I’m just testing the waters here to check for interest in this guild concept. The guild’s already existed for almost a year, but never really gotten off the ground due to RL limitations on my part and having been unable to find someone else who’s got a similar interest and - ideally - more time on their hands to get it going.
Streets of Gold is meant to be a guild that basically tries to give low-life characters without any wealth or power to speak of a place to ‘belong’, whether temporarily or for the long term. Not an actually organized ‘guild’ with a strict heirarchy and structure, but more so a bunch of misfits who will at least not harm or rob one another. Maybe even cooperate from time to time to better their situation. Bit of a “we’re in this mess together” sort of arrangement.
Within the guild there’s a number of distinct ranks, but think of them more as roles - or simply their method for surviving in their situation. Thieves, beggars, scavengers, fences (illicit traders), but there’s also roles such as ‘benefactor’ - a charitable (or scheming) individual that is providing funds/food for various lowlives, for whatever reason. There’s a few other roles and the likes that have been conjured up, but this is just some highlights to get an idea as to what sort of characters fit within the frame of the guild. Doesn’t have to be the lowest of the low, necessarily.
There’s a number of ways this could spawn all kinds of little events, but time is a serious constraint and I can’t in any way, shape or form promise ‘regular entertainment’. That said, event ideas span all the way from mini-heists for the thieves to various scavenger-hunts to find food or supplies, further from the safety of cities and the likes. Benefactors may be trying to regularly arrange for little street-side soup kitchens or other social events.
There’s a lot of varied events that are possible, but there’s nothing majorly heroic or spectacular in mind here. I generally do not fancy the idea of letting people into the guild with spectacular abilities without very good reason.
Aside from time constraints, there’s other issues that may get in the way of this idea - the “RP economy”, and many RPers not understanding the value of the coins they sometimes casually conjure out of their endless pockets. A few copper can feed someone for a day, but many RP’ers sometimes casually and without a second thought will straight up drop a pouch of gold in front of a street rat, as if that’s normal (and as if they could afford it). As a guild, we’d simply just have to either start ignoring the most ridiculous examples of these ‘charitable’ instances, or retcon the actual gift into something more sensible - while letting the donator know. Otherwise the guild would cease to exist in less than a week, because suddenly everyone became lottery millionaires because someone decided they had hundreds of gold to spare, when that’s nowhere near realistic, even in this fantasy setting.
To summarize; I basically want to bring to life a guild of characters that aren’t super-powerful, high-fantasy, main-character-syndrome heroes. These are people down on their luck, but able to get by through sheer grit and determination - or an unnatural amount of luck. Inspired largely by the song of the same name as the guild. Not intended to have a big focus on serious struggle and drama, but neither going the opposite way into a total comedy - more of a balanced middle-way, but with room for both sides on occasion.
If anyone’s interested in this idea, do let me know. Ideally in-game, via letter if I’m not online, because I’m not a regular forum-dweller, but I guess I’ll still check on this post regularly for at least a while (until I forget it exists). This guild is probably best suited for ‘alt’ characters, given that regular events is no guarantee for the forseeable future. Looking forward to hearing from you.