My group is playing through the kingmaker AP, i want to start a thieves guild. any idea's on how to make this tie into the kingdom running stuff?
My group is playing through the kingmaker AP, i want to start a thieves guild. any idea's on how to make this tie into the kingdom running stuff?
Just build a 'guild', maybe attached to another business. Maybe headed by a PC rogue or bard
our Minister Of Justice (ie Royal Assassin)has his own 'guild'. He has married Lily from RRR, and together they are starting to train some members.
The party are mostly LN/LE so its right they have a formal 'guild'
One of my players is a minion for a smuggling guild. I have 3 major crime organizations in Restov, and they have various levels of influence through the rest of Brevoy. This guild, The Tiger's Fang, sees this as an oportunity to increase trade and smuggling between Brevoy and Minov, and thus increase their proffit margin. They are particularly interested in smuggling the wine from the region. They expect the PC to get maps, as well as inform him of what the warden's are so that they can be elsewhere when they ship their goods. The other 2 guilds will be making an appearance, 1 pushing narcotics and 1 has a grudge against annother PC.
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Are we talking placement of buildings on the map, or are we talking more of an encounter/event type of thing?
If we're talking on the city grid:
Depending on the openness of your kingdom, towards thieves, a guild could work, as mentioned above.
If having an "open" theives' guild might be a problem (one most kingdoms would have), though, I'd recommend getting a black market up and running ASAP, though, doing something like I'm planning for the burgeoning Pathfinder Society in my group's kingdom: put down some other form of business, and have it double as the thieves' guild. A city heavy on tenements, brothels, and having a thriving black market basically begs for thieves' guild action.
If we're talking about adventures and events:
You could call any "Bandit Activity" or "Sensational Crime" roll some kind of nasty guild activity. Even a "Disaster" roll could be guild-related (an arsonist's fire against a non-paying business roils out of control, or shoddy guild-controlled building practices causes a massive collapse when a minor tremor rolls through, or even possibly riots, degradation of a neighborhood, or looting). This route mostly asks the PCs to make Stability checks to root out the more dangerous aspects of their cities' crime problem, and if they fail, direct action is required to get the problem resolved. The rest is flavor on your end.
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There were some other building ideas presented HERE
Mujaba posted some details on a Thieves Guild as well as a few others.
I have adapted most of the buildings in this thread into my campaign.
I'll also N'Wah's idea on this thread that if it's encounter/event/ropleplaying opportunities you're looking for as well, you can use some of the existing events for that.
If you're using the extended events list from THIS THREAD, then there are other events there that would work for the Thieve's Guild - such as Smuggler Activity.
Robert
Hey Eric,
I do not mean this in a disrepectful manner, but it feels like you are missing the point of the Kingmaker Campaign. Kingmaker is about founding a nation and the satisfaction of building something, not tearing something down. It does not really make sense for you to make a theives guild for three good reasons:
1) You are the "man"! Most of the time PCs are either saving the man's ass or fighting the man. So you may have not even realized you are the man. And since you are now the "man" you have perfectly legitmate and legal way to steal from your people called taxation. :-) By setting up a thieves guild you are basically giving another layer of people who will demand a cut or you end up training your competition (more thieves mean less to go around for your theif to steal).
2) A successful theives guild that actually generates more money than you could get through taxation, is either going to become source of unrest as your humble peasants complain about all the theft and the fact nothing is being done about it or when they learn their own leaders set it up. Ouch
3) In the long run you will probably have to put down your own theives guild since essentially it is a villanious organization.Now of course your DM could be a moron or a monty haul type of DM and this all goes out the window. Found your theives guild, rob your people blind, and laugh your ass off as thieves are mysteriously run amok in your town but you can go out in a gold plated carriage with 50-lb diamond spinners and the citizens of your kingdom never put 2 & 2 together and get angry at you. :-)
But I am not all criticism and no advice. The desire to found a theives guild if of the goal of many PCs. But their are ways you could put a spin on it to where it makes sense.
--- Secret Intelligence Agency. You recruit rogues and such and have them spy on threats to your kingdom. You know who the criminal origanizations are and keep them in line.
--- Apothocary (Poisoners) Guild. You set up an Apothocary Guild...
This is pretty much why I don't like the traditional thieves guild idea, and the ones I presented were a protection racket, a smuggling ring, and drug dealers. Any actual group that robs people on a semi-regular basis will be on the wrong side of the law real soon. Groups that act soling in the lower elements or just bypass laws, however, can exist for a long time before they are noticed.
Agreed on all this. A thieves guild, as it stands, is basically based on a taxation model: There's a large stream of revenue going by you're getting wealth by dipping your hand into it. If the thievery gets too bad, you basically kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
The other trouble with the thieves guild model is that it's posited on it being illegal and set up as an alternate system to the set laws. If you're being the state itself, you're then by definition becoming a robber baron or bandit queen, taking your taxes from those kingdoms adjacent to yours or from a large stream of travelers going through your territory because it's the most efficient route to wherever it is they're going.
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You could always do the Terry Pratchett's Discworld method.
It's impossible to stamp out Crime, crime happens and that's just the way of it when you have a group of more than one person. So by encouraging the Thieve's Guild to become a legitimate group then three things happen:
1) The thieves guild gives receipts after any mugging, robbery, theft or swindle. Presenting a receipt within a 6 month period to a member of the guild means that you are exempt from robbery for that period.
2) The thieves guild polices non-guild crime (usually violently and spectacularly, thieves don't need to worry about such paltry things as human rights). This discourages non-guild members from taking from the city. Like the saying goes, it takes a thief to catch a thief.
3) Crime rates can be set by the city. If those rates are exceeded then the government knows exactly where to find you.
Ta. Da.
Tread carefully with a thieve's guild. It is conceivable, and perhaps even desirable for one of of the PCs to have connections to a thieve's guild and perhaps even to use them for various deeds the governmetn wants done but can't afford to be seen as doing. These ties would absolutely have to remain secret, however, or it would cause major Unrest in the kingdom. I would say any PC who actually started such a guild or took an active part in running it would also be running a huge risk of discovery and scandal.
This, of course, assumes that the PCs are not running an evil and/or wildly chaotic government that allows crime to flourish openly. In such case, all bets are off, and there will be a host of other problems like how do you convince merchants to set up shop in your kingdom if they know they are likely to be robbed or extorted by thieves that the government is connected to? Why would people pay their taxes to the government if it can't/won't protect them from thieves? Why would anyone volunteer to serve in the armies your kingdom will eventually need to raise to fight for a kingsom like that? The important thing to remember is that this is a fledgling kingdom looking to attract settlers. Moving there is an entirely voluntary act - not like anyone has roots there that would convince them to try and make do in a bad situation. While a corrupt, evil, wildly chaotic or crime-ridden kingdom might be attractive to some people, it likely would not be to the types of people like skilled craftsmen and merchants that are needed to make a kingdom grow.
I would encourage you as a player, if you were looking to set up some sort of roguish organization, to avoid the traditional thieve's guild idea and instead look to set up either an internal and/or external intelligence network that operates in the shadows, but uses roguish talents in the service of the state rather than just to generate revenue by robbing/extorting/preying on your own citizens. I had a rogue character do something similar in a previous campaign, setting up such a network and then offering its services (for a price) to the local baron, and it was very fun. Gave the DM lots of juicy roleplaying hooks to work with, and a logical way for the party to uncover useful information and rumors.