Wednesday, February 24, 2021

Retrospective: Thieves' Guild

Despite my Hamlet-esque waffling about the merits of thieves as a character class in Dungeons & Dragons, I'm actually a huge fan of the archetype of the thief. From Bilbo Baggins to the Gray Mouser to Cugel the Clever, fantasy literature is filled with innumerable examples of thieves, burglars, and mountebanks as protagonists, so many that it could reasonably be argued that the thief is a much more foundational fantasy archetype than the cleric (but that's an argument for a different time). Consequently, I've long had a hankering to run a campaign in which all the characters are members of a criminal gang in a fantasy city. Not only would this be a lot of fun but it's a set-up that drinks deeply from the literary wells that watered the early hobby.

In thinking about this, I was reminded of Thieves' Guild, a 1980 product written by Richard Meyer and Kerry Lord, published by Gamelords (whom I knew well from their many excellent Traveller books). Intended as "the first in a continuing series of player and GM aids providing rules and scenarios for adventuring in the medieval underworld," Thieves' Guild was not, in fact, a mere add-on to D&D or other fantasy RPGs – though it could be used as such – but rather a complete game in its own right, released as 128 three-hole punched pages in a bag. Its system, known by the rather bland name of the "FANTASY SYSTEM" [sic], is clearly a close cousin of both D&D  (it has levels, for example) and Basic Role-Playing, cribbing elements of both, resulting in something that is simultaneously just familiar enough to be largely intelligible without much effort but just different enough that you need to keep checking the rules to see how various aspects of play are handled. 

Rules-wise, Thieves' Guild is probably most notable in two areas. The first is in its selection of available character races. In addition to the usual suspects of humans, dwarves, elves, and hobbits, there are also centaurs, goblins, kobolds, orcs, and pixies. There are also rules for cross-breeding these various races, should one care about such matters. More interesting, I think, are the skills, which, as one might expect, give a lot of attention to those used by thieves. There are also skills for many legitimate professions, quite a few of which have relevance in a campaign set in and around a large urban location. By most standards, the skill system is nothing special, but it's hard not to appreciate that the designers recognized the need to flesh out other professions in order to provide some context to the adventures of thieves. 

Intriguingly, there are no rules for magic in Thieves' Guild. Magic exists in the world of Gateway (as the game's setting is known) but it's not something thieves are likely to know. As in D&D, thieves can attempt to make use of scrolls, but it's a risky endeavor not to be undertaken lightly. More information is instead provided on combat, including various forms of non-lethal combat, since many thieves find it useful simply to incapacitate rather than kill (thereby leaving open the door for "rogues with hearts of gold" and similar characters). Disguises, fencing stolen goods, ransoming prisoners, and similar activities in which thieves might engage also get fair treatments, as do the workings of the Thieves' Guild and the legal system. None of these topics is covered at immense length, but the very fact that they're covered at all is a step up from most fantasy RPGs in 1980.

Where Thieves' Guild really stands out is in its scenarios, many of which are included after the rules. These scenarios are divided into categories, like "bandit," "highwayman," and "cat burglary," among others. In this way, the writers did a great service to referees and players alike, highlighting that the profession of thief includes more than just simple robbery. The breadth of scenario types is quite impressive and the scenarios themselves, while far from masterpieces, are nevertheless engaging. If nothing else, they offer the novice referee models to use in crafting his own, including maps of locations both outside and inside.

I never owned or saw Thieves' Guild back in the day, though I was aware of its existence from many advertisements in Dragon magazine. When I finally did see it years later, I wished I had encountered it sooner, as it's something I would almost certainly have enjoyed. Gamelords supported the line with supplements, each one offering additional scenarios and rules to expand the scope of a thief-centric fantasy campaign. The company also released a boxed set describing the Free City of Haven, another product I would have loved to have owned in my youth and only ever saw many years later. I have no idea how successful or well-received the series was, only that I think it remains a great idea and one I'd like to make use of at some point in the future.

12 comments:

  1. Hadn't Gamelords promised to publish two sister games to TG, one on warriors and one on mages?

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  2. Tadashi Ehara still has some original stock Thieves' Guild product on his Different Worlds website: https://www.diffworlds.com/gamelords.htm

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  3. Had the original, as well as the 2E boxed version, and several of the volumes. #2 was my fave (Tomb robbing scenarios- a couple of of real fun dungeon romps), as well as the one that was a Dress Ball. Magic was introduced in these later supplements (in order for magic items/scrolls to be found as loot), but the system never got the full treatment. They did promise to offer the boxed sets for Warriors and Mages, but Kerry Lloyd died suddenly as I recall, and the company folded.

    Gamelords made a couple of generic fantasy adventures and some for The Fantasy Trip as well. I owned a few of them and recall liking them, but I don't have any detailed memory of them.

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  4. I ran a "band of thieves"-style campaign once back in the day (though I permitted fighters also, on the grounds that a successful crime syndicate needs thugs and sellswords in addition to actual thieves and con men), and it was a hoot. It didn't run for very long, though; the party got into a scrape with the city guard and ended up slaughtering their way out of town. The prospect of trying to reëstablish operations elsewhere didn't excite anybody, so it kind of petered out at that point.

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  5. I think this is the one that had a merchants house that you can rob and you had a large dog with a name and a little dog called the "yapping ball of fur", that you really had to worry about because it was a living alarm system.

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  6. At a convention a couple years back (remember those? Ah, the pre-pandemic days), I had the chance to play in a game that was “all thieves” using slightly modified B/X. The pre-gens were all thieves with perhaps 1 or 2 “thug-llke” fighters. It was actually a blast in a Asprin/Thieves World type way (started with a house breaking, led to a greater score/mystery in an old wizard’s tower...all in the same city). Good fun...if I owned a supplement like this, I’d be tempted to run such a campaign.

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  7. We ran a bunch of thieves only campaigns back in the 90s. Which is to say we would always just make dual or multi class thieves no matter what the adventure the DM was pushing was about. Then mess around in town till the DM killed us or relented. I ran a lot too and loved complex urban heists and such more than dungeons.

    I tried to get my current group to migrate to a urban thief campaign, but they are more traditional.

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  8. My favorite from the line, the only one I still keep a copy of, is Thieves' Guild VI: Scourge of the Seaways - Pirates in Action. It includes rules for ship design, finding crew, ship combat and boarding, sea exploration (with the possibility of discovering a new continent!), more setting info focused on the southern seas where piracy is rampant, and even includes a streamlined version of the magic system. The bang for the buck, or page, is very high.

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  9. Had not thought of this for many years. Then I read the first book of the Gentlmen Bastard series, The Lies of Locke Lamora. And then I remembered it. Thanks for the review!

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  10. It's a strange coincidence, both Kerry Lloyd and David A. Hargrave, died two days apart.

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  11. The Gamelords books in general are still in-print and available from Tadashi Ehara: http://diffworlds.com/gamelords.htm

    Allan.

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