Newsgroups: rec.games.frp.misc
Subject: Re: Campaign: what for a thief to do?
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 22:22:04 -0600

In a message of <14 Nov 92  20:37:02>, millerl (1:282/31.0) writes:

 LM> A player in my current campaign prefers playing thieves to any other
 LM> player character type. Now he has decided to change the development
 LM> of his current character towards a thief style character,

One of the many joys of playing RuneQuest, as opposed to D&D, is the opprotunity
for players to do things like this...

 LM> despite the character's dexterity of 5 (in RuneQuest, similar to a
 LM> D&D Dex of 5).  Rather than simply dumping on his character, I'd like
 LM> to explore a somewhat cinematic thief thang with this character, who
 LM> would doubtless be relying on his basic sorcery skills rather than
 LM> quick fingers to survive as a thief, and probably to prosper in thief
 LM> gang administration or the like.
 LM>
 LM> I'd like to ask a question of those players who prefer to play
 LM> thieves as characters. What are some of the things that you would
 LM> enjoy doing in your campaign? Please describe plot developments, for
 LM> good and bad, that you would like to play through with your thief
 LM> character(s).
 LM> Thanks.

We have a similar situation happening in our RuneQuest game.  Our party's thief
happened to get a set of 5 Ermil toes (not sure of the spelling of Ermil - the
trickster aka Bobo). I do not know if these are described in any of the RQ
material but they seem to affect his luck at the strangest times.

I can not think of any plot ideas that pertain to the thief character, but I
must say that he is a main character/plot device unto hisself.

Maybe the story of how he got the toes might be useful to you:

  We heard about a newtling that was looking to hire some people to
travel with him.  We heard he had gold, so we went to check him out. After
talking with him a bit, we found that the job he was hiring for was harvesting
some lizard skins.  The lizards lived in a swamp about 2 weeks to the south. 
The newtling was working for "The Great and Lordly Dragon Newts of Ryzell."  The
lizards turned out to be dinosaurs.  We couldn't use any magic during the
'harvest' of the skins because then they wouldn't be "perfect."
  We collected the skins and went back.  The Newtling got killed by a
giant beaver on the way back.  We decided to take the Newtling's body (minus its
tail - heh heh) and the skins to the Dragon Newts anyway.  The visit with the
dragon newts was scarey.  We thought we were dead for sure... but they let us
live and they gave us a reward for bringing the skins (which wasn't what they
were really after but you know dragon newts...)  They showed us a room which, if
we did not know better(?), might have been their trash bin...  We found the 5
Ermil toes (small tan colored rocks about toe size) and a jar of sa metal aka
mercury aka aluminum.  The jar of mercury had hidden in it a scroll containing a
tretise written by some Lanker My preist on the martial arts ability of the
dragon newts.
  Our thief studied the scroll and has some weird "dragon claw" form of
martial arts.  He looks funny when in a fist fight - especially when he rolls a
special result...

 * Origin: * The Boarding House (1:292/49.100)