The Adventurers’ Guild

To Die Would be an Awfully Big Adventure

When someone finds themselves reborn into another world, there’s usually 1 of 7 immediate reactions.

1 - time to buy a slave

2 - YEAH BOI!

3 - STATUS!

4 - your skills are trash; get out!

5 - your skills are insane; get in!

6 - why’d I have to be reborn as this person?!

7 - time to join the Adventurers’ Guild

Ah, the Adventurers’ Guild and their adventurers.

From the great JRPG series The Legend of Heroes/The Kiseki Series in the form of the Bracer’s Guild to starring as the main characters in the world’s most played RPG, Dungeons and Dragons, adventurers and their guilds are everywhere in the world of fantasy.

In an anime context, most people would associate this cliché with the Isekai genre, though I do not know how fair of an assessment this truly is.

Its origins can definitely be traced back to Isekai with Mushoku Tensei bringing the cliché into the limelight.

In Mushoku Tensei, the guild acts almost like a private for-hire company for everyone in the world. They deal with all manners of different odd jobs and requests, many of which the world’s militaries are far too busy to deal with. For example, the adventurers gather herbs, provide escorts, search for missing peoples, exterminate monsters and gather materials from them, and much more. Their strength and diverse roles have made the guild an invaluable organisation to the world.

Narratively speaking, after being stranded on the other side of the world, Rudy and Eris worked with the Superd Rujerd as adventurers in order to make money to pay for their way home. The work is dangerous, but it’s far more profitable than any other job they could take as they moved. Further, because there are branches all over the world, it allows for them to keep working as they travel to, so it makes sense for Rudy and co to join the guild. Oh, and the issued guild cards help provide legitimate documents for the sake of travelling too, almost like a passport of sorts.

The Adventurers’ Guild doesn’t disappear once their journey home is over; Rudy works constantly as an adventurer as he looks for his missing family and then, even after that arc concludes, the guild remains in the background, resurfacing if and when necessary.

Now that I’ve touched upon its origins, I’d like to speak a little more broadly about what the Adventurers’ Guild tends to represent in stories where it features.

In most cases, it represents a sense of freedom, an organisation you can join and work for that doesn’t bind you to a single place or country. It also serves as an easy way of showing off the world’s power levelling and scaling. If someone who is an S-rank adventurer fights someone who is a B-rank, we know beforehand how the battle will turn out; most of the time.

Usually, Isekai that feature Adventurers’ Guilds tend to fall into 1 of 2 extreme ends; they are either front and centre or lingering in the background.

In Black Summoner, Kelvin joins the guild immediately and never truly leaves it, moving from place to place, fighting enemy after enemy, clearing quests and requests from the guild and it basically helps drive the plot forward whenever it gets a little stuck. In Tsukimichi, Makoto joins in the first volume of the Light Novel but it quickly becomes a background detail, just something that exists that he and his company can sell goods to. In fact, the most important character that comes out of the guild is its master (arguably).

In Slimes for 300 Years, our MC, Azusa, spends 300 years living a relaxed life, killing slimes on the way to the guild, then selling the gems they drop to make money. That’s it, and it serves to expose the fact that she’s now max level which kickstarts her whole story of getting a big old family of cute girls. Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?! has Adele/Mile ends up joining the guild after she’s forced to drop out of school, meeting her best friends there and becoming a team of adventurers alongside them.

Chronicles of an Aristocrat Reborn in Another World seems to only have the guild as a box to tick because it’s an Isekai and of course it needs a guild. Arifureta is the same - it’s introduced in Volume 2 and then basically never comes back up again; hilariously, even the anime adaptation seemed to know how pointless this was and thus skipped the entire thing in the show.

Konosuba does use the Adventurers’ Guild to drive its narrative along to great, hilarious effect, while it plays a minor role in Saving 80,000 Gold in an Another World for Retirement as Mitsuha basically just hires 4 of them a few times and that’s it.

Now, while most would probably just nod and say “Nothing screams Isekai like an Adventurers’ Guild”, I think the truth is a little bit far from this. Not every Isekai has one and, even if it does, it’s more akin to set dressing or world building; these days, it’s arguably more common to find stories focused on and dedicated to the Adventurers’ Guild cliché in what I shall dub quasi-Isekai.

The World Is Not In Your Books And Maps, It Is Out There.

Quasi-Isekai is what I’d call the fantasy stories you see primarily from Japan that involve game-like mechanics or clichés and tropes from Isekai, but just in fantasy worlds. The type where everyone has classes or job titles, where people can level up and increase stats, where things work almost identically to a game at times.

The most famous one, I’d argue, is Goblin Slayer, although this is of course more like Dungeons & Dragons but for the sake of this definition it fits quite well.

Why does no one in the series seem to have a name? They are literally just known by their titles, even in the Light Novels. The characters can only use spells and abilities X number of times before resting or within a time limit, very D&D, and there is an Adventurers’ Guild as the main driving force of the narrative. Even though goblin extermination requests are posted nearly every day, no one seems to take the threat posed seriously except Goblin Slayer himself, despite the vast number of people affected by the consequences daily.

Now, of course, this is not the best example of what I mean, but it is the most popular title similar to what I mean, so allow me to explain.

My Daughter Grew Up to “Rank S” Adventurer, Even Though I’m a Former Noble and a Single Mother, My Daughters Are Too Cute and Working as an Adventurer Isn’t Too Much of a Hassle, Do You Think Someone Like You Can Defeat the Demon King?, If It’s for My Daughter, I’d Even Defeat a Demon Lord, Dungeon Sherpa, An A-Ranked Adventurer’s “Slow-living”, Grimoire Master of an Everchanging World are just some examples of what I mean.

Now, these are not bad series by any means - in actuality, I quite like them all but for different reasons. I have merely mentioned them and brought them to your attention to help you understand just how big this cliché has become within the fantasy market space, and that it has become something of a staple within the genre, rightly or wrongly.

That said, sometimes it is a little bit jarring to see a fantasy world with levels, game-like systems and other such things, but some series are able to overcome this and make entertaining stories come to life. Goblin Slayer I’d argue slightly fails in this aspect, but that’s mainly because there is no real reason given to why the characters are only able to use their abilities X time a day. If it were a game like D&D, then just by saying “Those are the rules”, you accept it and move on. In the world of Goblin Slayer, it just seems to be there…without any real reason given why.

Is it something doctored by the gods for the Priestess?

Do mages have a fixed amount of mana they can hold and use in a day?

What about shamans?

I will say though that the quasi-Isekai genre seems to portray the Adventurers’ Guild in quite a different manner to the pure Isekai. In normal Isekai, the guild seems to be this freedom loving, fun organisation (most of the time), whereas in quasi-Isekai it seems to be the opposite. It’s a job that is often soul draining or boring, one that tries to tie you down the more powerful you become.

In both My Daughter Grew Up to “Rank S” Adventurer and Even Though I’m a Former Noble and a Single Mother, My Daughters Are Too Cute and Working as an Adventurer Isn’t Too Much of a Hassle, two of its main characters seem to hate working for the organisation from time to time. Angeline from Rank S wants to take holiday time to see her dad, but the guild keeps forcing her to work due to her seniority and need for her strength in times of great crisis. Further, the guild branch she works in is understaffed and struggles to attract new members.

Shirley from Daughters Are Too Cute constantly refuses promotions at the guild because she wants to spend as much time with her daughters as possible, earning her the nickname of The Forever B-rank. She’s far stronger than any other adventurer by a landslide but that doesn’t matter to her; her kids do, despite what the guild might try to thrust upon her.

It's a dangerous business…going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.

So, what is the true purpose of the Adventurers’ Guild cliché?

Is it lazy worldbuilding?

Is it just something you have to include in your fantasy/Isekai story?

The answer is simple - it’s a shortcut to jumpstart the story.

That’s it.

It exists to move the story along.

You don’t have a motivation for your main character to go somewhere or do something? Have them be an adventurer that has a request made of them.

Need a reason for your MC to head towards a city in danger? Have a quest pinned up on a board at the Adventurers’ Guild.

Need a cute girl to be rescued? Have your MC go pick herbs and save her from being attacked by bandits or monsters nearby.

What’s that? We’re unsure of how powerful the MC or someone else is? Use the guild’s ranking system or say how many S-rank adventurers would be needed to defeat someone or something to emphasise its strength.

Case and point, Slow Life in Another World. Had its MC not had the place to sell his potions too, then he would never have met the main heroines and the plot would never have started. My Isekai Life has no real plot outside of the Adventurers’ Guild forcing the MC to people or places where plot points can happen. The 8th Son? Are You Kidding Me? has the exact same issue - the MC joins the guild and that drives him towards the important characters, places and plot points. I Was a Sword When I Reincarnated, Konosuba, Black Summoner and basically any other that I’ve mentioned in this section attest to this.

The guild exists to give the author of a story a way to naturally push the main story along whenever it gets a bit stuck. Konosuba, as hilarious as it is, does use this to move Kazuma and his team around as necessary, putting them in the right places and the right time. I talked about this earlier, but Kelvin from Black Summoner literally learns about the people he wants to fight from the guild, either in the form of requests on a board or from word of mouth. I Was a Sword When I Reincarnated has a similar plot structure too and, again, there is nothing wrong with that.

I honestly wish there was more I could say about the Adventurers’ Guild, but this is what it boils down to - it helps move the plot along.

I’m sure that’s not a satisfying conclusion for some, but this is just how it is.

Not All Who Wander Are Lost

But not every Isekai needs a goddamn Adventurers' Guild!

- Tolkien (mostly)