Why Adventuring Parties Should Never Be Trusted If you owned a tavern in a fantasy world, which group would concern you more? A dragon. Or seven adventurers. The dragon probably wants livestock, treasure, or perhaps the occasional kingdom. Its goals are usually straightforward. Adventurers, on the other hand, arrive with a remarkable ability to turn ordinary situations into memorable disasters. Within a few hours they will have discovered a conspiracy, offended a local noble, acquired a mysterious artefact, started a fight, and accidentally accepted responsibility for saving the world. The dragon, by comparison, seems refreshingly predictable. Every Adventuring Party Contains At Least One Liability Fantasy adventuring parties are built around a simple principle: No matter how competent the group appears, at least one member is an ongoing threat to public safety. There is usually: A knight with more courage than common sense. A wizard conducting dangerous experiments. A ...
Building a Fantasy Guild That Actually Feels Real Fantasy is full of guilds. Assassins’ guilds. Mages’ guilds. Adventurers’ guilds. Thieves’ guilds. Mercenaries’ guilds. Most of them exist for a single purpose: handing out quests. A hero walks into a building, collects a mission, kills a monster, receives a reward, and leaves. The guild itself rarely feels like an organisation made up of actual people. The best fantasy guilds feel different. They feel as though they existed before the story began and will continue to exist long after the heroes have wandered off to save the world. So what makes a fantasy guild feel real? Rules Nobody Understands Real organisations accumulate rules. Not sensible rules. Rules. The sort of regulations that were created to solve a problem twenty years ago and somehow survived three management restructures, two wars, and a fire. Guilds should be no different. The moment an organisation becomes large enough, bureaucracy begins breeding in ...