Rogue's Cant Ability - How do YOU use it?

[rom90125]

Just as the title stated: How does your campaign use the Cant ability? Do you pass notes to the CK? Do you roll-play it?
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Developer: C&C Ruleset for Fantasy Grounds II

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The Lost City of Barakus: A C&C campaign using FGII
http://castles-and-crusades.wikispaces.com/

[serleran]

When, and if, a rogue gets the chance (ie, communicating to someone that would understand) and its not another PC, then notes are used, but the player must still speak... so, the actual words used and the conversation in notes are different.

[vegabond]

I see it like hand signals in the infantry. Each country, heck even different branches in the same country, have different hand signals for various things.

A rogue in one city may not understand a rogue from another city. And some cities have multiple guilds who may not be able to understand each other.

So first the rogue has to try one to see if the person he is "talking" to even understands the point he is trying to make. If so the player just makes hand signals while he talks and I do the same (for NPC's). Or notes can be used if he doesn't want the other players to know what he is up to. But that never happens.

[BLOOD AXE]

Hmmm.... I see it as sign language. It might be a bit different from city to city, but at least the two people would recognize each other as part of the Thieves' brotherhood. You might be able to get a very basic message across.

Silk the spy uses it in David Eddings books, the Belgariad.

[Omote]

In my games, Thieves Cant is a combination of things, though mostly language. Hand movements and body movements can be used.

There is a great, great book on this called CANTING CREW by EGG and TLG. This books has been well used for this exact topic where players take words from that book and use them in game.

However, we roll play this out as much as possible within getting in the way of the game. Sometimes it comes down to note passing, and other times we just have to plain say what it is and pretend that everything was in cant.

-O
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[Turanil]

For more than 20 years of play or DMing, I don't remember ever using (or seeing used) Thief's Cant. I guess we didn't know what to do with it... As described I tend to see this skill as mostly useless.
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[JRR]

A thief asks if he can do something, I tell him he CAN'T!!!
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[nittanytbone14]

In table top games I consider it largely useless.

The conversation will either proceed in plain talk as the player or DM lack proficiency in what is essentially a foreign language, or the conversation will be conducted using secret notes. Either way, the other players are in on something going on and its not much of a secret.

For online play it works great. Then, the DM and player can both have reference to a common dictionary of cant slang and use it to communicate "in code."

[serleran]

It works just fine for my games. I pass notes to players all the time. Sometimes, with nothing on them. Other times, saying "make a save" or "you notice something peculiar about that priestess... she seems to be wearing the necklace you were hired to steal" or whatever, so, in my games, passing notes, even in conversation, is normal and raises no suspicion except other players wanting to know what it said, if anything. Works even better if everyone is using a wifi connection and an instant messenger, but I hate having computers at the table.

[Maliki]

serleran wrote:
It works just fine for my games. I pass notes to players all the time. Sometimes, with nothing on them. Other times, saying "make a save" or "you notice something peculiar about that priestess... she seems to be wearing the necklace you were hired to steal" or whatever, so, in my games, passing notes, even in conversation, is normal and raises no suspicion except other players wanting to know what it said, if anything.

We often did the same thing in our games, and it worked both ways, the players often passed fake notes to the DM as well.
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[serleran]

Absolutely, Maliki. I feel that note passing adds a sense of mystery and drama that might be hard to pull across otherwise. I mean, you can say out loud "ok, Bubba the Fat Elf hears a scraping sound that reminds him of the time those ghouls clawed from their graves... you guys don't know that unless he tells you" and then the player has to, or you can pass a note saying "you hear a ghoul-like scratch" and then he can do it without you having to. In a way, I guess, it helps stave off metagaming.