Irregular Adventurer's Guild game-- advice

[Grod_The_Giant]

I'm planning on putting together a sort of irregular, rotating D&D campaign for my circle of friends. Every week or two, we'll meet, someone will run a short adventure, and whoever else shows up will play characters-- either their own, or a pre-gen.

First, has anyone tried something like this, and has it worked?

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, how to handle advancement? I'm less worried about experience (I'm inclined to just say "every X sessions, we'll level up,") and more about treasure. The standard "keep or sell" option doesn't seem too friendly to characters hopping in and out, and seems especially unfriendly to the stock pre-gens.

At the moment, I'm thinking something along the lines of "the guild gets all items found, and pays you cash money for completing quests"-- 1/Xth the WBL difference between your current level and your next level. If you want to keep an item, you can "buy" it off with your share of treasure, going into "debt" to the guild if necessary. (So if your regular payment is 500 gold, and you keep a +1 sword, you wouldn't get the gold payout for the next four sessions). Does that seem fair, or would you be unhappy with such a system?

[Palanan]

I think most players would chafe at the notion that cool items they find would be taken by a guild and substituted for cash payments. I would expect the players to begin plotting a heist against the guild.

[Yanisa]

This sounds a lot like Pathfinder Society. Which is the "official" way to play pathfinder. In general it allows for rotating parties (en dms), you get a sheet for each adventure and for each 3 sheets you get a level. You also get to find items, but hand them in at the end of the adventure, often getting gold in return or you get gold from different sources. You then use that gold to buy items you have found (the Pathfinder Society makes copies so everyone could buy it). There is a lot more too it but the sort answer is: yes people have done it before and it works. It does require a different attitude then default dnd, so it ain't for everyone.

[KorbeltheReader]

So here's a question: if they're giving all their loot away at the end of each adventure and using proceeds to buy gear, is there any need to give them any non-gp loot in the first place? I mean, other than stuff your monsters were using themselves, of course.

[Deremir]

the "gold by job" thing is fine but i wouldn't recommend the payments for magic items thing, perhaps you should do what my old d&d group did, whenever we got back to town we would split up the gold, then we would all bid over the magic items we had collected, the person who won the bidding would split up the money he bid and would give an even share to each of the other members, i think this might work well for you, and you can work it into your guild idea

[Yanisa]

So here's a question: if they're giving all their loot away at the end of each adventure and using proceeds to buy gear, is there any need to give them any non-gp loot in the first place? I mean, other than stuff your monsters were using themselves, of course.

In Society you "unlocked" the items so the general idea was: You find a cloak of resistance +1, now your guild can make cloaks of resistance +1. The item would get destroyed in the process of learning how to make it, so if you wanted to use the item, they needed to make a new one. Hence you need to pay for the material cost and time (which is just the normal price).
Still some basic items were always buyable, like wands and +1 weapons.

Also you can still use the items during the adventure, giving a benefit during the adventure as well.