Some Thoughts On the Adventurers Lifestyle & Thier Place Within A Campaign Society

Looking through old Grenadier Models  advertisements for Advanced Dungeons & Dragons miniatures. These adds are full of memory & nostalgia for the middle part of the D&D product line for me. These miniatures held a lot of imagination & possibilities for the dungeon master's imagination.

My thoughts often turn to what types of men & women become adventurers. Desperate men & women trying their hand in the game of delving into the darkness of half forgotten tombs, places of legend, & possibly forgotten civilizations in some back water wilderness. These are places mankind wasn't supposed to journey into.
Here are six reasons why I think that adventurers are on the prowl  in ruins & dungeons:

1. Adventurers are going to be lower echelon men & women of society  who crave adventure, quick cash, & the brotherhood  that the dungeon delve  life brings. The promising  lure of exploration & exploitation. 
2. Adventurers have to be a dreg caste of society unto themselves looked upon the same way as actors, performers, and veterans of wars were in Europe. Directionless yet a necessary evil of society with back door admission into academia & governmental positions such as espionage. 
3. Reputations of of the adventurer life style has to have legendary status within urban & polite society. Many boys & girls dream of it the same way that they might of war but the realities are vastly different. Bards are partially responsible for keeping these sorts of things alive among the populace. 
4. The line between hireling & adventurer is a fuzzy thing at best in society. Many down & out adventurers & outlaws become hirelings but drift into the adventurer life style based on opportunity & circumstance. 
5. Retired adventurers are often tomorrow's patrons living vicariously through others but exploiting the class & careers of others as needed. The cycle keeps the wheels greased based on the ploys. But monsters often become adventurers as wars & conflict create more ruins. These ruins are exploited by the forces of darkness. 
6. The life of adventurer is a very dangerous one & circumstances often force disgraced nobles & mercenaries to try their hand at it. Again warfare & conflict the opportunity for the life of an adventurer to be inflicted upon a PC.
   
   
   
   Can one leave the adventurer life entirely? I'm reminded of late Roman Empire soldiers & generals talking about war campaigns. The marks that these left upon them & their lives is something that has an echo for me as a dungeon master. Do adventurers ever really leave the life behind them?
   Where do the hoards that are in the dungeon come from? Again I think that the treasure in dungeons are closely tied in with war & it has far deeper meaning than we usually know once its retrieved. We'll get into that in another blog entry coming up.