Matters of Justice

[Sidmen]

Hello everyone!

I've just started DMing a fantasy RPG (a classless hack of the Dragon AGE RPG) in which my players form the leadership of a Noble Household (and its minor vassal family). During the first session, after characters were made, I had some random business pop up before leading into a werewolf hunt.

One of those random events was the Lady of the House listening to petitioners, at which she was asked to meet out Justice. The one case she had was a Baker complaining about a boy and his father - the boy had stolen bread and sweet-rolls, and his father refused to allow the boy to be beaten for the offense. The Lady ordered the boy to work for the baker until the value of the goods was repaid threefold (as determined by the baker).

I really enjoyed this exchange, as did everyone else in the group, so I'd like to include it randomly whenever the group is at home, so I thought I'd crowd source some minor crimes/offenses that she could arbitrate.

So far, in addition to the already resolved thief trouble, I have the following (both stolen from History Channel's Vikings)

1) A divorce, where the husband blames the wife of having a child with another man.

2) A death/murder, where the offender admits to killing the man - in self defense, but he did so in the dead man's home during a heated argument.

I'd be very appreciative for anything you can come up with, or even anything that you've done (or wanted to do) that helps characterize a character in a leadership position.

[TuggyNE]

It's hard to go wrong with one of the classics: two, ah, women of negotiable affection living in the same house, both of whom had just given birth to a baby. One of them accidentally rolled over on her child in the night and smothered it before she awoke, but when she did she switched the babies before the other one got up. The only question is which one did this, and who does the surviving baby belong to?

Of course, you'll need to dress it up a bit more in case they're aware of this one.