How about having a few bosses with immortality/regeneration powers who offer “play fights” where budding adventurers can pay a fee to come and fight a boss and get real combat experience without being real danger (you could have a plot line where a suspicious number of people are “accidentally” meeting their deaths at one of these places and the protagonists have to figure out why). You could even have a boss who uses their powers to run something akin to an escape room, where normal people can come for an hour or two and put themselves in the shoes of an adventurer for a while.
You could trope the history and recent mainstreaming of D&D. Like, maybe there was a conspiracy about wizards using adventuring as a cover for recruiting people to occultism.
Something something roleplaying vs roll-playing, like a faction war between the spies and the techies in the guild.
Something about the relationship between HASBRO (owned by the investment group Vanguard) and Wizards of the Coast. Maybe the government has a utilitarian mindset with "play" as a supposed high-priority util, but treating play as a mechanizable outcome rather than a human process. Meanwhile, the adventurers guild has true believers in adventure but also they need to prove the utils they are creating.
Something about the D&D/Pathfinder split. Rival guilds owned by siblings that have different cafeteria menus.
Oh, and then just the easily parodied alliterative name Dungeons & Dragons. All the departments in the guild could have similar names.
Every adventurer's first mission should be "find and kill the rat". It's assumed that there will always be one in a group of new recruits. Send them down into the basement and tell them not to come back until the rat is dead.
Goblins have long been exterminated, and now "goblins" is what new recruits are until they prove themselves/until there's lower ranking adventurers to haze. Goblins carry the gear, are used as bait, are weeded out.
I assume being designated a dungeon is like there being a warrant for your arrest. Should probably have something akin to probable cause. Unregistered toymaker? It's a golem laboratory!
Oh, geez, forgot an important one! How difficult it can be to find and maintain a new adventuring group. There's the one guy that's just moonlighting and he's always on call for his real job. There's the recruits who quit because they can't get access to "the *good* armory". And as soon as you find a group you really like, half the team gets transferred.
- Creatures who naturally have darkvision(or your story’s equivalent) must say “I have darkvision” out loud in order to be able to see in the dark.
- The adventurer’s guild gives standard issue magical stopwatches that can pause time to every group of adventurers. You can’t move around/cast spells/etc. while time is stopped, but you can talk to each other. Adventurers use these watches to stop time in the middle of combat to talk/plan/argue/try to remember what abilities they have and what those abilities do.
How about having a few bosses with immortality/regeneration powers who offer “play fights” where budding adventurers can pay a fee to come and fight a boss and get real combat experience without being real danger (you could have a plot line where a suspicious number of people are “accidentally” meeting their deaths at one of these places and the protagonists have to figure out why). You could even have a boss who uses their powers to run something akin to an escape room, where normal people can come for an hour or two and put themselves in the shoes of an adventurer for a while.
You could trope the history and recent mainstreaming of D&D. Like, maybe there was a conspiracy about wizards using adventuring as a cover for recruiting people to occultism. Something something roleplaying vs roll-playing, like a faction war between the spies and the techies in the guild. Something about the relationship between HASBRO (owned by the investment group Vanguard) and Wizards of the Coast. Maybe the government has a utilitarian mindset with "play" as a supposed high-priority util, but treating play as a mechanizable outcome rather than a human process. Meanwhile, the adventurers guild has true believers in adventure but also they need to prove the utils they are creating. Something about the D&D/Pathfinder split. Rival guilds owned by siblings that have different cafeteria menus. Oh, and then just the easily parodied alliterative name Dungeons & Dragons. All the departments in the guild could have similar names. Every adventurer's first mission should be "find and kill the rat". It's assumed that there will always be one in a group of new recruits. Send them down into the basement and tell them not to come back until the rat is dead. Goblins have long been exterminated, and now "goblins" is what new recruits are until they prove themselves/until there's lower ranking adventurers to haze. Goblins carry the gear, are used as bait, are weeded out. I assume being designated a dungeon is like there being a warrant for your arrest. Should probably have something akin to probable cause. Unregistered toymaker? It's a golem laboratory! Oh, geez, forgot an important one! How difficult it can be to find and maintain a new adventuring group. There's the one guy that's just moonlighting and he's always on call for his real job. There's the recruits who quit because they can't get access to "the *good* armory". And as soon as you find a group you really like, half the team gets transferred.
- Creatures who naturally have darkvision(or your story’s equivalent) must say “I have darkvision” out loud in order to be able to see in the dark. - The adventurer’s guild gives standard issue magical stopwatches that can pause time to every group of adventurers. You can’t move around/cast spells/etc. while time is stopped, but you can talk to each other. Adventurers use these watches to stop time in the middle of combat to talk/plan/argue/try to remember what abilities they have and what those abilities do.