Thieve's Guild Campaign 3.5/PF

[16bearswutIdo]

To start, if you've just played in a Cthulhu-type campaign set in Definitely Not New England with a lightning breathing camel, turn away now.

My current campaign just finished up, and I'm looking to run a Thieve's Guild style campaign. Something a bit more light-hearted than my last campaign, which basically ended with everyone in the main town being driven insane and the PCs earning a very Pyrrhic victory.

Has anyone here run something like that before? Looking for any types of advice or anything. Current thoughts are:

-Set in a large metropolis (20k people) on the intersection of several rivers
-PCs are sent in to establish a new thief organization, similar in style to the Bloodhounds but with a less stringent moral code.
-Currently, the Nightsong Guild has a bit of a strangehold on the shady, underground parts of town. Will inevitably lead to conflict between the two guilds
-The PCs have decided to all be either Good or Neutral, after having a majority evil party last campaign.


I get the strong feeling that this is gonna end up similar in tone to Persona 5 or something like that.

[DeTess]

To start, if you've just played in a Cthulhu-type campaign set in Definitely Not New England with a lightning breathing camel, turn away now.

My current campaign just finished up, and I'm looking to run a Thieve's Guild style campaign. Something a bit more light-hearted than my last campaign, which basically ended with everyone in the main town being driven insane and the PCs earning a very Pyrrhic victory.

Has anyone here run something like that before? Looking for any types of advice or anything. Current thoughts are:

-Set in a large metropolis (20k people) on the intersection of several rivers
-PCs are sent in to establish a new thief organization, similar in style to the Bloodhounds but with a less stringent moral code.
-Currently, the Nightsong Guild has a bit of a strangehold on the shady, underground parts of town. Will inevitably lead to conflict between the two guilds
-The PCs have decided to all be either Good or Neutral, after having a majority evil party last campaign.


I get the strong feeling that this is gonna end up similar in tone to Persona 5 or something like that.

Are you certain you want to use DnD for this? If you do, I'd recommend running something like e6, where the party remains relatively low-level. The reason for this is that the kind of obstacle most thieves deal with become trivial by the time you reach double-digit levels. There's also a couple of system out there that do sneaky thief stuff better than DnD (I've heard good stuff about blades in the dark (https://www.evilhat.com/home/blades-in-the-dark/), for example).

that out if the way, I recommend you run this as sand-boxy as possible. Design the city, and locations for them to steal from as actual locations, and let the players figure out how to approach them, rather than the 'traditional' encounter 1 -> encounter 2 -> encounter 3 setup.

Your players are also likely to take significant portions of each session planning stuff. This could be fine, but it might also feel a bit boring, or maybe some of your players like the meticulous planning, and others would just like to get on with it. If you find that the planning feels like a drag for some of your players, you could use s system where each PC gets a couple of 'flash-backs', so they can do the planning while working on the heist (for example: Your players encounter a vault that's all but impenetrable, so one of your players calls in a flashback to play out how they tracked down the vaults maker and tried to get them to tell them the vaults secrets and weaknesses). By making the flashbacks a limited resource you discourage players from using them whenever they encounter an obstacle, while still making them feel like expert planners when they use something they prepared earlier to deal with a problem.

[Efrate]

Definitely give some traits to give bluff, sense, and sleight to everyone, possibly stealth as well assuming everyone isn't going rogue or something similar.

There will likely be limited combat, at least early on, but a lot of creative problem solving, so don't be a RAW bully let rule of cool flow. It will likely test players more than characters, make sure every one is okay with that.

Pay special attention when designing your guards and town officials so they are at least reasonably competent to notice what's happening, and at least some bribability.

Also why are they establishing a new guild? Make sure you know why because it will color all your interactions with nightsong.

[16bearswutIdo]

Are you certain you want to use DnD for this? If you do, I'd recommend running something like e6, where the party remains relatively low-level. The reason for this is that the kind of obstacle most thieves deal with become trivial by the time you reach double-digit levels. There's also a couple of system out there that do sneaky thief stuff better than DnD (I've heard good stuff about blades in the dark (https://www.evilhat.com/home/blades-in-the-dark/), for example).

that out if the way, I recommend you run this as sand-boxy as possible. Design the city, and locations for them to steal from as actual locations, and let the players figure out how to approach them, rather than the 'traditional' encounter 1 -> encounter 2 -> encounter 3 setup.

Your players are also likely to take significant portions of each session planning stuff. This could be fine, but it might also feel a bit boring, or maybe some of your players like the meticulous planning, and others would just like to get on with it. If you find that the planning feels like a drag for some of your players, you could use s system where each PC gets a couple of 'flash-backs', so they can do the planning while working on the heist (for example: Your players encounter a vault that's all but impenetrable, so one of your players calls in a flashback to play out how they tracked down the vaults maker and tried to get them to tell them the vaults secrets and weaknesses). By making the flashbacks a limited resource you discourage players from using them whenever they encounter an obstacle, while still making them feel like expert planners when they use something they prepared earlier to deal with a problem.

Yeah, we'll definitely be using D&D for this. Anytime I've tried to run other systems with them, they're not feelin it. The party won't be getting much higher than level 8, if they even get that far. I tend to keep them at low levels regardless of what we do. I think the absolute highest level we've ever gotten to was 10, and that was in a 1.5 year long campaign.

Sandboxy is a really good idea. I was thinking of having an "experienced vet" NPC with them, suggesting possible targets. They could get him to go do one thing while they do another, for example.

One thing I was thinking of doing was giving them as much time as they want to take for the planning of any given heist, but then giving them a real world time limit when they're actually performing the heist. They're big fans of meticulously planning things out (which usually then falls apart and they start improvising like typical PCs). The flashback thing is a really good idea, though. I'll definitely float that by them. Maybe one flashback per heist would work.

I'm also planning on giving them two custom items each at the start: an earpiece that lets them Message anyone else with an earpiece (shamelessly stolen from CR) and a poison to drink if they're captured with no escape.

[DeTess]

Sandboxy is a really good idea. I was thinking of having an "experienced vet" NPC with them, suggesting possible targets. They could get him to go do one thing while they do another, for example.


How about making this NPC a 'Fixer' instead. He would basically be providing them with contracts for the theft of various items and what-not, and would also provide them with at least some info to get them going. The NPC wouldn't actually accompany them, as that's not the fixer's task, but he would be on hand to give them information and help them sell their gains.

Edit: The reason I'm suggesting this is because the veteran would run the risk of overshadowing the PC's a bit (and because of that, would probably need to go at one point or another). The fixer is just someone they know with a lot of knowledge about the business without getting in their way. So where the experienced veteran would in some ways be a rival, the fixer is a natural ally. They need the fixer for information and leads, and the fixer needs the party because they can chase down these leads.

Edit2: The earpiece is also a pretty good idea, as it allows for better cooperation and keeping everyone in the loop. If I where playing in a campaign like yours, and didn't have something like that, it'd literally be the first thing I'd try get a hold of. There's also the 'fell conspiracy' feat in the book 'exemplars of evil' (which despite the name and the source does not have the [evil] tag or anything else locking it to a particular alignment), which does pretty much the same thing.

[16bearswutIdo]

How about making this NPC a 'Fixer' instead. He would basically be providing them with contracts for the theft of various items and what-not, and would also provide them with at least some info to get them going. The NPC wouldn't actually accompany them, as that's not the fixer's task, but he would be on hand to give them information and help them sell their gains.

Edit: The reason I'm suggesting this is because the veteran would run the risk of overshadowing the PC's a bit (and because of that, would probably need to go at one point or another). The fixer is just someone they know with a lot of knowledge about the business without getting in their way. So where the experienced veteran would in some ways be a rival, the fixer is a natural ally. They need the fixer for information and leads, and the fixer needs the party because they can chase down these leads.



For certain. I phrased it badly, but that was basically exactly what I was thinking. By "go out", I meant if the NPC had 3 contracts for them, the PCs would take one and the NPC might do another. I do like the fixer/fencer angle more.

[Florian]

You might want to look at the Player Guides for the Hells Rebels and Ironfang Invasion APs. Paizo uses a very nifty adaption of the Downtime Rules (Ultimate Campaign) to simulate running a rebellion/resistance group, with a good mix of fore-ground and back-ground action going on. That´s a good start to get the whole Guild thing started, but keep it manageable on the table.

Basically, I´d say you to go for more or less full sandbox mode here, but maybe also include the Shadowrun model, meaning that out of 10 missions, maybe 3 or 4 share some deeper connection, building up a "mini story arc" to keep things interesting.

What I´d not do is giving them any "mentor", or "trainer" or "father figure". Establish early on where they can get information and how to proceed with that information to acquire a "mission/quest", again pointing out to Shadowrun, for Fixer, Informer, Insider an such. Maybe use the Ultimate Intrigue rules for connections, research and information for this.

[Zaq]

One really critical principle to keep in mind when writing challenges for skill-heavy characters is that you should absolutely never pick up the dice unless both success and failure are interesting.

Sometimes this is easy—your Hide check succeeds and you’ve snuck in, or your Hide check fails and you’ve been caught by someone you don’t want to be caught by. But sometimes it gets a lot harder. Thieves do breaking and entering and will probably pick a lock or six, right? It can be challenging to have both success and failure at lockpicking be interesting. (Not every time, but enough to be aware of it, you know?) You don’t want to grind the adventure to a halt if they can’t pick the lock, because then failure isn’t interesting. That sort of thing. Or Climb/Balance checks if they’re doing lots of second-story work. Is it interesting both to succeed at scaling this wall and to fail at the same? If you’re making a getaway, yeah, probably. If you’re just trying to get in in the first place, probably not.

A corollary to this is that you can and should assume competence until necessary. In the wall example, if they have to get onto the roof to start and you don’t want to do a creative problem-solving session about getting onto the roof without climbing (that CAN be fun, but not always), then assume competence and don’t roll to climb up the wall and start the fun. Absolutely roll to climb a wall when you’re being chased, but not when you’re just starting. Just let them get onto the roof. For most players, you’ll have to try to strike a balance between letting them show off their cool skills and not making a bunch of trivial rolls that aren’t exciting. It’s definitely kind of a mindset you have to intentionally adopt.

I mean, this general principle applies to pretty much whatever kind of campaign you may wish to run, but it’s especially relevant if you’re catering to a bunch of skillful characters.