A PC starting a Thieves' Guild? Is this possible?

UltimaGabe

First Post
A new, less-experienced player in our group has his heart set on starting a Thieves's guild. Every time he meets someone in the game, he tells them he's gonna start a thieves' guild and asks them if they want to join. My question is this... how exactly might he go about starting one?

First off, he's around 12th level at the moment, and he's got levels of Rogue, Ninja (Dragon Magazine), Guild Thief, and Dungeon Delver (and he wants to give up some of his levels to make himself a Shade. And this is his first character he's ever made. Uber cheese, I know). He doesn't have any sort of property, his character is mostly a wanderer, and he really doesn't have anything going for him in ways of getting people to pay him money and do anything for him. I want to be able to just shoot him down and tell him that there's no way that he's going to be able to start a Thieves' Guild by himself (especially as an adventuring PC), but beofre I do that I need to know exactly what one would have to do to start a Thieves' Guild so I have some concrete evidence as to why I'm shooting him down.

Any suggestions? Anyone know exactly what you would have to do/who you'd have to be/how much money and time you'd have to spend to do so?

Any help would be most appreciated.
 

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Have him take the Leadership feat, and his followers and cohort represent the core memebership of his guild (while it's small, most or allof the folks in it shoudl be pretty loyal tohim; if he's charismatic enough to have a LOT of followers, then it's fair to say he's enough of a leader to keep that level of personal loyalty up even with a not-so-small Guild.

Eventually, though, if he's in a big enough area (and he'd BETTER be, if he's got more than a dozen followers), he'll have guild members who are not also his FOLLOWERS. Some of whom may come to rival him directly in terms of power, and sway over the membership (read: their own followers). Which means you can, as a GM - at your discretion - introduce a power struggle to take the guild away from him (maybe it succeeds, maybe it fails, maybe the guild falls apart and becomes a half-dozen or more smaller, warring guilds all fighting over the same turf).

Regardless, just taking LEadership should give him the MEMBERS.

As for OTHER considerations - the members would come with standard NPC gear for their level, which means, most of them won't be able to afford much, if anything, in the way of equipment.

Certainly not a place to eat, sleep, train, etc.

For that side of things, I suggest you or s/he go out and buy the Stronghold Builder's Guide. The thief player can sink their own money into building a stronghold (read: Guildhall). Or, he can take the feat "Landlord", from the SHBG, which provides seed money (by character level) and "matching funds", towards the construction nd equippage of a stronghold.

The new guildmaster will obviously want to build somethign concealed, so all the tricks for keepign secrets secret will come into play, and certain sorts of construction won't even be possible (so, probably no floating citadels hovering over the city, neon signs that read "OFFICIAL THIEVE'S GUILD. NO ENTRY EXCEPT BY APPOINTMENT!" ... unless your game is set in/on Discworld, heh).

The SHBG actually LISTS a training area for Rogues as one of the sorts of rooms you can set up, btw. ^_^ So your budding Godfather can even set up a thieve's academy of sorts, training youngsters in the fine art of "active wealth redistribution". ^_^

Me, I'd le the Guild set up small "strongholds" at various locations around the city. A safehouse HERE, a Tavern with a secret room or two, the backroom of a warehouse over THERE, and so on. It might be easiest to just state a GP value for the Guild's citywide "holdings", and leave it at that.

MEanwhile, as for how much money is made ... count each criminal activity as one "income source" by the SHBG rules - possibly by neighborhood for somethings, possibly city-wide for others (whichever makes sense for a given activity; information brokering woudl be IMO city-wide, but pickpocketing woudl be per neighborhood and per market place of significant size - e.g., pickpocketing operations in each of the Grand Market (better economic area), the Tavern-and-Brothel District, and the Low Market (lower economic area) might each be a seperate income source. Managing prostitution would primarily be centered in that same Tavern-and-Brothel district, but the rest of the city might be able to support enough "incidental" prostitution to count as a second income source. Outright cat-burglar robberies wold probably be based on operations in both the Middle and Upper class districts (meaning, two income sources, since that sort of activity has to be kept infrequent and/or small enough not to draw too much attention on the Guild).

There're also protection rackets (by each business district and maybe each market), general smuggling (city-wide), an illegal slave-trade (one per city), possibly a narcotics trade (one per economic strata, I'd say - what the poor will buy for drugs, and what the rich will buy, are often fairly different), and so on.

Of course, in any city of significant size, most or all of the available sources of income may already be staked out - so the new Guild will either have to start by going to war to SIEZE one or more of those sources, or, they'll have to get creative and think of something NEW.

I'd figure that represents the dues / tithes / larceny liscenses / "please don't hurt me (again)" money / etc, paid by the lesser thieves to the Guild proper.

The trick is, that money goes first to MAINTAINING the Guild. LEgal fees (if the locals bother with trials), graft and bribes, patching the roof of that tavern withthe secret rooms, and so on ... that all costs money. And then there's the simple concept of expanding the guild. MAYBE even into entirely new cities! (why stop at just ONE, eh? ^_^)

Little or nothing should truly "trickle upward" into the PC's pockets. However, they have (in return for their investment of two feats and a LOT of real-life time and effort) a possibly huge array of resources. Any thiefly equipment or possibly-purchasable item (legal or illegal alike), the character should be able to get their hands on it in relatively short order - and may or may not have to PAY for it (hey, he IS a THIEF, after all). Anything they can't get directly, well ... if it's in the Guild's controlled/influenced area at all, they should be able to figure out WHERE it is. The should also have access to a wide range of skilled underlings, and even skilled craftsmen, through their contacts within the Guild.
 


He walks around and *asks* people to join? All the time? What's he going to do? Found the First Official Thieves Guild of Marsember, Registered Association?

ROFL! :lol:

Unless you play in the discworld, this behaviour will get him some bars before the head, or a hemp loop around the neck, sooner or later. These guilds are usually supposed to be *secret*

About how to create a guild:
First, he needs some funds: he has to get some buildings - a guild home several stronghouses, boltholes, some equipment would be nice, too.
Then, he needs contacts: Some officials that provide him with information and warn him, this could be done with bribes
Also, he needs charisma: you can lead a horde of raving wild maniacs with sheer force, but for rogues, you need more.
In addition, he needs information: How to do all the things you have to do to make your guild a success, who you can trust, who is bribable, who is reliable.
And he needs luck - for if there are rival guilds, and they think they don't want any competition, they might decide to nip it in the bud....
 

The main thing an effective guild needs is Contacts since unlike a gang of thugs a Guild is part of the Black Market and needs contacts and favours in order to participate in the market, earn cash and stay in business

Oliver Twist imho offers a wonderful example of a Thieves guild and how PCs are going to get into it.

The PC basically takes the position of Fagan a small time crook who runs a gang of juvenile pickpockets (commoners mainly, maybe a few experts and if lucky a rogue (ie The Artful Dodger))

Fagans boys are at the lowest rung of a criminal hierarchy, with Fagan overseen by a gang thug (Bill Sykes). When Fagans boys steal gold, Fagan has to pay a share over to Bill, if the steal property he needs contacts to fence it off.

Extrpolating we can assume that Bills Gang holds a territory which it defends from other gangs and along with its own extortion, prostitution, drug trafficking and repossesion operations also does odd-jobs for the 'Guild' (ie the Black Market and the decentralised association of powerbrokers that run it)

Ergo
1. The PC guild wannabe is a low level crook who needs to curry favour from the established gangs and the higher ups
2. The Higher ups will demand protection money and service from the PCs guild
3. It takes diplomacy, time and effort to rise through the hierrachy (which wont happen if your adventuring)
4. Reputation carries a sting
5.The law can get nasty
6. The Guild can get nasty (you don't want a contract on your head!)
7. Rival gangs can get nasty
8. Your own gang can get nasty
9. Sometimes the 'victims' of crime get nasty too
 
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Instead of having the player do all this on his own, why don't you have an NPC approach the character about forming a guild together. That way the NPC can handle all the nitty-gritty details while the player does the glamourous stuff (i.e. assassinating rivals, gathering treasure to use as funds, defending the guild against attacks, etc.).

Better yet, why not get the whole party involved so they won't be against the player taking up "communal" time for personal activities. Plus, the different classes in the party can all contribute their strengths to the endeavour.
 

Ogrork the Mighty said:
Instead of having the player do all this on his own, why don't you have an NPC approach the character about forming a guild together. That way the NPC can handle all the nitty-gritty details while the player does the glamourous stuff (i.e. assassinating rivals, gathering treasure to use as funds, defending the guild against attacks, etc.).
This can be the ideal setup for a Cohort, by the way. The Cohort approaches the PC (before BECOMING the PC's cohort, of course) with that very proposition. The NPC gets to be the "silent partner", nominallyhappy to take a back seat to the PC.
 

Two possibilities

1) Have representatives of the current thieves guild approach the character about his efforts to muscle into their territory.

2) Have someone enthusiastically offer to assist him, and even put up some cash. Just needs to PC to gather others of a like mind for a big meeting to plan things. Of course, once the meeting is convened the local constabulary appears in overwhelming force and the PCs "friend" is revealed to be their leader, who decided to use the PC as the target of a Sting operation to weed out the local unregulated thieves.

Just a few ideas to help pound into this persons head that a thieves guild has to be created and run with a certain amount of discretion.
 

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