Basic Information
Punishment is something unpleasant done to curtail lawlessness or disobedience. See also Crimes, Criminal, and Crime and Punishment Tropes. Usually a punishment presumes that an offence has been committed and seeks to either exact retribution against the offender, to reform him or to provide a deterrent example to him or to others.
To be rightfully called punishment, the act should also be committed by or at the behest of a lawful authority (within a given definition of "lawful"), otherwise it's just an assault (or suchlike). Who has the right to punish who for what has long been a cause of fallings out between the ruled and their rulers.
Modern punishments
- Community Service
- Compensatory Damages or Restoration
- Curfew
- Execution
- Fines
- House Arrest
- Incarceration
- Imprisonment (see Prison)
- Probation
- Punitive Damages
- Rehabilitation
- Restriction of Rights
- Solitary Confinement
- Suspension of License
Despite common misapplication, Parole is not a punishment. It's actually a reward for good behavior and rehabilitation, or a way to ease Prison Over-Crowding. Since Paroled criminals are often put on probation or assigned a Parole Officer, this sometimes is seen as a punishment, but it's generally far superior to the alternative.
Archaic Punishments (though, admittedly, some of these still happen today)
- Beheading
- Bilboe
- Branding
- Brank or Gag
- Chain Gang
- Cucking Stool
- Decimatio
- Enslavement
- Exile
- Flogging
- Foot Whipping
- Fustuarium
- Gas Chamber
- Hanging
- Hard Labor
- Keel-hauling
- Lobotomy
- Lynching
- Maiming
- The Pillory
- Pressed into Military Service
- Pressing
- Public Humiliation
- Public Penance in Church
- Ryding The Wooden Horse
- Scarlet Letter
- Shunning
- Slavery
- Slow slicing
- The Stocks
- Stoning
- Strappado
- Tar and Feathering
- Torture
- Walk the Plank
- Waterboarding
- Whip and Pickle
- Whipping Post
Disturbing Futuristic Punishments
- Chemical Neutering
- Holographic Torture
- Marooning on a Death World - but only economical if you've got really cheap stardrive or really large numbers of prisoners
- Mental Conditioning
- Slavery
- Tracking Implant
- Thought Monitor
- Spaced
Disturbing Fantasy Punishments
- Anti-Magic
- Cursed
- Damned
- Enchantment
- Fed to Zombies, a Dragon or the Monster of the Week
- Illusionary version of other punishments
- Inflict Wounds / Life Drain - Hit Point loss without pain?
- Pressed into an Adventuring Party
- Sacrificed to demons or gods.
- Sold to the Orcs (or given as a bribe / peace offering / slave to some other barbaric fantasy race or culture)
- Slavery
- Transmutation into a lower lifeform
- Short-term transmutation to learn a lesson
- Permanent transmutation to protect the community
- Transmuted and butchered
- Variations on Exile and Banishment
- Exile by long-range Teleportation
- Exile to the Dungeon Forest
- Exile to other Planes of Existence
Sources
Game and Story Use
- The extremes of punishment a society will go to says a lot about that culture or government.
- Lawful Evil will have harsh and brutal punishments.
- Lawful Good might have more humane punishments, but is likely to go the public humiliation or punative measures route.
- Chaotic Good will focus more on rehabilitation and reform, seeking to deter rather than punish. On the other hand, such a society might be inclined to tolerate vigilante justice, even while preaching forgiveness.
- Chaotic Evil likely has no laws, and relies on lynch mobs or private vendetta.
- Likewise, due to any number of cultural, historical, or societal factors, it's entirely possible that a given legal system might use one or more punishments that seem entirely out of character (and either brutal or laughable) from our modern western perspective. The Colonial Era relied on whipping and bilboes pretty extensively, but you'd hesitate to characterize the Founding Fathers as Lawful Evil for that.
- Sometimes, the Players have screwed up really bad, and you just have to punish the characters. May be you feel that all suspension of disbelief would be lost if the local authorities did nothing. You may be motivated by concern that you'll "lose control" of the campaign if you let them get away with that. Whatever the reason, it's always good to know what your options are, so you're not forced to escalate straight to Wanted Dead Or Alive.
