Guildmaster’s Quest

Guildmaster's Quest is a turn-based strategy game about running an adventurers' guild in a world that is slowly running out of time.

For centuries the Goddess Elanor has summoned heroes from another world to hold back the Demon Lord. This time she summoned you. You will never lift a sword: you find the people who can, and decide where they go.

Every death in this world, in a dungeon, a war or a plague, brings the Demon Lord closer to waking. Your job is as much keeping people alive as making them strong.

What you do each turn

• Hire adventurers from the towns where your guild has a branch.

• Form parties and send them out across the map to dungeons and other sites.

• Spend what they bring home on staff, research, facilities and new branches.

• Deal with the kingdoms: their courts, their wars and their sick.

• End the turn, and see what else happened in the world.

Do them in any order. Each turn is yours to spend.

Your guild

• Recruit adventurers from rank E to rank S, each with a class, traits and potential of their own.

• Build parties of up to five. People who fight together form bonds and people who die leave a gap.

• Forge gear, brew potions, research spells and develop recipes in your own facilities.

• Open branches in other towns and cities to recruit further afield and reach more of the map.

• Recover the fallen when you can, and resurrect the ones worth the cost.

Dungeons

Dozens of dungeons are scattered across the world, ranked E to S. Each is fought floor by floor, and choosing which party goes where is a core part of the game. Send a party that is ready and it comes home richer and stronger. Send one that is not, and you will be reading death notices, and the Demon Lord will be a little closer.

The world

A single hex map of seven great kingdoms, from the grasslands of Elan and the Rose Empire to the mountains of Karn and the deserts of Sahr, with the Demon Realm frozen across the north.

• More than 180 settlements: towns, cities, forts, fortresses and capitals, each with its own population and history.

• Places worth the walk: witch huts, sage houses, fairy forts, wizard towers, ancient vaults and more.

• Nests to clear out before they get worse: goblin boroughs that raid nearby settlements, and ant hills that grow stronger the longer you leave them.

• A map that starts under fog and opens as your guild spreads.

• Seasons, plagues, raids and wars that happen whether you are watching or not.

Courts and kingdoms

• Fund doctors to combat disease and head off wars with diplomacy: every life saved buys the whole world more time.

• Investigate nobles, generals, clergy and royals, and learn what they would rather you did not know.

• Win them over, or blackmail them. Their support decides how many soldiers stand with you at the end.

The other guilds

• Dark Guild - assassinations, bodyguards and espionage.

• Merchants Guild - trade, rare relics and a black market that asks no questions.

• Bankers Guild - loans, savings and the Item Box.

• Mercenaries Guild - hired blades to defend a kingdom, or to attack one.

The clock

As the dead add up, the Demon Lord's generals wake, one by one, until all four are resurrected. Then, it is his turn.

When that day comes you call in everything you have built: every adventurer, every kingdom, every ally, and every secret you are holding over someone.