Is "adventurer" a legitimate profession in your setting? Are they unionized? Is there an adventurers guild?

Is "adventurer" a legitimate profession in your setting? Are they unionized? Is there an adventurers guild?

No, but people buy licenses if they want to foray into the wilderness. Even a basic one is required for gathering firewood, but it's generally so cheap even a beggar can afford it.

With the amount of fucked up shit there is out there, these systems are more in place to make sure people stay uncorrupted and in line with the law, and since treasure-hunting is a big source of income, the government wants as big a share as it can get, so it taxes the legitimate and confiscates from the illegitimate.

That's not to say adventurers won't gather a considerable profit for themselves, and it's probably their treasure will find its way into the economy one way or another, but all the shit the government does, especially expansion into this blighted and mysterious region need vast amounts of wealth to fund to make any headway.

Adventurer is a common enough source of income in the city that it's recognized as a profession by the government census. While there is no union of Adventurers (yet), there is a guild, which offers a number of useful services including body retrieval and a cartographer's library. The government officially taxes 10% of all income gained from adventuring, though many adventurers skirt this fine, and dungeon delvers are instructed to report to one of the many official government-sanctioned appraisers with any newly discovered items, where said items will be identified and appraised at no additional cost and reported to the local administrative building who will file copies to the ministry of taxation and the central watch house.

Its a good system. Flavorful, bureaucratic and easy enough to get around if you don't care too much about the law.

Ha! No, people who call themselves adventurers are deadbeats that can't get a proper job killing monsters, waiting tables, or leading expeditions into ancient ruins. Honestly, even farmers don't get as much flak as those freeloaders. At least they can put some food on the table.

A profession is by definition not unionized. If you can't command your own negotiations you're a worker, not a professional. Guilds are fine.

Professional adventurers are mercenaries, contract killers, cat burglars, etc. but 'adventurer' is too vague.

No, but there is an Adventurers College. It teaches/renders training in magic, martial combat, rogue skills, dungeoneering, monsterology and so on. Basic and advanced skills an Adventurer would need. One year will typically give the average Adventurer enough to be well rounded. There are advanced courses of course.

It all started when a Mages guild, a thieves guild and a fighters guild were about to go under due to funding and were purchased by an elf that understood marketing and saw profit in the wind.

>Adventurers
>can't get a proper job killing monsters
>leading expeditions into ancient ruins
Wot?

In my setting, that kind of thing is generally handled by very specific people with very specific standards. If someone calls themselves a monster hunter, then they'll be kitted out to kill them some big'uns. If someone calls themselves an explorer, then they'll be ready to dig through some ancient deathtraps. If someone calls themselves an adventurer, chances are they couldn't make the cut and they've already gotten in trouble for calling themselves something they're not.

Was there anything remotely similar to adventurer parties in the real world?

>Not everyone is content to stay within the walls. Some wish to escape the oppressive atmosphere of the city, while others seek the treasures rumored to exist on the other side, and a rare few simply want to see the outside world. Regardless of their motivation, those who voluntarily leave the walls of their city are often granted the title of Frontier Agent and charged with the task of bringing back any information they can. “One word on the outside is worth a pound of gold inside,” or so the saying goes. Informally, Frontier Agents are known as frontiersmen or, more commonly, suicides. By tradition, before a frontiersman embarks on their journey they attend their own funeral and are thereafter considered legally dead until they return.

Stuff from my setting notes.

No. You are a dick with a sword or a wand, nothing more.

Mercenaries.

The in-setting term is "traveler," and it's about as legitimate as any other sort of transient work. Maybe a bit more tolerated due to how useful they can be and the potential for profit it can hold, but not respected unless they're affiliated with a church or government. There is a somewhat informal organization that calls itself a union with locations in a few of the major cities and one small frontier town.

Sort of, there's an adventurer's guild but it's just a bog standard mercenary company that realised calling its members adventurers was better PR.

They're """""legitimate"""", all right.
No unions or guilds (they always end up tearing themselves apart), but people recognize that roving bands of murderhobo exist.

It is used as a catch-all term for all the guild members, delvers, monster hunters, expeditioners, planar travelers, dungeon specialists, and any other mercenary with uncommon skills that doesn't fit into a regular job description or couldn't be part of regular troops and are in general employed by kingdoms and wealthy individuals for a miscellaneous tasks that are not into day to day stuff that most people do.

Also, no one calls themselves "adventurer", not for any prejudice, just because it doesn't really make sense. For example, in my current campaign the players are members of a monster hunting guild, and have many different classes. They were hired to solve a undead infestation problem, a monstrous issue, and in the way of solving they came across an Order of Knights, dedicated to remove undead. None of them are adventurers by profession, but they go on adventures, and even then, they have different job descriptions, but are trying to solve the same situation.

No.
They are called mercenaries.
There is no union, but a collection of mercenary groups for hire.
A lot of them are as low as peasants, but even some nobles have been known to join mercenary bands for the thrill of adventure.

Mercenaries are usually able to get any kind of job they qualify for, but often unreliable for long-term positions considering they are all basically nomads.

So are the player characters monster hunters/explorers or did you make them "adventurers" so you could act like they were going to be cool guys at the beginning and then have all the NPCs be smug and condescending in the game itself.

Sounds interesting, user. Tell me more.

"Monster Hunter" is a semi-legitimate profession: it isn't acknowledged in laws, but there is a system of traditions and customs around it.

It's called being a mercenary.

It doesn't matter if you have a sword, a bow, or a magic staff. If you're going around killing shit in exchange for loot and gold you're a mercenary.

Basically, the setting is a post post-apocalypse where a bunch of different extraplanar entities went to war over the planet until the mortals finally kicked them off. The cities founded by the original mortal Heroes were all that was left of civilization, with everything between them being battlefields and barren wastelands. In the time since, the cities have become more like city-states, and the former hellscapes have recovered and even overgrown. However, the tears in reality didn't go away, and significant portions of the planet were bathed in planar energies, some conflicting on a conceptual level, which had interesting effects on the ecosystem. The creatures that survived became monstrous, the ones that didn't came back stronger, and some outsiders still haven't realized the war has been over for hundreds of years. Not to mention the Fey Queens took it upon themselves to head the recovery effort, their current rivalry with the Dragons notwithstanding.

In effect, the cities are bubbles of safety protected by powerful magic and artifacts from a bygone era, and the outside world is pretty much still as dangerous as during the actual apocalypse. But the treasure, man. The treasure.

>so you could act like they were going to be cool guys at the beginning and then have all the NPCs be smug and condescending in the game itself.

Hey if that's the case he's probably my GM

the adventurers guild in my setting works more like an agent, people go to them with a problem, and the guild posts available jobs and propagates the request as far as it can, adventurers, either part-time or professional, finish the job, and the guild gets a cut of the reward, the details of which are in writing. failing to pay what you owe the guild may end up with your name on the bulletin

Nope, the players are pioneers in that regard.

No. Every adventuring group is a but unique, in what they are willing to do, their skills, and alligences.