Frayed Knights Development Update

Frayed Knights developer Jay Barnson has provided us with another development diary-of-sorts for the indie RPG, and this time he focuses the history and purpose of the Adventurer's Guild.
The Adventurer's Guild was started over ten years ago by Argus Stormhammer, a veteran and highly successful treasure hunter / adventurer. His fame came not only from his successes, but also by his tracts which he created to try and help other adventurers. In these pamphlets, Stormhammer noted that he had seen many a fellow adventurer suffer not only loss of life and limb, but failure and insolvency. His writings not only aided fellow adventurers, but inspired many people to take up the the life of an adventurer.

Argus sold the pamphlets through various merchants, but as demand for his writings grew, so did the number of people who came to him requesting personal assistance and training. He had become the guru of fortune-hunting. As the demand for his services and writing threatened to overwhelm him (and left no time for actual adventuring), he decided to delegate.

...

Would-be members complain that this Adventurer's Guild members an overwhelming advantage and a jump on any possible opportunities, leaving slim possibilities for the non-guild member to "prove" themselves.

The Adventurer's Guild has responded to this complain in the last year by offering some sponsored "quests" to non-members only, with success resulting in automatic accreditation. Again, this solution is imperfect. Several non-guild adventurers claim that these missions are excessively dangerous without guild training, and many adventuring groups do not survive their "audition." They also complain that these quests are exploitative, paying only a tiny fraction of the value of recovered artifacts that the guild, with its connections throughout Kaldera, can obtain. And finally, while completion of these quests do tend to provide a "fast-track" into guild membership, it is by no means guaranteed. Many contend that this is an unfair policy that exploits non-members that the Guild has no intention of recruiting.