In wuxia fiction, the characters are members of the Wulin, the World of the Martial Arts or community of martial arts practitioners. This term has overlap with, but is not identical to Jianghu, which is the sort of demimonde/underworld that includes the Wulin practitioners and associated people and locations.
While D&D and D&Dish settings sometimes feature guilds adventures are members of, I don't think I've ever seen this developed into a full-fledged community analogous to the Jianghu or Wulin. As I've briefly suggested before, there are a number of interesting developments taking this sort of approach would allow, though. Just off the top of my head:
- Schools of magic using types would be given an in-setting function.
- It would provide an in-setting rationale for the separation between adventuring clerics and stay in the temple priests
- The "keeping the Martial (or in this case Adventuring) World" separate from "civilians" aspect of wuxia would explain why adventurers are running every kingdom in the land.
- It would seem to naturally lead to more rivalry between adventuring groups, potentially meaning more faction play within dungeons.
- Guilds/sects/collegia are an easy source of adventure hooks.
King of Dungeons sort of goes down this route, although the adventuring community is more openly active, taking contracts from civilians and having sort-of-celebrity status. If you're familiar with the anime Fairy Tale it's got a rather similar vibe.
ReplyDeleteSo 'underworld' here is less a literal underground area, and more like the phrase 'criminal underworld'? Come to think of it, I would expect there to be considerable overlap between the two, almost like a John Wick sort of situation.
ReplyDeleteExactly!
ReplyDeleteFor quite a while, both D&D and Pathfinder have been pretty explicit about "adventurer" being a more-or-less formal occupation within the setting.
ReplyDeleteGoing ahead and making it that one step more official seems both consistent with a lot of what's already out there, and an improvement over having the basic idea but not really doing anything with it.