If being an adventurer were an actual occupation, what would it entail...

If being an adventurer were an actual occupation, what would it entail? I'm not talking about the whole 'adventurers are actually mercenaries' bit that gets mentioned often (although that may be part of being one). More that if you take all the qualities of what makes a typical adventurer in a typical fantasy RPG setting (i.e.D&D), how many jobs from other occupations would also be involved in adventuring?

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D&D is not a setting. Do you mean Forgotten Realms?

What?

Maybe? I wasn't talking about a particular setting, what I meant to say was a fantasy RPG that evokes the typical trappings of what you would find in a game like D&D.

Army work. Infrastructure, guarding civilians during travel, [mercenary work], etc.

You would be mercenaries.

The only alternate route is to be a handyman.

If you are talking about some kind of weirdo toolkit wandering band of people then you will need to make your setting bend over backwards to accommodate them since they wouldn't have the convenience of "Let's travel to X types of places since they always have work there."

Alternately, bandit.

If your business card said 'Adventurer', how many other jobs are implied in that title? Adventurers can clear out dungeons infested with monsters: does the job include pest control? They can also search for lost artifacts of historical value: does the job include archeology, treasure hunting, or rather grave robbing? Adventurers can also protect citizens from threatening circumstances if the need arises: are they law enforcement or soldiers?

See the Bracer Guild from Trails in the Sky. They're an independent organization that specialize in doing everything you could ever expect someone do need help with. From counter terrorism and overseeing international diplomacy right down to finding your cat or bringing a sandwich to your grandma in the woods, they're up for it as long it involves aiding and protecting civilians.

Professional sidequesters, basically.

>No mom, I'm not unemployed. I'm an adventurer.
>What do you mean it's not a real job? We have a guild and everything!
>What I do? Well, I go out into the wilderness and kill monsters and look for treasure
>NO MOM, it's NOT the same as beng a vagabond! Jeez!

God, I miss the days when "adventure" meant something special. When it was an experience unique to every person, and not a fucking commodity. When it meant going in search of something ineffable, getting caught up in extraordinary circumstances, and returning home changed.

Not this "kill 10 goblins" shite.

It's as if my business card said "freelancer" without further specification. Any job is fine as long as there's wage to match.

They're basically a mix of explorers, mercenaries, treasure hunters, and exterminators.

adventurers are basically a combination of hobo and mercenary, the two coolest professions possible.

why are they color coded

I'd imagine it'd be pretty standard Adventuring Guild. There's an organization that employs adventurers and they take odd jobs and requests to do stuff like investigate suspicious shit and kill monsters.

youtube.com/watch?v=Yh-QWKGbm2Q

>He says on an imageboard dedicated for children playing make-believe.

There are settings where 'adventurer' is an actual occupation, particularly in video games. For example, in the Arland trilogy of the Atelier series (Atelier Rorona, Atelier Totori and Atelier Meruru), adventurers get a formal license from the government and are then tasked with mapping territories that aren't properly charted, defeating monsters that are causing problems and gathering materials from remote or dangerous places.

The biggest memetical question is why hasn't anyone looted the dungeon yet?

Why hasn't anyone stopped the marauding goblings nearby the village?

Why hasn't the military do anything about undead?

It really activates my almonds when a DM can't answer this after he tells our group our local quest. I mean its retarded for quests to still exist.

How do you explain this to your group, Veeky Forums?

You are now picturing a modern corporation that employs adventurers.

You are now picturing someone in accounting bitching about Ulrist in Dungoneering trying to pass off his trips to bar as business expenses.

You know those Mexican guys so hang around outside the hardware store, yeah adventurers one and all, these guys are paid in cash to do all the dirty and disreputable jobs the locals wouldn't touch.

Settings without strong/competent governments or other organizations, or where danger/adventure is common enough that any help is welcome. like, maybe the village being marauded by goblins simply isn't considered valuable enough by the king/baron/whatever to prompt them to spend resources saving it, maybe the dungeon was carefully hidden and had to be uncovered by the party with careful research and exploration, maybe the undead are an unprecedented threat the military isn't equipped to deal with. It's really not hard to justify these things with a bit of creativity.

Fantasy troubleshooters.

When every other week an undead plague rises from an ancient crypt that seems to have just unearthed itself out of nowhere in the middle of the haunted woods, you need people who are qualified to deal with that sort of thing.

It's not codified because the people who are eccentric or desperate enough to want to do the job probably aren't the people who will follow a strict heirarchy.

What do you have in your games then? I admit this was part of the motivation for coming up with the question of trying to see niche adventurers are needed for when other jobs already fill it.

There have been times and places where "Adventurer" was a real profession. In 16th-century Italy, you could hire "bravos;" basically bodyguards/duelists/thugs for hire. In the 18th century, if you wanted to explore the wilds of North or South America, you'd hire some rough types; guides, trappers, scouts, basically an adventuring party.

The unfortunate thing about real-world "adventurer" types is that since they have to work for money, they wind up working for the people WITH money. You'd be far more likely to find them beating people up for the evil Count than trying to help the villagers overthrow him.

I have a setting kinda like that, adventurers are basically the"fill ins". Do everything from rescuing cats to vet work to helping with the harvest to killing monsters to scouting... And they do these things since wandering is very common in my world. For every settler there's a wanderer, and as such they take temp. Jobs that the settlers need to get done.

If it's a licensed profession it basically resembles paramilitary forces or bounty hunters. The government letting private citizens take some of the nation's security into their own hands. The same people who might otherwise be in the military but, for whatever reason, don't like taking orders.

Otherwise it's more like tomb robbers and those people are likely to double as vagrants or thieves doing odd jobs here and there, wherever money is to be made.

>Grimgar
Noice

>You'd be far more likely to find them beating people up for the evil Count than trying to help the villagers overthrow him.

>implications

>The unfortunate thing about real-world "adventurer" types is that since they have to work for money, they wind up working for the people WITH money. You'd be far more likely to find them beating people up for the evil Count than trying to help the villagers overthrow him.

The more ambitious types might overthrow him anyway. After all, why work for some of his money when you can take ALL his money?

>The biggest memetical question is why hasn't anyone looted the dungeon yet?
They tried. They failed. They died.

>Why hasn't anyone stopped the marauding goblings nearby the village?
They tried. They failed. They died.

>Why hasn't the military do anything about undead?
They tried. They failed. They died.

p incompetent npcs bruh

So you are telling me an entire army failed to defeat the lich king / local ghost. But a group of 3-5 bums could do the deed?

"the military" isn't a thing that really exists in a lot of places. Maintaining a standing army is expensive, and not just in monetary terms. Every guy who is a full time soldier is a guy who isn't a full time farmer, or miller, or anything else that produces food or resources.

Armies tend to do poorly against small groups. They're just not organized for the thorough blockades that would require.
That includes the enemy army.

Depends on the system. If medieval times, then the local lord has a local military. And no, he wouldn't "let slide" a bunch of goblins ruining his profits. If he can't deal with the threat he will contact his liege, either a duke or the king himself for help, he would also contact neighboring nobles to deal with the situation.

I forgot what was suppose to be my point so I will just stop typing here. Fuck Alzheimer.

>Why hasn't the military do anything about undead?
The others are legit concerns I expect to have good, natural reasons. This one however answers itself.

Armies don't have magic, magical items or a special connection to a deity. They are also very weak to area of effect spells, and after that they are a wonderful source of corpses for the lich king.
Nobody is going to bring out the army to deal with a local ghost.
Armies in D&D serve roughly the same purpose they do in real life, to defend the nation against its neighbors.
Adventurers are more like spies/assassins than hobos. They are highly trained or uniquely talented to a ridiculous fantasy extreme, and putting down the entire concept because you can't imagine a world where anyone is meaningfully special doesn't make that concept invalid; it just prevents you from learning what those experiences have to offer.

>If medieval times, then the local lord has a local military.
Actually, he'd more likely draft a bunch of his serfs into his army, relying on a small cadre of maintained troops to desperately try and train them to a modicum of competence before seeing combat.

Why are Aqua's hips so wide, look at those things.

G O D D E S S
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Taxation

It's not their fault they haven't been chosen by Those Who Play Games.

Only thing the dumb bitch is good for

The original example of the Adventurer archetype in fantasy, or at least the big codifier, is AD&D, which explicitly takes place in what amounts to a post-apocalyptic setting. The core AD&D setting is a world where a Roman-esq situation has happened, and a world of high fantasy, lore, and magic has collapsed, and its artifacts, lore, magic, and treasure has become occupied by vicious monster barbarians and wild animals, and now must be reclaimed. The world is ruled by warlords ruling from keeps or wizards in towers, feudal estates that replaced the former rule of Good King John or the Last Great Age of the Elves or the Dwarven Lords resulting in a political balkanized mess.

Thus the standard adventurer in such a setting is a mercenary, a monster slayer, a graverobber, an archeologist, a scholar, or a treasure hunter, and the party is united by a shared love of profit, or more rarely knowledge, or more rarely still a high and glorious ideal.

Interesting. I will now proceed to think in a post apocalyptic medieval scenario.

Honestly, check out Acquisitions Incorporated. The Chris Perkins/Jerry Holkins shared setting effectively takes the idea of "adventurers as mercenaries," and "adventurer's guild," and throws them together and turns it up to eleven. The most successful adventurers are part of companies that manage their teams and their jobs and give them representation to the sort of people that need them for things.

Think Goblin Slayer, but with specific organizations competing with each other.

I think it's important to note that if any society that standard fantasy settings has obtains adventurers/heroes, settlements need to be few and far between, the world needs to be mostly unknown or unexplored, and most importantly, there needs to be monsters terrorizing the populous.

So basically yeah, apocalyptic.

I love the idea of Acquisitions Inq because of how Holkins plays as a super shady cutthroat Guild with expendable "interns" and always weighs money and profit over any sort of moral quandary. Makes all the games hilarious, I can't wait for the new livestream at PAX West this weekend, especially since it's all gonna be Tomb of Annihilation

Character recognition? Same reason as to why helmets are so rare in any show.

Otherwise the show is just an overexaggeration of every class trope.

>Whaddya mean two hobbits could destroy Sauron when an army couldn't.

>Armies don't have magic, magical items or a special connection to a deity.
Says who? There's tons of fiction where an army has the favour of a deity, or has a powerful wizard on their side.

And what the hell are you good for, virgin-NEET?

They're basically professional grave robbers and traveling mercenaries.

If I was trying to justify their existence in a setting I'd probably go a Witcher-esque route and say that monsters are still a relatively new thing that the world hasn't quite figured out how to deal with, thus giving rise to sellswords willing to risk life and limb for the promise of reward.

The dungeons that still have good loot are in extremely remote places, and the goblins and undead popped up recently and no one else can deal with it, at least right now

They're called "murderhobos" for a reason.
Might as well post Konosuba.