Thieves' Guild of Mallain (CTH)

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==An Example of Guild Design==
Our DM is scripting the thieves' guild for the large town (or small city) of Mallain. The DM knows some basic social facts about this place, having placed it on the map in his campaign world, and records these facts for future reference. The issue of weak rulership is something the DM had decided in advance, likewise the fact that Mallain is in a civilized area of the country, and on a major inland trade route. The DM determines the population at somewhere around 17,000 (not too large, not too small!) and decides that 5% are halflings and 5% are half-elves; there are no full elves, and a smattering of dwarves and gnomes. The DM considers that there is a slight tendency toward lawfulness in the community, but not a strong one, so the overall social alignment is recorded as neutral.
How wealthy is Mallain? The DM rolls a 7 on Table 7. To this is added +2, because the town is on a major trade route. The DM adds a further +2, since Mallain is a large town, if not a major one. This gives an adjusted total of 11, so the wealth level is average.
The attitude of the law is resolved on Table 8, and a dice roll of 17 indicates tolerance. Why? One clear reason sticks out a mile: under-manning. The DM has already recorded that the ruler of the land is weak, and his militia is small in this safe, secure land. There simply isn't the manpower to go around chasing the thieves.
The attitude of merchants is resolved on Table 9. A roll of 14, modified to 15 by the tolerance of the law, indicates a complex/mix. The DM isn't sure enough of how to script a complexity here; he isn't clear enough in his own mind about the details of Mallain. So he opts for a mix, and makes two more dice rolls on the same table to see what the mix is (adding +1 to each roll for the tolerance of the law). He rolls 12 (13, with a +1), which indicates a standoff; his second roll is 1, and even with a +1 modifier this indicates warfare! How to synthesize this into a whole? The DM reasons that most merchants are described by a standoff—they put up with the thieves in a fairly resigned way. A minority, though, are furious about thieving for some reason; maybe they have suffered particularly heavy losses. This place isn't rich, after all. They try hard to persuade the ineffectual militia to do something about the thieves.
Deciding on thieves and other guilds, the DM does not roll on Table 10 for assassins and beggars. The DM isn't happy handling assassins, so he decides there aren't any in town, obviating the need for a dice roll. With beggars, the DM wants to choose Close Cooperation, details of which he records. This is a plot element he wants to exploit later on. If the beggars spy on the merchants, facilitating robberies in a place of only average wealth, it could help explain why some of the merchants are at the end of their tether, too. Matters are beginning to come together fairly nicely, but there is lots still to do. How about bards? The DM rolls a 1, hostility! Very odd, and at this stage the DM just records this without thinking about why. He decides to come back to this problem later.
From Table 11, the DM makes an initial recording of how many thieves live and work in Mallain. The population is 17,000. The DM rolls in the "5001-10,000" row, and twice in the "Per extra 5,000" row, in the Average (wealth) column. These rolls are 2d6+2, and 1d6+2 (twice) respectively—a total of 4d6+6. This is rolled as a total of 19, but the DM adds 10% to this because the law is tolerant, for a total of 21. They need not all be guildmembers, of course; the DM needs to know about the guild rulership to determine this. Recording the figure of 21, the DM moves on.
A roll of 5 on Table 12 shows that the guild is ruled by a guildmaster. From Table 14, the die rolls produce a picture of what this guildmaster is like. A first roll of 18 shows he is weak. A second roll of 12, reduced to 11 because of this weakness, makes him fairly cruel. A final roll of 12, reduced to 10 because of this cruelty, makes him fairly despotic. In summary: Weak, fairly cruel, fairly despotic. A rather pathetic creature, all told. This comes to the rescue of the DM when he rolls on Table 15 and comes up with a 20—Anarchy!
The DM is taken aback. There is a guild here, with a guildmaster, and now he is plunged into a real complication. He is about to re-roll the dice, but spends a minute or two in imaginative reverie. Perhaps, after all, this is workable. An old, feeble, weak, guildmaster has lost his authority. He has resorted to cruelty and despotism to try to hold on to his guildmaster status, but lacks the strength even to do this effectively. Guildmembers have drifted away in open contempt, but have not yet formed a separate guild (that would be Opposition, not Anarchy). They don't have the heart to kill the old thief, either (guildmasters appoint their own successors, the DM decides, so he'd have to be killed).
The DM rolls on Table 16 before all this has sunk in—if there isn't a guild, how can it have relations with outsiders and freelancers? But the roll of 19, Special Relationship, stimulates some further thoughts in the DM's head.
The DM decides that the guildmaster has managed to hang on to a small rump of the guild—1d6, he decides, and rolls just 4. Later on, he will select these as being primarily senior and compatible with the guildmaster's alignment. There is no need for the standard percentile roll to determine the percentage in the guild, because this is a special and very unusual circumstance. The other 16 thieves all work independently, maybe allying with each other in small groups for the odd job now and then. Perhaps a lack of coordination among them means that some targets are hit too often, which wouldn't happen if the guild was coordinating matters properly. Maybe this is why some merchants are so desperate that they want warfare declared on the thieves—this makes very good sense. It also explains why the law is tolerant—they know it's going to be hard to track down and deal with any central organization which really cuts the mustard in Mallain, and the DM adds this detail to his notes.
The "Special Relationship" is that holding between the rump of the guild, and the freelancers still in town. To complete the picture, though, the DM rolls another d20—giving a result of 6, hostility. This is the attitude of all the thieves of Mallain (or most of them!) to outsiders from beyond the town, to complete the picture.
The DM now has to determine the levels of the thieves in Mallain. There are 21 thieves in the town, and from Table 17 the DM determines the levels of the seniors as 8th, 6th, 4th (two), and 3rd. From the 5xd3 and 5xd2 rolls, another two 3rd-level and four 2nd-level are added. The remaining 10 thieves will all be apprentices. The DM records these figures on some rough paper.
From Tables 18, 19, and 20 the DM makes die rolls to detail these thieves. There are 5% half-elves and 5% halflings in Mallain, but no full elves or gnomes, so the DM decides in advance to replace any elf rolled up with a half-elf, and any gnome with a halfling. Two thieves were not rolled randomly; the 8th-level human guildmaster, and the 6th-level half-elven thief the DM wants to use as a plot element to advance the theme of anarchy within the guild.
The half-elf is a dashing, romantic rogue-figure who is the focus of the opposition to the ailing old guildmaster. He has musicianship skills, and a brother who is a bard—hence one reason for the guildmaster's hostility to bards (this detail is added to the record sheet). This DM sees this character as very chaotic, and one who doesn't wish to be guildmaster. But the old guildmaster hates his charisma, youthfulness, and character, and has always blocked his progress. Now he sees him as the enemy who has drawn away the other thieves—a special relationship indeed, a very tempestuous and intrigue-ridden state of affairs. Added to this is the fact that the half-elf doesn't want to be guildmaster, but the juniors who have deserted the guild are begging him to lead them in a coup against the old guard. He alone has the experience and charisma to do this. The DM has been watching a few Errol Flynn movies of late. However, while Evlarel the half-elf is chaotic good, the old guildmaster is Neutral—it is too obvious and unsubtle to make him evil, which would submerge many of the intrigues into a simplistic good-versus-evil battle. But most of those staying loyal are evil—if they have to be eliminated, the DM prefers them to be evil than to encourage his PCs to attack and kill neutrals.
After this flight of fancy the DM comes back to earth. The guild is in a state of uproar and anarchy, but there are still some practical details to attend to. Guild dues still have to be decided—these will be the old rates, which applied when the guild was not torn asunder, but they are useful as a guide to what the reformed guild (if it does reform) will accept. (The DM notes them in brackets.) A similar consideration applies to normal resources, but the DM also notes the present availability (poor) by way of an update. Special resources are important—the DM determines that the thieves' guild has a government snitch, a personal friend of the guildmaster, and this stool-pigeon is used to prime the military to arrest the hapless half-elf, driving him further underground, and making him an even more elusive and mysterious figure. The war between old Halradur and Evlarel gets hotter by the moment.
As for major activities, the DM decides that in such a fairly boring town as Mallain there is no scope for anything especially unusual. The declining guildmaster would not have had the strength of will to maintain any really nefarious activities. Individual thieves may kidnap, but the guild doesn't organize such actions. The guildhouse is located in the cellars of a local tavern, the DM decides; the Baron of Beef, run by one of the few thieves left who stays loyal to Halradur. This isn't a particularly creative design element, but the DM knows that matters are likely to be all-change in Mallain soon, and so can't be bothered to think up anything especially unusual. The tavern will make a good location for a final shoot-out in any event.
What began as a short exercise in rolling up a thieves' guild has now turned into a powerful intrigue which could cast a long shadow over most aspects of life in this town. The central struggle between an old guildmaster, with a small evil coterie, and desperate young thieves looking to a reluctant new leader is going to enmesh the unwary PCs as soon as they enter the place!