The Upstanding Citizens Guild

So here's the deal. 

Through separate events in both Game of the East and Game of the West*, a thieves' society sprang into life at the speed of DM-prov - purely because it needed to. That's exactly the phrase I'm looking for - "sprang into life" - as it feels less like it's coming out of my head and more like it's coming out of the world itself, as the World demanded it. This society did not exist before the first session; this society did not have motives until the second. The aim of today's post is to truly type it into full being. (And perhaps encourage my players to read my blog, which is meant to tell you about Daga without letting any spoilers through.)

The Upstanding Citizens Guild

The Upstanding Citizens are a fully licensed and operational guild. Their officially stated guild activities are "socializing, wealth management, and espionage." They lack a known guild hall, but as no members have ever complained on this point, it is merely considered an eccentricity. The UCG holds a number of very popular balls in the Capital of Carrigtrean each year. The guild claims no religious affiliation, but its members have been known to serve as agents for Logan on more than one occasion. 

The UCG openly welcomes all races and professions. Accordingly, many of its members are Beastmen, who often lack other working opportunities in urban areas. Their leader is known solely as Brook. A common way of asking whether a given person has membership in the UCG is to ask if they "have heard the babbling brook." This is merely a formality, of course, as the guild has a number of true passwords and signs that are closely guarded and changed each moon-turn. 

*I have been running multiple sessions of Bonehenge, and without the help of Evernote, I would be positively schizophrenic now. 

Game of the East: Online game with my friends back on the east coast.

Game of the West: In-person home game with my friends here on the west coast.

Ad Hoc: Random sessions open to the G+ community.

Gaming blog, I has it! Also, Santicore.

I suppose I've gotten to that point in DMing where I need a gaming blog. Nothing to do but accept it and start posting my ideas here when I get the urge to create involved Evernote entries regarding torques at 3 AM.

Let me start by posting my Bonehenge Player's Guide. It is a serious work in progress, but the Players appear to be using it successfully to create characters in my Labyrinth Lord based tabletop game.

Next, SANTICORE RESULTS.

I received a lovely and well-thought out Were-Man Race Description in response to my extremely vague request born of frustration that I couldn't come up with feats or abilities that I actually liked and found playable on my own. My Beastman class exists, you see, but my nebulous "you can transform sometimes starting at level 3"rule was a sort of note to myself to get my act together by the time someone hit level 3.

Good stuff, though incorporating it into my class has created a sort of existential crisis over the entire idea of feats and abilities, how I want to do them for all of my mostly-homebrewed races and classes, and whether I've made some of them far too powerful compared to others. That probably deserves a post of its own later.

MEANWHILE, the request *I* received for "a scene of hierogamy" was, in my opinion, an invitation to create slapstick in table form.