Post by geneweigel on Nov 7, 2008 13:59:34 GMT -5
Back on thieves again...
Now, we all know that thieves are everywhere and thieves guilds exist in all quasi-medieval things but usage in play as players is something that remains debatable to me.
To me its like playing a dragon. Sure you can do it but why bother? Thats how I see thieves.
You need a mini-milieux to sustain them and its usually of a mundane bent. Certainly not the bread and butter "wonder" of sword and sorcery but something more down to earth and hyper-realistic.
Like I said, we all know that excessively organized crime groups existed in urban terrain through out history and their "pagan" (in the literal "country" sense) counterparts (bandits, etc.) were of a less organized bent because "necessity is the mother of invention". In a world of spells and harrowing delvers the only thing preventing complete wipe out of these urban groups is that they are part of the establishment. They exist so that they keep themselves in check. Thats why fantasy cities don't have modern "police", the guilds are the only force of control.
Now with all that in mind, isn't just a little too busy to have players actually playing these members of a huge urban establishment? People have shown time and time again that they can't handle quasi-medieval urban complexity. A fighter or a magic-user can always get a proxy to deal with urban complexities but the thief lives and breathes it. Without it he doesn't exist. How do you play that with a legitimate air for every city they visit? Every time a character makes a thief and travels from town to town a gigantic sub-milieux/ urban rogues gallery of intrigue has to be created. Otherwise you're playing a superfluous entity who feels like he's losing his game turn. Now thats what I'm talking about. Wouldn't it be much easier to subsume the class as npcs only so that the "block to block" BS of urban life doesn't have to be dealt with? Then you can concentrate on the big picture of inter realm conflict that made S&S gaming what it is? Sure you can say F&GM, GTR, the big C and others were thieves but were they of the kind offered in rpgs? I don't think so, they just happened to have that label and where appropriate they joined a group. Technically, GTR was a literal game figure but that dude broke the mold on day one. What if he was just a player and had no divine lineage? Pretty fucking boring as I've seen time and again with lax refereeing.
There is always a nitpicking bastich player of thieves (you know who you are) who always has to get the lowdown on every damn village to empire on how the thieves stand and local laws. Now if they were just a fighter who was technically in a guild of thieves this wouldn't even come up. BUT NOOOOO....
Now, we all know that thieves are everywhere and thieves guilds exist in all quasi-medieval things but usage in play as players is something that remains debatable to me.
To me its like playing a dragon. Sure you can do it but why bother? Thats how I see thieves.
You need a mini-milieux to sustain them and its usually of a mundane bent. Certainly not the bread and butter "wonder" of sword and sorcery but something more down to earth and hyper-realistic.
Like I said, we all know that excessively organized crime groups existed in urban terrain through out history and their "pagan" (in the literal "country" sense) counterparts (bandits, etc.) were of a less organized bent because "necessity is the mother of invention". In a world of spells and harrowing delvers the only thing preventing complete wipe out of these urban groups is that they are part of the establishment. They exist so that they keep themselves in check. Thats why fantasy cities don't have modern "police", the guilds are the only force of control.
Now with all that in mind, isn't just a little too busy to have players actually playing these members of a huge urban establishment? People have shown time and time again that they can't handle quasi-medieval urban complexity. A fighter or a magic-user can always get a proxy to deal with urban complexities but the thief lives and breathes it. Without it he doesn't exist. How do you play that with a legitimate air for every city they visit? Every time a character makes a thief and travels from town to town a gigantic sub-milieux/ urban rogues gallery of intrigue has to be created. Otherwise you're playing a superfluous entity who feels like he's losing his game turn. Now thats what I'm talking about. Wouldn't it be much easier to subsume the class as npcs only so that the "block to block" BS of urban life doesn't have to be dealt with? Then you can concentrate on the big picture of inter realm conflict that made S&S gaming what it is? Sure you can say F&GM, GTR, the big C and others were thieves but were they of the kind offered in rpgs? I don't think so, they just happened to have that label and where appropriate they joined a group. Technically, GTR was a literal game figure but that dude broke the mold on day one. What if he was just a player and had no divine lineage? Pretty fucking boring as I've seen time and again with lax refereeing.
There is always a nitpicking bastich player of thieves (you know who you are) who always has to get the lowdown on every damn village to empire on how the thieves stand and local laws. Now if they were just a fighter who was technically in a guild of thieves this wouldn't even come up. BUT NOOOOO....