One of my players wants to use his Criminal Contact Background Feature to obtain information about a thieves guild located in a major city which the party visited recently. Essentially, this will involve hiring people to spy on the guild or bribing members to sell out what they know, including organization, leadership, safehouses and routes for moving goods and people. In either case it is going to be risky and probably expensive. I wanted to know whether there are any resources available to deal with this type of transaction. I am having difficulty determining what the costs would be. How much time the task would require and what the chances are of his inquiry being exposed. Since he has asked for verification from three different sources, it seems unlikely that he will receive false tidings although, he could be given conflicting reports. This is something that will probably play out in the background for a while before coming to a head and I want it to play out in a way that is fair to everyone. Any suggestions are welcome.
Can't offer much advice. I know of no resources because so much depends on the specifics of your setting. How much it will cost? Base it on how much money the Thieves Guild brings in per day perhaps? How long it will take? The faster they try to make it happen, the less they are going to get. Verification of information from 3 sources sounds like months or years worth of effort, not days or weeks.
There is one I can help you with. What are the chances inquiry will be exposed? 100%. Probably inside of the first or second week of inquiry. They get one, and just one, Criminal Contact that they can trust. Everyone else? Not so much. The kinds of people who are actually in a position to spy on the Thieves Guild are also the sorts of people who will sell the player out, and which side are they going to be more afraid of? Bribing people is all well and good, but can they be trusted to stay bribed? If they are willing to take money to sell out the Guild, you better believe they will take money to sell out the player too. Possibly both at the same time. Double Agent is a great way to make money. The risk goes up exponentially for each person the player brings into it.
Yeah, I like the idea of a double agent. You don’t want to negate the coolness of a player’s class feature by giving them false info, but the Guild might strike back at some point...
As mentioned, spying on an underground organization is extremely risky, and even more so when it is an illegal underground organization. If I needed to do this, I would send in someone already unquestioningly loyal to me to infiltrate the thieves guild or infiltrate it myself. So if I were a thief, then maybe I might feel confident enough to try it. If I were not a thief, I might try to gather intel in taverns and among the guardsmen but the quality of this intel would be very poor. Maybe if I got real lucky I might find a fence that I could develop a relationship with that would let something useful slip now and then. You might hit the jackpot and find a recent outcast that wants to spill what he knows just for revenge and a full bottle of spirits.
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One of my players wants to use his Criminal Contact Background Feature to obtain information about a thieves guild located in a major city which the party visited recently.
Essentially, this will involve hiring people to spy on the guild or bribing members to sell out what they know, including organization, leadership, safehouses and routes for moving goods and people. In either case it is going to be risky and probably expensive. I wanted to know whether there are any resources available to deal with this type of transaction.
I am having difficulty determining what the costs would be. How much time the task would require and what the chances are of his inquiry being exposed. Since he has asked for verification from three different sources, it seems unlikely that he will receive false tidings although, he could be given conflicting reports.
This is something that will probably play out in the background for a while before coming to a head and I want it to play out in a way that is fair to everyone. Any suggestions are welcome.
Can't offer much advice. I know of no resources because so much depends on the specifics of your setting. How much it will cost? Base it on how much money the Thieves Guild brings in per day perhaps? How long it will take? The faster they try to make it happen, the less they are going to get. Verification of information from 3 sources sounds like months or years worth of effort, not days or weeks.
There is one I can help you with. What are the chances inquiry will be exposed? 100%. Probably inside of the first or second week of inquiry. They get one, and just one, Criminal Contact that they can trust. Everyone else? Not so much. The kinds of people who are actually in a position to spy on the Thieves Guild are also the sorts of people who will sell the player out, and which side are they going to be more afraid of? Bribing people is all well and good, but can they be trusted to stay bribed? If they are willing to take money to sell out the Guild, you better believe they will take money to sell out the player too. Possibly both at the same time. Double Agent is a great way to make money. The risk goes up exponentially for each person the player brings into it.
<Insert clever signature here>
Yeah, I like the idea of a double agent. You don’t want to negate the coolness of a player’s class feature by giving them false info, but the Guild might strike back at some point...
Wizard (Gandalf) of the Tolkien Club
As mentioned, spying on an underground organization is extremely risky, and even more so when it is an illegal underground organization. If I needed to do this, I would send in someone already unquestioningly loyal to me to infiltrate the thieves guild or infiltrate it myself. So if I were a thief, then maybe I might feel confident enough to try it. If I were not a thief, I might try to gather intel in taverns and among the guardsmen but the quality of this intel would be very poor. Maybe if I got real lucky I might find a fence that I could develop a relationship with that would let something useful slip now and then. You might hit the jackpot and find a recent outcast that wants to spill what he knows just for revenge and a full bottle of spirits.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt