Rethinking Fantasy Feudalism: What's a Guild?

This week's post is sort of a continuation from this post about the ways that we misunderstand feudalism in our fantasy worlds, and how we can have more engaging worlds by learning more of the real world's history. This week, we're focusing on a crucial aspect of medieval, renaissance, and even early modern life: the Guild.

💡
As a brief aside: sorry for the no posts/short posts of the last few weeks. Turning Guide to Goblins from blog posts to product-that-is-worth-selling is a lot harder than I was anticipating, and progress is slow. I'm still working on it, but I also don't have a release date yet. It will come! This summer has been very hectic, and I've run out of queued posts, so on weeks where I'm travelling, I haven't had the time to really write anything for the blog. Teaching starts back up soon, though, and that means a return to routine, which (theoretically) means a return to regular posting!

What Is a Guild NOT?

Thinking about guilds when we're so rooted in the modern world is tricky. It's one of the big issues I talked about in my original post on feudalism and nobility. It's an entirely different economic system, and so the fundamental way that social class functions is different. So first, I'm going to introduce some common misrepresentations and misunderstandings of guilds, and then we'll discuss more about what a guild actually is.

Guilds are not dead by the [time period]

Much of our classic high fantasy, particularly for TTRPGs, is set in a vague medieval-renaissance-early modern mix that is not particularly historical. I always imagined that guilds were relics of the pre-capitalist society, disappearing alongside things like "Knights as a major military force" in the transition from medieval to Renaissance, and certainly expunged from history by the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and the 18th century.

I first went "oh maybe I need to learn more about this" while listening to Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast on 1848 a few years ago, when he mentioned guild artisans who had just recently lost privileges being major players in 1848... way later than I was expecting. This summer, when I was visiting Sweden, they said that guilds in Stockholm were abolished in 1846, and that was what really struck me. My main homebrew world is set in the same medieval-renaissance-early modern mix, though perhaps learning more on that early modern, "cusp of the Industrial Revolution but not yet industrializing" era in a lot of its themes. And all that is well before guilds were abolished in most of Europe.

So unless you're playing a game that is truly in a modern setting--and by modern I mean the present, the Cold War, or the World Wars--guilds probably are still major players in the economy of your world if you're aiming for a pseudo-European vibe. In games like Vaesen, which is set explicitly in the transition to industry in Scandinavia, the decline of the guilds and their eventual abolition can even be a major source of conflict.

When discussing what a guild is, I'll also bring up some modern guild-like systems. They still exist somewhat, in certain industries.

Guilds are not Labor Unions

This is another of those "it's hard to conceptualize the past" things. Today, our economic system is fundamentally based on the idea of workers and owners. Workers are paid a wage--hourly or salaried--and the owner is taking a risk in exchange for the profit. If the business thrives, the owner can make a ton of money. If it fails, the owner loses their investment. The worker is paid the same wage regardless of profit margin. (There are obviously a ton of caveats to this, but bear with me in the simplest explanation of a capitalist economy).

Workers can gain some power in this system through unions and collective bargaining. As a teacher, I'm part of a union. This means that I'm not negotiating my contract individually with my school; instead, my union is representing all the employees. If the boss tries to underpay us, the union can say it's not good enough, because it is way harder to replace 50 employees than a single one. Side note/soapbox moment: unions are good, you get higher wages and better benefits in unionized jobs, join a union if you can.

But in the Fantasy History Blend, under feudalism rather than capitalism, this just fundamentally isn't the way that businesses work. Setting aside agriculture, which is still like 95% of the population and economy in the medieval-renaissance-early modern history blend, which has its whole own system of ownership, in towns and cities, most people were not "workers." They were small business owners, with themselves as their own employee (or one or two others... we'll talk about that when discussing what a guild actually is).

Guilds are co-operatives of these small business owners, meant to improve sale prices and quality for the end customer. They are NOT unions of workers, designed around bargaining with a boss.

Guilds are not "Thieves' Guilds"

I mean, come on. Hopefully that's obvious.

Thieves' Guilds are staple of fantasy urban life, from Skyrim to most cheesy fantasy novels that I've read. But they're completely fictional.

Organized crime is a thing that exists by the early modern period, and that's sort of our closest parallel from the real world. But that is far more of a top-down structure, like a mafia boss, rather than a bunch of independent criminals who all band together to make an alliance to inflate... crime prices? The quality of breaking into a house?

Organized crime is fun (for fiction--this is not an endorsement of like, actually going and joining organized crime). The mafia are cool to write fiction about, and there's a ton of good mafia stories. There's even a ton of really cool history of organized crime in the fantasy history mix that maybe I'll write more about some day, that inspired characters like Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes.

But please. Let Thieves' Guilds die. They just don't make sense.

What A Guild IS?

Ok, so we've established some misconceptions about guilds. Let's get into what they actually are.

Guilds are Cartels

Guilds are, essentially, cartels. Today, there's certain cartels--like OPEC--which collaborate on prices to maximize everyone's profit. If three companies producing the same thing decide to work together, they can charge everyone higher prices, since you as the customer won't be able to just go to whichever is cheapest.

This is illegal for most industries in the US (though it still happens). It's the reason that you see all those ads for Tide on Hulu; Tide is more expensive than say, All, and so they're trying to compete by claiming a higher quality. If they were allowed to work together, both could charge Tide's prices and have a lower quality, because there would be no "discount" laundry detergent.

But that's the goal of a guild, and it is a lot less evil when instead of giant, faceless corporations making money, it's actually that your local two Chinese restaurants that are owned by neighborhood residents are just agreeing not to undercut one another on the price of their Stir Fry. This means you'll pick which restaurant you like more, rather than which is cheaper.

In the Fantasy History Mix, there aren't really big faceless companies that exist across the country. You're mostly buying local for a huge majority of your goods. So a guild is born when Tim the Butcher and Joe the Butcher, the only two butchers in your small village, agree that they are both going to set the same prices, so that neither of them is driven out of business by people going to a cheaper "other." It's good for them, it's bad for the customer.

Guilds are Accrediting Agencies

But customers were protected by guilds. Guilds ensured that certain experience requirements were met before you could open up your own store. William the wannabe-butcher cannot open up his third store until he's worked as a trainee under either Tim or Joe for a certain number of years. That means, as a customer, you can go to William's and know that he was trained by Joe, and so William's butchering is of the same quality as Joe's... because otherwise, William would have never made it to the rank of Master. More on this later.

This is backed up by the force of law. Today, you might have special, third-party agencies that review the quality of businesses. You know getting something on Shien or Temu is probably going to be lower quality than getting a hand-sewn product from a local tailor, but also it's so much cheaper that you might, as a customer, decide to take that bargain. At the time, guilds had exclusivity. You were not legally allowed to open a butchery if you were not approved in your skill by the Butchers' Guild. If you tried anyways, the city might arrest you.

We still have these today, just in very select industries. It's illegal to be a doctor if you aren't board-certified. It's illegal to sell legal services if you are not accredited as a lawyer by the Bar of your state. Lawyers and doctors are both examples where guilds still mostly operate.

As a lawyer who is accredited by the Bar, you can still go found your own firm. You're still a small business owner, like the members of a Fantasy History Mix-era guild. You're not a laborer in a union, working for a boss (if you start your own firm). But you're still dependent on that accreditation that gives you permission to have that business.

Guilds are Job Training Programs

Guilds were designed to provide training. While the details of each guild would vary, the typical structure was like this:

You start as an apprentice. You don't have your own shop, and you're likely paid pretty terribly. You might even be paid hourly, rather than per unit of product that you produce. You're likely doing fairly menial labor, the boring grunt work. As a Butcher's Apprentice to Tim, you might be going to haul the pig from the market or the farmer to the shop. You might be cleaning up all the blood. But these are still important skills, and you're learning how to tell a good pig from a bad one. You're also being taught by Tim how to actually do the work of being a butcher, even if you're not allowed to take the lead on it or operate on your own. You're a medical student doing your rounds. Apprentices were often ten to 15 years old, because child labor was allowed at the time. Often, you were an apprentice for a 7-year term, but this did vary guild-to-guild (and therefore city-to-city).

Next, you were a journeyman. This comes from the French word journée, meaning "day"--you were paid per day, rather than per hour. Journeymen were employees, but were seen as fully capable. A journeyman butcher could run the shop while the owner was away at the local market. A journeyman shoemaker could make a whole shoe, from start to finish, and sell it at the shop. But they didn't own the shop, and they didn't make more than their daily wage even if they produced more shoes or better quality shoes. If this sounds like ripe conditions for a labor union, of those workers trying to bargain with their boss, you're absolutely right--there are tons of examples of Journeymens' Unions in history.

To become an owner, you had to prove yourself as a Master. For most guilds, this meant that you would produce a "masterwork" to prove that you were capable. For blacksmiths, this was often a complex blade that used a particular technique. For our butchers, this could mean cutting a perfect cut of steak and submitting it. These were often not over-the-top things, they were simply a sort of exam standard, demonstrating that you can do a certain technique.

Once you were a master, you could open your own shop. Plenty chose not to, and stayed as journeymen, making a decent wage. But becoming a master was the goal of most apprentices, because now you could actually reap the full profit of your work. You were limited to the guild rules, which set fixed prices for most things across all guildmembers, and set regulations on what training you had to provide to your journeymen and apprentices. Guild rules also required certain quality controls; selling underweight meat, for example, would be the sort of thing prohibited by the Butcher's Guild. Breaking the guild rules could see you expelled from the guild, making your shop illegal again. This meant, as a customer, you knew you would be treated honestly and receive a certain standard of quality if you go to any guild shop, and your money would go to that master, not to some faceless corporate entity that lived across the country.

Guilds are Highly Local

Guilds were organized city-by-city. There was not an "International Brotherhood of Butchers" or even an "English Butchers Guild". No, it would be the very real London Worshipful Company of Butchers, which was distinct from the York Company of Butchers, which was distinct from the Somerset Company of Butchers.

Conclusion

Guilds are/were powerful institutions in the towns and cities where they existed. They often had a lot of political sway, and there were internal politics as well as external conflicts between the guilds. Having guilds--not just thieves' guilds, and not just one guild--in your fantasy towns and cities provides a lot more depth to them.

Is one guild particularly dominant? If so, why? Is the city's industry all focused on that? How does the higher guild prices affect the residents? Do people resent the guilds, or appreciate the training and quality assurances? Are the guilds corrupt? If there are multiple significant guilds, what do they think of each other? Are the blacksmiths and the silversmiths in fierce competition for who is responsible if an iron pot has silver inlay? How might a guild, as a collective, want to hire the Party to solve an issue for them? Would the guild use a party of adventurers to burn down the business of someone who broke guild rules? Would the party be ok with torching the house of a nice man who was trying to fight against corruption in his guild and pay his journeymen better, if it was going to mean that the party gets blacklisted from ever buying weapons from any other blacksmith in the city?

Giving guilds this sort of influence opens up all sorts of adventuring hooks, as well as just adding depth to your town and your world. I definitely encourage you to use this important medieval-renaissance-early modern institution in your own world's cities!