Frayed Knights: Free Strategy Guide, and the Adventurer’s Guild

Posted by Rampant Coyote on July 30, 2014

There are still 24 hours left to pick up Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon on Steam at the launch discount.

If you have already played the game and now own the Steam version, if you feel so inclined, please post a review on the Steam page.

Additionally, if you haven’t done so yet, I offer the strategy guide for the game for free. You can grab it here. The page encourages you to register for the (sadly, rare) email newsletter, but that’s entirely optional. Meaning: Please don’t put in a bogus address just to get the strategy guide. It’s yours if you want it, with or without your email.

The strategy guide is not just a walkthrough. I wanted it to really be an accessory to Frayed Knights: The Skull of S’makh-Daon (in addition to the 69-page manual) with some information on the world itself, peeks under the  hood at the game system and content, hints for those who just need a nudge, and a walkthrough for people who really need the help. Which would probably be me, if I was playing, rather than get frustrated by a part of the game.

So if you have the game, grab the strategy guide! Or, hey, grab the strategy guide even if you don’t have the game!

On to a little game-world related topic – the Adventurer’s Guild.

The ‘quest’ of The Skull of S’makh-Daon is to gain entry into the Adventurer’s Guild. The party fails in their first attempt, by getting beaten to the punch by a rival adventuring group. And then the fun really starts. But what is the Adventurer’s Guild?

The guild is sort of a weird idea I came up with long before Frayed Knights. It was me playing with the idea that you could have a world where – like in an MMORPG (or, at the time, a MUD) where you have lots of adventurers running around. In the old-school D&D modules, you were always finding the remains of these guys in dungeons – the group that tried to tackle the dungeon before you. I thought – if there’s enough of these guys running around the world, and the successful ones tend to come back loaded down with cash, wouldn’t a service industry evolve to help them and help relieve them of some of that hard-earned cash?

Thus, the adventurer’s guild.

The guild takes a number of roles in the world of Frayed Knights:

1. It educates adventurers as to “best practices” to survive the threats of a world full of magical and monstrous danger.

2. It informs members of the latest adventuring hot spots, rumors, jobs, etc. (Think Soldier of Fortune magazine).

3. It  can act as banking services for adventurers who don’t want to cart all their cash around with them.

4. It offers something of a primitive form of insurance – as a self-funded bounty for an adventurer’s rescue (or the recovery of their body) should they not return on schedule from an expedition.

5. While not really modeled in the game for the sake of convenience to the player, the guild also takes care of buying, selling, and trading magical gear.

6. The guild offers courier services to members

7. Major guildhalls offer temporary lodging for guild members, with the utmost in security that will not be found in your average inn.

8. Looking for group? The guild helps members keep track of each other – very important in a profession with a high mortality rate – and helping members track groups with openings and members seeking openings in new groups.

In the world of Frayed Knights, the Adventurer’s Guild has become somewhat more exclusive.  I figured this would be a natural development if the adventurers were as quick to “game the system” as gamers are in our world. For example – if a bounty is offered for recovering the bodies of dead adventurers, a group of assassins might specialize in arranging for the deaths of adventurers just to collect the bounty. “Wannabe” groups might underbid on the best jobs, winning contracts, and then failing utterly – taking the reputation of the guild with it. A few embarrassments like this, and the guild would no doubt start making additional requirements for membership, including recommendations by established members in good standing, and proof of competency.

And so we find Arianna, Benjamin, Chloe, and Dirk in the Temple of Pokmor Xang, on an “official” quest from a senior guild member to prove themselves, in order to gain admittance to the guild.

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Frayed Knights - Comments: 2 Comments to Read



top