Love the channel, but I didn't follow anything in the first few minutes. I had to check if I had mis-learned the word. Even on a rewatch, I not getting anything.
The gnome behind the desk doesn't even look up from the stack of papers on his desk, and says in a monotone voice: "Welcome to [the adventurers guild]. Are you hiring, or accepting a job?" "Accepting, we found this poster by the inn across..." "Membership number?", the gnome abruptly asks. Still without looking up at you. "We don't have one, we're new in..." "Sorry, you can't accept jobs without being members of [the adventurers guild]." "And how do we become members?" The gnome finally looks up at you. He seems to hold back a chuckle, and slides a small stack of papers towards you. "Start with filling these out. Then there is the trial of [something spookily named]." "The trial of [something spookily named]?" "Ah, yes you're new... [description of the trial]. Are you still interested?" "I... I guess we are..." "Great! Sign here, here, here, aaand here. And acknowledge that [the adventurers guild] will not, I repeat, will not reimburse you for any stolen, or destroyed goods, or medical or other expenses. Neither will [the adventurers guild] compensate you for any ailments should that happen upon you, including but not limited to burns, broken or loss of limbs, or even death." "Ehm..." "Until you have become members, of course. Didn't you read the thing you just signed?" "Well..." "Anyway, I will take a written statement from your bard when you return after the trial of [something spookily named], and I will add it to the pile.", he points towards the large stack of papers beside him. "But, we don't have a bard in our group." "Sigh... That's okay... For 3 gold you can hire a bard from [the adventurers guild]." "I guess..." "Great, put three gold in that box by the door and I will go get you [some fancy bard name]." "Good luck! And remember [insert guild motto]!"
That’s really good, but that’s a lot of reasons to go somewhere else and basically no reason to join the guild. I would think a sales pitch would include all the reasons to join and leave the “didn’t you read what you signed” to the negatives and things that aren’t covered. From this pitch I hear “we’re taking a cut of your loot and giving nothing but paper work in return.”
@@Veelofar The gnome looks up at you and says. "We regulate any adventuring in [region]. And we are damn good too. But you can't be any urchin off the street. You've got to be handy with the steel, if you know what I mean, earn your keep." And yes, if that works for you and your group is up to you. One of the groups I DM would love it, and the other would probably hate it. 😁 Btw, the trial [of something spookily named] doesn't have to be a huge tangent in the campaign, or even dangerous or spooky. For example, the party has to recover a stolen item from a thief guild hideout. In reality this is just an old house with half decent traps and puzzles to weed out the common folk. At the end when they open the chest they find what they were looking for. A pile of gnome sized shirts with the guild crest embroidered on the chest, and the text "I completed the trial of [something spookily named] and all I got was this shirt". Or they could do a real trial with real stakes and consequences. You're the only one who knows your players and what they like.
@@Veelofar historical guilds usually had the privilege of being the only ones to be allowed to do a certain trade in the region...so you may get in trouble with the town's guard/ army if you take adventuring contracts without being a member...let alone in trouble with the guild itself. - That's reason enough for low level adventurers to want to join. I believe Waterdeep guilds work that way too.
@@Alpha_Digamma I’ll be honest, if I’m a player and a pushy organization is telling me “join or leave” with no reason to join except that they’re in charge, I’m leavin. That’s not a place I’m interested in playing. Yea, it’s historically accurate, but the guilds of old were predatory and miserable. Historically accurate things are only good if they’re interestingly dramatic or fun. The sort of character I would make that would be interested in joining an adventurer guild is not the same as a character I’d enjoy running political intrigue and bureaucratic red tape mazes.
or Georgian era London - look up the Man Johnathan Wild, not only was there essentially a thieves guild in london, which he ran, the man was also essentially the head of London's Law Enforcement. at the time, London did not have a dedicated law enforcement organization, and relied on a bounty system using men known as 'thief-takers'. Wild consolidated both the thief takers, and the thieves under his control. litterally a real world example of how they explain a thieves guild might provide a lowering of crime. Wild basically turned thievery into a controlled system of ransoming the stolen goods back to the owners. and provided the service of restricting crime not under his control.
Actually they are not the only guild licensed to steal in Ankh-Morpork. You forgot about the league of lawyers. "There must be a hundred silver dollars in here," moaned Boggis, waving a purse. "I mean, that's not my league. That's not my class. I can't handle that sort of money. You've got to be in the Guild of Lawyers or something to steal that much." -- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)
My party immediately loved Dewey, the tired librarian attending wizard college. They convinced him to help fight the final battle against a crime boss’ minions and he died in one hit because he was a tired college student with like three spells and not a min/maxed adventurer, which they sometimes assume every NPC is.
11:16 One of the remarkable innovations introduced by the Patrician was to make the Thieves’ Guild responsible for theft, with annual budgets, forward planning and, above all, rigid job protection. Thus, in return for an agreed average level of crime per annum, the thieves themselves saw to it that unauthorised crime was met with the full force of Injustice, which was generally a stick with nails in it. - Terry Pratchett, Guards Guards If you want to have crime-guilds and make them actually fit in the world, read Discworld's Watch Series of books.
We looked at the street gangs of Rome and Byzantium where neighbourhood protection rackets was the norm. The police of the city only look for crimes against the ruler and the city. The private household guards of the aristocrats only protect their persons and property. Most regular plebs of the lunar cities need to make agreements with a multitude of shifting street gangs fighting for turf and rackets. The gangs dabble in any crime on the side they think they can get away with and profit from, from slavery to street drugs to robbery. There is no official license because the city does not care enough to bother tracking them. As long as a street gang doesn't get in the way of someone important, they can do as they like.
While adventurer's guild may sound like silly concept, you could use it as an excuse to have murderho.. adventurers roaming around the kingdom. Most states and societies have been pretty keen on keeping the monopoly of violence for themselves, so the "adventurer's guild" could be seen as an extension of state power. If players use violence against state (nobles etc.) they will lose renown, and sooner or later be expelled from the guild and declared outlaws (for using violence without state sanction)
@@Oxaphosphetane In my setting, the state has a standing army, the "adventurers guild" is actually mostly funded by the nobility. It is a compromise since the empire does not want any feudal lords building too much local power that they could challenge the state with. Such a force would also be better employed in the regular army. This makes sure manpower is drafted into the army for a solid offensive and defensive force, capable of handling external threats, while adventurers are employed with tasks less aimed toward warfare and rather handling internal threats such as monsters, odd errands and investigations on the areas under noble jurisdiction. Politics, brokering and embassadors between the state and the guild is inevitable since they are intertwined on various levels and schemes.
You could even have a whole "fine for breech of The Guild's charter" punitive system that varies in relation to the severity of The Party's activities ... for example, The Party accidentally allowed a peasant to die in a hostage recovery mission could cost 100 gold but accidentally allowing a Baron's son to contract lycanthropy whilst trying to rescue him could be a 1000 gold fine. And if you can't pay the fine?! Well, boy-howdy does the Guild Master have a solution for you ... here's a very dangerous quest to slay a [insert monster here] that you have to undertake as penance for your miscalculation in allowing this tragedy to occur! Oh, what's this?! Not going to take the job?! Oh, ok ... we'll just {set the city guards}/{assassin's guild}/{other heavies and/or goon squad} (delete as appropriate) on you, and now The Party has to deal with a guild trying to kill them!
I like to think of it as bringing support to higher power adventurers operating at the fringes of civilization as a means to improve the realm's security in far flung places. The small villages and hamlets won't have the ability to properly support anything but beginner adventurers but organizations like an adventurer's guild can raise enough capital to afford to have satellite guild locations in these less populated, distant areas capable of supporting higher power parties and in some cases could pool resources with arcane magic and divine magic and warrior's guilds so that they each have a representative at these adventurer guild locations who can provide more specific services. In this fashion, they can also function as part of the community security and receive appropriate support from the local crown or lords for this aid to their security in the form of enabling more and more powerful "troubleshooters" (adventurers) to operate in the area, the guild consisting of guild personnel who themselves have some potency in a fight or who can support militia forces against a common threat, and it would be expected that the guild facilities themselves are probably fortified similarly to a small keep and can be used as a keep in a pinch. I would equate something like this to real world America in the Rural Free Delivery Service starting in 1896 to allow remote rural famer families to receive direct mail via government program since it was never economically feasible for a company to provide such service, and the Rural Rectification Act of 1936 in which rural communities, where it was never economically feasible for companies to install a power line and telephone line infrastructure, got these services directly via government investment.
Adventurers are usually too eccentric, too few and too passionate about their own stuff to care for a greater guild organisation. If they need an organization they are more likely to form their own around themselves, acting as a growing paramilitary band. At most we've played that other organisations have their own groups of problem-solving dudes. These are often not tight adventuring groups either, but a pool of such individuals who are assembled into teams as needed. Sometimes it's like underworld personal connections, you need two dependable people and you know someone who can vouch for this elf. Sometimes it's the PCs who represent another faction. They can be Delta Green agents in Call of Cthulhu, work as emissaries and spies for an off-the-map government, spread a certain faith or be Twilight 2000 NATO troops. We have used the company model. The company is a temporary, chartered organization that covers a specific enterprise. It is formed and reformed year after year and left to dissolve when the enterprise has run its course with company assets split up between stakeholders.
Historical societies that had guild structures were, by their nature, highly codified, even down to code of dress. For instance, in Western Europe one could encounter a person on the street and instantly know what guild they belonged to, what job they did, and whether they were an apprentice, a journeyman, a master, or the grandmaster on sight.
It's useful also to tell friend from foe immediately, and it helps the players choose their course of action. This also works especially outside of guilds (e.g. noble houses ranks or religious hierarchies).
One idea I had for how to use a guild is as a sort of hub that allows players to change charactors frequently. like say have everyone bring 4 to a game and have everyone decide what quest they want to go on from the quest board. then let everyone pick their charactors and then have it roleplayed like the guild tapped those charactors for the job. it would also allow for switch outs in situations for when a charactor dies or is incapacitated. Or even if a player just made one of the charactors and realized they just dont like em. it'd also make things like re-sepecing easy. like your battlemaster wants to learn some magic, he can put in an internal request for tutelage and pay a little cash. forward a little time and he's now a eldritch knight.
Also, useful for dealing with sandbox type games where you play with whatever players happened to show up. As some players start leveling up, they can create a new character to play if they find themselves at a session with lower level characters.
can confirm- having organizations the players are heavily involved in works great for switching out characters. had a few players realize their characters werent fitting the group dynamic, and it allowed us to easily have that character be "reassigned" to a different role in the organization, so that the player could role up a new pc. also means that new pc is already involved in the plot and doesnt need a lengthy introduction to care about the story.
@@JMcMillen or you could intentionally have the higher level character escort the lower ones (or be a DM PC) where they aren't try harding against sewer rats but are looking out for the inexperienced guild members to make sure they don't die. (If it fits the narative, and depending on the class of the higher leveled character it could go better or worse, so a wizard or cleric has better potential to not steal the show than a rouge or barbarian without obviously fighting under potential) Just a thought for situations where either the high level olayer doesn't want to make and use a new character or if the group wants some extra help with a quest (at the expense of some of the quest reward/loot).
@@jasonreed7522 If you join an open world sandbox style campaign, you join with the understanding that you will most certainly end up with multiple characters of different levels so that you can always participate in the session you show up to. If a player only wants to play one character, then it's up to that player to make the game sessions featuring other characters of an appropriate level to theirs. Honestly, I don't quite have as big a problem with it going the other way, but I wouldn't award that low level character the same XP that the higher level characters earned, unless they were able to really pull their weight and contribute as much as the other characters. No trying to power level a character by having them tag along with vastly more powerful characters.
Guilds make great enemies too. It's a good way to ensure your enemies have plausible reasons to know things about the characters and ways to communicate with each other.
Also Tasha’s includes some ideas for guilds and organizations in the group patrons section. Even if you don’t use them as written, they can be a helpful starting point for your own stuff
Canadian detected. In all seriousness this is becoming my favorite DND guide channel. You provide simple to follow, but thorough advice. I know it's good when I start brainstorming and have to keep backing up the video.
after watching 3 videos, i find this youtuber worthy of a sub. i will enjoy saying in the near future that i was "there" when master the dungeon was under 20k subs, when they reach a million
I’ve been watching so many videos to help me make a campaign as a first time player/ game master and your channel is the only one I’ve found that has helped me out so much thank you 😊
I'm in a Zelda-themed game where we're rebuilding a guild from the ground up. We do have someone managing the front desk, but I don't know about any treasurers or guild masters yet. I'm gonna share this video with my party and see if there's anything we can take from this video to help us improve the guild. Hopefully it'll help us build a better functioning guild.
Not sure if anyone's familiar with the guild wars franchise, but one of the core story pieces is the 3 competing factions the player can choose to join. The vigil is the traditional militia style group, the Priory is the scholars and researchers, the order of Whispers is the basic thieves guild, the main tie in is that they all share the goal of trying to stop the elder dragons that wreck havoc on the world. They ended up forming a combined group they allocate resources to known as the pact and I love the idea of the party building rapport between groups to the level they start communicating out of the plot beats
I'm planning on making a one-shot for a down-on-their-luck band of goblins raiding an adventurer's guild in retaliation for some of their members roughing them up and taking their most prized possession, and a video like this breaking down how a guild like that would function is super helpful for this! I was drawing a blank as to what that guild's deal would be, and this video is definitely helping with thinking of a base to go off of.
Guild-to-guild interactions is another aspect that can add structure to a story. Is your Wizard a member of both the Mage Guild and the Adventurers' Guild? Are there conflicting areas of responsibility? Things neither will touch? Is there an official Mage Guild Liason in the Adventurers' Guild? Is it an open secret that the in-house bartender is the Thieves' Guild liason? (Don't tell the Paladin.) Is there tension between your guild and, say, the Rangers' Guild, so you start out at a bad renown value with them, and gain a set of professional rivals? How does this affect the group's Ranger?
Could also look to The Discworld for inspiration here ... The Thieves Guild might decide that it's easier to charge an annual "robbery exemption fee" to citizenry, but then have some sort of perks to being a member of another guild (like Assassins or Adventurers) be that The Thieves don't charge fees to members of those guilds "out of professional courtesy". In the same way that The Adventurers might only kill certain lifeforms (goblins, Knowles, ogres, etc.), but not others (humans, elves, dwarves, Halflings) "out of professional courtesy" to The Assassins and vice versa. And should The Party breech these "professional courtesies" then the guilds could make moves against The Party, be that monetarily or through a "penitent action" (a dangerous quest that The Party has to do on behalf of The Guild to show remorse). So for example, the "fine for breech of The Guild's charter" punitive system could vary in relation to the severity of The Party's activities ... for example, The Party accidentally allowed a peasant to die in a hostage recovery mission could cost 100 gold but accidentally allowing a Baron's son to contract lycanthropy whilst trying to rescue him could be a 1000 gold fine. And if you can't pay the fine?! Well, boy-howdy does the Guild Master have a solution for you ... here's a very dangerous quest to slay a [insert monster here] that you have to undertake as penance for your miscalculation in allowing this tragedy to occur! Oh, what's this?! Not going to take the job?! Oh, ok ... we'll just {set the city guards}/{assassin's guild}/{other heavies and/or goon squad} (delete as appropriate) on you, and now The Party has to deal with a guild trying to kill them!
@@calvinhumphries9595 In an OD&D game this is less of a problem. You are the baron. It would be silly to fine yourself. You run your stronghold as you like, as long as you can keep the encroaching buggery of the wilderness away from your little shard of civilization.
@@SusCalvin Never played OD&D, was always a 3.5e player until the mid 2000s / early 2010s ... when I played more 5e at uni, unfortuantely I don't play much atm
I wish this channel nothing but success. Between the chill vibes, the masterful advice, the conciseness of each video, and the breadth of topics discussed you have helped me immensely. Thank you so much.
My favorite Adventurer Guild situations are where there was a lot of fighting among each other over loot and salvage from ruins that turned into two rival guilds that essentially formed to keep the other one from becoming strong enough to bully the other. After a while, the heated anger turns to less antagonistic rivalry. It can provide the players choice, the guilds incentive to lure these new adventurers onto their side with cool perks, you can introduce a friendly rival group that can be recurring “helpful antagonist” type characters that are sometimes going to race the party to the end goal but can occasionally show up to help tip the scale of a really close fight, it can provide a lot of drama through political machinations as well with each guild trying to gain more power.
I am absolutely going to have to consider all of this for my own worldbuilding. I don't even DM, I just world build for fun, and this all could be quite helpful to consider for my current fantasy setting. Consider me subscribed.
In an idea I have for a future campaign, the party starts out in a newly founded town in the process of growing and developing. The local guild at the start provides multiple services and purposes, but over time as the town develops it separates into different guilds for the different services. The party helping the guild before it separates will enable them to already have both some renown and favorability in the post-separation guilds.
Having been part of a guild for years (well before Tasha's came out) I can attest to how nice it is to have that 'home base' and established hierarchy to be part of. Yes, you're accountable to a boss and others in the guild but the benefits are totally worth it, especially if you run short-run mini-campaigns in a common setting like our group did. I like the idea of tracking renown and favorability with the guild separately. Thinking about it we've been doing that already but I'd always conflated the two. Some nice additional published/official resources for Guilds-as-Patrons can be found in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything and the Acquisitions Incorporated sourcebook. I feel obligated to mention that "thieves guild" is a euphemism for "organized crime" and not a real guild that pays taxes and attends Board of Trade meetings. They _do_ make for great antagonists for when your Rogue decides to do a 'little side-hustle' on their turf.
I used the Ravnica guilds as parties fligthing for power in a Sengoku Jidai inspired space opera. Even though 10 guilds are a lot to manage only having 3-5 per planet makes it fun and varied. While all parties can be met in the capital
A really professional channel. Kind of makes me think of hello futur me but for D&D because it gives a thorough look at the point of a tool (here a game tool for him a literary tool).
This is gonna help me so much with my world's guild lore, the most I've fleshed out is my Adventurer's Guild which formed to give people that have the necessary skills to help protect people and settlements from monsters a safe and legal way to explore and fight
Fantastic. Just had a player wanting to be involved in a "bail bondsman" guild. Time to put some things together based on this video. Thank you and keep up the good work.
One use I can imagine is a banking house that holds payment in bond. The PC's clients hire them for something and deposit the pay in bond with this financial institute which release it to the PC when conditions are met. The client can't withdraw the bonded amount and bolt with it, neither can their PC. The institution needs to be independent and trusted enough by everyone involved.
yesterday I was literally just asking myself, "so why would my players even want to be a part of this adventurer's guild, what is there to keep them from just leaving whenever?" Now I'm thinking about potential perks to maintaining/advancing membership, so thank you!
I love using guilds in my campaigns! Especially when I have an idea for a side quest or side story that can still benefit the party's goals. The guilds I've used are pretty standard (thieves guild, mages guild, merchants guild, etc.) But I like the idea of having my players make assessments on which guilds they want to join to help better flesh out their characters or to help them pursue a goal.
FYI, this also works if the guild happens to be an enemy organization. Being annoying to such an organization can get people to start keeping a close eye on you. Being a legitimate threat can have worse consequences. Some shop owners might start charging greater prices or lose essential products the adventurers are after. Certain officials may start turning a blind eye to lawless people going after the adventurers, even in broad daylight with guards being actively pulled from patrols. Hell, bounties might even get posted for the adventurers' arrest in some towns. And the adventurers might never even know why if they aren't paying attention to said guild.
The algorithm just introduced me to your channel earlier today and I have been captivated by it! I sent your email a copy of my PDF I hope it finds you well and thank you for your outstanding production! I look forward to binge watching more episodes!
The content you provide is really of high quality. It's structured, concise, precise. It doesn't last for hours of blabla. It goes straight to the point! Great work! Not to mention the drawings which are really funny. This channel is a gold mine for new DMs like me. Keep it up! I'm looking forward to the next one!
I run some very guild-influenced campaigns, and this was a beautifully done and refreshingly in-depth guide. These are tips that I had to bash my poor, bruised brain against the prep desk to figure out myself as players threw me curveballs during the game, and having heard it presented like this beforehand would have saved me a lot of headaches. And I really enjoyed how this touched on so many related but tangential topics, answering the kinds of questions that aren't usually hit in an on-topic video but that are inevitably going to come up as a follow-up question once you try to put things into play. It's very much my own way of thinking... if a lot less focused on eating brains.
I've had a blast making and using a guild for the party to work with whenever they want to travel to new locations or just between major places. Having a rangers' guild give the party instructions on how to find someone to help in their travels almost always becomes its own unique quest and expands the depth of the world. It's a lot more work because I'm not rolling generic random encounters, but it's been worth it so far since each place has its own need for a ranger to help others cross.
This is shaping up to be a really great resource channel for roleplaying, in fact I'm using some of the stuff I've picked up from here in rpgs other than D&D as well!
Another great use of a major skilled as as a place to securely store backup spell books and as a resource for Magical in knowledge. Like a great magical library
this reminds me i got ogre guilds. in my setting, ogres form part of human society since around 300 years ago. first they started getting bribed to keep of certain territories, then they got hired as mercenary shock troops during the great hob war, a hobgoblin invasion wich consequences are still felt in the continent. after that some lords who commanded them in the battlefield, hired them as heavy labour to reconstruct lost villages. this way they started getting acceptance in rural areas for heavy lifting and fast construction but still shunned in polite society. some got good making bussiness getting lords, merchants and ranchers pay good money for their services, given that they where well accustomed to just getting their stuff and leaving and lords didn't want ogre tribes just going around. this led to ogre tribes getting more money and educating their young in bussiness and trades. this led to the transition of ogre tribes into ogre guilds, representing the labour of any ogre in the kingdom around 120 years. this bothered other guilds that still considered them brutes and lower than urchins and rising tensions among them. this came to an end when the king got convinced that by divine right he owned any product growing on the land, from crops to cattle and wild game and derivates and he alone holds the right to trade, distribute and affix prices on any of it. this led to open revolts by several farming, hunting and labout guilds. the king hired the ogre guilds as riot breakers but not only they denied the king, but got on the side of the rioting guilds and held back not only the guard but the army and even managed to march to the door of the throne room itself and get inside with representatives of each affected and guild to negotiate with the king. the great guild rebellion was 50 years ago and older farmers still swear on ogre loyalty.
I always go to your channel for dnd advice! You're one of the few channels that put up a visual guide and it's easy for me to understand! And I enjoy looking at the cute art that the artist made
12:08 I was just thinking about my world and how the players would start off in the guild and then thinking about the fact that there’s gonna be lots of mechanics in this game. I feel called out.
I have two games, one has the Adventurers' Guild, the other has the Messengers' Guild. The Adventurers'Guild is a paramilitary organization that is basically the Pinkerton detective agency. They go somewhere and commit some pretty gross rights violations. They're currently managed by that games BBEG, an evil dragon who's also secretly the mayor of the city the party lives in. The Messengers' Guild, who is basically the post office, is the guild that I have my players start off as members off because I really like using the plot of "the party is hired to transport a powerful but mysterious magic object." And the party usually ends up keeping the object and getting chased by the BBEG.
I’m from Italy and saw the tips for a DnD mystery this morning, I really enjoyed it and I like also this video. Great work! Will you ever do anything more generic than just DnD stuff? I mean those video are great, they can easily adapt to any RPG game, I’m just curious if you will ever do it.
I started structuring my D&D campaigns with guild-centric play after picking up John Harper's Blades in the Dark. There were guilds ranging from monster hunter, to dungeon delvers, to religious fanatics. I felt that having a core adventuring philosophy and MO made my games super focused and really helped off-load some of the story telling onto the system, allowing players to focus more on how their character fit into the guild. Everyone had a common goal, which was to make the guild the best of its type, and that helped bring cohesion to the sessions.
I liked their ambition of bringing domain play back, and to do so from the very start. I think domain play can't be something jarring you're pressed into at level 8-10 but something you build up. Somewhere around level 3-5 maybe, when you have the equivalent of a street gang or mercenary platoon.
I like the idea of adventuring guilds being an extension of a kingdom's military. They can't send the army to handle every little problem and keeps the villagers from getting upset at the ruling class since the problems are getting handled.. Guilds can "match" the funds that the quest giver is able/willing to give in accordance with the scale of the issue. That way the kingdom also gets alerted to potential problems earlier. If a guild can't entice adventurers for an issue then it's probably a large enough of a problem for the military to get involved. Once players reach a certain amount of renown then perhaps they can even get scouted by nobles or reach knighthood.
The first thing that happens when a village joins the empire in Mutant UA is that a taxman/notary, an officer and a miltia troop shows up. The militia is a gendarmerie organzation, part countryside police and part paramilitary frontier garrison. The cities and larger towns have a divide between the civilian constabulary, the army and the navy. At worst, they can send an army troop. A platoon of dudes with something between punt guns and light field artillery show up. Villages routinely work on their own security. They can raise a posse to deal with a specific threat, keep a rotation of sentries or fund a semi-permanent guard force. They smoke out tunnels, dynamite nests, bait traps. Going on big game hunts is a pride of the country aristocracy. Adventurers don't often mess with villages and towns because a town will screw them up so damn hard. If a village noticed that the central government wasn't present, they could start thinking they can ignore the taxman.
A bank would be a fun faction to have on the region map. The banks who survived in the early modern period were huge family organizations with branch offices around a region. Holding an amount of cash in bond between two outside interests could easily be a service they provide. The employer deposits the payment with the bank, who holds it until the employed have fulfilled their part, at which point it is released. The employer can't simply withdraw the cash in bond and bail either.
My biggest recommendation for DMs is the Ravnica book. It has guilds of different societal roles, mission/quest ideas, villain ideas, locations. The Dice set of set is my absolute favorite too. Gonna start a new campaign and dont have a villain? Roll the guild dice and see what the players are up against. Rolled Boros Legion? Theyre up against an army of holy warriors. The book then helps you find a villain OF that guild.
Really likes the idea that an adventures guild is a place for mercenaries to be busy and earn money when there’s not a war going on. And got to thinking What if the Adv guild had 2 parts, regular Adv guild and the mercenaries guild. Basic adv guild is dealing with small scale stuff, lone groups of bandits, smal time monster attacks, escorting caravans, and cleanup after mercs guild. While mercs do the big jobs. Fighting a rogue high level wizard (on behalf of mages guild) or a necromancer, or fighting a large bandit group with the help of maybe a few adv guild members. Etc.
5:10 Sounds like how I’ve handled Guilds (and other organizations) for decades now, separating your rank (renown) from the guild (or organization) as a whole’s reaction to you, which I treat as if it was an NPC and if it sees you as hated/indifferent/friendly/etc.
We went with roman/byzantian street gangs on the Moon. The police of the city only care about crimes against the ruler and the city. The private guard forces of the aristocracy only protect their masters and their property. The courts are there to settle disputes between the aristocracy and enforce the will of the ruler. The majority of citizen plebs are left to makeshift solutions. In practice this means street gangs. There's no central street gang or mob in our current city, there's a constant struggle between rising and waning street gangs for turf and protection rackets. They dabble in any crime they can get away with on the side from slavery to drug dealing to theft. In the starter town, this underworld was more firmly controlled by two mercantile combines. Everyone is a client of someone, and a patron of someone else.
I once read that a good way to think about guilds is to look at bar associations for lawyers and the AMA for doctors. Which makes the claims of monopolistic tendencies, such as cartelization, all the more clear.
I would run a codified thieves' guild as a group that exists as a tenuous balance between keeping profitable and keeping the government happy. The guards will look the other way for certified guild members' crimes, but will in turn require them to engage in "special jobs" for the head of state and his advisors. These jobs could be anything from targeted robbery, to espionage, to assassinations. This relationship is strictly on a need-to-know basis, and is handled cautiously so that any government involvement can be safely denied. It's basically a medieval version of the modern CIA mixed with a certain criminal element from a book I don't want to reveal because it's a big spoiler to that book. Those who know what I'm talking about will know what I mean.
My thieves guild was originally a group of maids who were "borrowing" their employers jewelry in order to pass themselves off as rich ladies and thus get rich husbands. The guild part came when they realized that all of them borrowing jewelry at the same time increased the odds of her noticing before they could put it back. To cover for their early mistakes, they hired a circus acrobat to masquerade as a phantom thief, jumping from rooftop to rooftop and leading the guards on a merry chase. Towards the end of the chase, the guards faced a sadistic choice as the acrobat dropped the borrowed jewelry on a moving cart and then took off in a different direction. Due to marriage with a high-ranking guard, the maids ensured that the jewelry was chosen and recovered... ...unfortunately, the legend attracted a "copycat criminal" who sought to follow in the footsteps of the phantom thief/ circus acrobat / "guild master."
Just found this channel. Really cool and useful insights. Love the animations. Especially the 'give more detail' to a character one. Comedy. Keep up the good work and thank you for the videos!
I would like to DM or play the founding of an Adventurers Guild. Some years ago I played with a group that had a guild: each player could have different characters than, when not used, will act as the guild npcs. They were really meticulous, they had a stat block were they keep track of the guild's notoriety, its possession, ect... The only thing I didn't like so much was the requirements to become a member: you have to be an experienced adventurer (be the same level as everyone else), so it had an elite-oriented, classist vibe (plus my first ever character was level 15 😅). But I liked the idea and it allowed to have different adventures, with different PGs or party compositions, without reworking the setting and background story every time. It allowed also some rotation in the masters, so you could do a long story focused campaign an the let the master breathe a little, while another was making a short adventure.
This is how I did it: two sets of token for each guild positive and negative you can use cardboard buttons or whatever. Rules: - Guilds exists only in larger cities. Players aren't in a large city - they don't get to access a guild. - Guilds are divided into Espionage - Martial - Magic - Scholar (there can be more than one guild for each - and interactions are obvious) - Guilds are used to make missions easier: Need to know location in a map (Scholar's Guild), need to find out enemy movement (Marital) , need fake documents/a one extra D20 for a deception check (Espionage Guild)... etc. - Guilds , if membership is required, you have to run missions. You get a token for each mission completed. - If you decide that Guilds are enemies then for each token obtained from one guild subract (or add negative token to competitor guild). Want to give you Bard or Rouge something to do? Create an internal power struggle in an Espionage guild. Want your fighter to level up faster and obtain favor from the local ministry? Join a Joust. Your wizard wants an excuse to dip toes in another school of Magic? OOOOppps this Magic guild only accepts wizards dedicated to the School of Illusion or Evocation... sorry NO, Necomancy ( _use the knock spell three times at dusk when the sheep bleat_ )
I gave the hunter's guild in my homebrew a rule that registration fees are waived if an applicant save the life of a guild hunter on the job, or completes quests that they posted outside the guild because no one was able to handle them internally. It gave my low level players a taste of what they'd be in for, and the guild gets to attract new competent contributors.
Full-time big game hunters in Mutant are often aristocrats, they're the ones with resources and leisure time in the empire to do such things. The typical aristocratic big-game hunter has a couple servants on her expedition and uses a sort of upscaled elephant rifle/punt gun/light artillery piece with one servant as the designated carrier/loader. Big game hunting is a pride of the country aristocracy, and often reserved for them. With the aid of servants and a posse to track and chase out the monster of course. Villages raise a posse to deal with specific threat. They might smoke out a tunnel, dynamite a nest or dig traps. Experienced villagers are often better hunters of the local wildlife than random mercenaries from outside. Part of their skillset is how to make use of big game the best way.
I'm sure I'm not the only one to use this idea for my setting and doubt I'll be the last, but for my setting there's both a Bounty Hunter's Guild and a Mercenary's Guild. Now, both have existed for sometime, but only started becoming more and more prevalent in the last couple years in-game due to the fact that there's a war going on and since the respective empires and kingdoms need to send a large chuck on their militia to the front lines just to make sure their borders are protected, it leaves a considerable amount of problems to arise and grow that need to be solved before they become detrimental. Mercenaries are basically required to deal with local or even regional issues like a monster attacks, missing persons reports, investigating why crops or other resources are either going missing or getting destroyed assisting in the gathering of artifacts in dungeons, etc. while Bounty Hunters deal with various criminals, bandits and even spies that have managed to infiltrate the country.
![[#2024MAMA] G-DRAGON - 무제(Untitled, 2014)+POWER+HOME SWEET HOME+뱅뱅뱅+FANTASTIC BABY | Mnet 241123 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ox29z5Nf1Uk/mqdefault.jpg)
Yes, yes. Potato, re-NOUN.
Yes, as a non-native English speaker I was wondering about that pronunciation. The point came through perfect anyway so who cares? 🙂
English is infamous for it's mischievous pronunciation.
Your correction is now re-known to me.
Love the channel, but I didn't follow anything in the first few minutes.
I had to check if I had mis-learned the word.
Even on a rewatch, I not getting anything.
@@pooppoop6337 ha! Good one
Absolutely diamond in the rough channel for dnd content. So glad I found it
Literally! How is this channel not more popular??
One of the better dnd channels, it's so good
Same!!
couldn't agree more
@@iampfaff 11:50 I'd tell someone about the channel that helped me come up with all the cool stuff, but even the players never see the cool stuff
The gnome behind the desk doesn't even look up from the stack of papers on his desk, and says in a monotone voice:
"Welcome to [the adventurers guild]. Are you hiring, or accepting a job?"
"Accepting, we found this poster by the inn across..."
"Membership number?", the gnome abruptly asks. Still without looking up at you.
"We don't have one, we're new in..."
"Sorry, you can't accept jobs without being members of [the adventurers guild]."
"And how do we become members?"
The gnome finally looks up at you. He seems to hold back a chuckle, and slides a small stack of papers towards you.
"Start with filling these out. Then there is the trial of [something spookily named]."
"The trial of [something spookily named]?"
"Ah, yes you're new... [description of the trial]. Are you still interested?"
"I... I guess we are..."
"Great! Sign here, here, here, aaand here. And acknowledge that [the adventurers guild] will not, I repeat, will not reimburse you for any stolen, or destroyed goods, or medical or other expenses. Neither will [the adventurers guild] compensate you for any ailments should that happen upon you, including but not limited to burns, broken or loss of limbs, or even death."
"Ehm..."
"Until you have become members, of course. Didn't you read the thing you just signed?"
"Well..."
"Anyway, I will take a written statement from your bard when you return after the trial of [something spookily named], and I will add it to the pile.", he points towards the large stack of papers beside him.
"But, we don't have a bard in our group."
"Sigh... That's okay... For 3 gold you can hire a bard from [the adventurers guild]."
"I guess..."
"Great, put three gold in that box by the door and I will go get you [some fancy bard name]."
"Good luck! And remember [insert guild motto]!"
That’s really good, but that’s a lot of reasons to go somewhere else and basically no reason to join the guild. I would think a sales pitch would include all the reasons to join and leave the “didn’t you read what you signed” to the negatives and things that aren’t covered. From this pitch I hear “we’re taking a cut of your loot and giving nothing but paper work in return.”
@@Veelofar The gnome looks up at you and says.
"We regulate any adventuring in [region].
And we are damn good too.
But you can't be any urchin off the street. You've got to be handy with the steel, if you know what I mean, earn your keep."
And yes, if that works for you and your group is up to you. One of the groups I DM would love it, and the other would probably hate it. 😁
Btw, the trial [of something spookily named] doesn't have to be a huge tangent in the campaign, or even dangerous or spooky. For example, the party has to recover a stolen item from a thief guild hideout. In reality this is just an old house with half decent traps and puzzles to weed out the common folk. At the end when they open the chest they find what they were looking for. A pile of gnome sized shirts with the guild crest embroidered on the chest, and the text "I completed the trial of [something spookily named] and all I got was this shirt". Or they could do a real trial with real stakes and consequences. You're the only one who knows your players and what they like.
"Good luck, and remember: Try not to die."
@@Veelofar historical guilds usually had the privilege of being the only ones to be allowed to do a certain trade in the region...so you may get in trouble with the town's guard/ army if you take adventuring contracts without being a member...let alone in trouble with the guild itself. - That's reason enough for low level adventurers to want to join.
I believe Waterdeep guilds work that way too.
@@Alpha_Digamma I’ll be honest, if I’m a player and a pushy organization is telling me “join or leave” with no reason to join except that they’re in charge, I’m leavin. That’s not a place I’m interested in playing. Yea, it’s historically accurate, but the guilds of old were predatory and miserable. Historically accurate things are only good if they’re interestingly dramatic or fun. The sort of character I would make that would be interested in joining an adventurer guild is not the same as a character I’d enjoy running political intrigue and bureaucratic red tape mazes.
11:08
“The Thieves Guild might get away with legal robbery, so long as only licensed thieves are allowed to steal.”
Ah, yes! Ankh-Morpork! Best city.
or Georgian era London - look up the Man Johnathan Wild, not only was there essentially a thieves guild in london, which he ran, the man was also essentially the head of London's Law Enforcement. at the time, London did not have a dedicated law enforcement organization, and relied on a bounty system using men known as 'thief-takers'. Wild consolidated both the thief takers, and the thieves under his control. litterally a real world example of how they explain a thieves guild might provide a lowering of crime. Wild basically turned thievery into a controlled system of ransoming the stolen goods back to the owners. and provided the service of restricting crime not under his control.
Actually they are not the only guild licensed to steal in Ankh-Morpork. You forgot about the league of lawyers.
"There must be a hundred silver dollars in here," moaned Boggis, waving a purse. "I mean, that's not my league. That's not my class. I can't handle that sort of money. You've got to be in the Guild of Lawyers or something to steal that much."
-- (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)
Always upvote Terry Pratchett.
My party immediately loved Dewey, the tired librarian attending wizard college. They convinced him to help fight the final battle against a crime boss’ minions and he died in one hit because he was a tired college student with like three spells and not a min/maxed adventurer, which they sometimes assume every NPC is.
11:16
One of the remarkable innovations introduced by the Patrician was to make the Thieves’ Guild responsible for theft, with annual budgets, forward planning and, above all, rigid job protection. Thus, in return for an agreed average level of crime per annum, the thieves themselves saw to it that unauthorised crime was met with the full force of Injustice, which was generally a stick with nails in it.
- Terry Pratchett, Guards Guards
If you want to have crime-guilds and make them actually fit in the world, read Discworld's Watch Series of books.
YES, I remembered it instantly during the "licensed thief" part! lol, I love Discworld.
I see you're a man of culture
"If one must have crime, let it be organized crime..." - Lord Havelock Vetinari
We looked at the street gangs of Rome and Byzantium where neighbourhood protection rackets was the norm. The police of the city only look for crimes against the ruler and the city. The private household guards of the aristocrats only protect their persons and property. Most regular plebs of the lunar cities need to make agreements with a multitude of shifting street gangs fighting for turf and rackets. The gangs dabble in any crime on the side they think they can get away with and profit from, from slavery to street drugs to robbery. There is no official license because the city does not care enough to bother tracking them. As long as a street gang doesn't get in the way of someone important, they can do as they like.
While adventurer's guild may sound like silly concept, you could use it as an excuse to have murderho.. adventurers roaming around the kingdom. Most states and societies have been pretty keen on keeping the monopoly of violence for themselves, so the "adventurer's guild" could be seen as an extension of state power. If players use violence against state (nobles etc.) they will lose renown, and sooner or later be expelled from the guild and declared outlaws (for using violence without state sanction)
This is a really cool twist on stock mercenaries and I like it a lot.
@@Oxaphosphetane In my setting, the state has a standing army, the "adventurers guild" is actually mostly funded by the nobility. It is a compromise since the empire does not want any feudal lords building too much local power that they could challenge the state with. Such a force would also be better employed in the regular army. This makes sure manpower is drafted into the army for a solid offensive and defensive force, capable of handling external threats, while adventurers are employed with tasks less aimed toward warfare and rather handling internal threats such as monsters, odd errands and investigations on the areas under noble jurisdiction. Politics, brokering and embassadors between the state and the guild is inevitable since they are intertwined on various levels and schemes.
You could even have a whole "fine for breech of The Guild's charter" punitive system that varies in relation to the severity of The Party's activities ... for example, The Party accidentally allowed a peasant to die in a hostage recovery mission could cost 100 gold but accidentally allowing a Baron's son to contract lycanthropy whilst trying to rescue him could be a 1000 gold fine.
And if you can't pay the fine?! Well, boy-howdy does the Guild Master have a solution for you ... here's a very dangerous quest to slay a [insert monster here] that you have to undertake as penance for your miscalculation in allowing this tragedy to occur!
Oh, what's this?! Not going to take the job?! Oh, ok ... we'll just {set the city guards}/{assassin's guild}/{other heavies and/or goon squad} (delete as appropriate) on you, and now The Party has to deal with a guild trying to kill them!
I like to think of it as bringing support to higher power adventurers operating at the fringes of civilization as a means to improve the realm's security in far flung places. The small villages and hamlets won't have the ability to properly support anything but beginner adventurers but organizations like an adventurer's guild can raise enough capital to afford to have satellite guild locations in these less populated, distant areas capable of supporting higher power parties and in some cases could pool resources with arcane magic and divine magic and warrior's guilds so that they each have a representative at these adventurer guild locations who can provide more specific services. In this fashion, they can also function as part of the community security and receive appropriate support from the local crown or lords for this aid to their security in the form of enabling more and more powerful "troubleshooters" (adventurers) to operate in the area, the guild consisting of guild personnel who themselves have some potency in a fight or who can support militia forces against a common threat, and it would be expected that the guild facilities themselves are probably fortified similarly to a small keep and can be used as a keep in a pinch.
I would equate something like this to real world America in the Rural Free Delivery Service starting in 1896 to allow remote rural famer families to receive direct mail via government program since it was never economically feasible for a company to provide such service, and the Rural Rectification Act of 1936 in which rural communities, where it was never economically feasible for companies to install a power line and telephone line infrastructure, got these services directly via government investment.
Adventurers are usually too eccentric, too few and too passionate about their own stuff to care for a greater guild organisation. If they need an organization they are more likely to form their own around themselves, acting as a growing paramilitary band.
At most we've played that other organisations have their own groups of problem-solving dudes. These are often not tight adventuring groups either, but a pool of such individuals who are assembled into teams as needed. Sometimes it's like underworld personal connections, you need two dependable people and you know someone who can vouch for this elf.
Sometimes it's the PCs who represent another faction. They can be Delta Green agents in Call of Cthulhu, work as emissaries and spies for an off-the-map government, spread a certain faith or be Twilight 2000 NATO troops.
We have used the company model. The company is a temporary, chartered organization that covers a specific enterprise. It is formed and reformed year after year and left to dissolve when the enterprise has run its course with company assets split up between stakeholders.
The “you look like trouble, let’s get you employed” panel gave me a solid chuckle 😂
Historical societies that had guild structures were, by their nature, highly codified, even down to code of dress. For instance, in Western Europe one could encounter a person on the street and instantly know what guild they belonged to, what job they did, and whether they were an apprentice, a journeyman, a master, or the grandmaster on sight.
Gonna steal a page out of the minecraft villagers book and have a badge made of increasingly valuable material on the front of their robe.
It's useful also to tell friend from foe immediately, and it helps the players choose their course of action. This also works especially outside of guilds (e.g. noble houses ranks or religious hierarchies).
They also had guilds for WAY cooler things like baking, milling, smithing and cobbling. Pff, stupid adventurer's guilds, mage's guilds and what-not...
One idea I had for how to use a guild is as a sort of hub that allows players to change charactors frequently. like say have everyone bring 4 to a game and have everyone decide what quest they want to go on from the quest board. then let everyone pick their charactors and then have it roleplayed like the guild tapped those charactors for the job. it would also allow for switch outs in situations for when a charactor dies or is incapacitated. Or even if a player just made one of the charactors and realized they just dont like em. it'd also make things like re-sepecing easy. like your battlemaster wants to learn some magic, he can put in an internal request for tutelage and pay a little cash. forward a little time and he's now a eldritch knight.
Lovely idea!
very convenient
Also, useful for dealing with sandbox type games where you play with whatever players happened to show up. As some players start leveling up, they can create a new character to play if they find themselves at a session with lower level characters.
can confirm- having organizations the players are heavily involved in works great for switching out characters. had a few players realize their characters werent fitting the group dynamic, and it allowed us to easily have that character be "reassigned" to a different role in the organization, so that the player could role up a new pc. also means that new pc is already involved in the plot and doesnt need a lengthy introduction to care about the story.
@@JMcMillen or you could intentionally have the higher level character escort the lower ones (or be a DM PC) where they aren't try harding against sewer rats but are looking out for the inexperienced guild members to make sure they don't die. (If it fits the narative, and depending on the class of the higher leveled character it could go better or worse, so a wizard or cleric has better potential to not steal the show than a rouge or barbarian without obviously fighting under potential)
Just a thought for situations where either the high level olayer doesn't want to make and use a new character or if the group wants some extra help with a quest (at the expense of some of the quest reward/loot).
@@jasonreed7522 If you join an open world sandbox style campaign, you join with the understanding that you will most certainly end up with multiple characters of different levels so that you can always participate in the session you show up to. If a player only wants to play one character, then it's up to that player to make the game sessions featuring other characters of an appropriate level to theirs.
Honestly, I don't quite have as big a problem with it going the other way, but I wouldn't award that low level character the same XP that the higher level characters earned, unless they were able to really pull their weight and contribute as much as the other characters. No trying to power level a character by having them tag along with vastly more powerful characters.
Guilds make great enemies too. It's a good way to ensure your enemies have plausible reasons to know things about the characters and ways to communicate with each other.
Also Tasha’s includes some ideas for guilds and organizations in the group patrons section. Even if you don’t use them as written, they can be a helpful starting point for your own stuff
Canadian detected.
In all seriousness this is becoming my favorite DND guide channel. You provide simple to follow, but thorough advice. I know it's good when I start brainstorming and have to keep backing up the video.
after watching 3 videos, i find this youtuber worthy of a sub. i will enjoy saying in the near future that i was "there" when master the dungeon was under 20k subs, when they reach a million
I’ve been watching so many videos to help me make a campaign as a first time player/ game master and your channel is the only one I’ve found that has helped me out so much thank you 😊
I'm in a Zelda-themed game where we're rebuilding a guild from the ground up. We do have someone managing the front desk, but I don't know about any treasurers or guild masters yet. I'm gonna share this video with my party and see if there's anything we can take from this video to help us improve the guild. Hopefully it'll help us build a better functioning guild.
Not sure if anyone's familiar with the guild wars franchise, but one of the core story pieces is the 3 competing factions the player can choose to join. The vigil is the traditional militia style group, the Priory is the scholars and researchers, the order of Whispers is the basic thieves guild, the main tie in is that they all share the goal of trying to stop the elder dragons that wreck havoc on the world. They ended up forming a combined group they allocate resources to known as the pact and I love the idea of the party building rapport between groups to the level they start communicating out of the plot beats
Just looking through YT for more info on guilds and this was the EXACT video i needed. Excelllent work!
OMG! My new favorite RUclips channel! With all the algorithms, I'm genuinely surprised I've never seen your vids.
Early bird gets the great D&D advice >:v)
The bird said it, so you know it's the good good
And here we thought people were coming to our channel for worms.
Better luck next time everyone, the early bird got this week's D&D advice.
This is the best DM tips channel
I'm planning on making a one-shot for a down-on-their-luck band of goblins raiding an adventurer's guild in retaliation for some of their members roughing them up and taking their most prized possession, and a video like this breaking down how a guild like that would function is super helpful for this! I was drawing a blank as to what that guild's deal would be, and this video is definitely helping with thinking of a base to go off of.
"If you are looking for more tools..." I already watched all your videos in a matter of 1 or 2 days! :o
Comment for the algorithm. Your videos have been amazing for me as a DM and you guys really deserve to get more popular
Dungeons of Drakkenheims factions have really great examples of having active guilds.
Guild-to-guild interactions is another aspect that can add structure to a story.
Is your Wizard a member of both the Mage Guild and the Adventurers' Guild? Are there conflicting areas of responsibility? Things neither will touch? Is there an official Mage Guild Liason in the Adventurers' Guild?
Is it an open secret that the in-house bartender is the Thieves' Guild liason? (Don't tell the Paladin.)
Is there tension between your guild and, say, the Rangers' Guild, so you start out at a bad renown value with them, and gain a set of professional rivals? How does this affect the group's Ranger?
Could also look to The Discworld for inspiration here ...
The Thieves Guild might decide that it's easier to charge an annual "robbery exemption fee" to citizenry, but then have some sort of perks to being a member of another guild (like Assassins or Adventurers) be that The Thieves don't charge fees to members of those guilds "out of professional courtesy".
In the same way that The Adventurers might only kill certain lifeforms (goblins, Knowles, ogres, etc.), but not others (humans, elves, dwarves, Halflings) "out of professional courtesy" to The Assassins and vice versa.
And should The Party breech these "professional courtesies" then the guilds could make moves against The Party, be that monetarily or through a "penitent action" (a dangerous quest that The Party has to do on behalf of The Guild to show remorse).
So for example, the "fine for breech of The Guild's charter" punitive system could vary in relation to the severity of The Party's activities ... for example, The Party accidentally allowed a peasant to die in a hostage recovery mission could cost 100 gold but accidentally allowing a Baron's son to contract lycanthropy whilst trying to rescue him could be a 1000 gold fine.
And if you can't pay the fine?! Well, boy-howdy does the Guild Master have a solution for you ... here's a very dangerous quest to slay a [insert monster here] that you have to undertake as penance for your miscalculation in allowing this tragedy to occur!
Oh, what's this?! Not going to take the job?! Oh, ok ... we'll just {set the city guards}/{assassin's guild}/{other heavies and/or goon squad} (delete as appropriate) on you, and now The Party has to deal with a guild trying to kill them!
@@calvinhumphries9595 In an OD&D game this is less of a problem. You are the baron. It would be silly to fine yourself. You run your stronghold as you like, as long as you can keep the encroaching buggery of the wilderness away from your little shard of civilization.
@@SusCalvin Never played OD&D, was always a 3.5e player until the mid 2000s / early 2010s ... when I played more 5e at uni, unfortuantely I don't play much atm
I wish this channel nothing but success. Between the chill vibes, the masterful advice, the conciseness of each video, and the breadth of topics discussed you have helped me immensely. Thank you so much.
Perfect timing! I've just started worldbuiling a guild for a solo campaign. Can't wait to see what happens with all these tips.
solo campaign, nice.
My favorite Adventurer Guild situations are where there was a lot of fighting among each other over loot and salvage from ruins that turned into two rival guilds that essentially formed to keep the other one from becoming strong enough to bully the other. After a while, the heated anger turns to less antagonistic rivalry. It can provide the players choice, the guilds incentive to lure these new adventurers onto their side with cool perks, you can introduce a friendly rival group that can be recurring “helpful antagonist” type characters that are sometimes going to race the party to the end goal but can occasionally show up to help tip the scale of a really close fight, it can provide a lot of drama through political machinations as well with each guild trying to gain more power.
I am absolutely going to have to consider all of this for my own worldbuilding. I don't even DM, I just world build for fun, and this all could be quite helpful to consider for my current fantasy setting. Consider me subscribed.
In an idea I have for a future campaign, the party starts out in a newly founded town in the process of growing and developing. The local guild at the start provides multiple services and purposes, but over time as the town develops it separates into different guilds for the different services. The party helping the guild before it separates will enable them to already have both some renown and favorability in the post-separation guilds.
Having been part of a guild for years (well before Tasha's came out) I can attest to how nice it is to have that 'home base' and established hierarchy to be part of. Yes, you're accountable to a boss and others in the guild but the benefits are totally worth it, especially if you run short-run mini-campaigns in a common setting like our group did.
I like the idea of tracking renown and favorability with the guild separately. Thinking about it we've been doing that already but I'd always conflated the two.
Some nice additional published/official resources for Guilds-as-Patrons can be found in Tasha's Cauldron of Everything and the Acquisitions Incorporated sourcebook.
I feel obligated to mention that "thieves guild" is a euphemism for "organized crime" and not a real guild that pays taxes and attends Board of Trade meetings. They _do_ make for great antagonists for when your Rogue decides to do a 'little side-hustle' on their turf.
I used the Ravnica guilds as parties fligthing for power in a Sengoku Jidai inspired space opera. Even though 10 guilds are a lot to manage only having 3-5 per planet makes it fun and varied. While all parties can be met in the capital
I enjoy all of Master the Dungeon videos 🎉
Absolutely criminal that this channel doesn't have 5x the following it already does. Top notch content.
Underrated channel
As a new DM, I'm glad I discovered this channel. I look forward to more of these insightful world-building tips
As a new player to DnD and trying to study up to be a DM this channel has helped SO MUCH.
you give the best tips for dms, you manage to make all your videos easy to understand and become better dms thank you
This channel is impressively helpful
Okay, I've watched dozens of dnd videos, yours are amongst the best. Clear and succinct, but not simplistic. Thanks!
A really professional channel. Kind of makes me think of hello futur me but for D&D because it gives a thorough look at the point of a tool (here a game tool for him a literary tool).
also the aqq inc book has a lot of detailed stuff and it functions similarly to a guild with a bit of a twist. its really cool
This is gonna help me so much with my world's guild lore, the most I've fleshed out is my Adventurer's Guild which formed to give people that have the necessary skills to help protect people and settlements from monsters a safe and legal way to explore and fight
Fantastic. Just had a player wanting to be involved in a "bail bondsman" guild. Time to put some things together based on this video. Thank you and keep up the good work.
One use I can imagine is a banking house that holds payment in bond. The PC's clients hire them for something and deposit the pay in bond with this financial institute which release it to the PC when conditions are met. The client can't withdraw the bonded amount and bolt with it, neither can their PC. The institution needs to be independent and trusted enough by everyone involved.
yesterday I was literally just asking myself, "so why would my players even want to be a part of this adventurer's guild, what is there to keep them from just leaving whenever?" Now I'm thinking about potential perks to maintaining/advancing membership, so thank you!
I love using guilds in my campaigns! Especially when I have an idea for a side quest or side story that can still benefit the party's goals. The guilds I've used are pretty standard (thieves guild, mages guild, merchants guild, etc.) But I like the idea of having my players make assessments on which guilds they want to join to help better flesh out their characters or to help them pursue a goal.
This was so in depth and helpful, thankyou!
Literally just found your channel and I immediately subscribed, your content is absolutely amazing
I remember when you guys only had like 1k Subs. Glad you gained so much subs in the last few weeks!
FYI, this also works if the guild happens to be an enemy organization. Being annoying to such an organization can get people to start keeping a close eye on you. Being a legitimate threat can have worse consequences. Some shop owners might start charging greater prices or lose essential products the adventurers are after. Certain officials may start turning a blind eye to lawless people going after the adventurers, even in broad daylight with guards being actively pulled from patrols. Hell, bounties might even get posted for the adventurers' arrest in some towns.
And the adventurers might never even know why if they aren't paying attention to said guild.
The algorithm just introduced me to your channel earlier today and I have been captivated by it! I sent your email a copy of my PDF I hope it finds you well and thank you for your outstanding production! I look forward to binge watching more episodes!
The content you provide is really of high quality. It's structured, concise, precise. It doesn't last for hours of blabla. It goes straight to the point! Great work! Not to mention the drawings which are really funny. This channel is a gold mine for new DMs like me. Keep it up! I'm looking forward to the next one!
I'm so glad I found your all's channel. Thanks for this video, and all the others!
I run some very guild-influenced campaigns, and this was a beautifully done and refreshingly in-depth guide. These are tips that I had to bash my poor, bruised brain against the prep desk to figure out myself as players threw me curveballs during the game, and having heard it presented like this beforehand would have saved me a lot of headaches. And I really enjoyed how this touched on so many related but tangential topics, answering the kinds of questions that aren't usually hit in an on-topic video but that are inevitably going to come up as a follow-up question once you try to put things into play. It's very much my own way of thinking... if a lot less focused on eating brains.
I just stumbled upon your channel and love it! I'm binging through as many videos as I can before my session tonight.
I've had a blast making and using a guild for the party to work with whenever they want to travel to new locations or just between major places. Having a rangers' guild give the party instructions on how to find someone to help in their travels almost always becomes its own unique quest and expands the depth of the world.
It's a lot more work because I'm not rolling generic random encounters, but it's been worth it so far since each place has its own need for a ranger to help others cross.
Definitely the best DnD tips I've seen yet on youtube. Thankyou so much for the content
You guys make very good videos, so thanks
This is shaping up to be a really great resource channel for roleplaying, in fact I'm using some of the stuff I've picked up from here in rpgs other than D&D as well!
Another great use of a major skilled as as a place to securely store backup spell books and as a resource for Magical in knowledge. Like a great magical library
I just found this channel and it is pure GOLD. Great content, straightforward, and I love the narrator's calm voice.
I love how carefully thought out every video you make is! So helpful!
Thank you SO much for this video! For some reason, guilds have never made much sense to me, but this helped LOADS.
this reminds me i got ogre guilds.
in my setting, ogres form part of human society since around 300 years ago. first they started getting bribed to keep of certain territories, then they got hired as mercenary shock troops during the great hob war, a hobgoblin invasion wich consequences are still felt in the continent. after that some lords who commanded them in the battlefield, hired them as heavy labour to reconstruct lost villages. this way they started getting acceptance in rural areas for heavy lifting and fast construction but still shunned in polite society. some got good making bussiness getting lords, merchants and ranchers pay good money for their services, given that they where well accustomed to just getting their stuff and leaving and lords didn't want ogre tribes just going around. this led to ogre tribes getting more money and educating their young in bussiness and trades. this led to the transition of ogre tribes into ogre guilds, representing the labour of any ogre in the kingdom around 120 years. this bothered other guilds that still considered them brutes and lower than urchins and rising tensions among them. this came to an end when the king got convinced that by divine right he owned any product growing on the land, from crops to cattle and wild game and derivates and he alone holds the right to trade, distribute and affix prices on any of it. this led to open revolts by several farming, hunting and labout guilds. the king hired the ogre guilds as riot breakers but not only they denied the king, but got on the side of the rioting guilds and held back not only the guard but the army and even managed to march to the door of the throne room itself and get inside with representatives of each affected and guild to negotiate with the king. the great guild rebellion was 50 years ago and older farmers still swear on ogre loyalty.
I always go to your channel for dnd advice! You're one of the few channels that put up a visual guide and it's easy for me to understand! And I enjoy looking at the cute art that the artist made
12:08 I was just thinking about my world and how the players would start off in the guild and then thinking about the fact that there’s gonna be lots of mechanics in this game. I feel called out.
After finding your channel it's helped revive my creative drive for my homebrew campaign so thanks a bunch
Love this advice! Guilds play such an important role in breathing life into a world
I have two games, one has the Adventurers' Guild, the other has the Messengers' Guild.
The Adventurers'Guild is a paramilitary organization that is basically the Pinkerton detective agency. They go somewhere and commit some pretty gross rights violations. They're currently managed by that games BBEG, an evil dragon who's also secretly the mayor of the city the party lives in.
The Messengers' Guild, who is basically the post office, is the guild that I have my players start off as members off because I really like using the plot of "the party is hired to transport a powerful but mysterious magic object." And the party usually ends up keeping the object and getting chased by the BBEG.
I’m very new to the channel, but your videos are well thought out and presented! An instant subscription for me, keep up the great work!
You deserve more subs
I feel like this channel doesn't have the proper attention it deserves.
I really like the content. Please keep going.
Every time I think the reknown is over it comes back 3x stronger
I just got my group into a guild and it's such a relief to have an easier excuse to send them on quests lol
I’m from Italy and saw the tips for a DnD mystery this morning, I really enjoyed it and I like also this video. Great work! Will you ever do anything more generic than just DnD stuff? I mean those video are great, they can easily adapt to any RPG game, I’m just curious if you will ever do it.
This channel is a DM's wet dream
This is the best channel on RUclips. Thank you.
Idk if you still check on comment for this video but I wanted to say thank you. This video was a big help
I started structuring my D&D campaigns with guild-centric play after picking up John Harper's Blades in the Dark. There were guilds ranging from monster hunter, to dungeon delvers, to religious fanatics. I felt that having a core adventuring philosophy and MO made my games super focused and really helped off-load some of the story telling onto the system, allowing players to focus more on how their character fit into the guild. Everyone had a common goal, which was to make the guild the best of its type, and that helped bring cohesion to the sessions.
I liked their ambition of bringing domain play back, and to do so from the very start. I think domain play can't be something jarring you're pressed into at level 8-10 but something you build up. Somewhere around level 3-5 maybe, when you have the equivalent of a street gang or mercenary platoon.
I like the idea of adventuring guilds being an extension of a kingdom's military. They can't send the army to handle every little problem and keeps the villagers from getting upset at the ruling class since the problems are getting handled.. Guilds can "match" the funds that the quest giver is able/willing to give in accordance with the scale of the issue.
That way the kingdom also gets alerted to potential problems earlier. If a guild can't entice adventurers for an issue then it's probably a large enough of a problem for the military to get involved.
Once players reach a certain amount of renown then perhaps they can even get scouted by nobles or reach knighthood.
The first thing that happens when a village joins the empire in Mutant UA is that a taxman/notary, an officer and a miltia troop shows up. The militia is a gendarmerie organzation, part countryside police and part paramilitary frontier garrison.
The cities and larger towns have a divide between the civilian constabulary, the army and the navy. At worst, they can send an army troop. A platoon of dudes with something between punt guns and light field artillery show up.
Villages routinely work on their own security. They can raise a posse to deal with a specific threat, keep a rotation of sentries or fund a semi-permanent guard force. They smoke out tunnels, dynamite nests, bait traps. Going on big game hunts is a pride of the country aristocracy.
Adventurers don't often mess with villages and towns because a town will screw them up so damn hard. If a village noticed that the central government wasn't present, they could start thinking they can ignore the taxman.
A bank would be a fun faction to have on the region map. The banks who survived in the early modern period were huge family organizations with branch offices around a region.
Holding an amount of cash in bond between two outside interests could easily be a service they provide. The employer deposits the payment with the bank, who holds it until the employed have fulfilled their part, at which point it is released. The employer can't simply withdraw the cash in bond and bail either.
My biggest recommendation for DMs is the Ravnica book. It has guilds of different societal roles, mission/quest ideas, villain ideas, locations. The Dice set of set is my absolute favorite too. Gonna start a new campaign and dont have a villain? Roll the guild dice and see what the players are up against. Rolled Boros Legion? Theyre up against an army of holy warriors. The book then helps you find a villain OF that guild.
Absolutely love the high quality content that comes out of this channel!
Thank you for putting all the videos in a playlist. They're all great and now I'm caught up and sad.
I look forward to more!
Really likes the idea that an adventures guild is a place for mercenaries to be busy and earn money when there’s not a war going on. And got to thinking
What if the Adv guild had 2 parts, regular Adv guild and the mercenaries guild. Basic adv guild is dealing with small scale stuff, lone groups of bandits, smal time monster attacks, escorting caravans, and cleanup after mercs guild. While mercs do the big jobs. Fighting a rogue high level wizard (on behalf of mages guild) or a necromancer, or fighting a large bandit group with the help of maybe a few adv guild members. Etc.
Wondering if you read the Acquisitions Incorporated book? Lots of great stuff in there focused on making guilds.
Consistently great, in depth videos!
5:10 Sounds like how I’ve handled Guilds (and other organizations) for decades now, separating your rank (renown) from the guild (or organization) as a whole’s reaction to you, which I treat as if it was an NPC and if it sees you as hated/indifferent/friendly/etc.
The “state sanctioned thieves guild” is pretty well explored in sir Terry Pratchett’s disc world books, especially the city watch series.
We went with roman/byzantian street gangs on the Moon. The police of the city only care about crimes against the ruler and the city. The private guard forces of the aristocracy only protect their masters and their property. The courts are there to settle disputes between the aristocracy and enforce the will of the ruler. The majority of citizen plebs are left to makeshift solutions. In practice this means street gangs. There's no central street gang or mob in our current city, there's a constant struggle between rising and waning street gangs for turf and protection rackets. They dabble in any crime they can get away with on the side from slavery to drug dealing to theft. In the starter town, this underworld was more firmly controlled by two mercantile combines. Everyone is a client of someone, and a patron of someone else.
You know this automatically helped me consider my Dragon Hunter's guild significantly better.
I once read that a good way to think about guilds is to look at bar associations for lawyers and the AMA for doctors.
Which makes the claims of monopolistic tendencies, such as cartelization, all the more clear.
I would run a codified thieves' guild as a group that exists as a tenuous balance between keeping profitable and keeping the government happy. The guards will look the other way for certified guild members' crimes, but will in turn require them to engage in "special jobs" for the head of state and his advisors. These jobs could be anything from targeted robbery, to espionage, to assassinations. This relationship is strictly on a need-to-know basis, and is handled cautiously so that any government involvement can be safely denied. It's basically a medieval version of the modern CIA mixed with a certain criminal element from a book I don't want to reveal because it's a big spoiler to that book. Those who know what I'm talking about will know what I mean.
My thieves guild was originally a group of maids who were "borrowing" their employers jewelry in order to pass themselves off as rich ladies and thus get rich husbands. The guild part came when they realized that all of them borrowing jewelry at the same time increased the odds of her noticing before they could put it back. To cover for their early mistakes, they hired a circus acrobat to masquerade as a phantom thief, jumping from rooftop to rooftop and leading the guards on a merry chase. Towards the end of the chase, the guards faced a sadistic choice as the acrobat dropped the borrowed jewelry on a moving cart and then took off in a different direction. Due to marriage with a high-ranking guard, the maids ensured that the jewelry was chosen and recovered...
...unfortunately, the legend attracted a "copycat criminal" who sought to follow in the footsteps of the phantom thief/ circus acrobat / "guild master."
Just found this channel. Really cool and useful insights. Love the animations. Especially the 'give more detail' to a character one. Comedy. Keep up the good work and thank you for the videos!
This channel's great! Your ideas are wonderful and your art style's so good! Please keep it up!
I would like to DM or play the founding of an Adventurers Guild. Some years ago I played with a group that had a guild: each player could have different characters than, when not used, will act as the guild npcs. They were really meticulous, they had a stat block were they keep track of the guild's notoriety, its possession, ect...
The only thing I didn't like so much was the requirements to become a member: you have to be an experienced adventurer (be the same level as everyone else), so it had an elite-oriented, classist vibe (plus my first ever character was level 15 😅).
But I liked the idea and it allowed to have different adventures, with different PGs or party compositions, without reworking the setting and background story every time. It allowed also some rotation in the masters, so you could do a long story focused campaign an the let the master breathe a little, while another was making a short adventure.
Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!
This is how I did it:
two sets of token for each guild positive and negative you can use cardboard buttons or whatever.
Rules:
- Guilds exists only in larger cities. Players aren't in a large city - they don't get to access a guild.
- Guilds are divided into Espionage - Martial - Magic - Scholar (there can be more than one guild for each - and interactions are obvious)
- Guilds are used to make missions easier: Need to know location in a map (Scholar's Guild), need to find out enemy movement (Marital) , need fake documents/a one extra D20 for a deception check (Espionage Guild)... etc.
- Guilds , if membership is required, you have to run missions. You get a token for each mission completed.
- If you decide that Guilds are enemies then for each token obtained from one guild subract (or add negative token to competitor guild).
Want to give you Bard or Rouge something to do? Create an internal power struggle in an Espionage guild.
Want your fighter to level up faster and obtain favor from the local ministry? Join a Joust.
Your wizard wants an excuse to dip toes in another school of Magic? OOOOppps this Magic guild only accepts wizards dedicated to the School of Illusion or Evocation... sorry NO, Necomancy ( _use the knock spell three times at dusk when the sheep bleat_ )
I gave the hunter's guild in my homebrew a rule that registration fees are waived if an applicant save the life of a guild hunter on the job, or completes quests that they posted outside the guild because no one was able to handle them internally. It gave my low level players a taste of what they'd be in for, and the guild gets to attract new competent contributors.
Full-time big game hunters in Mutant are often aristocrats, they're the ones with resources and leisure time in the empire to do such things. The typical aristocratic big-game hunter has a couple servants on her expedition and uses a sort of upscaled elephant rifle/punt gun/light artillery piece with one servant as the designated carrier/loader.
Big game hunting is a pride of the country aristocracy, and often reserved for them. With the aid of servants and a posse to track and chase out the monster of course.
Villages raise a posse to deal with specific threat. They might smoke out a tunnel, dynamite a nest or dig traps. Experienced villagers are often better hunters of the local wildlife than random mercenaries from outside. Part of their skillset is how to make use of big game the best way.
I'm sure I'm not the only one to use this idea for my setting and doubt I'll be the last, but for my setting there's both a Bounty Hunter's Guild and a Mercenary's Guild. Now, both have existed for sometime, but only started becoming more and more prevalent in the last couple years in-game due to the fact that there's a war going on and since the respective empires and kingdoms need to send a large chuck on their militia to the front lines just to make sure their borders are protected, it leaves a considerable amount of problems to arise and grow that need to be solved before they become detrimental.
Mercenaries are basically required to deal with local or even regional issues like a monster attacks, missing persons reports, investigating why crops or other resources are either going missing or getting destroyed assisting in the gathering of artifacts in dungeons, etc. while Bounty Hunters deal with various criminals, bandits and even spies that have managed to infiltrate the country.