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Old 09-05-2019, 01:26 AM   #1
Tywyll
 
Join Date: Nov 2017
Default Joining the Thieves Guild

The rules seem to indicate that if you can locate the thieves guild, you can join it.

I'm not entirely happy with that. I would like the players to have to earn their stripes as it were. There is a character that wants to join the TG to develop their talent set. They've done one mission for the TG so I am allowing them to learn remove traps.

However, they want the TG to provide them with fake documents, the kind of thing that if traced back to the TG would be extremely dangerous. So I figure they ought to do some other work to prove themselves.

What is a good 'quest' they could be forced to do to get in with the TG? It can't rely too much on 'being a thief' as the character(s) don't have that talents for that kind of work (which is part of the whole point). Any suggestions?
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Old 09-05-2019, 09:07 AM   #2
hcobb
 
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Pacheco, California
Default Re: Joining the Thieves Guild

Streetwise gives you a decent chance to contact them and +1 on the reaction roll. And then they're happy to take your money.
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Old 09-05-2019, 09:53 AM   #3
Tywyll
 
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Default Re: Joining the Thieves Guild

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Originally Posted by hcobb View Post
Streetwise gives you a decent chance to contact them and +1 on the reaction roll. And then they're happy to take your money.
To teach you something, sure. But to trust you? That seems...foolish. Doesn't feel believable or narratively satisfactory.
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Old 09-06-2019, 12:49 PM   #4
amenditman
 
Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Florida Peninsula, Earth, Sol Sytem
Default Re: Joining the Thieves Guild

You could have the group perform a difficult task for the TG.

Make a list of about a dozen names and locations of contacts (within the city or in several local towns and villages) and what to pick up.

Each location would be a business 'member' that 'owes' the 'social club' (TG) dues. Some would pay in coin, others in kind (the brewer would pay in barrels of ale for the TG to drink or sell). Each would have a different attitude/willingness towards paying up which could be modified by a reaction roll to the party and the approach they use. Some might not be able to pay in full. One contact might even be a new 'member' who has not been contacted before as part of the test or a plant that is a member of the TG to test them personally.

The players are not allowed to mention the TG or any names associated with it. Also, the TG would be sure to closely watch the group during this activity. The players have to keep the proceeds of this trip secure until complete and handed over en mass (and they are on the hook to the TG for the full amount no matter what).

There might be other groups which would try to steal from the group. The city/town guards would try to stop them, and possibly the TG would send one or more members to steal from or trick them into giving away info they shouldn't.

All kinds of shenanigans are possible.

You should call it the Debt Test, just for fun.
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Old 09-06-2019, 05:06 PM   #5
Skarg
 
Join Date: May 2015
Default Re: Joining the Thieves Guild

I think joining the Theves' Guild is likely to vary from case to case rather than to have a standard answer. The GM should determine it for the situation, and might include roleplaying and specific NPCs and situations.
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Old 09-06-2019, 07:32 PM   #6
hcobb
 
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Location: Pacheco, California
Default Re: Joining the Thieves Guild

Congratulations, you've just joined a thieves guild. The reason why they were so eager to have you join is that the bigger guild in town in wiping them out. Pity you were spotted on the way to the meeting.
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Old 09-06-2019, 08:13 PM   #7
JLV
 
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Location: Arizona
Default Re: Joining the Thieves Guild

I think this is actually a pretty good example of how the social interaction rules are "broken."

Actually that's a completely false characterization of them; the reality is they were never really worked through and set up in a modern sense. You've got to remember that back when the game was first written as an RPG (1981 publishing date) we were much closer to FRPG's roots than we are today, almost 40 years later.

Over the course of that time, we have gotten very much away from the original paradigm of loosy-goosy "guidelines" for the actual roleplaying part, and now, as a community, expect to see much more formalized rules governing the interactions between PCs and NPCs. I'm not saying one is better than the other -- there are advantages to both ways of playing; but the problem is that the entirely free-wheeling "the GM can do whatever he wants" system that was common in play back in 1981 (only six or so years after D&D hit the market, remember) is just not the same accepted standard of play in use today.

Given that Legacy Edition was a lightly edited re-print of the original set of rules, some of the basic underlying premises involved in it when it was originally written are no longer considered "self-evident truths" or even commonly accepted practices, and, as a result, a lot of players are left adrift by the *lack* of hard and fast rules for this stuff. I suspect that if Steve were designing the game from scratch today, the social interaction rules would be much more systematized and organized than they currently are, with much more comprehensive rules for running and resolving them. As support for my case, I present GURPS...
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Old 09-07-2019, 04:28 AM   #8
Chris Rice
 
Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: London Uk, but originally from Scotland
Default Re: Joining the Thieves Guild

Quote:
Originally Posted by JLV View Post
I think this is actually a pretty good example of how the social interaction rules are "broken."

Actually that's a completely false characterization of them; the reality is they were never really worked through and set up in a modern sense. You've got to remember that back when the game was first written as an RPG (1981 publishing date) we were much closer to FRPG's roots than we are today, almost 40 years later.

Over the course of that time, we have gotten very much away from the original paradigm of loosy-goosy "guidelines" for the actual roleplaying part, and now, as a community, expect to see much more formalized rules governing the interactions between PCs and NPCs. I'm not saying one is better than the other -- there are advantages to both ways of playing; but the problem is that the entirely free-wheeling "the GM can do whatever he wants" system that was common in play back in 1981 (only six or so years after D&D hit the market, remember) is just not the same accepted standard of play in use today.

Given that Legacy Edition was a lightly edited re-print of the original set of rules, some of the basic underlying premises involved in it when it was originally written are no longer considered "self-evident truths" or even commonly accepted practices, and, as a result, a lot of players are left adrift by the *lack* of hard and fast rules for this stuff. I suspect that if Steve were designing the game from scratch today, the social interaction rules would be much more systematized and organized than they currently are, with much more comprehensive rules for running and resolving them. As support for my case, I present GURPS...
Thank goodness the game has been only lightly edited then and is more or less as it was. I can't abide modern rule systems that systematise character interactions.
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