A Guide to Thieves Guilds
By Todd Leback (Patreon page); Editing by Brian Johnson; Layout by Tim Bannock; Cover art by Jen Drummond; Interior art by Daniel Comerci, Chad Dickhaut, Rick Hershey/Fat Goblin Games, Jeshields, Patrick E Pullen, Dean Spencer
43 pages including cover and OGL page
Written for use with Necrotic Gnome’s Old School Essentials, but definitely useful for most fantasy role playing games.
This book is a guide for both GM and player on how to create and run a thieves guild. Much of it is geared toward the player side; high level player characters gain followers and are able to start and lead their own guild. To use this book, you also need the Domain Building book.
Chapter 1: A Guide to Thieves’ Guilds
We begin with the basics of the guild. Remember in the Domain Building review when I said that Market Class is extremely important? This is why. Market Class determines the number of guilds an urban center can support without conflict, guides the type of activities a thieves’ guild can pursue, and limits the number of guild members. We’re also given a brief synopsis of the various types of guilds, like assassins, beggars, con men, spies, etc. There will be MUCH more about them later on.
Chapter 2: Guild Traits & Operations
This chapter describes the structure of the guild and profits and losses. The first section describes Guild Structures by breaking down the membership into a flow chart.
There is also a section dealing with player-characters who are guildmasters as well as adventurers. PCs are not going to want to sit around and deal with day to day business of the guild instead of adventuring. So Leback has provided some easy to follow rules and guidelines on how to incorporate these conflicts into your game.
Revenue and Expenses is a longer section with a number of charts. Once again, Market Class shows up as the Market Class determines the maximum amount of possible revenue per month. Revenue is modified by a number of factors including the type of guild, the number and class of guild members, boons, banes, morale, and conflicts. This gets you the gross profits. Then you work on the expenses which include bribes to authorities, pay outs to members, and maintenance on the guildhouse/hideout.
The next section is Guild Focuses, and deals with the various different types of Thieves’ Guilds. The types are as follows; Assassins, Beggars, Burglars, Con Artists, Fences, Smugglers, Spies, and Thugs. Each type has a description of what they do and any modifiers to the standard guild stuff (for example, a Beggars guild have a larger maximum membership than other types, and the guildhouse/hideout costs less), as well as tables showing the amount of monthly revenue that type provides, a table for boons specific to that type (good stuff that happens every month) and banes (bad stuff that happens). While this section is very long, a player is only going to have one or two pages to look at dealing with the type of guild their character runs. The tables are also concise and easy to use.
At the end of the chapter is a nice example of a Burglars’ Guild that breaks down membership, profit, and loss.
Chapter 3: Conflicts
Here we have descriptions of two types of conflicts that affect Thieves’ Guilds; External and Internal. External conflict describes what happens when there are too many guilds or thieves in a settlement. Internal conflicts are those that happen inside the guild itself; membership exceeds Market Class limits, failed morale checks, etc).
Something cool about these rules is that the player character’s thief skills are used to resolve a lot of the conflicts in ways that make sense.
The first section details External Conflicts; a d100 table is consulted whenever one of more items on a list is triggered. Results can range from a street fight between your gang and a rival or an all out assassination attempt against all of your guild leadership!
The next section examines Internal Conflicts. Like the External conflicts, Internal conflicts are triggered when a particular event happens. When that occurs, you roll on a d100 table. Results range from dissension in the ranks that leads to low morale (which can snowball into further conflict later on) all the way to an assassination attempt against the player character!
The last section in this chapter is Mass Conflict, which occurs when two or more guilds fight or a guild splinters and fights itself. These rules are simple and straightforward and would probably work with little variation for any kind of mass combat.
Chapter 4: Running a Guild
Morale is the first section here and it measures the happiness and loyalty of the guild members. If morale gets too low, you’re looking at mutiny. There are a number of modifiers that affect the Morale Score, and the Morale Score affects guild revenue and Internal Conflicts.
The next section is Experience and Gaining Levels. While running a guild does provide a character with experience points, it doesn’t provide that much which means the character must still adventure. However, the various NPC members of the guild also gain experience and can level up over time, which improves revenue.
Franchising is the title of the next section and details an option you can use when your guild has grown to maximum capacity in the settlement it started in. You can franchise your guild to another settlement! This has benefits and drawbacks but overall seems like a good idea and a fun part of this whole mini-game.
The last section of this chapter is a summary entitled, Order of Operations. Essentially, running a guild requires you to do certain things at the beginning of the month, and certain other things at the end of the month. So, at the beginning of every month, you pay your expenses, recruit new members, roll for banes and boons, and roll for Conflicts. At the end of the month, you collect revenue, pay recruiting costs, add/subtract members, roll for Morale changes.
Chapter 5: Guilds and the Referee
This final chapter uses the previous material to show what a game master can do to easily create and run thieves’ guilds in cities the player characters may visit, and how those guilds interact with the player characters. It’s also useful because just creating these NPC guilds can create conflicts that can be exploited to add depth to the city location or even make the basis for adventures for the player characters.
Conclusion
Overall, this is a wonderful game supplement. It is highly useful and utilitarian, easy to read and comprehend, with clean layout, non-distracting art, and rules that don’t get in the way of the game. In fact, the rules here form a mini game that you and your players can break into while playing your normal session. Keep in mind, you do need the previous supplement, Domain Building, as well as Hexcrawl Basics.