Thievin' Thieves Stealing The Game

[geneweigel]

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....

[ghul]

Training. That's been my answer to keeping the Thieves' Guild as part of the thief milieu. The thief must come back and report to his guild headquarters or prove his mettle at a foreign city's Guild. In my present campaign, this has involved Greyhawk, Stoink, Dyvers, and Yggsburgh. As part of their training, and as a requirement of level advancement, I might have the senior Guild member assign a "small" task to the player character. This might mean roughing up a gem merchant who's been holding out, or purloining a treasure from a merchant's dwelling. A recent task involved having two player character thieves scope out the Yggsburgh Museum, noting its security and ascertaining the presence of a coveted item, and it's precise whereabouts. These excursions can indeed take time out of regular play, and as DM it is our duty to make them short and sweet, but meaningful, or else the other players will never return from their smoke break. Exploring the depth of thieves and their guilds is something I quite enjoy as DM. During a recent session, a thief found himself on the wrong side of the law, and was arrested, flogged, and put in a cell. A few days later, a turnkey was walking by his cell, making thieves' cant gestures to which the thief responded in kind. The turnkey later helped the thief escape by switching his cell to that which has the secret door and hidden passage in the wall and down to the sewers. Now, however, the thief in question must pay down on his future profits to the turnkey, who is a member in high standing with the guild.

[Scott]

I don't mind the class, but as you have pointed out, the people who are prone to play thieves are usually the most annoying gamer types.

[geneweigel]

Nov 7, 2008 14:35:53 GMT -5 ghul said:

Training. That's been my answer to keeping the Thieves' Guild as part of the thief milieu. The thief must come back and report to his guild headquarters or prove his mettle at a foreign city's Guild. In my present campaign, this has involved Greyhawk, Stoink, Dyvers, and Yggsburgh. As part of their training, and as a requirement of level advancement, I might have the senior Guild member assign a "small" task to the player character. This might mean roughing up a gem merchant who's been holding out, or purloining a treasure from a merchant's dwelling. A recent task involved having two player character thieves scope out the Yggsburgh Museum, noting its security and ascertaining the presence of a coveted item, and it's precise whereabouts. These excursions can indeed take time out of regular play, and as DM it is our duty to make them short and sweet, but meaningful, or else the other players will never return from their smoke break. Exploring the depth of thieves and their guilds is something I quite enjoy as DM. During a recent session, a thief found himself on the wrong side of the law, and was arrested, flogged, and put in a cell. A few days later, a turnkey was walking by his cell, making thieves' cant gestures to which the thief responded in kind. The turnkey later helped the thief escape by switching his cell to that which has the secret door and hidden passage in the wall and down to the sewers. Now, however, the thief in question must pay down on his future profits to the turnkey, who is a member in high standing with the guild.

Yes, thats the kind of background that they desire but its always such a pain in the shoes when the campaign is far flung which is the way i like prefer to play. Kingdoms at war and players going to various hot spots like the opening of a Conan story. You have to make a base of operations that supports magic-users so thats civvy right there. Next its the thief player but whereas a magic-user (or cleric) only needs fair resource from a handful of purveyor denizens (alchemists, apothecaries, etc.) the thief doesn't need anything but they always demand a milieux of intrigue by default. That chafes my sides.

[geneweigel]

Nov 7, 2008 14:49:34 GMT -5 Scott said:

I don't mind the class, but as you have pointed out, the people who are prone to play thieves are usually the most annoying gamer types.

What starts as a simple crime (as they push their thief ability buttons) snowballs into having to recall who is who and what relation and all the dynamics required in the urban setting. All just because of character ability, without the class availability the game takes on a much more sensible tone and urban affairs/intrigue come as they come. When fighters opted to join a thieves guild in D&D day one they did so out of campaign necessity and because it was there. When the thief was introduced it created this "I'm a thief and I want things geared my way too" mentality. Whereas the play of the cleric is sort of internalized with the exception of support they have no need for the spontaneous adventure that the thief slides right into. Even an evil cleric of the foulest seed refrains from breaking and entering at every bend of the corner. But the thief is just so poorly devised for play that they just can't stop by nature.

[GRWelsh]

I just rolled up a halfling thief for a back-up character in Eric's game. Typically this is the sort of character who makes DMs cringe due to constant interruption of the game by picking pockets, cutting purses and wanting to sneak around and do his own thing. Chaotic Annoying. I don't want to play him that way, and I also don't have any interest in getting involved in guilds and urban details. Why can't a thief just be an adventurer?

[Scott]

They can, but for some reason players that play them tend to want to create their own campaign within the campaign.

[geneweigel]

Thats true but they have to go sneakin' at some point!

It depends on the game style, heck, if the game was thievish oriented then when in Rome I'd be making a thief. In my campaign, you're going to be stuck in a rut if you play most classes except a magic-user or fighter as they are lax on alignment (I tend to keep alignment as not always pertinent to those who don't care but most classes depend on it.)and they easily translate to large scale warfare (specifically Chainmail but the ability to get unbiased allies [fighters: followers/levies/mercenaries;magic-users: monsters].) If somebody wants to play anything its fine but I always say that i'd prefer that they choose from "sword' or "sorcery".

[Scott]

I can’t remember any successful thief players in my campaign. I don’t think I’ve even had anybody want to be one in about 10 years. They’re usually henchmen or NPCs.
I’ve played a few over the years. I think they’ve all been multi-class characters. I still have one gnome illusionist/thief character that I haven’t been able to play for years. I prefer playing a monk for the trap finding lock picker type, but they should have similar matters to attend to, just change guild to monastery.

[geneweigel]

I have several guilds in my main city although in the last game, I had to ad-lib the town of Blackthrush thieves guild and the high level thief player threw his weight around so much when the guild sided with the invaders. Infiltrating their command then challenging and slaying the command. It actually was pretty reminiscent of a Conan story the way it came out but while he enjoyed it I was scrambling to make it believable as if it was actually prepared.