No Thieves Guild - a Thief Taker's Guild

It is widely agreed that a 'Thieves Guild' is a ridiculous idea. After all, a guild is a group of tradesmen who have a legally recognized monopoly on a particular segment of the economy. What ruler is going to give a monopoly on stealing things to a bunch of robbers and thieves? They don't want to build a thriving and well-regulated tradition of larceny, they want people to stop stealing from one another. Or at least, stop doing it in ways that the ruler has to do something about, instead of outsourcing it to local organizations.

Thus, my proposed solution: there is no such thing as a 'Thieves Guild'. But there is a 'Guild of Thief-Takers, Watchmen and Guards' which has a monopoly on offering crime-prevention services. You might go to them in order to:

-Hire a bouncer, night watchman or caravan guard to toss out unruly patrons, patrol a warehouse or guard against bandits on the road respectively. The guild provides these burly guildsmen with the necessary equipment, training and moral education necessary to perform their appointed duties without risk of slacking, bribe-taking, cowardice, wenching, gambling or inattentiveness. Not that you have any alternatives, of course: the Guild has its monopoly.

-Pay an annual fee to register your home or business as a secured property, which results in regular patrols each night and a plaque informing would-be thieves that anyone who burgles this address will be beaten within an inch of their lives by the local Thief-Takers, men and women of fearsome repute. The fee is larger, of course, if you sign up only after being stolen from.

-Look through the pile of recovered stolen goods and then pay a small ransom to have whatever property belongs to you returned to your possession. Fees are cheaper if you have proof that it belongs to you, but if you are a good client of the guild and are up to date on all secured property fees, you can report your goods as 'stolen' after discovering their presence at the Guild. If your stolen goods aren't in there, you can leave a description and your deposit on the 'ransom'. Someone will get you once your goods are 'found'.

-Conversely, if you happen to come across some suspected stolen goods, there is a small reward for surrendering them to the Guild. No questions asked on where exactly you got the goods from, as long as there's no reason to think you might be the sort of burglar who goes after up-to-date secured clients. Incidentally, a list of wealthy persons who are and are not secured clients can be obtained for a small fee at any Guild desk. For investor awareness, of course. You wouldn't want to go into business with someone unsecured.

-Place a bounty against a particularly notorious bandit or outlaw. This one isn't even dubiously legal. They'll legitimately go after notorious outlaws to keep their reputation with the Crown from going too horribly crooked.

[Cloak-and-Sword] The Muse

For the ongoing Cloak-and-Sword bandwagon.

You are a Muse, an invisible and uncouth messenger between the Seen and Unseen worlds. As a class, you have a great deal of exploration potential, but are forced to work indirectly, through disreputable and vicious sorts.

What for us are all distractions of men's fellowship and wiles;
What for us the Goddess Pleasure with her meretricious smiles.

Artist: You start with 2HD Artist who feels Espirit for you and one other. Roll three times on the Lower Class Occupation Table to determine what your Artist does to keep itself occupied when it is not serving you. Choose between one and three vices for your Artist. They can never achieve financial or social success while you still live; these vices consume any funds they accrue and sour any reputation they acquire within the year. 

Muse: You are a Spirit, with all that entails. Angels can see you, as can your Artist. Other humans cannot see you, but can still recognize and listen to your invisible presence in depictions of you. This state of affairs is inverted in the Region de Fableau, which you may access through any window, mirror or lens. You cannot see, hear or pass through such apertures naturally - you only see the Region de Fableau. You cannot touch or be touched by humans or anything last touched by a human.

Immortal: Those who hear you will never forget your words, not anything seen or felt in that moment. While you still live, all who would hold Espirit for your Artist instead have Espirit for you. After you both die, all who would have Espirit for you instead have it for your Artist. Your Artist cannot die of heartbreak, consumption or disgrace while you still live, but still suffers terribly.

Composition: You get to look at the overall map of galleries, studios, dens of iniquity. You can also see the indoor map of any room containing artwork depicting you and whatever room your Artist happens to currently be in. You cast light as a torch in darkness, as the Moon at night and the Sun at day.

Artosopoeia: With an hour of conversation with your Artist, you may inspire a work of art. The medium through which they represent you is fixed when this is first used and may only be changed thereafter by the sacrifice of a sensory appendage. The Artist will continue to work along the themes of your conversation for the next week or until the piece is complete. All artwork created this way depicts you, even when it appears to depict something else.

Collaborate: Should you murder another Muse, you may steal their Artist(s). Should you seduce another Muse, you may trade one Artist of yours for one Artist of theirs, your choice which. Should you arrange for another Muse to be imprisoned, exiled or incapacitated, you may 'borrow' an Artist of theirs until their condition improves. These Artists may be more or less useful than the 2HD one that you begin the game in possession of.

[GLOG] Wuxing Wizard

 Perk: Learn two Elements (Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water) at your first template and one more with each subsequent template. Whenever a spell has an Element you know in its name, you swap it for any other Element you know.

Drawback: This tradition only teaches one spell: Transmute Element to Element. If you want more spells, you'll have to find them yourself.

Cantrips:
-When you look at a compass, you can make it point in any direction.
-When you examine a sick person, you can tell what organ is most sick.
-When you rearrange furniture, people agree it looks better that way.

Transmute Element to Element
T: [dice] objects or creatures R: 20 feet D: [sum] rounds.
Transmute one Element you know into another Element you know. The nature of the possible changes varies with the number of [dice] used and the elements chosen. All changes last for [sum] rounds divided evenly among all targets unless specified otherwise. Creating or destroying an object is permanent.

Creatures always get saves to avoid being transmuted. They can also save to stop you from transmuting an object they are holding, carrying or touching.

With one die, you may transmute loose material into loose material and emotions into emotions. When using this spell to transmute emotions, the intensity of the emotion remains constant and anything that would provoke or soothe the original emotion instead applie to the transmuted emotion.

With two dice, you may transmute rigid material into rigid material of the same shape, or sculpt loose material into up to [dice] slots of items made from appropriate rigid material. For example, Water to Wood could turn an ice sculpture into a wooden sculpture, or pull a wooden staff from a pond.

With three dice, you may transmute rigid material into loose material to deal [sum] damage to the underlying object or transmute one senses into another to (for example) see something that one could otherwise only hear. The clarity of the original sense is preserved: a faint scent becomes a murky image or a muffled sound, while a clear view becomes a clear sound.

With four dice, you may transmute animals into animals, based on what type of outer coverings they have or you may transmute loose material into an appropriate animal (ie. Fire to Wood to conjure lizards from an ash heap.) If [sum] is greater than the remaining hit points of a creature, you may perform the reverse operation, transmuting a creature into loose material.

Elements

Element	Wood	Fire	Earth	Metal	Water
Loose Material	Leaves or Petals	Flames and Ashes	Sand, Soil or Gravel	Rust or Liquid Mercury	Liquid Water or Snow
Emotion	Anger or Confidence	Excitement or Joy	Anxiety or Deep Thought	Grief or Compassion	Fear or Despair
Rigid Material	Wood, Roots or Vines	Burning Wood or Coal	Solid Stone	Any Solid Metall	Clear Solid Ice
Senses	Sight	Taste	Touch	Smell	Hearing
Outer Covering	Scales	Feathers	Bare Skin	Furs	Shell

[GLOG] Architect

 Continuing on today's "pokemon-ing dungeon rooms" train:

 Architect
+5 bonus Inspiration per Template
A. Survey, Eureka
B. Commissions
C. Infrastructure
D. Wonder

Survey: On entering a room for the first time, the Architect rolls [Templates + 1] d4s on the table below, learning the information from each result rolled. This works once per room, unless it gets renovated.

The Architect knows something about the...
1. Layout. The Architect picks a wall and learns what lies on the other side. If there is a room there, the Architect knows the dimensions of that room. Floors, ceilings and closed doors count as 'walls' for this ability.

2. History. The Architect learns when and why the room was first built. If the room is currently being used for its original purpose, the Architect gets an approximate description of the most recent user. If it isn't being used for that purpose, they learn what it's used for in the modern day.

3. Passage. The Architect ranks every possible entrance to the room in order of how likely someone is to enter the room through that entrance. Secret passages and teleportation are included in the ranking as "Secret Passage" and "Teleportation" but do not have their locations revealed.

4. Antiquity. The Architect may spend five points of Inspiration to declare that one furniture item or piece of art in the room is actually a valuable antique, worth ten times the usual sale value if sold undamaged to an interested buyer.

Inspiration: When the Architect discovers a trap, secret passage or architectural marvel, they record that feature and then add a point to their Inspiration stat. They may reproduce features seen in buildings they design by spending a point of Inspiration, or invent a feature (and add it to their list) by spending three. Invented features can't be magical, but encountered ones explicitly can be.

Eureka: Whenever the Architect rolls doubles on a Survey roll, they may insert an architectural feature of their choice into the room. The GM decides specifics such as placement, where any secret passages go, how traps get disarmed and what (if anything) is inside secret compartments. This costs just as much Inspiration as it would to add the new feature to a building the Architect was designing.

Commissions: While in town, the Architect can accept work designing rooms. The player has to actually draw out such rooms (with labels) and hand them to the GM. They get 12 gold per season of architect work, plus 1 gold per Inspiration spent on the designs. The GM is required to include these rooms in dungeons, fancy manors and other places the PCs visit if at all plausible.

Infrastructure: The Architect may now Survey outdoors. Layout treats any natural border (cliffs, rivers, tree lines) as a 'wall', History treats any space bounded by such borders as a 'room', Passage treats natural routes (trails, streams, mountain passes) as 'entrances' and Antiquity reveals natural resources instead. Eureka lets the Architect insert common terrain features for one Inspiration or ones not commonly found in the region (eg. a spring in the desert) for three.

Wonder: The Architect can spend one Inspiration to learn one of the following magical features: planar portals, rooms bigger on the inside than the outside, floating platforms, perpetual motion gearboxes and magma-proof catwalks. Each time this ability is used, the price becomes ten times higher than previously. If you can convince the GM that a magical feature should be on this list, you can spend inspiration to learn that feature too.

[GLOG] Psychic

Psychic
+1 Mind Template per level
A. Mind Palace
B. Usurpation
C. Architecture
D. Intrusion
Δ. Dream Door

Mind Palace: You have an imaginary 20' diameter, 20' tall chamber in your head with an aesthetic anyone that knows you well would recognize as yours. This is the Locus of your Mind Palace. Once per hour per template, you can touch a creature or object and create a copy of it inside your Mind Palace. This has no effect on the original; it's just a realistic mental copy.

If you have a copy of yourself (a Mind Self) inside your Mind Palace, it can interact with these mental copies. This lets you do things like touch a book and then have your Mind Self flip through it in the background, or use a copy of a wand on a copy of a tiger in order to figure out what the wand does. Making a new copy of something that already exists in your mind overwrites the old copy. This includes bringing your Mind Self back to life if they get mind-killed.

You can always perceive what is going on in your Locus and around your Mind Self. You control your Mind Self except where specified by other rules. (If they put on a mind copy of a cursed amulet, you're on your own). You have no direct way to communicate to your Mind Self, but know everything you knew at the moment you made the most recent version of them, including what you wanted them to do. They are as motivated as you are and as loyal to you as you are to you.

Usurpation: You can let your Mind Self take over your body. Your body gains access to your Mind Templates and your True Self becomes the Mind Self for the duration. After ten minutes, there is an X in 6 chance (where X is the number of times your Mind Self has been given control or refused to leave today) that the Mind Self refuses to leave, extending their Usurpation for another 10 minutes. If the chance ever increases to 6 in 6, it becomes permanent.

Architecture: You now have nine doors leading out of your Locus. By spending an hour meditating in front of a door in the real world while your Mind Self meditates in front of a door in your Mind Palace, you can permanently copy everything within 20' on the far side of the door into your Mind Palace. This includes creatures, objects, terrain, whatever. This works both with the nine doors inside your Locus and any doors you copy over using this ability. You don't have to know what's on the far side of a door to copy it, though if you don't want 3d6 orcs and/or black mold spreading through your Mind Palace, maybe you should check first.

Intrusion: While your Mind Self is standing in the Locus of your Mind Palace, you can copy anyone you make eye contact with, not just anyone you can touch. You can transmit your Mind Self into their Mind Palace (if they have one) or into their next dream or nightmare. If your Mind Self can find and defeat the person whose mind they are invading, they can rummage through their memories or use Usurpation on that person instead of on you. While your Mind Self is intruding, you cannot replace your Mind Self.
 
Mind Template: Your Mind Self is much more impressive than the real you. Pick a template from any class you qualify for. Your Mind Self has that template, but does not have your templates in the Psychic class. Nothing your Mind Self does can touch the physical world without Usurpation. A Mind Self can theoretically level up beyond what your non-Psychic templates and their Mind Templates provide, but if you ever reset or recreate them, they lose all progress.

Dream Door: If you have a Mind Palace without a Mind Self in it for a lunar month, you learn how to send your Dream Self into your Mind Palace while you sleep. If your Dream Self dies within your Mind Palace, you will never wake. Your Dream Self can do anything your Mind Self could do.

You're Using Mounts All Wrong!

 Or: "Horses Aren't Bicycles."

Consider the following scenario: the party wants to go somewhere that is Far Away. They ask the GM how long the trip will take, which results in some quick math dividing the total distance by the daily movement speed of the party. The players, hearing the result, wince and ask how much four horses would cost. They pay the fee and reduce their travel times by half. The horses are never brought up again outside of reminding the GM that the party now travels at horse speed, not walking speed.

Or, alternatively, one of the players buys a lance to go with their horse and leans into trying to joust anyone hostile-looking who they encounter in an outdoor setting. This is represented by the fact that the mounted character now moves at 60' per round, rather than 30', but still has the exact same maneuverability as a character moving around on foot.

Those are both obvious nonsense, but they share the same source: tables treating mounts as equipment, when they should be treated as hirelings. And not just nameless hirelings: the sort of hirelings who change over time, gaining personality and character as they go through shit right alongside the PCs. The sort of hirelings where you remember their names.

To that end, I propose the following two rules:

1. Use Horse Gaits.

Different horses move differently. Each horse is capable of a handful of 'gaits' (ways of moving) but a trot from a work horse and a trot from a race horse are two very different trots. Giving each horse unique gaits goes a long way toward making horses feel like specific individuals.

Walk. Every healthy horse can walk at a pace of 40' per round or 30 miles per day at a sustainable pace. If you're not doing some sort of 'changing horses at every stable' Pony Express business, this is as fast as horseback travel normally goes. Gait options don't change this any: if you canter four miles at the start of the day, your horse gets tired an hour sooner and you end up making the same net distance that day.

Trot vs. Pace. Every healthy horse can either trot or pace. Both are faster than a walk but can only be maintained for a limited amount of time. An average trotter moves at 80' per round for up to an hour at a time and an average pacer moves at 60' per round for up to two hours. Once a horse is tired from trotting/pacing, they need an hour of walking rest before they're ready to go again. Pacing is easier on untrained riders and gives a +4 bonus to any check required to stay in the saddle.

Race horses have a faster trot than usual (with 100' per round for 30 minutes or 150' per round for 20 minutes being common race horse trots) while gaited horses (ie. ones who can pace) can be trained to amble for longer and longer durations (3, 4 or even 5 hours) at their pace speed. As with pacing, ambling is easier on the rider and lets you do things in the saddle that would be much more difficult atop a trotting horse.

Canter vs Gallop. Every healthy horse can do one or the other. Some can be taught to do both. Horses who canter so at 100' to 200' / round for up to 4 miles, while horses who gallop do so at 250' to 300' / round for up to 2 miles. Once a horse is done cantering or galloping, they must walk or trot for an hour before they can do so again. Pacing and ambling doesn't count, which is one of the main reasons to prefer a trotter.

Weird Gaits. If you have a weird horse (or horse-like critter) it can have a weird gait. Kelpies can swim, fairy horses can canter onto a fairy trod, nightmares disappear into hell when galloping and skeletal steeds sacrifice their ability to trot for endless stamina at a walk.

2. Use Horse Morale.

Horses are naturally very skittish creatures. They are often afraid of things that are unfamiliar to them and need coaxed into understanding that an umbrella is not going to hurt them. Or cows. Or butterflies. Or lines painted on the ground. Or smaller horses. Every horse has their own idiosyncratic and characterful list of things that spook them. When buying a horse, working out its personality is just as important as working out what breed it is and how fast it can gallop. Hence, Horse Morale.

If you're using a system where Morale is 1d20, roll under, a horse starts with 6 Morale, +2 per thing this particular horse is spooked by. If you're using 2d6 Morale, a horse starts with 5 Morale, +1 per thing that spooks it. Horses bought at a stable start out spooked by 1d4-1 random things and thus have between 6 and 14 Morale (d20 Morale) or between 5 and 8 (2d6 Morale). Brave horses are weirder and weird horses are braver.

When horses encounter something scary (combat, loud noises, being injured, monsters) or sufficiently strange (to a horse), they test Morale. If the source of the fear is something this particular horse is spooked by, the rider needs to spend ten minutes coaxing their horse before the Morale test can even be attempted. Successfully coaxing a horse to overcome its fear on three occasions means it loses its fear. If the whole party has horses, roll a single die for all the horses, such that skittish horses either all spook at once or not.

On a success, the horse is unbothered. On a failure, the owner of the horse picks out a new idiosyncratic feature of the situation for their horse to be spooked by going forward and adds +2 Morale to their horse. If there's a goblin with a blue scarf threatening the PCs with a magic wand, the horse is more likely to be afraid of blue scarves or people holding sticks than it is to be afraid of goblins. Horses are weird like that.

[GLOG] Magic User

 A "wizard" chassis for any GLoG magic school, but one that somewhat modifies the underlying assumptions of how spells are prepared. Magic items instead of memorized spells and every kind of magic user being essentially the same thing, instead of Clerics having angels to command instead of spells or Druids having fundamental psychological and philosophical differences that make them unusable as PCs.

Starting Skill: Per Tradition. Music (Bard), Theology (Cleric), Ciphers (Druid), Anatomy (Warlock), Herbalism (Witch) or Mathematics (Wizard).

Starting Items: One Implement of each kind known, a robe or gown and a knife.

+1 MD per level
A. +2 Implements
B. Book Casting
C. +1 Implement
D. Orb Casting

Implements: When a Magic User casts a spell, they do so with some kind of magic implement, which modifies how the spell is cast. At first level, Magic Users pick two of the following four options: Chalk, Potions, Scrolls, and Wands.

Chalk: The classic way to cast a spell is to draw out an arcane diagram with chalk and then summon up a spirit to do your bidding. This sort of ritualism takes extra time (ten minutes to summon and ten to dismiss) but grants extra power: spells cast this way replace their lowest die rolled with a six, and instead of rolling for mishaps, doubles on a casting roll permit the spirit escape its bonds to cause magical mischief until it is dismissed. Note that the literal chalk isn't the implement, so much as the symbols that the chalk is used to draw. Literal chalk isn't needed, as long as the symbols are all there. Witches, Wizards and Warlocks all use diagrams and can summon the same spirits.

Potions: Instead of casting the spell directly, one may brew the spell into a potion. Each MD spent doing so produces ten drops of Potion of X, where X is the spell used. When drinking a potion, choose how many [dice] to drink, roll to discover the [sum] and deduct that many drops from the bottle. If the potion had fewer drops remaining, reduce [sum] accordingly. If this would result in a mishap or Doom, the imbiber suffers rather than the brewer. If someone drinks two potions at once, they suffer a mishap from the school of the latest potion. Witches and Druids commonly brew potions. Clerics 'bless' 'holy water' which is essentially the same stuff, but called something different because of religion.

Scrolls: Each scroll has the magic words for a particular spell written in big bold letters, right at the top. Read the words, cast the spell. But it also has a bunch of other words after that, explaining about how to appease the spirit that grants access to this spell. If you do what the scroll says while resting, your MD come back on a 1-4 instead of a 1-3 when casting this spell. Otherwise the spell works exactly once, then refuses to be cast until you honor the deal. Bards lure spirits with musical performances and Clerics with heartfelt prayers. Warlocks have their contracts, which lay out specific requirements from their patrons instead. Any Magic User trained in the correct skill (Music, Theology, Contract Law) can correctly use a Scroll of the corresponding kind.

Wands: Each Wand is taken from a tree that is either naturally weird and magic, or has been purposefully grown in some arcane fashion that makes it magical. If you push magic through a Wand, the spell goes off at whatever you happen to be pointing it at. This extra layer of insulation makes the spell more reliable, but also reduces the potential impact: the first MD on each spell always comes out as a three instead of being rolled. This means that you'll never spend your last die when casting with a Wand, but that your spells will always be that much weaker. Druids and Wizards use Wands or two-handed staves carved from wand-wood. Bards similarly play instruments carved from wand-wood, which work the same way.

Magic Users start out with one spell for each Implement they know. For example, a Bard would start out with a Scroll (in musical notation) for one spell and a Wand (in instrument form) for another. Wizards start with the summoning diagram for a spell-spirit, a stick of Chalk and a Wand (or staff) for another spell. Third level Magic Users learn to use an extra kind of Implement from this list.

Book Casting: After an adventure or two worth of exposure to other people who cast magic very differently from how they do, a second level Magic User learns to translate other magical traditions into something more familiar: Spellbooks. By spending an hour studying an Implement (including someone else's Spellbook) the Magic User can puzzle out a method to cast any of the spells found within. This forgoes all of the benefits of Implement-based spellcasting. Magic Users can spend a Season to make a new Implement for any spell learned this way..

Orb Casting: Orbs are in some ways the ultimate magical Implement. Lesser Orbs can capture any spell, trapping it within the Orb and denying it to the prior caster until the spell is released. Greater Orbs can do the same thing to any sapient being, trapping them body and soul to create a unique new spell based on their innermost magical nature. Yet both forms of Orb are jealous things, only willing to release their grip on their current prisoner if presented with one yet greater (ie. more MD/HD than the current spell/creature trapped inside).

You may craft a Lesser Orb with a Season of work in a place at least thirteen leagues away from any other Orb, be it Lesser or Greater. Should you suffer a terminal Doom while wielding a Lesser Orb, it will consume you just before you would suffer your ordinary fate, elevating itself to the status of Greater Orb in the process. Should the Greater Orb be recovered and your release secured, you remain free from your Doom. This is always harder than escaping normally.