Whelp, looks like he wants us to keep using the word adventurer!
See, my PC's got a house in Magnimar. They're murdertourists.It's Shattered Star if you're curious.Yeah. Well, I'm not playing that AP. Sorry.When I look at the AP I am running and see its basically a string of home invasion and burglary with an expectation of wanton murder? Yeah, murderhoboes.It's not the ones who call themselves that that bother me. It's the ones who try to pin on my characters and games. "All PCs are murderhoboes."MurderhoboesIf the players or characters call themselves this, I dont want to play with them.
Suddenly, I'm thinking of Westworld . . . .
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Can We Stop Using The Word "Adventurer" Now?I've got a better idea. How about we stop trying to impose our pet peeves and personal opinions on the gaming tables of the greater community. If you don't like the term adventurers, the only we that should be discussing that is your table, cause my table the term adventurer. Cause, you know, we go adventuring... :)
in all fairness to the OP, this is a good way to find out whether or not something you dislike is a pet peeve or an actual problem based on the comparison of your expirence to the expirences of your peers
I feel like adventurers works fine on the player level, but whether it works on the character level depends entirely on the setting you're trying to present.
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Can we stop using the phrase "life hack" now?
No. The clickbait thread titles shall continue until morale improves.
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Talking points for dragons at Dragon parties.
"So this Paladin walks in and challenges me to a duel! Naturally I ate him, but he had the most fascinating armor"
"Well this one guy tried sneaking in while I was napping, like I couldn't hear him, good luck trying to be silent on a big f$!%ing pile of gold there guy! But he had this really cool ring"
Talking points for dragons at Dragon parties.
"So this Paladin walks in and challenges me to a duel! Naturally I ate him, but he had the most fascinating armor"
"Well this one guy tried sneaking in while I was napping, like I couldn't hear him, good luck trying to be silent on a big f#$$ing pile of gold there guy! But he had this really cool ring"
Wait did he try sneaking or just take 10 these things are important.
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No, seriously what's with all these people linking to other threads that have nothing to do with the topic.
They're other thread's this guy has made to get people to read his blog...except for Kobold who's just having fun doing his own thing.
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They're other thread's this guy has made to get people to read his blog...except for Kobold who's just having fun doing his own thing.
And what's the problem with that? A bit of self-promotion doesn't hurt anyone and if you don't like it, simply ignore it. I've followed a lot of links on these boards over the years, sometimes a worthwhile effort, sometimes not so. And I think that it's much easier to discuss blog topics at an actual messageboard than by using the comment function for the blog entry.
Doesn't mean that I agree with Neal all too often. Different experiences with gamers, I think. I can't remember a single game I took part in, where the PCs called themselves adventurers, so this has basically been a non-issue at my tables.
Though I kinda liked the adventurer companies in the Realms' grey Box and generally think that what was good for London's oversea merchants should be nothing a group of PCs need to be ashamed of.
See if he made his title something like "Regarding the use of the Word Adventurer in Character" instead of the way he did I wouldn't have a problem.
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Earlier, I agreed that "adventurer" was useful on a meta-level for the audience outside the universe to describe characters who are "ones who are on an adventure", but I disagreed that the term had any real meaning in-universe. I was mistaken.
No one in-universe (besides Deadpool) would be aware of their life suddenly being the subject of a tale, the genre of said tale, and their importance as a character in said tale, and so would not call themselves "adventurers". Except, framing real-life events as tales is exactly the bread and butter of bards and skalds. They would be framing the events as a tale after the fact (if they're particularly good at improvising, then even during the fact), but these events would exist in-universe as tales. Putting all of the tales in the catchall category of "adventures" would naturally arise, and describing the participants of the adventures as "adventurers" would also be a legitimate thing in-universe. So persons that we, the audience, consider adventurers would also be considered adventurers by their fellows dependent on how significant a role bards and skalds play in whatever culture they happen to be in.
So "adventurer" does have its place, both in- and out-of-universe.
Oi, that's not burning down, that's blowing up! Get your destruction phrases right!
It was burning down, turns out the alchemist left some of his supplies there, got the job done though.
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I think of 'adventurer' like i di 'football player' A quarterback, linebacker, running back, and kicker all have vastly different skillsets, purposes and training methods. When talking about the team as a whole it's way easier to have a term for them as a collective.
The last group I actually played with was an halforc brawler, a halfling cleaner investigator, A cleric who's religious preview was solving logic puzzles and bringing lost ancient wisdom to light, and a lunatic hedge wizard sorcerer who focused on conjuration and illusion magic. We called ourselves a freelance adaptable solution providers.
My first 3.0 group was a half ogre barbarian strongman, twin human rogue contortionist acrobats, a druid animal handler, A bard based entirely off of Elvira and my Elven carnival barker/ringmaster/snake oil salesman Necromancer with the leadership feat who made a side income reanimating plow animals as zombies to help farm production. That group called itself Dr. Karrodius's Wandering Artists of the Whimsical Macabre.
They all likely would have nodded if anyone asked if they'd say they were adventurers.
No.
Doesn't have anything to do with PC motivation for me. An adventurer is someone who goes on adventures. Nothing more, nothing less. Which is exactly what PCs usually do.
Anything beyond that is your interpretation.
Zaister, I will pose this to you, then.
Say you put up a poster asking for a posse to hunt down a bandit lord. You want capable, experienced people with the skills to get the job done. Then some yahoo comes up to you, and when you ask what he does all he tells you is that he's an adventurer.
That's great, but what does that mean? By using the term in-game, you're still going to have people asking what you can actually do, and requesting a list of your previous exploits and history before giving you the job. And it's bad enough when NPCs are doing it, but if a new PC is approaching the group, that's essentially a job interview. You need to make your case as to why the company should hire you on. Wasting time with a job title that doesn't mean anything can make you look foolish, especially if you never thought beyond that label.
As usual, I don't have the power to make anyone do anything. I am not on staff as a game creator, and if people don't like my suggestions, they're free to not use them. However, pointing out that someone saying they're an "adventurer" and expecting that to mean something when it could be anything from treasure hunter and arcane scholar, to assassin or pirate doesn't seem unreasonable.
I would hope they would tell me what their skillset is. When someone new is introduced to a party, "what you do" has never been answered with "I am an adventurer like you".
I hear things like "I am a master of the arcane arts, capable of ....".
The thing is, roleplaying games didn't invent the word adventurer. It's entomology goes back to a 16th century French word meaning gambler, risk taker, or mercenary. Kinda like, you know, RPG adventurers. There are countless real life examples of adventurers. Marco Polo, Columbus, Ponce DeLeon, Lewis and Clark, Magellan... Etc. Regardless of what skills they bring to adventuring, the act itself is still the same.
Furthermore, describing themselves based on the experience they bring to the table cuts out a whole section of the tropes related to the peasant adventurer. The farmer who reluctantly takes up the sword, the hardscrabble urchin who uses their earned penchant for stealth... There's no reason to get rid of a word 500 years old at this point.
Lastly, I feel like if this had just been a post opening a discussion as opposed to a link to a blog (where the author presumably can hope to collect advertising revenue for clicks) it might be better perceived. I think this is an attempt to use Paizo's free portion of their website to back door around paying for real advertising and search optimization.
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Lastly, I feel like if this had just been a post opening a discussion as opposed to a link to a blog (where the author presumably can hope to collect advertising revenue for clicks) it might be better perceived. I think this is an attempt to use Paizo's free portion of their website to back door around paying for real advertising and search optimization.
I can all but guarantee you that it was only intended as clickbait. The OP has a history of posting links to his blog and disappearing from the conversation thereafter.
OTOH, in the context of someone looking to hire a group of PCs for job, it's useful to have a generic term for the type of people who'll do the kind of job he's looking for. Sure, one of those who show up may say "I am a master of...No.
Doesn't have anything to do with PC motivation for me. An adventurer is someone who goes on adventures. Nothing more, nothing less. Which is exactly what PCs usually do.
Anything beyond that is your interpretation.
Zaister, I will pose this to you, then.
Say you put up a poster asking for a posse to hunt down a bandit lord. You want capable, experienced people with the skills to get the job done. Then some yahoo comes up to you, and when you ask what he does all he tells you is that he's an adventurer.
That's great, but what does that mean? By using the term in-game, you're still going to have people asking what you can actually do, and requesting a list of your previous exploits and history before giving you the job. And it's bad enough when NPCs are doing it, but if a new PC is approaching the group, that's essentially a job interview. You need to make your case as to why the company should hire you on. Wasting time with a job title that doesn't mean anything can make you look foolish, especially if you never thought beyond that label.
As usual, I don't have the power to make anyone do anything. I am not on staff as a game creator, and if people don't like my suggestions, they're free to not use them. However, pointing out that someone saying they're an "adventurer" and expecting that to mean something when it could be anything from treasure hunter and arcane scholar, to assassin or pirate doesn't seem unreasonable.
I would hope they would tell me what their skillset is. When someone new is introduced to a party, "what you do" has never been answered with "I am an adventurer like you".
I hear things like "I am a master of the arcane arts, capable of ....".
You missed my point. I was saying that Neal's example of "I am an adventurer" is uncommon when someone is specifically asked what they do. Then I went on to give him an example of something that is more likely to be said, for the moments when "I am an adventurer" are not descriptive enough.
Neal was trying to insinuate that the hiring person is trying to get details, and the person being hired goes to some default answer that tells them nothing.
The thing is, roleplaying games didn't invent the word adventurer. It's entomology goes back to a 16th century French word meaning gambler, risk taker, or mercenary. Kinda like, you know, RPG adventurers. There are countless real life examples of adventurers. Marco Polo, Columbus, Ponce DeLeon, Lewis and Clark, Magellan... Etc. Regardless of what skills they bring to adventuring, the act itself is still the same.
Furthermore, describing themselves based on the experience they bring to the table cuts out a whole section of the tropes related to the peasant adventurer. The farmer who reluctantly takes up the sword, the hardscrabble urchin who uses their earned penchant for stealth... There's no reason to get rid of a word 500 years old at this point.
Lastly, I feel like if this had just been a post opening a discussion as opposed to a link to a blog (where the author presumably can hope to collect advertising revenue for clicks) it might be better perceived. I think this is an attempt to use Paizo's free portion of their website to back door around paying for real advertising and search optimization.
I was on his site for less than 10 seconds so all I did was increase his bounce rate. :)