One of my favorite parts about Waterdeep is the Code Legal. In some D&D campaigns, it can be easy for parties to get away with a lot of stuff, mostly because they feel untouchable, especially NPCs with stat blocks like commoner and guard. Small-town law enforcement can’t exactly stand up to a Wizard who can shoot fire from her palms. And who is really going to bother punishing the well-meaning group of people who set fire to the village while they were dealing with the devil hiding in the mayor’s basement?
But in Waterdeep, the authorities are a very present part of the game. And if you’re playing Dragon Heist, you have plenty of really good reasons to not get them involved, especially if you involve yourself with the various factions and gangs and decide to steal the money that technically belongs to the state right out from under its nose.
Most D&D parties seem to have a hard time understanding that actions have consequences, but I find Waterdeep to be a panacea for that. Because of the Code Legal and many responsible local heroes, adventurers are held to a higher standard, and actions end up having harsher consequences. This can sometimes clash with players’ perceptions of what Dungeons & Dragons games are like. My party was attempting a rooftop chase, from Chapter 4 of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. During this pursuit, the ranger took one of the pearls from her necklace of fireballs and desperately hurled it at her quarry in hopes that the ensuing fire would slow them down.
They were literal devils; it did not slow them down.
What ended up happening was a giant fire spanning three rooftops in the Dock Ward. As the pursued creatures made their escape, the City Watch arrived and arrested my party for arson.
In some cases, arson in Waterdeep is an offense punishable by death.
It was something that happened in the moment, but the second I had Captain Staget bring them in, I couldn’t help but think about the trial scene from Chrono Trigger.
Through trope reversals, iconic moments, and clever use of game design, nearly every scene of Chrono Trigger is a memorable work of art. I may be biased, or it may be the greatest game ever made. That’s up for you to decide. But it can’t be denied that Chrono Trigger wasted no time establishing at the very start that it was a very special video game.
As the capstone of the first act of the game, the main character is arrested and brought to trial, and everything you had controlled him to do is put under a microscope and scrutinized.
The first time I played Chrono Trigger, I didn’t know anything about the trial. I didn’t realize that failing to complete a side quest, or partaking of an item that was left out in the open would be interpreted as bad play.
I’d never had a game punish me for being inconsiderate before without explicitly telling me it was going to. There was no “eat this man’s lunch [renegade]” tooltip. Eating the man’s lunch felt as natural as smashing some pottery in a Hylian’s home. And I rarely get in trouble for that.
But in Chrono Trigger, Crono is arrested for kidnapping the princess, a very serious offense. But at his trial, the prosecution claims the content of Crono’s character is at the center of this case. He drags every poor choice you’ve made in the game up until that point to light. Did you listen to the little girl and help find her cat, or did you not complete that side quest in time? Did you try to sell something that did not belong to you? Did you press the A button in front of an innocent man’s lunch?
All of a sudden, the simple means by which you interact with the game world become very, very real as you realize that your behavior was, by real-world standards, abhorrent.
Kind of like committing arson on the Dock Ward.
I gave the party three days to prepare before their Waterdavian trial. I picked three days because that’s the amount of time Crono sits in his cell after his own trial, and he’s faced with the decision to wait for his sentence or break out. Breaking out absolutely could have been an option for my party, but they wanted to fight the charges.
I also gave the group one proverbial “phone call” in the form of the magic paper bird item, because they were all going to be tried together. This forced them to really think about who they were going to ask for help, and how. They wrote a letter to their trustworthy mentor, Bratwurzt McRib (why people trust this disaster of a creature, I’ll never know), and the rogue showed up as their defense attorney after gathering help from the party’s respective factions.
For the party’s trial, I put on a loop of the iconic trial song from the game. The prosecution and defense both called witnesses that they thought would help their case. Just like in Chrono Trigger, the party’s collective character was called into question with incidents that had little to do with the actual arson charges: they appeared out of seemingly nowhere to open a bar, fraternized with the Zhentarim, and remained tight-lipped and brusque around their neighbors.
The trial ended in their favor. They had great renown with their respective factions, and their ultimate defense was that they were attempting to save the city. Witnesses corroborated that the criminals they were chasing down were even more dangerous than a group of reckless adventurers. I let them off with a HUGE debt to pay to the factions that had helped them out, including a dangerous man who enjoys dressing up as Laeral Silverhand in his free time.
Did this work? I think so. My players started to pay more attention to the Code Legal handouts I had given them at the start of the campaign. The threat of the City Watch was from then on factored into their decision making. Most importantly, they had a lot of fun with this style of encounter, and the player who runs our Cleric tells me he put the Chrono Trigger trial theme on his workout playlist. I would absolutely do this again were players of mine to be arrested in Waterdeep.
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