OSR pick pockets, a Dutch painting, and a scene in Elizabethan drama

This blog is a sort of miscellanea about a thief skill: pick pockets.

In the OSE rules, a 1st level thief successfully picks a pocket 20% of the time; a fifth level thief, 40% of the time. I'd never actually read the more specific rules:

  • If the victim is 5th level, the thief's chances decrease 5% for every level above 5th.
  • A roll twice the thief's chances for success (40% for a 1st level thief) means the potential victim noticed.
The rules say a referee could use the reaction table to determine the victim's reaction (OSE, page 34). The reaction roll captures the idea of cunning - it gives a thief one more chance at getting away.

***

A few weeks ago, in a wonderful show of 17th Century Dutch paintings, we saw Nicolaes Maes' "Sleeping Man Having his Pockets Picked" (1653). 
 
A thrill of this painting is the shadowy area to the left, where the bandit crept to the drinker. Two others are the bandit's smiling glance and just how deeply her left hand is plunged in the drinker's bag.

I wondered how much the drinker's drowsiness increased her chances of success?


 

 ***

The situation in Nicolaes Maes' painting repeats in Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor." Even the language in this play can pick pockets! For comparison with Maes, I want to share some lines from the opening scene.

Falstaff and three figures, referred to as "sharpers" (i.e., deceivers or cheats), ridicule a country justice, who they've marked, filled with booze and appropriated his "seven groats in mil- sixpences" and two other coins worth "two shillings and twopence apiece."

The bandit Bardolphe explains:

Why, sir, for my part, I say the gentleman had drunk himself out of his five sentences."

Bardolphe continues:

And being fap [drunk], sir, was as they say, cashiered; and so conclusions passed the careers" [the matter was concluded].

***

In old school games, when a victim's out of his sentences, he may be 'n easier mark! 

Thanks for reading.

 

 

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