Hey all.
I have finally begun the Shackled City adventure path after many months of delay. As it turns out, one of my players is extremely paranoid and has a conspiracy theory about everything (most of them fairly accurate). One of his goals is to gain membership into the Last Laugh, so he can "get to the bottom of everything." Has anyone ever encountered a scenario like this in their own campaign? If so, how did you deal with it? To me it seems like getting your foot in the door of a well established organization like this might be hard, but then again I don't see why they wouldn't be interested in new membership...
Please let me know if anyone has any ideas on how membership is aquired in Cauldron's Last Laugh. Thanks!
In my campaign I just started one of the PCs starts the game attempting to gain membership. She took the place of Patch at the orphanage and if she performed that job well she would have a chance of acceptance... of course, you know how that ends.
I am likely going to have Jil toy with her a bit and offer her chances for membership if she gives up info, that sort of thing, but have no plans to actually let her in. She may actually join the Striders (actually the Harpers in my campaign since it is FR).
Basically your PC would have to gain the trust of a Last Laugh member which would be tough to do since he will be consistently messing with their plans and they likely aren't real fond of people doing that. Then they would send the PC on a few jobs to gauge trust and ability.
Only after that would the PC be accepted as a low level member. I imagine a thieves guild working on a cell type basis so it is unlikely that the PC would have enough visibility to get much knowledge or even info on the players.
Of course, that in itself could be fun since the PC is playing a dangerous game as a spy. How much is he willing to do in order to find out? If he does those things, isn't he just as bad?
Sean Mahoney
When my group started out, I had two rogues and a priest of Vecna who had lots of street contacts - so I made them all bottom-rung members of a Thieves' Guild in competition with The Last Laugh, as well as the Alleybashers; things turned out pretty well, as you can see here:
Unless I missed something I do not believe that the Last Laugh is in knee deep with the cagewrights. One or two of the upper management may know what is going on put most of the thieves are clueless pawns. In my campaign I had a duo of a thief and bard that are childhood friends. I started the campaign with them being the ring leaders of a small time street urchin pocket pinching group......sort of like the Quest. Sasha "the thief" and Reldegan "the bard" were the eldest of the orphans and the others looked up to them. The last laugh finally took notice of them, as they were getting good at the pinch and aproched Sasha and Reldegan. They were given an ultimatum....joining or be crushed. Being the free spirits they are they responded in unison "UP YOURS!!" Well within a few weeks Sasha and Reldegan were in hiding as the rest of their gang was either at the Lantern street orphanage or dead. At this point I started the campaign and Sasha and Reldegan along with other members of the party they had not meet before happened upon an alley during a mugging.
As an odd side note Jill has taken a liking to Sasha. She has been offering small bits of training trying to get Sasha to join the Last Laugh as he defiantly has skills. Sasha has been trying to show her the err of her ways and is trying to get her to leave the Last Laugh....the only home she has ever known. I no not know which way she will go at this point in the game....we just started Zenith and they hooked up during flood. She may betray the guild and leak vital info to Sasha...until she is caught. She may play double or triple agent, or last she may just betray the party at a VERY inconvenient time.
The question I put out there is...Is the last laugh an integral part of the plan against Cauldron or are they pawns used by the Cagewrights to fetch this, guard that, ect. Therefore they are only in it for the money and would turn on the Cagewrights if they knew the whole story. Being a gate city cannot be good for business....at least not for the current guild masters.....enemy of my enemy is my friend. Just a thought.