Share your fav artwork of them, talk about how they've been used in your settings, and just post your overall views on them and what you like to see out of them.Personally, I always love when they're like a home away from home for Adventurers. Grab a bite, warm up by the fireplace with some mead, swap tales with a fellow daredevil risking their life for coin, etc. Like not merely a building to manage quest paperwork, but a cozy place with it's own culture and ceremony.
>>96645468They're useful. In my D&D setting we've been playing in, there are functionally 3: The religious guild, the military guild, and the trade guild. The game takes place on a frontier, 1,000 miles away from the old world where the 3 major kingdoms are found.The major nations all follow a roughly analogous, syncretic pantheon. In the biggest city of the most-religious-state, a specific church wants to accrue power by trying to convert everyone to their version of the pantheon in a naked bid to acrue power (and in a covert bid to collect the secrets of the ancient magic of the "frontier" that caused it to be vacated by its prior inhabitants). The military guild has a charter to enforce the queen's justice on the frontier from the most-expantionist-state. One of the three nations claims to rule the new frontier. But it's 1,000 miles away from the old world and there isn't enough military might to secure it. So there is a knightly order that has a charter to do so, with semi-freedom to operate as they see fit in the queen's name. Basically to function as sherrifs and form posses or organize military defenses when needed.And the trade guild represents the interest of the most-prosperous-state from the old world. Their job? Exploit the shit outa the frontier and send money back home. So they sponsor expeditions, buy artificats, and occassionally want help securing land claims or oppressing workers.
>Adventurer GuildsHow do they generate income? Membership fees probably not reliable since everybody keeps dying.
>>96648162They get a cut of the rewards for the quest and part of any trade ins on useful monster parts. Simple.
>>96648162I've seen a few ideas from asian media.>Membership fees>Finder's fee for acting as the go-between for their wealthier clients and the adventurers>Getting their own cut of the reward money>Paying a fee for assessing the wealth and safe transportation of treasure found by the adventurers>Fee payments for proper storage of monster parts, or for those dragging whole monster corpses to them the fee payments for the on-staff butchers to properly rip the remains apart and safely dispose of the gristle/waste products>If they have beds and lodging available, service charges rolled into the membership feeds for that>If they have a cafeteria or tavern, getting a portion of the money spent for food/water/alcohol>If they have a store or access to blacksmiths/merchants/medics/whatever, skimming a portion of the profits when adventurers use those services>For settings where resurrection is relatively easy to accomplish, insurance policies and body retrieval if a job goes poorlyBasically, all of the super convenient handwaving shit that would go into proper logistics such as where to sleep, where to eat, how to maintain your equipment, and so on. Even seen a couple that basically had adventurer guild staff acting like banks in handling coin exchange and helping wealthy adventurers secure deeds for the lands to new bases/manors.
>>96648162Lots of people seem to like them being private companies, but what makes the most sense to me is Adventurer Guilds being financed by the government. They might make money back by training newbies, selling weapons and armor, rooms for the night, etc. but they wouldn't be outright profit-based. The real profit is that you have a bunch of semi soldiers kept busy and fed on tasks benefiting the population but too esoteric or small to warrant using the army for.
In one game I ran, the existence of an "Adventurer's Guild" actually had a pretty plausible in-game explanation; it existed, in large part, to try and skim the dross off the bottom of society. The homeless, the dispossessed, the debtor—the Adventurer's Guild was basically the in-game equivalent of the Dickensian "workhouse" for people who were still fit enough to technically fight. This worked out, at least somewhat; merchants of a less successful cast and other people of a technically-monied class who might want to scrimp on sword-arms had a ready supply of them, either to be used on less-important assignments or to be peppered in to supplement guard details with "real" soldiers. Of course, there was also -actual- "adventuring" assignments, too, but it gave the guild a more complex character, as on the bottom, it was a somewhat cynical economic development scheme, and on the top, there were "real" adventurers fighting wyverns and shit. In between, there was a deliberately weird, muddy, fucked-up grey area where people weren't sure if you were a glorified beggar-soldier or someone they actually had to pay attention to.
>>96645468
How else would you recruit people for high risk one time jobs? Locals can do seasonal works but they probably wouldn't want to risk chasing some unknown beast through deep woods.
>>96654942>equivalent of the Dickensian "workhouse"Now I'm stuck with mental image of Oliver Twist getting fed a single Goodberry and his sheer audacity to ask for another.
>>96645468Which system?
>>96648162People don't keep dying, obviously.
>>96654942That's actually a pretty cool idea!I will steal it.
Don't reply to yourself.
>>96651992>"hey check it, who let the dog out, amirite?"
>>96658690That's actually a pretty cool idea!I will steal it.
