Guilds and Adventurers
Mystic Eye Games has this great campaign setting called The Hunt: Rise of Evil. It does not seem to as well know as Bastion’s Oathbound or Fantasy Flight Game’s Midnight; however I have found The Hunt to be the most creative of the new campaign worlds. Guilds and Adventurers is a book for the Hunt setting, but it is easily transferable into any fantasy setting.
Guilds and Adventures was actually published back in 2002 in paperback format. Recently, however, Mystic Eye Games has decided to re-release the book as a pdf. This is a new trend that many publishers are doing. They take some of their older books that have pretty much ended their cycle of selling in the print world and gone the way of the e-books. This is a great and cheaper way to get some of the books people may have missed. I hope RPGNow continues making deals with publishers of this type.
Guilds and Adventurers comes a four and half meg zip file. Unzipped the pdf is a little under five megs in size. The pdf is one hundred and thirty one pages in length. The cover is a nice piece by Matt Bober. It depicts the happenings at a marketplace. There’s a couple in the fore ground with a thief behind them in shadow. Behind them is a person fixing a wagon, a blacksmith, and others. There are some brightly colored tents that remind me of a festival. All and all it is a nice cover and really an attention getter. The layout of the books is tight. I think Doug Herring is one of the better layout men in the business today. However, the layout was designed originally for the print book. It includes nice border on the pages that does consume a bit of ink when printing. Also, the pdf has no bookmarks. I would have liked if they would have included them when the converted it to a pdf. There is a small table of contents and no index so finding things can be a bit of a problem.
The book is a very clever way to use a single prestige class and a single core class. Each is very flexible with new abilities gained at certain levels. What the abilities are is determined by which guild a person is in. There are many, many guilds described and each lists the different things a guildsman gets. There are thirty different guilds presented here and by using them as an example it would be pretty easy to design new ones that fit in easily in this system.
Each guild is first given a brief description. It explains the purpose and duties of the guild and its members are. It can also detail what type of access the members get as well as where guild halls might be located. Each guild has their own symbol fully detailed and pictured. Some symbols differ depending on certain things within the guild. For instance the Mason’s guild has flags of the nation or noble house the mason guild is associated with. Each has specific requirements for the prestige class and lists the fees and what access to the guildhall might grant the person. There are different dues and access for associates and full members. Guilds also have a specialized skill associated with them, usually a craft. Each has their own list of class skills and guild feats that they can gain as they increase in level.
Guilds and Adventurers is a great book filled with options for non player characters and player characters alike. It covers many guilds, is very useful for any fantasy campaign, and is very easy to use and expand upon.
