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What's in a theives guild?

So, i have a small write up for my Crystalshore city setting of the local thieves guild

Angelic Shadows is the name of the local thieves guild. It's membership is said to be around 50 or 60 but no one other than it's own members know. The guild runs the red light district for the most part, handing out bribes to the city guard and other members of the justice ministry as needed. They also have a presence in the harbor with smuggling goods in and out of the city. It's also rumored that one of the board members of Merakesh LTD is either on the payroll or even a member of the thieves guild. The guild does have however a set code in which crimes and actives they par take in. Mainly no killing for money, only in self defense, this along with the bribes explains why the Justice department turns a blind eye to the thieves guild.

They also pick pockets cuz you know you gotta pick a pocket or two (cookie to the poster who guesses that reference first ) They have also in the past worked to help rig elections, along iwth providing additional security for Merakesh LTD and the Merakesh Family, They also run or are silent partners in a number of business around the city.

They will on occasion give up a low ranking member to help keep the peace, for the most part however the common folk think they are just hired hugs and run the brothels and the merchants either shrug their shoulders and do the best they can or hope they don't get robbed or have something stolen.
They also have contacts with other groups in other places, mainly just agreements about not working in each others areas that sort of thing.

How ever i think it's week and needs more juice or meat, any suggestions?
 

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Some help may be found here:

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?189098-Everything-Thieves-Guilds-Do

Also:

Thieves' Guilds may:

1) be used by wealthier types to help them do some claim jumping, especially if they suspect something particularly valuable is in the area they're going after- kind of like how thugs were often hired to get ranchers to give rail barons favorable prices on land for the trains to be built.

2) operate certain legitimate businesses nearby better (read: richer) claims. Those might include supply shops (with gear of questionable quality), bars (with watered booze), gambling houses (with crooked dice), and, of course, "recreation centers."

3) have members stake a claim in a strategically located area in order to use as a staging ground for raids on other claims.

4) run protection rackets

5) relocate en-masse to a subterranean claim if its good enough.

6) use the tunnels for smuggling and storage.

7) use the tunnels for spying


Cults & Religions may:

1) revere the Ancients

2) know why the Ancients died out or whatever their fate was

3) protect surviving members of the Ancients

4) try to drive off claimholders (by force) if they are not respectful of the Ancients.


Mercantile Guilds may:


1) operate certain legitimate businesses nearby better (read: richer) claims. Those might include supply shops (with quality but high-priced gear), bars (with watered booze), gambling houses (with crooked dice), and, of course, "recreation centers."

2) try to drive off claimholders (by force) if they don't purchase at least part of their gear from local merchants.

3) hire the party to retrieve certain raw materials from the abandoned underground networks


Adventuring Companies may:

1) be used by wealthier types to help them do some claim jumping, especially if they suspect something particularly valuable is in the area they're going after- kind of like how thugs were often hired to get ranchers to give rail barons favorable prices on land for the trains to be built.

2) have members stake a claim in a strategically located area in order to use as a staging ground for raids on other claims.

3) run protection rackets

4) relocate en-masse to a subterranean claim if its good enough.

5) use the tunnels for smuggling and storage.

6) may use the tunnels for spying on foreign powers.

And
To continue...

Thieves' Guilds may:

8) Forge documents and artifacts in order to raise cash.


Cults & Religions may:


5) Forge documents and artifacts in order to raise cash.


6) Forge documents and artifacts in order to inspire the faithful.

Mercantile Guilds may:


4) Forge documents and artifacts in order to raise cash.


Adventuring Companies may:

7) Forge documents and artifacts in order to raise cash.

*I may have been watching too many true crime shows about forgery lately...*
 
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The 2e Complete Book of Thieves was one of the best books to come out of the 2e era precisely because it answers this question so well.

Picking pockets is just one way to work the streets. A cut purse is a thief that uses a small blade to cut open purses or purse strings. A hooker is a thief that uses a pole with a hook of some sort to pull things through open windows. Professional thieves will often work in teams with one thief providing a distraction, one thief doing the work, and one as a handoff man who specializes in getting the loot out of the area. Often their will be a lookout as well, who often are also professional beggers of some sort. Actual theft will probably be a lower percentage of the guild revenue though than cons. The advantage of a con job over theft is that the victim is usually embarassed rather than angry. Professional beggars such as climesmen (who fake injuries, infections and diseases) make up the lowest rungs of the guild. Other cons run rigged games of dice or cups. More skilled cons use a variaty of complex swindles, usually by luring greedy people into doing something illegal and then pulling some sort of switch at the last moment. When a con can't find a mark, he'll often work as a tout - a guide for visitors to the city. The tout tries to steer visitors to guild owned establishments like brothels, drug dens, gambling halls or fences. He'll also propose to smooth the visit by paying various bribes to officials to avoid taxes (which may or may not be real). Crooked officials may work with the tout. An angry tout who feels that the visitor is being disrepectful may try to steer the visitor into trouble - such a pick pockets or muggers - or trick them into breaking the law.

Big complex jobs call for top story men, who enter houses through upper floors - what we'd now call a cat burgler - and box men that open safes and strong boxes. The guild is also likely to have a forger, who creates false documents and papers for the guild. In edition to fake documents, forging may include fake religious trinkets, fake antiques, fake magical items, fake medicines, and low quality goods made to look like higher quality ones.

One of the most important individuals in the guild is the fence, who buys, legitimizes, and sells stolen property. He will have contacts with crooked merchants in the city and with fences in other guilds. This makes him also critical in the smuggling industry, of which he is likely the defacto head. Hot property will be smuggled out of the city to sell elsewhere, sold to crooked merchants who provide legitimate fronts, or taken to crooked craftsman who will tear the item down for its valuable parts. Many of these won't be a part of the guild, but just business partners. Smugglers may be in the guild, or they may just as likely be independent 'contractors' that work with several guilds. Smuggled goods will be anything that has tarriffs and taxes, which could be something like tea or coffee, stolen goods, and illegal substances like narcotics, poisons, dark magical items, the paraphenial of forbidden gods. In a port city, the fence likely also has contacts with pirates, the captains of which are defacto heads of their own guilds. The fence himself will attempt to have a very honest front.

It's likely that the guild will have in it or be associated with a crooked apothecary for when the guild requires poisons - often for drugging gaurd dogs. In D&D, the guild will also likely contain or be associated with a crooked hedge wizard that provides the guild spells, and one or more clerics of some diety that looks favorably on theft. In D&D, the cleric may well be at least the nominal head of the guild, and responcible for officiating during formal meetings, mediating conflict between or passing judgment on guild members, and training new thieves. In my game, one rather common background for wizards is a 'gutter mage', who learned his arcane arts from a lineage of wizards who practice deception. These are either in guilds, or sometimes - on the theory you never interfere with a wizard - independent contractors who travel between cities plying their trade and helping guilds with enchantments and spells.

New recruits to the guild often enter into the ranks through a kidsman - a person that recruits orphaned or abused children to act as thieves. Older girls are then generally traded to pimps or madams become prostitutes. Likely boys enter the thieves guild. Those of no use might be trafficed as slaves.

Any sizable guild will have a number of enforcers who protect guild interests from rival gangs, criminals whether in or out of the guild that refuse to deal with or try to cheat the guild, and overly zealous good doers. These in D&D will be multiclassed fighter-thieves who are skilled in combat. At times the enforcers will recruit muscle - imporsing brutes sympathetic to the guild but perhaps not actually in it - to help in their enforcement. In your city, these are likely crooked stevedoers and teamsters that help with smuggling. The enforcers also likely run the guilds protection rackets, and act as bouncers in the bars, brothels, and gambling halls. Smart enforcers are also likely to end up running the guild, are they may end up in a tension with other guild leaders like the fences or clerics resulting in a sort of oligarchy rather than single leader. Alternately, leadership of the guild may have become concentrated in the hands of a wealthy or even noble family, so that it is heriditary. In D&D, the leader might possibly be a powerful magical being of some sort.

Gambling operations are important. They'll include not only games of chance, but betting on violent animal contests such as 'ratting' (pitting terriers against bins of hungry rats, you bet on how many rats they'll kill in a certain time), bull baiting (whether a dog can pull a bull to the ground in a certain time), dog fights, cock fights, and pit fighting or boxing between humans. Fighters who work in the pits often also serve as expedient muscle for the guild, as for that matter can particularly vicious dogs and their handlers. Bars and brothels will often be associated with gambling operations and drug dens. They'll often employ entertainers and musicians, serving staff (drunk patrons are good patrons), and cooks or bartenders. Young boys called 'fancy boys' will sing and dance to amuse the guests, help with seving, and sometimes serve as catamites depending on the tastes of the patrons.

As might be somewhat obvious, a guild of say 50 individuals might have many many times that many crooked associates that work with the guild in some capacity or who are dependents of the guild (wives and children, slaves and servants). The guild (or gang) forms much of the aristocracy of the cities criminal element, but they are not the whole of it. The smaller the guild, the more hats each member will have to wear. The larger, the more time that they can devote to a single pursuit. Fifty theives and similar criminals might be running an economy that supports 500 assorted commoners, experts, fighters, and aristocrats and which, through its legitimate fronts, provides considerable tax revenue to a port city (partially offsetting the loses from smuggling and the like). Weary law makers may often give up at beating the guild by enforcing anti-smuggling laws, and instead move the tax and enforcement burden to areas that they can control, unofficially tolerating the guild or even partially legalizing their activities as long as they don't draw attention to themselves or inconvience that law abiding part of the society. If the government is particularly corrupt, the guild might actually gain a reputation of being the more trust worthy and effective portion of society (imagine a LE guild in a CE society), and so otherwise law abiding individuals will turn to the guild for justice, recompence, protection and fixing legal troubles.

It's generally unlikely that the guild will pick trouble with 'slayers' like typical PC party members. They'll also typically avoid being confrontational if caught. It makes a lot more sense to try to patch up relations with powerful figures than to get into showdowns with them. Violence becomes an option only if diplomatic efforts fail and the PC's go after guild members, particularly those not directly connected with the original crime, or if the PC's cause the guild to lose face.
 
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Rite Publishing offers Way of the Yakuza supplement for the Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG). While it is definitely Japanese in theme, the yakuza is an organization of rogues, bards, fighters and tattooist wizards that work in concert to support criminal activities in urban settings. While this book includes much on various class archetypes, traits, feats, tattoo spells, there is an extensive section using the GMG city stat block rules to create a system for custom designing your own crime syndicate - creating a Yakuza Gang, that can be easily adapted to creating any cultural themed criminal organization. Sample gang stat blocks are included, as well as a complete yakuza gang, mapped area of control, NPCs and more. Also various criminal enterprises provide profits to the gang and are influenced by various modifiers that each gang possesses. Criminal enterprises of gangs include: assassination, gambling, narcotics, entertainment industry, extortion, prostitution and smuggling.
 
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what about a legitimate (at least on the surface :D) business. could be a market or a butcher...inside the shop are all sorts of doorways and secret rooms to the thieve's guild proper. proprietor of the business could be a conspirator or even the head of the guild.
 

resources - guilds provided a number
  • you have the hire thugs - need some muscle to back you up or move some crates, pick them up at the guild
  • then you have the watchers - these are people to be your lookouts or follow people while you do other things
  • paper - need a passport or a tax stamp or even a letter of introduction
  • Fixers - they put together the jobs, putting people together to do a job
  • Fences - good have to be moved
 

You can have the guild posing as two different guilds. One robs the rich - burglary, high end cons, fraud and smuggling expensive goods. The other guild runs protection rackets on the poor, brothels, street drugs, etc. That way the rich and powerful turn a blind eye to the street gang because they don't care what happens to the poor and the poor and downtrodden help the Robin Hoods. But everyone knows if a new gang moves into town the "two" guild join forces to crush the interlopers. :D

Then you can give your players an adversary no matter where they position their PCs. Similarly, if they would rather join the guild, you can give them the gamut of adventure possibilities.

PS
 

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