Adventurer's Club

Society of Explorers And Adventurers 1899

"Marching Along, We're Adventurers,
Singing the song of Adventurers,
Up or Down,
North, South, East or West,
An Adventurer's Life is Best.
An Adventurer's Life is Best!
Kungaloosh!"

— "The Adventurer's Club All Purpose Theme Song" (from the Trope Namer that existed at Walt Disney World)

This is where you'll find the Lady of Adventure, Adventurer Archaeologist, Great White Hunter and Gentleman Adventurer (and maybe the Egomaniac Hunter and Evil Colonialist, if you're unlucky) all hanging out when they aren't out doing dangerous things. There's probably a bar, a roaring fireplace, and lots of easy chairs for people to sit around in. Expect animal heads and African masks hanging on the walls in terms of décor, as well as lots of globes and maps. (Possibly a library full of them.) Often the site of a Framing Story, with one person sharing stories about his latest adventure and the others listening. Especially common in works set in the Victorian or Edwardian eras or a Steampunk universe, but they can be found elsewhere.

May overlap with Adventure Guild or Smoky Gentlemen's Club.

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Examples:

Comics

• Batman: The Peregrinator's Club is an exclusive lounge for the wealthiest citizens of Gotham City. Originally used by adventurers and explorers, it later became home to the city's rich and affluent bluebloods.

Fan Works

• In the Discworld of A.A. Pessimal, the Guild of Trespassers runs regular expeditions into places like the wilds of Howondaland. From its base in the City, it recruits for positions like Imperious Young Woman Who Looks Good In The Solar Topee With The Fetching Silk Scarf Attached, Who Shouts Loudly At The Natives in Morporkian, With Every Expectation Of Being Obeyed. Which is how it got Lady Jane Greystruck, a woman who liked Howondaland so much, she married a local man, and stayed there. Another position it recruits for is Totally Unsuited Young Woman Who Looks Good In The Solar Topee With The Fetching Silk Scarf Attached, Who Screams Loudly At Danger, Faints A Lot, And Always Needs To Be Rescued. It maintains an upmarket club-house in a smart part of Ankh-Morpork, and this is a base for planning expeditions and drinking a lot while reminiscing about old times. The Archaeologists keep a deliberately downplayed clubhouse in an old tower belonging to a redundant city wall, and only openly display really interesting things like broken pottery and everyday artefacts shedding light on everyday life in ages past. The boring stuff like gold and silver and gemstones are in a (well-secured) cellar strongroom several floors down, as they're not really all that interesting from a point of view of archaeology. Miss Alice Band prefers doing her social drinking at the Blue Cat Club, but that's a different story.

Literature

• Above the Timberline features the Polaris Geographic Society, whose members present themselves as dashing explorers bravely leading expeditions into the frigid wastes to recover the lost technology and knowledge of the old world. Their headquarters are furnished with impressive artifacts and equipment from their most famous missions, and the membership in the Society provides access to funding and supplies that would be impossible to wrangle otherwise. But under that veneer the PGS is a boy's club whose members are largely self-serving egoists jockeying to get their names in the headlines. When Wesley Singleton approaches them about mounting an expedition to rescue his stranded father Galen Singleton (a prominent PGS member himself), none of the current members are willing to lend a hand.
• In the Discworld, Ankh-Morpork has two: the Guild of Trespassers ^note Patrician Vetinari decreed the name change from the Guild of Explorers, as from the point of view of the people whose lands they are "exploring", a different and more accurate title could be more applicable, and the Guild of Archaeologists, whose younger and more adventurous members, such as Laredo Cronk and Miss Alice Band, take a somewhat more proactive attitude to the profession. They call it Stealth Archaeology, which boils down to getting onto the site of interest, digging up the loot, and getting away with it, before anyone notices. In the case of Miss Alice Band, this necessarily overlaps her other Guild membership, that of the Guild of Assassins.
• The Further Adventures of Dr A. A. A. McGurk M.D. by Osmar White opens with McGurk sitting in the Explorer's Club, depressed that he and his camel have crossed all the great deserts and he isn't sure what to do next. (Answer: polar exploration. Also by camel.)

Live-Action TV

• An episode of Frasier involves Frasier and Niles joining one such club, where the members share their travel experiences. It turns out that the club's main adventure is sleeping with the host's wife.
• Key & Peele The "How Old-Timey Anthropologists Got Laid" sketch involves two British explorers regaling one-another with tails of their exploits, which mostly involve native tribes performing various sexual acts on them, acts which become increasingly preposterous the longer each explains. They each rationalize their behavior as necessary because the tribe's "the local custom" and they don't want to contaminate the tribe with outside influence.
• Monty Python's Flying Circus: The "Lost World of Roiurama" sketch has a scene in the British Explorers' Club.
• In the third episode of the American Thank God You're Here, Harland Williams won as an adventurer returning to his club after an expedition.

Tabletop RPG

• The Explorers Society in Deadlands. They descend from a Roman society of monster-hunters, and since the Reckoning, are starting to dust off the old mantle again... much to the distaste of the Agency and the Texas Rangers, who both consider the Explorers Society to be half-baked bumblers who are far too open about the monstrous nature of their quarry.
• Forgotten Realms has "Society of Stalwart Adventurers", a club for adventurers and wannabe adventurers in Suzail (Cormyr).
• The Horatio Club in GURPS Time Travel.
• Hero Games' Justice Inc. game had the Empire Club, a haven for adventurers in a pulp genre setting.
• The Adventurers' Guildhouse in Magic: The Gathering.
  • Later on, the story tells of the planeswalker Tamiyo who invites several other planeswalkers to join her storyteller circle, where they trade stories from across the multiverse.
• The Grand Lodge of the Pathfinder Society in Pathfinder.
• Rocket Age has the Lodge on Venus, where explorers and big game hunters relax. The Empire's Fortune, a Martian Freebooter band comprised of four former British officers also have one.
• Traveller has the eponymous Traveller's Aid Society, that offers club houses at major worlds, news reports, and insurance for risky ventures.

Theater

• In Eric Overmyer's play On the Verge, the three Ladies of Adventure often reminisce about good times at the Explorer's Club back home. Fanny, in particular, has a great monologue about the Foreign Queasine she gladly partook of last time she was there.

Theme Parks

• The Trope Namer is the defunct bar and improv club at Walt Disney World's Pleasure Island, which was open from 1989 to 2008. Each night would feature a variety of actors representing the club's explorers and staff, who would perform improv-heavy shows at scheduled times in an elaborate two-story club full of animatronics and effects.
• There is also the Society of Explorers and Adventurers or S.E.A. at Tokyo Disney Sea and Hong Kong Disneyland. Some Easter Eggs at the Aulani resort in Hawaii serve as a little bit of glue connecting the two Adventurers Club stories with an old Adventurers Club painting being retconned into one featuring a younger version of SEA character Harrison Hightower when he was part of a group called the "Pillagers Brigade".
• The "Skipper Canteen" restaurant at the Magic Kingdom park.

Video Games

• The Jakobs corporation and the characters of the Eden-6 arc in Borderlands 3 has this aesthetic in mind, with its heir Wainwright being a Southern Gentleman, his boyfriend and previously introduced intrepid explorer Alistair Hammerlock being a Quintessential British Gentleman, and his villainous sister Aurelia being The Baroness.
• Curious Expedition deals with an adventurer's guild tasking various real life explorers with finding six Golden Pyramids and various other treasures in a competition. Between each round/expedition, the guild is depicted as the typical Victorian-style lounge with exploration-oriented décor.
• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers: Explorers of Sky features Spinda's Café, an underground shop where explorers can brew drinks, exchange useless items for better ones and gamble for prizes. Many explorers frequent the location, with some Pokémon exploiting this fact to offer jobs to the patrons.
• The Legends' and Heroes' Guilds in RuneScape.

Web Animation

• The Star Wars universe has The Galactic Society of Creature Enthusiasts, as first seen in Star Wars: Galaxy of Creatures. Inspired by the real life Adventurers' Club of New York and the National Geographic Society, the goal of the society is to track the nature and habitats of various species in the galaxy. Star Wars: Galactic Pals introduced a youngling branch of the society, focusing on younglings of various species and figuring out their various needs and nurtures.

Web Original

• The Virtual Exploration Society flavortext at the Museum of Unnatural Mystery Web site.

Western Animation

• In the Batman: The Animated Series "Joker's Favor" appears the Peregrinator's Club as an exclusive lounge for the wealthiest citizens of Gotham City. Originally used by adventurers and explorers, it later became home to the city's rich and affluent bluebloods. That would explain why on earth would the club had reconstructed a Mayincatec temple, right down to re-poisoning the darts in the traps... at least in part. Remember that is a Gotham City club.
• In DuckTales (1987), Scrooge McDuck is a member of one of these.
• The Looney Tunes short "Quacker Tracker" featured Daffy Duck being offered a lifetime membership to a club if he can catch the elusive Speedy Gonzales.
• The Super Adventure Club in South Park is visually based on the Disney club, although it's actually an organisation of child molesters (and a thinly veiled strawman of the Church of Happyology). When the boys say they assumed the club was about adventuring, the club's leader explains, "No, that's the Adventure Club. We're the Super Adventure Club."
• Underdog: Commander McBragg's stories usually started and ended here.
• A few Snagglepuss cartoons on The Yogi Bear Show featured Major Minor belonging to an adventurers' club. A proto Snagglepuss and Major meet here in the Snooper and Blabber cartoon "The Lion is Busy," where Snooper refers to some of the members as "fugitives from a late late show."

Real Life

• Numerous, including:
  • The Explorers Club in New York City.
  • The Royal Geographical Society in 19th century England, now a organization for professional geographers and other scientists.
  • The National Geographic Society, its American counterpart. It has expanded well beyond the old-fashioned club of the idle rich into a significant conductor of scientific research in fields of natural science, while also serving an educational mission with its magazine and tv network. Abandoning the patronizing attitude toward indigenous peoples has been a major improvement.

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