How should a functioning Adventure Guild look like?

The way i've got an "adventuring guild" for my party is actually just a growing trade guild, that keeps them on retainer as a hitsquad.

I can see it happening near the edge of civilizations. Kind of like an American frontier feeling, but with monsters instead of injuns. Of course, as the frontier keeps being moved further outward, adventurers guilds move further outward as well until in a very distant future they become obsolete.

Adventure Guilds don't make sense. It would be better to organize themselves into mercenary or monster-hunter bands.

>It would be better to organize themselves into mercenary or monster-hunter bands.
Mercenary bands specialized in hunting monsters? What if we would have a specialized term for this sub-type of mercenary? Like "adventurer"?

How about "Hunter's Guild"?

Do lvls, XP and stats exist in-universe? Can characters...read them?

A mercenary organization operating on the edges of civilization, where conventional rule of law is only barely applicable. A de facto leadership to the rogues and soldiers of fortune whose cause is that of whoever makes the highest bid. An alliance of the stateless, people of every color, creed and cause who seek life beyond society. A nation unto itself with no land to call home but the hearts of its citizens. The United States of Force.

The way I see it, it'd best work less as a guild and more as an office run by the government through which to give contracts to mercenaries, with payment being given out after a completed job. If it were a private business though, they would probably act as the middleman instead and take a cut of the pay for finding the jobs for adventurers in the first place. That they actually employ and take care of adventurers beyond that is probably unlikely.

These answers are always the most retarded and pointless.

As for a meaningful answer I would go with unless you are specifically trying to make your game as campy as possible. If that's the case I would suggest making it seem campy, include entry tests that result in a character's capabilities being judged and written up like a character sheet, give them ranks and assign the new guys stupid and easy missions like "take this cake to my grandma" or "get rid of the rats in my basement." Goblin slayer actually did do the idea of an adventurer's guild very well.

Wouldn't it just be a guild for people who do odd jobs (usually involving violence or risks) that require them to go out of town? That doesn't seem like too weird of a thing.

Goblin Slayer's Adventure Guild was the most retarded bullshit ever, what the hell are you on about

Adventurer is an incredibly vague job description. Its really just a vagrant who does random jobs they can pick up. If you want guilds for PCs have a council of mages or a society of highly skilled swordsmen or something. Paladins get their orders, wizards can have councils, knights can have societies, rogues can have their seedy brothel hangouts, etc.

Mercenaries, PMCs, private security and so forth aren't exactly uncommon concept, and i guess imagining a dedicated broker for those organization not too far stretched. The thing is though, all those organizations aren't parties of 3-4 "adventurers" that pick up "quests" from a postboard.
I can imagine one existing in world with high degree of feudal fragmentation, receiving requests and forwarding them to PMCs, maybe providing material support, lodging and whatnot.
No Independent adventuring parties though, want to be a sword for hire, go join brave cocks or whoever first.

I prefer the term: Murderhobo Guild.

As they say, "Dead adventurers don't pay taxes"

There are odd job places in reality, m8.
An Adventurers guild is just a more formal one, albeit with a bit of a weird title for people in setting.

It would make sense to be a facilitator service for people that haven't got connections yet. They'd help the new guys with material that's valuable but difficult for a group of nobodies to cash in.

I say yes. just have a bureaucracy in place that tests and ranks its members.
best of both worlds.

Which is the point. If you are making a setting that has adventurer guilds go full campy with ranks and character sheets and other bullshit. Why the hell would a guild of adventurer's exist? Do you give them a job offer to clear out your rats? What about a goblin's den? Do they need someone to send a commission to defeat the dark lord before they go out? Its only use is a lazy way to get players into the overarching story of the campaign and to vaguely keep them on the rails with the reminder of a specific reward at the end or something.

>There are certain elements that transgress settings.

And there are others that do not such as speed of communication, is magic a thing, are there private or public organizations that are already in place that deal with this sort of thing but are not "guilds", is flight/air travel a thing, is gunpowder/firearms a thing, is innate evil a fucking thing.

You stop being a retard and notice that those "key words" dont mean shit and what """"""should""""" happen in a guild type organization in a game of 40K would be completely different than a guild set in fucking Pathfinder.

My point was more asking the lines that GS' guild was woefully incompetent

Really OP, an Adventurer's Guild can work if the setting is built around it, like monsters and dungeon ecology being a regular thing. I imagine a guild would act as an intermediary between the government/local lords, functioning as a meeting point for cartographers, archeaologists, hunters, biologists, mercenaries and the like

A functioning Adventurers Guild should be similar to an actual medieval guild, except that the trade they govern is non-military mercenary and bodyguard work. Anyone who needs those services has to go through them, and anyone who wants to provide those services goes through them. In exchange, they train apprentices to the point where theyre competent to function on their own, maintain quality control over their journeymen, ensure that requests get handled and that members get work, and most important of all, collect taxes on what would otherwise be a profession where taxes would be hard to enforce. Like many guilds, this is a legal monopoly enforced by the government, although in practice, they just let the guild police itself and turn a blind eye when they do so.

They also provide for their members, and the families of deceased members whove paid their dues. They also act as a depot for their members, generally by making contracts with the blacksmiths guild, apothecarys guild, and similar guilds. Ostensibly this lets them bargain collectively to ensure members get better rates than they would otherwise, but in practice its to ensure control over materials the same way other guilds maintain them, which further prevents unlicensed adventurers from becoming a threat to them. And, finally, they serve as something of a gentlemans club for their members, where they can relax and discuss their trade without needing to spend time around people who arent members.

>My point was more asking the lines that GS' guild was woefully incompetent
Kind of necessary, how else will the PCs stand out?
>First job kill rats
>Second job deliver a package
>Third job get this girl to go out with me
...
>28th job kill a dozen goblins hiding out in a cave
...
>89th job kill some ogres hiding out in a cave
...
>31564th job kill the dark lord

vs. goblin slayer

>First job kill some goblins
>Hey you survived good job on being in the top third of all adventurers, here's a mission that isn't boring and/or stupid

So have the adventure guild be a place to pick up odd jobs
And you can have all that other stuff while having an adventurers guild

Apprenticeships.

For god's sake, do not send out a bunch of clueless newbies as a group. That's daft. If there's no one to teach them, the only way they're going to learn is by fucking up horribly.

You pair newbies with experienced people. The newbies do the part of the job that experienced people would be wasted on, while picking up skills from their mentors. That's how you learn a dangerous profession. In the middle ages, that's how you learned EVERY profession.

It's not fun in a game, and you shouldn't do it. But it's the way guilds worked, and if there was an "adventurer's guild," that's how it would work.

Why have a guild for that? Why not just have a job's board? Who is willing to pay a cut of their earnings so somebody can sit at a desk and tell them about all the stuff they can do instead of adventurer's just going to appropriate levels of power and asking if they have jobs to deal with. Beyond that a guild pretty much requires that it be widespread which raises the question of why the hell the world is in such an anarchistic state that they need to hire vagrants to kill the goblins instead of sending the town guard or the local count leading a dozen knights to put them down.

You start them as journeymen, with the assumption that they finished their period of time being apprenticed to a master adventurer. Thats why you had apprenticeships - because no guild just hands random kids hammers and nails and tells them to go build someone a house.

It still raises the question of why are there so many adventurers that they need a guild. What is the local count and his knights doing? What is the town guard doing? Why hasn't the king ensured that issues that require adventurers are dealt with through the proper channels? You don't need adventurers (that's why they never existed) problems that require force of arms can be dealt with by the government. If the town can't deal with a problem they will contact the count, if he can't deal with it he calls the duke, if he can't deal with it he calls the king.

The big thing that feels strange to me about those guilds in near-vidya fantasy settings like Goblin Slayer or DanMachi is that the the guilds themselves don't really seem like they are actually guilds made out of adventurers and are more like the DMV or something

not that user
but here are problems with adventure guilds:
>subsume functions of other guilds
Since adventurers are of all kinds of classes adventurer guilds support all classes. They make other guilds obsolete or marginalize them into obscurity. This removes detail and potential from the setting and pushes in direction of an artificial player centric setting.
>they induce monotony by centralizing player character quest and item supply
Players run back and forth between quest and guild instead of interacting with the wider setting.
>Adventuring guilds as well as adventurers themselves are, as a concept, aimed more at us the viewers/players/readers than the ingame world.
They don't portray or don't give the specialized support structure specialized classes they employ need or would benefit from.
The naming convention itself is illogical. We players learned to associate adventurer with RPG game, but something unfocused and indicative of irregular proceedings as "adventurer" wouldn't be used for these dungeon strike sentai teams that are often shown.
This influences setting tone. Renfaire facade directed at the players and thoughtless convenience vs deep immersion.
>the storytelling utility of an adventurers guild is mainly explaining away logistics and skipping to other parts of the setting.
But why make room for the guild in the setting at all when it is a glorified "don't think about it"? It works against it's own purpose.
>Adventuring guilds rarely interact with their settings at all beyond surface level
There are monsters the guild i there to organize combating them is often the only extend.
If they would connect to the wider setting more they wouldn't be adventuring guilds but many varied specialized ventures with more pronounced member preferences. But the intended one sized fits all structure can't allow for that.

For some cases it makes more sense, but in them "adventurer" means something more like "guy who goes into this specific
'dungeon' that seems to have an infinite source of monsters"

Because goblins are stronger than peasents and the town guards have too defend the town from bandits
Also nobles don't care about shit unless it gets really bad or they can use it as an excuse to go to war with a neighbor
Whats better
Random peasents or knight equivalents that are specialised to deal with this shit but are kinda expensive

Not him, but the assumption that I think has to be taken with such a thing is that the government is either nonexistent which raises plenty of other problems, or they don't care enough to deal with such things themselves for some reason or another. Maybe they can't spare any effort to take care of this or that because they've got a war or potential war with a neighboring country to deal with.

Still - depends on the setting.

I guess I've picked the wrong picture the first time around, here, grab this one, you cocksucker

>Why have a guild for that? Why not just have a job's board?
A guild can assess if someone is up to it, and advertise jobs that might otherwise fall through the cracks.
>Who is willing to pay a cut of their earnings so somebody can sit at a desk and tell them about all the stuff they can do instead of adventurer's just going to appropriate levels of power and asking if they have jobs to deal with.
And the answer would be that a guild would have connections some random bumblefucks wouldn't. Why bother wasting time and effort hunting around when someone else can do it for you? Why risk getting swindled out of your reward when someone can facilitate a fair price? This breaks down once people get to a high enough level to sort their own shit out, of course, but it works for beginners.
>You don't need adventurers (that's why they never existed) problems that require force of arms can be dealt with by the government. If the town can't deal with a problem they will contact the count, if he can't deal with it he calls the duke, if he can't deal with it he calls the king.
Not every setting is feudalistic. Private work isn't a modern invention.
Even assuming it is, having independent lackeys can be politically useful for a knight, lord or Duke.
You lack imagination.

At least make women who want to become adventurers become blacksmiths instead, women served by making ammunition for WWII, a women has no place in combat

>Also nobles don't care about shit unless it gets really bad
So your setting is campy. Of course nobles give a shit if people are fucking up land under their control, if the peasants lose crops or money than the nobles lose that shit through taxes, not to mention that if the nobles refuse to protect their underlings the whole feudal system breaks down.
>Random peasents or knight equivalents that are specialised to deal with this shit but are kinda expensive
Or you know society could function the way it was designed to and historically did work.

>discussion you don't like
>pointless argument starting
No, still the wrong image.
Save that one for bait threads about Dragons/Wyverns

I think you have it. Adventurers would likely be a profession built around organizing and ensuring the completion of adventures.

A merchant would hire an adventurer to help plan out a new caravan trade route and hire the sellswords and escorts needed to complete it.

A new ruin is uncovered and adventurers would be hired to organize the exploration efforts, hiring the mercenaries needed for protection and the laborers to clear things away.

Alchemist/Wizard/Noble wanting rare ingredients/components that are in hard to reach areas would hire adventurers to organize and run the expedition.

Miners wanting to establish a new mine would hire adventurers to find and survey new locations.

Adventurers are what legal Rogues would look like.

That is more a problem of the definition of the job "adventurer."

This is essentially the only correct answer. Groups of specialized trackers, hunters, and killers that learn how the monsters of the world work, and what works best to kill them. Sure, sending the local town guard to try and burn out a goblin nest might work, but it's like applying a hammer an ant's nest- there's going to be stragglers, and the deeper infestation could be overlooked. Hunters would act more like a scalpel- digging in deep and removing any and all traces from the area. At a cost, of course.

Alternatively, it could be a low-key reference to the Witcher, and make it so that monsters are hard as fuck to kill without the aid of silver blades, and the hunters are the only jackasses with the skill to use such brittle blades and the ability to make/mass produce them.

Original fiery hate user here.

First, it's weird that anyone would think of themselves as an "adventurer". My thief was a thief. She was part of a thieves' guild, because organized crime is actually a thing, and a very effective one too. She eventually stopped being a full-time burglar due to getting sucked into an adventure that spiraled out of control and concluded with a dragon goddess trying to take over Faerûn, but at the same time she was sucked into the whole thing, it wasn't a conscious choice.

Second, and most importantly for me, they encourage elitism, especially in Japanese media. "I'm an S-ranked adventurer! Dealing with goblins is beneath me! Fu fu fu fu!" That's fucking evil right there. There are goblins attacking a town. People are dying. HELP THEM YOU CUNT.

Even without that, having a guild at all means that you will create a system of bureaucracy and red tape, slowing everything down. "Dealing with that dragon is an A-ranked mission; you can't do that yet, it doesn't matter that the dragon killed your family, complete a few B-ranked missions first so that you can rank up enough".

It also inevitably will lead to the ostracizing of those who DON'T join the guild...when they probably don't join the guild so that they won't get bogged down by the useless bureaucracy and red tape. You end up with Guild thugs trying to go around and break the legs of people just trying to make the world a better place.

Finally with regards to my second point, most "quests" and "adventures" tend to be spur-of-the-moment things that need to be dealt with NOW, not when an adventurer becomes available. "Your town needs help? Please fill out form 1198-2 describing the nature of the attack. Once you are done it will be evaluated by our panel of expert adventurers and given a rank. Thereafter it will be posted on the board for adventurers of the appropriate rank to undertake."

Third, everything that and said.

Adventurer is just the word they choose. Getting to hung up on it kind of misses the point when most settings are actually pretty clear on what adventurers are. Going down the list here:
If something is destroying a town it's a military that more than something that should be given to a business in the first place
The next point is just assuming everything works like Monster Hunter or a Mystery Dungeon game in the most obtuse ways possible, and that threats of that nature are always supposed to be referred to the guild instead of the people running the land in question
The next point is one of the reasons guilds exist in the first place, which is to make sure people don't drive down the value of the industry in question. I can see this seeming wrong if "adventurers" were the public security force, but assuming they should be send inherently stage since they're basically mercenaries/explorers/hunters
The whole "urgent quest" thing sounds more like complaining about Monster Hunter specifically again, but keep in mind in those games the monsters are usually just dangerously nearby rather than an immediate threat and your delving into the issue of video game mechanics vs immersion

>Point that you can't see
>Reply you still make

>doubling down on an anonymous image board

>First, it's weird that anyone would think of themselves as an "adventurer". My thief was a thief. She was part of a thieves' guild, because organized crime is actually a thing, and a very effective one too. She eventually stopped being a full-time burglar due to getting sucked into an adventure that spiraled out of control and concluded with a dragon goddess trying to take over Faerûn, but at the same time she was sucked into the whole thing, it wasn't a conscious choice.

Are you aware of where the term adventurer comes from? Real world adventurers do exist and more often than not their stuff was planned rather than impromptu. "Everyman caught up in an adventure" is actually a rather stupid trope.

>Second, and most importantly for me, they encourage elitism, especially in Japanese media. "I'm an S-ranked adventurer! Dealing with goblins is beneath me! Fu fu fu fu!" That's fucking evil right there. There are goblins attacking a town. People are dying. HELP THEM YOU CUNT.

And it is treated as a negative in story.

>Even without that, having a guild at all means that you will create a system of bureaucracy and red tape, slowing everything down. "Dealing with that dragon is an A-ranked mission; you can't do that yet, it doesn't matter that the dragon killed your family, complete a few B-ranked missions first so that you can rank up enough".

It is more dealing with a dragon is an incredibly risky mission and the dragon is not currently rampaging. Sending people below A rank is likely to just increase the death tole. Prove you are good enough so that we have reason to believe that you will come back alive.

>Finally with regards to my second point, most "quests" and "adventures" tend to be spur-of-the-moment things that need to be dealt with NOW, not when an adventurer becomes available.

That is only true because desperation makes stories and campaigns exciting. Most of the settings imply that Emergency Missions are rare/unusual and that most jobs are material collection, monster population culling and caravan escorts.

Adventurer guilds are the most stale and tired cliche in isekai, I think I've developed an allergy to them.
Especially if they have job listings for monster extermination or item gathering bullshit and "adventurer ranks"

>Its really just a vagrant who does random jobs they can pick up
So it is kingdom's official institution to combat unemployment among young citizens?

If they die on the "quest" less unemployment.
If they complete quest, they are rich for a moment so no problem with unemployment.

>Missing point even harder

>mfw listening to Le Morte d'Arthur and Lancelot comes into a town asking the locals if there are any adventures or quests to be had

What about Witchers ?

That's a good overlooked point. It's like the Hero Association in One Punch Man (which is pretty much a glorified adventurer's guild) except that was actually a branch of government or something, and heroes were extensively consulted. We also got to see a lot of the politicking within it rather than just dealing with smiling receptionists.

Maybe there's not a single guild, but a bunch of them, as sort of non-military mercenary organizations. And the government likes having them because it makes it easier to contract work out and hold people accountable for the deeds done. And the adventurers like them because it gives some networking and connections to pick up more jobs, get resources, and have trusted companions, as well as the safety net of not having to shoulder every loss by themselves.

Just make them some fantasy LLC or something.

>Real world adventurers do exist and more often than not their stuff was planned rather than impromptu.

Sure, but the "adventure" that a real-life adventurer went on was usually quite different from what your typical D&D fantasy adventurer goes on. The best real-world equivalent might be what William Walker got up to in Mexico and Nicaragua.

With a high dose of raping op and op's mom.

>Why have a guild for that? Why not just have a job's board? Who is willing to pay a cut of their earnings so somebody can sit at a desk and tell them about all the stuff they can do instead of adventurer's just going to appropriate levels of power and asking if they have jobs to deal with.
Cause it is difficult and need specific skills.

Let me illustrate on my work in insurance law:
I work in law firm that operates in entire country, and we have agents that search for customers, agents outnumbers lawyers and takes around half of our income.
Why?
Cause nobody of us at the office have personal skills, time and motivation to travel around fucking country and ask people if they need our services. By having division of people that do the work and ones that make deals is just more efficient. Also agents make so work that other lawyers could do is done by us, so we have income.

And from other way in "high level" do you know how fucking hard it is to find high level adventurer?
Why nobody just goes to Messi, Ronaldo, Lewandowski and just hire him instead of going through their agents and all of uefa regulations?
Also why said sportsman use agents? Cause they do not know about business, they know about football and pay someone to organize their finances.

I'm reminded more of credit unions and other mutual societies.

Kinda, actually. The idea of collecting people with high individual skill, and jobs that can only be done by those individuals isn't crazy. What's crazy is assuming people wouldn't start competing firms to do those jobs, unless the work is taken over by the public sector, i.e. the government.

>How should a functioning Adventure Guild look like?

Like the original X-Com but with monsters instead of aliens.

>What to do with inexperienced, suicidal idiots?

They're the rookies.

Would it make sense for a kingdom to have a large adventurers guild instead of a standing army?

Only if you could pay them. Carthage had mercenary armies. But of all the lessons of history, one of the most important is to pay your armies.

We landsknecht now.

What do you think about warrior and mage guilds? Also nonsense?

Surprise surprise. Veeky Forums knows nothing about how economies and jobs actually function. Division of labor doesn't mean much here.

Adventurers guilds and all their implications are my least favorite videogame-esque trope. Suspension of disbelief, what's that?

Glorified mercenary middlemen.

Good thing those games don't have magic or dragons or other weird shit. Man, that'd suck. The only good games are paperwork manager and sitting in traffic simulator.

>"adventures" tend to be spur-of-the-moment things that need to be dealt with NOW, not when an adventurer becomes available.
> Not having your adventures being well planned expeditions into dangerous lands that go wrong or worse.

This isn't the kind of adventure that most fantasy adventurers go on, nor the kind of adventure that your typical adventurer guild deals with, and you know it.

So be the change you want to see in the world, nigger.

And yet all that "weird shit" is internally consistent. You say that not having an adventurers guild is boring, but I say the adventurers guild is boring. Rather than being heroes who do the unthinkable, the PCs are just faces in a crowd of adventurers. Instead of personal stakes and meaningful quests the PCs fulfill bounties in random dungeon #7. Instead of a rich cast of NPCs you get bounty clerk and merchants.

Pretty much this.

>What to do with inexperienced, suicidal idiots?
You're in the Army now!

But user, being special is snowflakey, and that's the worst thing you can ever be. The whole party should be faceless human fighters doing menial labor for a bland and boring organization. That is the pinnacle of roleplaying.

I mean, you ARE a face in the crowd. These fantasy world are full of fantastical shit and heroes and villains. Making it menial is making it more consistent.

like teamsters

Maybe, but I want to do those.
Though I admit I will use an explorer guild instead.

It's more of a people's militia. So kind of like army except with less training, discipline, and budget.

That's just Veeky Forums being contrarian. Being special is fine, and to a degree necessary, as long as you don't over do it in a desperate bid for attention
>depends on the setting
I finds worlds where the mean power level is low to be more interesting.

I've always thought of adventurer guilds as managing who gets to wander into what dungeons/ruins. It'd be more like an archaeologist's union; they're basically claiming rights to salvage operations and artifact recovery. Stuff like dragon attacks and goblin infestations would be out of their purview, and probably something you'd want to hire a mercenary band for anyway.

Lots of rape

How would you even define an "adventurer" in any setting that wasn't a self aware RPG, where everyone knows there are little quests for them to do no matter where they go?

Wouldn't a group that takes odd jobs that are usually exciting and dangerous just be mercenaries?

I find worlds with modern takes on bureaucracy to be interesting. It's something that grounds the setting to our own reality and helps me get into character. I find the "farmer guy who gets swept up into adventure without looking for one" really tropey and tried. This is all just personal preference in the end. Though I do think the idea of an adventuring guild is done poorly most times, I don't think it's inherently boring.

>How should a functioning Adventure Guild look like?
An army.

>What to do with inexperienced,
Basic Training.
>suicidal idiots?
Combat missions

>How would you even define an "adventurer" in any setting that wasn't a self aware RPG
You don't.

If the setting has a concept of an "adventurer" as we know it, it's already in bad shape.

I agree wholeheartedly. Perhaps it's from reading to much bad manga, but I find the adventurers guild trope to be worn out, but as you said it's all about personal preference.

If your setting has enough "adventurers" that they need organizing, than it has enough "quests" that it's not really a setting so much as a Saturday Morning Cartoon show, with reoccurring dastardly villains.

Then the question isn't relevant anymore, retard.

Wouldn't Adventurer Guilds make perfect sense in a Monster Hunter/Mystery Dungeon-type world? Half the problem Veeky Forums nerds have with Adventurer Guilds is that they erroneously assume they're existence in settings that don't accommodate them

The guild in monster hunter is less an adventurers guild and more a freelance DNR.

you forget that some thing like adventurer guilds existed in real life too.
National Geographic is the most faous example, but not the only one.
And they too comprised people from all walks of life. They were created and maintained mainly by people who loved exploration and discovery, and they could provide them for financial and political support. Politicians and nations supported them because of the potential discovery of new resources or new routes.

In a feudal setting they could also serve as a sort of prvate police/mercenary force. In a feudal world there wouldn't be a police force like we know, but a military belonging to the lord.
And they wouldn't really care about you losing your son or about some feud with some other guy or about wolves bothering a farmer.
They'd only step in if the problem because too big and caused instability to their fief.
The lord would tolerate and possibly sanction those guilds because they keep the people happy, they provide people to risk their lives to solve problems before they become too big, so that the lord can keep all his soldiers focused on maintaining his power, and give an outlest for hotheads, former military and other people who would otherwise cause trouble.
And anyone could beome an adventurer because it just requires you to be willing to risk your health and life, and different skills would be useful in different missions.

And there could be a more violent spin, with the "guild" ( you can call it somethign different from adventurers guild) overlapping wiht criminal endeavors.
Someone owes you a debt and won't pay? Hire some "adventurers" to scare them straight. They would also control the seedy activities in the town, like gambling, prostitution and so on.
The lord would accept it because having a guild offers him some form of control over the darker and possibly illegal parts of his fief's going-ons.

This too is something that to various decrees existed in real life.