A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement Den of Thieves

Den of Thieves by Wes Nicholson is a role playing game supplement published by Wizards of the Coast (originally by TSR, Inc.) for use with Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd Edition.

The supplement is available as a 108-page PDF from DriveThruRPG, as a softcover print on demand book for $11.99 or as the PDF and softcover for $13.99. The original printed book can also be found from sites such as Amazon. The PDF is the version reviewed and has 108 pages. Two pages are the front and rear covers, one page is the front matter, one page the Table of Contents, one page is an ad and eight pages are a colour map of a thieves’ lair that would originally have been a separate poster.

The Introduction gives an overview, explains how to use the book, what a thieves’ guild is and how they rise and fall.

Chapter One: A Typical Guild considers what types of individuals would be in the guild – not everyone is a thief – and what people outside the guild that are regularly dealt with, such as fences, fixers and tipsters. What an entrenched guild might control is next, followed by what the guild does. Guilds also do not appreciate freelance thieves. Should a character cross a guild, there is a list of suggested forms of revenge.

There is an alignment summary for how thieves will behave, for every alignment except Lawful Good, and what relations a guild might have with demihumans and humanoids – usually uncommon, so they tend not to blend in – monsters – useful but very dangerous – and spellcasters – often with useful skills but rarely on the permanent staff. What a guild might do with magical items is also covered.

Chapter Two: Thieves’ Guild Activities starts with a general section on income and then on expenses. The different types of income each have a page dedicated to them. These are burglary, counterfeiting and forging, extortion/street robbery, pickpocketing, blackmail, dancing girls, loansharking, protection racketeering, smuggling and begging.

Each of these sections has a similar layout. There is a reference to an NPC from the sample guild provided later who runs the income type. Next is a description of what the income type involves. Finally, there are profits for each type and, in some cases, a table of possible incidents.

Chapter Three: Guild NPCs describes the NPCs for the sample guild, from the guildmaster, his family, the lieutenants, their staff and the NPCs who run the different operations, with general stats given for less important people such as team leaders and team members. Finally, in this chapter is a section on Guild Based Adventures, which gives some suggestions, benefits for being in a guild, what to do if a PC becomes guildmaster and how disputes are handled.

Chapter Four: Guild Associates covers those with abilities useful to the thieves but are not actually members of a guild. These include assassins, beggars, fences, fixers, spellcasters, spies, tipsters, contacts and street urchins. Many of these have stats given to one or more examples of such, associated with the sample guild and its city.

Chapter Five: Street Toughs covers street gangs. Four gangs are described, with important NPCs from each detailed. There is also a freelance thief detailed, who has associates with the gangs and other associates, and who has plans to take over the thieving in the city. The gangs and freelance thief have been mentioned earlier in the text.

Chapter Six: Adventures has a number of thief-related adventures. Some of these adventures are technically done from two, one as someone stopping the thieves, one as thieves. Although in one of these cases there is no real difference – in each case, the PCs are supposed to be stopping a kidnapping. There’s also a gang war that can be fought.

Appendix One: New Magical Items has a number of thief-related items, some of which are cursed.

Appendix Two: Thieves’ Guilds of Fact and Fiction is essentially a bibliography, which as far as fiction goes is now a bit out of date.

Appendix Three: Tables has tables related to outcomes and thieving reproduced from other parts of the book.

Appendix Four: Notes on Guild Development and Limitations has some brief notes on how there is a limit to a guild’s expansion.

The two pages of Chase Rules would have originally been inside the covers and have a variety of street plans with hazards and rules for using them in a chase.

Den of Thieves in Review

The PDF is decently bookmarked with the major and minor sections linked and the Table of Contents is to a similar level of depth and is also hyperlinked. The PDF has been constructed from scans. There aren’t any problems with reading the material; some of the pages are a little wonky but that’s it. The biggest problem is that the scans aren’t searchable. Navigation is decent for a scanned book but it could be better.

The text maintains a two-column two-colour format and a number of errors were noticed, most minor but there were also a couple of duplicated paragraphs and Chapter Six actually says Chapter Seven as the chapter title. There are a number of black and white images relating to thieving as well as page headers. Presentation is decent for the time.

This book actually covers several different topics. The first is thieves’ guilds in general, and there are rules for running such. The second is the sample thieves’ guild. Chapter Three and Chapter Five are solely on this, but there are references to it in Chapter Two and the example associates in Chapter Four are also connected. This makes the organisation a little muddled; general information is next to specific information in some places. It’s not clear if this could have been organised better though, and in a way the sample guild does provide examples of how to use the material. However, it also takes up a fair amount of the book, and if the sample guild isn’t used, a lot of the supplement is wasted. Then there are the adventures and magic items. The supplement does have some useful information, but the sample NPCs mean that the book is less useful for other editions of the game. Den of Thieves can be found by clicking here.