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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 9048708" data-attributes="member: 27780">Polyhedron Issue 141: April 2000part 4/5Watching the Streets: Where there are thieves, there will eventually be law enforcement. Raven's Bluff has let PC's join the watch for quite some time, but with the introduction of downtime rules they've decided to reiterate and tighten them up in general. Each rank has an OOC minimum level for you to qualify, and uses up an increasing number of your time units, from 20 as a Private, to 65 as a special forces Captain, which leaves you a mere 8 for adventuring or anything else. There are a decent number of benefits as well though. You gain a +2 to local history rolls about your regular patrol area, plus an increasing number of bonus nonweapon proficiencies as you climb the ranks, plus another one if you join one of the special forces, room & board plus pay going from 5-150gp per month, which won't get you much at the magic trading interactives but at least means you'll never want for mundane gear. Plus being able to officially arrest miscreants during adventures of course, with the ability to send out an increasing number of warrants per month against less obvious suspects. Let's hope this encourages you to arrest enemies during adventures instead of killing them and not to engage in too much police brutality. (which will probably get you drummed out much quicker than in the real world because they actually take their no evil PC's rule seriously here) Now you just need to resubmit your character with proof of previous membership to make sure they're on the new database. More evidence that they're not planning on ending the Living City any time soon, increasing the number of ways players can get official positions and feel integrated into the setting. Living Greyhawk will have to work hard to catch up with that, particularly since it's spread over a much larger area. The Silent Network: With all this emphasis on PC's becoming law enforcement, or at least acting like upstanding citizens who go along with them to solve problems, plus the bureaucratic hassle of certificates preventing you from stealing random stuff from neutral NPC's in adventures there's not much room for thieves to really be thieves. But at least you can be spies, gathering information and using it to perform secret missions for the good of the city. It doesn't catch you up with all the different knightly orders or posts for cleric & wizard specialties, but they are finally giving us a rogue-centric secret order for PC's to join. Of course, since it's a secret order, they aren't just going to tell you straight-up how to join, what the mechanical requirements and benefits are. You've got to talk to the right NPC's in upcoming adventures or interactives and make a good impression, then maybe they'll extend a hand and induct you into a cell. Still, at least you know they exist now, right? That's a start. This seems deliberately written to be intriguing but also somewhat frustrating. Will that motivate people to make the effort and seek them out? Did any of you manage to join this and if so what was your experience? Were there any adventures where being a member had any significance?The Living City complications continue with a short sidebar reminding you that if you gained any permanent stat boosts in the course of your adventures, you need to register them before Gen Con as well if you want your characters to keep them after the 3e conversion. You snooze, you lose. That's almost guaranteed to result in a few complaints from people who aren't reading everything carefully.</blockquote>

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