Have you ever run a D&D campaign where the main focus was not on standard adventuring but on thief activities (e.g., breaking and entering, thief guild activities, etc.)?

Quote from: RPGPundit;801955Have you ever run a D&D campaign where the main focus was not on standard adventuring but on thief activities (e.g., breaking and entering, thief guild activities, etc.)?

Well, I'm running James Raggi's The Grinding Gear at the moment (intended to run it as a one shot, has turned into a mini-campaign with six sessions so far.)
The party basically started out looting an old inn and now they are looting an old crypt. They're just a bunch of looters.

i have not but i have recently reread all the prestige classes in complete divine and this gives me an idea for a temple raider of olidrama (complete divine page 67) based campaign

in fact if i can tie it into the setting im curently building/running it may give the newly ascended (or about to ascend depends on if Varakhuts stop there hunt at divine rank 0 or 1 (i want to have it throw itself at the temple in a last ditch effort) but for that i need to work out what book they are in (plus i will need that anyway so i can have the fight its a wizard20/cleric20 so it could wipe the floor with it most likely but i want to let the players help in the defense)) deity its first enemy

oh god thats a lot of parenthisis

A number of times.

Last time was just before 4e came out.

I mix in politics with that type of campaign.

I have never done it and probably never will but there was a French RPG called Nightprowler where you played a team of thieves/burglards who planned their next heist.

i played in a wfrp campaign that turned that way. it was fun up to a point.

Constantly though the PC's may not all be actual thief class.
Setting up a guild, gang wars, heists, long cons, spies, scouts, bounty hunters, outlaws, pirates, etc.

If you look at the movies an all thief campaign can look like oceans's 11, the godfather, the sting, gangs of new York, the thief of Baghdad, robin hood or the wire. In books if the lies of Locke lamora (even if he is really a optimized 2.5era cleric with spells) doesn't make you want to run a d&d campaign you are in the wrong hobby.

City-centered fantasy campaigns can get quite biased towards thievery.

Thieves are to cities as rangers to the wilderness.

Quote from: ostap bender;801970i played in a wfrp campaign that turned that way. it was fun up to a point.

Same here. We tried using different Rogue-like classes (including a cleric of Ranald) and some were simply better at thievery than others, mechanically and fluff-wise.

I probably won't do that again.

Ran a short AD&D Lankhmar campaign that was very thief centric. Most of the PCs were either thieves or fighter/thieves. The lower magic level and lack of PC spell casters really made magic something bizarre and mysterious. That campaign had a great S&S vibe.

I've wanted to for quite some time, but I haven't yet had the opportunity.  I imagine it could work in about any system, but with what I've got now I would probably use either ACKS (thieves guilds and downtime actions built in) or Spellbound Kingdoms (start a guild around the PCs right off the bat and let them build it up).

As an aside, somewhere -I don't remember where; I wish I did have a link- I read the story of the old school D&D group back in the day that needed a thief.  So all the players took a break from their regular characters, and everybody at the table rolled up about six thieves each.  Then they all went on a massive crime spree in town.  The lone surviving, unimprisoned, newly leveled thief got to join the party, and everyone else picked up where they left off.

Its a little goofy, but I like the style of it.  I can actually see doing some kind of character funnel for a classic D&D-style thieves guild, though.

D&D 2e rules really lent itself to a Thief game. Both the multiclassing and the spending points on the specific Thief skills both allowed everybody to be a thief, but still have their own specialties. As somebody mentioned earlier, these specialties made planning heists feel a lot like a fantasy Ocean's 11.

I ran a small local con tournament game that was all thief party assigned to run a heist. Due to my lack of skill at the time they planned the crime but ran out of real time to excute the plan. They all still had fun planning and executing the set up and such, had 6 thief characters with different skill sets (Ad&D 2nd edition I think) face man, thug, second story man, generalist, etc.

I own the old 1980 or so thieves guild game by judges guild (I think) which was all about running that sort of game.

I have always wanted to run a purely thief / guild based, game it would be a blast but gotta find the right group.

Not an entire campaign, but I have created an adventure in 5e inspired by the Vorovski Mir, where every PC has the criminal background.

Quote from: RPGPundit;801955Have you ever run a D&D campaign where the main focus was not on standard adventuring but on thief activities (e.g., breaking and entering, thief guild activities, etc.)?

YES!

When I was doing some feature-writing for Dragon back in the day, they asked us to give them a list of ideas of things we'd like to write about. I did an outline for a feature on running an entire campaign set around a thieves guild - the ideas spiraled WAY out of scope of what an article to contain and it would have been better served as a book.

But! It's definitely viable. The concept is that the GM has to center the game around a city. Keeping the initial scope of the game local. But you have to outline the tiers of criminal activity that exist in your location and who runs the show (the Guild).

The thing is you need to break the misconception that most players think "Thieves Guilds" are only for the Thief Class. Which is silly. Thieves guilds need leg-breakers, and healers, and the materialistic magician if they can get their hands on one - like anyone else. They use what works. Generally speaking - you should keep things relatively low-magic (since it defeats the purpose of many Thief-skills - but not always).

There can be tiers of progression that starts with street gangs trying to gain notice of the Guild. Or if there are more than one Guild - you have instant rivalry that can cause a LOT of low-level drama in terms of the PC's being drawn to one Guild or another. The idea is that by starting PC's at the low end of the pool - they get to establish their bonafides

The next tier - is the actual Guild(s) level. Where the various scams and jobs of Guild life allow for mission-based assignments and lots of roleplaying with establishing contacts, running side-scams. Dealing with rivals. Dealing with the Law. etc.

The next tier - Shotcallers. The Guild business IS your business. So everything that gets you to this stage is already well established. Day-to-day activities are handled by your sub-ordinates (possibly other PC's) so the goal at this stage is the growth of the Guild into other realms - possibly other cities, maybe even taking control of the established authority itself?

It's a big help to you in understanding how commerce actually works in your city. What are the major trade factors, who runs the law-enforcement? what are the laws? Where do thieves go when they're caught? What establishments are "safe"? Are there only one Guild in the city? Who controls WHAT - "what" being the various vices that exist. How is the Guild organized?

I had a list of scams and con-artists jobs. Breaking and Entering was for the pro's. Illegal pit-fighting, prostitution, drug-running, poison-making, general smuggling (which is a bread-crumb to bringing Guild thieves to other cities to deal with OTHER Guilds - or to establish themselves there and perhaps start a Guild war).

Yeah... I could go on and on... You can have a full campaign without ever leaving your city.