"Thieves' Cant" is a misnomer
An old post of mine got deleted, and I remembered that tumblr nuked the OP's account (epicdndmemes IIRC) so maybe they also nuked everything they ever posted and all the reblogs? Idek, they posted d&d memes for pete's sake. In any case, yay for archiving stuff, here's the rescued text. The op's meme (sadly not rescued) was claiming that all d&d rogues MUST be criminals, otherwise they wouldn't know thieves' cant and how to use thieves' tools. A narrow-minded and unimaginative take which made me go off and
Stop thinking of thieves’ cant (which is a real thing, not a D&D invention) as a jargon of Thieves, and start thinking of it as a jargon of People in the Margins: petty thieves (the big ones live in mansions and speak on a higher register, not cant), gamblers, sex workers, vagrants, beggars, performers of all sorts (actors, acrobats, buskers, carnies etc), slum dwellers, peddlers, itinerant and migrant workers of all sorts, whatever minorities have reason to mistrust the law, and whatever professions are considered disreputable or “unclean”. In a word: rogues.
Cant’s purpose is to be unintelligible to respectable law-abiding god-fearing outsiders, because if you’re in the margins, these folks are dangerous. (They’re also potential marks for your scams, sure, but cant is primarily a defence mechanism.) That doesn’t mean it’s magically unintelligible to outsiders. Anyone associating with this underworld can potentially learn it, or at least parts of it. And in fact, all cant dictionaries were written by respectable law-abiding god-fearing outsiders.
So in order to speak Thieves’ Cant, your Rogue can be criminal, or criminalised, or otherwise marginal, or someone who has associated with these elements enough to pick up the lingo. You’re not required by law to be an urchin -> pickpocket -> thieves’ guild member, geez.
As for thieves’ tools, it’s a toolkit used by burglars, locksmiths, investigators, cops, spies, activists, revolutionaries, and lockpicking lawyers amateurs who like a puzzle. Your Rogue can be any of these, or somehow related to any of these. It’s not even a stretch of the imagination, geez.
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