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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 3261100" data-attributes="member: 7240">Actually, that sounds like the Spanish Hapsburgs. That's what the conquistadors were. Pizarro, Cortes, Aguirre, de Soto and a host of less famous ones led small, multi-ethnic parties that were largely self-financed and operating at arm's length to the crown. The adventurers who obtained the Aztec and Inca gold were not really that different from your average adventuring party, except in size. Furthermore, the most adventuring party-like endeavours were the subsequent quests for El Dorado in South America and the Seven Cities of Cibola in present-day New Mexico -- these groups were even smaller, more competitive and bigger risk-takers.KrazyHades also makes a good point about licensing. Licensing was pretty important for the Spanish Hapsburg conquistadors. But the best stuff on licensing adventurers was in the 2E Runequest campaign scenarios Pavis and Big Rubble. There were all kinds of regulations, a bureaucracy dealing with adventurers and, in what I think was a tip of the hat to Paranoia, fabulous adventuring forms for the players to fill out.Adventuring, to succeed, cannot be centred on your core territory. It has to be a way of expanding your territory. New territory obtained through adventuring or, more likely, territory the empire never owns but raids periodically does not need to be heavily controlled by imperial authorities. They can let the adventurers set up all kinds of personal fiefs; as long as your world doesn't have giant smallpox epidemics, the chances that territory temporarily seized and plundered by adventurers could one day be fully incorporated into your empire, possibly rivaling the centre for power is next to nothing. So, let the crazy risk-takers run their little military colony or despotate until the locals manage to throw them out. As long as the empire keeps getting a share of the plunder or tribute being exacted from the territory, it gains much and loses nothing by delegating its administration to the unstable individuals who are extracting wealth from it.Well, I think the adventurers having to set themselves up as despots in order to keep extracting value from an imperial march, borderland or uncharted territory adds interesting political and economic dimensions to the game.I used to game with a guy who, every time we cleaned out a dungeon or ruin would proclaim, "Awesome. Let's make this place our base!" It would be great if instead of being a ridiculous impulse, this became central to campaigns.Anyway, lots of other great ideas in this thread. It sounds like you have hit upon an excellent idea.</blockquote>

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