Reliken |
Not necessarily "rogues," mind you, but... A party that would pull off a heist. It might have need of some rogues, sure, but also perhaps a bard, a wizard, a fighter...
I'd love to run an adventure that focuses on the misadventures of an enterprising group of bandits/thieves/conmen. Pathfinder is ideal, but anything from 3.5 could be easily converted. Heck, even 3.0 something!
Any advice?
savior70 |
isn't there an AP called council of thieves? I would have to take a look at it but it seems to fit your bill. barring that make up your own adventure/campaign
Have them begin as part of a city's Thieves Guild, since they are young and eager, have them betrayed by the soon-to-be BBG. have them run out of the city by City Watch or angry Guild members.
Then have them set up shop in a separate city, build a new guild to rival that of the old one and then once they were high enough level, have them take back their old city and get some good old fashioned revenge, bloody or cold.
Reliken |
Council of Thieves summary: Once the seat of mighty Imperial Cheliax, the decaying metropolis of Westcrown now stands wrecked and ruined, haunted by mysterious shadow beasts and besieged by the agents of the nation's new diabolical rulers. Amid this chaos, a growing schism in the city's influential Council of Thieves threatens to tear Westcrown apart unless a new group of heroes rises from the ashes of empire to chart a new destiny for the lost souls of the city.
So I wasn't sure how much actual thieving/conning you'd be doing, and how much you'd just be trying to bring peace. Hmm.
Making my own campaign is probably the best way to go. Just a lot of work, haha!
thejeff |
It would be an interesting idea to do adventures a bit more focused than the usual generic any class/random adventurer types. Something focused on thievery, as you're looking for. Or centered on a mage guild. Or a quest for paladins. All sorts of ideas, well rooted in the genre, but hard to do with the standard assumption that any published adventure needs to work with almost any random assortment of characters.
Probably too limited in appeal for an AP, but it might work well in the new larger module line. Or 3PP, obviously.
The Diplomat |
Robin D. Laws The Worldwound Gambit is a tale in Golarion about a team pulling off a long con. Maybe use this as a starting point for your own adventure? If nothing else, it will give you an idea of what kind of party mix could work.
Reliken |
Read Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch for some ideas. or just read it because its my favorite novel of the last 10 years.
It's great, and actually what inspired me to start thinking about this type of adventure.
It would be an interesting idea to do adventures a bit more focused than the usual generic any class/random adventurer types. Something focused on thievery, as you're looking for. Or centered on a mage guild. Or a quest for paladins. All sorts of ideas, well rooted in the genre, but hard to do with the standard assumption that any published adventure needs to work with almost any random assortment of characters.
Probably too limited in appeal for an AP, but it might work well in the new larger module line. Or 3PP, obviously.
I don't know about the general AP people, but I really really dig this idea. There's a custom campaign I've written that I'm running right now that's based on a similar kind of idea - the PCs work for the military of a government, and have been recruited to go on a spy mission into a warzone.
Many non-spylike classes can be made to work, and the PCs still have a lot of choice for how they deal with things, but the story and the objectives and the encounters are much more rooted in that idea of infiltration and espionage than they are "traditional" D&D tropes.
Robin D. Laws The Worldwound Gambit is a tale in Golarion about a team pulling off a long con. Maybe use this as a starting point for your own adventure? If nothing else, it will give you an idea of what kind of party mix could work.
I'll look into this - thanks for the suggestion!
MeridiaCreative |
Check out Streets of Zobeck. It's got some heists in it, and the whole thing is for "shady" types.
thejeff |
Perhaps Skull and Shackles?
Pirates are just thieves with better PR. We're playing that right now, and we are some shady MFers.
But while it certainly fits morally, it isn't really about heist or other thief tropes.
It's really designed for the usual balanced party and includes a lot of "dungeon" crawls. And sadly, little actual pirating.
Marigold Malachite |
Marigold Malachite wrote:Perhaps Skull and Shackles?
Pirates are just thieves with better PR. We're playing that right now, and we are some shady MFers.
But while it certainly fits morally, it isn't really about heist or other thief tropes.
It's really designed for the usual balanced party and includes a lot of "dungeon" crawls. And sadly, little actual pirating.
Perhaps if run as intended there's not a lot pirating. But as players, we're just as shady as our characters - the main plot can wait when there's booty to be recovered!
Could be why we're still mired in book 3 ;)
RegUS PatOff |
Game Lords had a Thieves Guild RPG and series of adventures. It launched in 1980 (if I'm remembering correctly), so there'd be a lot of conversion necessary - but it provided a lot of great source material for thieving group adventures (long con, highway robbery, tomb raiding, etc).
Goblin Bait |
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Ive kind of been kicking the idea around of using the kingmaker rules for a thieves guild building campaign.
Start the players off as lower class citizens in a massive metropolis getting hooked up with an existing gang. Then they gradually start their own guild/gang and begin building it up. Just have to retool the kingdom rules to fit into city districts instead of wilderness.
Gator the Unread |
The main issue with a rogue based game (anything where thieves are the stars) is one of reaction; the game is more of a proactive nature than reactive. Instead of waiting for some evil-doer to do something bad, the heroes seek out things to take. They (should) pick the job, the time, and the place. This is not a bad thing, but rather something to be aware of; you may want to have a few prepared jobs/maps/opponents ready for when the heroes bypass the planned mission to go raid a rival's stash.
Sounds awesome, to me. I've been wanting a game like that for a while.
thejeff |
Of course, a lot of the best heist movies and books had motivations beyond "Want to steal stuff and get rich".
Nothing wrong with adding enemies and problems to push the gang. Just make sure they can deal with them using thief style approaches, rather than falling back on PF standard "break down the door and kill it"
Also remember that your players, however clever they are, aren't going to be as the standard caper plot characters. The author is on their side and you have to be too. Just enough so they still feel clever about it.
Krodjin |
I just picked up Ultimate Campaign. Thinking it could be cool to start the PC's off as young characters. I'm planning on having the setting in Korvosa and will be able to use some stuff from the Curse of the Crimson Throne AP, namely stats for some of the NPC's that are involved in the upper levels of the Thieves Guild.
The fact that Korvosan laws only allow a single guild (the thieves guild) will narrow the focus somewhat, giving the PC's an obvious objective if they want move up the ranks.
Vicon |
A great source of inspiration are the three "thief" games by looking glass studios. The briefings, cinematics, as well as playthroughs are all on YouTube. You can easily adapt the missions and plots of these games for pathfinder. If they seem truly appealing you can acquire them cheap on steam as "research" - another game to play or research online is "payday 2" - while not in the fantasy genre, these missions can be adapted to play as interesting thief capers -- stealing weapons from warehouses, stealing information and loot from police evidence holdings, bank jobs, Jewelry store smash and grabs, all these are great examples of capers to convert to your game.
Reliken |
hogarth: I'll look into For A Lady's Honor, and RegUS, I'll look into Game Lords thieves guild RPG stuff. Both may require a lot of work to convert, but if nothing else I'm sure they'll offer good inspiration. MeridiaCreative: I need to look into it some more, but there's a chance that Streets of Zobeck just might be perfect! Thanks for the suggestion.
xobmaps: I'll have to look into the Evil Hat setting guide, too - thanks!
Ive kind of been kicking the idea around of using the kingmaker rules for a thieves guild building campaign.
Start the players off as lower class citizens in a massive metropolis getting hooked up with an existing gang. Then they gradually start their own guild/gang and begin building it up. Just have to retool the kingdom rules to fit into city districts instead of wilderness.
Flavor-wise, this is a really cool idea. If you end up doing it, please tell me how it goes! I'm quite curious.
Gator the Unread, I think you kind of hit the nail on the head. It definitely would need to be built differently than other campaigns... but I think that's what attracts me to the idea so much!
Majorat: I haven't looked into Second Darkness much - why do you think the first book would be go od for this?
Vicon: I've heard a lot of people say I should play those games, but have never gotten around to it... Now I just might have to...
The hardest part about all of this is that this is a campaign I want to PLAY IN more than I want to DM, haha.