Why Hire Adventurers?

[Tanarii]

No, it's not so broad as to be useless. It's a perfectly valid thing to want to have a word to describe. You disagree over the use of the word "story" as that word, but do not dismiss the concept as a useful one. Do you have a substitute word? If you don't, you're simply going to have to live with people using "story," which they have been for years.

It's functionally useless because it means "playing a roleplaying game".
Just call it "playing a roleplaying game"
Don't try to broaden the word "story", which has an existing meaning, to include "playing a roleplaying game". Which is something it most definitely does not mean by definition, as well as being circular.

Underlying narrative threads tying together events in a preordained way, or narrative mechanics ... those are not useless. In that case, you're playing a story. And there are other ways to play a story, instead of playing a character. I don't do any of those, and they are likewise not integral to playing a roleplaying game, but it's fine for those who want to.

Oh, i didn't say "real world". It can totally be purely fictional as long as it is consistent and believable.

Of course, importing real word societies is a shortcut because we already know that it works and how. One has to do less design work. But if one does import real world societies, they better not be ridiculous carricatures. Those have only a place in a comedy game.

When you say verisimilitude, you're implying (appearing) to be real. Yes, fictional. But that's what the word means.

It's slightly different from believability, arriving at which usually implies some suspension of disbelief.

And consistency impacts both of those to some degree, it seems to me.

[Fiery Diamond]

It's functionally useless because it means "playing a roleplaying game".
Just call it "playing a roleplaying game"
Don't try to broaden the word "story", which has an existing meaning, to include "playing a roleplaying game". Which is something it most definitely does not mean by definition, as well as being circular.

Underlying narrative threads tying together events in a preordained way, or narrative mechanics ... those are not useless. In that case, you're playing a story. And there are other ways to play a story, instead of playing a character. I don't do any of those, and they are likewise not integral to playing a roleplaying game, but it's fine for those who want to.

Except "playing a roleplaying game" is the act of engaging in those fictional events, not the fictional events themselves. It's a verb. We're talking about the noun. Also, it's a concept that encapsulates more than just a group of people sitting around a table playing make-believe. It is the "meat of the make-believe" itself that we're talking about, not the act of playing make-believe, and it applies to more than just roleplaying games, but any form that fictional events with thematic elements may take. It's a concrete concept and it needs a single word to describe it. Many, many people have used the word "story" for years - including outside the roleplaying game community. You may not like it, and you're free to suggest an alternative, but please stop being so dismissive about it.

Also, what distinctions you find important are not necessarily the distinctions that others find important, so having a way to easily identify what those distinctions are (rather than out of hand dismissing the ones you don't care about) would be a great idea, so I wholeheartedly support any attempt to come up with a substitute word. For example, as I said, I don't care whether somebody is telling events afterward or the events are unfolding - to me, that's irrelevant. What isn't irrelevant is whether those events are preplanned or not, which is why terms like "organic story" or "emergent story" get used to describe non-preplanned sequences of fictional events. I'm not trying to say there isn't any difference between the two definitions of story and that we should conflate them. I'm trying to say that the one you're dismissing is a useful concept and one that needs to have a word for it.

[Tanarii]

You may not like it, and you're free to suggest an alternative, but please stop being so dismissive about it.

I'm not dismissive, I'm pushing back against people who are telling me that I'm doing something when I play a roleplaying game that I know I am not doing. I'm not playing a story, I'm not telling a story, I'm not engaged in collaborative storytelling. And I'm not creating a story, although like any set of events one may be told about them after the fact.

Claiming that my world-building or playing a tabletop roleplaying has anything to do with story or storytelling is not correct, unless the term is expanded so much as to be meaningless. And as such, I'm going to push back on it.

[aglondier]

You don't hire adventurers because "adventurer" is not a profession. It's a catch-all term for people who go on adventures... and quite often that's the only thing those people have in common. Less charitably, it's a term for people who enjoy and go out of their way for dangerous and exciting experiences.

What you're talking of is hiring of mercenaries. And in the sample situation, hiring mercenaries is a bad idea & the feudal lord in question should find themselves a better advisor. If you are feudal lords with loyal underlings, you send THEM on the "adventure", or rather, military operation. That's why you have them.

The chief reason for a feudal lord to hire mercenaries is because they DON'T have loyal underlings willing to do their damn job, AKA military service. This could happen, for example, because they have substituted monetary payments for said service - so the feudal lord can pay someone else to that job.

There are other reasons, like false flag operations others have mentioned, but they don't apply to the sample scenario.

If we're actually using say, medieval England or France as our inspiration for this fantasy world, then there's actually a deeper misunderstanding we can address that clears up the issue of why to hire adventurers.

From a modern understanding we have a tendency to mistake the relationship town guards, men at arms, and knights have with their lords as an employee relationship, but it's actually closest in modern terms to jury duty.

"Knight" is not a job. There are five small business owners in your duchy (three commercial farms, one winery, and a realtor) who, as a condition of the license by which they operate their business, are required to respond to summons for "Knight Duty" and if they've already served more than nine weeks in the last two years, they're allowed to respond to the summons with "No."

"Town guard" is not a job. There are three local trade unions (book binders, wheel makers, and blacksmiths) who, as a condition of the license that allow them to organize, are required to maintain a program where employees who volunteer to be police officers after their work shifts for two weeks are paid time and a half.

The percentage of actual, full time, not expected to be working in some vital industry four days a week, soldiers in your generic medieval kingdom who are not mercenaries already is asymptotic to 0.

So you have two choices. You can write a letter to one of your local private citizens summoning him to Knight Duty. He's allowed to take a full week to respond, and then another full week to actually arrive. You can do that to him only maybe three times a year, so this had better be one of the top five most dangerous things to happen this year or next year.
Or you can splash around some silverware and get a mercenary company in the goblin camp tonight.

I think the term we are looking for is Scutage. When the vassal is called to service but cannot or will not fight, they can pay a cash fine to their lord, so he can pay someone to take their place. Even today it happens in nations that have compulsory national service.
The players are the kind of people who make their living by being the people who are paid to take the place of the unwilling knights.

So, our example Lord has an alleged Goblin problem. He calls on his knights, who are busy or unwilling to fight myths and legends, and instead pay scutage. Lord then uses funds to pay adventurous mercenary types to investigate and resolve the situation. Pretty straightforward.

[Zombimode]

I'm not dismissive, I'm pushing back against people who are telling me that I'm doing something when I play a roleplaying game that I know I am not doing. I'm not playing a story, I'm not telling a story, I'm not engaged in collaborative storytelling. And I'm not creating a story, although like any set of events one may be told about them after the fact.

Claiming that my world-building or playing a tabletop roleplaying has anything to do with story or storytelling is not correct, unless the term is expanded so much as to be meaningless. And as such, I'm going to push back on it.

I'm very confused. FieryDiamond has detailed the implications of world building in respect to an aspect of the actitvity of playing a roleplaying game. This aspect was given the name "story".
If you replace the name "story" with some random but unique string that has no inherent meaning and soley exist as an identifier to the meaning that FieryDiamond has described, would you then disagree about the implications that world building might have on this aspect?

If no, what exactly are you pushing back against?

If yes, could you describe how exactly you are disagreeing?

[Lord Vukodlak]

Here's a point that's not addressed, its not always the noble doing the hiring. A town might take up a collection to pool money to hire adventures. "The Seven Samurai" because the local lord doesn't give a **** to solve the problem. A collection of merchants might do the same because they aren't allowed to have more then a handful of guards.

[Tanarii]

If no, what exactly are you pushing back against?If yes, could you describe how exactly you are disagreeing?

The idea that when I am sitting around a table with folks making decisions for what our characters do, and another player is resolving the actions and describing outcomes and consequences, has anything to do with the already pre-existing word "story" merely because there is communication involved and it's not real events.

The idea that world-building to create a setting & people & current situations for those players to exist in and interact with and make decisions within and experience outcomes and consequences within, has anything to do with the already pre-existing word "story" merely because there is communication involved and it's not real events.

What we are doing when we play a roleplaying game is called "roleplaying characters" by "making decisions" in the "fictional environment" and experiencing "outcomes and consequences". Which is pretty much the definitions of roleplaying and player agency. Neither of which have to do with any kind of story, and both of which are actively harmed by most kinds kinds of actual story. Except for recounting the events after the fact, telling a story about them after they've happened.

So no, nothing me or my tables do has anything to do with story while we're playing or world-building, thank you very much. Any more than I am "living the story of my life."

[Jay R]

The real reason to hire adventurers is because we are telling the story of the adventurers.

If 999 nobles use their own guards to solve problems, and only one noble hires adventurers, then the only one we'll hear about in the game is the one who hires adventurers. That doesn't make it the only way to handle things, or the most common way, or the best way. It just makes it the only way that we experience.

Most problems in the fantasy world are not solved by adventurers, just as most problems in New York City aren't solved by the Avengers. But when we're watching an Avengers movie, it will be about the one problem that gets solved by the Avengers.

[Mike_G]

OH MY GOD.

Because if you don't there's no game.

That's the reason. But now we've entered the Internet zone of 'Let's Argue About How We Argue."

The OP asked a question,and plenty of people gave answers that could very well work as a justification for why somebody might hire adventurers.

Then we got pedantry about what feudalism is, counterarguments as to whether that should even have any bearing on a fantasy game, and now we're fighting about how broadly we can define "story."

NPCs hire adventurers so we can play adventurers. That's the answer. Lots of people gave justifications. Pick one. Or don't Just tell the PCs 'You see the Lord's forces heading out of the village. When you ask why, they tell you they're off to hunt goblins because he can;t think of a reason to hire adventurers." Then the game can be about how they decide to loot the town now that the guards are all out hunting goblins.

[icefractal]

So no, nothing me or my tables do has anything to do with story while we're playing or world-building, thank you very much. Any more than I am "living the story of my life."

I mean, some people would say that you're "living the story of your life" - that's a meaning that I've seen used.

Consider someone relating a series of events which happened to them, and ending:
"... and then we hitched a ride home on a big rig. And the boat was never found. True story!"

Is "true story" a misuse of "story" because the teller was simply relating events which happened, not changing them to fit a particular narrative? I don't think most people would agree.

Story, in common usage, means both things. And I understand you like one of the things and strongly dislike the other, but that doesn't mean they can't share a word, any more than delicious salad can't share a word with terrible salad (that kind of coleslaw which is like 75% mayo, for instance )

[Tanarii]

OH MY GOD.

Because if you don't there's no game.

Hahaha very true.

I mean, some people would say that you're "living the story of your life" - that's a meaning that I've seen used.

And they would be wrong. I do not live the story of my life. They're welcome to believe that is what they're doing with their life. I'm not here to tell them about their life and how they live it.

Consider someone relating a series of events which happened to them, and ending:
"... and then we hitched a ride home on a big rig. And the boat was never found. True story!"

Is "true story" a misuse of "story" because the teller was simply relating events which happened, not changing them to fit a particular narrative? I don't think most people would agree.

I wouldn't agree either. Clearly telling a story about previous events. But that doesn't make the events themselves any kind of story. Same for me when I'm playing a roleplaying game. We're playing characters living in a fictional real time, making fictional real time decisions, and fictionally experiencing real time outcomes and consequences as a result. We don't make decisions based on what's the best story, we don't believe there is an underlying narrative thread or theme affecting the decisions and outcomes/consequences ... any more than I believe there is in real life.

Story, in common usage, means both things.

Both what things? So far I'm only seeing two things that don't apply to my actively living through events in real life or doing the fictional same for a character experiencing role playing game events: telling an actual story, and making decisions on the best narrative outcome / using narrative mechanics to control the narrative outcome.

[JNAProductions]

OH MY GOD.

Because if you don't there's no game.

That's the reason. But now we've entered the Internet zone of 'Let's Argue About How We Argue."

The OP asked a question,and plenty of people gave answers that could very well work as a justification for why somebody might hire adventurers.

Then we got pedantry about what feudalism is, counterarguments as to whether that should even have any bearing on a fantasy game, and now we're fighting about how broadly we can define "story."

NPCs hire adventurers so we can play adventurers. That's the answer. Lots of people gave justifications. Pick one. Or don't Just tell the PCs 'You see the Lord's forces heading out of the village. When you ask why, they tell you they're off to hunt goblins because he can;t think of a reason to hire adventurers." Then the game can be about how they decide to loot the town now that the guards are all out hunting goblins.

I like to have a consistent world, with good verisimilitude.

If you don’t value that, that’s fine-but other people do. And it can help to bounce ideas off other people, see what they think.

[EndlessKng]

One thing to consider is that by the time the duke of wherever is looking to hire on sellswords to deal with a problem and the PCs are in that range, they probably have a reputation already. Most low-level adventures - heck, even in video games - don't start with requests from super-high-ranking NPCs, unless the PCs are in a structure that provides someone above them in that fashion (in which case, they're not anonymous sellswords but retainers, vassals, employees, or on your Suicide Squad). Level 1 adventurers (using D&D terms) start out dealing with pests and petty problems, and usually are hired by people similarly lower on the societal ladder - an innkeep, bartender, or farmer looking for some help with a problem. They can't afford to be as choosy as the Duke AND lack the support of the armies that the duke has at his beck and call. The party gets called up only after they have a reputation, and even then maybe only for certain specific tasks at first.

Related to this, many settings include guilds, either a general adventurer's guild, guilds for specific professions, personal guilds, or a combination of the lot. Look to Final Fantasy XIV and Elder Scrolls Online for examples of all three and so much more, in various degrees. Guilds provide structure and accountability to members, and channel members to various tasks in exchange for services. If the duke needs someone to look into those goblins and doesn't want to risk his own troops on a wild goose chase, he can pay a much lower (relative) fee to the hall, who put it up on the board for adventurers to take - but only those in standing can do so - or even give the task to a specific team.

[Mike_G]

I like to have a consistent world, with good verisimilitude.

If you don’t value that, that’s fine-but other people do. And it can help to bounce ideas off other people, see what they think.

And plenty of people gave ideas and examples and said what they think, and many were plausible. Real life towns and cities and nations have hired mercenaries and special contractors to do jobs. There is no lack of verisimilitude.

In other words, people answered the original question.

Annnnnd then the "Ackshully, the feudal system..." pedantry ensued.

Ya know what, not every fantasy world has a feudal system, and not every example of a feudal system is the same, and yeah, even under a feudal system, a lord might look to hire professionals to do a job. Lots of big important state actors hired foreign warriors to supplement their own troops or keep their own people on the farm or whatever.

So asking for ideas is great. But pedantically crapping all over those ideas is...well I guess it's Peak Internet.

[Chauncymancer]

I know. But that doesn't change anything. You are still effectively paying those knights by providing them land to sustain them and having this limited access to their martial service is what you get in return.

Now, the problem was "golins" raiding your villages. Which means the enemies are very close and actually threaten your subjects and holdings. That is exactly the situation where you should use your knights and levies instead of mercenaries because
a) they don't need to move far and can repel the raiders on a limited time budget
b) they are more motivated.

That your knights and their armed retainers are not full time fighters and don't owe you uninterrupted long term service is a problem, when you want to go to foreign lands or plan to do long campaigns. Not when you are defending your own villages (some of which should belong to knights holdings anyway).

Right, but I'm trying to explain the parallel here. You get a letter in the mail. It explains that there have been multiple violent breakins in your neighborhood. {Srubbed}

...

The threadline of narrative continuity of the events of your life is character continuity. {Scrubbed}

[Vahnavoi]

OH MY GOD.

Because if you don't there's no game.

Humbug. There is no necessity for the player characters to be mercenaries, sorry, "adventurers" - they can just BE the lord and his vassals, going to deal with the problem. And on the flipside of that, a player character doesn't need to get hired by anyone to go on an adventure. You can throw the entire title question in the trash and you're still left with majority of possible game genres.

[Lord Raziere]

Humbug. There is no necessity for the player characters to be mercenaries, sorry, "adventurers" - they can just BE the lord and his vassals, going to deal with the problem. And on the flipside of that, a player character doesn't need to get hired by anyone to go on an adventure. You can throw the entire title question in the trash and you're still left with majority of possible game genres.

But cuts off the genre that is most relevant to DnD: as lord they have to return to their castle to govern, when the default mode, the way most people play is by traveling around going wherever to get new adventurers. being tied to a castle and land is too much responsibility for most player characters to care for.

[Vahnavoi]

Or, you can not play the parts you aren't interested in, and skip to when the next interesting happens. Or, they could join their king and go on a multi-year military... what's the word again? Oh right: campaign.

The idea of player characters being sellswords is far less fundamental than you're implying.

[PhoenixPhyre]

But cuts off the genre that is most relevant to DnD: as lord they have to return to their castle to govern, when the default mode, the way most people play is by traveling around going wherever to get new adventurers. being tied to a castle and land is too much responsibility for most player characters to care for.

And if one player is a lord and the rest are his retainers...that breaks a fundamental principle of D&D that it's a party of (narrative) equals, not a protagonist and his flunkys. When one party member can order the rest around, that's not a good D&D party.

And if they're all lords, then
a) that invalidates like 99.9999999999999% of concepts
b) they're all lords of different areas, so why the heck are they adventuring together
c) have you tried scheduling regular adults? That's already nearly impossible. Finding a time when a bunch of rulers can go adventuring together is DC: NOPE. This would be blue text, but I'm deadly serious.

-----

And the idea that we need to mimic historical patterns is, to me, intolerable. It's a fantasy world, and history is for our world. The patterns will be different. If they're not, then that's bad worldbuilding. And there's tons of wiggle room to construct patterns where D&D-typical adventurers fit really well.

[Satinavian]

And if one player is a lord and the rest are his retainers...that breaks a fundamental principle of D&D that it's a party of (narrative) equals, not a protagonist and his flunkys. When one party member can order the rest around, that's not a good D&D party.

Stuff like that can work well. Most theme parties have a hierarchy and most players are not averse to play in one.

Of course people need to agree to that and sometimes there are issues in play, but honestly, i have not experienced more of those than in more traditional groups.

A couple of campaigns i have played recently :

- A young noble title holder in exile, her old knightly teacher, a prospective court wizard, a prospective court priest, a regular lowborn retainer with some secret and illegal powers seeking protection

- A (third son) conquistador leading an expedition seeking fame and riches, his slave bodyguard, a scholar witch i his service, an elite mercenary and a big-game-hunter/wilderness scout also on his payroll

- An heir to a big merchant empire, her sister, their mage, their guard chief

- A noble knight inheriting some remote outpost and related village, his priestly cousin and his uncle (who hates politics and therefore moved to the remote outpost) and the merchant setting up a shop there

- A princess competing with her siblings for the throne (as was the normal way to decide succession there ), her bodyguard and two political allies who later became supporters and friends.


It works. There are even games out there like SIFRP where such groups are basically standard expectation (not that any of the above were in this system).

[PhoenixPhyre]

Stuff like that can work well. Most theme parties have a hierarchy and most players are not averse to play in one.

Of course people need to agree to that and sometimes there are issues in play, but honestly, i have not experienced more of those than in more traditional groups.

A couple of campaigns i have played recently :

- A young noble title holder in exile, her old knightly teacher, a prospective court wizard, a prospective court priest, a regular lowborn retainer with some secret and illegal powers seeking protection

- A (third son) conquistador leading an expedition seeking fame and riches, his slave bodyguard, a scholar witch i his service, an elite mercenary and a big-game-hunter/wilderness scout also on his payroll

- An heir to a big merchant empire, her sister, their mage, their guard chief

- A noble knight inheriting some remote outpost and related village, his priestly cousin and his uncle (who hates politics and therefore moved to the remote outpost) and the merchant setting up a shop there

- A princess competing with her siblings for the throne (as was the normal way to decide succession there ), her bodyguard and two political allies who later became supporters and friends.


It works. There are even games out there like SIFRP where such groups are basically standard expectation (not that any of the above were in this system).

Yes, it can work. But it's a huge departure from the D&D norm. So doing it in D&D (or preaching it as the presumed default) ends up cutting out the vast majority of all the regular games out there.

It's like saying that you can play D&D without classes or races and do everything pure point buy (a bit less extreme, but still on the same end of the "major changes" spectrum). Sure, you can...but why? Why not play something that's designed that way and for which the basic social contract defaults to that style?

[Tawmis]

Let me start with a story.
You are baron/ess [Your Name] of Genericfantasyshire. While you believe in your family's glorious lineage, you also know that House [Your Name] is in power in your fief for solely two reasons: to enforce the laws of the king, and to provide tribute in military service, but most importantly in this situation, taxes, to your liege. For the past few years, Genericfantasyshire has been relatively stable. Your knights have been able to keep the law, you are in good relations with the surrounding nobles as well as your liege, the changing of tax resources have allowed you to keep your position as well as live comfortably, and you are far enough from the king's wars that you and your forces have not been called upon. However, all of that changed in the last few weeks.
It feels like almost every day that messengers comes to you and reports of villages being sacked by what are reported to be goblins. You've never seen a goblin before, and doubt their existence, but that doesn't really matter. Villages are being stolen from and burned, people are dying, and the count is demanding tribute soon that you may not be able to supply. While you don't know the exact location of the threat, the reports of attacks leave a simple pattern that allow a small area to investigate. Not only do you have your own knights, as well as a potential militia of vengeful villages, but can call on your neighbors for help as well and reasonably convince them to help you.
But your most trusted advisor has a different idea.
Some strangers wandered into your capital last night. If they aren't armed to the teeth, they are carrying spellcasting equipment. They went into the market to buy combat equipment before going to the alehouse where they are now.
Instead of calling on your military resources, why not outsource it to these rowdy and dangerous looking strangers you have no reason to trust, and give them authority to kill things in your land?

You could also consider that - as a position of royalty - why sacrifice the sons (and daughters?) of your own kingdom's forces?
If it is a bad horde of these fictional goblins, which you know nothing of (and don't believe in them anyway) - why send people of your kingdom to face the risk?
What if the goblins slaughter them as well?
That will certainly mar your name.
Strangers? Sure. Send them - pay them if they succeed and return with evidence.
If they return successful, problem solved.
If they never return and the attacks continue, then they may have perishd.
Regardless, it was no loss to you or your kingdom.

[Tanarii]

And if one player is a lord and the rest are his retainers...that breaks a fundamental principle of D&D that it's a party of (narrative) equals, not a protagonist and his flunkys. When one party member can order the rest around, that's not a good D&D party.

That's not a fundental principle of D&D.

[Vahnavoi]

And if one player is a lord and the rest are his retainers...that breaks a fundamental principle of D&D that it's a party of (narrative) equals, not a protagonist and his flunkys. When one party member can order the rest around, that's not a good D&D party.

Social rank and narrative importance are not the same thing. One person being the party leader / lord / superior officer / whatever does not mean they are the protagonist and the other characters are flunkies. Go read some war novels that actually have a group focus and pay attention to rank to see how false that idea is.

Related, it's actually quite natural for small groups to have a pecking order, with a recognizable leader figure. This happens among the players at the table just as well. Paying attention to this, discussing who people want to serve as group leader and what it actually means to be a good leader can go long way to building cohesion and solving social problems within a group. A leader being able to issue orders does not prove a dysfunction within a group, whether a D&D party or something else.

And if they're all lords...

This was literally meant to happen in past versions of D&D as consequence of gaining experience and retainers. Every player character could acquire their own retinue and got class-appropriate slice of a shared domain at name level. Yes yes, it was later dropped, but not to great benefit of anyone.

then
a) that invalidates like 99.9999999999999% of concepts
b) they're all lords of different areas, so why the heck are they adventuring together
c) have you tried scheduling regular adults? That's already nearly impossible. Finding a time when a bunch of rulers can go adventuring together is DC: NOPE. This would be blue text, but I'm deadly serious.

a) and the idea that "adventurers" need to be hired for the game to happen invalidates all concepts of adventuring that aren't motivated by money
b) gee, what on Earth could oblige multiple lords to get together and work together in a world where dark forces regularly threaten all of civilization and where said lords have sworn oaths of fealty towards a common liege (and possibly, each other) so they can be called to fight said dark forces?
c) Read a history book. Or even just read or watch a fantasy series that focuses on aristocrats as protagonists. You aren't appealing to anything real, you are appealing to a trope of modern adult life and then retrojecting it to past societies to justify another trope for genre fantasy. You could just nix the middleman and use the elements of fantasy to, you know, work over the scheduling problem.

And the idea that we need to mimic historical patterns is, to me, intolerable. It's a fantasy world, and history is for our world. The patterns will be different. If they're not, then that's bad worldbuilding. And there's tons of wiggle room to construct patterns where D&D-typical adventurers fit really well.

"Adventurer" as a profession and social class of its own has never been high-quality world-building. That you even have to use "wiggle room" to "construct patterns" to make it work is purely a self-created problem born of lazy use language and not paying attention to profession and social class your character would already have as result of their life outside of an adventure.

But hey, let's forget about that. Let's let our imaginations run wild and free and entertain the whole set of hypothetical societies. It doesn't take a lot to imagine a setting where 1) player characters are directly responsible with dealing with the situation instead of being social outsiders or 2) the player characters are motivated to deal with the situation for reasons other than money. So even abandoning historicity entirely, the idea that there isn't a game if adventurers aren't hired is still humbug.

[Mechalich]

"Adventurer" as a profession and social class of its own has never been high-quality world-building. That you even have to use "wiggle room" to "construct patterns" to make it work is purely a self-created problem born of lazy use language and not paying attention to profession and social class your character would already have as result of their life outside of an adventure.

There are historical and history-adjacent circumstances where 'adventurers' are a thing, even though there was almost always a local term for the people who fell under this umbrella. Ronin, Cossack, and Cowboy, for example, can all be considered proxy terms for 'adventurer.' However these are indeed born out of specific historical conditions.

The big one is actually a surplus of soldiers. Persons with military experience become 'adventurers' because there aren't enough jobs available as paid soldiers and their military background has made them unsuited to civilian life. Adventurers consequently proliferate after wars have ended because there are huge numbers of former soldiers who are suddenly out of work, don't have any money, and cannot go home for some reason, whether that's temperament, or because their home no long exists or has been conquered by foreigners or some other circumstance. These adventurers may solidify as a class if there's some adventure-friendly frontier available where the law and the norms of social behavior are loosened that can absorb these men.

The whole 'adventurers are cheap' bit comes is dependent upon this surplus and the fact that adventurers cannot command a premium in a buyers market. Seven Samurai is a very good example of this, since the peasants are able to hire trained warriors simply by promising them steady meals, which is a product of the specific setting in which that movie occurs where the countryside is full of broke samurai. The film is also illustrative in that the line between adventurer and bandit is razor thin and may in fact be non-existent in some settings - Conan, rather famously, jumps back and forth across it on a whim.

However, one of the issues with this sort of thing is that the existence of adventurers, as a group large enough to represent a social class, tends to be temporary, lasting at most a few decades. This largely happens because the supply of surplus soldiers is usually finite and the attrition of adventurers is significant as they continually leave the profession due to finding steady work, dying (more often of disease or their vices than combat), or actually making enough money to settle down somewhere. This is a major game design issue for adventuring games because it really doesn't take very many successful adventures to make enough money to buy a plot and settle down. This is a big reason why 'adventurer-esque' characters in long-running media series are almost never allowed to succeed at anything because actually making any real money would end their need to keep adventuring (Cowboy Bebop being a classic example of this trope).

So the D&D adventurer model is actually quite limited, because it has a built in termination point where the PCs make enough money to stop playing the game, which they very plausibly hit around level 5. After that, in order to continuing finding reasons to adventure the characters need different motives. Pathfinder: Kingmaker, is actually a decent example of an adventure path that recognizes this. Gaining control of the Stolen Lands is the first arc, everything after that is the Lord and their retinue defending the newly established frontier outpost from threats.

[RandomPeasant]

D&D also has clear reasons to have an "adventurer" career path, because it postulates that there are ruins full of monsters and traps that also contain magical treasures and secrets beyond what the mages of the present can replicate. If you go into the Mulhorandi ruins outside town and come out with an artifact that protects the crops from plague (or just a bunch of Decanters of Endless Water), that's a real improvement to local quality of life that justifies investing a certain number of people in the "go off into the wilderness to seek your fortune" career path.

And if one player is a lord and the rest are his retainers

Lord and retainers doesn't work. But Lord, High Priest, Arcane Headmaster, and Merchant Prince works. You don't have to put one player in charge of the other players to put the players in charge of other people.

that invalidates like 99.9999999999999% of concepts

I agree that "you are the head of an organization" invalidates concepts which are not the heads of organizations, but all that means is that you shouldn't balance "head of organization" and "regular adventuring" abilities out of the same power pool. If your table decides "we don't want to rule any lands, we just want to keep going into dungeons and fighting dragons", that's fine, and the game should support that. But all that means is that if the way the Fighter keeps up with the Wizard casting teleport can't be an army of tiny men. It doesn't mean you can't have rules for people getting armies of tiny men, and I would submit that as something that happens in basically all of the source material, that is something you should have rules for.

And, honestly, that's probably the right way to handle it anyway. You don't want to think of separate Lord-tier progressions for the Scout and the Ranger, and you don't want to tell the Fighter that he has to become a General rather than a Spymaster or Grand Librarian. The idea that the Fighter would justify himself by getting armies instead of high level abilities is tempting, but it's not nearly as good an idea as it seems like at a first glance.

they're all lords of different areas, so why the heck are they adventuring together

Because the guy at the next level up the feudal ladder invaded his neighbor and called them up? Because the arch-priest of Hextor declared a crusade? History doesn't have a lot of examples of groups of political leaders teaming up for ninja squad missions, because in the real world the overlap between "political leader" and "ninja squad member" is close to zero, but it has plenty of examples of disparate political leaders coming together for a particular task.

have you tried scheduling regular adults? That's already nearly impossible. Finding a time when a bunch of rulers can go adventuring together is DC: NOPE. This would be blue text, but I'm deadly serious.

Having scheduling things is good. If you have a kingdom building game that creates demands for the Wizard to do his rituals at the harvest festival or the Rogue to wait for spy reports at midwinter or whatever the hell you have something that can be natively used to explain why the BBEG has to wait for the new moon to do his unholy ritual.

[Pauly]

D&D also has clear reasons to have an "


Because the guy at the next level up the feudal ladder invaded his neighbor and called them up? Because the arch-priest of Hextor declared a crusade? History doesn't have a lot of examples of groups of political leaders teaming up for ninja squad missions, because in the real world the overlap between "political leader" and "ninja squad member" is close to zero, but it has plenty of examples of disparate political leaders coming together for a particular task.
.

But the Fantasy literature genre is full of over titled ninja squads
LotR: Leaving out Gandalf and the hobbits. Aragon - king; Legolas - Prince; Gimli - member of the Dwarven Royal family and first cousin once removed of King Balin, so a Duke or Marquess in modern terms; Boromir Eldest son of the Steward Denethor and next in line to that title, so effectively a prince.
That’s a ninja squad of a king, 2 princes and a duke.

The Belgariad is another example of a ninja squad full of princes, imperial princesses, dukes and earls.

Since D&D and the whole Fantasy RPG industry derives from works of fiction then fully titled ninja squads are within the acceptable and believable. If you are running an Historical RPG, then I fully agree that the overlap between lords and ninjas is close to zero. But it’s very common in fantasy for the best ninjas to also be highly entitled.

[Mechalich]

Because the guy at the next level up the feudal ladder invaded his neighbor and called them up? Because the arch-priest of Hextor declared a crusade? History doesn't have a lot of examples of groups of political leaders teaming up for ninja squad missions, because in the real world the overlap between "political leader" and "ninja squad member" is close to zero, but it has plenty of examples of disparate political leaders coming together for a particular task.

What history does have, is the occasional case of 'ninja squad members' who rose through their success to become political leaders. Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei, is one example, though there are definitely others.

But the Fantasy literature genre is full of over titled ninja squads

Fantasy literature is full of ninja squads with impressive titles, but not nearly so full of actively reigning characters. Aragorn and Thorin, notably, are kings without countries, and similar lost or exiled characters of impressive lineage are staples of the literature. Such status was not unknown in history, and many an ruler was indeed reduced to 'ninja-squad' status prior to rising back up to retake their crown and authority (or dying ignobly while trying), for example Alfred the Great.

[Pauly]

Fantasy literature is full of ninja squads with impressive titles, but not nearly so full of actively reigning characters. Aragorn and Thorin, notably, are kings without countries, and similar lost or exiled characters of impressive lineage are staples of the literature. Such status was not unknown in history, and many an ruler was indeed reduced to 'ninja-squad' status prior to rising back up to retake their crown and authority (or dying ignobly while trying), for example Alfred the Great.

Also the literature is also full of the noble administrator Handwavium the third who looks after the land in the lords absence. Historically in times of stability it was quite common for the Lord to leave the estate in the hands of an administrator and the Lord going off and doing their thing. The Victorian era is a prime examp,e.

[Eldan]

But the Fantasy literature genre is full of over titled ninja squads
LotR: Leaving out Gandalf and the hobbits. Aragon - king; Legolas - Prince; Gimli - member of the Dwarven Royal family and first cousin once removed of King Balin, so a Duke or Marquess in modern terms; Boromir Eldest son of the Steward Denethor and next in line to that title, so effectively a prince.

Don't leave out the Hobbits. Frodo is landed gentry, Sam is his batman, Peregrin is directly related to and later takes the title of, the Thaine of the Shire (who is at least master of the moot and captain of the shire armies) and Merry becomes Master of Buckland and Warden of the Westmarch, which are at least noble-ish titles.