Why do lots of D&D settings, Pathfinder's setting, and

>>49568351

Mostly backlash from an excessive amount of "the chosen brotherhood"/"but thou must" group-of-destiny-big-artifact-evil-wizard bullshit. Now instead of destroy the One Ring it's be part of a mercenary company.

Except the rules grew out of a Destined to Destroy the One Ring era so things get awkward and every country church has a small-town cleric who can put Gandalf to shame in the powers department.

5e's stat crunch helped this a good bit but it's still a setting that's a far cry from Middle Earth much less Middle Ages on everything but Aesthetic.

>>49568351

I mean I guess? I've never really run into this problem before. Neither as a player or as a GM running a game for people who expected an "adventurers guild".

As far as why adventurers are so common in official settings, it's because those settings are written by mediocre fantasy writers who are just using the setting as vehicles for their own OCs.

>>49568351
Because then the PCs don't have to think too hard about the backstory of their characters. Lots of players just want to jump in the game and think about backstory later. Also having PC-level characters around opens up resources the party can use even without having the class in their roster.

Most D&D settings don't do that. They seem common because you interact with more PC class type people because there's not much adventuer to be had by dealing with pig farmers all the time.

And really people with PC levels should be common because most settlements would be wiped out by the local wild life if they weren't.

>>49568351

Because tens of thousands of adventurers existed in real life - the amount of successful adventurers, however, well, that is something else entirely, and a bit where D&D skews things.

>>49569245
>tens of thousands of adventurers existed in real life
Tiny slice of the population.

>>49571011
Tell that to medieval Italy. Mercenaries (read: adventurers with no goblins to slay) did most of the fighting for the Italian city-states, including the Vatican. Hell, one captain named Francesco Sforza even adventured himself into being the duke of Milan, an office his family held for almost a century after.

>>49568351
I think its because no one wants to be the destined chosen ones possessing powers far beyond the average man who then gets killed by a spike trap built by shit slinging goblins.

It's for the convenience of shared settings. If you want to get a table full of strangers going, you just say "the Adventurer's Guild threw you together." "The Guild sent a new PC to replace the old one who died." "The Guild is why everyone in this shop is running the same adventure." It also makes a convenient place to go get missions, especially in video games. It's on the same level as meeting in a tavern.

>>49568351
Ran a game where the PCs barged into what they thought was an adventurer's guild(it was a guard station, and I told them that, but whatever) to pick up a job. Receptionist told them they didn't need the help, being in the middle of a city away from monsters and all that.

Like, no, nigga, you don't get paid for being a murderhobo if the city has cops.

>>49572220
>medieval guard station has receptionist

Why.

>>49568351
Overall I agree with your idea, if not your angry sentiment.

>>49568351
I like Blacky the Blackball's justification in his dominion rules for 5e and BECMI:

>In a world where someone can teleport into your bedchamber while you're asleep and disintegrate you, or where a high level fighter can cut down you and your bodyguards in a few seconds, being a noble (especially royalty) is a high risk profession. Add to that the number of vampire and doppelgangers and the like that might want to eat you or control you and it's clearly a very dangerous job.

>So any noble who is - in D&D terms - a "normal man" isn't going to survive long. Similarly, any noble who is only in that position because they've inherited it from their parent after a life of luxury isn't going to survive long.

>Consequently, to have any long term stability you need to make sure that people are given titles of nobility only if suitably experienced and capable. The ideal way to do this, of course, is to make sure that any potential noble has had a successful adventuring career. Not only does it ensure their competence, it also means they've experience enough of the world to be able to understand and deal with dragon attacks or infestations of werewolves or whatever.

>So you end up with a system of patronage where nobles keep an eye on the career of adventurers looking for potential heirs. This benefits everyone. It makes adventuring socially acceptable (the children of nobles need to become adventurers in order to "prove themselves" before they can inherit, and commoners will take up the life as a means of social climbing - after all, many of those children of nobles will die in some dungeon somewhere, and someone has to be qualified to inherit power in their place), helps keep adventurers from being "murderhobos", and gives a good in-character reason why the high level nobles send low level adventurers on quests they could easily do themselves. It's not laziness. It's networking, testing character, and supporting the next generation of rulers.

>>49568351
I dunno, I don't do it in my setting.

Adventurers are fairly rare and rarer still are those who make a real name for themselves.

There's still plenty of skilled warriors, casters, thieves, etc. but they tend to be solo acts or often heads of their own personal organizations. In rare cases they're part of a larger cabal (relatively larger, like... maybe twelve more people) of similar caliber or specializing in another area of the same class.

There is the "thieves guild" cliche, but the thieves guild are much more 'hush hush', and 'thieves guild' only came about because they often used various other businesses and other guilds as a front and referred to eachother as 'members of the (merchant's) guild'.

Once a few cells were busted though and it was revealed there was such a well-organized crime syndicate, they got branded as 'thieves guild'.

Ironically, the thieves guild is technically the single largest guild because 'fighters guild' and 'mages guild' don't really exist as they're all a bunch of nebulous orders and schools.

All of this is helped that the world is "small" at the moment and I'm focusing on one relatively new (like maybe began eighty years ago) Kingdom founded by exiles from "The Old World"