The guilds or lack thereof

[Cauldrons]

Adventuring guilds are a standard trope of this medium and I've had several grievances with it and just how practical it would be in a working society. In my mind it makes much more sense to have guards take care of that and not some random mook from the street, but that not what I wanted to talk about. The adventuring guilds are often times the ONLY guild you see in fictions and I think it's both a result of influence from previous works and a lacking understanding of the middle ages. Simply put their was a guild for EVERYTHING tailoring, cobblers, bucket making, ect... you name it and it was part of it's own guild. Not even to mention the fact that guilds primary purpose was to regulate the market for their product and it's encompassing political sway. I just can't help but feel authors both misunderstand guilds and underrepresent them.

 

[Agentt]

Adventuring guilds are a standard trope of this medium and I've had several grievances with it and just how practical it would be in a working society. In my mind it makes much more sense to have guards take care of that and not some random mook from the street,

And, this part, I admit is not realistic, but the logic is that trained soldiers are needed to deal with important stuff, so you do have to send in a random mook to kill pests and collect herbs.

but that not what I wanted to talk about. The adventuring guilds are often times the ONLY guild you see in fictions and I think it's both a result of influence from previous works and a lacking understanding of the middle ages. Simply put their was a guild for EVERYTHING tailoring, cobblers, bucket making, ect... you name it and it was part of it's own guild. Not even to mention the fact that guilds primary purpose was to regulate the market for their product and it's encompassing political sway. I just can't help but feel authors both misunderstand guilds and underrepresent them.

Well, many isekais do include merchant guild and spies guild. Even if all those guilds existed, they wouldn't really be shown till MC needs them.

 

[Echimera]

Not many stories have both adventurers (who would organize in an adventurers guild) and a big enough focus on other trades to actually bother showing off their respective guilds.

At least for me, the default assumption is that there are guilds for most trades, they are just not relevant for the story.

 

[Deeprotsorcerer]

They're very practical for a working society, in instances where they're not outright called adventurer's guilds in-story (and indeed in the real world) they're just surveyors, investigators, mercenaries, hitmen, and "private security" (read, hired thugs) that can be part of a company or solo acts. Putting organization + guild is a genre thing, particularity with litRPG and DnD inspired works that readers as well as writers have come to expect.

You are certainly right about most authors glossing over the political aspect of guilds, even top-grade novels do that, it's unfortunate.

 

[Lloyd]

I plan on introducing guilds into my story later, since it is heavily inspired by the medieval HRE. No adventures guilds though, because the army farms the dungeons and kills monsters for resources. The dungeons are the property of the King!

 

[Bartun]

Well, you DO need some kind of friendly system for RPGs, conveniently divided into levels or ranks, so each player can pick up quests and rewards according to his own level/experience. Of course, this system starts to show its flaws when applied to more realistic settings, where Merchant Guilds would be the most powerful ones, they would be the ones contracting the muscle for escorting caravans and protecting their interests.

 

[SakeVision]

It's as practical as a merchant guild or whatever the crazy fucks in medieval were doing to organize their craftsmen and tradesmen before working was standardized and you had to have a high school degree to flip burgers at Mcdonalds.

 

[Mephi]

The adventuring guilds are often times the ONLY guild you see in fictions

Merchant and craftsmen guilds are usually distinct from the Adventurer's Guild, in my experience, in the fiction I've read. I've seen them have their own guilds with fair frequency. Thief and assassin guilds are quite common as well.

When all is said and done, "adventurer guild" is really just a glorified mercenary company mixed with a hunter's guild. Most of the jobs you get from the adventurer's guild are either escort quests, fighting bandits, monster hunts or herb gathering, coupled with the occasional dungeon delve. Nothing that uncommon even in reality (except for the lack of dungeons). Heck, the adventurer guild is basically the warrior and ranger classes in a nutshell. And they very much do serve a realistic purpose.

The part that's a bit trickier to swallow is how common priests, wizards, thieves, monks/cultivators, etc members are. And how they're taking are taking adventurer jobs to hunt monsters and get plants when they should be tending to their followers, studying magic, meditating, looking for marks, and so on. Churches, wizard schools, sects, are all usually distinct political entities as well, no need for a guild. But that part is glossed over for the sake of ADVENTURE!!!!

 

[Deeprotsorcerer]

The part that's a bit trickier to swallow is how common priests, wizards, thieves, monks/cultivators, etc members are. And how they're taking are taking adventurer jobs to hunt monsters and get plants when they should be tending to their followers, studying magic, meditating, looking for marks, and so on. Churches, wizard schools, sects, are all usually distinct political entities as well, no need for a guild. But that part is glossed over for the sake of ADVENTURE!!!!

This is true in many respects, but there's several realistic ways to get your smol witch in a room with a bunch of axe wielding meatheads. An arcane institution can be tied to government forces, either as field experts or living artillery pieces who could contract guild members for cheap on the spot protection/cannon fodder, or the institutions themselves may loan out new spellcasters to flex their influence or give them practical experience. Spellcasters affiliated with an adventurers guild before the place they learned their art from may be in it for the money/freedom (which would allow them to make regular escapades into places an academic institution may not support them going to).

 

[Amok]

I like city guild politics, that moment when the thatcher's guild gets their muscle together to storm the assassin's guild cos they allied with the tiler's guild. And there are many variants and different implementations for guilds, from collectivized institutions to more authoritarian systems where the guildmaster's word is absolute law.

Vote rigging, trade disputes, sabotaging worksites, stealing trade secrets to full-on guild wars which burn entire districts to the ground, it is a fun premise to play with I'd say. Guilds can grow strong and challenge queens, guilds can span planets to unite wanderers and minstrels and hedge mages. Guilds can evolve over centuries, with humble origins as a 'guild of fisherfolk' and a final form as a piratical entropy cult with a stranglehold on entire port cities espousing their belief that all terrestial life is corrupt and that people should be 'consigned to the waves'. Cue the ritual drownings/shark-feedings while a fat priestess in fish-scale robes leads the chanting, arms thrust high in rapture.

 

[BlackKnightX]

Dunno what you’re talking about. I’ve had my fill of isekai, have read a lot of them over the years, and most of them have multiple guilds like you said. It’s only a few of them that have only an adventurer guild. What have you been reading?

 

[Temple]

But those stories are not following medieval Europe? They're emulating games. Specifically, they need a quest giver NPC and a ranking and so we have the Adventurer's guild as a literary shorthand to set this up. Its kind of like the truck became the literary shorthand to jumpstart an isekai. There's really no point in questioning the realism of an embedded trope in a genre. If you write like realistic guilds, then that would be a subversion of the trope and would be fun to explore. But at the core, it's a trope, no intention for realism.

 

[T.K._Paradox]

Adventuring Guilds make perfect sense in way, given how many feudalistic societies relied on mercenaries instead of a strong standing army. So why not let mercenaries take care of your problem instead of your small group of elite knights and soldiers.


Though these adventuring guilds don't really make sense in the fact there doesn't seem to be a uniform testing regiment, a limit on membership, a backing for there currency (the just seem to be able to pay people and endless amount of money).

Also why the hell would non renegade nobles join an adventuring guild? That is just asking for your family bloodline to end, and if they for some reason join, they would in a completely different sector compared to the peasants that join. They are aristocrats after all.

Also an adventuring guild would have to worry about political tension in a feudal system. With too many members a ruler may think that a coup is going to happen. Or the fact the guild members may be called to war to aid the kingdom.

TLDR: Adventuring Guilds could be a lot better and not seem so generic and if they didn't resemble videogame guilds and look like something that would fit in Medieval Europe.

 

[Echimera]

Though these adventuring guilds don't really make sense in the fact there doesn't seem to be a uniform testing regiment, a limit on membership, a backing for there currency (the just seem to be able to pay people and endless amount of money).

These aspects change from story to story.
I've seen a lot where there are entrance exams in the form of sparring matches, and similar tests to advance ranks. I'd argue that's quite standardized. When there is a system, it often moves straight to looking at levels or something similar, which should be a good way too, if the system is balanced.
Limits on membership are a bit tricky as it either has to be turned into a non-issue for the main characters or it might add another side-arc nobody really wants to read just to get the story going.
I don't think I've ever seen them have their own currency, they usually use what's used in the kingdom/empire/whatever. They also usually are intermediates between the actual client and the adventurers, so it's not really their money they are paying with but that of the client.

 

[K5Rakitan]

bucket making

A good story needs conflict, and adventure is full of conflict. Other guilds may exist in the universe the writer created, but they may not be mentioned because their conflicts are too mundane.

 

[Mephi]

This is true in many respects, but there's several realistic ways to get your smol witch in a room with a bunch of axe wielding meatheads. An arcane institution can be tied to government forces, either as field experts or living artillery pieces who could contract guild members for cheap on the spot protection/cannon fodder, or the institutions themselves may loan out new spellcasters to flex their influence or give them practical experience. Spellcasters affiliated with an adventurers guild before the place they learned their art from may be in it for the money/freedom (which would allow them to make regular escapades into places an academic institution may not support them going to).

Well, just as likely the story just lets magic users and theives and the like level up from hunting monsters. I mean, I get how it happens.

I just find it funny thinking that the first day of wizard school in an adventurer-based world? The teacher basically suits everyone up on a goblin hunting trip so they can learn to shoot fire. "What, you think you can master the secrets of the universe by reading a book? Now grab your staff and get ready to bash some heads in!!"

It's not that different from a xianxia novel, where even the bards (hi Ling Qi) and fire flingers get better via martial arts and meditation.

 

[Deeprotsorcerer]

Well, just as likely the story just lets magic users and theives and the like level up from hunting monsters. I mean, I get how it happens.

I just find it funny thinking that the first day of wizard school in an adventurer-based world? The teacher basically suits everyone up on a goblin hunting trip so they can learn to shoot fire. "What, you think you can master the secrets of the universe by reading a book? Now grab your staff and get ready to bash some heads in!!"

It's not that different from a xianxia novel, where even the bards (hi Ling Qi) and fire flingers get better via martial arts and meditation.

Oh, true true, I was aiming at more of a "practical experience" thing than a "kill some mobs to level up" thing, but that is how a lot of litRPGs work, kinda defeats the purpose of having academic institutions when the best way to get a bigger fireball is to kill things with your small fireball. It'd be interesting to see a world where both studying and leveling can grant you skills with a healthy mix of both being promoted by some while others are hardliners for one method or another. I can already see arguments between murderhobo mages and their tower-dwelling counterparts throwing jabs at each other because "you give magic a bad name" could work both ways in this instance.

Hell, the different methods of mastery could come with their own tradeoffs, maybe learning magic through a system limits your versatility and control while traditional practitioners can pull off meta magic stuff: sure the killy guy has a big fireball but the scholar can make tracking fireballs, use the fireball as a stable light source, or even imbue the spell in a scroll or somesuch.

 

[Cipiteca396]

Guild Structures in Fantasy

I couldn't find other threads on this so i decided to make my own, if there is another thread about this call me a fool below. So everyone knows the stereotypical guild. You have the guild master, the receptionist, and members or registered adventurers. A lot of the time the adventures also...

forum.scribblehub.com

the Concept of Adventurers Guild

I'm sure we all know what an adventurers guild is. the place where you register and doing a quest designated by the guild. be it a subjugation request or collecting materials. but what I wanted to discuss here, is how to make an adventurers guild that systematically make sense. you do know...

forum.scribblehub.com

Short answer is it's a game thing, so it shouldn't appear outside of LitRPG. If it DOES appear, it needs to be heavily modified to fit into the setting.

Maybe, or maybe instead of the adventurer's guild, it's the 'Administrator's Guild', lol. Just one job that needs to be done. Though thinking about it, it could be government run instead. Maybe it's a bureaucracy where all of the 'nobles' are paper pushers tearing their hair out over all of the commissions they have to review, never having enough adventurers to assign them to.

Something that occurred to me while reading through the other posts, is that the guild could be built into the system instead of being regulated by humans. That would be the best way to avoid the vast majority of the fridge logic being applied.

It would still have a major effect on the world, of course. If the system enforced rules and ranks, there would be a significantly decreased need for government of any kind, for example.

 

[aattss]

As I understand it, it's "typical" for protagonists to go around and go on adventures and help people. However, if the protagonist isn't particularly special in terms of ability, then it would make sense for other people to also have the ability to help people, which means it makes sense for there to be some sort of system for someone to ask people to kill the three-eyed pigs eating their crops with an offer of some sort of reward rather than that person just being helpless until a party of do-gooders stroll into town and asking them for help.

I'm not saying it doesn't make sense, but I think it's a more compelling story for the MC to slay a monster to protect the safety of the village or get medicine to cure a sick grandma, while getting exp and money for it, rather than the MC just slaying some random monster to get exp and money. So I suppose instead of adventure guilds I can prefer MCs going on quests that are less commodified/standardized and more personal, and where there is not only personal power growth but also an impact on the world.

 

[Kitsura]

Adventuring guilds are a standard trope of this medium and I've had several grievances with it and just how practical it would be in a working society. In my mind it makes much more sense to have guards take care of that and not some random mook from the street, but that not what I wanted to talk about. The adventuring guilds are often times the ONLY guild you see in fictions and I think it's both a result of influence from previous works and a lacking understanding of the middle ages. Simply put their was a guild for EVERYTHING tailoring, cobblers, bucket making, ect... you name it and it was part of it's own guild. Not even to mention the fact that guilds primary purpose was to regulate the market for their product and it's encompassing political sway. I just can't help but feel authors both misunderstand guilds and underrepresent them.

Ascendence of a bookworm has this