Hey guys, one of my players is playing a Bounty Hunter, and has asked me if their are any guilds or organisations in the Starfinder Pact Worlds setting for Bounty Hunters.
For the life of me I cant find any references to bounty hunting, have i missed it? or is this still to be created?
rgds
Dean
I believe mercenaries groups are the closest thing you'll find right now. Pact Worlds has information and options for the Skyfire Legion, the biggest mercenary group of the setting, located on Triaxus.
There's even an archetype.
Yeah, the Skyfire Legion serves as a sort of unofficial mercenary bonding agency, at least in my read. If you are not at least some kind of loose affiliate with them? It means ( or at least will broadly be interpreted to mean ) that you are either too small, or too sketchy. Which, hey, doesn't mean there's no demand, someone is always hiring mercs because they are cheap, or because they'll do atrocities on demand. ;)
There's no "bounty hunter's guild" as yet, but there is easily room for such. If I were making one, I'd. . . make two:
One is a subsidiary of AbadarCorp, acting as a full and proper bonding and contracting agency for independent bounty hunters. They'd enforce minimum standards in competence and ethics in their hunters, as well as in the contracts. A 'proper' bounty hunter is a freelance adjunct to law enforcement, after all, and should befit themselves as such. Note that Abadar cares less about the exact details of the laws themselves, and more about maintaining a general level of lawfulness. Hence the bounty hunters: its a pragmatic way to minimize the about of border-jumping.
The other 'guild' is a much less formal operation, run out of the Church of Besmara. Some people like the freedom of the open space ways, making their living finding people with a price on their head. Even if they don't want to follow rules, they'll still need friends. Thus, a loose association for the more chaotic and law-breaking bounty hunters, where they make friends, trade favors, and in general ensure they all survive better than as lone borderline ( or not-so-borderline ) criminals.
Remember the Hellknights have the Order of the Chain which is, among other less reputable activities, a bounty hunting outfit.
Bobba Fetch Bounties and Bail ?
The Aspis Consortium is also part of Starfinder. They seem likely to mask some of their recruiting and operations activities under the guise of a legitmate-looking professional organization for bounty hunters, perhaps something like the Aspis Private Acquisitions and Recovery Division.
The church /corporation of abadar has some of the more legitimate ones
Don't forget the Stewards. They're the general 'peacekeeping' force in the PW setting and part of their mandate is hunting down fugitives. They likely have subcontracts for bounties, assuming they work like basically every other law enforcement organization.
I'd also lean towards "the scrubs join the guild and the really good ones do what they want."
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
For an idea of what a guild might provide its members look at the secret organization in the John Wick films. ☺
I'd disagree. The real scrubs are independent, because nobody wants them. The professionals join a guild, because now a guild will accept them.
The masters? Either join a guild or don't, but it doesn't really matter hugely, because they can write their own rules. One in a 'guild' pretty much strongly influences policy, while one outside a guild pretty much still has a 'guild' of their own anyway, built out of their reputation and contacts and allies.
Scifi guilds often need handwavium reasons to be the monopolies they need to be to justify their existence.
In a mature/future commerce setup like presumably Starfinder has setup, why join the monopoly when you can interface directly with the pact world level administrative system? Ala, why follow "Guild rules" when you can make your own PMC and simply follow the larger Pact World setups. Especially when you consider things like the existence of Hellknights and other Star Knights stuff. They might have similar goals, but different approaches, so why would they agree to operate under one restrictive monopoloy umbrella when they can do it on their own?
I could see local guilds of varying power, but especially with a system involving multiple species and 'the gap' groups would be inclined to stay as independent as feasible. If on a larger scale you're think of 'loose coalition of groups that identify themselves as bounty hunters' vs large singular megacorp that rules all bounty hunters, I could see that working.
But that kinda rolls back to 'scrubs join up because they need the collective power to make up for their newbie/lack of influence'. Higher tier groups could just make their own private military company, even higher tier could do what they want on their own.
If reflecting back on Pathfinder/DnD, Thieves guild as in 'local to city' but not 'planetary thieves guild'.
Oh, I have been using "guild" just a general term for a professional organization. I wouldn't expect them to be 'guilds' in the economic sense of exclusivity, at least not most of the time. The only way a professional guild would become a monopoly would be if its service is so broad and inoffensive that there is no real reason *not* to unify.
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We don't cotton to space-union talk around here.
Losobal wrote: Scifi guilds often need handwavium reasons to be the monopolies they need to be to justify their existence.
In a mature/future commerce setup like presumably Starfinder has setup, why join the monopoly when you can interface directly with the pact world level administrative system? Ala, why follow "Guild rules" when you can make your own PMC and simply follow the larger Pact World setups. Especially when you consider things like the existence of Hellknights and other Star Knights stuff. They might have similar goals, but different approaches, so why would they agree to operate under one restrictive monopoloy umbrella when they can do it on their own?
I could see local guilds of varying power, but especially with a system involving multiple species and 'the gap' groups would be inclined to stay as independent as feasible. If on a larger scale you're think of 'loose coalition of groups that identify themselves as bounty hunters' vs large singular megacorp that rules all bounty hunters, I could see that working.
But that kinda rolls back to 'scrubs join up because they need the collective power to make up for their newbie/lack of influence'. Higher tier groups could just make their own private military company, even higher tier could do what they want on their own.
If reflecting back on Pathfinder/DnD, Thieves guild as in 'local to city' but not 'planetary thieves guild'.
Guilds get a big advantage dealing with bureaucracy, and as time goes on everything gets more bureaucratic. For instance, maybe a bounty hunting corporation needs approval from various government committees, a lot of paperwork documenting their members, and SOPs for routine government audits. Multiply all that times every planet you want to work in.
Big guys have a much easier time handling all this than a small group(and maybe the big guys lobby for stricter regulations to keep it that way).
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