Den of Thieves

[Tomemancer]

The title is a work in progress.

Concept
The idea of the module is to build an RPG with some mini-games that are roguelike. The mini-games are definitely ambitious and time consuming so will be introduced gradually. As an example, consider the lockpicking mini-game: the basic idea would be to escape a maze as a low light radius "tool". The number of lockpicks you have is the number of lives you have. You would try to avoid pitfalls like alarms, instant lockpick breaking, magical locks, etc all in the form of monsters. Ever thought your character looked like a tool in combat? Well, now they definitely do.

The theme is basically the underbelly of an urban fantasy city (in some cases nearby villages or towns). You can decide to go it alone or work in a faction (except for Marauders, which are forced to join a faction). Each class has a different winning condition, but there is a universal winning condition (being elected mayor (emperor?) of the city).

Talents
Some talents are covert, others are overt. This is basically whether the talent has a stealth component or not.

Lying
Stealing (covert) / Thuggery (overt)
Threatening
Hurting (Note: combat will be very difficult!)
Inciting (covert) / Troublemaking (overt)
Eluding (covert) / Fleeing (overt)

Classes
Robber
Stealing > Eluding > Fleeing > Threatening
Stealing is the primary tool of the Robber. Thievery can be dangerous, so while many work alone, many others choose to work within criminal organizations. Robbers come with a wide range of ability and may be anything from the pickpocketing child on the street to the masterful art thief stealing from a heavily guarded mansion. Since nearly all Robbers have desperate origins, they are willing to do just about anything to get out of hairy situations.

Highwayman
Threatening > Thuggery > Hurting > Fleeing
These brigands are experts at setting up ambushes or traps for unsuspecting travellers. While many of these bandits are merely nomadic loosely-knit bands of cowardly outlaws, some highwaymen can be extremely dangerous and ruthless. After all, why leave witnesses?

Marauder
Hurting > Troublemaking > Thuggery > Fleeing
It's a sad fact of life, the fastest way for a nobody like you to gain and exert power is to pillage and murder those more helpless than you. Understandably, this sort of lifestyle quickly degrades the soul, and most Marauders become psychopaths living for chaos and destruction. Having such a weak moral code comes with benefits, such as having no problem sacrificing comrades as decoys when things turn unfavorable.

Miscreant
Inciting > Troublemaking > Lying > Threatening > Stealing > Eluding
These anarchists want to tear down the pillars of society. Some are reckless and openly escalate tense situations (especially involving the authorities), while others are terrorists planning methodically or inciting riots from the shadows. Often these people work to sway public opinion from mere distrust to outright revolution, but when all else fails, Miscreants have little problem resorting to scamming, threatening, or stealing to get what they want.

Swindler
Lying > Stealing > Threatening > Eluding
These scammers range from the hustler looking to take your money in a rigged game to the con artist, the master of manipulations. For the Swindler, trust is a one way street right up their alley. They choose which laws to break very carefully, and though threats may be a tool in their bag of tricks, they rarely resort to violence. The best Swindlers even have a sixth sense about when their plan is blown and simply disappear.

[Zonk]

Sounds interesting although I'm not really excited at that simple lockpicking example, seems like it would be very...odd to me.

What will the fantasy elements be?
Robbing wizard towers/homes with summoned guardians that are very strong but have specific weakness perhaps? Could have a magic skill . though the player might only get to do minor tricks...perhaps a 'Charlatan' class which was the best at that?. They're Charlatans but they might eventually have figured some *REAL* magic. Maybe background was they got kicked out of Wizard school/are an ex-Wizard apprentice.


Also not sure on the conceptual difference between Thuggery, Threatening and Hurting... (I guess I can see it between Threatening and actually Hurting but Thuggery sounds like a mix of the two?)

[Tomemancer]

The lockpicking example is just an example of how the roguelike element of the game would be utilized. In the game proper there would be some combat, but I wanted to make it extremely difficult to just mass murder everyone. I secretly want to demonstrate how the roguelike playing style can be used for things other than mass murder.

I was thinking that magic would be in the world, but it would be super powerful/rare so not available to the player except in very limited circumstances.

About Thuggery - it is supposed to be overt stealing. What I mean by that is something like purse snatching. I don't want every skill to be about destruction and killing, so hurting (which is destruction and killing) is a separate thing altogether. For example, a mugger is someone who would use Thuggery to steal a purse but doesn't really intend to hurt anyone. There's intentionally a little overlap between some of the talents for synergy sake. So for purse stealing (all values relative):

Someone with moderate Threatening can intimidate the wearer into giving over the purse
Someone with (very) high Stealing can steal the purse without being detected
Someone with low Thuggery and moderate fleeing can just snatch the purse and run
Someone with high Hurting can just kill the wearer and take the purse
Someone with high Inciting and moderate Stealing can accuse the wearer of theft, and in the commotion steal the purse

[Kaja Rainbow]

Thuggery isn't a very good name for that talent. I'd use Snatching. It pretty much has the exact connotation you want (overtly just grabbing something). There's a reason they refer to purse snatchers.

Also I think you should beware of creating gimmicky minigames that have no sense of connection with what you're doing. Just look at how Zonk said the locking minigame sounded very odd. I think a lot of players will have that opinion. If you want to make minigames, you should make them have some relation to what you're actually doing, even if it's an abstracted version.