Adventurers: A Dying Breed

In a typical cookie-cutter fantasy RPG story, we have ourselves a bunch of people who usual band together in a tavern to fight some evil by trekking halfway across the world to some dark fortress and kill the evil overlord within.

Along the way they probably fight bandits or savages, retrieve ancient artifacts in caves or ruins, and of course kill some mega fauna.

Now what conditions of the world need to be changed so that this is no longer possible?

In a previous thread I stated that perhaps with stronger law enforcement on a local and national level then towns and villages wouldn't need to rely on some traveling band of vigilantes to solve their problems.

A very effective police force

A unified government e.i. World peace

A lack of ill governed areas a la Sherwood Forest

Difficulty traveling between regions

Strict feudalism in times of peace. Peasants are by definition tied to the land. Only four groups would do much legal traveling at all: merchants, messengers, clergy and the nobility, and any travelers who didn't fit those criteria would be immediately suspect and likely to lumped in with a fifth category: Outlaws. With no lord to "own" them, adventurers wouldn't even have access to what passes for legal protection in such a system, so it'd be a short step from suspicion through arrest to hanging.

In times of war, things would get more relaxed in some ways (especially since many of the feudal landholders who'd normally be policing their territories would be off on campaign or dead) while also ramping up the hostility of the peasantry a fair bit due to bad experiences with deserters or refugees.

Would it be a nice twist that the villain has already achieved his or her goals by creating a world where adventurers have to exist so that they can slay evil?

Even better if the villain was also once an adventurer.

Okay, so I think the easiest way for adventurers to become a dying breed is for a lack of the unknown. Without new lands to explore and new dungeons to delve into, an adventurer is nothing more than a glorified mercenary.

edited 10th Jan '14 4:24:37 PM by MaxwellDaring

Oops, it turns out killing all the dragons, werebeasts, goblinoids and assorted abominations resulted in there not being any of those critters any more. Without those monsters running around to slay, much of the adventurers' work has dried up.

You could have some "the Incredibles" style no one trusts them and people don't want them around

Until something cool happens and they want them back.

Simple-Everyone's looted everything already.

Diminishing threats and problems adventures deal with means diminishing need for that profession. Or a more efficient and effective means of dealing with those problems is now handled by the state instead of what basically amounts to free lance mercenary groups.

Make sure none of your adventurers work on a scale comparable to The Incredible Hulk? Perhaps the "higher level" entities have "rules" that prevent them from just roaming about, such as Gandalf The Grey/White.

After that, yeah, make the world too rigid, too dangerous, too toxic, too disorienting for casual travel to be done by common folk.

Increasing paranoia and distrust ought to do it. If there are dangerous creatures with the capacity to appear human people will be very distrusting of anyone unknown.

Well, you'll need to start by figuring out why adventurers existed in the first place. Don't just take it for granted that they did. Think about how your world really works, and why there would be a need for strong independent agents like that to be running around. Then remove that reason.

The world becoming more settled is a good one.

edited 1st Jul '14 3:30:17 PM by Bloodsquirrel

This is going to sound pessimistic, but... Post-apocalyptic wasteland, the exact cause of which can vary from setting to setting, but is at least a Class 3 with catastrophic damage to the environment and small pockets of human survivors (or Elf, or Dwarf, or whatever).

Adventuring is by its very nature resource-intensive, and so are the threats they come across. Without the means of carrying enough food or water - or perhaps not having enough to do so - you don't have the beginning of an adventure. And if you can't find any, you die; the adventure ends before it can really begin.

Then the world adapts to it. Restpoints get created - little villages a half-day's walk from each other - or maybe the magic comes back. Then there might be enough provisions to share, but not before.

So I say that, between the death of the world and the gradual rebirth of society, there is no adventuring as we would recognize it, but group scavenging (and even that's only possible if they know there's something to scavenge - no one goes looking for water in the desert).

I'd say that as soon as settlements are established adventurers would appear. Scavenging is most certainly a form of adventure as long as sites to scavenge are some distance from the new settlements and manpower is too lacking for a full blown excavation. There's also the matter of raiders who don't care about the big picture. Establishing trade routes between settlements would require exploration and as long as there is wildlife worth noting an adventurer can live off the land.

As long as there is nothing securing national boarders adventurers can exist semi-nomadicly, hunting and gathering for food and odd jobs for income.

I think we're only disagreeing on how comparable scavenging for survival and adventuring as an occupation are?

Or, it's a question of perspective. What the people on that world thinks of adventurers, we think of as hired farmhands, along the lines of the protagonist in the song Rocky Road to Dublin. (I have an easier time picturing this tabletop scenario than a scavenger one, for some reason.)

My logic runs that a scavenging trip is functionally an underfunded archeological expedition. Following this concept, can we dismiss Indiana Jones as an adventurer?

edited 27th Jul '14 6:40:47 AM by Belisaurius

Yeah I'd say it's the other way around. Apocalypse would make adventurer spring out from the thin air, because in a lawless society adventurers (i.e scavengers, explorers, independant mercenaries, roaming wanderers) would be all over the place. To me the end of adventuring as a thing would be caused by the complete opposite: A society becoming orderly and peaceful (you could take our own as an example), without danger there is no need for a adventuring sort (as our own world displays).

You can make adventuring a governmental-sanctioned kind of job, I guess. Locating ancient ruins and scavenging for powerful artifacts sound like something not every random guy/girl with a sword should be allowed to partake in anyway. If the government of the nation(s) in question is strong enough, having them organizing the entire ordeal so they can monopolize the expedition business and artifact tradings should do it without having to exclude uncharted parts of the world entirely.

Or at least, that's my take on it anyway.

edited 27th Jul '14 8:21:49 AM by arreimil

Hadn't thought of that - finding your funding on the way is the proper way to explore! But yeah, I agree. If we take Dr. Jones as an example, then 80-95% of an adventurer's job is done in a classroom or library.

I think actual archeologists - and in-field sociologists - would be tickled to know that the rest of the world thinks of them as adventurers, when the 'adventuring' part of the job isn't so far off from 'glorified farmhand with a degree and stock shares in a sunscreen manufacturer'.

I think going on an adventure and 'adventurer' as a profession can be two separate things (compare Dr. Jones Jr. with Dr. Jones Sr.). They don't necessarily need to be in the same story (Manly Guys is an example of putting 'adventurers' of one definition or another in a setting that doesn't support them) but they combine nicely and are done so for the sake of roleplaying and/or a good story.

I don't think anyone in their right mind would call themselves a professional adventurer. Mostly because it means homeless, jobless bum that's armed to the teeth. Most will call themselves minstrels, mercenaries, or merchants. Most steady forms of work would be caravan guards.

Fictional Oliver Chrommenwell, he organised the army away from nobility to the state, dismantled castles and drasticly reduced the aristocracy, in fictionland I could see him sending armies to loot dungeons if not demolish them.

Alternatively make it that what you find in old ruins is roughly the same as what you find in real life, mostly just rubble.

Read Troll Bridge by Terry Pratchett. It's only a short story, but it's pretty much exactly what you're describing. Cohen the Barbarian, a once-mighty hero, has become an old man out of touch with the post-adventurer times.

edited 11th Aug '14 1:53:06 PM by Tungsten74