How would an Adventure Guild work?

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Bah, I page-topped and so knocked ECD's post onto the previous page. I really recommend reading it, so here's a link:
ECD's post
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Okay, you do make a good point on that last note! XD;

Also, you have some rather interesting ideas regarding levelling, society, and their effects on the world there, if I may say.

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Dec 30th 2023 at 11:44:51 AM

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Some of these questions were inspired by the fanfic Forged Destiny (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Fanfic/ForgedDestiny ), which doesn't really address them, but does flag them in an interesting way.

Edited by ECD on Dec 30th 2023 at 1:56:35 AM

I mentioned my own view on what adventurers' guilds look like in the other thread, at somewhat great length, but even before I got to whether it's a security company/job board/temp agency, I'd consider who are the guild. MMORPG/Fairy Tail style guilds are a model for an adventurer's guild - a party or roster of adventurers that employ their own brokers to get jobs.

But I think what makes it a guild is that it's also a system for regulating adventurers (which may mean that a pure mercenary company model is deficient in such regulations, depending on its bylaws). If you want to use the guild as a story-generating element in its own right, instead of a plot device to grease why a bunch of armed psychopaths are off getting the princess' cat out of a tree, you probably want to look at how, why the guild regulates adventurers' behavior, on and off the mission, and who's responsible for the regulations.

I would argue that the most likely location for a guild in the sense that is meant here, is the frontier. A government doesn't necessarily want to push the frontier, or if they do they do not necessarily want to be bothered with it. After all, during the colonization of America plenty of nations let people leave, because the people leaving were primarily the ones they didn't want anyway: political dissidents, religious minorities, etc. And sometimes, control over the colonies was largely a mirage (part of why the Louisiana purchase happened: the sale was over land barely controlled and not valuable anyway). Sometimes governments have their hands full at home (like, say, a hugely devastating ongoing religious war!) and so are both happy to let the "wrong" people go and not really care about where they're going. The frontier will eventually be mapped and turn into a normal country, but for the purpose of the story this doesn't have to matter.

As your novel adventurers move towards the frontier you'll get regular towns, yes, but you would also want to cooperate with people to destroy threats and explore the region. And perhaps the most dangerous thing to a "player" is another player. A guild could thus be a way to get comrades that you can trust (and the major currency then would also be your reputation). people mention bodyguards here but it's good to keep in mind that in a more lawless situation, the people wielding weapons can rob you, even the ones you hire to not rob you.

I think the important question is what purpose one wants the guild to serve in the story. Most historical guilds were craftsmen, a collection of small business owners that had a monopoly on a certain craft.

If there are different types of magic skills, it would make sense that it is regulated and that there is a training organization, and an organization that represents the interests of the magic practitioners. You can make that all one organization. They could even provide health insurance and retirement help (sorta like real guilds).

You could also make them part of the government. The Lord Mayor of London is still elected by guilds. Defense of the city might be organized by guilds. Guilds might have a monopoly over certain types of magic jobs, so even if the member of one guild could do a job, he might not be allowed to do it.

I don't think you need a guild to deal with a constant a very specific job like the cactus, the city might as well require citizens to do it or pay a full time force.

In my case they are...

• a way to regulate adventures and dungeons that they are on the public's side if shit hits the fan
• a union-esque movement for them (this being for a ealry 1900s inspired setting FTR)

However this is for the official ones. There are unofficial guilds butthey tend to be fronts for mobsters, bandits and other ne'er-do-wells, or be legit in methods and motives but denied officialisation because they represent underclasses.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jan 19th 2024 at 4:40:22 AM

Sounds like a job for the Traditional Guild structure.

The Guild gets

• Exclusive rights to all Adventurer Business in their territory
• The right to purchase and carry weaponry inside a city
• Political influence

The City Government gets

• Tax income
• Soldiers in case of a siege or raid
• Oversight on Adventurer behavior

Internally, the guild is run by Master Adventurers who train Apprentice Adventurers until they can past the examinations to be Journeyman Adventurer. Journeymen that spend enough time in the Guild can become Masters with the approval of the current Masters, a monetary donation, and completing a particularly tough job as a sign of their mastery.

That would seem to imply a setting in which adventurers are, for the most part, not the wandering sort; who tend to operate out of a given city, rather than travelling the world looking for adventure.

(Which I could see applying in some settings, to be clear; I'm just noting that it does seem to carry that implication.)

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It also makes me wonder why they are still called adventurers. It's basically a protection racket.

I think that's sort of my problem with the concept? There's just a very narrow band of adventurer's guild outside of which it quickly stops being either a guild or for adventurers. Like an unofficial guild is just a cartel.

I mean, I can see certain types of adventurer, or adventurers in certain settings, operating out of a single location rather than wandering.

In short, as long as there's enough adventure to be had in the local area, they might be fine.

But that does mean that the local area would presumably be remarkably dangerous—and not merely hostile, but frequently dangerous in an exciting way. That's... quite a place.

[edit] But I wonder whether it might not be worth dropping the word "guild", considering what, precisely, this organisation is intended to do, and then determining an appropriate new name for it?

For example, the sort of "adventurer's guild" that I previously described might better be called an "adventurer's community centre", or an open "adventurer's club".

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Jan 21st 2024 at 9:15:33 PM

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I do have a city with three guilds....

• One is the official guild and as such also doubles as police. I'm not sure how intentional the protection racket stuff is but I'll prolly explore that side of it alter on.
• an unofficial guild that mainly doubles as mutual aid group, helping the impoverished out of the good of their hearts and trying to get them into the upper strata of society. Racketeering in general would be unintentional and should not happen with them, but they are not officiated because of powerful folk not wanted there to be social mobility at all.
• and an unofficial guild that is...a front for an organized crime ring. protection rackets are intentional here. Their leaders are in the highest class but they are not officiated because it would be a bad look for the city if the public learns they are actually endorsing crime and terrorism in general and the leaders prefer to keep their identities secret outside of their underlings or allies.

I also have a guild in a more rural area, they oversee the local town and do not forbade visitors from venturing into the dungeons in their employment.

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Jan 22nd 2024 at 7:50:40 AM

Part of me thinks that you might also go the other way and have increasingly non-guild organizations be called guilds. Like a guild is a certain type of organization backed by local government, so i do think you could have some fun with ludicrous activities being guilded for tax purposes essentially. Bonus points if characters never call out the guild naming structure but do call out the tax evasion equivalent. "You guys don't do a lot of golfing in the golf guild".

I kind of struggle with this because if the location is so dangerous that it has plenty of adventure, why would anyone settle close to it? Either a guild isn't all that local and plenty of adventure is all the way out, or you have specific locations (like tombs or dungeons) where adventure is had for the local town). Or, well, someone or something is deliberately creating the danger for other purposes.

Edited by devak on Jan 22nd 2024 at 7:51:19 PM

To clarify, are those "adventurer's guilds"? Or just guilds in general...?

That's actually a good idea, I do think!

And it's not one without precedent, on two fronts:

First, there's arguably a bit of a history of fantasy settings producing unlikely guilds. I seem to recall reading somewhere that Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar had a "thieves' guild" precisely as a lampooning of this trend. (Which type of guild then was taken up and used in seriousness by other fantasy writers.)

And second, that's... kinda how words work: meanings drift, and thus it may be that a given setting may come to use the word "guild" in a manner that doesn't fit its older meaning.

I mean, people live next to active volcanoes and regions prone to hurricanes.

Further, it may be that the region was previously more safe, and has become more dangerous—and, well, people sometimes prefer to remain with their home even in the face of danger. (Not to mention that the danger may render it difficult to leave.)

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I get your point about volcanoes, but volcanoes do not really...attack. maybe i'm not explaining myself well. I think there's a massive difference between merely a location that is, in some inherent way, dangerous (volcanoes, but seas or rivers can also bring danger via storms, floods, etc), and an extrinsically dangerous location. That is, bandits, monsters, magical creatures, ghosts, undead, dragons, etc. Although adventure does involve mapping locations, you do kind of need monsters.

If all you have is an abandoned tomb, you are going to clear that out very quickly. Monsters could greatly slow down the speed of exploration, but there can't be that many monsters or you couldn't live nearby. And if the whole place is just littered with tombs, it become hard to explain why. The obvious case in games is that the total amount of monsters is limited but they respawn all the time, so there's always danger but never too much.

I'm not sure that there is so great a difference to the people living there, as long as they have enough safety on a day-to-day basis.

So if, say, the city is heavily walled and the surrounding fields perhaps warded, I could well see people continuing to live there.

Especially as leaving would then be more (immediately) dangerous than staying.

Now, it would likely help if the level of danger had increased slowly—say over a few generations. That way there's no acute impact to the danger, something that might frighten people into leaving, but rather a gradual shift that people might adjust to over time.

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"Excuse me, but where is the police guild?"

"It's over there, next to the firefighters guild."

"Oh, I thought that was the trash collector's guild."

"No, that's on the other side of town, it shares a building with the dog catcher's guild."

2 are adventurer's guilds, the last is closer to Totally Not a Criminal Front, that uses one as the front.

Then I'm curious: how much adventuring do their members get up to, given the positions that you've described their holding...?

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you'd be surprised how many dungeons could be found in a City of Adventure

Also plan on weaving monster attacks into the story.

That would have to be an awful lot of dungeons in one place. :P

But fair enough, if you've made it work! ^_^

My Games & Writing

I think the issue with that set up is that it seems like a world built for a game, and not like a world that would exist on its own. That is not necessarily a problem, it is especially useful for works that satirize RPG conventions, however in many situations you want to avoid that.

This issue exists pretty much every time you treat "adventurer" as a normal profession. There are several problems with this first, adventurers tend to actually have different professional backgrounds. Sure, the protagonists of medieval Epic Romances were almost all knights and in Dn D, adventurer regardless of class end up being traveling killers for hire (murder hobos). Still, the idea is there, that each member of the group has a different skill set and background. (Although, the newest versions of Dn D undermine this).

If you look at the jobs that adventurers typically do, there are real world equivalents. Looting tombs wasn't really a profession, but it happened. There were professional hunters, who not only hunted game animals, but would kill wolves and other dangerous wild animals. There are plenty examples of treasure hunters and explorers etc. Hiring mercenaries was a very common thing throughout written history.

The golf guild idea reminded me of shooting clubs in Germany and Benelux. They are sport clubs now, but in the middle ages some of them were called guilds and had a military and police function. They usually used one type of weapon and had contests. The Night Watch painting by Rembrandt actually depicts one of these groups that had militia function.

The animated version of Critical Roll replaced every mention of Adventurer with Mercenary and frankly nothing of value was lost.