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[Ekaton]

EDIT: I am proposing guilds that fit into several types which have their own characteristics, and procedurally generated by the game (check my second post in this thread).

Merchants' guilds

They have the guildmaster but no apprentice system. They should unite the most powerful merchants from a certain town and membership must be a great honor.

In some towns merchant guilds could enjoy certain privileges - to have best stalls during the fair, to be able to use the town port without paying money, to enjoy lower tariffs, to have their own representation in the town council, etc. A merchant might even refuse to do business with someone who is a member of another, hostile guild.

These should be essentially the means through which merchants are trying to protect their interests and unfairly compete with those merchants that are not their members. An important institution for every merchant PC.


Laborers' guilds

With traditional master-apprentice system. They regulate trade of certain goods - for example jeweler's guild can regulate trade of jewels - for example their products can be sold at lower prices as they are exempt from tariffs or would have to always be presented first during fairs. Or they could be the sole suppliers of the royal or other noble court.

If the PC wants to be important in a certain profession or learn something more (the guilds should have their own restricted knowledge, methods of production and secret ingredients) - he would have to become a member and rise through their ranks. It could even be so that in some towns you can't practice a certain profession without being the guild member.

The laborer guilds could be represented in the town council by their guildmasters.


Fighters' guilds

Guilds, brotherhoods, companionships etc. Somewhere between privileged town guilds and underworld ones, but their role could vary greatly. For goblins or violent humans or dwarves, these can be very prestigious and they could influence politics to a large extent. In more civilized societies, these are little more than mercenaries and they don't enjoy the splendor of the town guilds while at the same time they are not being despised as much as the guilds of the underworld.

For PC these can be the source of quests - if he wants to escort a caravan, this is where a merchant would come to requests soldiers to be his bodyguards. If there is a dangerous creature to slain, they will know about it and might even direct PC to it. Membership gives access to trainers, training grounds, lucrative contracts and a place to sleep and eat in. Guilds could also organize tournaments and fiercely compete with other fighters' guilds.


Underworld guilds

The thieves' guild, smugglers' guild and assassins' guild. They are unofficial and their structure could vary considerably. These could be very egalitarian or very strict. They could allow non-members to practice their trade or dispose of them. These could be quite powerful and would surely brutally compete with other, similar guilds in their area of operation. Perhaps some of the guilds can be strong enough to actually influence politics considerably.

A thief or assassin could get his tasks here and could rise through their ranks.


Traditions

Guilds can have their own traditions, rituals and ceremonies to add additional flavor. Others, mainly merchant guilds, could be more like clubs for rich people - a place where they can do business and drink that expensive, dwarven bourbon.

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

I hate to be the guy, but there's many suggestions on guilds. This one may be different, but you have to work hard to demonstrate how it is so.

Here's a similar thread.

If you think that one's close enough to your idea, post this as a response, after checking for redundancy in what was already written.

[NW_Kohaku]

I hate to be the guy, but there's many suggestions on guilds. This one may be different, but you have to work hard to demonstrate how it is so.

Here's a similar thread.

If you think that one's close enough to your idea, post this as a response, after checking for redundancy in what was already written.

Actually, I'll be that guy to your being that guy...

That thread won 11th place on Eternal Suggestion Voting, and is on the devpage near the bottom under "Fortress Subgroups".

That said, you could still write about what kinds of guilds they should be, or what purposes they should have.  That was part of what I wrote about in Class Warfare.  This thread at least talks about some new types of guilds.

[Ekaton]

Guess I haven't clarified that one out. I am aware that there were suggestions for guilds before, and I know the one you provided link for, I just don't like them that much.

We have procedurally generated worlds that can be entirely different from each other and will be different a lot with those planned political, economical, philosophical, legal and religious systems. Yet guilds proposed will be too simillar to each other in the way they work, influence the world around them and they were though through with only dwarves in mind.

I propose guilds that are generated too, out of several modules.

The professions

Basically, who can be a member. Some guilds will only unite workers of one profession - as in Blacksmiths' guild, while others will united those of different, albeit similar professions - as in Jewelers' Guild whose members are gem cutters, gem setters, etc.

Some cultures might find a certain metal very important and so they might create special guilds for them - for example Gold Jewelers' Guild.

The name

The name could be a variation on the name, patron, idea, symbol etc. There are countless possibilities.

The symbol

Generated procedurally from elements that different groups consider important. For example jewelers could have a golden goblet while fighters a head of a slain goblin and an axe.

Their influence

The guilds can have a very different standing in various towns and fortresses. Guildmasters even can have a different authority inside their own guild - it is not hard for me to imagine that some guilds could be run more democratically, by two Guildmasters, each of whom can veto any decision of the other one as in Ancient Rome, or by a council of masters.

Within the town or fortress itself, the guild also might have a different importance, especially if there is another guild uniting craftsmen of the same profession, but for example from another part of town. Guilds are fighting for power with nobles, town councils, and non-members. Guildmaster therefore could have the right to mandate production of certain goods, restrict trade of them, impose quotas, quality checks by the guild, quality requirements etc. He could be by law a councilman or a respected advisor with influence as high as in the royal court itself. An important guild could serve as an arbitrator of disputes. Or the guildmaster could be confined in his power to his own guild.

There are countless possibilities here, and the world of the guilds doesn't have to be a static one - for example a king, influenced by enemies of a certain guild, could strip it of its priveleges or restrict it or even close it and execute its guildmaster for high treason.

Organization

The guild themselves can have a very different organization. More authoritarian or more democratic in choosing its leaders, passing bylaws and accepting others as masters. Different matters can have different people deciding. I'll give you an example of a fairly moderate guild.

Choosing the Guildmaster - the council of those who are accepted as masters will have a right to choose their guildmaster. If they can't decide, the candidate who receives the least votes will not be considered for the post anymore, and the voting will continue without him. They will continue that until there is only one candidate. In case of a tie, they choose randomly.

Impeachment of the Guildmaster - by a unanimous decision of the masters.

Changing the guild bylaws - the council of masters must be unanimous in their decisions. The guildmaster can veto the decision.

Accepting members as masters - the council of masters examines the masterwork created by the apprentice and votes if this is indeed of masterwork quality. Simple majority is enough. In case of a tie, they choose randomly.

Firing the member - unanimous decision of the council of masters.

Some guilds can have a different system than Master - Apprentice. They can have additional levels below the apprentice, between master and apprentice and even divide masters into groups of importance - in case of jewelers it could be something like Masters of Gold, Masters of Silver, Masters of Iron etc. especially considering which metals are more precious than others for that certain civilization. Or a guild might not have that distinction at all.

The guild might also have a large structure - different masters responsible for different matters - Master of Coin, Master of Rituals, Master of Quality, Master of Vote etc.

This would allow guilds to be very different from each other, enriching the world greatly.


Rituals

Guilds could have different rituals that in most cases should be as ancient as the guild itself. Let me give you some examples.

The first guildmaster in one of the jewelers' guild decided that every new member has to make a tattoo of a diamond on his chest, above the heart, so that he will know that money is all that matters. Members must stand around him and play instruments and shout to banish evil spirits from the ceremony. After the ritual the new member must drink a cup of beer and then he is thrown into a ritual barrel of beer, encrusted with different gems.

The Brotherhood of Armok will choose its leader throuh the combat to the death of two members of the guild, chosen by Armok (randomly). Others stand around them and drink beer and throw tomatoes at them as the first brothers did. Note that brothers can only fight in leather armor, as the first brothers did.

Merchants of the merchants guild accept new members if they offer them a barrel filled with golden coins. Then they drink wine and play chess.

Merchants' Guilds

Those should be mostly very different from other guilds and typically, in societies with many merchants such as port towns, should have a dominant position in local politics. Merchants' guilds should have a system of Importance inside the guilds based not on master-apprentice, but on the ancestry of a merchant and/or his wealth. Merchants could form their own groups of interest inside the guilds, fighting for importance and position of the guildmaster.

Apart from that, most rich merchants should be represented in town councils and they would continue their internal struggles there too - vetoing each other's laws and trying to impeach one another.

Broader associations

The guilds should be able to spread to other cities by establishing their own non-independent guilds there. These guilds should at least initially answer to the main office, accept its regulations, and adhere to its general policy. Those guilds could become independent over time, even fighting with their main office.

Similarities

The game should take local traditions into account - if for example a civ in question is savage, their guild rituals should be savage too. If it values strength greatly, then guildmasters will more oftenly be chosen for their strength (by having a positive factor during voting). Guilds exist inside a certain civilization and should reflect that.

Even different towns could have local traditions that could influence guilds to some degree.


Conclusion

I don't like the idea of guilds being too similar to each other in different worlds, regions and civilizations. I think that guilds should have a number of fixed elements from which the whole guilds are procedurally generated - such as different sets of rituals, systems of internal organization, etc.

[GoblinCookie]

Guilds are coming I know but the game seems to me to be moving in the opposite direction to a division of labour thanks to the new improved labour AI with it's work order priorities, which makes the kind of cardboard cutout guilds taken from history really not make sense, since these were based upon an established division of labour.  I think guilds only make sense at the moment as basically trade unions, the underlying motivation behind them being the desire of dwarves with skills of particular value to the fortress to leverage themselves a certain quality of life, similar to the way that nobles demand rooms of a given quality depending upon their position. 

Guilds should develop based upon a guesswork of what types of production skills our fortress is highly dependent upon but which are not superabundant.  Dwarves with a given minimal level of that skill are admitted into the guild; the guilds objective is to use the fortresses dependence of their skills to leverage from the fortress a guarantee of a certain quality of life.  The best way is not to have individual dwarves assigned to room individually one by one but have the guild demand a given amount of rooms (or other goodies) of a certain quality as a block and then have them distribute the rooms or other goodies autonomously to the dwarves that are members of the guild. 

If the player does not meet their demands the dwarves of a given guild go on strike and refuse to work, hence there is generally an incentive for the player to meet guild demands, since strikes lead to the loss of skilled labour hours. 

[Cormack]

Guilds described by Ekaton are not guilds that will be mostly occupied with the division of labor - they are political instruments in their finest. Which is totally fine by me. I'd love to be a member of that guild in adv mode and climb my way up to the guildmaster through clever intrigue.

As far as division of labor and professions for fort mode themselves are concerned, I believe that the game should use the guilds of the civ's capital, which should be larger than others in that civ, and quite possibly, controlling other guilds in that civ as some kind of Royal Guilds. Those could supply laborers, especially skillful ones, and could soon open their own offices in your fortress, if that's the path you choose. Then if you have like 10 jewelers, you'll have them make a guild - maybe a guild of their own or maybe an office of their old one.

[GoblinCookie]

Guilds described by Ekaton are not guilds that will be mostly occupied with the division of labor - they are political instruments in their finest. Which is totally fine by me. I'd love to be a member of that guild in adv mode and climb my way up to the guildmaster through clever intrigue.

As far as division of labor and professions for fort mode themselves are concerned, I believe that the game should use the guilds of the civ's capital, which should be larger than others in that civ, and quite possibly, controlling other guilds in that civ as some kind of Royal Guilds. Those could supply laborers, especially skillful ones, and could soon open their own offices in your fortress, if that's the path you choose. Then if you have like 10 jewelers, you'll have them make a guild - maybe a guild of their own or maybe an office of their old one.

The question is to what end would the guilds be centrally organized?  The central government does not control production/distribute resources at all, which means that local guilds would gain nothing from federating owing to how the central government does not need to be influenced by guild power at all and can provide them with nothing.  Maybe guilds would have a family tree by which older guilds spawn new guilds in new settlements as their members migrate there, but it does not make sense at present to have a civ-level guild organization owing to the lack of centralization of production at a civilization level. 

Owing to the lack of division of labour in the game will have a hard time at the moment since the player can simply assign new dwarves to do the guild occupations at will.  The question is why would the player (or the AI site governments) not simply crush all guilds by bribing individuals with nice stuff on condition that they remain unaffiliated/leave their guild. Once the monopoly on a given skill is broken it gets very hand for the guild to have any influence at all since if there are other people working for the site that are not in the guild that can do the work/pass on the skills whatever the guild members do or do not do. 

It seems to me like guilds would only form in the event that the material benefits of site membership are sufficiently low that the vast majority of workers of a given site do not see much benefit from their labours.  Otherwise the fear of the wrath of the site government that does not want guilds forming is going to combine with the initial uncertainty of being able to get a sufficient following to be able to protect themselves is going to stop anybody from actually forming a guild in the first place.  The preconditions for a guild forming would basically be having a body of skilled laborers that do not presently receive a suitable material reward from the site already.

[NW_Kohaku]

Before going into it, I should, in full disclosure, state I speak of this mostly through the lens of what I wanted to accomplish through the Class Warfare thread.

That said, central organization is probably an afterthought, not a precondition to the formation of guilds. 

We already have the basis of the formation of something guild-like, already, which is the creation of churches and dwarves that openly identify to an almost monotheistic degree with only one or two deities in their pantheon.  Toady has given hints that he wants religions to play a guild-like role in organizing dwarves. 

Basically, the religion forms first, and then the clergy form from among the religious to administer the religion. 

Guilds of any sort - or perhaps it would be better described as "factions" or even "associations" than "guilds" - would form and exist not as an organized attempt to wield power against a centralized authority in a manner similar to modern unions, but simply as a result of dwarves of like interests or socially-distinguishing traits.  Humanity has a natural bias towards tribalism, whether it is based upon social stratifications based upon divisions of labor, religions, ethnicities, genders, which sports team you favor, or whether you like Coke or Pepsi. 

A fortress has unified cohesion when it is a small group facing imminent death at the hands of starvation or the savage things waiting to savage their families, but when a fortress is successful, peaceful, wealthy, and has a population large enough that not every dwarf can reasonably know every other dwarf, rifts in fortress unity would be a logical consequence.  If your fortress is split between a deep and a shallow fortress because you set up magma forges in the deep while farming and trade takes place at the surface, then maybe the deep-workers and the shallow-workers, after years of separation grumble at the demands of each other group they never seem to meet, but always seems to require concessions from their side of the fortress. 

From a more overarching meta-game perspective, the reason why internal factions are important is because they serve as a way to re-introduce challenge into the later game, when fortresses become boring otherwise, barring players deliberately tempting Fun by allowing in FBs or opening the HFS.  Mechanics based upon dwarves own perceived insecurity and need for cohesion in the face of external threats versus their own distrust of their fellow dwarves rising as fortresses grow larger and more impersonal mean that the mechanics to add the challenge of maintaining a successful fortress from internal divisions rise only when it is proven that the challenge of building and defending a fortress from external threats has been mitigated.