So obviously, everyone knows adventurer's guilds are lame isekai shit only used by pathetic weebs, and basically only serve to turn the setting into a videogamey high school fantasy - which is, of course, exactly the kind of thing they enjoy.
How can we salvage the concept of an adventurer's guild and make it something worthwhile for us non-subhumans? For starters, the word guild has to be dropped, because it's not even a guild. (This also applies to "thieves guilds".) Making them more like mercenary groups would make more sense, but contrary to popular belief mercenaries are entire armies for hire, rather than individual people you send to do a job.
Ultimately I think bounty hunter dens are the best choice. They provide the mechanics of an adventurer's guild - basically a tavern with a job board, while not being god awful anime dogshit.
>For starters, the word guild has to be dropped, because it's not even a guild.
A guild is a protectionist collective of business owners who work together to create a mutually beneficial standard of behavior. It costs money/dues to be in a guild, the guild provides benefits for its members, and generally speaking it is illegal/impossible to do business without being a member of the relevant guild.
An adventurer's guild is, in fact, a guild.
With this in mind, adventurer's guilds are fine.
>The party pays dues to the guild - probably a percentage of their rewards
>The party follows the guild's rules - no murder, no blasphemy, no rape, no cheating
In return:
>Nobles will be eager to hire the party, knowing that they're card-carrying members of a reliable organization
>Town guards will look the other way for the party's shenanigans, because the local guild chapter is relevant to the town's economy
>The party can network with other mercenaries to trade loot, information, and jobs
>The party can rest at guild chapters and safely store loot there
>The party can get money exchanged at or take out loans from the guild
In a world with monsters and supernatural problems, monster hunters and adventurers will be sought-after mercenaries and there will be economic organizations to codify their profession.
Not without global communication
>what is Sending
inefficient and requires lots of spell slots for 250 words per minute and you can only do it for a minute and a half per day or so at max.
Conveniently enough the adventurer's guild is well placed to double as the closest thing to a post office.
should it be as farcical as 'the guild of calamitous intent' from Venture bros?
I think so!
Under this defintion it would also be possible to have a thieves guild, as legal recognition is not strictly necessary to be considered a guild, you just need to have enough influence to prevent or severely hamper people from entering the market without going through the guild. A thieves guild would have a standard of conduct, take a cut out of every score in exchange for providing services like fences and stash houses, and aggressively muscle out anyone trying to do business without being a guild member.
Put together that sounds an awful lot like a protection racket. A thieves guild is basically just a mafia.
>A thieves guild is basically just a mafia.
That's exactly what it is. The term "Guild" is just used for standardization purposes. A thieves guild is a mafia conglomerate. A fighter's guild is honestly just a mercenary company. Magic Guilds are probably the closest to a "Traditional" guild structure with ranks and apprenticeships for new wizads as well as a tight control over how their wizarding is done and which spells are passed down to who.
>A fighter's guild is honestly just a mercenary company
That's not even close to being accurate
>Magic Guilds are probably the closest to a "Traditional" guild structure with ranks and apprenticeships for new wizads as well as a tight control over how their wizarding is done and which spells are passed down to who.
It would be closer to a college or university. That said, the university structure is very similar to the guild system, especially at higher levels, where students basically act as apprentices and journeymen to the professors' masters and grandmasters. The thesis is even analogous to the guildsman's masterpiece.
The fundamental differentiator between colleges and craftsmen's guilds is that colleges deal in knowledge, which is traded in a much different manner from physical goods. It's also harder to regulate.
That's true. Back in the day universities weren't places most people went to for 4 years as a prelude to a specialized industry job like they are now, they were dedicated specifically to academia and the production of academics. The Bachelors > Masters > Doctorate progression is even roughly analogous to the apprentice > journeyman > master track in a guild, they're both measures of someones level of mastery in a subject.
Even today graduate students pursuing a doctorate operate very similarly to an apprenticeship under a master. They work under a specific professor who furthers their education and gives them experience and guidance in exchange for the grad student helping the prof with their specific projects and research. They also work towards a thesis which has to be a unique work of their own and must be reviewed by the professor they work for, as well as a board of his peers, who judge whether the work is worthy enough to justify granting the student the title of doctorate, at which point they are allowed to pursue their own work and take on students of their own.
That's an extremely medieval system, probably owing to the sheer age of universities as a whole, being one of perhaps the only other institutions besides the church to survive from the middle ages into the modern day.
>That's an extremely medieval system, probably owing to the sheer age of universities as a whole, being one of perhaps the only other institutions besides the church to survive from the middle ages into the modern day.
That makes sense. One of the death knells of the guild system was the growth of industrialization and automation reducing the importance of their highly specialized training and knowledge. Design a machine that can do something a human could only master through years of practice in an apprenticeship and suddenly the organization offering said apprenticeships looks a lot less valuable. But we never figured out a way to automate the production of knowledge, so while the mason's and tailor's guilds died out, the mathematician's and philosopher's guilds have remained to the present day.
Hell that's also why so many priest and cleric guilds have survived too. Spirituality has proven similarly immune to automation.
>Spirituality has proven similarly immune to automation.
I regret to inform you...
The reason I say it would probably be closer to Guilds is that if magic is so readily available you could pop your brat in magicollege for four years and they get shit out with some mediocre spells they're almost certainly going to be used more akin to a travelling doctor or tradesman than a college student. Their job wouldn't be exclusively knowledge, it would also be plying spellcraft.
Some universities were literally guilds of teachers, or even constantly churning guilds of students (using guild dues to hire teachers)
And with that concept, you also introduce the interlocking mechanisms that real guilds often have. Sometimes the requirement to get into a guild involved getting training from another guild. There could very well be a "fighter's guild" that teaches fighting styles, and an open secret "thieves guild" that doesn't officially exist, but whose members can get under the table endorsements, and wizard colleges, and then to actually join the adventurer's guild, you need to have accreditation from one of their orbiting training guilds. Incidentally, admin is handled by contractors from a notary or secretarial guild, because no profession can't be given a guild.
You're right, but the idiots will deny it.
'Adventuring' is too broad of a profession to have a single guild as it covers everything from monster hunters to mercenaries to tomb robbers to spies to professional thieves to diplomats and more. The only thing that unifies them is the use of violence.
It's why in Golarion the 'guild' is portrayed as a barely disguised arm of the government and essentially what amounts to an international terrorist organization quickly amassing political power to bully everyone it can. Their abilities are so broad an 'adventurer guild' quickly becomes more of a extranational political force instead of a means to train new adventurers and protect prices.
Rename it to a mercenary chapterhouse, or like you said, a bounty hunter's den. The same shit just without the moronic baggage.
Reducing adventuring to a consistent career sucks the soul right out of it.
Reducing adventuring to a mercenary career or bounty hunting career sucks the soul right out of it.
>it is illegal/impossible to do business without being a member of the relevant guild.
This is what I think makes an adventurer's guild unrealistic. Compared to most other guilds, the specialty of adventurers comes down to one thing: violence. Whether fighting rats, staving off bandits, or even hunting legendary beasts, adventurers are killing something. This makes an adventurer's guild go from being a guild of professionals into something else.
Then you have to question its legality - a bunch of highly trained, dangerous fighters would either be at odds with the local government, or cooperate with it.
At a city level, then, it's either a crime syndicate or an actual adventurer's guild.
At a national level, it would have to be an irregular branch of a state's armed forces.
If international, then an adventurers' guild would be a mercenary company or a state in its own right.
I think the only situation where an adventurer's guild would be an actual guild would be if they were organized on a local basis. However, that would also cause problems, since guilds are organized on a per-city basis. City A's guilds are not City B's guilds, and they have little to no coordination between each other. Considering how nomadic adventurers tend to be, that becomes an issue, and ranking structures become a nightmare.
>I think the only situation where an adventurer's guild would be an actual guild would be if they were organized on a local basis. However, that would also cause problems, since guilds are organized on a per-city basis. City A's guilds are not City B's guilds, and they have little to no coordination between each other. Considering how nomadic adventurers tend to be, that becomes an issue, and ranking structures become a nightmare.
The issue you are having here is the assumption that the majority of adventures are nomadic or migrant job seekers and that most adventuring jobs could be completed in a relatively short amount of time (a few days at most). Make adventurers focus on an area of about 40 miles/64 km (roughly 2 days of cross country travel by horse and a week on foot) around the city the guild is based in and assume jobs taking weeks to months on average to complete and things start being a bit more sensible.
Real life guilds didn't coordinate shit and it still worked out. Realistically, the only thing an adventuring guild can actually legally control is the taking of contracts. They can't sue someone for going into the goblin hole of their own volition, or because they got a contract to do it from the next city over (Although they might be able to go after whoever hired them if they're local), they can only sue them for taking or trying to take the goblin hole job inside this city.
And suing them is exactly what happens, they've got a legal monopoly, the government will hear their case and they will fine the shit out of violators for revenue and kickbacks.
When has anyone ever charged players guild dues?
give it a try, see if it doesn't help immersion
though it can be said that they take it off the back end from any guild jobs
Adventurers aren't merchants or tradesmen. You don't hear about knight guilds because a better term applies.
Exchange the word "adventurer" with mercenary, since you're so hang up about the "adventure" part not being an occupation.
Say monster hunters, explorers or slayers. Fantasy worlds have dangers and issues any government is going to struggle to keep under control. Adventurers are there to fill the blank that a huge army or town guard cannot do.
Dealing with petty threats without the spending of taxes, and discovering and plucking dangers before they happen.
In turn all the individuals of note in an are are being bookkept, and contribute to the local culture as the people's heroes. The successful ones will retire into cushy mentor jobs for the army and nobles. Unsuccessful ones will either die, or likely try to join the army, local syndicate, etc.
Thank you. Adventurer's guild threads keep happening, and they keep reaching this consensus.
But still people like OP continue to deny the concept based on surface level complaints and biased against "weeb shit".
First of all, don't call them adventurer's guild.
Second, make multiple guilds but strictly for different types of adventurers. Fighters, Mages, Bards, Thieves, Rangers, etc etc, all of them gets a guild of their own that deals in troubleshooting that may suit them. Clients wouldn't go to a Fighter's Guild to fix a problem that the Mage's Guild would be better equipped to deal with.
With that, you're already doing the concept infinitely better than 100% of anime today and likely many other GMs. Give yourself a pat on the back for doing some basic effort.
> Fighters, Mages, Bards, Thieves, Rangers, etc etc, all of them gets a guild of their own that deals in troubleshooting that may suit them.
that's fricking moronic
>Plumbers, Electricians, Carpenters, Operators, Laborers, Machinists, and etc unions are moronic.
A professional association that helps set standards and practices while also providing a place to get training in said profession has been common through much of history. Applying that same logic to many D&D classes works, obviously not all classes would form such groups; for example, clerics, paladins and other divine types would more likely form religious orders centered around their favored divinity.
Churches would likely for groups to assist those sorts of classes. To train them anyway, obviously. The work they do and regulations on said work would likely be handled either in house or during joint cooperation with another group that already regulates the work done that they might find themselves doing. A group that might also have more reach in the labor market, but would benefit from cooperation with the church. Something like a...Adventurer's Guild?
>Plumbers, Electricians, Carpenters, Operators, Laborers, Machinists, and etc unions are moronic.
Yes.
Either have one singular adventurer's guild governing all adventurers everywhere, or frick off from our hobby.
>construction companies can't possibly exist as discrete entities because they need to hire carpenters, electricians, plumbers, laborers, etc and everyone knows all these trades work independently from one another
You're moronic.
Honestly a generaized adventurer's guild still makes a lot of sense for hiring mercenaries and as a place for wealthy dilettantes to organize and brag about adventures (like, expeditions and what not)
The main problem is that there are usually not a good representation of normal professional guilds like goldmiths or shoemakers who would give the adventurers guild context
The better answer would be to have different types of organizations for different tasks. Standard historical mercenary companies are going to prove a good source of soldiers, warrior, and fighters of many stripes, while a hunting lodge might be a better place to try and find a skilled archer who's used to tracking beasts and monsters.
The task of adventuring varies a lot, and you don't want to bring along an archeological scholar to take on a chimera rampaging through the wilderness
>The task of adventuring varies a lot, and you don't want to bring along an archeological scholar to take on a chimera rampaging through the wilderness
Yeah but like, the scholar might be hanging out at the same guildhall as the mercenary captain, because they both were on the expedition to the northlands.
The adventurer's guild would be more of a fraternal order that certain members of other organizations (city guard, traveling merchants, minor nobels looking to dabble in knoght errancy, a particularly bored Goldsmith, Magic college, locksmith's guild (thieves guild, obv. They have a protection racket and also make sure unauthorized theft is kept to a minimum)) would associate with when they want to get up to no good.
>Thieves guild
That shit is fricking gay. It would be better to just have many criminal groups of varying levels of organization.
I also played Oblivion! Stop right there criminal scum XD
Todd Howard, please provide a good game again instead of dumbing down the formula.
Adventurers Guild was started by an OG murderhobo and runs the guild like a sanctioned Bandit Lord who sends out privateer type groups to act as mercenaries. Adventurers are feared and disliked by most and have to eat at the executioners table in the inns. Adventuring is outlawed in half the kingdoms under penalty of getting your hand chopped off. To be an adventurer is to be a dishonorable oppurtunist.
A bit about actual medieval guilds.
For one they were highly regulated and for the most part hereditary. A guild member might take an apprentice from outside the guild, but this was the exception not the rule. To put it one one way, guilds were one part-monopoly and one-part union, they were the only ones allowed to do their crafts in their region, so swords are only coming from the swordmaking guild of your city, that's it. Guilds however were very concerned with quality, reputation was everything for medieval economies, so usually quality was very good.
Suprisingly something you don't see a lot in fantasy is the guild-hall. Many guilds would share a communal hall in smaller places, but in wealthier places guilds would often have their own guild halls which would be very large ostentatious locations where guilds would meet to set regulations, induct members, and so on. Many also had secret greetings, passwords, handshakes, the sort of thing you'd expect from the free-masons, or moose lodges.
Guilds were often also incredibly specialized. Like there might be one guild who would make the pommel of a dagger, and another the blade. One guild might make buttons for shoes, and the other the soles of the shoe. So this could translate to an adventurer guild to hunt goblins vs. one to hunt orcs. Or one to hunt orcs with spears, and one to hunt orcs with swords. Or one guild to hunt the orcs, one to loo the orcs.
Guilds were also incredibly regionalized- localized to a specific city. Adventurer guilds in manga are often portrayed as large national if not pan-national institutions, but instead you'd have the Adventurer Guild of Paris, which can only accept jobs in the region of Paris, and is not allowed to do any adventuring outside of Paris, or the Adventurer Guild of Orleans will have to send you a very sternly worded letter. Naturally you can see why this doesn't translate too well to a globe-trotting campaign.
it seems ironic that what a real "adventurer's guild" would be is the opposite of what a player would expect out of it
being able to just go to the mmorpg quest board and pick out a mission off the table sounds more like a freelancer or consultant
a question that adventurer's guilds raises now is who are allowed to hire them?
if they live in the domain a lord, what are the implications of taking a job that conflicts with the lord's interests?
what even is the job of an adventurer? just to go around and collect shit? provide protection in a world full of monsters? hunt down monsters or people that the clientele deems a threat? how do they mesh with the military of the local region?
There wasn't any sort of prohibition on selling goods by guilds. It's inherently anti-capitalistic (or at least anti-profit). There should be no reason that peasants to lords should be able to purchase the services of the adventure guild, so long as they agreed to the set-upon rates.
Now as to what the lords would do, guilds tended to have not unlimited soveriegnty but were pretty much given free-reign in the cities to handle their own affairs. The idea of a king intervening in the economy didn't really exist. The analogue of mercenary companies exist and were relatively common as even lords struggled to raise the funds for an army. Mercenaries however were considered unreliable, as if you couldn't pay them on time, best case scenario they pack up and go home. Worst case scenario they get paychecks from the enemy and side against you. They weren't really restricted to specific loyalties- I mean they were mercenaries.
As for how they might be used with relation to the local military, I assume that some authority, be it a lord, or garrison captain or so on would commision the guild for a mission as they saw fit. Probably whenever a job is too dangerous, or they lack proper arms or expertise that the guild might have. I imagine though if they can be bought off for war campaigns there isn't too much difference between an adventurer and mercenary. That could be a relevant feature of the guild- they have immunity from conscription in war. The guild might have it this way so that even in wartime the guild can keep making money by slaying goblins and the like. In fact, it could be a necessary institution- with men away on campaigns, the adventures guild becomes even more important to maintain stability in a world with monsters in it.
>There should be no reason that peasants to lords should be able to purchase the services of the adventure guild, so long as they agreed to the set-upon rates.
should or should not? i think yes, but with some restrictions. peasants probably only can ask for certain jobs, due to conflict of interest?
>Mercenaries however were considered unreliable, as if you couldn't pay them on time, best case scenario they pack up and go home. Worst case scenario they get paychecks from the enemy and side against you.
machiavelli wrote to never trust a mercenary
>the adventures guild becomes even more important to maintain stability in a world with monsters in it.
seems like an adventurer's guild fills the role of local militia
they might arise organically in areas with poorer lords or more monsters
Sorry, 'should be no reason peasants or lords can't purchase the services of adventurers'.
The only one setting rules for guild members would be the guild itself. The idea of the government being there to do anything other than defend against invading vikings didn't exist in the middle ages. Hard to consider given we take for granted the government is meant to do all kinds of things for us today. But the guild would probably as a matter of course say 'you can't hire us to assassinate a king' or anything like that. Guilds were extremely regulated, they were immensely concerned with reputation, and guild codes were seen as being key to this.
the concern that i would have as a noble, is that "adventuring" as an organized trade seems a consolidation of military power and influence that i'm not a member of
Welcome to feudalism.
that's kinda where i was going with this adventurers just end up being the military caste in a feudal system
huh, maybe this is why all my campaigns turn into property management simulator
>As for how they might be used with relation to the local military, I assume that some authority, be it a lord, or garrison captain or so on would commision the guild for a mission as they saw fit.
Considering the general lack of standing armies, the adventurer's guild would likely comprise much of the military's non- commissioned officer corps
>Guilds were also incredibly regionalized- localized to a specific city. Adventurer guilds in manga are often portrayed as large national if not pan-national institutions, but instead you'd have the Adventurer Guild of Paris, which can only accept jobs in the region of Paris, and is not allowed to do any adventuring outside of Paris, or the Adventurer Guild of Orleans will have to send you a very sternly worded letter. Naturally you can see why this doesn't translate too well to a globe-trotting campaign.
You've just articulated the main reason why the concept of adventuring guilds are stupid and associate with anome drivel. Good post
The difference is anime settings like DnD, TES, and Warhammer tend to be more globally interconnected thanks to magic communication, travel, and surveillance techniques globalizing the settings. While these filthy weebshit settings tend to also have regional tradesmasters, they also have the global communication necessary to have globe-spanning organizations with well known reputations like the Blades, the Harpers, and Brettonian knights.
Yeah, the more guild-like they are the more antithetical they are to adventuring- high regulations, high barrier of entry, incredibly local, often incredibly specialized.
You know though what I think is an under-utilized vehicle for adventures? Knightly Orders. About as perfectly medieval as it gets with lots of fun adventures and chivalry. Many were crusaders but many weren't, and they can offer a lot of inspiration.
The Knights Templar were Europe's bankers prior to the Renaissance which is where their power came from, allowing them to build castles across Europe. And were famously wiped out all at once by the Pope in what inspired the infamous Order 66.
The Knights of Cyprus doubled as merchants ferrying goods from the Near East to the rest of Europe.
The Knights Hospitalier were basically pirates going on slave raids on muslim held coasts and where the idea of Galley Slaves came from.
There was the Crusader State of the Latin Empire from the 4th Crusade, squatting on the ruins of the Byzantine Empire.
Order of the Dragon, which submitted to the King of Hungary to help fight off the Ottomans.
And so on. A version I like are the Dawnguard from Skyrim's DLC, who are just guys dedicated to hunting vampires. That's a fantastic premise right there, just gather up the boys, build some castles, study monsters and go throughout the land trying to slay them. The Witchers from the Witcher series are also pretty similar.
Knightly Orders are definitely closer to what an Adventurer's Guild actually does but their name implies a closer tie to nobility than the standard "come from nothing with a particular set of skills" murderhobo that you get from most starting packages of a generic d&d campaign. It SUGGESTS (I know that Knightly Orders also had sizable amounts of commoner support staff) that everyone going on missions is a knight and few want to be explicitly told they're playing second fiddle to another character. The Guild moniker sort of works if you include dues and guild politics but the honest truth is that most people just use it as a waystation between gigs. A narrative space for the party to come together that isn't on the road where they can interact with other people in a similar line of work and have information given to them about the state of the world. There isn't as much of a historical analogue to that because it's a literary and game device.
>The Knights Hospitalier were basically pirates going on slave raids on muslim held coasts
What? where did you get this from?
>and where the idea of Galley Slaves came from.
you do know there have been galley slaves for as long as there have been galleys right?
makes me think that the best way to do a guild focused game would be to have a guild at a frontier. not much afventure to be had around paris, but around the last bastion of civilization at the edge of the known world? yeah
Aventurio.
Just add some good ol genpvide and plundering of the native savages and we are go
meant to quote this khomie
>you'd have the Adventurer Guild of Paris, which can only accept jobs in the region of Paris,
>or the Adventurer Guild of Orleans will have to send you a very sternly worded letter.
Or... the Paris guild asks a premium for those kinds of jobs because it knows it's members will be regarded as outlaws and brigands who are at serious risk of having to fight the Orleans guild and/or guardsmen and invite possible assassins, sabotage, or open conflict with the Orleans guild if they get caught.
A regionalized guild system just means limited safe havens, options for morally ambiguous jobs, and a good excuse to have players fight adventurers from other areas.
Hell, this can even result in some characters having their home town/village burnt down as part of the guild wars.
Multiple adventurer's guilds engaging in a brutal all-out war sounds positively kino.
brutal all out war? that would be very bad gor business and we could probably get sued! better to do petty sabotage and street brawls
Honestly, two groups from rival guilds getting in a tavern brawl sounds like a decent hook.
>How can we salvage the concept of an adventurer's guild
First you need to answer why you want to do this in the first place.
It does streamline a bunch of adventuring. At least giving a setting a good framework for random people to post adventuring jobs and to hand out rewards to them.
But that's about as far as I think you need to go with it, no need to turn it into a video-game leaderboard.
>streamline a bunch of adventuring. At least giving a setting a good framework for random people to post adventuring jobs and to hand out rewards to them.
Why do you need any of this?
Save time?
Save time on what? The players working to seek out adventure so you can get back to hitting goblins? At that point you should just start every session outside of the dungeon and it doesn't matter who hired them
Literally nothing wrong with these two, uness the person is being autistic about it.
In a recent survey it was shown a vast majority of people here arent even in a game group so taking any advice or opinion here seriously is just silly.
"I want to play a gish" is fine too. That's what fricking paladins and some 5e warlocks are.
First make it more open, a place that serves the adventurers, but also the common folk, of course by making it open for everyone the players will probably have to pay for food and housing, but they probably won't complain Then make it less bureaucratic, instead of a board with standardize jobs like if it's the 21 century, make it simpler, more personal, like a central character, maybe the owner of the place, that knows the jobs just because he is one of the pillars of that community.
Finally just give a old timey name like, i don't know, the tavern, and there you go, a less weird adventurer's guild
>having guilds
>Ever
Hippity hoppity height
Open markets are a liberal right
Guilds were an important part of training people in a particular trade and passing on knowledge before the printing press made books cheaper and easier to make. Adam Smith's ideology struggles to work even now with information more accessible than it was in his day. In an era with significantly less accessible information his ideas are utter nonsense.
>non-subhuman
You can't be lower than a human, you complete copetard
If levels and leveling exists, then a guild makes sense. There is no way to control the superman, except an equal or greater superman. Conversely the type of weirdo who would go out and fight monsters for money instead of doing a normal job probably doesn’t deal well with others, so you need a middle manager type to deal with both groups. So you have a group of humans with useful skills that are necessary to making things run, but do weird shit like not wear appropriate outfits or get obsessed with their job. So guilds and adventurers make sense if you treat them as IT. You have your maladjusted IT, being managed by slightly more adjusted but less skillful management, trying to maintain balance with the countries they have contact with.
Try inserting an adventurer's guild into fellowship of the ring, and then tell me if you still like them.
>MUH TOLKIEN
Shut the frick up.
LOTR is not a setting where adventures happen often. There are not goblins caves or dragon dens under every burrow. Generally everyone knows where the dangerous areas are and tries to avoid them. Hobbits know not to to travel through the old forest and Barrow Downs. Gondorians know not to walk into Mordor, Dwarves avoid the Misty Mountains and orc holds, everyone except the elves stays the frick away from Mirkwood, etc. Random warriors bravely venturing out into the wild to slay perilous beasts is not a common occurence, nor are there level 20 supermen running around destroying cities all by themselves, so there's no need for an organization to manage them.
Imagine the only fantasy you liking is a boring ass book from the 50’s, and still managing to suck at reading.
I have, as I have played MERP and Rolemaster.
It kind of works in the far south and east, where monsters are more prevalent and politics more liquid and gray. The black and white survival of the northwest does not allow for a more mercantile mindset and cooperative vagabond lifestyle.
Too many loyalties to hearth and home in the lands of the Numenorians.
Isn't the in-game Pathfinders group in Pathfinder literally just a frick huge adventurer's guild?
Yes
I just have it as a natural resources arm of the government. Sometimes you find iron or good timber. Sometimes you find an ancient tomb. It all gets licensed to the highest bidder to exploit just the same.
There is no functional difference between an adventurer's guild and a mercenary group. The Knight of Saint John were an adventurer's guild. Blackwater was an adventurer's guild. Change my mind.
Reminder, Erik Prince is Betsy DeVos' brother and was lobbying Trump to move to an all-private army. Thankfully it seems even Trump isn't stupid enough to think that sounds like a good idea.
>randomly /misc/gayging
Well due to the more well-rounded nature of an adventuring party an adventurer's guild would probably handle a wider range of jobs than a mercenary group
You don't know frick all homosexual, the Flemish would be disgusted with you
Represent guilds as the highly protective medieval institutions they were, and have your players be filthy know nothing scabs
For my setting I gave the Adventurer's Guild an in lore reason to exist and a purpose. Stuff like that goes a long way to fixing the problem as long as it's well thought out.
The Adventurer's Guild was born out of a continent spanning Merchant's Guild. The MG paid poorly and expected adventurer's to do back breaking manual labor for them with no regulation. It started off well enough, until some merchant's got greedy and started abusing the people they were paying to escort goods or even themselves. Those who did work for the MG unionized and decided to form their own guild to regulate the kind of work done and the prices that could be paid and the work expanded for the members afterward because it became clear that merchant's weren't the only people willing to pay for the labor adventurer's could offer. Nobles, townships, craftsmen, and even regular people could benefit and were willing to pay. The Thieves Guild is like the black sheep of this guild family. The TG was formed primarily out of larger bandit gangs working together to strike MG caravans, but during the rise of the AG they targeted MG shipments that didn't use the AG as primary workers. This meant the non AG shipments were more likely to be taken down and MG members became more likely to use the AG. Effectively a mob vs scab workers sort of play. There are whispers about the AG paying the TG off during this time for what they did to the MG, but these sorts of rumors are denied heavily by the Adventurer's Guild.
In its modern form the AG just gives missions to its members, and pays them accordingly. Regulating the prices of specific kinds of work its members do. Taking a small cut of anything they make doing these missions as a members fee/finders fee. The way I set them up, I could easily make them an enemy later on and that's 100% intentional.
>elves are for
Delivered.
>I HATE [THING]
>BUT ALSO I DESPERATELY WANT [THING] SO I'M GOING TO TRY TO SUBVERT AND "FIX" IT
Why are anti-weebs so fricking tsundere when it comes to shit they think is weebcore? If you don't like something, then just don't include it instead of trying trying to "fix" it like some homosexualy woman trying to "fix" a bad boy.
>tries to pretend anime made adventurer's guilds (or made them bad)
If you believe in this anime boogeyman, I don't think this anime website is for you.
They could also be a group of monster hunters. Got a problem with a monster? Register a bounty with your local monster hunter office and a group of hunters will fulfill the contract or die trying.
>How can we salvage the concept of an adventurer's guild and make it something worthwhile for us non-subhumans?
Drop the pretenses and have the players do contract work for a mercenary company.
there's NOTHING wrong with playing a gish, gish are a based and there's no place for that sentence in that meme
Make them like a union. The old-style "Pay us or we break your kneecaps and burn your house down" kind of union.
> A thieves guild would have a standard of conduct, take a cut out of every score in exchange for providing services like fences and stash houses, and aggressively muscle out anyone trying to do business without being a guild member.
You mean like the mafia, the yakuza, and other criminal groups that keep some manner of standard of behavior that keeps the cops off their backs because it's the lesser evil?
I think it would make sense in a new world type of place. The established landmass doesn't need a guild of adventurers. They already know where everything is. Now in a new landmass, there would be a purpose to an adventuring guild. Pioneers for hire who go out and do the dangerous parts of setting an unknown land. Fighting off local beasts, making contact with the native populations, and finding safe places to settle.
One day they won't be needed anymore but for the purposes of a game, it doesn't matter. That time won't come until long after the game is over.
We should drop the word syndicate from crime syndicate because it isn't even a syndicate.
I get that this is bait but why is "commissioned art" in the middle there? What's supposed to be wrong with it?
Your only real options are crime syndicate, mercenary band, trade company, or pirate crew.
>So obviously, everyone knows adventurer's guilds are lame isekai shit
Isn't an adventurer's guild literally just what would happen if mercenary companies decided to unionize and form a guild?
having a thieves guild is the modern equivalent of a "crime corporation"
and that is why it is cool.
Given that many have pointed out the similarity of adventurers' guilds to historical guilds or companies, I wonder if the real reason adventurers' guilds come off as kind of cringe is just the term "adventurer" itself. Most of their work is mercenary stuff or hunting monsters. But they're neither exclusively mercenaries nor monster hunters, and sometimes they're couriers, and sometimes armed archaeologists, and sometimes explorers, etc, so neither term quite works - but "adventurer" just seems kind of gay and lame, most of what they do is getting sent on missions, not "adventuring", which, first of all, doesn't really focus on the martial nature of their work, and second, kind of tends to imply that they're working for themselves and doing things of their own initiative, when in practice it's some NPC telling them to go do X.
Is there a better term we could use than "adventurer"?
They come off as cringe because they're actually adventurer corporations most of the time, and adventurer clubs the rest. They're almost never actually run like a guild. A guild doesn't have a boss who gets to order everyone else around. Each full guild member is an independent business owner. The guild is their lobbying/standards and practices organization, like a department of labor and training that licenses businesses and investigates malpractice, only instead of being a government institution, it's run entirely by the businesses it oversees and the government only gets involved when it brings a lawsuit to a nonmember or member who breaks the rules. Guilds are what happens when the government outsources licensing and standards.
A guild grandmaster could banish any master from the guild at will. If you did not do as he wished, you lost your ability to do your profession in that city.
You seem to have mistaken rights with duties and requirements. Guild members had many duties and requirements that were ruthlessly enforced. If you did not commit to them, you could not work.
Your history-fu is weak.
Yes, but they also got to throttle competition and abuse apprentices at will. The guildmaster isn't remaining the guildmaster for long if he just takes out members for shits and giggles. It isn't a corporation.
No it is twelve times worse. It is a feudal power structure based on nepotism and local power politics.
The only thing that made guilds functional was that they had a culture that all adhered to. Any iconoclastic ass would be tossed out on his kiester and anyone playing up "my property or my profession" without loyalty to the group would be cast out faster that a leprous prostitute in church.
Guilds bossed everyone around they could. They intimidated kings whenever they could and wear often the money behind attempts to buy out charters for their cities to avoid feudal rule.
The horrible practices of guilds were notorious enough that even Karl Marx called them out on it.
Yes, it can work. But first of all get rid of the silliest elements.
> The guild doesn't function in a tavern-like building in an urban area, but in a rural estate.
>Only experienced men-at-arms, hunters, mercenaries etc. no plucky lvl1 "guy that wishes to adventure" types.
>"adventurers guild" is a silly name.
>better if the system has some sort of stress/trauma mechanic, to enforce the idea that fighting monsters isn't something for everyone, thus the need for such an institution
>if 90% of the system's monster compendium are just fluffed stat blocks that can be killed by conventional means and strategy (if fighting monsters works the exact same way as fighting another man on the battlefield), then there's no need for an especialized "adventurer" profession.
doesnt have to be just hunting monsters, but being able to deal with all the bullshit that can happen to your people in a DnD world
local lord and his 20 good men can take care of it all bro no need for a guild
I guess one of the things I don't like about Adventurer's Guilds is how they diminish player agency and proactivity. Like you don't go digging for ancient secrets or avenging a lost friend, you take a job offer. It's hard to care about a quest when it's just another day at the office.
I hear that. It requires a GM who knows how to wrangle a good game and not let the guild be a crutch.
I used to play with a guy who ran a game where all we did was get "quests" from the guild that had objectives like "kill 8 red goblins and 4 blue ones"
Your DM had anime/MMO brainrot
>only serve to turn the setting into a videogamey high school fantasy
It serves as a place to meet other adventurers and find quests. It is far more organized and sensible than just asking around a bar. You have always been the subhuman you seek to avoid.
>Town next to monsters
>Militia takes care of them, but they regularly come back and are more of a hassle than a threat if taken care of.
>King does not give a shit
>Some guy decides to start taking care of these threats with a group of frens
>The town's authority rewards them
>Militia does not care since it's less work for them
>They take it to do this regularly
>Their business model is successful and more randos join to take care of threats
>Some of them kill monsters, gather ingredients and do random good Samaritan shit or darker stuff like taking care of monster bounties or cleaning dungeons. even serving the local lord if they prove to have enough prestige.
>The guild finally splits
>In fact, a frickton of guilds emerge
>The local lord decides to regulate them into a single bigass guild with lots of mini-companies of wannabe heroes
>Other lords notice this and, if their lands have a similar issue, they create a similar guild
>Once in a blue moon they get questing knights to join and slay legendary beasts
And that's just because a bunch of illiterate peasants from bumfrick nowhere had enough of those pesky goblins stealing their potatoes. Because you do have potatoes in your setting, right?
>Because you do have potatoes in your setting, right?
Only if it is set in South America.
Why is it a guild and not, say, a mercenary group or some sort of private military company?
That poster is braindead and moronic and so are you.
you could attempt to refute the points made instead of being a salty homosexual.
That poster literally describes a corporation and not a guild. Guilds do not employ their members in the exact same way lobbyists do not employ the people they lobby for. The only people who work "for" the guild are the paper pushers and lawyers they use to liason with the government. The actual tradesmen or service providers (for things like merchant or paper pusher guilds) are working for themselves and benefit from the guild's collective action.
The closest thing we have in the modern day are unions, but unions are made of employees and butt heads with business owners and the government, while guilds are made of business owners and butt heads with freelancers and the government.
That moron believe guilds or companies in general do not explore and employees don't develop, feel fear, triumph, or make sacrifices. That organizations are always stable and never deal with the unknown or unpredictable. It can only come from someone who lacks humanity and you should be able to see how he is full of shit on your own.
Adventures can do more than fight. In their ranks you have healers, explorers, treasure hunters, ect.
And yet in real life you saw a lot of different individual guilds for those sorts of roles. There wasn't a 'wearable objects' guild that lumped together tailors, cobblers, and armorsmiths just because they all work towards a vaguely related end result.
The knifemakers and swordmakers had a rather famous and often misunderstood slapfight as a result of knifemakers trying to get into the sword market by making very large knives and then leaning really hard on the legal definitions based on what kind of tang was used that means their extremely large knives are still knives and not swords and they can't be held liable for their customers using their very large knives for combat.
Because those have command structures and everyone works for the company.
You don't work for a guild. Guild masters are the guild.
The Explorers Guild is the appropriate name.
They specialize in knowledge of tombs and ancient locations, getting to these places and getting out of these places.
The adventurer's guild is the quintessential corrupt union. Once you get to level 5 or so you quit adventuring and start living off the dues paid by new adventurers. Adventuring without union membership gets you murdered, and union members working with non-union members are blacklisted for a first offense.
Unified pest controllers guild. A guild for anyone who is in the business of dealing with creatures that are nuisances or hazardous as a profession, which will include the kind of monster hunting which is a typical RPG adventurer's bread and butter.
Giving out quests under the auspices of a particular organisation offers certain avenues for narrative tension around whether the party are willing and able to complete the task set out for them. Going back on a contract will have consequences, but the job assigned may also turn out to be more hazardous than it's worth. There's also opportunity for tension between those players who are just doing a job and those with some kind of personal stake in the task. You can also put together parties that represent different, contrasting organisations, EG for profit guilds, holy orders, chivalric orders, and secret societies.