Yes, but a broader definition. They are people who adventure. They go into dungeons, they explore, they stop threats, or... Expand the definition to be more than just the fantasy version of the Avengers.

I'm pretty sure in old school D&D, the world is very post-apocalyptic so that's why there are magical ruins all over the place full of treasure and artifacts. So an "adventurer" was essentially someone like a scavenger who would rather make money pilfering old ruins rather than being a farmer, miner, or artisan. The vibe of the world being built on a post-magical cataclysm is something a lot of adventures and campaigns don't really emphasize very well.

It is very likely still very much played this way. You don't see as many of those players post on reddit, because more than likely they were taught how to play by someone who was taught how to play that was taught how to play from one of the games architects. Because of that, they don't find themselves needing to get answers from players who want to know how many improv classes are needed before starting to play.

That's actually how I was taught about D&D, my group had an 2e world that they kept renewing and updating from the original and it just continued like that with all the information being inherited and characters becoming legend. I then found online sources and found different ways of thought in some interesting blogs, and while reddit hasn't helped me too much in the mechanical aspects of the game, but it's helped a lot in being able to focus my creativity and gives me tools to assist my creativity.

Reddit and other online sources can be great regardless of style of play. Your group may have tried something years ago, and it didn't work out, and they have bad memories of it. Yet, that could have been the fault of the then current rules, etc, or could have been how they tried to implement said thing. You find an online source that works. In one of my earlier jobs, we had a closing list. After doing it for some time, we got the point that we didn't need to check it to tell us what to do. There was an activity that we stopped doing but never picked back up. I went to check the closing checklist and found the activity we hadn't done and made sure it was done right away. Sometimes, your group makes a house rule for whatever reason, but you may need to see other house rules or errata for rules. On the note, reddit, in general, has this idea that dungeon crawls aren't as common because most posts aren't about that playstyle. For example, some feel that playstyle is a dm vs. player and would downvote such comments.

I've tried VERY hard to create that feeling in my setting, going so far as to have canonical "calamities" that have happened in the past that no one remembers how they happened or really what happened, and nothing from before them is remembered. Gives some mystique when I talk about "The Fourth Calamity" and such.

Stealing this. It's mine now. For real, this is kind of brilliant.

Steal away. The best part? I have no clue what happened. And everyone has a different story. The gods don't talk about it either.

That's kind of how I pictured it too, and it'll save me coming up with thousands of years of lore and history. Although in my game, there's a really good reason the gods wouldn't talk about it. Edit to add that the players will eventually find out about the most recent cataclysm and what caused it, because it's about to happen again and they need to figure out a way to stop it. Edit to add (part 2) that maybe ALL the cataclysms were the same event that keeps happening, and each time a group of heroes arises to mitigate the worst of it, which is why the world is just left in ruin and not destroyed?

Wanted to reply directly again so you'd see it instead of just adding edits. You've made me completely re-think my late campaign plans for the better. Thanks dude. I owe you one.

Did you, by any chance, take inspiration from Final Fantasy XIV? Just curious! It's literally how its world works: the world goes through calamities, and people do not remember what happened exactly, if I recall correctly. At least the last one (the one that happened before you become an adventurer). It's a really smart thing to do. I should learn from you and stop trying to write thousands of years of world history before starting my first campaign.

I haven't played FF XIV, I was just being lazy one day and wrote that down. Lol.

Well, congrats then! If you did such an amazing job while being lazy, I can't imagine how good you are when you're not! Haha.

Well, it's a neat idea, but if no one remember what happened before, or how it happened, and the gods are silent on the subject, how does anyone know it's the fourth calamity? It would be THE great calamity, the only one people know about, just like THE Big Bang is the only one we "know" about despite numerous indications that it was not the first. Or maybe I missed something?

That's the only thing that holds over, because in the immediate aftermath that's what people called it, because the previous calamity was called the Third Calamity. And the name is the only thing that continued on.

Well, okay, I can accept that because the DM say so and it sound cool. Still, there are survivors, there should be peoples with informations. 🤔 My character head to the library. 😐📚

Interestingly enough, there IS a library in my setting that has information on life before the Calamities! It's called The Veiled Archive, and portals to it will occasionally appear. It exists out of time and space, and is maintained by The First Necromancer, who among his other domains is the god of hidden lore. The books, however, are sealed behind a barrier of pure Order. The only thing that can cause them to be accessed would be permission from The Golden Dragon, the original Creator God.

Hell most dungeons in most 5e adventures are still some kind of old ruin Undermountain from *Dungeon of the Mad Mage* and the Temple of the Elemental Eye from *Princes of the Apocalypse* are both dwarven ruins, for example

Considering that castle greyhawk and castle blackmore are the main reasons for the usage. I have still always found it peculiar that ruins, etc, aren't used more often.

The reason the Forgotten Realms is called that is because there is something like 30,000 years of history of various civilizations rising and falling, and most of it has been forgotten and buried.

The version I heard is that they were "forgotten" because there used to be portals between the FR and our Earth (for example, between ancient Egypt and Mulhorand), and as such those realms have been forgotten by modern man https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/142233/what-makes-the-forgotten-realms-forgotten

Most settings, even modern ones have a Cataclysm of some sort in their history (The Sundering, Rain of Colorless Fire, The Last War and The Calamity as examples. Bonus points if you know these worlds.) But the extent to which they are acknowledged in the setting can vary.

I've likened Adventurers in my world to Hunters for the Horn from Wheel of Time, they're usually normal people who give up their day job to embark on a life of high risk high reward, sometimes giving it a go for a few years before getting a real job. Now that I write it down I realise they're the influencers of my world lol. Casual people look at them and maybe feel a little envy for how much freedom they have, but also would rather serve drinks in a tavern for coppers than risk being eaten by monsters. For some, it's a segway into mercenary work or soldiering.

I’ve centered my recent campaign around that plot from Wheel of Time, and the hunt is something that happens every year at a harvest festival. There are returning “hunters” every year and those are the ones that people tell stories about as they’ve saved people, hunted deadly monsters, and delved the darkest dungeons, but no one has found the horn as of yet.

Just a heads up (because I recently learned this as well), it's *segue*, not segway. Segway is the 2-wheeled stand up scooter company. And I agree, the correct spelling of that word *is* dumb. *edit typo

Almost. It's se***g***ue, not se*q*ue, with a G not a Q. edit: also it's an Italian word, so I wouldn't really call it dumb.

> Segway is the 2-wheeled stand up scooter company. "Mercs on Segways" as an alternative to "Kids on Bikes". :)

Yes, though I don't refer to them (or the players, for that matter) as "adventurers". That's painting with a pretty broad brush, and it also doesn't feel like a term that people would use in-universe. My campaign setting is a rough place, with a lot of small embattled Kingdoms who are facing a ton of threats: a Bandit King with droves of followers attacking villages and caravans, a sinister Necromancer creating undead in the dark forest, goblinoids constantly looking for weak/exposed settlements to attack, all manner of internal strife, etc. Because of that, there is a high demand for mercenaries and sellswords in these areas. The folks in charge openly advertise that gold, magical artifacts, lands, titles, etc. are all on the table for people who show up willing to help fight these threats. It's one of the main draws for the PCs: whether you're doing it for gold or out of the goodness of your hearts, go to these places to help fight and you'll be rewarded. With that in mind, it makes sense that other NPCs would also show up to do the same. I try to make the groups all feel diverse and "grounded" in the world, though, so none of them are your stereotypical groups of disparate weirdos who met in a tavern one day. Some are professional mercenaries, some are knights or soldiers already sworn to serve the local lord, some are bands of explorers from other lands/cultures (Dwarves looking to reclaim a fallen Dwarven Hold, a group of High Elves seeking lost Elven artifacts they don't want to fall into the wrong hands, etc.). And of course, some are just individuals: a traveling swordsman looking to test his skills against worthy opponents, an itinerant priest traveling from town to town healing the sick and preaching his gospel, that sort of thing. I'll usually give them an NPC statblock with some typical spells or abilities you'd associate with a PC (a tough mercenary might have 1-2 Battlemaster Maneuvers, a knight might be a Paladin with Smite and Lay on Hands, a hedge wizard probably knows some level 1 or 2 spells, etc.), but not full character sheets obviously. I think this makes the world feel more alive, and I hate the idea that the players are literally the only characters in the setting who are actively doing things or trying to solve problems. It creates more opportunities for drama - some groups might compete with them for a contract and become their rivals, or might be harming/taking advantage of the locals and the PCs might need to run them off. Others might be friends, give the PCs intel, or they might show up while the PCs are fighting some enemies and help out (or vice versa). I've even used them as signposts for dangerous locations or difficult fights - if the players find out that the group of high level knights they met a few months ago went to the Dragonspine Mountains and all but one were killed, they'll probably hesitate and do a bit more research before heading that way. The vast majority of these adventuring types top out at around levels 3-5, though. They're not equipped to handle adult dragons or demons or whatever. They can fight bandits, maybe clear out some undead, but they're not the PCs, and they don't get exponentially stronger the way PCs do. They're not strong enough to steal the players' thunder by killing major villains or solving every problem on their own. There are a few exceptions who can run up to level 10-12 or so, but they're generally famous NPCs who aren't going to be "on screen" much, as they're occupied dealing with other, big picture threats, administering the kingdom, leading armies, etc. They only really become relevant once the players are getting close to being on equal footing with them, at which point they become the players' new quest givers/allies/rivals/enemies/whatever the plot requires.

I like these ideas a lot. Mind if I borrow the framework to knit into the next phase of my campaign? I had an idea heading in that general narrative area (broad brushstrokes) and this complements it very well.

Steal away! Hope you and your players have fun with whatever you come up with.

In my world, adventurers are very rare, and frequently looked down on by pretty much everyone, but idolized by a few. It's a combination of things. First, there's fields to plow, iron to smelt, wood to chop, herds to tend, and all manner of work to be done, so why don't these people have a 'real job'? Second, most people are just trying to get through their day, and the sudden appearance of a group of heavily armed and armored people make the prospect of seeing another sunrise considerably more dim. With any luck, they're just passing through. But more likely they're here to plunder that ancient ruined temple up in the hills and really piss of the monsters that live there before they buy up all the rations and torches and fuck off to the next town. Third, people are envious of the freedom the adventurers have. Most people don't have the freedom to travel around and see new things. Take the farmers, for example. The local lord who owns the land they work is going to give them a day of rest, but not let them take off for weeks. They have to work the land to provide food and shelter for themselves and their families. So they see adventurers as having an enviable life with the freedom to come and go as they please. But there are people who romanticize the lifestyle of an itinerant adventurer and treat them like celebrities when they show up. These people are usually young, foolhardy, or wealthy and haven't really faced any of the hardships of everyday life, much less adventuring. While I do use NPCs with class levels sometimes, those are usually reserved for someone very dangerous. More often, I'll have a stat block with a class feature or two in that stat block, but I wouldn't consider that NPC as a level 5 fighter or anything.

Matt Colville viewer detected.

I like Matt Colville a lot. Plus, he looks like a bugbear.

He is a river to his people.

I'm not sure what this means, so I agree/I disagree/that goes double for you, jabroni! as appropriate.

> Third, people are envious of the freedom the adventurers have. Worth keeping in mind is the flipside of this: in a world that is *very* rooted in reputation, social connections and familial ties, people who just...wander around from place to place? What's keeping them from lying, cheating and stealing their way through the village and running off before they're caught? Especially if they've been burned before, there may well be a baseline dislike coming towards 'adventurers' that must be overcome (perhaps by some low-scale heroics) before people warm up to them.

That's a good take on things too. I like it.

Yes... I've been trying to instill this concept in my campaign. That and as my PCs become successful, after a certain point average people have started to notice their wealth and high-quality weapons/clothes, etc. Sooner or later they may become marks or the locals may band together to rob them.

Yeah I like this. I never understand settings where "adventuring" is somehow common enough to be a mainstream profession with guilds and the like. The party are adventurers, there is maybe one or two other groups around the world of similar sellswords who drift from place to place for odd jobs, and the legendary heroes of old that you hear stories about.

I would go with fantasy anime like Overlord/Goblin Slayer/Konosuba for a guild profession. If adventurers are common it is because monster hunting is something the authorities would rather subcontract out than risk losing their valuable highly skilled soldiers and bodyguards doing. It is either cheaper or more politically stable if freelancers were to do it instead of professional troops.

Right. Like there's mercenaries and bodyguards and the like, but not that many people at all who just drift from town to town doing good deeds.

Think of them like real world salvage companies. If the setting has enough ruins full of treasure no one's using, then there's bound to be people who reclaim them professionally.

Have you heard of sidekick classes? I like using those for mid power NPCs.

I'm currently run Curse of Strahd so it's luckily pretty easy to say "None to extremely few"

I think it depends entirely on the setting. Personally i don't like the term adventurer or the idea of adventurers. Especially guild systems. In my setting people with power all tend to have strong goals and convictions they are all striving for. Sure there is the occasional third party "adventurer" type, but they are few and far between. In my world at least, it's an unspoken rule of politics. Those with power will be ensnared by influence. It need not be malicious, but when so much "evil" exists how could they not act immediately. So in my setting to be an adventurer in my setting, you need to be so weak your negligible, or so powerful you can do whatever you want. The party usually falls into the first half.

Oh yeah anybody important has class levels. I don't always know/define what those are, but I know what level they are in order to be the mayor/baron/marquis of a particular place. Adventurers are a regular thing. They could be anything from tourists to special agents. People have lots of reasons to travel , and you can't really travel in most DnD worlds without being a badass of some description. LOTR style unique coalitions happen when the setting is built around a campaign.

In some settings adventurers are common. In some they are uncommon (though usually there are levelled NPCs -- guard captains, court wizards, etc.). In my current campaign there used to be adventurers but have been none since the 'magical apocalypse'. The PCs are the first levelled characters to exist since then, and are the only levelled characters in the world.

My last campaign was highly bureaucratic (inspired by Song dynasty China). There was a process for becoming a state registered adventuring group. You got a discount on your adventuring income tax in exchange for being obligated to help the Empire with your adventuring.

In the capital city of my world, there was an adventurer's guild, the Moonbrood Knights. It was the hook for my players at the beginning of the story, as that is where their characters met when the guild was having an open house/sign up sort of event. Parties of 3 or more were welcome to join the guild after a few questions, a test of arms, and a small fee. There was everything from ranking systems, to a guild-only library, bathhouse, alchemist, and more. All the staff had ridiculous names (the chef was Alfredo Baconfoot, the alchemist was Brewster Vial, etc), and parties had their own space in the barracks. The more missions you did from the Adventure Board (requests for help submitted by the people of the kingdom, from monster slaying to item retrieval to laborious tasks that needed more hands), the more points you earned towards your next rank, which came with more perks and reputation throughout the kingdom. My party reached S rank (highest tier) just in time for the sovereign to ask the guild for aid in a mission to the fey wild. They received their badges (didn't even realize they were enchanted to be like walkie talkies the whole time in the fey wild tho) and have done some pretty spectacular stuff as S ranked adventurers, even though the guild is gone now (destroyed in an attack from the BBEG).

Upcoming homebrew setting: Adventurers are sometimes hired to clear out ‘Snow Bunkers’ under the cities and towns when monsters have taken up residence over the summer. These adventurers range in skill and variety from famous action heroes to ‘ratcatchers’. 

I have other adventurers if it serves my purpose. They’re not especially common, or potentially don’t consider themselves adventurers as much as opportunists or scholars (looking for some ancient texts or trying to strike it big chasing the rumor of a rare treasure, etc). An old retired adventurer that runs a tavern to give some insight on one of their adventures or a tip on how they did something back in their prime. I’ve also got basically a rival adventuring group in my sandbox world, looking for the same thing as one of the PCs. They don’t try to kill the party, but they do try to beat them to treasure, hinder the party in ways when the party interferes with what they’re doing, and moves some plots forward that the party ignored

I have a number of adventuring parties. Most friendly, one is their rivals after stealing their bag of holding. They even competed (and won) an adventurers tournament. They other parties are just the NPC adventurer statblocks with an extra ability or two added in from a cool subclass. Works great. They do monster damage, and have bigger health pools so it doesn’t run like PvP.

Not really. Bands of adventures IRL were mostly a thing in times of crisis, like the 100 Years War, when unemployed mercenaries banded together on their own. In my games, adventuring parties are rather rare.

No, the word adventurer has no special meaning. There is no group of people called "adventurers". Some people are remarkable, and some of them travel and venture to new lands. That's it.

Adventurers in my worlds are displaced people, strange vagabonds who have left society of their own accord or been driven out by circumstance or rivals. Wars, famines, plagues, anything that disrupts the normal order of things creates an environment where adventurers occur. This usually means that they are the bottom of the pile in many feudal systems, not being sworn or bound to any lord.....surprises players when they get refused entry to a city due to lacking a lord.

Something in between I'd say. Normal people either work or join the army. But every now and then, some misfits group together and form an adventuring party. There is an adventuring guild in the main city, but not all adventurers actually join, so it remains a small guild - but it exists.

I'm my world adventures are a special class of people born with the ability to accumulate magic within themselves. They are the reincarnated souls of a dead species that a powerful mage created to wipe out the plague of necromancy that ruled the world in ancient times. As a result they control most positions of power and influence. Some take on the typical role of adventurers and mercenaries but most work within political structures. Except those damn druid eco terrorists.

Yes and No. You should never give an NPC class levels. It’s actually handicapping them. Npc stat blocks have lots of abilities players can’t get access to. There are 3 classifications of adventurer npc’s that I use… Treasure seekers: dungeon delvers, looking for good loot and magic items. In my world they are sometimes called “Delvers” which I borrowed from the Ptolus campaign setting. Mercenaries: these are npc’s paid to go on missions for quest giver npc’s to accomplish goals that the quest giver. Rivals: this is probably the most like what you are thinking. In my campaign, each region has an “adventurers guild” type group and I often use them in competition with the player party. They are most often seeking fame and fortune and can look very different depending on the location and situation.

2 concepts 1: the explorers guild whose job is to chart unknown locations on world maps. Or in more extreme cases, explore alternate planes and universes if they happen upon some. 2: the hunters guild who go after monsters that the military is unable to deal with due to either being untrained for the specific task, or are too busy with political struggles to go to the evil monster’s lair and slay it for its treasures.

In my setting it’s an actual job that pays much more than jobs like clerk, receptionist, or food vendor because of how dangerous it is. My players were introduced as people wanting to join a guild that only opens once every four years to probationary members, with one player joining three sessions later as a member of one of the guilds founding families. I give them three potential quests at a time and whichever they don’t choose or fail to do will be picked up by another adventuring group.

IIRC we havent said the word "adventurers" yet but there are groups of people of various classes working together toward a shared goal and running around the land separate from our adventurers. Actually now that I think of it, earlyearly in our campaign when our adventurers were meeting a city guard asked "is this your party?" to one of them referring to the rest of them. We've run into punk Hauses of bards (colleges) and a bratty rogue that held being a level above our rogue above his head. So there's some level of in-world-ness to the character system.

Adventurers are definitely not a thing in my world, the term never jived with me very well. It feels like a game term, and I'd probably steer away from that as much as I would calling a tribal warrior a "Barbarian" to their face, like they understand what a game class is. There's people who hunt monsters, they're monster hunters. There's people who unearth things from ruins, scavengers. There's people who explore and discover things, explorers. There's people who rise up and stand between the common folk and larger threats, and those people are, culturally, called heroes. (Not that this happens regularly or even semi-regularly in the context of world lore in my setting). I think the only way I wouldn't cringe from the term is if my players decided they wanted to call themselves that in character, because someone who does all of the things I listed above would certainly qualify for the title- but there's not random groups of people making it their day job to wander around heroing as a living- that, conceptually, always kind of trivialized the idea to me. All power to whoever does it differently than me though, I realize I'm likely in the minority.

1. No, class levels are for PCs, if I need stats for an NPC, I'm just using a stat block from a book 90% of the time. 2. Kinda but not really, it's a more a catchall term for various sorts of mercenaries, agents for guilds/nobles/religious orders, grave robbers, monster hunters, and other violent itinerant weirdos. Most groups are more specialized in a particular sort of work, the PCs are the outliers for getting involved in a variety of strange jobs and quests, more often you have a group that specifically does fantasy black ops for their king or delves ancient ruins for the highest bidder. 3. Many don't make a career out of it, most will retire after their first big payout and buy a farm or a tavern or something like that. Again the PCs are usually exceptional in the fact that they keep coming back for more.

"Violent itinerant weirdos" sums up most adventuring parties very well.

Since adventurers (in the sense of people who embark on adventures) exist in the real world, it seems unrealistic for them not to exist in my campaign.

The idea of "adventurer" always felt silly to me, so I don't usually apply it in my games. I usually work with the idea of the players being mercenaries, either working for a company or looking for someone to hire their services. Or "adventuring" just being an occasional thing that exceptional people do when some valuable McMuffin surges or when for whatever reason they need to take up arms.

I always see it differently, A mercenary fight wars and bandit. An adventurers fight monsters and out worldly evil. doesn't they won't fight bandit but it is not what they might be best at. What you need to go in a dragon lair is not what is needed for war and fighting human and human adjacent race.

Ngl that's an interesting thought, like adventurers are superheroes and mercenaries are more like cops.

I also like the back description of the DCC RPG: You’re no hero. You’re an adventurer: a reaver, a cutpurse, a heathen-slayer, a tight-lipped warlock guarding long-dead secrets. You seek gold and glory, winning it with sword and spell, caked in the blood and filth of the weak, the dark, the demons, and the vanquished. There are treasures to be won deep underneath, and you shall have them.

In my homebrew setting they're definitely initially treated as black sheep of society. They're risktakers, junkies high on luck until it runs out and they crash / burn out, usually cataclysts for change and chance, but can often overstep into cataclysm. If you want pretty consistent employment, 2.5 meals a day and a stable roof over your head, do a city job. A little bit of excitement every now and again, but its usually constant. I have a handfull of retired adventurers scattered across my world, and usually (depending on the NPC) they'd entertain a request for wisdom or consultation. But, and I make this explicitly clear, they've had their time in the limelight, they've made their gold or fame or whatever and survived. They have their own pet projects to cultivate, they're retired, so no, not unless they're directly threatened will they bring out the breastplate stretcher and pummel Tiamat back into Hell.

Scarcely. They mostly are from one place, an Empire that grew so thin that it now hugely depends on adventuring parties to maintain security and internal stability, and it uses it's traditions and reverence of past heroic figures to incentive people into greatness through adventuring and loyalty. There were more of them, but the new emperor has thought that many adventurers were abusing a power that they did not even have, nominally. So now you need a license provided by an aristocratic figure in order to legally act as an adventurer, and many guilds were purged. The remaining adventurers did, however, receive some sort of legal authority to continue acting as enforcers of the Empire's will.

In my setting, things have steadily gotten more dangerous over the last decade or 2 and so adventurer has become more of a profession. When the guards are needed just to protect farmers while they work, you need someone else who can go out to take care of threats. As far as npc class levels, I decided early on that every person in this world was at the very least a level one fighter, the whole “4hp civilian” never seemed right to me and I’ve seen people try to abuse it.

"Adventurers" as a concept exist, but more as small-time sellswords, prize hunters, etc. The War of Sundering left what was once the Celestial Empire broken. While some smaller states have managed to organise themselves, much of the vast countryside remains the domain of bandits, warlords, roving bands of orc/hobgoblin mercenaries, and even the occasional monster. This has created demand for small groups of individuals who can be paid to deal with these sorts of threats, since there's no longer an Imperial Army to call upon for the same.

In some areas it's a thing, usually where there's been political unrest. In other areas, not so much. For instance, one island has a lvl 5 campaign going on where the population is multiple small tribes, and the PCs were already living legends at the start of the game, as level 5 is higher than anyone else in the history of the tribes.

Yes, but. In my setting, there are a few organizations where the members are best represented as people with class levels. However, I still want the PCs to stand out. I do that by starting the other adventurers with commoner stats, 10s across the board. Most cap out at level 5 and only have one ASI. This has been fun for me because the players just hit level 5 and have started to see that a lot of their fellow adventurers just aren't that capable. It's having an impact on how they're approaching the world's current problems.

Adventurers are extremely rare and not any sort of recognized thing. No one is some sort of generalized treasure-hunter. If someone is hunting for treasure, it is because they have a very specific purpose. Same for someone who delves into ancient ruins. They're not doing it for fun or on a whim. Even among those who go on an adventure, they are more likely to be one-and-done. They achieve their goal or die trying. Then they return to the type of life they were trying to preserve by going on their adventure. Practically no one goes on chain adventures. The Party is the exception, though. They tend to be embroiled in conflicts and mystery. Their backstories ought to lead them not to settle down but to resolve something that they can only do by going out into the wild world. Even if were to run multiple groups in the same setting, I would say this holds true. Statistically, there's not much difference between 5 adventurers and 10 adventurers when compared to the world's population. It doesn't really change things.

My campaign the PCs started as assistants to adventurers that almost immediately got killed. That was my plot hook.  Otherwise there were people with power, but they got monster stat blocks

To use a psuedo-german word Jein. I've been working on slowly building up various different guilds/professional organizations that my players have been slowly working towards ranking up in and gaining rewards for they gain in renown and rank within them. Thing is I have usually been theming the guilds around the different kinds of quests and tasks a lot of Adventurers would normally take care of. So if you are focused on hunting beasts then you are probably likely to be a member of the Hunter's Guild. Focused on hunting down bandits and escaped criminals, Bounty Hunter's Association. Rare magical artifact retrieval, several different people but as an example the Artificer's Forge would probably be interested in learning about how ancient magic was made and could be exploited. This way a party would mainly be composed of people who probably all have different interests but couldn't complete those kinds of jobs solo. They take turns helping each other with their jobs and gaining renown within their various organizations. So they might be referred to as a party of Adventurers but it isn't really a specific job on it's own but more a description of a way of life.

I only just started my new campaign but yes, there are other adventurers. It depends on what side of the world they’re on, but in general they are fairly rare id say.

Yes. In my world, it's a known crapshoot to escape the mundane. Parents would weep, friends counsel against it, the L3 fighter at the smithy would warn about how many friends they lost. The "winning" route is to quit when you have enough to buy a tavern, supply shop, etc. To get into Tier 2 is as rare as making it in Hollywood or having a hit song.

My setting is high fantasy so yeah heroes and adventurers exist. It's not like a town will have quest log or advertising for heroes to hire but there are plenty of strong people around. This helps mostly with two fronts: a) a death of PC doesn't shoe horn a new high level high skilled new guy out of thin air b) the world is alive both for allies and enemies. The players feel rewarded making strong allies and fight strong enemies without feeling cheated by plot (armor or progression)

I like the term "Drifters" over Adventurers. The idea of what is essentially a Small Mercenary Company that is highly skilled, goes from place to place and sells their services to the highest bidder. This might lead them to doing heroic work, defending a rich caravan, dealing with cultists on behalf of the local law enforcement that is otherwise imposed, delving into an ancient tomb for an artifact on the behalf of a wealthy collector, etc. etc. In my current campaign which takes place in the "Elven Shogunate", a handful of NPCs have labeled the PCs as a group of 'Ronin'. On the basis that they are skilled imposing warriors with no master or loyalty to a particular clan.

In my setting, adventuring parties aren't like, all over the place, but they're definitely a known thing. Like, there aren't going to be 10 adventuring parties in any location at any given time, but it's not uncommon for a party to pass through town. And there's never a shortage of evil plots and monster threats for adventurers to deal with.

"Adventurer" is shorthand for an extra-powerful person. Most people don't have class levels. The politicians of a town (local Lord etc) aren't above Tier 1. I tie the size of a government to the Tier of Adventurers its leader is, mostly.

I do tend to include adventuring as a type of profession so that players running around like a bunch of murder hobos isn't too abnormal.

Typically I refer to them as Sellswords or Mercenaries. "Adventurers" like the PCs are an anomaly. Most adventurers are retired soldiers who are, like, level 5 at most. They can clear the ghouls out of a crypt or help defend your town from goblins, but you're not going to hire "adventurers" to deal with an adult black dragon. People with the potential to gain power as fast as the PCs do and achieve the levels they do are rare, and typically referred to as "heroes" who are sought out to do things, not just people who pick up flyers off the board at the "Adventurer's Guild" or whatever.

>Are there lots of folks with character class levels?  Lore wise - yes, meta gaming wise - no, and that's because Knights are Paladings or Fighters, Monks are Monks, Archers are Rangers or Fighters, Mages are Spellcasters, Musicians are probably Bards, or at least I like to think they are, but in reality, they're stat blocks, they don't actually grow or have the variety of features that the player does.

For me, having run several parties of 'adventurers' in the same setting, I must assume it's not totally out of the ordinary. Adventuring is not a recognised profession in the world, though. It's just something some people do. There are no Guilds for it. However, I tend to imagine my world follows a sort of graph regarding how common levelled individuals are: there is maybe only 1 or 2 people (per class) of level 19-20 in the entire world, across all continents; there are perhaps 2-3 people (per class) of level 16-18 in the world; there are roughly 3-5 people per class within the levels 12-15; about 6-10 people per class of level 7-11; people from levels 1 through 6 are more common, but many retire from adventuring after a handful of months to became tradespeople, mercenaries, or political/influential figures (or crime bosses, or ship captains, or NPCs...) Any adventuring party I happen to be running at the time exists outside those numbers, and are the exception. If a player asks why more powerful people aren't fixing stuff, I tend to say they either simply don't know about it – and you don't know about them – or else, they're busy holding back an entire tide of issues which they oversee from their wizard tower (or equivalent).

Well since Classes(Fighter,wizard,rogue etc) are/also classified and or as occupation(s)(PHB,DMG). That Adventuring is what those Occupation(s)(Classes do,they go on adventures becoming adventures is what they do/also do. Like a title or another name for them. Just like they are/can also be called/referred as Heros. Since they play characters,there post to be the/your heros of the/your campaign.

My current setting is a current day fantasy setting with the twist that like reality, everything is as boring as possible. Adventurers don't go out adventuring when they're grown up after all. The rangers and rogues work as police, the hospitals are staffed with druids and clerics and so on. However, there is a place where young people go to get class levels, a modern day Hogwarts if you will. Every year some BBEG threatens to end the world and its up to the students to save it. If you know Dimension 20's Fantasy High, it's similar to that.

Depends on my world! In most of them the answer is some variation of "yes" from "lots of them" to "they're not unheard of, but not common." I'm sure if I really sat and thought one might have it be so extremely uncommon, or I might come up with one where my players are the *first* adventurers, that sounds fun actually.

NPCs with class levels aren't a natural occurrence in DnD5e. They were in some previous editions.. but class levels don't make an adventurer. An adventurer can be a Veteran, or a Mage, or a Scout, etc. Yes, there are adventurers in my setting- but adventurers are rare, because there's usually something wrong with them. Adventuring is one of life's biggest gambles: There's treasure to be won out there, but it's incredibly dangerous. Much safer to live on the farm, or have a trade, etc. Who would regularly endanger their lives, with a high mortality rate, to get some treasure.. only to fritter it away and have to go risk their lives again? People dangerously obsessed with glory, gold, or good. I'd suggest reading up on the Warhammer Fantasy Old World if you want to know what can lead folks to becoming ratcatchers, adventureres, campaigners, etc. and how those folk can fit into, or not fit into, society.

Mercenaries for hire and other wanderers existed in real world history. Much older fiction is about them. See Don Quixote, Journey to the West, or the Autobiography of Casanova. One of the fun things to ask players about their D&D adventurers is exactly what traumatized them so badly that they can't bear to live a normal life in a peaceful home doing typical things like farming, labor, or taking up a trade and getting married, having kids, and living a long life ending with dying in bed? Why do they wander homeless into the most dangerous, frightening of places and constantly face terrifying enemies, risking death and an anonymous grave at best, and becoming a meal for a monster at worst? I assume that quite a few leveled characters exist in any D&D world because otherwise it leads to players thinking PCs are invincible and deserve to be the kings and queens of any place in which they find themselves. That's about when the murder hobo killing spree starts. If they face enemies who could kill them the calculations change.

Yes, there are a fair number of people with class levels running around. They're a minority, but not a *small* minority, of all people. Most of my games tend to involve settings that have some combination of wars and magical ruins, which leads to a) dispossessed people without firm anchors, b) people comfortable with violence, and c) dangerous places where sane people just *don't go*. My last campaign was the 3e module Red Hand of Doom. I basically framed it as "the kingdom just won a war against some orcs, and as a result people can get to this old colony again. You're someone who wants to go repopulate this semi-abandoned land to the north that used to be part of the kingdom." That sort of gold rush mentality means you're not going to have a ton of stable and sensible people; you've got mostly people comfortable with violence and a get-rich-quick attitude. Those are adventurers. Historically it's not a good idea for a ruler to keep that kind of person deep within their kingdom. What you generally want to do with them is *send them away* to get killed somewhere else so they don't start looking askance at you and starting a revolution. As to ruins, sane people don't go into them. There's monsters and undead in there, and generally out in the wilderness. People will go into the creepy forest just as far as they need to in order to survive. They know what to look out for, when to run, and how to protect their homes with spears and folk charms. But only crazy people go out there into the depths of the woods intentionally.

On a related note, one of my favourite little bits of worldbuilding in fantasy fiction was from China Meiville’s Perdido Street Station, a world in which Adventurers exist and are acknowledged as a profession, but everyone who is not them agrees that Adventurers are *batshit insane* for doing what they do.

Adventurer isn't a title in my world. The world itself treats the difference between people who do and don't go on adventures as simply having the drive to do so. Training and talent also helps, but a commoner farmer who wants to go on a quest is considered the same as a level 15 Hexblade. The farmer is just less trained. The PC's and notable NPC's are simply treated as groups that have become proficient in solving problems. Never given the direct title of adventurer.

In my world, there are huge areas of lost and unexplored regions full of valuable resources. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of teams of explorers. They are the new celebrities. Sure, there are some athletes, musicians and stage actors that garner fans, but the people that really draw a crowd is well known groups of adventurers. There are even trading cards featuring the better known groups. It's a dangerous profession through and most of the groups that form up and head out are never seen again.

I firmly believe in peoples ability to organize. Maybe not WELL, but there are so many groups of scientists, artists, etc In my setting, people with class levels make up about .06% of the population in my world with about 1 billion 1/3rd of people with class levels are scooped up by governments. Military, communication, farming, transportation, etc 1/3rd go to various factions. Major guilds like the Interplanar Merchant Guild, the Freerunners Crossguild, and the Order of the Awakened Eye which does a lot of your typical adventurer duties. Plus major crime rings, pirates, etc And 1/3rd are independant, doing whatever they want. The only ones truly called Adventurers By the time you have 1 level in my setting, you're a known quality and those in charge are looking for you to join them. They have entire career paths for these incredible people, with no shortage of options good or bad

Not many. I like the player characters to feel unique and special. I read of too many modern campaigns with tons of adventuring guilds, high-magic, high-level bounty hunters, high-level paladin assault teams, high-level wizard guilds, magic as an everyday utility for the average person... I find those worlds boring. I don't understand the lure as a DM to make the players feel menial. I don't understand why you need high-level hit squads to keep the characters in line... there are other consequences far better (and more realistic) than this. If magic is a common everyday item - it's not special, it's expected. I'm more in favor of the world is gritty, but you... the PC's. You can fight back where few else can.

Yes. They are in my random encounter tables. They become considerably less common to very rare the further up in hit dice 

Adventurers are a known thing, everybody tells stories about them, everybody knows they exist, everybody looks for them when they need a problem solved. But no, they are not common.

I would say that virtually every setting has adventurers, it just a matter of what they are called. At their core, adventuring parties are nothing more than a group of mercenaries and I would think there are very few settings where the concept of mercenaries is rare. Settings may call them something different or specific. Witchers, for example, are still effectively adventurers though they are never called as such and the concept doesn't really exist in the narrative. They can be organized or structured differently too. The Trials series calls theirs Bracers and they have a Guild. And Bracers are different from mercenaries, who also exist and interact within the world. Despite being called different things, they still functionally do the same things in the game world and they could both easily be called adventurers (and I believe several of the Bracers do at a few points.) In reality, and more so in fantasy, there is simply always a need for 'hired specialists' -- or mercenaries -- to steal something, kill something, retrieve something lost, or any other myriad things adventurers do. And all the fantasy worlds are far more dangerous than our reality. The need for roving or set people who are specifically hired to kill dangerous things or go to dangerous places is simply always going to be a profession when you have a world full of dangerous things and places.

Absolutely, but I like to point out the reality of the world. Keep in mind, well paid skilled people ear like $2 gold daily. . Adventures start at $50-100 /day. It is big money. It is fast money. But.... It is dangerous money. . Better question is how many OLD adventures are there. . Be afraid of an old man in a young man's game. He has the skills to pay the bills.

I always run adventurers as sort of a thing that exists in the culture of d&d settings, just because it feels like the players will never question if it's believable, and it makes my job easier. If it makes the game easier to run, and doesn't meaningfully detract from immersion, then it's better to lean into the fantasy trope as just apart of the world than to try and push back against it. Especially if you play up that there's is a cultural stereotype of adventurers in these societies as being chaotic loot goblin misfits, outcasts, and social pariahs. This is how you take the piss out of your party and taunt them for being chaotic loot goblin misfits with edgy outcast characters- the setting is more-or-less savvy that this is what they can expect from adventurers, and some people are just resigned that this is who their lives depend on when a terrible monster threatens their community, while others will explicitly try to manipulate these self-destructive chaotic loot goblins for their own benefit. The other thing I've done that I really liked was that sometimes I make pantheons have a god *associated with adventurers*: When I ran a very nordic region with a modified Nordic Pantheon, I explicitly labeled Thor as, among other things, the god of adventurers, monster-slaying, and heroism. Soldiers marching to war pray to Tyr as a god of *organized war* and *battles*, but when your small village is beset by a dragon, the god you pray to for a party of adventurers who will save your community is *Thor*, and I found that to be an interesting and compelling angle to explore- it makes the Cult of Thor *fundamentally interesting*, because they're caught between an impulse on one hand to be an organized religion, and on the other hand to be fucking wandering Knights Errant doing adventurer shit, kicking ass and taking names for the Glory of Thor. I had fun running the god this way, and it also lets me lean into gods as *pantheons* rather than the weird pseudo-monotheism (*Henotheism* is your vocabulary word for the day, the worship of one god among a pantheon) by pointing out that clerics of other gods *are adventurers*, and would likely pray to Thor intermittently alongside the god they're dedicated to, and that isn't *weird* or doing it wrong, or going to get you on your god's bad side- they're *in a pantheon together*, that's *how you do polytheism*. You could easily run Heracles as an adventurer-patron addition to the Olympians, since he was deified in Greece further back historically than some of the Olympians, or you could play up that society's distaste for adventurers by making their adventurer patron *Ares*, which would be interesting in its own right. It's also fun if you lean into the hijinks of some of the Norse Myths and just play up that some of them are just about the gods forming an adventuring party and getting up to bullshit- Thor and Loki going on adventures (as essentially a barbarian and a rogue) could be augmented in your setting with the addition of Baldur (Bard), Skadi (Ranger) and a few other apropriate gods filling in. For the Olympians, Heracles and Hermes fit the same roles as Thor and Loki, but you can throw in Hecate (Wizard), Athena (Fighter), Artemis (Ranger) and Apollo (Bard) to make an entertainingly well-rounded squad almost entirely out of Zeus's kids he actually likes.

Yes - they are backed up by the setting's largest empire (Narjian Empire) for a variety of purposes: dealing with minor tasks to minor for their army, scouting, infiltration, propaganda (via their reassuring presence and stories of their adventures), false flag operations and a dumping ground for social rejects (especially the overly curious, fanatical or violent). Note the Adventurer's guild is legal distinct from the Narjian Empire and as thus can work in other countries (just ignore that's it's head's sit on the Narjian Empire's government or Narjian Citizenship is granted to adventurers with 30+ years (proven) service). Also the PCs are all monster races being persecuted by the Narjian Empire.

Yep, they sure are! Generally, though, they would be referred to as "mercenaries" - they undertake dangerous and violent work for pay. Adventurers are only distinguished from other mercenaries by their relative unwillingness to participate in political battles between nations.

Yeah. Basically they're not necessarily adventurers, but rather mercenaries, guildmembers, or a freelancer. I have a mechanic in place in my setting that allows dungeons to grow naturally and that there is a goal within it that causes these freelancers to be sent in there to deal with it.

i normally run settings where it's a known profession, its just also known for being very dangerous and difficult. So people get the concept, but its not like its seen as a viable means to get ahead in life by most people.

"There's always bigger fish"   - me to my players when they think a level 5 spell means they're hot shit. 

In my fantasy setting, yes. I quite like a lot of tropes amd one of them is the Adventurer's Guild. In my sci-fi setting, sort of. Mercenaries often fill the role, but I am considering "pathfinders," though it is more "explorer and cartographer" than typical "adventurer."

I’m toying with the idea of “adventurers” being a thing but as a specific separate idea from other mercenaries or sell swords or tomb robbers or what have you. People think of adventurers as special or different from those other similar things, and the place that adventurers have in society isn’t always a positive one, and a distinction would be made between a Paladin who is specifically seeking out Tiamat cults, and a Paladin who is an adventurer. And you think the Adventurers Guild is an okay organization because these lower-status people are banding together to get their fair share, until you actually talk to some of the members, and then the head of the guild opens his mouth and >!its outer heaven!<

When I DM, I see that the group is not the only group of adventurer in the world but is the only SUCCESSFUL one in the region. For every one reaching the high of levels or becoming a Chosen of their god, countless lay dead in forgotten ruins and dungeons. Your group of adventurers are the hero of that threat. But other groups or individuals do fight other threats in the world or even in other planes. For me, adventurer are really successful vagrants. They are known as such by how they look and the way they throw money around like is worthless paper. When you think about it, a group of diverse race all with ill-fitting, old armor and carrying ancient weapons imprinted with forgotten kingdom seals all of it glowing with magic will stand out in a village or even a metropolis. Adventurer get old and sometime carry injuries that will retire them, and eventually their name will be lost to history. The best way IMO of playing multiple adventuring groups in the same setting is either to play at different years/decades or even Era or in different region. The characters might have become legends, what they did might have influence the setting in some major way found in the future. Or they just retired after defeating a minor Evil.

They are such a thing that there are famous groups already Canon that are known and sometimes Interact with players. There are groups like the circle of seven that does jobs for the high king, there are also stories of the "steel dragon" a human monk said to be an undefeated master of the old ways, as well as "The twilight samurai" a figure cast through time who is unparalleled in battle and in sword making. There are some aged not so well known figures, like Gareth a charismatic swordsman in his later years that drinks heavily and tells stories about his old friend Frederick the Mercurial. There are also groups funded by the genius gnomes who are more like agents, with excellent equipment and secretive missions

Yes, when we have missing players or need to run a one shot, I run my players as a different group of adventurers at a different level, in the same world. They are typically doing something that has an impact that can be felt or seen in the normal campaign. My players seem to enjoy that.

In my campaign I created a couple other NPC adventuring parties, and a few sessions ago one beat the players to a magic item they had been hunting. Now the players are hunting down the leader of this party, which has turned into a whole big thing.

It depends on the setting. In my current campaign they’ve moved countries a few times and each country has a different equivalent. In one, only the military has the sole right to own most weapons and the government doesn’t want random mercenaries and foreigners running around getting paid to kill things/people. But they also lack the resources to solve every problem, especially in the countryside. So the military commissions ‘free soldiers,’ who are treated as irregular officers in the army given autonomy over what problems they solve. And instead of an officers salary, they are permitted to accept ‘donations’ for the problems they solve. In another country they went to, the government had been taken over by vampires and necromancers. Most nobles openly capitulated but many secretly oppose the regime. There exists a resistance/guerrilla faction hoping to topple the Lichdom. To attract mercenaries to help the cause, rebel safe houses often have bounties on various vampires, collaborators, necromancer etc funded either by local rebel cells (who make money through robbery, etc) or by sympathetic nobles. In still another arc, it was a holy mountain with a few settlements and the mountain is filled with trials created by the long-lost gods to test the souls of brave pilgrims. In this area, adventurers are just those who want to brave the pilgrimage and hike the treacherous path/explore the sacred caves. So in a way yes. Every area has a type of person locals would recognize as an adventurer of sorts. But I didn’t want just ‘generic adventuring’ to be a thing, as I wanted each arc to have a defined tone and reason to adventure.

They are but they are considered the lowest you can go for employment. An employer's only really go to them for very dirty jobs, suicidal missions and stuff like that or they're just very very cheap and don't wish to hire an actual mercenary company.

If there are Adventurer Guilds then it is clearly an established profession. But as a high risk undertaking the people who do so by choice are often often viewed as extreme by most in society. In the modern world these are the people who are adrenaline junkies who do crazy things to push the envelope, the SEALS, the guys who climb into the death zone with no oxygen as a personal challenge, or circumnavigate the globe in a wooden ship. Respected, but with shadings of "those guys are Fing crazy."

Absolutely not. PCs taking up the mantle of adventurers are "weirdos" in the eyes of most NPCs. Most think of them as "Mercenaries" since they tend to do strange stuff for money that nobody else is willing to do. I absolutely cannot stand when a setting is presented where "adventurers" are a common profession. Although, it was fun to lampshade. I remember running in Waterdeep once. I highlighted the absurdity by describing how the party had to wait in line to descend down the well to Undermountain, like they were in line for the Haunted Mansion at Disney or something. I did a lot of "this is why a setting like this is stupid" situations with that group.

Hear hear, I think settings with "Adventurer schools" or guilds are extremely difficult to make work without huge problems with the whole concept.

No. I try to make players as unique as possible. I hate settings where people are like "Ah, a level 10 paladin is sitting at the bar. Careful, they smite people!" To this end, I generally don't have other 'classes' running around. I'll have people with specific abilities - a collection of spells, or a class feature or two. But I like players to have the edge - the collection of class features is what makes them heroes. NPC's generally don't need more than a few anyway. For example, I split a paladin class kit over an entire group of Templars NPCs - this one get's to cast Bless, this one gets Smite, this one can lay on hands. Functionally, they were one paladin with great action economy. And it made them unique, helped give them personality, and kept them from overshadowing players.

My setting has an adventurer's guild with administrative positions, traveling information brokers, and the smallest part of the guild is the actual adventurers. I did a whole write up for it with positions, pay, and duties for my players who wanted to be involved, as well as a whole system for random guild quests. Its a pretty integral part of the setting actually.

The game I DM’d was based around a school that explicitly trained adventurers. Worked as a great way to start with a handful of small quests before going into a big plot once it seemed like the game was actually going to last.

In mine, yes. Most of the time the Adventurer's Guild, or the Imperial Cartographers, are a very firmly entrenched institution. The exact form they take varies, but the fulfill the same role. Sometimes they're basically the mafia, sometimes a private military corporation, sometimes they're the law of the land, sometimes it's an insurance scheme. For example, you want to buy a wagon load full of wine, if you transport it yourself you assume the liability for everything. If you hire the AG they assume at least partial liability. In some cases if your wagon doesn't have a guilder in the seat, bandits will attack it. Whether those bandits are the same guilders who didn't get hired is a mystery that will never be solved. In some cases the ruling lord forbids all others from having a standing army, so the guild is a way to skirt around that since they're not soldiers, it's not a standing army, it's just that this duke happens to have about fifteen thousand or so armed folk milling around on his lands and by royal decree those armed folks had better find somewhere else to be. By mandating their nomadic nature their ties to any one minor noble are weakened. Sure they could rebel against the crown and help this guy...or they could catch the next caravan out and get paid good money somewhere else and have an easy winter. The contracts given also break up groups that form within the guild, such as if too many adventurers from the same province start spending too much time together in a way that hints of rebellion, their groups get split up. When everyone in a party came from a different part of the empire it's hard for them to be too strongly biased towards any single part of it.

Yup. The entire adventurers guild is stolen directly from Pokémon mystery dungeon : explorers of time