Bandit

For the sake of this article a Bandit is aa type of criminal which has removed his/herself from the bulk of society, dwells mainly in the wilderness (or in the seedier parts of a population center) and makes a living engaging by various means of armed robbery (or "banditry"). Since there is strength in numbers, bandits will often gang up, and depending on their infamy and wealth: these numbers can range anywhere from a handful of thieves, to having enough to rival a nation's armed forces. Solo bandits also exist, although they're either highly proficient robbers that they don't need any help (or against the idea of sharing their spoils), or a rookie with more balls than brains.

There are various permutations of this, but the common theme is that if you traveled from town to town there was a good chance that you'd be waylaid by armed people which would try to extract the valuables from your person by force.

History

In general for most of the history of civilization crime was bad. Really Bad. The worst areas of the modern first world pale in comparison to that of the middle ages as far as crime goes. This was a time where most people were dirt poor and for most civilizations there was no form of police that cares about anyone other than the nobility. In the Middle Ages, towns would have guards who'd protect the gates and deal with with riots, laws that required that random townsfolk to patrol the streets at night with torches and chase away suspicious people, bounties were put out for thieves captured and rich people would have guys patrol their neighborhoods to catch anyone who looked suspicious. The countryside did not even have that and there were many nooks and crannies were ner-do-wells could lurk. And since most people lived in the countryside or sparsely populated villages, outlaws were an ever-present danger outside the boundaries of their homes.

The worse off a country was, the more bandits it produced. If your cottage gets burned by a party of knights on a raid and the choice is letting your family starve or stealing some stuff from some passing merchant who never sold anything you could afford, a fair number of people would steal from the merchant. Robin Hood might have been a work of fiction, but men who steal from the rich and give to the poor when taxes were too high are not unprecedented. How much of this is altruism and how much of it was public relations would be something that varies from case to case. After all, if you provide a bit of treasure to people who have little enough to begin with, they're less likely to rat you out to the local knight (who they probably hate anyway for taxing them to hell and back).

Some notable Real Life historical banditry:

• The Qin Dynasty fell in part because the penalty for reporting late (death) as for rebellion (death again), thus neatly creating a bandit and rebellion problem, among other things.
• Seaney Bean, a guy who started a whole family of bandits who decided that they didn't need the gold so much as they just wanted to eat people. And most of the grandchildren were the products of incest. I mean, if you're going to break one law, why not break them all?
• There were many outlaws during the period of the Wild West who get romanticized, like Billy The Kid, Jesse James, and Butch Cassidy.
• There was also an outbreak of Bank Robbery during the 1930s that was later romanticized, with such names as Pretty Boy Floyd, John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, Bonnie and Clyde, and Willie "Falsely Attributed as Saying 'I Rob Banks Because That's Where the Money Is'" Sutton.

Roll in Tabletop Games

Bandits are great upper-low tier villains for a campaign, as they can come from diverse backgrounds with plenty of legroom to work with. They can either be desperate townsfolk mugging passers-by to survive, a couple of assholes who can't be bothered to earn an honest living, to a unit of veteran soldiers who went rogue after realizing banditry is more favorable than serving in the military, or just having no other choice, either due to being on the losing side, or due to winding up on the wrong side of the law for some other reason. Additionally, just about any race with some semblance of sapience can become bandits.

This leads to a variety of quest ideas from: some guys jump the party wanting to loot your stuff, there are some jerks out there robbing people on the highways that the King wants taken care of, to a well-organized crime syndicate who has total control over the region that you have to bring down or play nice with.

Popular bandit archetypes

• Mugger - Lowly miscreants who prey on civilians in a population center for petty valuables. They usually don't put up too much of a fight and will run if they realize there's even a hint of risk they'll get caught (or worse, mobbed by the angry citizenfolk)

• Highwayman - Your stereotypical fantasy bandit. Highwaymen prey on travelers, primarily on unsecured highways (as highways linked to major cities and were established trade routes: a lot of money, rich folk, and trade goods regularly flowed through them). That said, they're fully capable of sticking people up in any other location that suits them, like deep in the woods or in the middle of nowhere.

• Bank robber - One of the most popular in the list. Bank robbers are groups of men who rob banks by: going inside weapons drawn, and forcibly steal the bank's contents using brutal force, then making a quick getaway whilst attempting to evade the law. They're pretty popular in modern settings, getting into intricate planning segments to ensure they get in and out as quick as possible, high-speed vehicles chases, and heated gunfights with the law as they fight tooth and nail to escape with their haul.

• Train robber - Popularized by old American wild west movies. Train robbers basically rob moving trains of any loot they might have, and since trains were the most reliable form of quick transportation between cities in the old west: they normally carried plenty of valuables (and trains were also normally boarded by rich folk wishing to cross the country). Contrary to popular belief, they rarely jumped from their horses to get on trains (as this was incredibly risky, and hard to pull off from a physics standpoint), and would normally board the train like regular passengers, before signaling to the gang to commence the heist. To get off the train: they normally forced the engineer to engage the brakes.

• Raider - Bandits who take a more direct approach. They're much like highwaymen, but they prefer to invade poorly defended areas to pillage their goods and retreat to their hideout before an response force is mustered. Rinse and repeat. They're another one of the common bandit archetypes. Also, through out history but most commonly in Bronze and Dark Ages, raiding was the most common type of warfare conducted, so the difference between state-sanctioned raiding and actual bandit raiding was very often pedantic.

• Slavers - Normally considered the most despicable of all bandits. Bandits don't usually bother with kidnapping, as a ransom is typically too problematic for anyone but a well-connected syndicate to handle, and taking captives brings in a lot more heat than they're willing to handle (and even then, trying to move live cargo around and trying to find a good buyer for them is a feat in it's own right. Its simply a lot more efficient for most groups to hold people up and take their good stuff.). Slavers however, says fuck that, and apart from the usual fighting and looting: they'll take prisoners home to sell on the slave market, with their captives' welfare usually being an afterthought. Slave raiders are terrifying to civilianfolk: while its depressing you can always get material possessions back one way or another. But how're you going to cope with losing friends and family? Once they're sold off, its highly likely you're never going to see your loved ones again, and you'll be tormented to death not knowing if they're still alive or not. Hence, slave raiders typically attract the most attention, either from law enforcement and or local militia, as anyone incharge will want them gone as soon as possible to quell any panic from destabilizing the area (and from a less moral PoV: slavers are taking away your workers and tax payers, how dare they cut into your fortunes and cost you good money to hunt them down?).

See Also

• Pirate - The bandits of the sea.

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