Do mage guilds make sense or are they as stupid as adventure guilds?

Do mage guilds make sense or are they as stupid as adventure guilds?

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>implying adventurer’s guilds don’t make sense

Stop complaining about how other people have fun.

Witcher Schools aren’t adventurer’s guilds.

>A group of people in the same profession pooling resources and expanding their personal network while working to set a standard of industry practice doesn't make sense.

Depends on the nature of magic in a game.

Historically though, any time a group of people who have had specialist knowledge or a skill worth selling, they have often organized for social, economic and academic reasons. Magic, potentially being all of these things, certainly would be a good candidate for such an organization.

This can create some interesting situations, in a game I'm playing in I'm a member of the mages guild, so can legally provide "magic" services, though that is unclear where those lines are. I, for example, cannot hire out as a "healer", even though I can heal, as I'm not a licensed member of the healers guild. I also can't hire myself out as a builder, in spite of having spells to do great works in that area, as I imagine some builders guild would be on me. However, if I rent out as "a mage" and happen to heal someone after a fight or make some fortifications for an overnight camp in the wilderness, I seem safe.

True. They’re monster hunter guilds.

Mage Guilds
>A place where mages can come together and share information from magical studies
>Multiple mages can work together to hone their craft, further each other's research, or solve problems that plague their ingroup or the local community
>Acolytes can train and learn from other's mistakes without having to suffer huge learning curves due to their seniors' experience
>Experiments are easily peer-reviewed by other mages who might have more knowledge or experience in the area

Adventure Guilds
>A place where adventurers can come together and share leads and stories
>Multiple adventurers can work together on outings in combinations that would not normally be available to them, with needing niches being filled by other members
>Young adventurers can work with senior adventurers to hone anything from their puzzle-solving skills to combat prowess
>The sense of comaraderie that is built among members makes for amazing stories and inspires awesome adventuring groups to unite and take on bigger and better challenges

And that's not to mention the incredible economic and social good that a guild can do for a local community, what with dues and treasure hauls and tourism and such.

Guilds are awesome, writing this out makes me want to GM again.

Wring. They’re pan cleaning guilds.

But why hasn't the mage guild taken over the kingdom already?

I prefer Companies, or Colleges for arcane folks. Guilds feel more like a union deal, where as Companies are the actual workers and business.

Does a group of scientists seek to overthrow their local government?

Because they don't feel like it.
Or maybe the mages have their own kingdom already.

Or maybe the mage gul

Can a high-level scientist take on an entire army by himself?

>Guilds
>Good, on an economic basis
Monopolies on labor are just as bad as monopolies on goods.

The guild is government funded. Only reason they are allowed to sit around jerking off over crystal balls and spell books is because the kingdom thinks it can help strengthen arcane studies and combat ability for the kingdom

How common are Mages? If they're super common, yeah, works well enough.

Maybe 99% of mages are only level 2 or 3 at the most like every other normal npc.
Maybe magic is more "subtle illusion and tricks" and less "world ending nukes" in the setting.
Maybe mages just want to be cute magical lolis and not rule.
Maybe any other reason you can think of.

A high-level spell caster wouldn't be shitting around in some guild. A spell-caster capable of fighting armies would have no interest in ruling a kingdom since they can manipulate reality with the flick of their hand, why rule a kingdom when you can make your own fucking demi-plane and fill it with artificial servants and magical beasts you've collected.

They got him

Yeah, create demi-plane + permancy > random kingdom of fucksville.

Also, interplanar bullshits makes limiting yourself to the prime material really stupid for a serious mage.

>Go to the capital Mage College
>Expect to meet a bunch of crazy super powerful spell masters who can summon elemental storms with a thought and call down destruction and split open planes!
>It's actually just a bunch of old men whose best spells are fireballs and magic missiles who are teaching a bunch of kids how to summon water and create light

Another target neutralized. The Crown sends it's regards.

Are you a royal assassin or is there an assassins guild as well?

Depends on the kind of mage. Pic related is what I think most of them would be like.

...

>"Ah! The Great Mage Lord Ignar Fugglepuck! I have searched for ages for you! I bring you an offer most delectable, work alongside me, and let us overthrow the king of Dungball and take his kingdom for ourselves!"
>Wizard currently floated on a giant, animated couch, sipping the most delicious mixture of elementally brewed alcohols, being fanned by bound succubi while relaxing in the artificial sun he created and the artificial ocean crashes on the artificial beach he made on a whim
>"Yeah, nah, I'm good"

Precisely. I never understood why people assume PC lvl 20+ World-Destroying Super-Wizard is the norm and that an adventurers guild must only be filled with people able to take on elder dragons single-handedly.

It's right next door the Thieve's Guild, both of which are just subdivisions of the larger Rogue's guild.

Does the mage guild have any other function besides being backstory fodder for your wizard or being the one stop knowledge/magic item shop?

>btw, would you mind sticking around for a bit? I've got this meeting with some devil's later on and need someone's soul to bargain with.
>B-but Lord Fugglepuck, you could have ruled the kingdom!
>.............*Hold person*

If your PCs are above level 8 at least, people should be acting like they are super humans. Anyone in a normal mage guild would see you as some super scholar, and any fighters would see you as some crazy beast able to strike two times in an instant.

>How are you going to have a groups of highly trained people with guns in a country, wouldn't they just kill the president and take over?

Mage guilds make sense if there's a strong enough economy to support career academia, especially if you can somehow tie it into another facet of government or economy. For example, the largest kingdom in my setting employs something analogous to a mage guild to train soldiers basic healing magic.

Yeah monopolies are bad but what would Hammsburg be besides some lord's backyard without the mage's guild?

And nobody said they had to be a monopoly; mages are free to practice magic outside of the guild, it's just that the guild represents a consolidation of resources and experience from a majority of public magic users. Or maybe there's multiple guilds too, each one vying for magical superiority.

Mages guilds are an organization of peoples who pay to gain access to specific privileges, ie a unionized group of people for that knowledge.

Adventurers Guilds are a temp agency where the money funnels from the Guild to the Adventurers and uses adventurers as bounty hunters.

Both are eligible in their own right and both are capable in the direction they take. If you treat a mages guild like a bounty hunting temp job, it is stupid, if you treat an adventurer's guild like a unionized organization, then it falls apart easily.

Would this explain the different magic schools developing?

Magic schools are analogous to university departments, because mages guilds are 9 times out of 10 just magic colleges

They have influence over the important aspects of the kingdom and can step in for their own purposes.

But they're mages. They don't give a fuck about politics for the most part.

Why not? Maybe, several decades ago, there were several magic guilds competing to set a mage industry work standard. The schools of magic were originally just the collection of typical spells common to a given guild. Over time, after the King passed down various decrees to keep these mage guild/schools from fighting, the guilds either consolidated or died off, but the practice of separating spells into "schools" became standard.

this

Who else is going to police the magic community? What happens if someone sets the local river on fire? What happens if someone turns the weather off? What happens if some little shit starts turning all the red apples green?

Magic schools make a lot more sense then adventurer's guilds.

"Adventurer" is not really a profession. I know one of the main reasons people dislike adventurers guilds as it makes adventurers seem more common or being able to be "taught" how to be a heroic figure, which goes against a lot of settings.

However a "Mages Guild" makes perfect sense in setting, as magic is a highly regarded and practiced trade, especially if it can be learned via scholarly readings and occult books. Remember that 99% of Mages in the Mages guild are not adventuring Wizards, the vast majority are charm casters- entertainers, basic enchanters and court magicians. An Adventure's guild implies that you can join up to do a bunch of nearly illegal shit and come into contact with all kinds of monsters and powers, where as a Mage's guild is something your character comes from in order to become an adventurer.

Sorry, but people who post 3d anime girls aren't allowed to have opinions

Also "adventureing" isn't a profession

>Also "adventureing" isn't a profession
it generally a kind of mercenary who is somewhere between "one eyed thug in the back of the bar" and "soldier for hire"
having a bit of the "do any job no matter how stupid"mentality and freedom of the former but the skills and work ethic of the latter

a band of adventurers who will dive into dungeons one day, fight wars the next day, and go under cover as a circus troupe the next probably wouldnt identify as swiss mercenary type people

>"Adventurer" is not really a profession. I know one of the main reasons people dislike adventurers guilds as it makes adventurers seem more common or being able to be "taught" how to be a heroic figure, which goes against a lot of settings.
A lot of people really miss this important fact.

If EVERYONE AND THEIR 9 YEAR OLD SISTER is trying to become a big-shot hero for money, loot and the salvation of mankind, then well that just makes the PCs completely and utterly irrelevant, since there's 5000 other people in town doing the exact same thing. It could be fun if you're running some form of lighthearted anime game where you run into goofy rival parties or something, but for most people, the fun in playing heroic figures singlehandedly saving the world is... being the heroic figures that are singlehandedly saving the fucking world!

Adventurers' Guild
>An organisation that has applied for and received a license from the local governing body to operate
>Mediates requests between adventurers and clients
>Supplies adventurers with a certain degree of training and gear in exchange for cuts of profit
>Insures adventurers for injuries, death, etc
>Insures clients for non-completion of requests, collateral damage, etc
>Holds adventurers to rules and standards (Not every hillbilly can be one) if they want to continue working legally in the area they operate in
>Basically is a business, despite being made out as a non-profit by-adventurers-for-adventurers type of thing
>Would have partnerships with certain local apothecaries, blacksmiths, country-wide network of taverns where adventurers get discounts, maybe an in-house bar for adventurers, etcetc
>Also would have partnerships with other guilds for contracting some of their members for certain jobs, to provide help in emergencies, etc

Adventurer guild would just be a monster hunter/wilderness guide guild more or less. I don't think it doesn't make sense except that it's not a part of the military.

>
>Holds adventurers to rules and standards (Not every hillbilly can be one) if they want to continue working legally in the area they operate in
>Basically is a business, despite being made out as a non-profit by-adventurers-for-adventurers type of thing

>goblins assaulting a village in massive scale, "fuck you let's grab who we can and set fire to the rest"
>a few "heroic" "adventurous" "people" twiddling their thumbs, "well gee I guess we can't really help them can we"
>"why the fuck not?"
>"w-well we might go to adventurer jail"
the last thing fantasy games need is a REALISTIC BUREAUCRATIC TWIST

Everyone knows that for those kind of situations you fill out the mountain of paperwork AFTER the attack duh

adventurers are likely given the ability to react to unforseen events without interference
their ability to react quickly sets them apart from more rigorous and uniform mercenaries
as long as they ask for a fair reward afterwards and dont loot anything their actions might well be condoned

That's fucking stupid. You wouldn't hire the same group of people to do any of those jobs because they wouldn't be specialized for any of them.

Okay but what about monster infested settings? Or gold-rush styled dungeon fests? Or a good, old fashioned viking run, where the PCs get drunk and raid villages? Are you seriously so inept that you can't think of a reason for adventurers to band together and get shit done or are you so obsessed with LotR type settings that you can't imagine a group of level 3 PCs taking out a goblin nest Iwo Jima style as an actual adventure?

The world/frontier/material plane is a big place. Not all adventures have to save it from some kind of big dicked demon army or crazy reality bending wizard

you seem to forget that there was in fact a party in LotR setting doing adventurer things in the exact manner of what you just described, and more overtly, that they didn't fucking need to sign a contract with some anachronistic fucking union of exterminabourers to do it

>people not realizing that adventuring guilds are best done when tied to settings with a large monsterous population and large dungeons
Are you guys seriously telling me that a city with a mega dungeon nearby wouldn't have an 'adventurer guild' to clean it out for resources?

Even in settings not like that, mercenary companies are not unknown things and adventurers are basically mercenaries.

>Are you seriously so inept that you can't think of a reason for adventurers to band together and get shit done
But that's you, man. You can't see the forest for the trees. What you just chastised people for? That's what adventurer's guilds ARE, they're a crutch, especially in their natural form of shitty ass LNs and mangos (the cesspit of creative bankruptcy that they are).
"You're all in the same party under contract of the adventurer's guild. Please level up from your Wood Level Tier Class to unlock more quests. Once you hit Bronze Level Tier Class you may move on to the next city with a guild."
I'm just gonna say it. If you can't DM a fantasy game without such a crutch, you need to read up (or even play) some new material.

Jesus Christ, this sounds wonderfully miserable. It's the perfect faction to slap in a comedic cynical fantasy world, just imagine running into these mass-produced pseudo-heroes as rivals.

I fail to see how a treasure hunters' guild in a world full of deadly crypts and caverns filled with treasure guarded by dangerous supernatural monsters doesn't make any sense.

>What is treasure hunting
inb4 "all the treasure would have been looted long ago"
Not when it's guarded by demons, it wouldn't have.

If it's guarded by demons, treasure hunters would be few and far between.

Wouldn't Adventurer guilds make a lot more sense as something like Mercenary companies? The advantage of being able to pool resources and knowledge, while also being able to travel to hotspots of trouble and actually, y'know, get hired to fight and use their skills.

Well for one thing the rulers of the kingdom that dungeon is in will fucking want all that treasure. Organized movements will attract attention.

What does a treasure hunter's guild offer that treasure hunters WANT, to the point of giving up their precious money and the inherent freedom of treasure hunting?

If the world has as many caves and dungeons as people say it does, then how would such a guild even control the information so that it's not common knowledge? Just go up to a town and ask local gossip if there's anything interesting.
>Ah yes well there's a fortress to the north of here and it was overtaken by Moss Golems, bout a decade ago I'd say, you could probably find all sorts of things to tickle your fancy in there
Go to the general store, grab supplies, strap in, blast off. Fuck your guild shit.

Yeah, but nobody wants to be the bad guy that does stuff for money.
'Adventurers' are basically either mercenaries if part of an organised group or bandits if not. But you gotta be the hero of your story, so adventurers end up being this romantic notion of vagabonds who travel the lands doing good in their wake.

Why the fuck would you need a guild to do any of that? What could that level of organization possibly offer? Maybe what you're thinking of would work as a club.

Which is exactly why they should form a guild.

Teaching for how to improve your abilities as a dungeon delver? The guild would have obviously been started by an expert.

Also, if your kingdom is so shitty that you have bandits and goblins popping out of every hole, what makes you think that you'll have the bureaucratic infrastructure to run a goddamn murder hobo guild? Medieval kingdoms had very few (except for fucking china) bureaucrats, scholars, or even people who could read.

That's my fucking point, those people were adventurers as much as the members of the Fellowship of the Ring and though they didn't necessarily save the world, they STILL WENT ON ADVENTURES.

You don't have to be some kind of world-savior godlike being to be an adventurer. You just need to be willing and able to go on adventures. And adventures can be as simple as fucking up (or getting fucked up by) some low level shiteaters.

Thus, an adventurer's guild is just a guild whose members like to hunt monsters or dungeon crawl or even just explore new areas. It doesn't have to be some kind of federal fucking issue involving saving the world.

>If the world has as many caves and dungeons as people say it does, then how would such a guild even control the information so that it's not common knowledge
There's no reason there wouldn't be more than one adventurers' guild.

Oh as a player in your game I'm absolutely riveted by the concept of having a greasy old mentor NPC tell me how good they are at dungeon delving.

No actually I would really rather just go dungeon delving. Shit makes no sense, no one would join that.

>It doesn't have to be some kind of federal fucking issue involving saving the world
and yet you got this shit

Technically, I think they're best suited to a cartel, opec style. They're sitting on an immensely valuable resource (magic), and need to exercise control in order to maintain price standards (and not get purged/burnt/crushed with rocks)

You can hypothetically build a mile in your garage so... Yes?

there is usually a mismatch between available demand and supply
an organized guild would help smooth things out by matching people with the right skills to the right job
gone are the days of wandering all around the city looking for something to kill only to find out all the bad guys were one city over
adventurers gets more work, guild gets a cut, everyone is happy
it wont even trip over the toes of the mercs, since they cover jobs too small or ornery for them to even consider

they can even co exist along with the mage guild, since the mages might need muscle or specialized abilities on archeological digs, but the local mercs have a minimum order of 100 halberdiers

Do remember that guilds are basically one step away from organized crime. They protect their own and WILL fuck non-guild members up if they move in on their turf. The Guild grows big and people join in because there's no choice but to join and people want a cut of that treasure.

It doesn't have to be a crutch, in fact, it can be a good springboard for any kind of one-off you want to do. Just make a guild setting and then boom, template for adventures when you don't have time to play the generic "save teh wurld" kind of campaign.

I think we just have two very different points of view on what can be fun, though, I'll admit that the idea of a guild can be abused.

Seeing as how "ADVENTURE" is done by literal murderhobos, I see no problem with them strongarming non-guild members.

They're specialized and have a very clear focus on what they cater to.

My main issue with Adventuring Guilds is that "Adventuring" is so fucking vague and fits so many types of people that providing assistance and resources to all of them would require being involved in basically everything.

If you have a population density high enough that an "adventurer's guild" would be called for to match murder hobos to jobs, you have enough population for more specialized workers

But why are dangerous, destabilizing threats showing up in the middle of civilization? Shouldn't the local lord be stomping that sort of thing out with his own soldiers/guards?
Why do you have groups of what amount to armed peasants roaming around going 'well if you say he's a bad guy AND your paying, I don't see any reason not to murder him'?
Adventuring only makes sense on the outskirts of civilization, places without the necessary infrastructure to sustain a guild.

>Shouldn't the local lord be stomping that sort of thing out with his own soldiers/guards?
local lord probably contracts the guild for some additional muscle because his militia men are not up to the task, and the king is too busy

>Why do you have groups of what amount to armed peasants roaming around going 'well if you say he's a bad guy AND your paying, I don't see any reason not to murder him'?
that's why there is an organization, to make sure murdeehobos channel their poweful but dangerous skills against the right people, just give them jobs with obvious black and white problems but require brute force
its all about matching the right people to the right job at the right time

>Adventuring only makes sense on the outskirts of civilization, places without the necessary infrastructure to sustain a guild.
its the adventurers guild open 24/7 for anything ans everything

I don't know about any other anons, but I'm defining "adventures" here a strictly going into a hole in a ground and killing things and taking their stuff. I think a city growing around a large megadungeon makes sense, and I think adventurers banding together and forming a guild makes sense in that context.

The problem with this idea, as always, is that the Kingdom has no goddamn reason to let adventurers keep what they find. I suppose the Adventurers Guild could rule the city and be at war with the local kingdom over the megadungeon in that case.

>Oh as a player in your game I'm absolutely riveted by the concept of having a greasy old mentor NPC tell me how good they are at dungeon delving.
>Doesn't like wise old mentor characters or "journey of improvement" stories
Shit taste detected.

just give them "take what you want but the lamp is mine" rules

Yeah, sorry, I'm going to have to disagree here as well. I used to not like adventurer's guilds, so much so that I actually set out to write a post on my blog about how bad they were. But as I was writing it and REALLY thought about their merits, I convinced myself that they're actually pretty awesome. I feel like mages guilds are too. If anyone's interested, i'll go ahead and link that blog post I was referring to.
draconick.com/2018/01/08/adventurers-guilds/

>blogposting

Another reason that treasure hunters ending up in bureaucratic organizations instead of just operating independently is that working for an organization with multiple members in it means that you will always be secure in finding other able-bodied and skilled dungeon delvers to boldly venture forth and all that with. I imagine finding others brave or crazy enough to attempt the sort of shit adventurers get up to would be difficult otherwise. Additionally, a contract as well as the potential presence of a representative of this guild's authority on this venture decreases the chances that the adventurers, who were previously strangers, will begin stabbing eachother in the back so they can keep the treasure for themselves as soon as the big scary monster is dead.

Why would the lord allow an independent group of extremely dangerous armed people to be operating on his land? I mean, with a guild you've just concentrated all the unstable murder hobos into one location with central leadership. Unless the ruler and the leader of the Adventurers are one and the same, but at that point is it really a 'guild'?

Leagues of a half-dozen fractious centuries-old frenemy wizards are good.

Hogwarts is bad.

Maybe the lord himself is the one who runs the guild? Maybe he holds some power over them that they cannot contest (the king has a pact with the nearby ancient dragon if rebels get too uppity, that he will send if the lord requests it, iron fist, etc. etc.) that prevents them from acting against the lord's wishes without suffering major consequences. I'm sure I could sit here and think of more possible explanations, but you get the idea. If an idea for a fantasy story sounds implausible to you, you just aren't thinking creatively enough.

>Maybe the lord himself is the one who runs the guild?
That's called the fucking military

I don't see why the lord wouldn't be capable of operating a guild meant to operate specific tasks that is adjacent to but not part of the local military.

Exactly. At that point your players would just be medieval spec ops working for the king.

And this is a problem, why? Adventurers do traditionally receive quests from the king.

Not if he wants plausible deniability on what the adventurers get up to.

It's not a problem, it's just inherently different from a guild.

Then they would be black ops, not "adventurers"

Would mages be part of the third state or have their own fourth estate?

A group of five adventurers working directly for the king is a task force. Five members of a larger organization that the king or other influential members of society often charges with carrying out dangerous missions in search of riches, lost ancient knowledge, or what have you, are not just a task force, they are a member of a company that sells their services. Call them mercenaries, call them hired treasure hunters, call them whatever you like. I call them adventurers.

Depends on how mages get their powers really.

You think of guilds too much as medieval capitalist coorporations. Most of wealth came from owning lands and serfs, not trading and manufacturing. Merchants were seen as the bottom of jobs and seen no better than predatorial parasites and scammers.