(09-11-2014, 03:50 PM)undefined Wrote: The second is so mind-bogglingly narrow a view that I, personally, can't comprehend how they came to such a conclusion. True, the city-states of Limsa Lominsa, Ul'dah, and Gridania would never stand for an officially sanctioned thieves' guild... but who said it had to be officially sanctioned? In the vast majority of fantasy settings, thieves, when they've banded together in some semblance of organization, have been at odds with the authorities of their place of residence. Their guilds, gangs, whatever - they move about. They hide, and then they either keep moving or else they keep to their hidey-holes until they're forced to move. It's disheartening to think that the XIV developers don't believe they could have gone with an unofficial, unsanctioned thieves' guild. It robs the cities of flavor and does the setting a disservice by shrinking the world further, because the argument eventually comes back around to, "oh, well, they wouldn't stand for it, so they'd stomp them out"... which implies that the cities are small enough and the authorities well-manned enough to enforce order on such a large scale.
The impact that this implication has on the setting is pervasive: Limsa, for example, is suddenly as small as it now appears to be in 2.x, and the Maelstrom and Yellowjackets have the manpower to shut down any such scandalous activity. So: no pirates, no thieves, etc. Suddenly Limsa is a duller place, as opposed to how it's seen by the roleplayers who've given it so much more character on top of the foundation that Square Enix laid down.Â
I feel like this is perhaps exaggerating the impact of the second claim. You are correct that a thieves' guild needn't be officially sanctioned, but you ignore your prior understanding that the developers have a specific type of narrative in mind for the setting, however dismissive you may find that.
Part of that narrative is that the adventurer's guilds are legitimate organizations, and the various Disciple classes products of officially sanctioned, legitimate enterprises. That the city-states wouldn't tolerate an unofficial thieves' guild says nothing about their manpower or ability to stamp out such groups. What it does say is that unofficial guilds would be unlikely to have doors open to the public, street signs advertising their location, and receptionists around to tell you about the nature of the guild and give you the option to join. This makes it difficult for such a guild to maintain the same structure and image provided by, well, every other guild in the game.
Perhaps the city-states have that manpower, but perhaps they do not. Perhaps they only have enough to make it that such a guild would be forced underground, as it likely would be anyways. This would still mean that such a guild could exist, but it would deviate from the aforementioned structure above. Thus, it doesn't get included, and the statement about not "standing" for something is an IC fig-leaf, and not indicative of actual ability to shut such a thing down.
I just don't think this narrows the setting in the way you're describing, and that you're drawing conclusions from it that are a bit of a leap.
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Current Fate-14 Storyline:Â Merchant, Marine
Current Fate-14 Storyline:Â Merchant, Marine
