The popular assumption is that the job of adventurer is tolerated- someone who solves some otherwise intractable problems.  If the game world really has like ten to twenty levels of power, then it's totally plausible, because high levels don't really map to anything like what the real world has in D&D. 

But even if the game is capped at 6th level or uses a system without such tiers, if you are in a place where some ogres can be a problem and a team of specialists can fix it, it's plausible to assume a looser attitude towards such characters.

There's another issue here, as regards being disarmed, unarmored and going on boats and such, and that is that there's no shortage of characters who are nearly as well defended as a knight by virtue of ki power and nimbleness, even whilst nude.  Even something as mundane as a rogue will often end up the greatest martial combatant if subject to some place without arms and armor (because he secretly brought a knife, which any system worth a hill of beans will allow a rogue to accomplish, and has a good baseline agility-hoppity-hop stat).  To say nothing of casters, who the system might make incapable of casting via some mechanism or simply not hinder them at all, depending.
You need to build a lot more baseline realism into a system to make all that work all that well.

It really depends on the setting.  While the trappings of d&d are medeival, the cultural assumptions and social structure are a lot more like the American old west.  The ideas of adventurers and adventuring make the most sense in such places, where significant numbers of people live out past the edge of strong civilized authority.  The age of pirates is another good example.  In many cases folks did go armed. 

I just recalled another relevant example.  I recently read about a far northern town where the residents are required to go armed outside because of the threat of polar bears.

Quote from: Mishihari on May 06, 2025, 11:00:39 AMIt really depends on the setting.  While the trappings of d&d are medeival, the cultural assumptions and social structure are a lot more like the American old west.  The ideas of adventurers and adventuring make the most sense in such places, where significant numbers of people live out past the edge of strong civilized authority.  The age of pirates is another good example.  In many cases folks did go armed. 

I just recalled another relevant example.  I recently read about a far northern town where the residents are required to go armed outside because of the threat of polar bears.

Yep. The typical D&D setting is a mishmash of myth, legend and history from all over the world and wildly different time frames. It's only superficially medieval, and sometimes not even that.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on May 06, 2025, 09:14:45 AMI think that one thing that helps with these kind of rules is to make shields more realistically valuable and/or have helms.  That's one of the reasons I built helms into the system, and I definitely wanted shields to matter more. In my system, helms, most shield, and moderately heavy or heavier armor all equally contribute to reducing the effects of critical hits. So even though the armor provides more total defense, the helm/shield has an outsize effect on the actual damage you take.

In many systems, equipping the shield is almost an afterthought, unless it is magical. Putting a time on that is not meaningful, just nit picky accounting. Whereas, I have had situations where a player made the decision to go with the fast shield/helm combo to get into the fight in a hurry.  I've even had a handful of times where a player did that to try to hold off opponents while the rest of the group got their armor on--and then retired as soon as someone could relieve the post.

If you want to make putting on armor a chore, then toss the players a bone and make grabbing up that big shield a useful emergency action.

Ironically, that's exactly the conclusion I came to when adjusting B/X-derived ACKS for a historical game. Armour was de-prioritised and shields made much more important. A big shield and helm was equivalent to medium armour, without actually wearing anything else.

It also provides an intermediate step between totally unprepared and totally armoured up. Sure you haven't got time to get into your cuirass and strap on greaves and arm plates, but you do have enough time to put on your helmet and pick up your shield before jumping into the fray.

And as you say, there's an interesting twist where the group, working as a team can do that trade off of some hold whilst others get ready.

Quote from: LordBP on May 06, 2025, 09:29:13 AMJust a note on historical settings.  During certain time periods, just about everything had a palisade wall around a cluster of buildings for defense.  You wouldn't have a farm as a few buildings, you would have an extended family with multiple buildings with a wall around most or all of it.

Fantasy worlds with a lot of monsters would have even more defenses.

You can get a palisade around the core area where the town and marketplace might be, you couldn't literally wall off the entire extent of farmland surrounding it. That would be the place people in the outlying farms would retreat to in times of trouble.

Within that space, though, the people in charge would be much more particular about who they want running about armed and armoured.

Quote from: Ruprecht on May 06, 2025, 09:49:10 AMI think its a practical matter. Most characters know they are in for adventure and want to be ready. They simply won't go anywhere without their best gear. All this is a shame because it limits the GM's bag of tricks.

If you're genuinely engaging with practical matters, they can't wear all their best gear, all the time. They have to sleep, bathe, swim, recover from wounds.

But yes, it doesn't just limit the GM's bag of tricks. if we assume the same for the opposition then the players don't get the chance to catch their enemies unawares, either.

Quote from: Venka on May 06, 2025, 10:10:40 AMThe popular assumption is that the job of adventurer is tolerated- someone who solves some otherwise intractable problems.  If the game world really has like ten to twenty levels of power, then it's totally plausible, because high levels don't really map to anything like what the real world has in D&D. 

But even if the game is capped at 6th level or uses a system without such tiers, if you are in a place where some ogres can be a problem and a team of specialists can fix it, it's plausible to assume a looser attitude towards such characters.

There's another issue here, as regards being disarmed, unarmored and going on boats and such, and that is that there's no shortage of characters who are nearly as well defended as a knight by virtue of ki power and nimbleness, even whilst nude.  Even something as mundane as a rogue will often end up the greatest martial combatant if subject to some place without arms and armor (because he secretly brought a knife, which any system worth a hill of beans will allow a rogue to accomplish, and has a good baseline agility-hoppity-hop stat).  To say nothing of casters, who the system might make incapable of casting via some mechanism or simply not hinder them at all, depending.
You need to build a lot more baseline realism into a system to make all that work all that well.

Again, in a frontier-type location maybe. But in the capital city of a developed nation well away from the frontier regions, why would the same permissiveness necessarily hold true?

Most places didn't sweat carrying knives on your person, even if they stopped people carrying spears and swords. The heaviest thing you might get when preparing for trouble in an urban area is a club or staff. If that gives an advantage to the roguish types, well that is the environment that's supposed to be their element. Though that sort of thing is paired with stealth/surprise and in a straight fight less useful.

Your latter point is a good one, but there may be similar strictures on casters and other power sources. Those who might respond to "unauthorised" magic use in the same way as people visibly armed where they shouldn't be.

Quote from: Mishihari on May 06, 2025, 11:00:39 AMIt really depends on the setting.  While the trappings of d&d are medeival, the cultural assumptions and social structure are a lot more like the American old west.  The ideas of adventurers and adventuring make the most sense in such places, where significant numbers of people live out past the edge of strong civilized authority.  The age of pirates is another good example.  In many cases folks did go armed. 

I just recalled another relevant example.  I recently read about a far northern town where the residents are required to go armed outside because of the threat of polar bears.

This is a good point, you've got a potentially incompatible crossing of trappings and assumptions going on. As far as I'm aware medieval Europe had laws and ordinances about who was allowed to carry what and wear, the old West was very different in that regard.

A lot of this comes down to what you think your job as the GM actually is.

You're the judge arbitrating the rules for a fantasy adventure game where players kill things for gold and experience. To what extent do you think you're obligated to enforce the rules and social norms of 13th century Europe onto characters who are carrying around weapons and therefore empowered to defy those norms?

Even mundane arms and armor were worth quite a lot of money. If the players have to take off their armor and disarm themselves, who are they going to trust to hold on to it? This is exacerbated by magical arms and armor. That +1 sword is probably worth more than the entire town.

Then you have metagame reasoning. The "neutral" judge who is supposed to "challenge" me during play is trying to take away my weapons and armor. What motivation could he have for doing this? Players aren't stupid, and they're suspicious by nature. This all sounds conspicuously like the GM engaging in kung fu treachery. No, I don't think I want to be unarmed and in plain clothes when the assassin strikes the mayor, thank you.

Quote from: Corolinth on May 06, 2025, 11:31:06 AMA lot of this comes down to what you think your job as the GM actually is.

You're the judge arbitrating the rules for a fantasy adventure game where players kill things for gold and experience. To what extent do you think you're obligated to enforce the rules and social norms of 13th century Europe onto characters who are carrying around weapons and therefore empowered to defy those norms?

Even mundane arms and armor were worth quite a lot of money. If the players have to take off their armor and disarm themselves, who are they going to trust to hold on to it? This is exacerbated by magical arms and armor. That +1 sword is probably worth more than the entire town.

Then you have metagame reasoning. The "neutral" judge who is supposed to "challenge" me during play is trying to take away my weapons and armor. What motivation could he have for doing this? Players aren't stupid, and they're suspicious by nature. This all sounds conspicuously like the GM engaging in kung fu treachery. No, I don't think I want to be unarmed and in plain clothes when the assassin strikes the mayor, thank you.

Personally, I think my job as GM is to present and believable, internally consistent world where people behave in a way that makes sense to the mores they'd hold.

Are they really empowered to defy those norms outside of the most thinly populated frontier towns? If they're wandering around the capital city of a developed nation, they surely said nation has it's own means of protecting the citizens who pay their taxes there?

Where they leave their stuff is one of those considerations of a realistic setting. Do they have henchmen/hirelings who guard their camp to free them up from routine stuff? Have they spent the time and effort building up a trustworthy entourage who can support them? Or perhaps they have a citizen of the settlement who's sponsoring their presence who can look after their stuff for them?

On the metagame, that's not players being smart, that's being paranoid. If they're never willing to be apart from their stuff, that limits their options of where they can do. By the same token, why would powerful people permit dangerous people like the PCs in their presence fully kitted out? If you don't want to be in plain clothes and unarmed, you don't get anywhere near the mayor or even to speak to them, because why would the mayor's security be dumb enough to let random people close by armed?

These aren't merely theoretical considerations, they're how societies work. You don't think in ancient Athens there were people who might worry about assassins, but trusted to the social conventions that everyone was unarmoured in the city to protect them? The alternative wouldn't be a functioning society, but armed camps staring at each other from within their fortresses.

That's how we developed customs around hospitality and guest friendship, where some societies developed really complex rules around "face" and status that come from behaving in particular ways. Many societies barred entire classes of people from having any weapons at all, for example.

Quote from: Kiero on May 06, 2025, 11:26:01 AM

Quote from: LordBP on May 06, 2025, 09:29:13 AMJust a note on historical settings.  During certain time periods, just about everything had a palisade wall around a cluster of buildings for defense.  You wouldn't have a farm as a few buildings, you would have an extended family with multiple buildings with a wall around most or all of it.

Fantasy worlds with a lot of monsters would have even more defenses.

You can get a palisade around the core area where the town and marketplace might be, you couldn't literally wall off the entire extent of farmland surrounding it. That would be the place people in the outlying farms would retreat to in times of trouble.

Within that space, though, the people in charge would be much more particular about who they want running about armed and armoured.

More thinking Neolithic Europe where most "villages" were an extended family with all the buildings inside of the palisade to protect them from other "villages" and the hordes from the plains (not that it helped much with the later).

This would be the model for any type of settlement outside of "civilized" areas, but in fantasy, I'm not sure that would work even then.

Quote from: Kiero on May 06, 2025, 11:42:04 AMPersonally, I think my job as GM is to present and believable, internally consistent world where people behave in a way that makes sense to the mores they'd hold.

Pardon me for not bothering to quote an entire post, because that became a whole thing recently.

So it's believable that a hardened warrior who risked life and limb to acquire a sword worth a king's ransom from the lair of a horrible monster is going to... surrender that sword because Sheriff Bob said so? Let's go with that whole some societies banned certain classes from carrying weapons schtick. Clearly the player characters are not from those social classes, as they have weapons. Problem solved.

What I'm getting from your posts in this thread is that you want to enforce a fairly rigid view of how medieval society interacted with one another, and aren't terribly interested in considering how, "That guy over there slew a dragon," might throw a monkey wrench into that paradigm. That's a thing you can do, but it's going to have limited success. Tabletop gaming is ultimately a group endeavor. Whatever you're trying to achieve requires some cooperation from your players.

Quote from: Corolinth on May 06, 2025, 12:45:36 PMPardon me for not bothering to quote an entire post, because that became a whole thing recently.

So it's believable that a hardened warrior who risked life and limb to acquire a sword worth a king's ransom from the lair of a horrible monster is going to... surrender that sword because Sheriff Bob said so? Let's go with that whole some societies banned certain classes from carrying weapons schtick. Clearly the player characters are not from those social classes, as they have weapons. Problem solved.

What I'm getting from your posts in this thread is that you want to enforce a fairly rigid view of how medieval society interacted with one another, and aren't terribly interested in considering how, "That guy over there slew a dragon," might throw a monkey wrench into that paradigm. That's a thing you can do, but it's going to have limited success. Tabletop gaming is ultimately a group endeavor. Whatever you're trying to achieve requires some cooperation from your players.

Uh no. I don't play medieval, I'm more interested in antiquity, and "Sheriff Bob" is an old West-ism. It's more like why would the king of a realm permit these dangerous individuals into their presence armed, even with his guard all around him?

That guy who slew a dragon is still a foreigner and a stranger, they don't get to simply skirt social convention when they could be dangerous. If they're the sort to be a dick about the way society works for everyone else, instead of finding a receptive locale to sell their loot and seek services, they find all the citizens mobilised against the invaders.

Quote from: Kiero on May 06, 2025, 05:56:25 AMPoint I'm getting at is the fantasy assumption that PCs are armed and armoured all the time makes no sense. And you would think any settlement would take a dim view of dangerous looking strangers wandering about the place loaded for bear.

It would also mean there are times when PCs might have to consider whether they want to get into a fight, when they're unarmoured and possibly armed with nothing more than knives or at most clubs, or avoid a fight and come back to something when they're better prepared. Or where a surprise encounter might feature the decision of whether some of the party react immediately to the threat whilst others get their armour on and perhaps locate mounts.

Quote from: Kiero on May 06, 2025, 12:54:50 PMI don't play medieval, I'm more interested in antiquity, and "Sheriff Bob" is an old West-ism. It's more like why would the king of a realm permit these dangerous individuals into their presence armed, even with his guard all around him?

That guy who slew a dragon is still a foreigner and a stranger, they don't get to simply skirt social convention when they could be dangerous. If they're the sort to be a dick about the way society works for everyone else, instead of finding a receptive locale to sell their loot and seek services, they find all the citizens mobilised against the invaders.

In your original post, Kiero, you talk about PCs avoiding a fight when they're unarmored, or possibly getting surprised and having to get their armor on during the fight. What would they be fighting? i.e. What are the sort of encounters that you are thinking might happen in the city?

---

I've had problems in the past with games where the citizens are inconsistent. If the PCs misbehave, then the citizens all mobilize against the PC invaders. However, if a bandit or monster shows up, then the citizens fail to mobilize and it's up to the PCs to fight it.

If the PCs are treated as dangerous-looking, untrusted strangers and afforded no rank - then I'd expect that the PCs would treat any problems in the city as none of their business. They'd back off and let the citizens handle it if a monster or bandit appeared. In my current cyberpunk campaign, say, the PCs are poor young gangsters of a sort in a Norse-myth cyberpunk city.

In many of my fantasy games, though, the PCs are considered to be of high social rank - so they are treated as valued visiting nobles and/or heroes. In my last D&D campaign, the PCs had a semi-divine patron, so they were treated as having religious authority and people commonly appealed to them (plus one of them was a princess).

Quote from: Kiero on May 06, 2025, 12:54:50 PM

Quote from: Corolinth on May 06, 2025, 12:45:36 PMPardon me for not bothering to quote an entire post, because that became a whole thing recently.

So it's believable that a hardened warrior who risked life and limb to acquire a sword worth a king's ransom from the lair of a horrible monster is going to... surrender that sword because Sheriff Bob said so? Let's go with that whole some societies banned certain classes from carrying weapons schtick. Clearly the player characters are not from those social classes, as they have weapons. Problem solved.

What I'm getting from your posts in this thread is that you want to enforce a fairly rigid view of how medieval society interacted with one another, and aren't terribly interested in considering how, "That guy over there slew a dragon," might throw a monkey wrench into that paradigm. That's a thing you can do, but it's going to have limited success. Tabletop gaming is ultimately a group endeavor. Whatever you're trying to achieve requires some cooperation from your players.

Uh no. I don't play medieval, I'm more interested in antiquity, and "Sheriff Bob" is an old West-ism. It's more like why would the king of a realm permit these dangerous individuals into their presence armed, even with his guard all around him?

That guy who slew a dragon is still a foreigner and a stranger, they don't get to simply skirt social convention when they could be dangerous. If they're the sort to be a dick about the way society works for everyone else, instead of finding a receptive locale to sell their loot and seek services, they find all the citizens mobilised against the invaders.

The unwritten assumption here is that if the GM is going to this kind of effort to have a consistent world, then:

- It's consistent across the board, whether that helps or hurts the PCs in any given situation.
- The players have signed on for this kind of game.
- It's strongly implied that the players have a lot of choices in what their characters tangle with.

So yeah, if you want to run an episodic, adventure of the week, with no real purpose other than dealing with that adventure, then it's a dick GM move to deprive the players of their weapons without at least some kind of way around it.  If the players have to go to town because that's the only place the adventure occurs this week, then assassins every time you are unarmed would get old in a hurry.

OTOH, if you are running a world in motions, where things happen, and players decide what they want to do about it, then more things are on the table.  I have actually had a group decide not go into a town because the restriction on weapons and magic struck them as particularly onerous and suspicious (and they weren't even all wrong about it, either). That had consequences of course, since they couldn't use the town services, but they were the ones deciding to make that trade. In fact, this way, a town can even functionally be an enemy.

It helps a lot to have some variety, and for that variety to have a reason the players can learn. This town over here likes us a lot because of that time we cleared out the ogres. So even though they have some rules about arms and magic, they made us honorary citizens.  I've even had players sign on as a temporary militia member.  When you have things like this in the game, they are just another kind of challenge to navigate.  What isn't cool is putting stuff like that in the game as gotchas with no ways to navigate it.

Consider too that non-humans may not follow human norms on what is socially acceptable. For some groups, it may be very unusual or even socially improper to go about unarmed or unarmored.

Quote from: jhkim on May 06, 2025, 01:49:37 PMIn your original post, Kiero, you talk about PCs avoiding a fight when they're unarmored, or possibly getting surprised and having to get their armor on during the fight. What would they be fighting? i.e. What are the sort of encounters that you are thinking might happen in the city?

I'm not the one you're asking obviously, but for my games the combat encounters in a disarmed city would mostly be like the things you could encounter modern life.  Mainly criminals, but also bar fights, (rare) monster incursions, and aggressive locals who do have the right to go armed, like police or nobles.  If weapons are illegal then the ones used would be concealable or improvised, like knives, clubs/staff, spells, and martial arts.  I prefer to keep such encounters rare unless I'm specifically running an urban game, but they do provide a nice change of pace from the dungeon.

Quote from: jhkim on May 06, 2025, 01:49:37 PMIn your original post, Kiero, you talk about PCs avoiding a fight when they're unarmored, or possibly getting surprised and having to get their armor on during the fight. What would they be fighting? i.e. What are the sort of encounters that you are thinking might happen in the city?

Two different scenarios - the "on campaign" version where it's rest time and those resting get unarmoured. Which behooves the party to make sure they have a watch schedule of some people who remain ready whilst others rest. In that case, it could be absolutely anything they could face.

For the "civilised city" version, I would expect them to be fighting (or avoiding) opponents under exactly the same strictures as they are. So unarmoured and possibly even unarmed gangs of toughs, brawls erupting over disputes over politics or in the streets.

Knives might be common, clubs a little less so, but no one else is armoured or toting battlefield weapons around either. Not without some sort of order from the authorities, perhaps, telling the prominent citizens to go home and arm up in response to a specific threat (or perhaps some kind of political maneuverings). The bigger danger to the PCs might be the sheer number of opponents, if an enemy has brought in all their supporters from the countryside, for example.

Quote from: jhkim on May 06, 2025, 01:49:37 PMI've had problems in the past with games where the citizens are inconsistent. If the PCs misbehave, then the citizens all mobilize against the PC invaders. However, if a bandit or monster shows up, then the citizens fail to mobilize and it's up to the PCs to fight it.

If the PCs are treated as dangerous-looking, untrusted strangers and afforded no rank - then I'd expect that the PCs would treat any problems in the city as none of their business. They'd back off and let the citizens handle it if a monster or bandit appeared. In my current cyberpunk campaign, say, the PCs are poor young gangsters of a sort in a Norse-myth cyberpunk city.

In many of my fantasy games, though, the PCs are considered to be of high social rank - so they are treated as valued visiting nobles and/or heroes. In my last D&D campaign, the PCs had a semi-divine patron, so they were treated as having religious authority and people commonly appealed to them (plus one of them was a princess).

Absolutely, consistency should go both ways. If there are conventions in place as to who and how the place is defended, they should cut both ways.

The last D&D game I played in, the PCs weren't "adventurers" at all, they were explicitly the defenders of the community in which they lived.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell on May 06, 2025, 02:21:37 PMThe unwritten assumption here is that if the GM is going to this kind of effort to have a consistent world, then:

- It's consistent across the board, whether that helps or hurts the PCs in any given situation.
- The players have signed on for this kind of game.
- It's strongly implied that the players have a lot of choices in what their characters tangle with.

So yeah, if you want to run an episodic, adventure of the week, with no real purpose other than dealing with that adventure, then it's a dick GM move to deprive the players of their weapons without at least some kind of way around it.  If the players have to go to town because that's the only place the adventure occurs this week, then assassins every time you are unarmed would get old in a hurry.

OTOH, if you are running a world in motions, where things happen, and players decide what they want to do about it, then more things are on the table.  I have actually had a group decide not go into a town because the restriction on weapons and magic struck them as particularly onerous and suspicious (and they weren't even all wrong about it, either). That had consequences of course, since they couldn't use the town services, but they were the ones deciding to make that trade. In fact, this way, a town can even functionally be an enemy.

It helps a lot to have some variety, and for that variety to have a reason the players can learn. This town over here likes us a lot because of that time we cleared out the ogres. So even though they have some rules about arms and magic, they made us honorary citizens.  I've even had players sign on as a temporary militia member.  When you have things like this in the game, they are just another kind of challenge to navigate.  What isn't cool is putting stuff like that in the game as gotchas with no ways to navigate it.

Yes, exactly. The whole point is that it's a setup everyone should be signed up to, and the usual maxim of not playing with dicks applies. I haven't had that particular problem since I left school.

And variety and nuance are the rewards for the "world in motion" (and make the effort worthwhile). Earning citizenship becomes a meaningful prize, in the same way that it's lack can be a challenge.

Quote from: HappyDaze on May 06, 2025, 02:24:22 PMConsider too that non-humans may not follow human norms on what is socially acceptable. For some groups, it may be very unusual or even socially improper to go about unarmed or unarmored.

Yes, though again I'd hope the implications of how that society functions have been considered properly when the PCs come into contact with them.

Quote from: Mishihari on May 06, 2025, 02:27:37 PMI'm not the one you're asking obviously, but for my games the combat encounters in a disarmed city would mostly be like the things you could encounter modern life.  Mainly criminals, but also bar fights, (rare) monster incursions, and aggressive locals who do have the right to go armed, like police or nobles.  If weapons are illegal then the ones used would be concealable or improvised, like knives, clubs/staff, spells, and martial arts.  I prefer to keep such encounters rare unless I'm specifically running an urban game, but they do provide a nice change of pace from the dungeon.

Precisely this.

I should probably say my own bias here is that the groups I played with back in the day got bored with dungeons pretty quickly (here's a richly detailed fantasy world, now spend most of your time in a hole in the ground and only interact with said world to resupply), and preferred overland adventures plus random urban stuff.

I have enforced this kind of restriction on players, but only in a specific context. Namely, in my Dragon Warriors campaign. There are a couple of reasons why it fit there, which are I think illustrative of a sensible approach to the concept. First, I ran that campaign openly and intentionally as a medievalist campaign. My players were there for a more authentic historical fantasy experience. Secondly, and this is a very big one, the Dragon Warriors rules accomodate it. Armor is useful for every class, and it's not their sole means of defense. A knight in that game is still drastically more difficult to hit than a sorcerer, even if he's caught in his pajamas. Magic weapons exist, but they're far less necessary than in D&D, as hit points remain low and attack scores scale more dramatically across the level range.

When using that kind of restriction in that kind of context, the rule I use (which I think represents the "spirit of the law" in most medieval and renaissance examples) is that within a town, a person may not go "armed for war". That means no metal armor or shields, no bows, and no main battlefield weapons (so no poleaxes, greatswords, halberds, pikes, warhammers, etc.) Under the Dragon Warriors rules, it isn't much of an imposition on a knight for him to have to strip down to his gambeson and only carry his arming sword and dagger, especially if his potential opponents will be under the same restrictions.

I might use similar restrictions if I was running other historical games like Maelstrom or Vampire Dark Ages, and they're built into some modern or sci fi games like Call of Cthulhu or Traveller. But I would never impose them on a D&D game. It's too unfair of an imposition on certain classes, and I don't think it matches the setting assumptions implicit in the game rules.

It can be fun to think about how this kind of thing would play out in a standard dungeon-fantasy "D&D world" type setting, though. Disarming the population is a desirable thing for rulers in any environment, but the question is whether they could get away with it.

For one thing, I think the class disparity would manifest in-world. The fighters guild is going to notice that arms control regulation unfairly penalizes them and allows the wizards' guild to laugh in their faces, and they're going to lobby to have those laws changed. Probably successfully, too, since an organized body of armed and trained men is always a potential power base. In general, I tend to think that the setting assumptions of D&D would tend to produce a professional organization for adventurers, and such a group only has to boycott a town to get the laws changed. When the adventurers stop spending money in the local hostelries and nobody is killing the local griffins, the baron is probably going to re-think his battleaxe registration program.

I could see strict arms-control coming about in a D&D world, but only in the most powerful and desireable cities. They'd have to be able to impose some rules on wizards as well, potentially even needing to pay their own casters to spread antimagic fields over the town, and the city would have to be so necessary to adventurers that they can't afford to stay away. So it has to have the best questing opportunities, the best magic item markets, or similar.

On a side note, it is very easy to see how organized adventurers could quickly become a social menace. They're well armed and trained, usually better than the local authorities, and the amount of money you can make as an adventurer prices the authorities out of hiring similarly capable enforcement officers. As mentioned, an adventurers guild could easily hold a city or even a small state to ransom by refusing to take quests in their territory, leaving them to either pay up or accept the depredations of their local monsters. Real world mercenaries often did something similar by refusing to fight on the eve of important battles, until their demands were met. A sufficiently well-organized adventurers' guild might become a "state within a state" and functionally above the law. It's only real threats would be freelancers undercutting the guild prices and trying to avoid paying their union dues. But hey, that could be fun for a campaign.