Hunters guild

Just because they call themselves a "Guild" doesn't mean that they're legal. And if they are, and the law is ignoring them, it's because they've corrupted that government, as organized crime often attempts and sometimes succeeds in doing. Not sure what particular issue you're complaining about.

>not admitting it depends on the union branch

>Setting has guilds dedicated to killing shit, magicing shit, and stealing shit
>Not a single guild dedicated to trading, let alone specialized skills like masonry or smithing

Hate it. Hate it every time it happens.

"Guilds" are nothing like real life guilds, ever

>every time it happens
I'm all ears.

I like to think those guilds always exist but are just not interesting enough for the PC's to ever interact with.

Just something I've had happen to be a few times while playing. No crazy storytime or anything. Think most of it comes from Oblivion/Skyrim where those three are used as a form of questgivers.

Problem is when you're a player who loves getting involved with that kind of stuff it sucks.

could be a legit guild to keep the crime rate down and the city keeps its quota of banditry
can't have just anybody just turning to petty crime
the guild makes sure amateurs are dealt with

>Implying he has a job

colloquially, a guild is just a group/organisation isn't it? I don't see how any of those wouldn't work in this case

>PBR

Shut up Vetinari, you're lucky you're so damn good at your job

>Think most of it comes from Oblivion/Skyrim where those three are used as a form of questgivers.
I hear ya, although in a video game like Skyrim, even if it's extensive, it's got to cut corners somewhere, and so they focus more on the quest-givers that play into the more "adventurous" play than you would find in an artist's guild, or a vegetable-seller's guild.

You're an idiot. Those are criminal organizations. OP has legitimized organizations.
This

>OP has legitimized organizations.
Where, and when?

>implying a gang or whatever crimincal organization just can't call itself a guild because they like the sound of it

>Hunters guild
Doesn't seem that far out there assuming an actual medieval guild society, since they had guilds for every profession under the sun who wanted to protect their interests.
>Thieves guild
>Assassins guild
All depends on the rulers, culture and nature of said guilds. Look to the Thieves Guild of Lankhmar (the prototypical one that everyone else steals from) or the Assassins of Morrowind's Morag Tong.
>Bandits guild
Barbary Corsairs were basically that in real life.
A local lord having bandits who target outsider assets without an overt connection to himself isn't exactly a new idea.

owned, capitalist

Dohohoho

The correct answer is,
[spoilers]>You're both right[/spoilers]

>today
Japanese government developed out of organized crime structures. It's only today that people sometimes forget about this connection.

Well, it's understandable oversight, considering that in this time and age it's usually the other way around.

>Not having The Third Civil War of Nefarious Personages
>Not having the Bandits' Goods Exchange siding with the Right Thuggish Doorkeeps against the Order of Highwaymen and Improper Tolltakers

Do you even civil war strife?

>the other way around
The government steps in to help their fellow man like tattoed antiheros when organized crime justice doesn't work?

Seriously though, the Japanese and the Italians both have a very.... benevolent? Philosophical bent to their organized crime that isn't really matched in other countries.

>BANDITS guild lol so dum
You sound like you live in a small world devoid of history or borders and like you do it in the most unimaginative way possible.

I think the Triads are in Taiwan. Something to do with one of the presidents being a member of one.

>Doesn't seem that far out there assuming an actual medieval guild society, since they had guilds for every profession under the sun who wanted to protect their interests.
Afaik there's never been a a Hunter's Guild for the simple reason that it was common (ie. there is no real hunter profession, rather it's something people do as a side-job) or the land is owned by a lord anyway, making hunting there illegal.

Although now I think of it, Gameskeepers were a thing. But I've never heard of anything like a Gameskeeper's Guild.

>Hunters Guild

M80 even today you get gentelman's clubs and hunter societies. I have no problem believing you'll find an analogue in a fantasy setting. A group of rich, well-equipped weirdos looking to bag the freakiest monster they can find sounds awesome, really. And "Huntsman's Guild" sounds exactly like the kind of thing a bunch of eccentric rich monster hunters would call themselves.

A "bandit guild" is just a group of bandits. Stop acting so silly.

I'm not a fan of Thieves Guilds or Assassin Guilds though. At least not how they're usually presented. Especially Thieves' Guilds.

Guan Yu is the patron of Triads, Police, and Business.

Wasn't it bean curd?

Don't call them guilds then.

When is it appropriate to begin talking about Companies (like the East Indian Company) instead of Guilds?

This problem is nothing new. It was prominent enough for a joke in Colour of Magic, way back when.

Hunter's Guild is perfectly okay.

Thieve's guilds has always been odd to me, there's no way they could exist in say a city and not be found when a major populace also lives there, they have to be nomadic or solitary for a guild to even remain a secret.

Assassins and Bandits guilds though is some serious middle-school laziness. Sounds like what one of my mates is writing up for his edgy as fuck campaign.

You did the right thing OP.

Bandits could have guilds.
Individual bandit groups would join and their leaders would form guild council.
They would discuss things such as new techniques in avoiding law enforcement and settle territory disputes.

Guilds were basically an urban phenomenon and mostly covered jobs related to the manufacture and selling of products.

Pretty sure they're not related at all. The only common point is that they legally have the monopoly over something in a specific area.

Yeah I know, but hasn't most of this thread been pointing out that there have been videogame-esque guild analogues in real life organisations, like the previously mentioned mafia? All I'm saying is that a hunter's guild doesn't even that. Either a society is a hunter-gatherer one, in which everyone hunts or nobody does it (as a profession).

>pbr

absolutely worst, bottom of the barrel, choke yourself on a dick taste

it aint even that cheap

There's no reason a guild has to deal with people's primary profession. I imagine most assassins, for example, would have their regular "day jobs" as their primary profession, and the same with bandits.

No one is saying that fantasy guilds need to adhere too closely to historical guilds from medieval Europe.

What about state sponsored banditry against a rival kingdom? Essentially privateering on land. With or without overt action, deniability, and letters of marque.

A thieves guild could be a popular nickname for a loose affiliation of crime families. I'm sure they could call it other things.

Do you even Fida'yin infidel?

Most of the things unions fought for are required by federal law these days. Occasionally they need to come in to help their members with legitimate issues, but mostly they exist to bully business owners on behalf of the more lazy workers. I guess you have to do something while waiting for corporate fat-cats to infringe on stuff.

Historically assassins did their job by becoming close to the target, this could take years in some cases. Either that or religious fanatics like the Hashashin who were fine with killing their target even in a crowded area, because they'd die anyway. And bandits would not be welcome in society, the stereotype of them being on roads and shit targeting travellers existed because of the fact they could only do their job outside of towns. So yes, it IS their full-time job. This isn't to say though that anyone is first an assassin or bandit or that they don't stop becoming one after a while.

Though yes I agree with you that guilds are fine as they are in games, as a place to give quests and non-hostile NPCs for each class, as long as they're not presented as historical.

Fuck you man he's a veteran he can drink whatever he wants.

It doesn't help that they abandon those ideals when operating in other countries.

That's more of an umbrella organization than a guild. A guild denotes the idea of some legal precedent. Are they paying taxes to the king whose tax collectors they rob?

this is good, i like this

Have you ever considered that the "Thieves Guild" isn't a Legal guild? That they just call themselves a guild for both respect, and because they act like a guild?

When you start making money you realize that all beer isn't that far off in price so you can pay a bit more for something with flavor. And if you're just trying to get drunk without flavor you can buy fucking liquor.

There are plenty of unofficial ways that organized crime and government can interact.

>Historically assassins
>followed by anything
Assassination is a very wide category of activity that spans so much time and geography I don't really think you can make true general statements about what assassins did or did not do beyond offer to kill human targets for some kind of reward.

>And bandits would not be welcome in society
And that's why you don't fucking TELL people you are a bandit. When times are bad, some men turned to banditry as a side deal. The closest thing to becoming a full-time bandit would be farmers or other professions where there is a pronounced off-season.

You... you know that isn't even close to what OP is talking about right?

>adventurers guild
>in exchange for a cut of the profits, they will pay to relocate your family when you cross a BBEF and they will come to your legal defense when you are inevitably arrested.
>the guild has pushed through major legal reforms in most countries, including trials and innocent until proven guilty.

Just like soldiers from an attacking country aren't beholden to expend men, supplies, and time to protect you from attackers and aid you in times of disaster, organized crime from other countries would have no reason to compromise power or profits in order to support the common man in some foreign country.

I honestly don't know why you would expect them to. As if Robin Hood would believe fervently in supporting the rightful king of France while there.

Of course there's a Thief's Guild. You can just go around hiring any unaccredited hobbit recommended by a wizard when you need some burglary done. You might end up with an amateur.

It's mostly a don't shit where you eat principle.

*can't
Other way around kind of undermines my point.

You honestly think that all bandits live in their secret bandit hideouts and don't interact with society with their "normal citizen" faces on?

Honestly, sneaking through the King's forest to do minor banditry on the highway on the other side is plenty of safety buffer for this sort of thing.

In summertime, the land is fat and you can live off it to some degree; in winter, you pretty much have to go to a town or some other normal human habitation. "Secret ninja villages" were extremely rare to the point of not existing even in Japan, from where the trope currently identifies the most strongly.

An organised crime group cannot exist without an extensive peripheral network. In that peripheral network, that would involve the bankers, the politicians, the policemen, basically the portals into the licit world that protect the core and organised crime group which revolves around business activity.

My only real gripe with these kinds of organizations is that no one ever names them something cooler than "[Name of criminal activity] Guild".

Wait, is it too unreasonable for a criminal organisation in a world with guilds for every realistic and a good number of unrealistic crafts to call itself a guild, too?

You're the kind of asshole that thinks every DMV should have a special name, aren't you?

A Hunter's Guild is perfectly sound. It'd serve as a way to regulate and coordinate hunts for rare and dangerous game, track yields, prevent overhunting of game in a given area, and provide grounds for the apprehension of poachers.
Assassins also make some degree of sense, assuming a setting/culture that has ritualized combat or political killing. Consider the Morag Tong in Morrowind.

Thieves and bandits having guilds is retarded, though. Organized crime doesn't structure itself like a business; it structures itself like a clan.

>Organized crime doesn't structure itself like a business; it structures itself like a clan.
I can't even begin to unravel how wrong this sentence is to find a mutually acceptable point to explain it to you.

I mean, are you forgetting how many historical businesses were in fact clans? Or are you just pushing modern perceptions of how a business is run onto period fantasy for no reason?

the guild structure represents a form of organization and control, there was a form of legality for this, but it also existed at a time when there wasn't a unified form of legality.

Now we'd use the term 'cartell', but an organization calling it selves the 'thieves guild', because it shares the general structure of the other guilds, but without the official legal backing, isn't that weird.

Bandits on the other hand, makes no damn sense, because bandits by nature are more mobile,disorganized,and not concentrated in population centers. Those things are more essential to the 'guid' structure than the legal recognition.

it's also a comedy setting where 'the place that the sun don't shine' is a geographical location. There is a stripper named 'brocoli', pork futures exist as butchers pigs moving backwards in time, etc etc.

Logic works a little funny there.

>Bandits on the other hand, makes no damn sense, because bandits by nature are more mobile,disorganized,and not concentrated in population centers. Those things are more essential to the 'guid' structure than the legal recognition.

It could be legally sanctioned banditry like a letter of marque and the guild is some bureaucratic middle man.

>bandits by nature are more mobile,disorganized,and not concentrated in population centers
Bandits operate in territory, and a city will be surrounded by several bandits' territory. I see no reason why a bandit leader wouldn't have a guild council seat for every city affected by his territory.

>all these people putting organized crime in a good light
Christ how depressing

Bandits are more or less like mercenaries. I've never heard of mercenary guild.

There's no good light or bad light about it user, just facts. Governments also do bad and good things, seeking to exert control to maintain itself as/along with some sort of status quo, but talking about them isn't some sort of sinister plan to make them look absolutely good or evil.

At least, it shouldn't be. You don't do that, do you?

>ctrl+f discworld
>no results

Why do I even come here. Thread about guilds and Sir Pratchett isn't even mentioned.

Try actually reading the thread, retard. Or at least improve your search-fu.

>bandits operate in territory
a fairly broad territory, and they can move to new ones.
Bandits don't have the ability to police an area to make sure no one else is being bandits.

You could get something like the pirate 'councils' but those are MUCH loser organizations. The 'guild' anology starts breaking down.

Banditry is also more opportunistic than a long term organisation.

letters of marque worked in part because of how unregulated the areas they operated were.

The legality isn't the issue. As I tried to point out the 'thieves guild' might have no legal recognition whatsoever. It's. guild because it uses the guild structure of self regulation and control.

Banditry and piratry work based on lose structures, they aren't guild like in nature, no matter there legality.

>bandits never get in conflicts over territory
>bandits never try to beat out or absorb competition and increase their share of the finite spoils of banditry in an area
First of all-

>The 'guild' anology starts breaking down.
Okay, fair enough. Let's start with your position on what are the essential aspects of a guild, and why. Would prefer arguments revealing the internal logic of the position rather than a stark list of traits.

monopolistic control over. particular activity in existing unified geographical areas.

Bandits getting into conflict over territory is what makes them NOT guild like. There is one printers guild in a city, and they keep out everyone else, but the next city city might have it's own guild. Those guild might be linked, they might break away, but within the region there is one guild.

guilds are long term stable organizations. While bandits might try to beat out competition and increase there share, they are opertunitistic as another user pointed out. They shift to much to establish themselves. When they become established, they stop being bandits and become warlords. Which is a different thing.

But what if it's a stationary bandit rather than a roaming one? Isn't that, afterall, how many but not all governments start?

>Bandits are more or less like mercenaries. I've never heard of mercenary guild.
Ever hear of Blackwater?

They usually transition away from banditry as they become established.

that's a warlord, which I just mentioned. They create a zone of governance, rather than existing within one.

Guilds are stable structures within city, or region, they are defined by their territory, rather than defining them.

>>Thieves guild
>>BANDITS guild
if you're going to have crime, it might as well be organized crime.

>I've never heard of mercenary guild.
French Foreign Legion is essentially that.

>unified geographical areas
Does this mean that a "guild" that oversees all of a particular province except one particular city isn't a guild, but something else? Would you accept that it is a guild, but that there are dissenting factions within it threatening their monopoly?

What prevents bandits from forming guilds? Is it not useful for them to have a forum for the bigger factions to dictate policy to the smaller and for the smaller to petition the larger for the common guild good? If a city with a printer's guild has some minor unsanctioned printing going on, either by guild members moonlighting or by nonmembers, have they then broken the guild? Or would you say that the guild is simply experiencing an imperfect monopoly?

There is a spectrum of organisation on which bandit groups can exist. What prevents a more organized bandit group, or more likely an association of such groups, from existing long-term? What prevents a guild from being opportunistic? Do you think a hall is required to have a guild, or why would forming a guild would necessarily transition bandit leaders to warlords?

Will post soon outlining my thoughts on what makes a guild.

>letters of marque worked in part because of how unregulated the areas they operated were.

Coastal New England was hardly a lawless den of thieves. You don't need to be lawless barbarians to use piracy and banditry to fill your own pockets, you just need cognitive dissonance and an official looking stamp. A bandit guild could just be a sanctioned group of thugs and assholes for hire. Rich assholes could fund a bandit lord through the guild to go steal as much shit as possible for X number of years.

I'm pretty sure they were being sarcastic, and making fun of people who think that bandit companies/guilds are too impossible to entertain seriously.

Wouldn't they just be mercenaries at that point?

The New world coast were certainly a lawless den of thieves and villainy. New England piracy was an extension of the Caribbean piracy, and that basically defines 'lawless den of scum and villany'.

The trade system extended back to Europe, so the American cost was all pretty much local in terms of naval operation.

>just thugs for hire
then they're just using the word with no guild structure.
Where 'thieves guilds' work in fiction, they operate like guilds. Masters, journeymen, training, etc etc.

Kind of splitting hairs, but mercenary sort of implies a military commitment. These guys would just be dickheads looking to knock over targets with the best risk/reward ratio, strong arming isolated villages, setting up bullshit tolls, and other bandit stuff.