Getting to the last of my Gamelords stuff. Sad days. I really love what they did with their Thieves’ Guild line and how the booklet supplements acted as regular installments of rules updates and scenarios. That said, I do think you can feel the series beginning to run out of steam a little at this point.

Thieves’ Guild 8 (1983) is really the last of the potpourri approach. It has incredibly complex rules for ranged weapons that include determining the specialties of given bowyers and penalties for firing a bow without bowmen’s leathers. As usual with this sort of complexity, I am both fascinated by the thinking that went into it (its’ extremely interesting!) and appalled at the idea of actually implementing it in play.

Next is a new set of targets for highwaymen to waylay, including a tailor, a mourning knight and a seller of counterfeit relics. This brings the total pool of travelers upon which bandits can ply their trade to about 50, which is a huge resource. I love the idea of structuring at least part of a campaign around this sort of thing and wonder how long it would take before players started to feel bad about it, or if they’d turn into hardened predators. Interesting stuff.

The rest of the book is given over to scenarios, the first is part one of a lengthy adventure in which the players are recruited to journey to a distant valley in order to retrieve a powerful magic crystal for a client. It’s not bad, but it amounts to a long overland journey in which the party is essentially prey for bandits and other hostile actors. This turnabout is perhaps fair play for an ongoing thief campaign, but the travel itself doesn’t strike me as exciting (compare to the travel of the early half of Warhammer’s Enemy Within). The second scenario involves rescuing a wedding party from trolls. I kept waiting for a twist with that one, but none came — just a straightforward rescue.