsible for their own; an offender offends not only against an individual
but against a family, and punishment is meted not only against the offender
but against the offender's family. Although wergild systems have tended
to exist in warrior cultures where maintaining peace among hot-headed
warriors is extremely difficult, it might also exist in a pacifistic culture
where the governing body refuses to kill even a killer.
In a wergild scenario,
an offender harms a victim's property or person and is brought before
the lawgiving body. How the lawgiving body decides the guilt or innocence
of the offender depends on the culture; future RPG essays on this topic
will address trial by oath, by ordeal, by combat, and by torture as alternatives
to trial by jury. However, the offender is tried, found guilty, and sentenced
to pay the victim (or the victim's surviving kin).
The offender and all
of the offender's relatives to some X degree of relationship are required
to pitch in shares that are scaled to their degree of closeness to the
offender. Thus, the offender pays the largest proportion of the wergild;
brothers and sisters might shoulder the second largest proportion; parents
the third; aunts and uncles the fourth; grandparents and grandchildren
the fifth; and so forth, to whatever degree of consanguinity the GM deems
appropriate. From a roleplaying point of view, one can imagine that the
threat of being hit with such a fine would lead to a great deal of self-policing
in families! A society with this system of justice is also likely to have
strict rituals of disinheritance designed to protect a family from a proven
"bad egg" (although we can assume that the family probably cannot
disinherit the offender after the crime is committed but before the wergild
is paid).
The wergild is paid
to the victim or, if the victim is dead, to the victim's relatives, again
scaled to whatever degree of consanguinity the GM deems appropriate. Once
the wergild is paid, the victim or the victim's family may no longer seek
revenge against the offender or the offender's kin—wergild can be
understood in part as a nonviolent form of settling disputes that might
otherwise tear a close-knit society apart.
Traditionally, wergild
for an injured or slain priest was paid to the priest's church, and in
a campaign, this could be extended to include any person who belongs to
any organization commonly thought to replace that person's family. In
addition, although wergild was traditionally paid to family, individual
campaigns might want to replace family with the most relevant social group
for the society is—religious group, clan, tribe, shield-sisterhood,
and so forth.
A GM who wants to use
a wergild system in a campaign must develop a list of offenses and scale
the wergild fine accordingly. I would suggest that the wergild payment
for damage to property be exactly what is needed to repair or replace
the damaged property (whether it's an injured cow, a burnt house, or a
demolished space station). A GM might also wish to scale the wergild payment
to income lost as a result of the property damage, or include mental anguish
payments. These are modern concepts and wergild is a premodern system,
but there's no reason why other races or cultures couldn't mesh the two.
Wergild payments for
damage or death to a person are a little more complicated. I've developed
a rough chart that can be used as a starting point for developing a system
of personal-injury wergild payments. A GM using this chart should tailor
it for the culture (is childbearing capacity valued very highly?), race
(do you need to add prices for wings or tails? does the race value noses
more than eyes?), and level of science (does chromosomal damage need a
rating?). I have not included an actual monetary amount. The modifiers
are all multiples of the base amount, and the base amount is provided
in generic, relative terms from 1 to 10—1 to 10 nuyen, 1 to 10 gold
pieces, 1 to 10 credits, whatever. The GM should multiply the base number
by whatever amount fits the campaign; for example, an AD&D campaign
might multiply each base number by 10, so that a finger is worth 10 gp
and an eye worth 70 gp.
Payment Modifiers for Type of Damage:
Simple Damage (Cuts, Bruises, etc.): 1x
Great Damage (Leaves terrible scars, etc.): 3x
Broken (But can heal): 5x
Partial Loss (Partial amputation or loss of use): 7x
Complete Loss (Total amputation or loss of use): 10x
Death: 100x Head
Payment Modifiers for Type of Injury:
Causes Loss of Livelihood: 25x Head (doesn't include death)
Causes Loss of Virginity: 15x Genitalia
Causes Loss of Child-creating Capacity: 75x Genitalia
Causes Loss of a Family's Sole Source of Support: 50x Head
Payment Modifiers for Class of Individual:
Esteemed (high-caste, noble, celebrity, etc.): 75x Hand
Respected (middle-caste, merchant, scholar, etc.): 50x Hand
Useful (working-caste, yeoman, service industry, etc.): 25x Hand
Payment by Body Part:
Head:
Skull: 10
Ear: 5
Eye: 7
Nose: 4
Jaw: 3
Teeth: 1
Arm:
Shoulder: 5
Elbow: 5
Wrist: 5
Hand: 7
Non-joint part of arm: 3
Fingers: Thumb 9; Index 7; Third 7; Fourth 5; Pinkie 3
Leg:
Hip: 5
Knee: 5
Ankle: 5
Foot: 3
Non-joint part of leg: 3
Toes: Big toe 9; Second 7; Third 7; Fourth 5; Fifth 3
Nonfatal injury to:
Lung: 9
Stomach: 9
Intestines: 9
Throat: 9
Kidneys: 9
Ribs: 5
Genitals: 10
Other modifiers might
take into consideration whether the damage was inflicted as the result
of assault or self-defense, on an adult or a child, and so forth. Payment
may be in the form of actual cash or independently assessed valuables.
If somebody cannot meet the payment, s/he may go into debt or may possibly
be indentured to the victim until the debt has been paid off.
Using a wergild system
gives the GM a few advantages. First, the GM doesn't have to worry about
throwing player characters into prison or executing them if they break
a few laws. Second, the GM can run a quick encounter with a wergild-using
race to lighten the characters' pocketbooks a bit if they've been accumulating
a bit too much money. Third, it differentiates a race or culture, providing
much more depth and interest to the campaign than just another cookie-cutter
imitation of modern-day jurisprudence.
originally written December 14, 1998
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