Quintessential Rogue

[Psion]

Thieve's Guilds, Traps, Poisons?

So why should I get this if I already have Traps and Treachery and SOng and Silence?

Maybe because you want a trap that your PC can actually build, not a trap that requires you to have Grimtooth's own engineering team?

The reasons where obvious for Quitessential FIghter...

In what sense? OMCS gave us something we didn't have before. But prestige classes, feats, and a fighting style system that introduces a whole new way to gain abilities? How much "new ground" is that?

I've a very high opinion of what I've bought from Mongoose so far. But you folks make it sound like they're third in line for the same ideas on this one.

Class customization is one feature I'd be keen to if done right... and I know Mike has what it takes. The one thing I miss from 2e was the ability to customize class abilities.

 

[mearls]

Mike,

Can I use the thieves' guild template to create my gladiatorial slave camp? My character is building one right now and has 6 months invested, but the DM and I have been waiting for some decent rules to come out. I want to know how much money and flesh I own!

Hey Wil,

Ya know, I think you could. You'd have to squint a bit and convince yourself that the income your followers generate is based on... urmm... selling people... but you could do it.

- Mearls

 

[mearls]

Thieve's Guilds, Traps, Poisons?

So why should I get this if I already have Traps and Treachery and SOng and Silence?

Poisons: The rules here allow you to make your own custom poisons. And when I say "you" I mean "your character", as in a character with a very good Alchemy skill can now figure out how to make a poison designed to paralyze drow.

Traps: As Psion pointed out, the traps are simple, tripwire style things that your character can build in an hour. Think of the final battle scene amongst the ruins in CONAN THE BARBARIAN. All the traps they built are possible with this system. This system is designed to allow your to use Craft (trapmaking) to build pit traps, crossbow traps, and other simple mechanisms that take only a couple hours of your character's time.

Thieves' Guilds: This is the biggie. The system is rather big, semi-complex, and requires a fair bit of bookkeeping. It's designed to allow a PC rogue to become a guildmaster and run his own guild. You can do things like:

* Wage a gang war against a rival guild and figure out who wins.
* Figure out if an underling gets too ambitious and tries to overthrow you.
* Send agents to a neighboring city and establish a "branch" of your guild there.
* Compute income from your guild based on your policies and orders, which also have an effect on the loyalty of your thieves.
* Figure out if rival guilds form to take you down. Get too greedy and the other thieves in the city may band together against you.

Each month, you take the roster of your guild and assign everyone to different jobs, such as protecting your holdings, launching raids and assassinations against rivals, and working the streets via robberies and other schemes. You can easily slip the entire guild on to autopilot and allow it to simply generate income for you, or you can micromanage your thieves and send them out on different missions. Abstract systems resolve guild activity with a die roll or two.

The thieves' guild system is almost a game unto itself, so much so that we might do a complete downloadable mini-game on the Mongoose site that allows each player to control a criminal cartel and duke it out with their rivals. The system would need some mods to handle that, but the foundation is there.

I know about Song and Silence and Traps and Treachery. QR was designed to address what I saw as gaps in those books.

- Mearls

 

[mearls]

I see three potential problems here:

1. GURPS is infamous for it's ability to be abused.
2. This sounds like a different system than that in Quintessential Fighter. Which makes me worry that the Sollector Series will not have much of a line unity to it.
3. The restriction you've set sounds like it could cause problems in customizability.

Are my concerns unfounded?

The character concepts in QR are a bit different than those in QF. As I think I mentioned elsewhere, the concepts are essentially new character classes, each a variation on the core rogue.

You can't make *any* character with the system, but you can make a new type of rogue. After all, that's why we have other classes. The system works best if you want to modify your class skill list or grant yourself competence bonuses with a few skills. You can only go so far from the core rogue. For instance, you can't purchase a better BAB progression or change your saves. I considered those to be parts of the core rogue class concept and do not think they should be open for customization, outside of a complete system for building any type of character from the ground up.

Keep in mind, this system will be available at the website. It doesn't actually appear in the book.

As a designer, I think points 1 and 3 you make go hand in hand. The more ground and open chargen system tries to cover, the greater potential for abuse it holds. I'd rather have a closed system that produces robust results than an open system that relies on the people to play nice for it to work.

- Mearls

 

[drnuncheon]

* Wage a gang war against a rival guild and figure out who wins.
* Figure out if an underling gets too ambitious and tries to overthrow you.
* Send agents to a neighboring city and establish a "branch" of your guild there.
* Compute income from your guild based on your policies and orders, which also have an effect on the loyalty of your thieves.
* Figure out if rival guilds form to take you down. Get too greedy and the other thieves in the city may band together against you.

Gnahhhghh...

This is exactly what I need. My Freeport game (see SH plug in .sig) is going to feature a mob war in upcoming sessions. Hopefully QRogue will be in my FLGS before then!

J

 

[d20Dwarf]

Hey Wil,

Ya know, I think you could. You'd have to squint a bit and convince yourself that the income your followers generate is based on... urmm... selling people... but you could do it.

- Mearls

I don't sell people! Just because they are slaves doesn't mean I sell them.

Actually, my character is an ex-slave, so what he does is allow people to fight their way to freedom, rather than being in the pits forever. Sure, I turn a little profit before I let them go, but then I ask them to stay on as permanent employees. My eventual goal is disrupt the Zhentarim slave trade along the Vilhon Reach.

I wonder why those Skymages have been trailing our party the last few weeks?

 

[Shard O'Glase]

I had mixed opinions about the quint. fighter, so I'm not that motivated to pick this up. I thought quint. fighter had mediocre prestige classes, pretty good feats, I like the kit like things in the begining, and the concept of fighting styles. The fighting styles conceptually I may have liked, but the actual styles themselves I wasn't impressed with.(and I'm not sure they should be added as is without some feat costs or somehting)

Also I'm not sure if I'd call this a moral objection but, I don't need scantily clad and bare chested women, especially when they are supposed to represent fighters, and armor kinda comes in handy for fighters. And also the balckfeather story I really didn't need. Yeah sure the description on the blackfeather says something about not all of them being criminals, but then the story featuring the blackfeather as the protaganist makes him a murdering rapist, call me picky but rapists as protaganists crosses the line for me.

 

[Wulf Ratbane]

...Call me picky but rapists as protaganists crosses the line for me.

Aww... and the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant are so GOOD, too.

At least you didn't have a problem with the murdering part. You'd miss a lot of good Elric that way.

Wulf

 

[Shard O'Glase]

One I stopped reading thomas covenant because of the rapist part. I wont purchase things that put rapists in a decent, sympathetic light.

Two I have a problem with the murders, but I can accept it more in an RPG character(especially in a game where a large component is killing things for loot) The difference is I wont play with people who have their characters rape, and I generally don't want to play in evil campaigns where murder is accepted, but considering the game concept I find it at least a little less objectionable.

And this is probably the deciding factor for why I wont pick up other products made by the same company. Everyone else feel free to buy their stuff. And it doesn't bother me if other people have no objections with this type of behavior roleplayed. Me I have a problem with it so I object with my pocket book and wont purchase future products from them.

 

[Isida KepTukari]

Well, how about this. The Quentessential Rogue seems to be available on your webiste... how long until it reaches the general public?