The Campaign Builder's Guild

What do you do about fish out of water adventures? One I'm working on right now is paladin versus thieves guild/merchants guild. How could I for instance make this interesting enough and yet not something the paladin can just hack and slash through? The latter is easy enough--it's in a reasonably friendly and lawful territory, but one in which the paladin has no specific powers of arrest. What about the other?

Maybe there are obscure ties to someone the paladin greatly admires? Someone he admires enough that he doesn't want to jump the gun and falsely accuse, or someone he doesn't think could be part of a thieve's/merchant alliance thing, and goes to find out the deeper truth?

Add some mystery too it, tie in a local myth or legend, tweak it a bit to make it something more then a simple thieve's/merchant guild. Shady ties to local celebrities, ties some an ancient chimera cult.

If the guild is based in the docks, maybe ties to a newly arrived foreign prince, who in reality is part of a conniving plot by the guild to infiltrate the nobility.

Make them sacrificing part of their "hard earned" gold to an abyssal well, stopping a "great semi-ancient evil" from destroying the town, that's a good moral dilemma for a paladin.

How about they use most of the "hard earned" coin to make foster houses and orphanages, schools and even a fledgling university, churches to the paladins patron god as well as other gods.

Make some of the thieves "Paladins of the Thief God".

Hopefully you can use or draw inspiration from some of these thoughts. This is all off the top of my head so I'm sure with some thought you could whip up something pretty pwn.

Also if you want more of a "social class" thing, maybe stage a peasant revolt. The revolt could be backed by the thieve's/merchants, or maybe the thieve's are the only one who can stop the revolt.

EDIT: Also, bonjour!

One fascinating but perhaps difficult thing to do would be to engineer the realization that the thieves have a code just as rigid and draconian as the formal "legal" system - and perhaps their code is also morally informed (good) whereas the formal legal system is oppressive (evil).  This isn't just a clear-cut case of chaotic good versus lawful evil, tearing the paladin in two.  The point is that the "formality" of the official legal system is only legitimated by the group that has power and authority - power seized through brutal means, through evil.  The alternative code of the thieves guild is just as lawful as the code of the authority, its just not officially recognized.  Sure thieves steal stuff - which can be seen as an inherently "chaotic" act - but the government could have extremely high taxes that they use only for personal gratification or the waging of unnecessary, selfishly motivated wars, making tax-collection an equally "chaotic" act, made officially "lawful" only through oppression.  In other words, the entire alignment status of "lawful" gets deconstructed; the paladin is left questioning the fundamentals of his own code.

A simple solution would be for the paladin to find out that there are several people working as double agents inside the thieves' guild who are unwilling to give up their identities very easily and have been there for several years.  It would prevent the paladin from going too crazy.  (Or so we hope!)

Taking this in a different direction than alignment conflict, I noticed that you said thief guild/merchant guild, a facet that nobody else really explored.  Depending on the actual goals of the paladin, as "vs." isn't very descriptive, there is definitely room here to explore the corrupting effects of wealth.

Being in a friendly and lawful territory, the paladin will likely be restrained from exercising vigilante action and letting heads roll for the greater good.  Trying to bring any criminals or even morally questionable Borgoises to justice will likely result in the paladin facing repercussions and the guilty walking free due to his or her "generous financial contributions to the well-being of the community".

Good luck, and good to see you back Tybalt.

Quote from: The Rose Of MontagueTaking this in a different direction than alignment conflict, I noticed that you said thief guild/merchant guild, a facet that nobody else really explored.  Depending on the actual goals of the paladin, as "vs." isn't very descriptive, there is definitely room here to explore the corrupting effects of wealth.

Being in a friendly and lawful territory, the paladin will likely be restrained from exercising vigilante action and letting heads roll for the greater good.  Trying to bring any criminals or even morally questionable Borgoises to justice will likely result in the paladin facing repercussions and the guilty walking free due to his or her "generous financial contributions to the well-being of the community".

Good luck, and good to see you back Tybalt.

Much of this deals with the thieves/merchant guils itself, as well as the church they follow.  Could not the secret leaders of this guild be funnelling money to charitable areas, perhaps a downtrodden minority's only succor is the money from this guild?  Perhaps there are more than one such guild around, and the others are far worse, and to combat and weaken the merchant/thieve's guild would strengthen a group of drug dealing assassins who follow a god of sacrifice?  The more eveil and rapacious guilds would actually be made stronger if the paladin damages the merchant/thieve;s guild.

Wow guys, thanks a lot for the responses! Three main things I'm getting here:

1. The idea that the thieves' guild do have a code of sorts and that it is in a way just as lawful and clear to them as what the paladin follows.

2. The notion of a more evil thieves' guild, a rival group of some kind.

3. The fact that not only are they more lawful but that they are in fact connected to perfectly legitimate authorities.

I should add a bit more background. The church in question is the Temple, an organization of priests and priestesses who are semi-monastic, serving the regional pantheon. I'm wondering if perhaps the supposedly pious and upright temple is the real danger while the thieves ironically are almost like a group formed to fight off oppression, using their ability to keep crime in order to have the merchants prefer the evil they know. (if this rambling sentence makes the slightest sense.)