ITT red flags

> DM mentions that his setting has an "adventurers' guild" in it, which all adventurers are a part of

I feel you're being nitpickey here. That's a relatively minor thing, and can actually work in some games.

>There are caravans being attacked.
> Go investigate why

It's always fucking caravans.

I fucking wish. I usually get
> There are caravans being attacked
> Go guard one

>You wake up naked in a prison cell

>you notice a man clouded in shadow watching you from the corner of the tavern.

>I ignore him.

Since when Adventurer is a profession? It is an euphemism for child-murderer mercenary?

It's lazy, but not a red flag. Yellow, maybe, but the DM is at least trying to actually give the PCs a reason to be working together.

>lvl1 characters
>the king has a quest for you

> Hi, DM, my character is a fourteen year old kitsune, who...

>dm gives you multiple pages of story about the history of the setting but is mum on local details of where you are from
>you all start as adult orphans from the local wild boys cabin and were taught by the town loner
>you meet a god(s) and they are active in your business every session or story point
>any setting being fantasy american civil war
>auto fuck yous that the dm has you roll for anyway then ignores the rolls

It's less a profession, more of a hobby, old chap.

>I want to climb a building and follow the party from the rooftops.

>Character's description includes penis size.

It's actually pretty convenient to have in a fantasy setting, which I am sure you are playing in.
You aren't that autistic to believe you are playing a street sweeper in a realistic setting right in front of your friends at the table?
Do you even ever roleplay?

>DM

As a noob DM, currently prepping for our 2017 which we kicked off with one session so far, what do you think is the most important background material to prepare? It's tempting to start with a broad outline of history, cosmology, a world map etc.

I'm also trying to incorporate my characters backstories, which all fit the broad idea of the world since we worked on the idea together.

>Fantasy setting
>There are potatoes and orange carrots

Does anyone do their research?

>dm provides character background template that includes "preferred pronoun"
>Homebrewed rules for magical recreational drug use
>" Your crit kills the drow how does it happen?" "I shoot the fireball up is ass lol"

> a broad outline of history, cosmology, a world map etc.
Don't, since your players hardly cared about this shit. And they will be checking their phones if you forced it in.

Start with the background/map of the Region they will be in and the power players. The factions, the races, the incredible locales, the insane/striking NPCs.

You will actually use those and can tie their backstories in.

The concept of adventurer guild is fucking retarded, and requiers a setting to be centered around it. Go watch some goblins overlord online anime, if you're into that garbage.

>Caravans are attacking
>Go investigate or defend against one

> FANTASY setting
> Gods actively bless clerics and create entire races.
> Potatoes and orange carrots are unrealistic because they doesn't fit in any !Not!Europe setting.

If you never play tabletop before, go fuck yourself and get out of this board.
It shows.

>He seems to be ignoring you as much as you are ignoring him, but you can't shake the feeling that he feels disappointed about it.

I think a Greek Mythology inspired campaign where the gods are constantly showing up and fucking with people could be kinda cool.

>the adventurers guild has imposed itself as the monopoly on dangerous freelance mercenaries
>this sounds fantastical and good when you explain it to the players that they're part of that
>really, as in real life, the monopoly does more harm than good even though it has a lot of NPC mouthpieces that claim the opposite
>adventurers always help the highest bidder, or they are arrested for unlicensed adventuring
>often times the highest bidder is not exactly a good guy
>the players will have to face the fact that they're not exactly the good guys either despite being told they were, or embrace the moral darkness they've been told to embrace

>every quest is killing some monster a god created due to poor impulse control

A campaign where you play as a group of unlicensed adventurers would be cool even having to fight against the guild eventually.

Adventurer guilds can work and make sense if they're contrrolled and taxed by the government.

Easy way of keeping tabs on really strong individuals.

>"I read on Veeky Forums that..."

>fighting lawyers at low levels
literally worse than vampires

Why won't you get licensed? You only have to pay for the test and renew your card once a year. You get discounts at bars and inns and have a free portal to use if you get stuck. For an extra premium, you can get free treatment at the healers guild too. Sign up today!

I never call them "adventurers' guilds" when I run games. I always call them explorers or archaeologists or monster hunters, since that's mainly what they do, right? Who makes all the sweet maps that everyone relies on? Who discovers the ancient relics and lost cities and ruins? Who keeps towns safe from the REALLY big nasties?

two player ones I've learned to be wary of

>so why do you travel with us mr. CN? t. another player at session 1
>I travel with you because I'm bored
>that's it?
>yes
then the countdown starts till they betray someone in the party for stupid reasons

the second one is just
>militant Paladin/Cleric in a campaign not built around their views

What is this bit about "95% of the dungeon exploration's earnings will go to the guild?"

"Adventurer's guilds" can work, although I'd never personally do them since I run more realistic campaigns, but what I now absolutely consider a red flag from past experiences is Adventurer's guilds that issue ranks (from F to A and then S, but then some guy, usually DMPC, is like SSS or something) and have a magical ID card with your rank on it.

That aside, a red flag I often encountered is when a player makes their character "very beautiful" or something to that extent, and if the system permits it, actually gets stats to that effect, but then their character is just a fighter or a mage or something that doesn't make use of that beauty.

I'm not saying that it can't be done well, but every player I've seen that did that has turned into an insufferable faggot down the line, and are usually the first to throw a tantrum when things don't go their way, in my experience.

in a fantasy setting, wouldn't it kinda make sense to have a adventurers guild?

with constant threats from everything from goblins to dragons, having an organization that manages heroes to solve these things seem like a fairly good idea.

the peasants got a know place that they can go to directly for aid, wich will be provided by people who are guaranteed (atleast according to the guild) to be able to handle the job at a more or less set price, while adventurers get more job security, potential benefits from more organized employments (adventurers guild discounts, etc, etc) and a forum where they can form groups, learn new shit from other adventurers and more easily earn fame (it's easier to gain recognition within tighter social circles)

if anything, just having a office that hands out important missions to literally who's on behalf of the city feels way dumber than a guild

"You can read?"

>The great war between caravans and convoys enters its second century

The problem is, if you have the sort of organizational level that permits a central clearinghouse for that sort of thing, why is it in the hands of mercenaries who have no oversight? And how come whatever government that is apparently permitting this sort of thing to go on hasn't tried to absorb or close down something that could so easily be a threat to its own power?

Freelancing adventurers "work" in kind of wild-west type settings, where official power is weak to nonexistant. Those sorts of places generally don't have the sort of infrastructure to set up guilds.

>in a fantasy setting, wouldn't it kinda make sense to have a adventurers guild?
Only if your fantasy setting facilitates having adventurer's guilds, like having constant threats from everything that somehow didn't get eliminated and cleaned up by the local army and the people don't move away to safer places.

I prefer settings where peasants aren't under constant threat from wandering monsters that can cleave a man in half with no effort, they make no sense to me and I don't enjoy them, they feel too artificial and unnatural.

But whatever floats your boat, I guess.

As a DM, I just renamed it to the local "Contractor's Guild", and described it as "mercenary work with a cheerful coat of paint." Though, it's usually Farmer Bob offering some schmuck ten gold to kill the goblin hiding in his closet and whatnot.

>You get a funny feeling about the swan...like it's checking you out

Isn't this what Iron Man wanted in Civil War?

But... closet goblins keep the sock gnomes from stealing the left sock from each matching pair! Why would you get rid of them?

Quad quads confirm, closet goblins protect you from those little gnome fucks.

yes

Yeah, but the little bastards then turn around and steal your underwear. The perverts.

That's why I keep mattress sprites to stop the goblins.

Fucking this. I want dungeons and dragons, not fucking caravans and bandits on some railroad to a location that's a lot cooler in the DM's head than it at the table.

>Session starts with a friendly NPC being murdered/raped/etc. by the BBEG
>DM doesn't even let us try to save them or kill the BBEG.
>mfw this happens within the first five minutes of game

I've yet to see a DM pull this off and not have it be an obvious asspull to generate shitty drama and it's why I always start off as a nameless orphan w/ no friends or family.

>any setting being fantasy american civil war

I fail to see any problem whatsoever with this. I'd love to play a fantasy Confederate. Have a knight with a Tidewater plantation drawl and everything, it'd be wonderful.

How many mythical creatures do you have in your bedroom?

Your new is showing child.

What sort of shitty campaign would glorify murderhobos who kill/steal/rape/etc. anything that moves? If anything, adventurers should be a necessary evil at best, especially after all the horror stories you'd find on what some crazy asshole decided to do at a table one time.

Well part of the problem with that is the BBEG rarely has a good reason for sparing you. If he's determined to kill the friendly NPC, it's not like a bunch of level 1 pissants are gonna do much to successfully impede him, and there's no reason -- if he's such a BBEG as to kill this NPC -- he wouldn't also just wipe the party. It's hamfisted to have him spare them 99% of the time.

Adding to this, in a setting in which PC's are prevalent, you'd think that the BBEG would go out of his way to murderfuck anyone who stands against him simply because of how many creatures were killed because they were arrogant or stupid.

I know I'd send my CR 21 demon prince to squash some PC's if my goal was to kill them, rather than to test them or some shit like that.

yes

Players who want to roleplay Jagoff Alignments.
I've ran popular campaigns for decades really, in a few large towns as I've changed locations.
Always had players that insisted on playing atypical or what I call "jagoff alignments". By which I mean that almost without fail, the player using that alignment is going to be a game and party-disrupting jagoff, whether it's the intent originally or not.

So years back, I just dropped the Alignment system entirely. And a funny thing happened.
Players at my game tables stopped being troublesome jagoffs. Of course I still had silly Gishes and thinly veiled animu or novelized "adaptations", but the jagoff behavior almost completely vanished with the Alignment chart.

So my red flag is anyone who seems terribly disappointed that we aren't enforcing alignments on everything.
My Orcs are still belligerent and warlike, my Elves are still smug and self-satisfied, my halflings are still impetuous or homebodies and my humans are still opportunists.

I'm...sort of on the fence regarding Adventurers guilds.

I just got out of a campaign (mostly because the club I was part of disbanded) which framed our DnD adventures as our characters being magically abducted by a figure who may or may not be Dungeon Master from the old cartoon. Basically, our characters had the potential to be great and do great things. The actual Hall was basically a demiplane and we didn't get charged stupid amounts for membership. From a Doylist POV, being part of this guild allowed players who couldn't attend every session to basically drop in and out, as well as making it easier to introduce new players/characters.

That said, in-setting Adventurers Guilds kind of upset me. I can understand a Fighters Guild (Hey, you have to learn Power Attack SOMEWHERE) or a Companions style group (Martial-type troubleshooters (in that they locate trouble, then proceed to enact martial-type resolutions upon the trouble) who are the successors of a legendary hero), but outright Adventurer Guilds? Unless the setting is an Ankh-Morpork expy (where the Thieves and Assassins have their own guilds as a way of controlling the amount of theft and killings. Considering that the Thieves have moved to an "Insurance/Protection" model and the Assassins Guild school is seen as one of the best private schools on the Disc and that the Black Syllabus is optional, I'd say that it works), why would a city legitimize the actions of murderhobos?

>which framed our DnD adventures as our characters being magically abducted by a figure who may or may not be Dungeon Master from the old cartoon.
This sounds like it could be ran to be genuinely fun, and at the same time still upset the Crustaceous Neckbeard busting chops on "children" in this thread.

But really, fuck him. He hasn't had fun in a TTRPG in ages.

>Dex based fighters putting 8 points in strength.

btw, Thieves and Assassin guilds originated in the world of Nehwon way way back in the day.

The Thieves and Slayer's guilds of Lankhmar were officially the first.

My personal opinion on "Adventurer's guilds" is that a setting shouldn't really have enough "adventurers" to justify a guild or it even be a profession.

"Adventurers" (the kind that players in TTRPGs play, anyway) should be like a once-in-a-century deal or the like, and more a product of circumstance and not conscious choice.

I don't like it when people suddenly wake up one day and decide that they'll spend the rest of their lives fighting monsters and going into dungeons and defeating evil sorcerers. I prefer it when my players are some dudes who are placed in a bad situation and have to deal with it.

Adventurer's guild feel unnatural to me.

That said, I don't consider Adventurer's guilds to be a red flag, more like a flag that this game does not match my preferences.

I feel bad for that leopard :(

Seriously, if they aren't planning on carrying around STR requisite Armor, why SHOULD they bulk up?
Maybe they want to be the runt or the skinny warrior (or the gurl).

Your bait is weak, newfriend.
Now fuck off to your own thread where you pretend to actually play tabletop offline before while begging to join any online groups.

>not unionizing
You deserve to get dicked over by the nobles.

No one else was going to feed him, just so you know.

>fantasy american civil war
That sounds like the absolute coolest shit though.

What you got against adventurer guilds? Why wouldn't the fuckers who are continuously in the tavern eventually form a large group to look out for each other?

My favorite. As long as I didn't waste time choosing equipment I'll never get back and there's a plausible reason my lawful good character is in prison.

Setting aside the fact that they are direct competition to each other, oftentimes have strained relations just within the individual parties, and will inevitably involve Clerics and the like from various rival or even confrontational temples?

>uses the term Not!Europe to refer to a region in his setting
>gets annoyed when people make comparisons to the real Europe

>caravans carry trade valuable/essential goods
>raiders want trade goods
>lack of security far from major cities
except for the mongols, i think caravan raids were frequent

>implying the nobles dont run the guild.


enjoy turning over half your loot some dude who has never even seen the inside of a dungeon.

Define "make use of that beauty"

What is your opinion on a flamboyant knight who always fights without a helmet and has long blonde hair?

my players love the adventurers guild i put in, so maybe the GM is only half the problem

>every NPC of significance is vastly higher level than you are
>they all make a point of telling you how little you matter
>any attempts to influence the setting or influential NPCs automatically fail

If it's a central part of your character and it comes up in play, then it's usually fine.

However, when it's tacked on and isn't a prominent feature of the character, particularly if the player paid a real cost to have that character feature, then it usually results in a bad character.

I'm not saying that playing a beautiful character is bad, I'm saying that bad players usually play beautiful characters.

i understand what you mean, but i think that you just need to put a slight bit of effort into worldbuilding and you could make it work. i hardly think having an organization that organized and redistributes manpower requires as much suspension of disbelief as "the world where super mighty magic exists, wielded by but a few, there has been very little in the way of wizards already ruling over literally the entire world" among a shitheap of other things. i mean, just something like random encounters break the world way harder than guilds, by the constant threat logic

for example either the army doesn't want to risk soldiers dying to goblins, or maybe they use it for talent scouting or maybe it's just a city state who got little in the way or an army, or maybe the army is the one that organizes the guild or the guild is allowed to operate across borders due to attempts at strengthening alliances or other political ties, and the people doesn't move because it's atleast as dangerous elsewhere


why would any government ever allow any form of magic in that case?

This.

>bait is weak
>still replied
>projecting

I think you need to leave child, the adults are talking.

Aren't most fantasy settings 'wild-west' so to speak? Where the kingdom can barely stop the direwolves and goblins and rats within its own borders, let alone bigger threats like evil undead armies?

My party gets a kick from competing with rival adventurer parties, though

>"the world where super mighty magic exists, wielded by but a few, there has been very little in the way of wizards already ruling over literally the entire world" among a shitheap of other things.
>i mean, just something like random encounters break the world way harder than guilds
I don't like any of those in my settings either. As I said, I prefer my settings to be reasonable and plausible. Think LoTR, Black Company, Wheel of Time, Legends of Ethshar, stuff like that are the kind of feel I prefer for my games.

I'm sure I could worldbuild a world where adventurer's guild are a thing, but it will probably feel like a world that was built specifically to make adventuter's guilds a thing, and I don't like that feeling.

Fuck this shit, my first ever dnd was like that and the dm had to stop every little trouble we cause or were in by letting some lvl 20 dragon or rouge save the day.
FUCK YOU! YOU ALL POWERFUL DRAGON! FUCK YOU!

How do you think we get half goblins?

A lot of them are just "Shit is dangerous on the wild frontiers of the Empire, the ruins of an older civilization are teeming with feral remnants and weird magical experiments. And beyond that, There Be Dragons."

Adventurers' guilds are trash. Character-class oriented organizations and governing bodies are much better.
>Magic-users' guilds
>Monasteries
>Crusader orders
>Marauder
>Wizards' towers
>Knightly orders
>Bands of robbers
>Militias and armies
>Criminal gangs
>Royal orchestras and choirs
>Mercenary companies
>Performing bands
>Assassin cults
>etc etc

Then each character can be associated with different organizations, and the GM can have some flexibility in giving the PCs a variety of questgivers, who can in turn introduce them to new ones as desired.

>not wanting people of different classes to work together for a single purpose

Well, if you can't spare the men to either patrol those places where your people live or go in and clear out potential dangers, wouldn't it make sense to have a bunch of self-paid mercenaries go in and die for you? You don't have to pay the idiots to try and kill the dragon since they think they'll get enough payout just from the job alone. Unless the guild is taking a cut so damn massive without any compensation for it that they don't go in freely.
Still, if you can't fix an area, is it not better to let some random assholes die trying to fix it rather than waste the lives of your own people? And if you allow the guild house in your city then you can rely on adventurers not trying to randomly depose you.
Though is fine too. I'm going to put an endless, multi-planar spanning dungeon somewhere in my setting and the town that springs up from harvesting its riches will be the beginning of the unified adventurers' guild. Distributing guild so that it doesn't collapse economies, providing for common safety of the divers as well as care should they actually bring stuff out and so on.

Shit, is Kvatch going to get burned down again?

I only ever use adventure guilds in worlds that are infinite.

Then the party might run into a town with a guild hall, find guild marks or dead members in dungeon or just have a place for them to turn in bounties.

Not for high story games but for those old school games.

top kek

I find that having an adventurers guild makes my players feel like they are part of something bigger, that they live in a world where anyone can be a hero

It also gives it a more 80s /vr/ or OSR feel, like yeah these guys are professional dungeon divers, or monster hunters, it really sucks my players in more

>Potatoes
Do you have any idea of the socioeconomic changes that the humble potato wrought?It has no place in most fantasy settings.

by growing the citizens to be big and strong, it makes having big strong adventurers more reasonable to have

agree to what user said, dont dump info. Give as general of an overview as possible to the players, just enough for them to know what they are in for and the tone of the setting (If you are a more experienced DM, bait and switch is sometimes fun, but dont try that as a first timer)

Do all of the things you listed for yourself, and use them to minimize the amount of things you make up on the fly. The world history, the characters, the creatures, the magic, the archeology and the geography, all those things will help YOU make the game world feel alive and real. Dont just info dump. Create a setting, which the players will explore

Don't have too much detail. Have a bit of it for the local town's atmosphere. Are the people worried, happy, mourning, etc. and why
This will also link adventure hooks to the town, and give ways to drop hints of what's happening in the wider world.

Kingdom's army score a major victory? People are probably going to be cheering.
Orc warband on a path near the city? Probably going to be scared, looking for weapons or packing to leave.

Have a couple ideas for interesting NPC personalities and names they can interact with. Just get a couple, and you can drop one in front of the PCs wherever they decide to go. You can flesh out the character's history later, just have a couple general details for them.
Ex: Local ranger, half elf, a bit short attention span, likes to go on tangents. PCs go to mayor? He's talking to him, trying to organize a hunting party for some harassing goblins. PCs go to tavern? He could be trying to recruit for something there. Wherever the PCs go, you can find a reason to drop the NPC in front of them.
Just don't force it too much, have a couple NPCs with different hooks on hand, to see what catches the players' interest.