Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[rylen]

Will non-military types train each other?  For instance, if there are two Stonecrafting dwarfs, will the more proficient one give the other a hand.

As the population of the fortress increases, guilds would give a way to manage the training as squads manage normal dwarfs.  Large guilds elect a chief who performs administrative duties.  The guild hall has tables, chairs, and craft-appropriate buildings where members can demonstrate their skills.

Tying the fortress into the rest of the world, sufficiently important guilds would ask for high quality bedrooms.  At regular intervals, high skill dwarfs visit from elsewhere in the land, spending time, buying trinkets, and teaching their craft.  These are about as controllable as nobles, but more productive.

The fortress can also dispatch a few (one or two per year) craft ambassadors.  These raise the prestige of the fortress, help increase immigration, improve the skill of migrants for that craft, or discourage dwarfs from coming. Generally a high skilled recruiter is most effective but after the fortress gets decimated, a peasant is pretty good about attracting military types. 

Usually, dwarfs are happy to have their skill recognized.  But some don't like travel or resent leaving their families and friends.  A few unscrupulous ones use this honor as an opportunity to skip town, perhaps letting the statute of limitations on the beating they're due run out.

[waldo]

i'm not entirely sure but i think it's actually part of the plan to someday implement guilds and actual training, whether it be books or simply one dwarf showing another dwarf the ropes.

but i would like to be able to send dwarfs out to increase the skill of incoming immigrants.

[Pilsu]

Only Masters and above were allowed to join and teach in the historical guilds

What the hell is a "craft ambassador"?

[rylen]

What the hell is a "craft ambassador"?

My term.  Someone from the guild (presumably someone with good skills) goes out, shows dwarfs at other forts that this one knows how to build it right.  The player gets to choose between keeping one of their better laborers around vs. good stuff from having him traveling.

Good stuff being, a better quality of immigrants in that skill group, increasing or decreasing the size of the immigrant wave, or civilization details when they're ironed out.

[Joakim]

Rather than (I assume master) craft ambassadors, I always got the impression that the masters stayed in one place, guru style, and the jorneymen/apprentices came to them. So you can send out your guy with a backpack full of food, booze and a *Golden Trumpet* to pay for tutorship and lodging. This teaching would be much more linear than training. For example you could gain one level on each trip. When training is more balanced, this would be a very big deal when you're in the master range. To counteract this, receiving training from a master should be very, very expensive if you're good since you need an even better teacher. A trip would take a year or so. Leave in spring, come back next year. Or not at all, if he's killed by carp. Or come home in the summer after being robbed. Or run of with a circus and come back as a Legendary Mimer.

Only Masters and above were allowed to join and teach in the historical guilds

Didn't real guilds also forbid non-guild practitioners? I can imagine requiring a Master level craftsman to allow selling stuff to caravans, especially foreign ones. This would of course be dependent on which kinds of guilds there are, how strict they are, . For example a dwarven civ might not be so concerned about shitty kitten biscuits being sold to the mountainhome, but woe to the fortress that exports dwarven metalwork abroad (ally or not, reputation is at stake!) without guild approval.
The global civ guild or a local guild chief/council could also set (primarily lower) limits on the quality of exported goods.

Of course care should be taken to not turn such mandates into a you-lose-because-the-computer-says-so situation. But I think this can be avoided by tolerating lower level exports to the mountainhome and restricting it to just a few areas depending on each civ. Trade your shitty stuff to the mountainhome for cash (when that get's tradable) and use that money to get elven wood and Giant Cougars.

It's still legal to produce whatever you want for your own use. And even if it weren't, you either don't have a guild representative and they have no insight into your fortress, or you have and your production is therefore authorized.

The first craftsman in a field to reach a required level would be appointed local guild chief. After that they could be elected from viable masters, like OP said. Non-masters are considered working for the master as apprentice or journeymen depending on their skill.

[Neonivek]

Didn't real guilds also forbid non-guild practitioners?

It depends on how much power they actually had or how far they were willing to go.

A few guilds basically functioned in similar ways to organised crime syndicates and would go even as far as killing their competition. Effectively if you wanted to do buisness you HAD to be a member of the guild. (Actually Some guilds WERE Organised Crime Syndicates)

Others would simply pool money the members Tithed to provide them with services they normally couldn't afford. For example a single Merchant would likely never be able to afford enough protection to stop bandits, a Merchant Guild Carrivan could easily stop them.

They also could, if they had enough members, blackmail local or greater governments by threatening to stop working or something along those lines. Use your imagination for what they actually could do, which by the way is just about anything.

[Granite26]

Group Medical Care... Some groups hired their own doctors (this is more a masonic practice, but principle applies)

[Pilsu]

Didn't real guilds also forbid non-guild practitioners?

If memory serves, only guild members could hire journeymen or something like that. Proficient dwarves no longer churn crap so I guess that is the line for no longer being an apprentice

Considering our forts are largely communist or some variation thereof, guilds would probably end up being political entities, demanding better lodgings at the very least. Cartels don't work well when there's no real economy to begin with