I am a Thief, A Thieves' Guild Review Part III

In the last post I talked about the rules and now we get to what is the heart of the book, the scenarios.  


First off they explain the stat block. Yes Thieves Guild has stat blocks however they are formated to fit on one line. While a bit dense they look straight forward to read and use.

Next are three chapters of Scenarios;

Bandits and Highway Adventures
Cat Burglaries and Second Story Adventures
Armed Robbery and Pursuit Adventures.

Bandits and Highway Adventures
The initial part of the chapter explains that the players should pick a time of day and terrain in which to do their activities. The choices for time is Daylight or Night. For terrain the players can pick Clear, Woods, or Mountains. From this the referee rolls to see what is encounters. The possibilities include Farmers, Merchants, Travelers, or Warriors. The initial part concludes with a reminder that there should be the occasional encounter with the local wildlife (i.e. monsters) and that spending too much time in one area means the encounters will get tougher as guards are hired and patrols increased.

For Farmers we get a series of short tables to roll up a group of farmers. While farmer do not carry much in the way of luxury good they do have food and livestock that are useful for subsistence. Sometime the players will lucky and the farmer is heading into town to buy something and has gold.

Merchants are pre-canned encounters. The listed encounters include,
 Textile Merchant,
Master Tanner,
Silversmith and Family,
Spice Merchant,
Fur Trappers,
Drogann the Weaponsmaker,
The Coppersmith,
The Jewel Speculator (toughest and most lucrative),.

Next we get into Highway Adventures and Travellers. Another set of pre-canned encounter we have

The Escaped Prisioners
The Travelling Players (a theater group). 
The Pilgrims (wow the players are being rat bastard for these guys)
The Beggars (now we are getting low)
The Royal Herald
Jarok (dumb tough fighter with little wealth)
Animal Trainer
The Household of Lady Feanori (she is a wizard and spells are given to use in the encounter)

Last are Warrior encounters. Again pre-canned encounter that include

The Company of Fanagar the Reckless
The Company of Kulloden
Grulak's Band (Uruk-hai on the march!)
The Militia on Manuevers

On nice thing about the pre-canned encounters is that they well organized with an initial description of what the players see, a GM section, and the last section (and most important) what stuff they have.


Cat Burglaries and Second Story Adventures

These scenarios take place in the City of Haven and we learn bits and pieces of the city we read the different scenarios. Also the scenarios are also more detailed than the Bandit/Highway Adventures.

The first one is Heligor's. Heligor's is a jewelry shop on the Street of Silk Veils. The scenario is more than just about the shop itself but spend a lot of time describing the street and the people living in the area.This is important because in order to pull off the job, the players have to case the player and learn the best ways of getting in and out. To do that they need to interact with those that live nearby.

Next is Magic Books & Scrolls, It lies also in Haven on Magic Street. Like Heligors it describes the surrounding area. Again the players are expected to case the place and interact with the inhabitants to find out all they can. A complication is that Magic Street is well patrolled by the Constabulary.

 Armed Robbery and Pursuit Adventures.

 Next we get into Armed Robery and Pursuit Adventures. There only one scenario called Waylaying the Couriers. But it goes into extensive details on their stops and random encounters on the streets of Haven.

Section III

Thieves Guild I wraps up the book with a series of encounter maps with some of them keyed with interesting features. A map of the Street of Silk Veils, another map of Magic Street, A map of the courier route and building maps.

Finally there are some appendix, one dealing with character conversion from Chivalry and Sorcery, Runequest, ADnD, and Tunnels and Trolls. Then there is several pages of reference charts. A character sheet, and a large scale hex map for miniatures.

Tomorrow Part IV which will have my thoughts on Thieves Guild I.

I am a Thief, A Thieves' Guild Review, Part II

So what in Thieves Guild #1? It is basically in two sections, Rules of Play and Scenarios. Richard Meyer and Kerry Lloyd are the authors. Physically the first version of the rulebook is loose leaf punched for a three ring binder. Like Harnmaster and initial ADnD 2nd edition Monster Manual the system is modular with later supplement having new sections to insert among older sections.

This was also was probably one of the first roleplaying games to laid out and the final copy printed out from a computer. It is laid out using a dense typewriter font that is hard to read. There is a second printing that is laid out more traditionally and a little easier to read. Finally the 2nd Edition Thieves Guild reorganizes the rules and is pretty much as good as any middle tier RPG of the eighties.

The art is distinctive with humor and seriousness intermixed. I found myself laughing at some of the humorous illustrations.

Rules of Play

This is a DnDish system that focuses on creating Thieves and in less detail many of the people they deal with like fighters and common folks. It is actually party of a larger game called The Fantasy System. Your attributes are Strength, Coordination, Reflexes, Stamina, Discretion, Intelligence, Talent, Magic Resistance, Magnetism, Appearance. These are all generated using 3d6 straight down the line. If you roll an 18 you have a chance at a very high stat of 19+

There are a diverse number of races available to play; Human, Dwarf, Hobbit, Elf (sylvan), Elf (sindar), Elf (noldor), Half-elf, Centaur, Pixie, Orc, Uruk-hai, Half-orc, Kobold, and Goblin. For some reason the Kobolds get illustrated a lot and look like ugly hobbits with really big ears. Orcs are pig nosed btw. The rules distinguish between male and female with bonuses and minuses.

Hit points are based on Strength + Stamina /2 + the character's hit dice. The hit dice is NOT based on class but rather looked up on a table that is indexed by the total of the character's stamina + strength. For example a character with a 13 strength, and a 10 stamina has a total of 23 which gives him a d8 for his hit dice.

Next is your family background which is rolled using a d1000. The different races have restrictions on which background categories they can take. For example Kobolds can not gain a noble or guild background..

After the family background is determined the character rolls his starting purse (i.e. money). This is influenced a lot by the family background. Also his family background determines the choices he can pick for the weapons and skills he starts with.

Thieves guild looks mostly like a skill based system. Gaining levels through accumulating experience is how you advance your skills or choose new ones.  The other "classes", Fighters and Wizards, look like they would use the same system as thieves but have different costs and different choices of skills. Not only thieves are ever presented in any type of detail in the Thieves Guild series. Although later supplement flesh out things a bit and Second edition was going be the first in a series of book for the The Fantasy System.

Weapons have minimum attribute requirements. For example your basic Broadsword requires at least a 7 Strength and a Coordination. The boardsword does a 1d10 damage and later if the character pays for expertise it can do 2d6 damage. Finally it has a interesting stat called HAC0 or Basic Hit Probability.

Thieves Guild uses an Ascending Armor Class system!  However there no to hit bonus based on level as there in the D20 system. Instead if you are proficient in a weapon you gain it's HAC0 as your skill. For example the Broadsword has a HAC0 of 8. This means to hit an unarmored man (AC 0) you need a 8 or better on a d20. However if that opponent was wearing Scale Armor he would have AC 8. And the character would add that to his HAC0 of 8 which tell him he need to roll a 16 or better on a d20 to hit.

What interesting this works very similarily to DnD Next weapons from the closed playtest.

For skills, the players rolls for Training opportunities for his character and add the result to the number of training points for their social class. From that they can purchase various skills.  There are are a total of 44. As "The Fantasy Game: still has class and level, the thieves skills are found on a level chart similar to the one in AD&D. There are race and stat bonuses also similar to those found in AD&D.

TThe next sub-section is about the rules of play. There movement including outdoor movement. At lot of Thieves Guild, especially in the later supplement, involves activities in the rural landscape as well as the city. Next is combat which takes place in 15 minute combat round on a 5 foot grid. Thieves Guild is loaded with what is now called battle maps. There is no initiative, all fighting is considered simultaneous  after movement. If you roll 10 or better than your chance to hit you score a critical hit. Misses that are 10 or less than the chance to hit are critical fumbles. Criticals are rolled on a chart giving a variety of results. Special Combat tactics for thieves are backstabbing, coshing (whacking somebody on the back of the head with sand filled bag), poisoned weapons, and striking from concealment.

Other topics covered are
the Role of Magic (sketchy),
Ransoming Prisoners,
Revenge by ransomed prisoners (I kinda of like this)
Disguises (a page and a half of rules),
Fencing Goods,
how to create Traders and Fences,
The Thieves Guild,
what happens when you get busted, including individual magistrates.

The next subsection is a fairly extensive equipment list including

Weapons
Weapons Accessories
Armor and Accessories
Mount
Mount Equipment and Training
General Equipment
Clothing
Foodstuff

The last sub section is experience. You gain xp similarly to DnD with some additional wrinkles

Combat
Through the sale of loot from thieving
Through successful Agility rolls
Resolving encounters with NPCs.

Much of the rest of the chapter gives specific awards for each of these categories. For 1/4 of the GP value of loot fenced. Last is the XP table itself including the advancement in thief skills. First level is 1,500 xp, 2nd is 3,000 xp and roughly doubles every level afterwards until 8th. Afterwards advances by 100,000 per level.

Next is Part III the Scenarios!

I am a Thief, A Thieves' Guild Review, Part I

Shortly after I started regularly buying Dragon Magazine (issue #38) I started seeing ads for Thieves Guild like the one below.

This interested me a lot, but unlike the Harn Ads I never got the chance to buy any of Gamelords releases except for a few of their unrelated Traveller supplements (they are pretty good). And because this was all pre-internet I never learned what was in them. Even today information on the Thieves Guild Supplements is pretty sparse. Different Worlds has many of the original releases still at their original prices!

Finally a year ago, I had some extra money and bought the first two Thieves Guild supplements from Noble Knights Game. While not as cheap as Different Worlds they were at a decent price and more importantly had Thieves Guild 1. Along with that I got Thieves Guild 2.

When they arrived I finally found out what was in them.

Which I will go over in Part II on Tuesday.