By licenced incidentally, serial numbers crudely filed off so as to avoid lawsuits is fine by me.

Thief, the whole series.  It just seems designed for gaming.  Thieves, keepers, pagans, hammerites, wierd magical steam tech, treasure, undead, creepy towns and temples.

Deadly, rewards careful planning and thought, full of great NPC organisations, it just seems absolutely crying out for a paper and pencil treatment.  Ideally not d20, or not with escalating hit points anyway, as a certain fragility of character is key to the setting concept.

Thoughts?  How would you do it?  And what would you like to see?

Thief was a great game, even if it did get lost slightly in the avalanche of stealthy games that emerged post Metal Gear Solid.

I adore thief games because they invariably invite you to push your luck.  You start off robbing poor people then you try the more difficult richer people and the steepness of the reward curve and the difficulty curve always make you want to take risks as you think "well if I survive that I'll have LOADS of loot".

In fact, one of my pet hates in RPGs is when the GM downplays the rewards because he doesn't want us to get rich too soon even if we took huge risks to get it.  I remember one game where we intricately planned this heist whereby we were A) stealing some princess's jewels and B) framing someone else in order to kick off a war between two people we didn't like.

The war kicked off fine but all the planning was wasted when we only got a few gold pieces for the jewels.  I felt defiled.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalThief was a great game, even if it did get lost slightly in the avalanche of stealthy games that emerged post Metal Gear Solid.

I adore thief games because they invariably invite you to push your luck.  You start off robbing poor people then you try the more difficult richer people and the steepness of the reward curve and the difficulty curve always make you want to take risks as you think "well if I survive that I'll have LOADS of loot".

In fact, one of my pet hates in RPGs is when the GM downplays the rewards because he doesn't want us to get rich too soon even if we took huge risks to get it.  I remember one game where we intricately planned this heist whereby we were A) stealing some princess's jewels and B) framing someone else in order to kick off a war between two people we didn't like.

The war kicked off fine but all the planning was wasted when we only got a few gold pieces for the jewels.  I felt defiled.

Actually, you capture there something which I think can be very hard to balance.

Firstly, I tend to think that sometimes some stuff should result in great loot for little risk, sometimes tons of risk may yield little loot, but generally risk and loot should be linked as though oddities will happen if the loot is too easy the question arises of why someone else hasn't taken it yet.  The only reason I think the first two should sometimes happen is just that sometimes life just isn't fair for good or ill, but over time the averages should work out so that the difficulty of the job and the value of the haul are fairly clearly linked.

The next bit is keeping it fair while keeping it interesting.  Let's say you do a great job of looting something, if everyone is really enjoying the robbery side of things and they're all suddenly rich then that's just killed what everyone was enjoying as they don't need to do it anymore.  If however they don't get a great reward you've still killed it as you've just hosed the players and all their effort.

I think the answer is in having something to spend it on.  Be it drink and whores, better gear, magical protection or a good farm with healthy animals the characters need something that will soak up the money so that there is still incentive not just to retire but that will soak it up in a way that adds to the character - that isn't just zero sum.  If a character blows his cash but afterwards has a fine new sword, a richly appointed townhouse and a new mistress but now needs money again then the player has seen a real reward but there is still incentive to keep adventuring.

That said, I'm firmly of the view that characters who don't die should by and large get rich, that's why people do this.  If the rewards weren't huge nobody would risk their lives.

What is a pain is if a player just won't spend the money.  I had one once where the party made tons of cash eventually, they became quite wealthy. One bought a house with servants, another bought books for magical research, and one lived in the same garret apartment with the same crappy food and spent nothing.  I could never work out what he was actually adventuring for, the others all had goals and adventured to get cash to realise those goals, he just seemed to like having a lot of money in the bank.

the very same reasons it made a great computer game, are the same reasons it would fail as an RPG.

Quote from: Lawbagthe very same reasons it made a great computer game, are the same reasons it would fail as an RPG.

I know of people who have successfully run it as a tabletop, and the setting seems perfectly well suited.  What makes you say this?  I don't see any reason at all you couldn't do it as a party based game.

Quote from: BalbinusFirstly, I tend to think that sometimes some stuff should result in great loot for little risk, sometimes tons of risk may yield little loot, but generally risk and loot should be linked as though oddities will happen if the loot is too easy the question arises of why someone else hasn't taken it yet.  The only reason I think the first two should sometimes happen is just that sometimes life just isn't fair for good or ill, but over time the averages should work out so that the difficulty of the job and the value of the haul are fairly clearly linked.

The next bit is keeping it fair while keeping it interesting.  Let's say you do a great job of looting something, if everyone is really enjoying the robbery side of things and they're all suddenly rich then that's just killed what everyone was enjoying as they don't need to do it anymore.  If however they don't get a great reward you've still killed it as you've just hosed the players and all their effort.

  As for the first bit, yeah, I totally agree.  It also adds to the verisimilitude if there's a sense of randomness in there.  It shouldn't be completely straight-forward to do risk/benefit analyses.  One time you could stumble across another thief's nest egg in an otherwise tumble-down house.  Another time you might break into the palace of the Marsh Hierophant only to learn that he has gone to a conclave and taken his most impressive pieces of bling with him (because we all know that religious types love their bling).

  As for the second bit, I think money, if treated as something other than a character comodity like hit points, is rarely zero sum.  If you're a group of blokes living out of a one room apartment in the shades and suddenly you have enough money to buy a small mansion aren't the authorities going to take an interest?  What about the guy whose money they stole... surely he's not going to just suck it up.  Similarly if the group risk their lives and get nothing then clearly they've been fed a line by someone.  Who? Why?  In truth, money brings with it complications and it shouldn't ever kill the fun.

  Consider The Long Good Friday - Incredibly wealthy and succesful gangster has seen off all the competition and lives on a luxury yacht with a beautiful refined wife.  Suddenly his friends and employees start turning up dead and his properties are being blown up.  What was Bob Hoskins playing if not a bloke who started out small and then got the loot only to find out that he still had problems?

  Actually, that's one thing that has always annoyed me about the Grand Theft Auto series and particularly San Andreas.  You start off with nothing and you gradually start to build something... you take over a few neighbourhoods and you get some contacts.  The problem is that you then just keep doing the same thing, earning more and more money but the challenges stay precisely the same.

Quote from: Mr. AnalyticalAs for the second bit, I think money, if treated as something other than a character comodity like hit points, is rarely zero sum.  If you're a group of blokes living out of a one room apartment in the shades and suddenly you have enough money to buy a small mansion aren't the authorities going to take an interest?  What about the guy whose money they stole... surely he's not going to just suck it up.  Similarly if the group risk their lives and get nothing then clearly they've been fed a line by someone.  Who? Why?  In truth, money brings with it complications and it shouldn't ever kill the fun.

Good points all, plus you become a target for thieves yourself of course.  If you splash the money about people start asking where it came from, if you don't then what's the point of getting it?  Tax shakedowns, competing thieves, private investigations to track the loot.

Hm, you make it all sound quite fun actually.

Quote from: BalbinusThoughts?

I'd love to write it. The hammerites, in particular, are something I could really sink my teeth into as a writer.

I missed the game entirely when it was new (because I rarely bother with computer games) but Warren Spector and I were talking about what computer games I liked and I gave my usual answer of "not much since Doom II" and he sang the game's praises (this was before he was personally involved with it; he was busy with Deus Ex at that time), so later on I tried it (with a bargain-bin copy of Thief Gold) and found it to be a work of something approaching Total Awesome. Got very hooked, and I think the setting would be a very rich one if properly developed for table-games.

"The Simple Life" The Role Playing Game

*Runs Away*

I think Pirates of the Caribean would be a great D20 setting. Just add a bunch of piratey classes.

Who else thinks the girl in that movie is level 6 Noble/2 Swashbuckler.

Jack Sparrow. Level 5 Rogue/3 Swashbuckler/1 Captain.

That blonde guy. Level 8 Swashbuckler.

So easy.

Quote from: KrakaJakI think Pirates of the Caribean would be a great D20 setting. Just add a bunch of piratey classes.

Who else thinks the girl in that movie is level 6 Noble/2 Swashbuckler.

Jack Sparrow. Level 5 Rogue/3 Swashbuckler/1 Captain.

That blonde guy. Level 8 Swashbuckler.

So easy.

How about a system that is customer tailered for the setting instead of throwing D20 at it.

Because a Pirateds of the Caribean game sounds like fun but not if its D20

I'd like to see a good rpg based on the new battlestar galactica.

By good I mean very faithful to the material, with inut from the writers and such.

Quote from: Dominus NoxI'd like to see a good rpg based on the new battlestar galactica.

By good I mean very faithful to the material, with inut from the writers and such.

Now there's a bit of irony.

Quote from: KrakaJakI think Pirates of the Caribean would be a great D20 setting. Just add a bunch of piratey classes.

Skull & Bones is almost a PotC game as-written.

Quote from: Geek MessiahHow about a system that is customer tailered for the setting instead of throwing D20 at it.

I think Skull & Bones demonstrates pretty handily that D20 can be just as easily tweaked to fit the feel as a custom game could be crafted.

Quote from: Dominus NoxI'd like to see a good rpg based on the new battlestar galactica.

By good I mean very faithful to the material, with inut from the writers and such.

Well from what I hear MWP is doing the BSG RPG and they have great access to the writers. So I guess we will just have to wait and see.