What do you typically find in a thief hideout?

[outlander78]

I was reviewing the templates I generate random quests from in my game.  The main inputs are:
site types (ruins, castle, tower, pyramid, caves etc)
quest types (currently just kill the leader, clear and loot, but I will fix this soon)
monsters (leader, henchmen, casters, associates)

For the numerous bandit templates, the site types make no sense.  Thieves hiding in a castle?  How about a tower?  8th level thieves still living in dripping caves?

So, I'm going to add "hideout" to the list of types.  I will have to figure out how to generate random hideouts, design a few by hand, and - this is my question - figure out what to put in a hideout.

I obviously need living quarters, a kitchen/mess, a treasure room, leader's rooms, perhaps an armoury or training hall, and lots of secret doors and traps.  What else?

Do you folks ever offer up a "raid the guild" or similar story to your players?  If so, what do you put in the guilds to make them memorable?

[Serian]

"What do you typically find in a thief hideout?"

The best thief hideout doesn't even look like a hideout. It blends in with everything around it, and typically in a city is fronted by a completely legit business.  The real "loot" is hidden away in the domiciles of the gang members. :-P

[outlander78]

True enough.  That kind of organization is too labour intensive for "proactive salvage operations" though.  I am thinking of the dummies from Batman 1966, not Dark Knight, if you know what I mean.

[Shiftkitty]

Traps and hidden doors/compartments, even trapped hidden doors/compartments. Puzzles to access the good stuff, though a really nasty thief would make a trapped puzzle, delighting in the idea of the interlopers working so hard to facilitate their own doom. If you're looking for campy 60's era Batman, don't forget cages suspended over shark tanks to slowly lower the trapped victims in.

Perhaps there's a large fireplace with a secret door in the back that can only be opened when a full, roaring blaze is going. (The master thief has magical protection against fire.) Without fire protection and a specific amulet, trespassers will suffer from the fire and may find the rear door slamming shut followed by the front of the fireplace shutting shortly thereafter (saving throw to get out before it closes). After the front of the fireplace shuts, the fire magically intensifies, charring to a crisp anyone still inside, though they might scale up the chimney and discover a secret door further up.

An egotistical master thief might have broadsides and wanted posters (especially early ones) around his private quarters that may hint at treasures the party has only dreamed about. ("It says here that 20 years ago this guy was wanted in connection with a series of minor burglaries near Kingsport. that would have been about the time the Silver Fleet got robbed right in the port! Do you think they're connected?")

Rotating rooms are a favorite, but if you make it rotate 6 directions instead of 4 with magical gravity, you can really screw with mapping. Or go for the tesseract. Why not make the master thief an evil genius, after all?

[outlander78]

Thank you for the great ideas.