Games » Thieves & Treasures

A game mostly played within the Clockwork City, using many oddly-sided, die-cast brass polyhedral dice, called "erudition dice". There are rumors that this game was originally made by a young Sotha Sil for educational purposes, but it eventually grew into a popular recreational storytelling wargame. Thanks to its low barrier of entry compared to many wargames, its focus on player agency, and its detailed setting, it provides an appealing escape from everyday life.

"Thieves & Treasures" is known to use verified mystical principles and accurate mathematical tonal models in its calculations, to the point where a player may gain enough magical knowledge to rival a novice spellcaster or mathemagician, simply by reading the game's basic rulebook. The amounts of attention to detail and the way the rulebooks introduce rules, with a distinct sense of progression toward complexity and while providing mini-stories as demonstrations of these new rules, support the idea that it was originally educational in nature.

When the Clockwork City shut its planar gates for the final time in the middle of the Third Era, about one hundred complete sets of "Thieves & Treasures" existed in Tamriel, with a slightly higher number of partial sets around. Hobbyists made copies of the rulebooks and playing tools, by print and by hand, and preserved the game in this way. "Thieves & Treasures" remains popular to this day, especially in academic institutions such as the Schools of Julianos and the College of Winterhold, where it is occasionally used as a teaching aid.

A pared-down, less fantastical and technologically-focused version, "Padomaic", was also played in Morrowind, but it was mostly forgotten by the end of the First Era.

This is basically Empire of the Petal Throne meets Traveller, running on the Amazing Engine system.

 

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