Looking for a Code of Laws

[Smith]

Have you ever run an extended campaign within a city or kingdom and wished you could have something in writing regarding the laws of the land? I think they wrote a few pages on crime and punishment in CS War Campaign, but it doesn't seem like it would function perfectly in a city like Nostrous, within the Federation of Magic.

I am running such a campaign in Nostrous (in a play-by-post format) and was hoping someone may know of a resource online that might be able to help with this. I'm no lawyer myself and I would not presume to be able to write a whole set of laws that wouldn't be full of loopholes for my players to exploit. I certainly don't want anything as complicated as a set of modern-day laws, but just a simple set of rules and punishments - just like what they provided in CS War Campaign. This seems to me to be something that someone would have produced at some point - possibly even for a non-palladium game...

I found the Code of Hammurabi:
http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/MESO/CODE.HTM
which is close to what I'm looking for, but a little outdated as it is a historical text and not intended for RPG's.

Thanks for any assistance.

[lather]

PFRPG Old Ones book has some wirtten laws for the Kingdom of Timiro.
Basic stuff though.

[Drakenred®™©]

the problem is that it takes time to come up with a set of laws, Heck the original "common law" of england took literaly centurys to develop into the form it was in when Sir William Blackstone published his comentarys on English law (the 4th book delt with criminal law by the way.) oh an interesting footnote, Even as late as the 18th century it was more common for a woman to Sue for Civil damages from rape than to charge him criminaly. Better to ruin the rapist financialy than to leave him a shattered reck unable to suport any offspring.

http://www.lonang.com/exlibris/blackstone/

[Drakenred®™©]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Tables

[Drakenred®™©]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twelve_Tables

[Smith]

Thanks very much for the links, although I would still be very interested to hear what others may have read.

To be honest, I am not a huge patron of DnD, but I know it has so many sourcebooks, seemingly on every topic, I figured this is one subject they would already have approached. I'm not too proud to adapt their material to my Palladium games.

The list in Old Ones is helpful, but it is pretty basic. I need a code of laws that includes rules regarding property, trade, and contracts.

The laws of old England also look pretty good, but in order to use them in Nostrous, I might have to modify them heavily (I see Nostrous as being slightly less principled than 18th century England, and they probably aren't Christians)

The Roman information looks good also, but the wiki appears to only include exerpts.

Something tells me I'm not going to find a simple solution to this issue and will end up either 'winging it' in the game or giving myself a sizeable personal history project.

[Drakenred®™©]

well thats the thing, the more "Cutthrought" the compitition between factions the more detailed the laws often becomes just because of all the laws that end up getting made to deal with every bloody thing that comes up (one example was from 1620s Veinec I belive, where a sale of property needed specific witnesses-Agents and facilitators based on who was buying and who was selling, and god help you if everyone involved (as in literaly everyone the buyer, the seller, the Agents and the facilitators, even the required witnesses) did not attend the same church because you needed witnesses from each church to verify that they were members, and that did not count getting guild approval when applicable.

[desepchun]

Honestly I think the best thing you could do would just be to wing it and keep notes on the decisions you make. Unless one of the characters is a Lawyer it's hard to believe they would have the entire code of laws committed to memory.