Does anyone know of some good resources that can help a DM include Thieve's Cant into their campaign? I'm not real knowledgable about it, but I would love to be able to say something in character as an NPC, that a PC could then pick up on because they're a Rogue. And then there are the symbols, which I don't really know what any look like.
Any help is very much appreciated. 
Luciender wrote:
¡Sí se puede!
bawylie wrote:
edwin_su wrote:
RustedKitsune wrote:
Thieves'cant is all about deniability. Al Capone never ordered his men to kill someone. Just pointing out his dissapointment with the fellow and a suggestion that it's time for the guy to "leave the organisation" is enough for his men to know what to do. And if the place is bugged or if there is a snitch? Well, nobody heard Capone order a murder, so he goes free.
In a D&D setting those guys in the corner booth that are talking about a raid on the big boss' lair, with the discussion about how many orcs there are about and what loot is hidden there could be mistaken for adventurers. But the big boss' lair is the house of the mayor, orcs are the city guards around, and the loot is the mayor's treasury.
I see proficiency in thieves'cant not only as knowing the slang most often used between criminals, but also being able to recognize the nuances in meaning in talk between those criminals.
ankiyavon wrote:
ankiyavon wrote:
bawylie wrote:
bawylie wrote:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_j9qAhXfNAU
I've always liked the idea of using cockney rhyming slang for thieves' cant. That's the actual inspiration for it anyway, as far as I can tell. It arose as a method of saying what you want to say without the police keying in. The basic idea of how it works is this: take the thing you want to say, then find a word that rhymes with it. Then find a third word that goes with the second word in normal conversation, a common phrase or something. Then, a lot of the time, you also get rid of the rhyming word and just keep the word that goes with it. So you could have a word that has nothing at all to do with the word you actually want to say, but that someone who knows how the slang works could still possibly figure it out.
A quick example: Phone rhymes with bone. Dog and bone go together, so you could say either dog and bone or just dog to refer to a phone. Of course, you'd have a hard time explaining to your fellow Rogues what the hell a phone is, but it was the first example that came to mind.
An example of someone who knows how it works figuring something out: if you're a Fighter and some Rogue elbows you and says "Butcher that, mate!", you'd probably just walk over and kill it to death, because that's what Fighters do. If you're a fellow Rogue, however, you'll know that that's not actually what your buddy is telling you to do. So, not having heard this particular phrase before, you might think "Hmm... what goes with butcher? Cleaver... no, nothing that rhymes with cleaver fits the context right now. Hook... hook! Butcher's hook. Hook rhymes with... look! Okay, what am I supposed to be looking at?" Of course, once you know what you're doing, it'll go a lot faster, and there are also a lot of common phrases so you'll end up memorizing a lot of it as well.
I've been thinking of running it as strictly gestures, nothing vocalized. Similar to Maiden's hand talk from the Wheel of Time.
JRutterbush wrote: