Best of the Web - Thieves Guilds, Resources, & Inventory

Dungeons and Possums has a couple of posts on Thieves Guilds and Gangs called Thoughts on Thieves' Guilds and More Thoughts on Thieves' Guilds. Both are worth a look. I've always thought Thieves Guilds of the sort shown in the first D&D movie are silly and I've always used more of a Yakuza/Mafia/Triads organized crime model. Then I read a bit in the 'zine Metal Gods of Ur-Hadad issue one had a Street Gang and neighborhood generator (loved that 'zine). Now Dungeons and Possums adds to the gang pile with lots of additional tables to create an interesting gang. Well worth the read.

Rick Stump at Don't Split the Party has a nice post on using logistics to connect players to the campaign world. It is called If Your Torches Burn for only One Hour your NPCs will be More Important and it's thought provoking and worth a read. I like the idea, I really like the idea, myself I've been trying to do something like that but haven't gotten beyond simplify things to have supplies in 'days' rather than hours.

The Oblidisideryptch has a post called On Inventory in which he discusses mental inventory. There is a lot in there about Trauma that I don't really know how to unpack but the post got me thinking about spell slots and memory and the GLOG idea of spells as living daemons of some kind packed/trapped in your brain. Combine that idea with this bit:

Photo of a loved one: As long as you possess this item, you may use it to store up to 3 slots of Stress. If you ever lose it, though, you gain Stress equal to twice the Stress in the photo.

Imagine that photo is a rune of glyph that increases your number of spell slots as long as you can see it prior to casting you are good. It jogs your memory. My imagination is churning and the ideas are still half baked but I think there might be something there.

Also Oblidisideryptch started the post mentioning the short story "The Things They Carried" which dove-tails with some of my thoughts on giving more personality to different items. Another idea I need to revive and work on. Nothing special, but a table to tell you more about starting equipment to give a character color. Was the sword a family weapon handed down or was it given by the master during weapons training? Found on a battlefield or stolen? A mundane item can provide a lot of character and as far as I know nobody has really exploited this, yet.