I'm making a homebrew setting. I'm heavily inspired by Ravnica: an endless city dominated by guilds. I like it

I'm making a homebrew setting. I'm heavily inspired by Ravnica: an endless city dominated by guilds. I like it.

I need guild names that aren't retarded sounding.

So if you could include a guild in a fantasy setting, what would you call it, and what would it do?

Personally, I would just use Ravnica.

Names depends off of function, and function depends off of what types of trades are feasible in the setting. Is a brewer's guild broad enough to have a lot of influence? Or is there enough magic to justify that falling under a larger alchemy guild that handles both beverages, medicines, poisons, and other mixtures?

Say there is an Alchemist's guild though. While you could just call it 'The Alchemist's Guild', that feels a bit lazy. I think something Ravnica did well wasn't just giving all the guilds made-up names, but adding a different organizational type to the end. It's not 'the Simic Guild' or 'the Orzhov guild', it's Combine and Syndicate.

You could easily call an Alchemist Guild 'The Admixture Maker's Association'. People might still call them the Alchemist's guild, or go by AMA for short, but it gives some more variety than having 'Fighter Guild, Mage Guild, Thief Guild'

It depends. Setting wise, I don't want to limit the players to the main guilds. Essentially, there will be thousands of small guilds, but only a few will rise to have global reach and power.

Politically, everything is democratic, with each district electing a representative. Guilds can be elected as representatives, in which case the guild chooses a senator from among their number.

A brewer's guild is certainly possible, but such a guild might not rise to global dominance like a general merchant's guild might.

Those are some good tips on naming.

What happens if a large enough guild gets voted as the representative of two districts?

Then it gets to pick a representative senator for each district.

The guilds are sort of like political parties too. You can vote party line in your elections, and then the party you picked sends someone if they win. If that someone dies, they send a new someone. If you vote for a non guilded individual and they win, then they go themselves, and if they die, their position is inherited according to standard feudalism type inheritance: males down the line of succession, eldest son taking first.

Are the guilds your only Ravnican inspiration, or are you working with the "endless plane of one city" and "cheeki breeki Slavland" themes too?

The city covers 95% of the planet, with oceans covered in urban sprawl, mountains of towers reaching up to the sky, etc.

Slavs will be represented, but not a majority.

If you're working on making names, it's worth remembering that the Ravnica guilds all sound vaguely Slavic because they're based on phenomes common to that language. Something like that. There was a neat article by wizards about it somewhere.

That's a good point. I can follow the ravnica template of *language based made up word*+*synonym for group*.

thank you user.

Didn't wizards nuke all their archives or something? I think I remember that article too.

Fuck if I know, their sites can be pretty hard to navigate sometimes. I'm still irritated that they have no "Unearthed Arcana" tag for their D&D articles. You have to dig past all the celebrity interviews and shit to find them, it's really annoying.

>Didn't wizards nuke all their archives or something?
Not per se. But they did migrate to yet another link structure (which breaks all old links), and then somehow fucked up their search functionality. Apparently they really can't afford more IT people. Everything's falling apart there. I'm pretty sure that's why the killed the old Wizards forums, because that shit was always brittle.

If you know what to search for, you can probably find it with a google search using "inurl:wizards.com"

Pretty much They broke all the old links, and searching through the new archive is a pain.

I never quite understood why Dimir was the bid baddy of the setting I struggle to understand how a society could function with any faction operating like Rakdos.

Nigga, Ravnica functions as a society BECAUSE they have the Rakdos. They're the ones keeping the massive assraper demon entertained so he doesn't destroy reality.

Keep in mind that the guilds only make up a small portion of the population on Ravnica. The vast majority of people are gateless, and much of the plane has way less guild influence.

Rakdos allegedly also has a side of it not just devoted to entertaining their eponymous demon-patron, including regular artists, cooks, performers, stuff like that. You didn't see them on the cards so much, just like you didn't see many Izzet plumbers or Selesnya regular-plant-farmers, I suppose.

Rakdos meant different things in the two Ravnica blocks.

In the ancient history of the first block, they were too powerful to destroy, and had to be dealt with. While they were dolling out spheres of influence they basically said, "and Rakdos can handle... labor?"

That had nothing to do with what we saw, however, which was basically a biker gang, hard rocking, drug taking, self-zombifying, thrill-killing cult.

And in the second block they realized there was really no guild theme, so they said, "fuck it, psycho-circus". Which, again, is not actually something society needs or has.

Who knows what it will be when we go back to Ravnica again.

I don't know about that "way less guild influence". They may not be affiliated or be territories under any one guild's control... but just try building a new apartment building without Azorius building permits, an Orzhov-approved union, Workers who blow their wages in a Rakdos sin den and eat Goglari soylent green, and Boros protection fro the the odd, pissed off Gruul shaman who calls in the sand wurms just to fuck up your shit for building in their old stomping grounds.

All of whom are actually Dimir agents.

>Izzet plumbers
I had forgotten that they're public works.

And the phrase "Izzet plumbers" is somehow disconcerting....

But that's exactly what that is. Most of the guild power is focused in the tenth district, where they're all centered.

In most places on Ravnica, it's a normal town. You've got the local Azorious office, but they're far from the senate, and so not as many rules will be enfroces. Orzhov presence will be there, but not to the same crushing level. They still function as a bank, but you're less likely to get your soul crushed by debt. The Rakdos sin den might be a Casino. The Boros have a police station, but don't show up in full force to blow up the block, and any Gruul are going to be the random person releasing animals from the pound.

It's not going to appear like it does on the cards, where there's basically a constant war in the streets from Rakdos and Gruul trying to tear everything down as Boros does the same trying to stop them.

You're far more likely to have nothing happen to you then be one of those guys who gets gutted. For every person who has their life ruined by guild influence, millions more go along their daily lives without really noticing them.

That always bothered me too. Without this discussion getting too bogged down in real world politics, I think most people understand the need for intelligence services. The world isn't always a nice place, and sometimes people doing shady shit in secret is a necessary evil- look at all the espionage and trickery that the Allies did in preparation for D-Day. Even if you don't like it, most people can accept it to the point that they're able to carry on their daily lives without it affecting them too much. I'm not sure I'd be able to say the same thing about a murder cult built around a literal demon that IIRC occasionally burn down entire city blocks with their antics when people apparently can't handle the truth of Dimir's mere existence. Sure, maybe Ravnicans are just sort of used to it by now or something, but the lore wasn't created for them, it was created for us. The whole thing would be a lot more believable if Rakdos were publicly just weirdo artists and performers, sort of like the setting's version of carnies- everyone sort of knows they're creepy and shady but they don't just look at one of them and instantly assume he spent last night chopping off some girls head and fucking her esophagus as her corpse reanimated as a zombie in front of a cheering audience. Maybe even make the full extent of it hidden from the lower ranking guild members to make secrecy easier to maintain.

Wasn't there a forgotten realms piece that pointed out exactly that?

Baffled by the idea that anybody in Ravnica is ostensibly the "big baddies." The guilds are all explicitly depicted as big bad douchebags. Let's take a look.
>Azorius: If the DMV came to life, formed an organization, and began actively trying to spite you.
>Boros: Dirty Harry times a billion plus a dash of psycho angel demagogue leader. These guys won't even give a shit if you've been SWATted because who gives a shit about warrants?
>Orzhov: the worst parody of the Jews imaginable, plus the worst parody of the Catholic church possible, plus eternal undead servitude because lol usury. Also, they're ghosts and skeletons.
>Golgari: Soylent Green as led by a lich and staffed by fucking skeletons/zombies.
>Izzet: Insane mad scientists ostensibly in charge of public works cause mass floodings, immense thunderstorms, cyclones, fires, the proliferation of potentially fucking sapient hostile weather, led by a narcissistic dragon
>Gruul: the indigenous people that want to kill you for having running water. Ecoterrorists, emphasis on the terrorism.
>Selesnya: Spooky cult that devotes itself to a hive-mind, actively proselytizes, raises armies of brainwashed saplings. Ultimate conformists.
>Rakdos: already covered
>Dimir: already covered
Calling any of the factions the actual bad guy is dumb, because they're ALL awful, in their own special ways. Likewise, all of the guilds have a nicer side, like how Dimir supposedly runs journalism and libraries (behind the scenes, of course) and Golgari will take in cripples and Boros is at least nominally devoted to justice. It doesn't matter which guild your favorite is, because at the end of the day they're all run by fucking crazy people trying to usurp the other guilds (covertly or openly) and conquer the fucking world.

They could easily afford to hire more IT people, but then their swimming pool full of money would be slightly shallower.

You forgot the Simic

I need a source on this.

Dimir