As you doubtless have noticed, I've reorganized the forum quite a bit. I've split a number of posts off of the brainstorming thread to make some new threads. I thought the subject of guilds could be a pretty big one, so I've made it into one of the new threads.
Before I get started, I have a question for you: how attached are you to your guilds? Before I started reading
City of Splendors: Waterdeep, I told you to go ahead and post all your guilds, thinking that we would need guilds. Now that I've finished reading it, I've discovered that Waterdeep already has 43 guilds. Now, just because it has 43 guilds doesn't mean we can't add yours to the total or even replace some original ones with yours. Which is why I asked the question: depending on how attached you are to your guilds, I'll put more or less effort into integrating them into the game.
I think I've already implicitly said my aim with this game, but just to clear things up I'll say it explicitly. Even as fleshed-out as Waterdeep is with the published material, there are plenty of gaps that can be filled in and plenty of details that can be added by you and me. For instance, if you were to take a look at the map I keep on mentioning, the majority of the buildings are unlabeled. Even though there are 43 guilds already, each one has only a few or even no NPS statted out. So there's plenty of room for creative contributions from you and me. My preference then is to add things to the canon, so to speak, rather than take away or to alter. We can do the last two things if we feel it's vital for the game, but I'd prefer to avoid it as a rule.
Having said all that, I'll assume for now that you're at least enough attached to your guilds that you want to see some effort made for their integration into the game. So, what will be following is a first stab at doing that. Now, I'm making the effort because I've read the aforementioned book and know what the 43 guilds are about. However, if you want to play a more active part in this you may want to read the chapter on guilds yourself, or at least the guilds that I will reference below (in which case CTRL+F to search for the guild name should lead you to the right spot). The book can be downloaded for free from here:
http://www.4shared.com/office/RRhamNzX/City_of_Splendors_-_Waterdeep_.htm. However, as I think I mentioned at some point, we may want to approach our game design in such a way that each of us focuses on the things we're interested in and good at. For instance, you're better at the art, and I want you to have a free hand in it. You in turn may be less interested in the game's cosmology, IDK. If you get disinterested in a particularly area of design, just let me know. I'll probably keep posting just because this site has become a repository for our game (and so that you can at least see where I'm going), but maybe at that point you'll take a more minor role in said area of design.
Anyways, let me know. For now, I will post my stab at integration, as much as it's possible:
BROTHERHOOD OF REDEMPTION
First of all, this guild may be entirely impossible depending on what conclusions we arrive at in the Morality thread (Ref. my discourse on "orcs"). However, this guild probably won't be impossible. Assuming that's the case, this guild has such a unique flavor that I would suggest simply adding it to the 43 original guilds.
DELVER'S GUILD
Oddly enough, Waterdeep, which sits on the most infamous dungeon in the Forgotten Realms, Undermountain, does not have an adventurers' guild. I think the reason for this is that the guilds are political entities in Waterdeep, not Skullport (the city in Undermountain). In other words, the mostly LG citizenry and government of Waterdeep see an adventurer in Undermountain as out of their jurisdiction and see an adventurer in Waterdeep as out of place (read "unwelcome"). The more or less official policy of Waterdeep's government toward Undermountain is one of non-interference, for good reason. Even aside from the Skulls of Skullport and a menagerie of other deadly beings, Undermountain is the domain of the Mad Mage Halaster Blackcloak. So, if Waterdeep's government officially recognized a guild of adventurers which interfered in Undermountain, they'd be dangerously contradicting their own foreign policy. The Delver's Guild could exist in our game, but it would not be in the good graces of the Lords of Waterdeep, and would therefore be spurned by the citizenry. In fact, it would only be called the "Delver's Guild" with tongue in cheek, because it would certainly not receive the official guild status enjoyed by other guilds. Mechanically, however, it could be the same as any other guild for the players. If we do import this guild into our game, we'll have to make sure the resurrection benefit indeed comes only at high levels, as that is really powerful. As the game currently is, there are plenty of adventures who rest in Waterdeep and adventure in Undermountain. But their unorganized status makes them less threatening to Waterdeep politics and therefore less irksome to Waterdhavians.
INVERTED PYRAMID
Now this guild can be kept more or less as-is as a direct import to the 43. If however, we prefer integration to addition, we might combine some of the flavor of this guild with another arcane guild. Some good options are Blackstaff Tower, Eltorchul Academy, Halaster's Heirs, and the Watchful Order of Magists & Protectors. I don't know what you might be trying to do aesthetically with the Inverted Pyramid, so forgive me if I mangle things. But for instance, any of these guilds could actually have an inverted pyramid as their headquarters, an inverted pyramid as their crest, or they could even be mages who specialized as geometers, which of course are the mages who find arcane truth in geometry (so sad that D&D didn't have a numerology prestige class). Additionally, the aforementioned four could have their names changed to "Inverted Pyramid" but their role in Waterdeep would largely remain unchanged (otherwise we should just go with the addition rather than integration option). Alternatively, if you're interested, my preference for this guild is to have it be historical. It's not that I don't like it, but I genuinely have a use for it's being extinct. I was going to have an NPC mage in Waterdeep who's hidden the only copies of the most powerful spells in Waterdeep in a special library which can only be decrypted by fellow members of the geometer prestige class. So, he might have exterminated other geometers in the city to safeguard his library. Ask me more if you're interested.
CITY WATCH
Lol this is actually the exact name of the police in Waterdeep, so I'd say these are already fully integrated. However, in addition to the City Watch, Waterdeep has the Gray Hands, which are kind of like the Swat Team. They're actually adventures in the pay of the city (the one good use for adventurers) who are called in only as a last resort. They shoot first, ask questions later, and generally incur massive collateral damage.
SISTERHOOD OF SILENCE
As far as I understood this guild, they're kind of like recognized vigilantes. The character of Waterdeep's government is definitely against recognizing vigilantes, so integration would be difficult here. However, this role is largely filled by the Gray Hands and also the Red Sashes. While the Red Sashes are vigilantes, they're very much unrecognized and secretive. As vigilantes, they do fight for justice, but their subversion of the law often humiliates Waterdhavian officials. I think the Sisterhood of Silence probably made more sense in your Gratis setting where their absence would have created a serious deficit of law. In Waterdeep, however, the City Watch is a pretty effective police force, and where it lacks is filled in by the Grey Hands. Theoretically, the Red Sashes could be infused with some of the flavor of the Sisterhood of Silence, but the former is essentially chaotic while the latter is essentially lawful, so I'm not sure how successful that integration would be.
THE CHURCH
As you describe this guild, it would be a practically impossible import into Waterdeep. However, there is a dark church that I want to have as a centerpiece in Waterdeep, and that is the Church of Shar. As I mentioned above, there will be some essential differences between trying to combine Waterdeep and Gratis in that, as far as I can tell, Gratis was in many ways LE society (possibly CE in the absence of the Sisterhood of Silence) and Waterdeep LG. It is perhaps more appropriate then to import some features of Gratis to Waterdeep's evil counterpart, Skullport, rather than Waterdeep itself. Appropriately, the Church of Shar is very powerful in Skullport.
CHORRUN CHAR
This guild has some similarities with Gnawbones's guild. This could be relatively easily integrated by making infusing Gnawbones's guild with the racial elitism I tasted from the Chorrun Char.
KILLRAVEN CRIME LEAGUE
This could be a more or less direct import. Alternatively, Killraven could be a member of the Two-Cities Consortium. Admittedly, there's a lot of criminal competition in Waterdeep, so this could be difficult.
CALASPER CRIME FAMILY
This could be one of the seven families of the Two-Cities Consortium (a criminal organization so-named because of the dubious relationship between Waterdeep and Skullport). However, when you describe it as a syndicate, I think of a very large organization. In that case, the Shadow Thieves of Amn might already be filling the role of this guild. This could also be another direct import.
THE FORSAKEN
There is a City of the Dead in Waterdeep and also a Master Vampire, but I'm not sure how to tie this in. There are also parallels to this guild with the Savants of the Dark Tide and Agents of the Eye, which are guilds centered around powerful beings, specifically aboleths and a beholder, respectively. As there's no direct parallel, we could simply directly import this guild.
THE FALLEN
Pretty much said everything I had to say in the previous paragraph.
DREAMING APOTHECARY
Actually, the only problem I really have with this comes from being a grammar Nazi, lol. The OCD in me would be much happier if it were instead called something like Dream Apothecary, Dreams Apothecary, Apothecary of Dreams, Apothecary of Dream, Dreaming Apothecarist, etc. As it currently is, the name makes it sound like the actual shop is dreaming, which is of course impossible. The best integration for this guild would be with the Eltorchul Academy. I'll just cut and past the short introduction to this guild. After you've read it, I'm sure we'll find some way to integrate them.
Eltorchul Academy
Upon inheriting the family spice and import business, Lord
Thesp Eltorchul invested the family fortune into arcane academia
and rare magical component procurement. The family
has run Eltorchul Academy for three decades now, having slowly
elevated it into an elite bastion of noble scions and the children
of the well-to-do.
In the Year of the Banner (1368 DR), Lord Thesp’s son
and heir, Oth Eltorchul, was left a babbling husk after dabbling
in the creation of dream spheres with the Mhaorkiira
Hadryad. Fallout from the dream spheres affair nearly
bankrupted the family, forcing them to open the doors of
Eltorchul Academy to all manner of students willing and
able to pay. As a result, current students and recent graduates
of Eltorchul Academy vary widely in talent, ability, social
status, and outlook, and the academy’s status among the social
elite has plummeted.
HOUSE OF BLACK & WHITE
This guild is very similar to the Knights of the Shield, but with a slightly more magical and illusion flavor. We could reflavor the Knights or do a direct import.
Anyways, let me know what you think, if you've read the guild chapter of the book, and so on.
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