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D&D 5E What proportion of the population are adventurers?

R

R_Chance

Adventurer
Krachek said:
So I will give my first law of demographic for DnD,
for any size of a location, there is always at least one group or individual rival, and one possible ally or in need for help.
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True or there wouldn't be any adventure to be had. That's story related as opposed to demographics / world building. The smallest village could end up hosting an adventure. That sounds... wrong, like they were throwing a dinner party :D
 

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K

Krachek

Hero
R_Chance said:
True or there wouldn't be any adventure to be had. That's story related as opposed to demographics / world building. The smallest village could end up hosting an adventure. That sounds... wrong, like they were throwing a dinner party :D
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Demographic is in service of the story, not opposed, otherwise if you choose the opposite you can have this party of adventurers stuck three sessions in a row at the inn, because there was absolutely nothing interesting happening 100 miles around.
 

Mercurius

Mercurius

Legend
Here's a somewhat unconventional route to address the question: consider adventuring parties as vaguely synonymous with real-life gangs.

According to Wikipedia, as of 2011 there were more than 33,000 gangs active in the US, with 1.4 million members. There were roughly 310 million people in the US that year, so that means that about 1 in 220 people are gang members, and about 1 gang per <10,000 people.
 
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R

R_Chance

Adventurer
Krachek said:
Demographic is in service of the story, not opposed, otherwise if you choose the opposite you can have this party of adventurers stuck three sessions in a row at the inn, because there was absolutely nothing interesting happening 100 miles around.
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My game is a sandbox. I have a starting location with numerous adventure possibilities and the demographics to match. It draws would be adventurers from across the world. Now, if they wander off to a quiet village with nothing going on... not my fault :D
 



A

Ace

Adventurer
Giltonio_Santos said:
If we consider that bail bondsman is a similar real-life occupation, Google tells us that there are about 15,500 of them in the US, for a population of less than 330 million. That would mean not a lot of adventurers running around, which is fine for my own standards.
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Not bad.
Your numbers would be 1 in 2000 or so which means Waterdeep has maybe 50 . I think that might be a bit low for worlds with magic, monsters and limited government

If you add other adventurous professions, flanuers, archeologists, climbers and the like its probably 30K, maybe 100 in Waterdeep

Given that D&D worlds are more adventurous than our own entirely settled world I'd probably go with 1% or so with some levels in something. This does mean a lot of low level hedge witches, "veterans aka L1 or 2 fighters" and such.

Autarch who makes the B/X variation "Adventurer Conqueror King." has very complete rules for for how many people are adventurers called th Demographic of Heroism

Its outstanding and ties very nicely to its extremely authentic economy allowing D&D and realism.

The bad side is that its only good to L14 where the game stops.
 

K

Krachek

Hero
I made some search on google,
9,087,000 military personnel served on active duty during the Vietnam Era (Aug 5, 1964 – May 7, 1975). 2 8,744,000 GIs were on active duty during the war (Aug 5, 1964 – March 28, 1973). 3. 2,709,918 Americans served in Vietnam , this number represents 9.7% of their generation.

US population at these time was 210M.
So we can imagine a society where 1/20 people served duty in war. Is this sufficient to make them adventurers? Not sure, but it makes them a good edge over the commoner template.
 

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