The Thieves Guild Lacks Real Thieves
After a discussion with a friend about the politics of Skyrim, I decided to load up the game and give it a go. Well, I didn’t just load up Skyrim, I opened up Mod Organizer, used it to load SKSE, which then loaded Skyrim. It took a couple of attempts, but after I disabled a bunch of mods, I got Skyrim working and realized I’d installed a mod that had simplified every texture. I also discovered that I only had one save and it was pretty new, left at Diplomatic Immunity. I decided I was just going to roll with it, since I didn’t fancy fucking around with mods.
Diplomatic Immunity is the main story quest where Delphine makes you go to a Thalmor party, so you can find information about what the Thalmor know about the dragons. Turns out, they know fuck all about the dragons, but are looking for a guy called Esbern in Riften. I swiftly murder everyone there, save the prisoners and make my way back to Delphine with my information. She tells me to go straight to Riften to find Esbern.
While I’m in Riften, I decide I want to join the Thieves Guild. It doesn’t fit my character at all, but I like having a place to sell stolen goods, and I have a LOT that I stole from the Thalmor Embassy. My character is a massive Argonian wearing full plate heavy armour, with a sword and shield, they’re not a thief at all, but fuck it, money is money. So I do the standard initiation where I steal a ring from one guy and plant it on someone else and somehow I manage it with ease, despite having almost no points in Sneak. Bynjolf is impressed, gives me info on both the Thieves Guild and Esbern and I go through the Ratway to the Ragged Flagon.
So I decide to save Esbern, sell all my looted Thalmor armour and get him to safety, then I go back to Riften and the Thieves Guild. And I quickly realize that, well, there’s not much… thieving going on. The very first thing I did, planting a ring on someone, did involve some thieving, but it wasn’t really stealing loot for me. After that, I don’t go and steal stuff, I have to go and collect some debt, and I do so by beating people up. I recall there being other ways of collecting the debt, but the first two people, I just punched them, and the third just straight up gave me the money.
The following quests are no different. It’s clear that the Thieves Guild isn’t a den of thieves, it’s basically a mob. Stealing just makes a small amount of their money. Most of it is helping Maven Blackbriar, forging ledgers and generally being a bastard. Sure, you can unlock radiant (i.e. random) quests from Vex and Delvin, but not all of them are stealing – in fact, one requires you to frame someone, the other requires forging the ledgers of another business.
It doesn’t really help that no one else really does much thieving outside of, well, just you. You almost never see other named members of the Thieves Guild, outside of that one guy who got caught by the Thalmor. And even then, that guy has little to say. Occasionally, you do see unnamed thieves in Thieves Guild armour wandering around between cities, but they’ll try to rob you unless you happen to also be wearing Thieves Guild attire. You even get random thieves in Riften that always get slaughtered by the guards, but they are always hostile to everyone and are clearly not affiliated with the guild. However, you never really have anyone being actual thieves.
I suppose at least the radiant quests do have you stealing things. You’re required to do them in order to improve the guild, gain more members and unlock more fences in the various cities. But the gold you earn isn’t really that impressive. If you really want coin, your best bet is to go to the fencers, sell your stolen goods and make money that way. Fencers start off with 1000 gold and get up to 4000 gold once you become Guild Master. Although by then, you don’t really need gold any more.
Really, the Thieves Guild doesn’t become a guild of thieves until after you complete the main storyline for them. But even then, it’s still you doing most of the hard work.