How would an Adventure Guild work?

I'm trying to figure out how an Adventure Guild would realistically work for a project I'm doing. What I've figured out so far is that each guild specializes in a specific thing.

Well, tell us a bit about your world!

For a few questions:

• What sort of jobs would the adventurers be taking?
• How frequently do such jobs come up?
• How easy is transport between settlements, or between guild houses?
• How easy is communication between settlements, or between guild houses?
• How do job-postings reach the guild?
• Is magic part of your setting
  • If so, how widespread is it, to what degree can people use it, and what impact has it had on the setting?

And as to the guild itself:

• How specialised is the guild?
  • Both in terms of what jobs it takes and in terms of what sort of adventurers it takes on—e.g. is there a separate "Wizard's Adventure Guild" and "Warrior's Adventure Guild", etc.?

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Dec 27th 2023 at 11:33:01 AM

My Games & Writing

Magic in this world is extremely widespread. The average civilian knows a few spells for utility purposes.

Adventurers take jobs such as dealing with monsters, exploring the World Below, assassination, protection, police work, and other things.

Communication is equivalent to modern day due to magic.

Transportation is easy, but new settlements are harder to get to and have been known to entirely disappear.

How often jobs come up is dependent on the type of job.

Guilds differ based on what jobs they take on. There is one guild called the Desert Gardeners who's only job is to deal with a cactus that became a god whose rapid growth threatens to cover the entire planet.

Edited by Drakath51 on Dec 27th 2023 at 3:15:52 AM

Hmm, interesting.

I suppose that my next question is this, then: why haven't the local authorities stepped in and produced an official, publicly-answerable body to handle such matters? Why is it still left to freelancers as and when they decide to take a given job...?

After all, it sounds like communication and travel is fairly easy, so I would expect governments to be fairly able to extend their reach to their various settlements and the surrounds.

My Games & Writing

I would speculate that an adventuring guild would be essentially a mercenary organization that operates in areas with weak, but not non-existent central authority.

In short the stuff that would be handled by the authorities in more stable areas gets outsourced to the guilds and the government only steps in if the guild starts causing trouble itself.

Well the first question is: why would an Adventure Guild exist? Guilds existed historically to gatekeep professions. But the nature of adventurers makes this effectively impossible to enforce.

So IMHO, the only realistic adventurer's guild is a nonexistent one.

Edited by devak on Dec 27th 2023 at 5:30:47 PM

"Guild" is perhaps a misnomer to the way that these things tend (I think) to work: they're more freelance mercenary companies, hiring out professionals for dangerous work.

So it's less about gatekeeping skilled work than about providing scattered freelancers a central source for jobs.

My Games & Writing

I've made a thread here some months back that might have some relevant discussion

@Falrinn You are correct abiut that. Also, the guilds were created to keep adventurers in check because they are often dangerous themselves. There are examples of adventurers taking over multiple towns and declaring themselves leader of a new kingdom.

You might want to dial back on this a little. One thing that might help make this work is if there are relatively large, safe settled zones bet beyond that is fairly wild and dangerous areas. This would help justify the need for something like an Adventurer's Guild since things like protection for travel between settlements would be fairly common.

How do they do this? Do they have force aside from their constituent adventurers...? After all, I would expect adventurers to be fairly itinerant, and thus not reliably available for enforcement duty...

My Games & Writing

Okay. Trains have been invented which has made it a lot easier to travel between cities.

They have a multitude of ways for keeping the adventurers in check. An adventurer turned criminal is treated a lot worse than a regular criminal. Considering that this is an RPG Mechanics 'Verse, they are sometimes punished via level drain.

Edited by Drakath51 on Dec 27th 2023 at 3:51:44 AM

But how, precisely? These criminal adventurers seem unlikely to willingly turn themselves in for level-draining, so where does the guild find the force to subdue them?

[edit] Basically, I'm not asking what punishments they have available, I'm asking where they get the manpower to take on highly dangerous criminals. Especially when those criminals operate in out-of-the-way towns (the sort that one might reasonably try to take over), and are—as you noted—particularly dangerous.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Dec 28th 2023 at 10:00:50 PM

My Games & Writing

As far as I see it, "Adventurer Guilds" exists as a makeshift solution to a internal problem that the country's army can't afford to waste time and resources on themselves.

So with this in mind, this might be a solution to the potential risk of making the adventurers overpowered through levels.

While they are doing this, the army itself is continuously grinding EXP and levels every day, ensuring that they will be stronger than the adventurers in terms of level and outnumbering them greatly in case the former tries a coup.

And the army in turn is focused on a FAR greater and powerful threat that is lurking outside of the country's borders that they have to be prepared to deal with at a moment's notice.

Basically making this country an "oasis in a desert of deadly dangers".

How about that?

"If there's problems, there's simple solutions."

One thing of note is that the royal families are often the highest level people in a kingdom.

Not really. the term adventure guild comes from gaming, where (at least in MMORPGS) guilds are large collections of players working together to beat certain quests, dungeons, raids etc.

But functionally, it's the same as a real-life guild. the purpose of game guilds is to lock endgame progression to teamwork. You can't solo such content, hence the only way to experience it is to join a guild.

But if you ask how that would work realistically is that, well, they don't. The closest analogue would be a gentlemen's hunting club. Cause in reality, the power of the guild is what we'd call government.

The only real way you could make this work is if there is new unexplored territory (or dimension for that matter) where these guilds prop up as joint venture companies.

Even in anime, they exist as an obvious plot excuse. It's a simple way to tie monster-of-the-week episodes together and also allow the (usually reincarnated or otherworldly) newbies to get companions, directions etc without it necessarily being contrived. Or rather, the Adventure Guild trope is a contrivance by itself, just a convenient one.

EDIT: so i tried to google more about gaming guilds to check some things and now its all crypto nonsense.

Edited by devak on Dec 29th 2023 at 11:02:27 AM

I mean...yes it can. Given that this is a very modern setting, I think what you've got is less 'adventuring guilds' or 'mercenary bands' and more 'security companies' but it definitely can exist. These usually come in two varieties, what one might call 'high order security' and 'low safety security.'

High order security is where the society they're working within is generally safe, but either due to higher level of individual danger, or specific higher danger locations, additional security is desired.

So, a well off merchant might be concerned about kidnapping and hire adventurers to protect their family. Or a store in a dangerous district in a city might hire new adventurers to keep the local criminals at bay.

Low order security is what usually gets thought of as 'adventuring guilds' 'go into the wilds and kill this guy/secure this location/retrieve this object.' But you can also see this in places where you can't rely on the local authorities to provide any baseline level of security or order.

Depending on what you're looking to do, there's fun stuff that can be done by creating tension between those groups, they're all adventurers, but what do the folks who go out to kill goblins think about those who stay back to be security guards?

My personal favorite answer to 'why wouldn't the adventurer's guild take over' is the same as to the question of 'why doesn't the army just take over' sometimes they do, but mostly they're made up of members of that society and believe in its precepts and authorities. But the emphasis on the mercenary nature makes that a bit tricky.

The easy solution probably is 'there is an army, it is loyal to the local authorities, but it spends all its time defending the home base, so if you want to expand, or travel off the beaten path, you need adventurers.'

Edited by ECD on Dec 29th 2023 at 2:28:36 AM

It's true that this is the meaning in MMOs, but that's not the only meaning; in single-player games they're quite different.

Specifically, in these cases "Guilds of Adventurers" essentially function as central places for adventurers to find quests. They may also offer training and an opportunity to socialise.

But importantly, the adventurers themselves are likely unaffiliated with each other—they come and go, and indeed, may or may not appear personally in the story.

(For example, the Quest for Glory series has a running element of each game featuring such a guild, complete with a sign-in book for visiting adventurers and a board on which citizens have posted requests.

... And a moose-head.)

And indeed, this seems to be the definition that our own trope page uses. Not the bit about the moose-head.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Dec 29th 2023 at 12:51:14 PM

My Games & Writing

I was trying to find out which came first. From what scattered info i could find, it seems the origin is in MMO's, with people working together to achieve goals. But the other 99% of search results is crypto nonsense and at that point i just gave up.

But anyway that's not really the point i wanted to make with all of this, rather my point is that it's kind of hard to go "how would X work realistically" without considering whether it would exist at all. Especially since the actual question seems to be "how can i make this work for my own world".

And using guilds in stories has a history, there's plenty to pick from and it doesn't need to be realistic since the very idea isn't.

I doubt it, since Quest for Glory had an adventurer's guild back in... 1992.

Unless MU Ds had them?

Huh. I've just now learned that there was a "computer moderated, role-playing play-by-mail game" called Adventurers Guild... (And that back in 1990!)

Oh yeah, that is fair!

The tricky thing here, however, is that the setting is apparently an RPG Mechanics 'Verse, so it presumably has guilds. It's then more a matter of figuring out how to justify this...

This is true! See Fritz Leiber's "Thieves Guild"—the origin of that specific idea, I gather—from his Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories.

(Which was, I've read, intended to poke fun at the fantasy guilds already popping up when he was writing.

And also perhaps the origin of the appearance, at least, of D&D's demi-lich.)

My Games & Writing

Well, one way it could work would be if it was an "Adventure Guild" in name only, slapped onto a pre-existing form of Organization before it had to be repurposed to deal with this new kind of problem.

Like a staffing agency for example.

Finding out the new recruits' strengths and diverts them to tasks best fitted to them so they won't be wasted by being put against something way above their league.

Or the wrong man for the wrong job, the "plumber in the car mechanic workshop" kind of thing.

That way, they could circulate the workforce effectively, force people to take on job they are qualified for while allowing some choice in these jobs for the adventurers to pick, with the last one being forced upon someone who got too late to choose, and ensure that the tasks won't end up stacking into paperwork-mountains because "nobody wanted to do it".

Maybe this would be an idea to how such a thing would be run?

"If there's problems, there's simple solutions."

I think there's basically three models:

Security company (top down command and control, you hire them, they assign a team to solve the problem)

Temp Agency (you hire them, they send it to their people until someone says yes, then that person is assigned)

Job Board (you post your assignment, first one to get it done gets the reward)

Now, you can also have varying levels of oversight and support for all of these, though I tend to think it makes most sense for that to decrease as you slide from security company to job board. And any of the models probably want a way to try to avoid adventurers just letting one guy do the work, then ambush him and claim they did it.

Edited by ECD on Dec 30th 2023 at 8:24:39 AM

Don't Guilds typically maintain control over their members by gatekeeping access to equipment, training and supplies?

Well, again, "Adventurer Guilds" in gaming—and this is an RPG-verse, I gather—aren't really guilds, per se—at least in my personal experience of single-player games.

They tend to fit more the "job board" paradigm given by ECD, above.

Of course, devak brings up a reasonable point in that we may be dealing with MMO-style guilds, in which case yes, they might well gatekeep.

That is a good point—I'm not sure of how a "job board"-style Adventurer's Guild might do that.

The only things that come to mind are (A) magic, or (B) reputation and access.

In (A), adventurers would be given some form of magic—let's say a crystal each—that binds to them and them alone, and that records their activities.

That way a guild-master can check whether the person handing in a quest is in fact the one who completed it.

In (B), well, secrets are fragile things I hold; they're prone to breaking, and the truth to light. Thus an adventurer who poaches the quests of others will likely be eventually found out, I suspect. And once that happens, they can be refused access to the job-board, and thus any reward for quests—whether completed by them or not.

My Games & Writing

I think Ars Thaumaturgis explains this point well.

But I would say, I think someone trying to do an Adventurer's Guild as an actual guild could be extremely interesting.

There aren't really great historical models, as usually there's just not that much value in hiring an 'adventuring band' of 3-7 people. You're either trying to hire individuals to fill out roles (e.g. bodyguard/caravan guard), relying on local forces, or things have gotten bad enough you're trying to hire mercenary companies of 100+ people.

But RPG mechanics do change this. You can certainly imagine a guild, led by a grandmaster, or a council of master adventurers, who, along with their apprentices and journeymen handle larger quests, while assigning smaller ones to their own journeymen. Lots of potential internal politics, very weird (to modern senses) social dynamics. One easy way to avoid the 'why don't they take over?' question is simply 'they did' they're top dog, but don't want to spend their time dealing with leading a city, so they offload that onto some other parties, just taking some percentage of the taxes.

This also raises interesting questions, after all, in an RPG-verse presumably levelling/advancement are going to slow down as you increase in level, but a master adventurer might well be able to walk his level 1 apprentices through an Orc stronghold and bring them all to level 10 in a day. Is that a service they offer? What about bringing along a blacksmith and letting him be 'part of the adventurer' in exchange for new weapons they can forge if they level up enough?

This obviously isn't where OP is going, but with an RPG-verse structure that's existed long enough, I could certainly imagine a world where monsters are an endangered species that has to be carefully preserved in order to allow for levelling of a nation's defenders, or leaders.

This also raises real questions about 'recycling' levels. After all, if you're the level 20 prince and your father, the level 80 king is dying...is it actually ethical to just let him die, or should you be killing him so that you'll be a level ~40/50 king and better able to protect your family/people? I can certainly imagine such 'recycling' being viewed as entirely appropriate. He decides who gets his sword and his gold, shouldn't he decide who gets his EXP?

There's a lot of really fun world building you could do with an RPG-verse structure!

But, back on topic, if you want to maintain a more standard fantasy structure, a magically binding oath not to interfere with the politics of nobles/royalty, or something to that effect being a requirement of promotion to master adventurer might do it?

Yeah, for Job Board models, I think (barring magical tools) you basically have to depend on reputation. I also think you're being real optimistic about how a group of heavily armed people who kill for a living would respond to someone double crossing them. I think that's a story which ends with: "and then John the Job-Thief was stabbed fifteen times and his body was cremated."

Edited by ECD on Dec 30th 2023 at 1:12:51 AM