Anime Fantasy

It occurred to me while reading Modiphius' Infinity RPG book: theoretically speaking, it should be able to create a setting inspired by the aesthetics and common tropes of anime without making it an "anime setting" strictly speaking (or imitating the conventions of any particular genre directly).

With that in mind, I tried looking up "fantasy anime" but most of the ones I found that weren't very famous (e.g. Berserk) seemed to be mostly parodic.

What conventions/tropes/common motifs/etc. could you point out as being very characteristic of "fantasy anime" without being so definitively recognizable that any use of them would immediately become just that?

Other urls found in this thread:

myanimelist.net/anime/season/2018/winter
hahnlibrary.net/rpgs/sources.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_and_influences_on_the_development_of_Dungeons_&_Dragons
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

Berserk is actually one of the most famous fantasy anime as a point of fact, but otherwise I can’t help you too much.
Most fantasy anime storytelling tendencies (especially these days) aren’t ACTUALLY specific to fantasy anime because we time had gone on and the anime market shrank more and more in it’s home country a lot of it has gotten increasingly homogenized.

That's what I said, most of the ones I found that WEREN'T famous appear to be parodies.

Record of Lodoss War, and Legend of Arslan (the older one) are also ones you should watch.
Slayers, while a satire, is also good.
There's also something someodd maria virgin witch. It has low key weapons and HEMA people will reply with how it's so cool because it has a murder stroke.

I happen to be a HEMAfag and never saw it. But I remember it for that meme.
There's also a huge number of magical girl anime to draw from which IS fantasy and also anime.

Watch Revolutionary Girl Utena.

Sorry, it’s late here.

I don't doubt that there are good fantasy anime (just like I don't doubt that there are good science fiction anime from which elements were handpicked to make Infinity), I'm trying to isolate those elements which are unique enough to them to distinct from Western fantasy series' yet aren't so "typical" (e.g. the harem comedy tropes which make up a lot of Zero no Tsukaima) that they could be used to create something other than that.

Heroes are against high odds, but are abnormally strong in some way - not necessarily chosen ones, but different, usually in a way that is noticeable to some people. Heroes are usually feared and respected like angels.
The villain usually has a direct connection to the heroes - whether it be killing someone dear to them, being a relative, or sharing the trait that gives one of (or all of) the heroes strength.
Adventurers are less "murderhobos" and more "justicehobos" - fewer random encounters against goblins and monsters and more random encounters against criminals and villains who have wronged the heroes, villages they pass through, or random innocents they encounter.

Twists are more common in anime than traditional fantasy.

I honestly think the "western style fantasy" genre in Japan has reached the awkward point by which even the parodies of it are already being parodied. It's brown elves and lolis all the way down.

Part of finding what is unique to anime's take on fantasy is going to involve watching anime. If you already like fantasy stuff, you should enjoy those. Arslan is hit or miss, but it's gorgeous.

You want to make a good fantasy campaign, and then take in the anime elements for flavor. Like an asian fusion dish.

Good fantasy has the same common elements across cultures. Cultures take fantasy and make it their own. So if you want to do something in that vein, you should probably borrow tropes. Don't try for an aesthetic, but instead go for atmosphere.

As for a sci fi, watch Legend of the Galactic Heroes. Try the 1992 film, if you haven't seen that yet.

>So if you want to do something in that vein, you should probably borrow tropes
That's my intention exactly. So which tropes would those be, in your opinion?

It depends on what you're going for. You could go with a focus on teamwork and friendship. Shonen animes do that a lot.
You could play down individual strength with this. You don't need a literal friendship laser to do this.

Berserk involves higher powers which are beyond the mainstream and false human religion. There are a lot of slow hints at the cryptic prophesy, but it plays out slowly over time. It also involves a very powerful but still human protagonist.
Lodoss War is about maintaining the status quo. Balance between good and evil. Keep the current system going.
And there's a love story. Both the bad and good guy get elf waifus to play off a feeling of duality.

Put in competing good and evil parties. You foil them, they foil you. You come to a big clash at the end.
Also consider power levels of magic. Fantasy anime magic tends to go big. But usually only in destruction, and little is done in the way of creation or configuration.

I can't think of much that 's specifically fantasy anime as opposed to just generally anime stuff that also happens in fantasy shows. Except for the "dying and sent to a fantasy world" thing that's popular at the moment. And copying Dragon Quest.
Also while some are parodies, a lot of them are just goofy rather than actually parodying anything. Which may or may not be relevant.

Slimes as the generic "low level opponents"?

Okay, I’ll try to help.
>Emotions will mostly be extremely melodramatic or overdramatized.
This is part of Japanese entertainment in general, likely as a response to their fairly traditionally reserved culture.
>Beauty will usually have an androgynous element to it.
Pretty guys who look like chicks are just regular pretty in Japan due to cultural stuff.
>Multiple Love interests for the male heroes
The is so common across Japanese media as to be nearly ubiquitous at this point, especially in anime which is aiming at a specific market.
>Lots of world-building, even if the world kind of ends up looking like other fantasy
A lot of Japanese Fantasy is adapted from light novels which tend to be fairly heavy on detailed worldbuilding. While the details are often quite numerous, it generally tends to go explaining why certain D&D fantasy stereotypes are around mostly while not deviating too far from them in most cases.
>Magic is flashy, powerful, but not ALL-powerful
Works like Final Fantasy magic; just another way to hit folks. Almost always elemental in flavor, very little in the way of “utility” spells or spells useful in solving puzzles that don’t involve violence shown in the story.
>Fanservice
There will be at least one chick who’s built and/or dresses like a porn star, with an increasingly high likelihood of this being true and there being more then one of them the father into the post-2000 anime era you get.
>Hero will probably use a sword nine times out of ten.
Not that different from here, but worth noting anyway.
>Hero will not be using a shield
He’ll more likely hold it samurai-style. Sometimes he won’t even wear armor.
>Hero will likely be a moron
Or at least weirdly socially obtuse to really obvious shit, to preserve the romance triangles and harem stuff.
>A guy with a katana has like a 98.5% chance of being an amazing swordsman

This.

Also, technology is all over the place. Some, like Berserk, try to keep things within some timeframe, but often Anime fantasy uses magic to explain away devices which allow for modern day conveniences.

The Arms Peddler is pretty good, Ubelblatt is okay-ish.
Some Miyazaki stuff can be called fantasy I think, like Shuna no Tabi

>Hero will be almost absurdly helpful and nice, but when pressed he’ll reveal that he’s truly dangerous and literally everyone will be super-impressed by how dangerous and skilled he is.
Japan’s really into having characters exposit the hell out of their thoughts once a character has demonstrated something, and they frequently use it to restate stuff that you already just saw. It’s actually a quirk of the language itself, not just the culture.
>Lots of “power of friendship” stuff.
Look up the concept of “Nakama”.
>Lots of “Yamato-damashii” moments
Frequently when the hero is loosing and needs to get stronger, he just WILL. It’s not always just heroic willpower though, sometimes he’ll employ new abilities that he developed just because he needed them.

>A guy with a katana has like a 98.5% chance of being an amazing swordsman
Corollary: The worse a sword seems like it should perform, the better the person wielding it likely is. If someone's fighting with a training weapon, a broken weapon, or some kind of shitty "backwards weapon" or whatever, expect them to be supernaturally talented.

True that.
Also, Katana Supernaturally Good Fencer Guy is nearly never the main hero. Usually he’s a guest character or even a villain, but the katana is there to let you know he’ll fuck you up.

>likely as a response to their fairly traditionally reserved culture.

Loving this armchair sociology meme.

The presence of a mentor lasts much longer than most western stories.
Rulers are incompetent, military is in a much better state.
Destiny is a thing (I love that one in terms of RPG)
Gods are meddling with terrestrial raced even more than with the greeks
Spirits exist and are mostly alien, bizarre and malevolent.
Secret societies (it's incredible how many took place in Asian history)
Ruling/military official brothers are fighting each other for power.
Philosophy makes you immortal

Anime fantasy you say?

Fighters are mages
Mages are barbarians
Barbarians are druids
Druids are rangers
Rangers are rogues
Rogues are fighters

For a moment I thought that was art from Kill Six Billion Demons.

Grimgar is a good anime, unironically

Been there, actually.
They aren’t that reserved NOW because time has changed things, but it’s an artifact of their language (seriously, most Japanese people I know who swear are young and do so in English because it really lacks the vehemence in Japanese) which is really proper and further most of Japan’s population is OOOOOLD so basically even as things in the country move on socially a lot of conservative elements remain because a huge population of the nation remembers in the 1960’s as children and 1970’s as young adults.

What about all those times you hear characters in anime say “shit”?

“Kuso” is the word you’re thinking of.
It does in fact literally mean “shit”, but notice you tend to see in in anime aired and aimed a relative young audience. In Japanese it’s more or less the equivalent of a little kid saying “crap” and lacks a lot of vehemence of the word “shit” on television.
You express rudeness or anger in entirely different ways language-wise in Japanese. It’s more about addressing the person impolitely rather then swearing at them or insulting them. Forms of address and self-address are weird in Japan and kind of are why the language is confusing sometimes; there is no equivalent of “I” in the Japanese language.
Instead you have versions for men, versions for women, versions for young boys, versions for rude people, versions for old people, old-fashioned versions, humble versions, arrogant versions, etc.

Sort of related, but I heard that Gilgamesh from the Fate series is sort of hard to understand in Japanese.

Not exactly hard to understand, but his language and terms of address is often extremely old-fashioned in the light novel (meant to show his great age presumably), especially when he starts talking a great deal at once.
Generally the shorter his sentences the more modern he sounds.

I think the biggest thing is that, because the average Japanese' knowledge of Western culture is basically as bad as the average Westerner's knowledge of Japanese culture, it's common to see situations by which seemingly Western characters in a seemingly Western environment still end up acting Japanese. Like, everyone has Western NAMES (or at least what the Japanese think passes for those, which might just be gibberish), and they dress like theme park medieval Europeans, but when you come down to it they eat Japanese food in the Japanese way, talk to each other like Japanese people, express Japanese cultural and social sensibilities, respond to situations like Japanese people would, etc.

Very specific subtypes of this include the Japanese assumption that European knights were just samurai, Christianity is Shinto-Buddhism with crosses, and wizards/witches/"alchemists" are onmiyoji surrounded by Hebrew letters.

Some older examples also seem to think orcs are oni, although this is very rare nowadays.

Imagine someone in an English speaking work who speaks in Shakespearean English, with "thous" and "thees".

Especially in Fate/Zero his dialogue can get florid as fuck.

So anima?

Anybody else read the Lodoss novel that (FINALLY) just got an English release? Overall I liked it and was happy to finally get it in a language I can read. Was surprised how much is different though, the anime really had to really change or pad a lot.

Also I remember a while back someone made a TG recommenced anime chart but Ive since lost it. Anyone save it?

Spice and wolf would make for a awesome no-magic setting

Besides the giant, talking, shapeshifting animal gods that is.

Anyone watching The Ancient Magus Bride? It does a lot for my Irish Mythology boner.

In japanese culture the skill of the wielder means more than the weapon itself. So if i was doing anime fantasy RPG weapon would most likely be cosmetic and damage was assigned to class itself (not unlike in a certain game about dungeons and worlds).

Also
>this is your beastfolk on anime

Check out BASTARD! it's basically the Japanese take on western fantasy through the lens of 80s heavy metal album covers

The fuck every happened to that manga. The author just up an vanished.

>with "thous" and "thees".
People in yorkshire still use those, and Birmingham sort of area still has the accent it did in Shakespeare's day.

The 1980s ended and metal bands started to get slightly uppity about copyright infringement and trademark use.
So, no more kingdom of Metal Lica.

you need to have modern underwear in your medieval world.

Yep. Love it, mostly because of the art style, but the rest is still pretty good.

Obviously
And of course no one is allowed to play them

the final fantasy games (or at least the early ones) are a pretty good sample of japanese fantasy, as are the tales of series.
As for tropes;
main characters need at least 2 love interests, the best girl and the bland girl that he actualy falls in love with.

fantasy races tend to have their physical features turned way up to 12

female dwarves are all lolis

there'll always be some sort of not-japan reigon in setting

japan still likes the "pointlessly evil for the sake of it" villian

they also still have effeminite villians (since they don't have hordes of morons waiting to crucify you for suggesting gay people can have differing motives or goals)

magic tends to have "soft limits" in the sence that x thing is meant to be impossible but can be overcome by trying really hard

guns tend to be weapons of the badguys, unless its made by a gun otaku in which case guns will be everywhere

>What conventions/tropes/common motifs/etc. could you point out as being very characteristic of "fantasy anime" without being so definitively recognizable that any use of them would immediately become just that?
Word on the streets is that Dragon Quest is to shitty fantasy Light Novels what Tolkien is to shitty fantasy Western novels. Play the Dragon Quest games and recycle elements from those.

Pretty much this. Which is all the sadder given that Dragon Quest itself was originally inspired by D&D, which itself was inspired in many ways by Tolkien.

Yeah, and Tolkien was inspired by real world myths, but most people are too lazy to cut out all the middle men.

IIRC he has a lot of furigana, for stuff like "He says 'ore' but pronounces it 'ware'."

Nah, D&D was inspired by stuff like Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Conan the Barbarian, and PDF related. Gygax threw in some LotR races because his players wanted to play them, but the setting as a whole was never meant to be Tolkienian.

Original flavor D&D was filled with weird technology, people using holy powers for evil, humans from Earth being transported to fantasy land to become heroes, and a lot of other stuff that most people nowadays think was invented by anime.

I like isekai anime just fine. When it's told well. The big problem with the Japanese variety however is that, more often than not these days it's almost always just used to plug some shitty light novel that's just riding out as many volumes of nothing it can get.

Look at the original El Hazard OVA. It's isekai AND harem and was great. Why was it great? Because it actually told a damn story.

>without making it an "anime setting" strictly speaking
That is fucking stupid and makes no sense, but then again, I guess it's just a semantic problem.

>What conventions/tropes/common motifs/etc. could you point out as being very characteristic of "fantasy anime"
Well, outside of using Japanese folklore and historical motives, I'd say the most important and generally most common "anime thing" is the idea that will transcends physical reality. It's the idea of "kiai", the "powerlevel" of a character, the reason why Anime gets away with scrawny noodle-limbed children defeating giant professional wrestler-type guys - it's what justifies the characters leaping fifty feet in the air and breaking stone with the force of air from their hits - it's what makes cutting stone with swords possible.

Anime is above all a form of (largely visual) symbolic language - it's a form of exaggeration, abstraction. That is what actually justifies a lot of the typical "crazy" stuff happening in it. But there is also a popular underlying theme, the theme that "as long as you have the will to do something, you can literally materialize it and bend the reality accordingly". It's not just a random thing either, it's deeply rooted in Japanese folklore and folk beliefs too. Besides the obvious stricly visual "code" aspects of anime, it's this emphasis on emotion and will that I think is at root of most anime aesthetics.

"In anime, reality itself is formed by (or reflects) the emotional states of its characters" is what my teacher once claimed, and I think he was onto something there.

A second, and perhaps less important thing of note is that Japs don't seem to care about actual historical continuity that much, at least in Anime, so their fantasy (and sci-fi) worlds tend to be quite heavily anachronistic.

>worlds tend to be quite heavily anachronistic.

Im not the kind of guy who's going to nitpick over every minor historical inaccuracy, I just wish they weren't so aggressive about it

I don't think they are aggressive, they just don't give a fuck. Japs have I think generally quite different perception of time. To them, not treating it as necesarily a strict, linear causal line is actually quite natural. And it does often lead to some really interesting results - like Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Those who Hunt Elves, Saishou Heiki Kanojo, Jinrui Wa Suitaishimashita (which itself is a parody of Yokohama Shopping Diaries) and many other things I'm too lazy to think off.

user, if they don't even aim for accuracy you shouldn't give a fuck about it either.

Aggressively not giving a fuck about historical accuracy has given us (untranslated, which is a crime) setting where there are knights on literal motorcycles.

I say let them.

Im not asking for a lot. Just a more consistent attention to world building.

>There will be at least one chick who’s built and/or dresses like a porn star, with an increasingly high likelihood of this being true and there being more then one of them the father into the post-2000 anime era you get.

You're pretty wrong on that part my man. 80s anime had girls in outfits that would make Sonja blush.

Here is Dream Hunter Rem, can't remember if it was 80s or 90s though. Either way I miss sword&sorcery anime.

I also laugh when people try and act like Moe or fanservice are somehow NEW concepts.

Some of the things I’ve noticed come up a few times-

A distant (but not too distant) island that is fantasy Japan. Which let’s you vary up a lot of the traditional European fantasy in terms of monsters, items, characters and magic. Good for the ability to insert samurai into your story alone.

Beast-folk are just monster girls. Which I’m completely on board for.

Protagonist usually manages to get a wolf-girl companion with silver hair, which is culturally significant to her culture.

Airships.

Princesses usually have something important to them besides being princesses. Either they are extremely physically and magically gifted, or being a princess grants them some power.

The church beuracracy is usually more corrupt than not.

Gods tend to be lacking, and religion is more nature based.

It's always funny when people talk about Miyazaki saying modern anime is trash, except he's been saying that exact line since the 80s.

Toss in Sorcerous Stabber Orphen to the watch pile.

Beautiful scenery, enjoyable fantasy romp. One of the few series where the dub is better than the original.

I mean he's got his points but then he completely undermines it by having every single movie be about the same cute ginger girl

Fairy Tail is basically anime Dungeons & Dragons/Pathfinder.

...

Oh they aren’t, to be sure.
But they weren’t ALL moe and fanservice shows and to make stuff sell you didn’t need 50% of the cast be a little girl. There were boys shows, girls shows, and young adult shows, and the divide was often fairly clear in the animation style and storytelling style.
With the near complete loss of a younger generation of viewers in Japan they’ve pretty much fallen back on their only consistent source of income; otakus and shut-in adults with disposable income.

Along with the damage to the industry their ridiculous economic contraction caused, a lot of anime has some pretty rough economic issues directing it.

I can agree with on how most anime is made as a product, but the product being made (both then and now) tends to be ones I enjoy and can't find anywhere else, so I don't mind.

But yeah I think he's definitely a massive hypocrite when it comes to talking about moe. And I tend to disagree with the themes of most of his movies, but I think it was best handled with Princess Mononoke. I also think it's just grumblings of an grumpy old man, because he doesn't do much to improve the state of the industry by encouraging and cultivating the next generation of animators. Look at how Studio Ghibli is a shadow of it's former self since he left. He ran it so ironclad that in a lot of ways he was Studio Ghibli. Really I think the big flaw with anime is that the grand masters never let go of the reins to give the next generation the experience and freedom they need to ensure the medium can continue to flourish. At least Hideaki Anno, for how much he grumbles about modern otaku culture he thinks he helped create, admits it's a symptom of a larger problem, and actively mentors up-and-coming animators and helps produced animator expos. And funnily enough he was a better father figure to Miyazaki's son than Miyazaki was himself.

I think Miyazaki is just peeved that anime is not perceived as this super artistic medium first and foremost, and while I can understand that, I disagree with trying to pursue that as a goal.

I can point out several where when they show up they’re just minor one-off scenes rather then major components of the show. I don’t disparage people who like it, but you sure as fuck couldn’t turn Kiss X Sis or Green Green or High School DxD into anime as they are back in the 90’s unless it was an OVA.

Define moe and what constitutes a fanservice show. A show that revolves around it, or just has elements of it?
myanimelist.net/anime/season/2018/winter
Look at this chart. Only about 1/4 of what is airing this upcoming season is the dreaded moeshit SoL show, and that's stretching it. There's still a lot of variety to be had in anime, and has been for some time. Hell, a few years ago we had an absurd amount of mecha series airing.

Wasn't Kiss x Sis and OVA series though?

I’m aware, and it’s a significant improvement.

>But they weren’t ALL moe

They're NOT ALL now. The only difference is we live in an age where all information is readily available so we're not at the mercy at whatever execs think will have more western appeal.

But all this moe girl, harem MC, cute girls shit has been going on forever. Rumiko Takashi alone has built a career on it for over 3 decades

They’re making another Ninpochu series? Why aren’t they adapting Yagyu Ninpochu? Seems a shame to adapt Fuutaro Yamada’s novels but not used his most commonly used protagonist.

Woman’s a genius.
Did a moe show filled with fanservice but also convinced girls to watch tons of it too.

I though that Basilisk was rather Ninja Scroll-like. I enjoyed it.

Also, proving the Patriots right, the digital age has ensured we remember everything that airs in a season, even the mediocre stuff.

Ninja Scroll was heavily inspired by Fuutaro Yamada’s works, while Basilisk is a direct adaptations. “Ninpochu” is actually literally translated as “Ninja Scroll”.
A lot of his works are similar; ninjas have superhuman skills but some are like X-Men style freaks of nature caused by crossbreeding or hellish training, and frequently they star Yagyu Jubei (Kibagami Jubei is a stand-in for him in Ninja Scroll) as a protagonist. He also likes to use “unkillable” villains who heal or regenerate.
Also cause it’s old Japanese stuff written in the 1960’s women tend to get sexually abused and/or humiliated because I don’t even know what their hangups are.

>1960’s
Christ, that is some old stuff they’re adapting.

It’s honestly probably not an exaggeration to say that given the timing and popularity of his works, Yamada’s works are one of the major reasons Japan loves the “ninjas have freakish superpowers” thing.
You know that Dojutsu/Eye Skill from Naruto? Well, Yamada invented it (as in the “supernatural eye techniques passed by Ninja bloodlines” you see sometimes) in his FIRST novel, which was adapted into Basilisk.

I don't always like her stuff but I can respect her as a creator. Especially in terms of actually being able to be famous for more than one thing. Even Toriyama is pretty much just coasting on Dragon Ball and maybe sometimes when they roll out a new DQ game every odd decade

Your confirmation bias is showing. Every season, there are plenty of non-moe and minimal-fanservice shows that air. In fact, those shows still make up a minority of what airs every season. But people think the industry is flooded with them because the actual majority of what airs every season, the merely mediocre flavor of the month shows and new iterations of what we've already seen, are forgotten. The only reason people think moe and fanservice dominate the industry is because they are predisposed to seek out any evidence that supports their beliefs and ignore any that denies them.

Lodoss War was based off an RPG.
>at long last, Hiro has become an adventurer. Now he can pay me back what he borrowed.
>Hey, at long last, I have become an adventurer. I spent all my money on chainmail, please loan me some more.

Just like normal television. Imagine that.

Not that user, but this is a super boring argument that should probably better be kept to /a/.

You’ve clearly not been to /a/ before if you these are the sorts of arguments usually had.

Thirded. This is Konosuba.

Konosuba unfortunately falls too deeply into the "The authors idea of and experience with fantasy falls squarely into Dragon Quest and only Dragon Quest."

It still does a pretty good job of capturing the essence of D&D PCs: that being an adventurer means being a broke, homeless outcast from society. Dragon Quest protagonists are generally fairly well-regarded by the people around them compared to the average Konosuba adventurer.

The very idea of an adventurers guild sickens me

This.

Guilds are to create collective bargaining, enforce regulations, and for the enforcing of monopolies.

Adventurers are supposed to eccentrics, freelancers, tombraiders, mercenaries, and outcasts. If they were perfectly normal, social, and welladjusted they would have stayed home doing normal jobs.

>Nah, D&D was inspired by stuff like Jack Vance, Michael Moorcock, Conan the Barbarian, and PDF related. Gygax threw in some LotR races because his players wanted to play them, but the setting as a whole was never meant to be Tolkienian.
This. So much this. Why is this inspired by Tolkien nonsense repeated everywhere? Yes, Tolkien had some influence, but compared to above mentioned (and Fritz Leiber), it's obvious that they were far more influential and are the primary inspiration to D&D.
Someone actually did a detailed list of influences:
hahnlibrary.net/rpgs/sources.html
And this is useful as well:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_and_influences_on_the_development_of_Dungeons_&_Dragons

Hear, Hear. We don't adventure for the sake of a 9 to 5. We adventure for the sake of it. We adventure to see what lays beyond the distant mountain, We adventure to know what exists beyond the endless sea and explore the endless forests!

Adventure, is not without treasure and riches, but it's not some post it note you take off a board because some idiot is to lazy to do his own job. An adventure seeks only the unknown.

A guild invites rules and regulations. An adventurer follows no course but their own. They quest for questing's sake and are like the wind, whimsical and free. To settle into a guild is to settle into routine an adventurer by their very nature is a wanderer. Someone who can't settle, who can't get into a routine.

Fuck you. I'm in it for it for the money. I live for the finer things: good clothes, good food, good wine, a good bed, and a good, thinly dressed girl to warm it for me. I need tax-free income if I want to keep living like a king and the guild sure shit isn't letting me operate without taking their cut. They're closer to a Yakuza clan than a trade guild.

I don’t get how Adventure Guilds work I’m practice. Do they have some ability to restrict adventuring for those who don’t join? Do they provide training or equipment or at least discounts or some benefits to their employees? How do they actually function as a company?

I mean this is really the confusing part. You need a certain amount of recognizable authority to maintain a guild. Adventurers by nature are independently aligned.

I mean one could make the case that an adventurer would seek out a sponsor like for example, I dunno, Columbus. Who sailed on behalf of the King of Spain, but that's not the same as a GUILD.

And to an extent I understand the need to let PCs accept quest but that's just something easily solved by a messaged board which doesn't need a GUILD either.