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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jack7" data-source="post: 4641148" data-attributes="member: 54707">You mean like a Conan RPG?No, seriously, that's what thieves in the game used to be. Or at least the background of most of them.This is my opinion and experience. I never played in such a game, per se, where everyone was a thief or cut-throat, but because of my personal background I often included places like this in my games, when I was the milieu designer and DM. Not whole cities but at least whole districts given over to criminal activity. Sex slavery, kidnapping rings, hostage taking, fencing rings, burglary networks, murder for hire, smuggling of various kinds, gang and merchant warfare, caravan interception and ambush, extortion, political corruption, spies and insurrectionists, protection rackets, tactical terrorism, and so forth and so on.To tell you the truth, when it came to urban adventures, these were often the absolute most dangerous areas a party or person could enter. As, if not more dangerous, than most dungeons. Several times characters fell victim to theft, hostage taking, gang warfare, assassination. They were extremely fun for me to DM, extremely violent and dangerous places for the characters to visit, but not always in the way that seemed most apparent. And you're right, real criminals don't draw attention to themselves unless they feel absolutely secure about their behavior and the circumstances. Even in bad neighborhoods old habits are hard to break. It's a lot easier to slit throats and bury bodies than brag to the wrong fella while drunk and try to explain later hung from a meat-hook why you killed the made-man's nephew. My players had a saying about one area in one city in particular. "Let's get the hell outta Jehiecal!" They didn't like going there. They knew what it meant. And they were pretty tough in a standing fight. Course around professional killers and thieves you don't get standing up fights. Not from somebody who knows that they are doing anyway. You get stabbed in your sleep.All I can really say is that if such places are done right then they operate pretty much like they do in real life, it's a fascinating kind of hell-hole to visit, or to work a case in, but you really wouldn't wanna live there for very long. And most don't.</blockquote>

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