Need help with a Thieves Guild

OK, I need some help on this; I'm working on my game for tomorrow, which is set around an archipelago that holds a large number of ruins and dungeons from an ancient civilization. Right now, I'm working on the main city that the adventurers(the archipelago, called the Isles of Adventure, attract a large number of adventurers and explorers, hence the name) stay in, which is like Port Royal; it tries to be the London of it's tropical area(although it's not a colony, it's a free city).

Now, I'm currently working on the Thieves Guild for this city, and I need some help. What business would a Thieves Guild be involved in? I need some specifics, as I'm not enlightened about this; I'd assume begging, information trade, burglary, muggings, and probably an underworld fighting arena, but what else? Also, what goods do you think they'd have smuggled in, considering that it's a fairly Caribbean area(and a mixture of sword and sorcery and steamtech)?

Any help is appreciated.

For tomorrow, just stick with what you've got, the bare bones. Later, pick up some of the great resorces out there. Some you may want to borrow rather than buy, but from oldest to newest, I can point you to a few resources. Arduin, Gygax's Canting Crew and Kenzer's GriftMaster's Guide are all nifty. I think Gary's book would be the most useful in building a guild from the ground up. Also, read the antho;ogy, Thieve's World, edited by Robert Lynn Asprin. Great stuff and fun reading! Finally, my last tour around the ENWorld store showed lots of titles for source material dealing with the seedier elements in a fantasy world, including stuff dealing stricly with thieves and their world. I have no idea as to the quality of any of that material. However, it's virtually 100% d20, which you'll not get with the sources I'm familiar with. Good luck.

In general, a thieves' guild is like a business conglomerate that does not care about the legal restrictions on what it does. Making something illegal immediately means that some people will pay huge amounts of money for it, whether "it" is a substance (drugs), service (prostitution), activity (gambling, arena fights), resource (money), "forbidden goods" (slave trade), etc.

Once someone no longers cares that the income is made legally, you can pretty much open yourself to anything. So, the first thing you must decide is what is legal and what is illegal in this port city. Legitimate businesses will stick to making / selling / performing legal goods and services. The thieves guild will operate on two parallel tracks: forcing as much money as they can from the legitimate businesses, and making as much as they can from as many of the illegal ones as they can find a market for.

Lets say you have legitimate money lenders. The Thieves Guild might want to get involved in loan-shark type activities, but you need to know what recourse the legitimate money lenders have. If the legal lenders can make you a debt-slave for failure to pay, there is not as much room for the loan sharks to operate. Loan sharks are generally people you go to when the legitimate lenders can't or won't help you and you feel desperate. If the legitimate lenders have a wide range of options to force repayment, there is less of a market for the loan sharks.

If the city has few laws, the theives' guild may well not exist. Every business may be its own small thieves' guild, in competition with the others. Or the city may be divided into sections, each controlled by a small guild. In the case, the violent side of the business may be mostly turf battles over a market stall or the like.

Hmm; well, if you were a free state catering to adventurers in need of food, supplies, rest, and a place to trade and blow their spoils from raiding the ruins of an ancient civilization, would you have a lot of laws?

I'm not great at this, I'll admit. I can't figure out whether or not they'd have a lot of laws or not.

My conception of a thieves' guild hinges around a "job board." Bounty hunting, burglary, armed robbery, confidence games, pick-pocketing in a particular neighborhood, etc..

Clients who pay protection money are off-limits. Businesses which refuse to pay the guild for protection may be specially high-lighted.

Thieves may be assigned jobs by superiors within the guild; this may be a punishment or a reward, depending on how risky and lucrative the job is. Or it could be just the way that junior thieves pay their dues. Most jobs collect bids- generally a percentage of whatever the job will earn.

Someone looking for work could post a notice to that effect. Someone who finds an opportunity they can't use can post it, and get a portion of the eventual pay-off (e.g. "I have a contact in a noble's manor who can leave a door unlocked- contact Stinky McGee for info." or "'Have a market district job?'- Vard the Knife has the best look-outs and neighborhood informers.")

If a team of specialists is needed, the board is a good way of getting them organized. Items for sale, important contacts- it is a clearing house for information. And a reasonably efficient way of dividing up the work in a city.

Wow, that's a seriously great idea! I might use the "job board" idea for the various "Adventure Halls" within the city as well(basically Adventurers Guilds, they've split along various lines, what with the city hosting a large population of adventurers, it makes sense not everyone would get along).

The easy way to do it is to think of a thieve's guild in a manner similar to the mafia. Whereas the mafia is a family thing (usually) a thieve's guild does not have this stipulation (again, usually).

The big thing to remember is that the Mafia has legitimate and illegitamate ventures. Sure there are "protection" rings, and rigging of boxing matches (classics lifted from movies), but there are also things like sanitation (ESPECIALLY garbage collection, which was a big Mafia thing in the 80s). The reason for the legitimate businesses is as fronts for laundering money and places to put up as saying "that's how I afford the giant house", among other things.

As such, the thieve's guild can literally have its hands in everything present in the city. They could even have expanded and function in a number of different cities (I like this one, it tends to make players worry about ticking off people more ).

So yeah, I hope that answers your question. Oh yeah, loan sharking is a good place to put a thieve's guild as well, tends to get a fair bit of money, and assuming you don't have a banking system, only the nobles would have access to rich people for loans, so the guild becomes the only game in town for the majority of people.

Sometimes I think about this stuff a little too well.

EDIT: Sorry, forgot to mention the big one. Training new thieve's and trafficing in illiciate items. If your campaign has it, these guys should replace Alchemists as the place to pick up poison and narcotics.

Those're some great suggestions SylverFlame.

I know I asked this before, but what laws would you have if you ran a city(city, not town; I'm modelling it on Victorian London, with a more wild side; when you've got a large population of men and women who can lose their lives every time they step out to go to work, they tend to be rowdy and live life to the fullest) that catered to a large population of adventurers?

Definitely a "no weapons" policy

All adventures must report to the guards' office for a Visitors Licence (has a limit before it must be renewed)

(If you're using narcotics) No illegal narcotics (make a list, have some legal some not, just like tobacco and *insert illegal narcotic*)

Many older towns had the "banned persons list", might be fun if your PC's have gotten names for themselves (fun for you, and the player who has to sneak into the town, ah look, a hook for the guild)

Also, as an aside, be sure to show them the pillaries and such. Nothing like reinforcing how crime is punished. You could even have an execution at the time of their arrival. Good luck.

blackshirt5 said:

Those're some great suggestions SylverFlame.

I know I asked this before, but what laws would you have if you ran a city(city, not town; I'm modelling it on Victorian London, with a more wild side; when you've got a large population of men and women who can lose their lives every time they step out to go to work, they tend to be rowdy and live life to the fullest) that catered to a large population of adventurers?

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I think your sources are in conflict. London may not be the best model for what you want, but it also depends on how you are using it as a basis.

From the sound of things, it would be more like Tortuga, the infamous pirate port in the Carribbean. As you describe its role in the region, I would expect few laws. The government would be a loose alliance of multiple "thieves' guild" type groups (probably). Almost NOTHING would be illegal; but MANY things would require payment of fines of some sort. Adventurers would be welcome to kill each other over petty rivalries, and no resident of the City would care much. However, kill a permanent resident (and thus deprive the City of the income from that resident's services), and you likely face a big "fine", payable to whichever faction of the government s/he was alligned with.

All that being said, you could also argue that a functional City would not be possible without a more stable government than that. In that case, there might be a group of mages or priests with another agenda behind the scenes. They write enough laws to keep the city working, and "persuade" the factions to enforce them. In that case, adventurers might still be free to kill each other with impunity, but killing a citizen/resident might earn the death penalty, and NO amount of bribes can get you off -- because the REAL power wants the citizens alive, and will cheerfully execute all members of the faction (i.e., Thieves' Guild) who lets someone off the hook.

Successful cities require good planning (ever play SimCity ?); the Romans were very good at this. David MacCaulay's book "City" is a nice short, educational read on the planning of a typical Roman city. A group of feuding factions is unlikely to be able to maintain and promote the growth of a city, but it is a fantasy world and you can get away with more.