/tg/ - Traditional Games

We had something like that once - basically a mercenary company where you could post job offers and individual groups of adventurers would notify you if they were interested in the job.

However, the entire sub plot in the city the guild was situated in came with the fact that the guild was not quite as heroic as it seemed - the guild did offer you beds, potions and other equipment at reduced prices and all that, but also was fiercely protective of "its" market.

So if you made the mistake of freelancing in the city without being a member, some guys from the guild would hit you up and nicely ask you to join them. At first. If you keep taking jobs anyway, their means of persuasion would become increasingly forceful.

And then there was all the other crap: Adventurers with more or better connections than you snatching away jobs from right underneath your nose even if your group had signed up for them first. The guild having very cozy ties with the organized crime in the city, to the point that certain high-priority customers did not enjoy its protection but were rather subjected to a protection racket. And the guild master having a finger in every political pie in the city.

Sure, except it's a Pokemon Guild instead. The last mission they got from there was about 16 sessions ago, so I think we're at the point where they can survive in the world and do things without needing to be told "there's some funny business in the woods". These kind of setups are best in sandbox games, where the party can stumble into the guild after a long night's drinking, look at a few quests, and pick the ones they like the most. Plus it's a good source for NPCs when you need them. Where did this badass adventurer dude come from all of a sudden? Why, he was doing a job in another city and just got back.

I also threw in a Cartographer's Guild, because maps are cool and important. They love asking other guilds to protect them while they're out mapping dungeons and wilderness and shit. They also love selling maps to players!

>>398014

That's a great idea. For now, I just want them to have a secure employer with set payment for missions but I might use that later on if they ever get bored of those missions.

>>398015

>Plus it's a good source for NPCs when you need them. Where did this badass adventurer dude come from all of a sudden? Why, he was doing a job in another city and just got back.

True. Though my worries are that they might try to steal from other adventurers or get i some other serious trouble. Guess I'll just see what happens.

>>398018

Please god, let your players be dumb enough to try and rob another adventurer. If they do that, they deserve everything you can do to them.

>>398024

>If they do that, they deserve everything you can do to them.

Oh don't worry about that. I hope they don't but if they try and fail then they'll certainly get what's coming for them.

>>397968

In my world-setting, a lot of former adventurers head small mercenary guilds and the like. There's no dedicated adventuring guild operating under that exact name, but there are a lot of groups that more or less take on those sort of jobs. Or more often, groups that collaborate - think something like in Morrowind, where a Fighters Guild quest might involve you being contracted out to some other group to help look for a missing scholar, and so forth.

>>398056

I was just about to say, dressing it up as an adventurer's guild can be too on the nose. But having other groups that would naturally have help boards/large number of people gathering/would need help (mercenaries, churches, town-halls, libraries, academies, pubs, etc) is fine right?

>>398061

I think adventurer guilds (not necessarily by that name, but that structure) make perfect sense in your average fantasy world:

Travelers are threatened by a whole lot more than in RL, where it was just bandits, and even the most powerful of kings would be hard pressed to guarantee safety outside of the heartlands.

That means that basically anyone that travels would pay for a guard. But since they're travelers, they wouldn't know how reliable people are and they'd need some kind of security that they aren't going to get stabbed in the back.

If we go with the assumption that the king can't or won't be bothered with micromanaging everything (which would hold true to how RL feudal societies operated), an association that vets the kind of self-employed mercenaries(adventurers)/micro-companies (parties) requested by the market and matches the same with contracts according to their capabilities for a cut of their payment makes perfect sense. From that point, it is logical for the guild to offer ancillary services: Booze and food after a hard day of drudging through shitty weather, smiths, tailors, alchemists to keep their equipment in good repair/replenished, etc. It'd basically ensure that a large part of the money that goes into guild hands, remains there as adventurers immediately spend it as soon as they receive it.

And as a bonus, if the official armed forces are stretched thin, the king can temporarily hire adventurers to do tasks usually done by soldiers, like protect towns from bandits. If the economy collapses and trade and travel does a nosedive, both the guild and the king are safe since they have only the bare minimum of employees to start with. Only the adventurers get fucked.

TL;DR: Adventurer guilds are fantasy Uber and the adventurers are the drivers.

>>398218

just go for crusaders of (god of adventure/journey/badassery) then. thats enough reason in itself

>>398217

The closest to a true "Adventurer's Guild" I use, is an organization I call the Forester's Guild. Just as the name implies, the majority of those members with class levels are Ranger-types, but pretty much every character type is involved. Their foundational purpose is acting as swords-for-hire in dispatching monsters, not a far cry from non-mutated Witchers with better publicity, but members take other jobs as long as it doesn't threaten the integrity of the Guild. Since big-name clients often need entire ruins cleared to make way for civilization, they also attract a lot of scholars, who help with securing archaeological sites and all of the deepest lore within.

>>397968

It's extremely overdone, but such things did actually exist in the past (still do I'm sure, but I'm sure any existing "modern" adventure guilds are just glorified tourist organizations).

>>398218

Good point on the money. "Half now half on delivery" doesn't really work when you can shank the guy half-way along the trek and take the other half. Bank notes kind of work, but with magic you could just use an illusion or even transformation spell to make an ally look like the guy you just killed so he can OK the bank-note once you get to the next village.

Meaning people who could afford a guard would probably leave some of their wealth in various banks/homes in other places they'd travel between. This in turn means when they want to send their money to other places, the bank transporting the gold to another site would need to be heavily guarded- creating more jobs for adventurers and guards.

The guild gets more profitable, can incentivize members more, and the whole thing has a nice cycle of profit for adventurers, banks, and merchants/upper class.

>>397968

You know I think the concept of an adventurers guild is lazy story telling and something that only exists, because the knowledge of how real "adventurers" operated got lost in history(speak the people who write about today's fantasy are ignorant about it) or in the case of Japan lost in translation.

I tolerate when I come upon it, but I don't like it because the concept doesn't work at all. It doesn't work economically, it doesn't work socially and it doesn't work ecologically, but since it is pretended to be working, its is making everything and everyone involved dumber.

First of all there are too many businesses and services incorporated into the typical adventurers guild for them to be economically viable in the long run, considering their business is based on odd jobs, mercenary work and going on expeditions. All of these have questionable returns of income and success.

Since it would be so expensive to run, all the services provided would also be massively expensive and all this in return means it would be some kind of scam onto the adventurers and that they are.

The majority of "adventurers guild" as presented in fantasy media are not a guild aka a union of people from the same business, but corporations that are fleecing low class mercenaries.

To top it off these corporations could not exist, because the adventurers themselves have easy methods to escape this business model in a feudal fantasy world, they can just form fellowships, brotherhoods and expeditions based on oaths and contracts like real people did and they have the ability to buy stuff much cheaper by going to the producer directly.

Then you have the social problem that the adventurers guilds as presented are basically independent international operating defense contractors, this would fly right into the face of a feudal society where everyone is given his status at birth. The ruling class wouldn't tolerate an organization that can challenge them and the people inside the organization couldn't really work together since their status would separate them. One major reason why real people left their home and go into adventures is that they are looking for a place or way that allowed them to improve their status, that wasn't possible in the confines of their home.

The mortality and number of adventurers is also a huge problem. The reason why few people in real life became adventurers is that it provided an unstable and dangerous life, people where usually of better staying at home. So if Adventuring is too dangerous, that would mean there are actually too few people to run a business for and if Adventuring became safe enough to be common then the profits would go down, since there is only a finite number of quests, because there is only a finite number of monsters, unexplored regions and forgotten ruins.

And at last you have the ecological clusterfuck a adventurers guild is turning a setting into, because to make this creation possible the creators turn monsters into every day common animals to fix the problem that there can be only a finite number of quests. This completely destroys the character of many monsters and stories you tell about them, because their threat level has gone from abnormal creepy freak of nature to just another stray dog you have to catch as the fantasy equivalent of a dog catcher.

> I know it's pretty videogame-loike

Didn't keep on the borderlands have an adventurers guild? Shit's as old as D&D.

I like to emphasize the importance of religion in my settings, and so replace most guilds with monastic orders whose patron saints represent the guild's mission (saints of exploration, travel, commerce etc).

Most of the members are serving a cause, and the gold is just a bonus, which is why they don't just leave to form their own companies or stab their clients in the back. Of course, there is usually also an element of corruption and those are just in it for the money, like the RL church

>>398417

just play glorantha at this point tbh

>>398414

please elaborate

Was thinking about writing an isekai webnovel where someone ends up in a place with an adventurer's guild, but instead of joining he sets up a jack of all trades/private detective office of his own.

Then go for something like >>398014 suggested for further conflict. Medieval corporate/guild warfare, basically.

>>398426

please dont joke like that, its not funny

>>398435

What stops the army-pureeing warrior from leading a rebellion against the guild?

Sure the high class NPCs can wreck him all the way to the immaterial plane but if he can get enough people following him it means that the guild system breaks down either due to simple lack of participation or due to him becoming the martyr of a full on pro-adventurer rebellion.

Its not like the base for anti guild sentiment is lacking since you pointed out that Guildless work exists but is frowned upon(Which means that those who take said work would be spiteful of the Guild by default)

Could be a nice adventure hook if your PCs ever get too annoyed at the guild messing up their profits.

>>398442

The guild usually prevents such incidents by being as helpful as possible - and most anti-guild sentiment is from criminals, thieves, cutthroats, and crime-lords who don't understand why they can't post jobs like "Break the mayors legs, myeah, see?"

>>398441

well first of all, it most certainly is going to be nominally neutral which is kind of a unique characteristic back in the day. You can't buy the guild's affliation (but you can buy an adventurer's affection for the low low price of 199 gold an hour). Second, it would be a clearing house for technically illegal skills. Tired of being chased by dogs and guardsmen? Do a stint as a scout to lay low, and if someone has a lock that needs picking why not. Lastly it gives the crown (or whatever the ruling power that is ) plausible deniability. Need someone murdered? Go a town over and hire an adventurer? Need an expert in graverobbing? Go a town over and hire an adventurer? Need an rival gang/tribe/village eliminated? Go a town over and hire several adventurers.

Truthfully its historically inaccurate but the given the history of trade guilds and mercenaries its not that strange to think someone could make this a viable civic institution (especially if it produced more highly skilled individuals, especially in less then socially acceptable things like magic or graverobbing).

>>398427

Why not? The whole concept of an adventurers guild just pisses me off, anyhow. Like it was in Grandia; it's just a complete oxymoron and a contradiction in terms.

>>398426

>isekai webnovel

>Medieval corporate/guild warfare, basically.

Don't make the mistake of our beloved rice dwarfs and forget that people back then were much more family oriented.

Back then a business was run by a family and the guilds lead by the most powerful families of a region.

Blood relationship mattered heavily, even some of the family members competed against each other.

>>397968

I do it when I want to run more of a collection of one-shots rather than a huge overarching campaign. It works well when your group meets irregularly or on short notice, so they can use the same characters (saving time on char creation) but don't need to remember story details or what was going on in the big picture of the campaign.

>>398857

I was thinking of doing something like this. Gives a good place to leave a stable of pre-written characters in case players want to try something different for a while.

>>398195

>>404775

Have the guild staff have minor magic like Detect Lies

>>397968

Sure, but in a more "realistic" setting itd operate a lot differently.

No sane ruler would just allow a bunch of mercenaries to live within their city walls murdering for money, it'd be a threat to civil order and would make the local guard look weak.

Instead they would just contract things out to mercenaries who happened to be wandering by or request the city enlist a militia to deal with the issue.

Its a lot easier rallying up a bunch of young farmer boys to take cheap weapons collecting dust in the armory to go deal with the problem, for if they were to just "quit", they'd still live in the town and have to deal with the consequences.

Whereas mercenaries can just decide part way through the job just isnt cutting it and forgo the payment, moving onto the next town.

God forbid you hire mercenaries to defend a town against bandits. A local militia might be incompetent but they'll defend the place to the death. Mercenaries might just kill the bandits only to occupy the town itself and become the new problem.

Even Machiavelli, despite his questionable military strategy, knew that mercenaries were bad for the state and sovereignty and so advised against using them whenever possible.

The only exception i would see to this rule is during times of warfare and desperation or for specialists who deal with unique problems that might require some martial prowess.

Spies, Assassins, and Thieves are all typical order, but for a more "Adventurers guild" styled approach, magical nuisance exterminators are a solid choice.

While the city guard or a whole damn army of militia men might be called to deal with a massive dragon, if one were desperate, they could hire specialists to deal with lesser magical beasts that'd require larger forces to deal with.

Phantasms haunting your church?

Contacting the pope might take awhile, but a Magical Merc could deal with it for some gold.

Griffons stealing your cattle?

Getting a sufficient number of peasants with crossbows might take time and if you're on the verge of civil war that might be a problem. But hiring a Magical Merc (R) to deal with the problem would be easy.

Fantasy worlds present unique problems and for unique problems you need unique solutions. MAGIC should follow predefined limits with their respective settings and for me that means that every problem that can be resolved without magic, will be resolved without magic.

For everything else you have Magical Mercs (R)

>>405032

If you look back in history, there were a few professional mercenary standing armies employed by a state's leader that functioned well. Of course that requires enough money floating in, and key figures with loyalty to the state's leader, but it's certainly possible.

>>397968

Adventurer's guilds are only good when used humorously

Big fan of adventurer's guild's by any other name.

>trading, merchant companies

>hunters, furriers

>colonial co-operatives

>privateers

>Reisläufer, routiers

>>405032

> No sane ruler would just allow a bunch of mercenaries to live within their city walls murdering for money, it'd be a threat to civil order and would make the local guard look weak.

Italian city-states almost solely replied upon mercenary armies, because they had a decentralized government, comparatively low populations, and comparatively high incomes relevant to the rest of Europe. That, and these city-states were run by a merchant class, rather than a warrior class.

The alternative system was feudalism. You have to remember, you didn't really have militia forces for medieval people, or armies paid in wages - that concept died off with the fall of Rome. Knights and other members of the First Estate fought. Peasants who were brought it weren't dirt farmers - they were ones making a high income. And that was more a thing for the Brits than the French. The problem that emerged was that as firearms and the like developed, and nobles ended up just getting killed instead of captured and ransomed, they started sending more and more peasants out instead. The result, however, was exactly what the nobility feared in the past - the peasants had the weapons, did the fighting, and steadily got more and more power, until eventually the nobility was deposed.

How this pertains to D&D - While you can do whatever sort of bullshit you want, the implied setting of (classic) D&D and even 4E is one where the human population is not exceptionally high - lower population density than the medieval British isles - and most of the marks of "civilization" are ruins; high-level characters rule over independent fortresses all across the landscape; monsters are all over the place; most of the "wealth" of the world is sealed away under the ground, rather than entering into circulation; and so forth. The implied economy is one where barter is less common, with exchange of coin being far more commonplace - the perfect situation for mercenary soldiers to be the common-place. And naturally, mercenary adventurers.

>>397968

Honestly, a centralized hub for a campaign makes organization a lot easier. Plus, it allows more leeway for DMs and Players alike. Hell, the guild itself can provide ample amount of adventure.

>>416455

Like fellow guild-members that are jealous of PC's status

Stop thinking how to marry Adventurer Guilds and the government. Adventurer Guilds ARE the government. When you have individuals that are capable of huge feats by themselves, the whole quantity over quality real world reasoning simply doesn't work. IRL, no matter how good you are, how well trained you are, how well supplied you are, you'll die from a bullet or a rock to the back of the head just as easily as the next guy. That's why tactics exist, because once you caught your enemy unaware, they are dead, no matter how good they are.

However, in fantasy settings, well trained adventurers cannot even be harmed. Grabbing 200 peasants, arming them with old weapons, and sending them to flush out a gang of 40 bandits is a total possibility IRL. Now imagine the same situation in a fantasy world, where the same 40 bandits are all at least level 5 and know some magic. Even worse are Adventurer guilds, where they are much more high level, and difference in power is staggering. A clever adventurer can fucking destroy an entire city by himself at level 10, and a non-clever adventurer is a dead adventurer. The only way to counter said individual is with another strong individual, and preferably several of them.

Like fuck there would be regular armies, militia and guards, when adventurers can do the job of 10 men by themselves. There would only be one huge Guild, that can afford to control this mess.

>>416658

Yeah, the problem isn't the nonsensical adventurers' guilds, it's the retarded fantasy settings.

>>416658

Pretty much this... with an exception.

Adventurers don't have the ability to produce food or build homes and stuff like that.

Granted however that an Adventurer Guild is basically on the same level as ultra nobles on steroids, they may still not be considered nobles if only because they own no land/workers/means of production.

Still, what this anon said is true: you always need to check how mechanics relate to the lore.

>>398410

I see adventure guilds as another form of the hub city. Its meant to be the resting place, gain jobs, meet interesting NPCs and where you get your gold. This style of play usually works for episodic games as a way to have a solid begining and a end to sessions. I would much rather perfer the hub city over the adventurer's guild for this role, as cities are much more interesting then a single building but each has its niche.

>>416664

>Adventurers don't have the ability to produce food or build homes and stuff like that.

If we're talking D&D levels of magic prevalence, all you need is a druid or a wizard to do those things.

>>416712

In any campaign that I DM if a druid forced itself upon nature by trying to industrialize it they would lose their druid status pretty fucking fast.

For wizards... why the fuck would they care about feeding peasants?

>>416455

>Honestly, a centralized hub for a campaign makes organization a lot easier.

Yes, but it dumbs down the story, both for the game world and the characters.

Take for example the Thief or Assassin Guilds, they are a really stupid concept that could never work in a world that makes sense. The law couldn't work in a place were it is legal to be a criminal and the moment it is, you are no longer a criminal.(i.e. a Thief has to do thievery to be a Thief.)

What does however for certainly exist is a Criminal Underworld, with all the things this entails. And what is the better story, a character that is his profession only in Name and goes to the "Guild" to get a stamp for his work or a Character that lives his profession by actively doing it?