Adventurers in the campaign world

[Snapdragyn]

A couple of recent posts have touched upon the great power which adventurers would wield in the campaign world, both raw & financial. This brings up a point: how would a 'realistic' campaign world deal with this phenomenon? I've thought of a few possibilities, which could all exist in different places within a world depending on local law & custom.

1) Adventurers are outlaws.

All 'PC'-types work for governments or guilds. The 'adventuring party' (henceforth 'AP') does not exist as a social phenomenon. If an AP enters a territory which operates by this standard, they can expect a visit from the authorities once it is realized what type of people they are.

2) Adventurers are loose canons.

Most 'PC'-types work for governments or guilds. APs are rare, but they do exist. Most power centers regard APs with great wariness as a potentially powerful ally or enemy, but not likely to be a trusted friend. Commoners are likely to fear the AP, either shunning them or showing extreme deference.

3) Adventurers are mercenaries.

This is a bit different from 2, though there are similarities. APs are more likely to belong to regulated transnational guilds; a status that provides a measure of reassurance to governments who trust that their contracts will be upheld by the guild even if the AP should fail. Of course, this also means that the AP you hire to defend you today could be hired to attack you when the current contract ends; whether this means it is best to avoid hiring APs or to keep them under long-term contract is a matter of individual policy.

4) Adventurers are heroes... or villains.

Under this paradigm, APs are expected to serve a higher cause. As long as you know the patron of the AP in question, you know where you stand with them. Treatment of APs would depend on congruence between the goals of the AP's patron & local culture; an AP serving the god of death might be well received in a necromancer's stronghold (even if they were of neutral alignment or in a campaign with 'grey' alignments), while an AP serving the god of warm fuzzies would probably get a less than fuzzy reaction.



I wonder, though, which of these paradigms would be most common in a pseudo-medieval setting? What sort of regulations would be likely to arise to control these wandering 'tactical nukes' of the world?

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

5) Adventurers are kings by their own hands
Often, they wear their crowns upon troubled brows, probably because by the time they reached 15th level and carved out kingdoms by the strength of their blades, some other saps were reaching 14th level and becoming arch-dukes fit to challenge the present monarchs. The world is awash with super-powered warrior-chieftains ever contesting for dominance, while the masses huddle in awe and fear before the power of their living gods. A dark age, a harsh age, and age great and terrible, for Here There Be Dragons, and They Be Worth Darn Good XP.​

Personally, I find this one the most likely. Unless so common and so mundane that ever kingdom expects to have a few dozen bands to call upon (Forgotten Realms) or so rare that the PCs are literally the only PC-race creatures of their level (Eberron), adventurers have the ultimate in force multiplication.

Any sizable group of commoners *needs* an adventurer or party thereof to protect them from unsavory adventurers (and more powerful mosters), so they'll provide the adventurers with assorted and sundry services. Commoners will gather in sufficient numbers to ply worthwhile goods to their adventurering lords - a lusty barbarian may settle for the favors of a few tavern wenches, but the most valuable protectors, mighty clerics and wizards, require more expensive services like building great temples or aiding in magical research.

This develops into a kind of mini-nationalist situation. It's not feudalism because the adventurer-barons, unlike feudal lords and their monarchs, don't need anything from the adventurer-kings - nor do the kings have much need of lesser adventurers. Loose alliances of former party members form like the the treaty-bound great powers of 19th-century earth, save for the fact that, as soon as they settle down to rule, lower-level adventurers start to catch up with them.

As the turnover in monarchs is likely to be very high, and not to impact the common folk much aside from having a succession of good and bad rulers, most of the actual management of these state-estates probably falls to stewards (the butler did it!). These high-level experts or aristocrats wouldn't involve themselves in their masters' conflicts and would serve the territory, not the individual ruler.

 

[kigmatzomat]

6. Adventurers are privateers/freedom fighters.
The group has a letter of Marquis from an organization giving them the right to take out pirates and other outlaws. Of course, "outlaws" include foreign merchants in neutral or unclaimed territories. This is somewhere between Mercenary and Guild because they are official but unpaid, recouping losses by the gear of the "outlaws" they capture/destroy.

IMC I use a mixture of the above. Some areas don't like adventurers, others wan't them regulated, others use them as "contractors" and a few will encourage them.

I use a subset of the "King" variant, which is to make them lesser nobles (i.e. land-holding knights). Generally I place them in areas that come under frequent attack or are the subject of some form of dispute. The cost of giving an adventuring party a few hundred acres is nothing against the increased production when the orcs learn to not harass an AP with a vested interest. And if the AP doesn't have the diplomatic skills to defuse a political situation, they will blow it up in a very deniable manner and likely kill some of the troublemakers so the survivors are much more amenable to negotiations. And if everyone gets killed in the process then I guess the King has to come in and claim all the territories for himself, poor guy.

 

[Wraith Form]

This brings up a point: how would a 'realistic' campaign world deal with this phenomenon?

Well, this is obvious but...
7. Adventurers are common folk thrust into extraordinary circumstances. Ya'know, the Luke Skywalker/Frodo Baggins/Tom Hanks in Private Ryan effect. Farmers and rabble being thrust into situations beyond their control and responding accordingly [i.e. heroically]. The rest of the population (including, potentially, the BBEG) doesn't even know who the heroes are, so they pass in the streets undetected. Finances? They don't get much and they don't need much. Copper tends to be more common than gold....

(Or did I not get the "point" of the thread?)

Cool topic, by the way....sparked some ideas for me. Thanks!

 

[VirgilCaine]

My campaign world includes countries where 1 and or 2 are common, 3 is pretty common, and 4 probably also exists to a point. 5 also, in the appropriate (coastal) areas--and the Coastal Princes Archipelago.

8. Adventurers are treated like private citizens like anyone else.
This only works in anarchies or in countries where there's a lot of social equality, such as in one of MC's barbarian border kingdoms.

Because private security measures (a multitude of cleric orders that contribute funds and manpower to city watchmen, rural militias, mercenary units and the Wizards Guild, as well as other adventuring parties) provide more than enough firepower to respond to any threat, adventurers are unregulated. The PCs work as 3, 4, or 5 or as something else.

 

[Klaus]

9. Adventurers are big-time celebrities.
When the AP comes down the road into a village, the younger kids see them as inspiration to escape their lot in life. It's like being the rock stars or movie stars of the D&D world. The AP's appearance adds much-needed excitement to the commoners' lives, and sows the seeds for a whole new generation of dungeon-delvers.

 

[adwyn]

9. Adventurers are big-time celebrities.

We always saw them more like the motorcycle gangs in the movies that were popularin the fifties. They come into town wearing nothing but trophies and stolen gear, half of it taken from tombs. They swagger about, generally killing anyone they wish, taking what they want, and behaving in ways good folk never would. They'll take the cow you need to survive the winter then give you a golden statue you could never trade without it being stolen and call you an ingrate for not thanking them. Even the ones who profess to be "Good" will stand by their 'mates' in any dispute, no matter how vile the cause any day of the week.

 

[DragonLancer]

I'd go for option #7 myself. Sure by their very definition adventurers may cause trouble to befall a city or kingdom, but they also bring back items and gold that can be taxed. At the end of the day, they are free citizens like most everybody else.

 

[random user]

My take is this:

Adventurers are like Football Players.

For every pro NFL football player there are hundreds in "lesser" leagues (AFL, Europe etc), and for each of those there are hundreds in college, and for each of those there are hundreds who play high school football.

Most adventurers never get past the "high school football" level. They either die (think of all stories you've heard about TPK's and partial party kills) or discover that they simply aren't good enough to get to the next level. These guys adventure for a couple years (if they are lucky and don't die) and settle in to be a town guard or perhaps own a piece of land if they got lucky with treasure.

Even at the higher levels (ie playing at a semi-professional level), many adventurers can "get the job done" as long as it's not too challenging, but they simply still don't have the strength, intelligence, or skill needed to play at the highest levels. They have some amount of skill that your normal person doesn't have, and do well enough to earn a living. But they still don't have that special quality that makes a star. Adventurers here still have a high mortality rate, but nowhere near the death rates for the "high school" or "college" adventurer.

Then you have the NFL teams. Even among them, there are standouts. Not every party or team will have a star. The lower tier is still more powerful than 99+% of the population, and that commands some respect, but everyone still knows there are bigger fish. A good example would be a 2nd string corner for a team not doing very well. He's well compensated and most people hold him in fairly high respect for his abilities, but people aren't going to go crazy for him.

Lastly you have the stars. These are the people that get all the attention, that all the people want to meet. In most campaigns this is what the pc's end up being. But just because they are stars, doesn't mean that all adventuring parties are stars. Sure there are some, but they are quite rare. A lot of adventuring parties just go out and do a decent job, have a decent living, but will never become famous.

 

[Herpes Cineplex]

9. Adventurers are big-time celebrities.
When the AP comes down the road into a village, the younger kids see them as inspiration to escape their lot in life. It's like being the rock stars or movie stars of the D&D world. The AP's appearance adds much-needed excitement to the commoners' lives, and sows the seeds for a whole new generation of dungeon-delvers.

This has always been my favorite version.

Especially considering the whacked-out economy of vanilla D&D, where monsters who spend all their time squatting in a filthy lair somehow have more treasure (both in coins and in magic items) than a village of a thousand people. You know, where somehow the rules assume that adventurers will have massive financial resources (especially wizards!) but somehow everyone else will barely be able to afford to eat dirt.

It just makes so much more sense when you realize that the best adventurers are A-list celebrities who are involved with Important Causes, and the worst adventurers are strung-out rock stars with serious entitlement issues.

And no one can get away from them...go down to the local tavern, and you can bet cash money (which you probably don't have, being a commoner) that the bard will be singing about some adventurer who did something cool once upon a time. Go listen to the town crier, and he'll be bleating on about how mighty adventurers are needed to avert the disaster which looms over us all. And out in the yard after their chores are done, your sons and daughters are waving sticks around like they're swords or wands, re-enacting the Raid on the Temple of Inexplicable Evil, and talking about all the stuff they'd buy if they were wealthy successful adventurers.

--
and somehow "a farm" and "livestock" never end up on those lists
ryan