Actually in the campaign I'm in (which is set in Connecticut, USA) assuming the players are smart and don't have their characters do stupid things, there wouldn't be much difficulty with them having & owning body armor.
Granted, some levels of protection are restricted to law enforcement or military personnel but for low levels of stab, ballistic or blunt force trauma protection, it is completely legal for an ordinary civilian to have. In CT what gets difficult is that such armor can only be purchased in person unless you are LE/Mil, or have it issued by your department (which used to happen to some ambulance crews).
Now some of the lower level protective vests Type IIA, Type II and even a few Type IIIA are specifically designed to be worn in public without being obvious as body armor. Some are compact enough to be worn under normal clothing, other vests are designed and built into things like
jackets:
http://www.bulletproofme.com/Ballistic_Clothing.shtmland windbreakers:
http://www.securityprousa.com/bujaleiiprwi.htmlBecause of that, as long as whatever the character is wearing is weather & climate appropriate, they won't suffer too much grief about it. Even in the novels, Harry ended up commenting a number of times about how he would wear his duster in the summer due to the danger, and suffer the heat effects (hello Aspect...) as well as the occasional odd look from people.
What's important from my POV is that the table agree on how things will run and that they be treated that way in a logical and consistent manner.
Realism is great until it bogs down a game or overcomplicates my fun.
Quite true, though the realism can also add to the fun as well, and sometimes the lack of realism ends up detracting from the game. Case in point, when Sleepy Hollow was run, one of the players had a character that was a Red Court Infected with Inhuman Strength and Inhuman Speed. Now this was the campaign start, and the player wanted to have a sword which his character would carry around with him under his jacket like in the Highlander TV series... When it was pointed out to the player that there isn't a way to effectively conceal something as long as a sword on ones person and that the first cop who say the character was going to spot and search them to find out what that long rigid object they had was... The player's response was that if any NPC tried to take it away from his character would just slaughter them. In this case, the way the player ran their character ended up detracting from the game a little since aside from sociopaths, people don't state that if someone tries to do their job, they'll be killed.
-Cheers
