crime? what a rippoff!!

[funkysnunkulator]

every campaign setting seems to have thieves guilds or the equivalent. in your games, to you include them? to what extent? how does your guild involve itself with the world.

in our game, thieves guilds are something like the mob. they expect to be in on whatever goes down in thier territory and they want thier cut.

but they also broker information and influence. lots of it.

in fact, we have several well known criminal organizations.

at one time or another, several of our players characters have been members. makes interesting things happen.

so... your thoughts on crime?

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Crime: I'm for it.

But a good thieves guild does need some work. It has to act as the seemy underbelly of society and this means that both it and society need to be well mapped out. Things to consider:

Who's who and their what are their connections to to the guild? What rackets are the guild into? (slaving? gambling? prostitution? drugs? protection? blackmail?) There may be more than one gang. If so do they have different physical territories or are they involved in different rackets, or are they in all out turf war? How does one join? How do they feel about competition (Aw heck, lets face it, no thieves guild has ever liked competition) and how might this impact on PC thieves?

Working on my next campaign at the moment. There will be a thieves guild and they'll have connections with a powerful local noble who is also the chief cultist of an evil sea god (think Dagon from HPL.) The noble has allies among the Sahuagin that live off the coast. The thieves are basically going to be the introduction for the PC's to the deeper evil threatening the town. The thieves will control smuggling and the docks as well as indulge in white slaving. There'll be drugs as well as other contraband like spell componenets. Arcane magic is illegal in this area and the few wizards who live locally are keen to buy their supplies on the quiet to avoid the Witch Finders. They'll be the people to go to for any sort of slightly dodgy necessity and I'm hoping they'll be able to play a duel role for the PC's.

Funkysnunkulator: How did you get your PC's involved with the guild?

 

[funkysnunkulator]

hahahahaha!!

only one was a member by choice (you could call this a "made man") the rest unwillingly served.

it was actually a means of dm control for runaway power players. essentially, the characters were hired to go adventuring... remove threat recover something yatayatayata.

anyway, it was a setup. fairly blatant one too. but, the players didn't check anything out. walked right into the sharp end, so to speak. anyway, while they are rampaging around a nobles abode, the authorities arrive... wackiness ensues.

while the player/characters were drunk on power (mightiest in the land), they realized the prince controlled everyone in the land so they gave up. while wallowing in prison, the guild pulled some strings (conditionally of course).

gave extra experience for roleplaying because the setup would not have worked without the player character that was the actual member of the guild. hahahahahaha!!! the players were really mad. but only for a while. course then, alignments began to change as they began attempting to subvert the guild (climb the ladder). then they got mad again.

good gaming though. of course, with a game environment like we run, there has got to be a way out. and there is. they just haven't found it yet.

guess it just goes to show... they wouldn't have lasted a day in menzobarranzan!!

hahahahahahahahaha!!!!!

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

IMC, Guilds and Vampire Lords play a large part of the behind the scenes actions. And sometimes they are the same

But, in play the amount of air time depends on the group. Its well known among my regular players that *if they want to*, they can try to hunt down the Vampire Lord in any decently sized city. They can also join/fight the local Guild.

Usually my group avoids both.. partly becuase I read Stephen Brust, run CP2020, and tend to play Thieves. {yes.. Thieves, not them disrespectful wanna-be goody two shoes named 'Rogues'. Thats a name for a pretty X-Men girl..not a bloodthirsty, greedy, backstabbing mercenary }


But.. thats not to say the Guilds are all powerful, and often the larger cities have multiple guilds that can be played off each other. Many of the PCs Thieves IMC are 'made men', which makes hooking the party into adventures much easier.

Gary Gygax's The Canting Crew is a nice reference for building a guild, some good stats that I intend to eventually build into a town+guild generator. If I ever find the time and motivation at my door simultaneously

 

[funkysnunkulator]

well, our dm council decreed that "anything the players could concieve, they could create". our job is to provide a framework in which to do it.

wanna become a god? go for it.
wanna create a new race in your lab? go for it.
wanna take down the hierarchy of baator? go for it.
wanna be the next zorvitaal champion? go for it.
wanna play an unusual or unique monster as a character? go for it.
wanna finance the construction of the next waterdeep? go for it.
wanna summon godzilla to destroy tokyo? go for it.
wanna BE godzilla destroying tokyo? go for it.

of course, there is the small matter of actually accomplishing it. hahahahaha!!

part of the framework is the stuff that happens regardless of the characters. the world lives. it evolves. there are movers and shakers and a lot of them work in secret. so at some point dealing with or being manipulated by these organizations/individuals. it is not routine to use such things as ways of bullying the party into one course of action.

that would be ungaming. that would be a video game (generalized of course).

 

[DrunkonDuty]

SO do your players come to you and say 'next campign I want to play Godzilla and destroy Tokyo' and you set about building a campaign? Or does it happen in game and you modify the game to accomodate?

I certainly try to accomodate players after the game has started. But the basic campaign idea is always one of mine. There IS negotiation about power level, style of campaign and long term goals before the game starts. But I rarely just say 'go for it.' I find it gets too too complicated. I just don't have the time needed to stat up reasonable challenges for Godzilla.

Heck, I don't have the thorough game knowledge needed to present a good challenge for a high level game unless I limit it to the core books only.

 

[Graybeard]

In my game, there is no thieves guild. There are several local gangs that control different parts of the city. One of the main bad guys is trying to join all the gangs together and those that refuse are wiped out. The PCs have had several run ins with them which cooled their expansion plans for a short while.

 

[jdrakeh]

I actually don't use thieves guild very often. Instead, I usually set up high levels of political corruption via elected officials and merchant houses, with individual organizations (gangs, after a fashion) doing the street-level stuff. There are always some independent movers and shakers to flesh things out, of course. One, unified, thieves guild? Not very common in my games, I'm afraid.

 

[Planeswalker Maloran]

I usually have thieves guilds in my world settings, but they seldom come into play. Often, the players never even know they exist. They are simply a facet of the setting, which could be discovered if the players are in the right (or wrong) place at the right (or wrong) time. When a player wants to play a thief (or at least, one more sophisticated than a common pickpocket), the guild comes into play, either as a provider of plot hooks or as a powerful enemy (depending on how willing the player is to cooperate with the guild).

 

[funkysnunkulator]

SO do your players come to you and say 'next campign I want to play Godzilla and destroy Tokyo' and you set about building a campaign? Or does it happen in game and you modify the game to accomodate?

I certainly try to accomodate players after the game has started. But the basic campaign idea is always one of mine. There IS negotiation about power level, style of campaign and long term goals before the game starts. But I rarely just say 'go for it.' I find it gets too too complicated. I just don't have the time needed to stat up reasonable challenges for Godzilla.

Heck, I don't have the thorough game knowledge needed to present a good challenge for a high level game unless I limit it to the core books only.

a little of both actually. we are a dm council of 12 we are paid by the players to develop compelling campaigns/worlds. so we do.

on of the steps we go through is at the beginning of each campaign. we collectively ask:

what can you (the player) not live without seeing/doing/meeting/fighting etc. each player gets one. they might say they want a certain monster, npc, city or whatever. or they might even lay down a plot point or twist. "we wanna be involved in this situation.....

during the campaign, we pay attention to everything (hence the large number of us). we never ever ever tell players "no". they may attempt ANYTHING. we get paid to provide logical and fun consequences and rewards. we have had parties abandon the current mission/campaign/situation and go off on a tangent when they see something interesting along the way. just like someone could do in real life.

thus we are very careful to create campaigns/worlds/situations that are fluid enough for such changes and yet coherent enough to withstand those changes.

and yes. a player did, as godzilla, destroy tokyo...