The Esoteric Thief
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- Ancient History
- Serious Badass
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The Esoteric Thief
Regular thieves steal shit. Anything that isn't nailed down, and a few things that might be. Gold, jewels, documents, lives, your child's virginity, your wife's heart, your ancestor's bones, whatever. If it can be physically taken, the thief can take it. That is their purpose in life, that is what their skills are bent to.
It's a very adaptable concept. The idea of hackers as "electronic thieves" is a simple and intuitive leap, and has had a literary and real-world tradition stretch back to when "computers" were human beings whose job in life was to add shit - wire tapping and wire fraud are the oldest anti-hacking laws on the book (unless you want to get something really old school, like forgery).
But many roleplaying games are set in a fantasy world, and in fantasy thieves does not face the same limitations - instead of gold and jewels, fantasy thieves can steal intangibles. Life, souls, dreams, ideas, magic, whatever you have. D&D played with this concept a little, with spellthieves (and psi-thieves), the Thief of Life prestige class, the Ur-Priest (in fluff only, mechanically they were just really bitchy clerics), etc. Earthdawn had Thief as one of their Disciplines, and those at the highest circle were rumored to steal life from Death itself. Elric was mistaken for (and teamed up with, and banged) a dreamthief in The Fortress of the Pearl. So the idea has been recognized, and has some literary cachet.
But what do y'all think of esoteric thieves - are they something you would like to see in a game, or at all emphasized? Do you think they should be distinct from "normal" thieves, or a specialization of them? Is there a particular incarnation of the esoteric thief you did or did not like?
It's a very adaptable concept. The idea of hackers as "electronic thieves" is a simple and intuitive leap, and has had a literary and real-world tradition stretch back to when "computers" were human beings whose job in life was to add shit - wire tapping and wire fraud are the oldest anti-hacking laws on the book (unless you want to get something really old school, like forgery).
But many roleplaying games are set in a fantasy world, and in fantasy thieves does not face the same limitations - instead of gold and jewels, fantasy thieves can steal intangibles. Life, souls, dreams, ideas, magic, whatever you have. D&D played with this concept a little, with spellthieves (and psi-thieves), the Thief of Life prestige class, the Ur-Priest (in fluff only, mechanically they were just really bitchy clerics), etc. Earthdawn had Thief as one of their Disciplines, and those at the highest circle were rumored to steal life from Death itself. Elric was mistaken for (and teamed up with, and banged) a dreamthief in The Fortress of the Pearl. So the idea has been recognized, and has some literary cachet.
But what do y'all think of esoteric thieves - are they something you would like to see in a game, or at all emphasized? Do you think they should be distinct from "normal" thieves, or a specialization of them? Is there a particular incarnation of the esoteric thief you did or did not like?
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Disgaea's Thieves can steal things like your "soul", your "heart", or even your "first kiss".
Game mechanically it worked out to moving attribute points around. Stealing a lot of kisses made your stats grow faster as you leveled, allowing for a ludicrous amount of busywork and level grinding to get even more ridiculous stats. Kind of like everything else in that game.
-Username17
Game mechanically it worked out to moving attribute points around. Stealing a lot of kisses made your stats grow faster as you leveled, allowing for a ludicrous amount of busywork and level grinding to get even more ridiculous stats. Kind of like everything else in that game.
-Username17
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Time
Also, Carmen Sandiego is an Esoteric Thief. Seriously, stealing the glint from the Hope Diamond?
Also, Carmen Sandiego is an Esoteric Thief. Seriously, stealing the glint from the Hope Diamond?
Last edited by Hieronymous Rex on Thu Sep 15, 2011 3:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Steal the sun, steal the secrets of the gods, steal divine/arcane/Steve power, steal your heart, your mind, your soul, your ideas, your will to live.
Being able to project objects by "stealing" the original design blueprint of said object from the world would be a really cool esoteric thief idea.
Being able to project objects by "stealing" the original design blueprint of said object from the world would be a really cool esoteric thief idea.
FrankTrollman wrote: Halfling women, as I'm sure you are aware, combine all the "fun" parts of pedophilia without any of the disturbing, illegal, or immoral parts.
K wrote:That being said, the usefulness of airships for society is still transporting cargo because it's an option that doesn't require a powerful wizard to show up for work on time instead of blowing the day in his harem of extraplanar sex demons/angels.
Chamomile wrote: See, it's because K's belief in leaving generation of individual monsters to GMs makes him Chaotic, whereas Frank's belief in the easier usability of monsters pre-generated by game designers makes him Lawful, and clearly these philosophies are so irreconcilable as to be best represented as fundamentally opposed metaphysical forces.
Whipstitch wrote:You're on a mad quest, dude. I'd sooner bet on Zeus getting bored and letting Sisyphus put down the fucking rock.
- Josh_Kablack
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The concept is a lot older than you think and has a rich mythological pedigree.
Prometheus stole fire from the gods.
Adam and Eve stole knowledge of good and evil.
From those two myths alone it becomes pretty easy to write a cosmology where the role of mankind is to be hackers of the natural order, uncovering exploits in natural law in order to oppose and eventually topple unjust and duplicitous divinities.
Prometheus stole fire from the gods.
Adam and Eve stole knowledge of good and evil.
From those two myths alone it becomes pretty easy to write a cosmology where the role of mankind is to be hackers of the natural order, uncovering exploits in natural law in order to oppose and eventually topple unjust and duplicitous divinities.
"But transportation issues are social-justice issues. The toll of bad transit policies and worse infrastructure—trains and buses that don’t run well and badly serve low-income neighborhoods, vehicular traffic that pollutes the environment and endangers the lives of cyclists and pedestrians—is borne disproportionately by black and brown communities."
Wasn't that the backstory to one of the Planescape Factions?Josh_Kablack wrote:
From those two myths alone it becomes pretty easy to write a cosmology where the role of mankind is to be hackers of the natural order, uncovering exploits in natural law in order to oppose and eventually topple unjust and duplicitous divinities.
Anyway, I wrote the Thief of Souls in the Tome of Necromancy well before WotC wrote the Thief of Life, so I think my position on esoteric thieves is clear.
- JigokuBosatsu
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Weren't they convinced to do so by a yuan-ti diplomancer?Josh_Kablack wrote: Adam and Eve stole knowledge of good and evil.
Omegonthesane wrote:a glass armonica which causes a target city to have horrific nightmares that prevent sleep
JigokuBosatsu wrote:so a regular glass armonica?
One of the funniest parts about the Adam and Eve story is not obvious at the first reading. "So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her ..." So wait a minute; this serpent was dissing God and insulting Adam's woman while he stood stupid and silent? And for what? To find out OMG WE'RE NAKED!
I've always dug the idea of stealing weird things (and I truly laughed out loud when I found out that in Disgaea, you can steal a tank's pilot).
Hell, one reason I picked Bleach back up was there's a villain who writes himself into your past in whatever way he wishes. He really does steal your past and your memories (and got major Effective Villain points for hitting all of Ichigo's friends and family with it before Ichigo even knew he was there).
So, yeah. Bring on the thieves of memory, of light, of pasts and futures and knowledge. Bring on the thieves of magic and vision. Hell, let's have Thief from 8-bit, who stole his class upgrade from himself.
Hell, one reason I picked Bleach back up was there's a villain who writes himself into your past in whatever way he wishes. He really does steal your past and your memories (and got major Effective Villain points for hitting all of Ichigo's friends and family with it before Ichigo even knew he was there).
So, yeah. Bring on the thieves of memory, of light, of pasts and futures and knowledge. Bring on the thieves of magic and vision. Hell, let's have Thief from 8-bit, who stole his class upgrade from himself.
He jumps like a damned dragoon, and charges into battle fighting rather insane monsters with little more than his bare hands and rather nasty spell effects conjured up solely through knowledge and the local plantlife. He unerringly knows where his goal lies, he breathes underwater and is untroubled by space travel, seems to have no limits to his actual endurance and favors killing his enemies by driving both boots square into their skull. His agility is unmatched, and his strength legendary, able to fling about a turtle shell big enough to contain a man with enough force to barrel down a near endless path of unfortunates.
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
--The horror of Mario
Zak S, Zak Smith, Dndwithpornstars, Zak Sabbath. He is a terrible person and a hack at writing and art. His cultural contributions are less than Justin Bieber's, and he's a shitmuffin. Go go gadget Googlebomb!
I remember it as Eve bringing the apple to Adam. What I find hilarious about it is that it's an analogy for discovering sex.tzor wrote:One of the funniest parts about the Adam and Eve story is not obvious at the first reading. "So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her ..." So wait a minute; this serpent was dissing God and insulting Adam's woman while he stood stupid and silent? And for what? To find out OMG WE'RE NAKED!
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.
You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.