There is a lot of crunch going on here. The quick and dirty of it is that adventuring is a living (especially for the restless) and the world as it is allows for that sort of life style.
Also, so long as the kingdom's tax collectors aren't being waylaid, It's unlikely that many kingdoms care that there are bandits and goblins somewhere in the countryside.
In my campaign I justify adventurers as mercenaries that are doing deeds for a warlock's town as the world is slowly descending in the chaos.
The warlock can not send his army as they are needed to protect refugees washed up from foreign nations under siege by dark entities, and the party is the perfect mix of stealth and combat to see a job done efficiently. They go around collecting food, protecting the town from sieges, and fending off the spreading corruption in an odyssey like adventure.
Some of them are doing it because of a troubled past, some are doing it out of sheer goodness, and some are in it for the money.
But the fact is that he needs people to help him get the job done as their are other things he must attend to. Sometimes moral quandaries are raised and people don't want to bother. And sometimes their is a deeper more important goal that these tools (players) are helping to implement.
As I said, such "explorers" didn't do so without an economic agenda. Columbus didn't go to the Americas because there were monsters there, he went to find a route for trade.
You have your answer right there: an economic agenda.
Either adventurers are out looking to merc it up so they can get enough loot to do whatever it is they want to do - like start their own kingdom, or just retire in gratuitous luxury, or someone has a job that needs doing that adventurers will do cheaper than the other options.
Columbus went looking for trade, but what about the people who went with him? They went because they were getting paid, whether it was to sail the ship or to guard the exploration/diplomatic parties. For that matter, Columbus was able to go because he found someone willing to put up the money he needed, and that person wasn't the one who ruled the city he lived in.
Even once you have viable trade routes they still need to be protected. There weren't dragons and chimeras and what not in the real world, but there were certainly pirates and privateers, bandits and free companies, and just plain people who objected to foreigners showing up and insisting on having a trade route at that particular place. All of these required people to do pretty much standard "adventuring" activity. The only big differences being all the dungeons that show up in adventures, and the much lower number of armies rampaging about.
As for why all those employers didn't just use their armies, they were generally using them for other activities, like fighting wars at home rather than sending them off hither and yon on the chance that they might discover something useful. Just as archaeologists are anachronistic, so are government military explorers as opposed to private but government sponsored explorers. And, despite the image, even core "anti-bandit/anti-monster" could be licensed out to nobles buying commissions/adventurers. Now I personally dislike the FR-style privateer/adventuring group license, but you can still have local rulers, wealthy people, or even communities going out and hiring adventurers for various tasks without getting egregiously anachronistic. (Though such things appear a bit more prominently pre- and post-Medieval.)
So at this point, all the reasons are there, waiting. All you have to do is actually implant them into adventures in a reasonable manner.
In real life (what's that?), there are hundreds of reasons people move about on adventures. Some take them across the globe, some just a few cities away. They're all seeking better opportunities and discoveries. Sometimes they find things about themselves that they never knew...for better or worse. • Religious-based outreach • Relocations for better job opportunities • Student Exchange Programs • Couch-surfing • Witness Protection (had to include it!) • Eminent Domain due to Constructions (dams, roads, etc.) • Previously mentioned Archaeologists, Spelunkers • Vacations • Etc.
Any of those and 100s more reasons to get out and about...can be used to start or flesh-out gaming content. Maybe do a google search for adventures and modify the results for inclusion into new games?
If you are going to *limit* your ideas to a specific time period (D&D is NOT a medieval game), perhaps search the InterTubes on information about population movements & drives during that specific time period.
Order of the Bug Hunters Apple ][+ MOSTech 6502 1.0 MHz • 64k Ram • Hercules 8k EGA video card • 300baud USR modem • 2 x 340k 5¼" floppy drives • Software Emulated Sound • Apple DOS 3.3 • Sony 13" TV monitor • Integrated Keyboard • No Mouse
Isn't part of the impetus for people to become adventurers usually built into the world? I think it's the 5e DM Guide (it's not in front of me at the moment) it mentions that if you deisn a world, make it mostly wild and previously populated by a 'great-but-fallen' civilization. Those that explore the neglected depths of the past can earn fame and fortune.
Off the top of my head I have some justifications:
1) Bored/young farm worker who is called to greatness becomes adventurer. This is usually justified by the fantasy construct of prophesy (thinking David Eddings or Robert Jordan). It most definitely is an anomaly because only one person born is the Chosen One.
2) Heroes who were in the right place at the right time and willing to do the right thing. Their actions, which could be classified as going on an adventure, are to serve a greater good? Sounds cheesy but is an easy starter adventure for a group or even a political campaign. You could probably write a book of anecdotes about how rare this motivation is in the real world.
3) People get paid or ordered to do something unsavory. Very common in both the fantasy and real world I'd gather. Easier to send out two to five peons to take care of your problem than be obvious with an army. Depends heavily on your definition of adventure!
There's actually quite a few real world examples of explorers in history. Taticus did it to inform the Roman Empire of what was in "their" newly claimed lands. Erik the Red did it because.... he had a temper and something to prove I guess, his son continued on the tradition to find his kin a place to live. Ching Shih did it for wealth (and I'd say a bit of fun), Ibn Battuta did it because he was rich as hell and wanted to explore, ancient writings are full of stories of pilgrims, traveling troubadours were somewhat popular for quite a long time, mercenaries, traders, refugees.... The only real thing that's changed with time is the amount of the world they explore. Like in D&D, the lower level explorers/mercenaries/pilgrims really stayed near their own realms until the conditions were right to go farther.
If you're wanting inspiration, this wiki-list might be a good place to start.
Well, in one game we actually created an Adventurer's Guild so yes, there is a legitimate reason to be an Adventurer: it's a logical career choice for someone interested in exploring, or scouting, or researching, or traveling, or fighting, or...well, anything! It's like any other Guild with a business model, dues, and recruitment. Perfectly legit!
Outside of that, though, our DM (and most of us players) don't think of our characters as Adventuerers. It's just circumstances of fate that bring them together to face challenges. I'm currently playing an Inquisitive Rogue trying to solve the mystery of his past--and a missing destined child--who's joined a group that has similar interests, threats, and goals. We're not the most cohesive but all of us believe the undead rising are a problem and might be related to our current circumstance. In another game all of us were simply on the run, my character from his demonic family, another from his slave masters, yet a third from the rogue's guild she stole from. We built up trust traveling together and fighting injustices (like slavery, demonic possession, etc), all spurred by our personal histories. Yet another game, I was a dwarf who was simply on a trip to see the world. If he as a cleric came across evil, he was inclined to help stop it (along with other passengers/crew members). And yet another my character was an actual mercenary, seeking treasures of the world for himself and others for a profit.
I could go on, but the point is we're not Adventurers. We're characters that end up in circumstances where we have the chance to be heroic and, on occasion, alter the course of history. Metagame? Yeah, we're an adventuring party. But like the real world, our characters don't think of themselves like that. The justification for their activities is in their personal histories and moral decisions. Just like all of us and a myriad of historical figures in the "real world."
On a little different tack from previous answers, I'd say what justifies the existence of adventuring parties is healing magic.
No matter how talented the elite cadre of paramilitary explorers is, they're going to take damage. And a physical body loses some functionality each time you repair it. Unless there's magic in that there healing, restoring the damage to completely undamaged, full-reversal-of-entropy, pristine health, no adventurer is going to get far enough to complete a campaign.
This is why armies are so popular - realistic "adventuring" is an exercise in attrition. It would take a sizable force to complete each quest. And with a military hierarchy, you can keep your intelligence and wisdom (generals) away from the inevitable damage to strength and constitution (infantry and archers).
Adventure is quite prominent in history. Gold/land rushes of any era, medieval merchants, trappers and cartographers, the crusades, pilgrimages, traveling priests, rail and road layers, raiders, sailors of all stripes, coming of age rituals, hunters, treasure seekers and many more. To adventure, it seems, is to be human.
The traditional Dnd setting simply adds monsters and magic to an already established foundation, and adds a dash of pulp culture spin.
I couldn't get through 1/4 of page 1 before I wanted to slam my head in an oven door.
You can't compare this reality or historical events to a fantasy world or the "norms" of such a place for exactly TWO reasons.
1.) Magic is *real* in said fantasy reality.
2.) Gods, divine power & the vessels in which they employ their will (ie clerics, druids etc.) are *real* in said fantasy reality.
Every situation you could possibly concoct in a real world scenario would be null'd in such a realm. The mere presence of said "two reasons" inevitably predicates the necessity for adventurers. Just like the existence of POLITICS in THIS WORLD predicates the necessity for espionage.
And as far as the beholder vs. archers example, which is where I pretty much had to stop reading, a beholder's average Int score is 17. Seven... teen. Let's take a moment for that to actually sink in.
...
Ahem. Anywho, that equates to a 170 IQ. To put that into perspective, in THIS world it is averaged that less than 0.001% of the WORLD'S population has an equivalent or greater IQ. In other words, you're more likely to be struck by lightning than you are of knowing someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone that has an IQ equal to or greater than 170. People with that level of intelligence don't typically work "normal" jobs. Those are the kind of people who graduate summa cum laude from MIT. The kind of people you don't generally hear about because most of them are locked away concocting new and interesting ways of tearing our universe apart.
Tactically gifted people like Judit Polgar (world's greatest female chess player), mechanically gifted people like Kim Ung Yong (started working at NASA at 8 years old) or intuitive geniuses like Steven-freakin'-Hawking (RIP).
Beholder's aren't just floating bags of magical death meat. They're, literally, evil geniuses. So, the odds of said beholder just standing out in the open for your army of archers to take a whack at him/her/it are somewhere between zero and "ain't gonna happen." The only way I see that scenario playing out is if the beholder did so, voluntarily, only to laugh maniacally as the entire army of archers was summarily incinerated as the magical bombs he planted in said battlefield some 50 years prior finally detonated at the exact time he predicted 8 decades earlier.
I'm not sure what rubbed me wrong more: The topic of this thread or the fact that iconic villains are arbitrarily degenerated into their combat stats. If at least one, if not more, of your party goes up against a beholder and doesn't come out of there needing a resurrection... you played that beholder wrong.
Your players should be physically sweating at the mere insinuation that they would have to tackle that kind of situation. If they aren't, that's not their failure, it's yours.
Obviously there is magic and the threat of monsters but is that enough to justify the existence of adventurers?
In history, adventuring simply wasn't a thing, at least not without (usually) economic purpose. The entire concept of adventuring parties is really unjustified. Who would leave their home and their families to go adventuring? And who would pay them thousands of dollars to do it, when they could more easily use an army?
Life in a medieval world was nothing like what it is today and I think a lot of people forget that or don't understand or know the differences. Travel for common-folk was the exception, not the rule. Travel was dangerous and often meant neglecting your duties to your liege. You grew up learning your family business and didn't do much else other than teaching your children that profession before you died. And in a world with monsters, this would be even more true. Going off and facing danger for little to no reason wouldn't exactly be a popular choice.
Now, I'm not saying that I want perfect realism or that I'm saying adventurers shouldn't exist, rather I'm looking for reasons why they would exist. What is different, specifically, about a medieval fantasy world that promotes the craft of adventuring? What advantages does it have above raising an army to deal with threats? Why would people abandon their familial professions and lives to go adventuring? How is the reward greater than the risk in this environment to make it anything more than an anomaly? Or is it and should it only ever be an anomaly?
Basically I'm interested in the reasoning and history and social structures behind the scenes that result in a world where adventuring parties are a legitimate thing rather than purely a contrived fantasy construct.
Two things:
1) "Adventurers" is, for all intents and purposes, a polite term for "mercenaries" or "sellswords". You're doing things which often involve heavy combat for others in exchange for payment. Mercenaries have existed in the real world for basically all of human history. In the 11th century BC, Pharoh Ramesses II used 11,000 mercenaries. The Greeks and the Romans used them, they were used all throughout the medieval time period, and so forth all the way up until modern day, where they *still* exist and are *still* used.
The raw concept of having someone who is trained in warfare, and paying them to practice their skills rather than doing it yourself, is one that has always held appeal, because people don't want to die. Having 40 of your town guard go out there (perhaps all of them) vs sending out say 5 random guys makes sense on an overall tactical level, until you consider how many of them are going to die, and whether or not that makes sense to them on an individual level. How are you supposed to talk to Hannah afterwards about why her husband was even out there at all, because you were too cheap to hire the trained mercenaries available? How are you supposed to rebuild when your town has been devastated by losses and you're ill equipped to handle future threats? Why would your guardsmen follow orders from you when you sent them to their death rather than loosen the purse strings?
Mercenaries DO have a historical context and a place in medieval society. An environment where there is still greater danger than historically was present, would lead to even more justification for their existence, and for others to employ them. Most people are staying at home where it's (relatively) safe, pursuing a profession, as you say. That means their first time in combat, if they did it themselves, would be against whatever this creature is. Why risk it, when you can pay someone who does this for a living? Would you get a wild animal out of your attic, or pay someone? If you wouldn't even engage in confrontation *there*, what exactly are you expecting of these people?
2) As to the 'army', most historical armies have been, well, mercenaries. You have 3 elements in an army: 1) Trained soldiers (knights), who are rare, expensive, and comprise the upper class by necessity and design. 2) Peasants and common folk conscripted from the general populace with a spear shoved in their hands, or otherwise roughly equipped with whatever you can afford, trained as well as time allows, and 3) Mercenaries. "Maintaining" an army means your populace isn't actually working at full capacity, *and* you're paying directly for the food of everyone in it, not to mention the maintenance costs of gear, so it is difficult to do for long periods. Assembling that army in the first place means pulling common folk away from their jobs, and any losses means you're reducing the profitability of your lands as those peasants don't get to go back to work.
The idea of a "standing army" or a group of trained or even semi-trained professional full time soldiers retained on a permanent basis is not one which has significant historical merit. The logistics and expense is simply too severe. Nowadays, with the USA acting as "world police" and using their military to project a military umbrella over 3 1/2 continents (N. America, S. America, Europe, and the "Pacific Theater" though we won't call it all of Asia), their standing military? It's 1.3 Million on a population of 330 Million +. Less than .5% of the total population. In the UK, they didn't have a standing army until the 1600s. So think of it this way: You can rassle up the peasants, arm them, pay for their food, gear, and training, and taking the time to round them all up, and then send them into battle. Alternately, you can just pay a mercenary company who already has gear, is already trained, and leave the peasants to generate the food and money you'll need to pay for and supply those mercenaries.
So to summarize, mercenaries were (and still are) absolutely a thing. Individual mercenaries, when not part of a company being paid by the crown for waging a specific war, still had to get paid. That would come from taking on odd jobs, and plying their trade at a more individual level. If you wanted to give those sellswords a polite, evocative name which implies something more heroic than a base exchange of violence for coin, you might call them 'adventurers'.
I don't think you can give any one reason why people in the D&D world become adventurers. Think about when you're making a character, you're probably coming up with goals and motivations for why that character is going out into the wider world, and those reasons usually vary between different characters and parties.
It could be that the character wants to gain some coin, explore the unknown, become a renowned wizard, visit a dwarven citadel, see the great city of Waterdeep, hunt down a goblin tribe that raided and destroyed your village, go on a holy quest as dictated by a deity you serve, to do the bidding of an evil force and gain powers in return, to escape "justice" for a crime you committed in Calimport, to catalog everything in existence, to prove yourself to your monk master so that you may one day become the protector of your monastery, to recover an ancient lost artifact that could tip the balance of existence, or to one day establish your own empire. It could even be just flat-out curiosity, which I believe was once the main driving force behind our advancement as a species in the real world.
These are all reasons one may justify becoming an adventurer, and there are many more that could be listed.
Would you rather play Paul the Plumber, or Charles the CPA, because they have a justified existence in society? The whole point of Fantasy RPGs is escapism.
Otherwise, going to work on Monday morning would be D&D.
Fame and fortune! Why collect gold and power if not to amass fame and fortune? You save all the villagers and now they adore you. You search the dungeon and come out with 500 GP and treasures. It isn’t all altruism! Maybe you’re an adventurer to restore your family name, you are looking for your own kingdom, or you just have nowhere else to go. Look at Conan, LadyHawke, or the Lord of the Rings. The hobbits were unwilling adventurers. That is the entire reason for playing! To write your story and be a part of it, instead of just reading or watching. There are as many reasons to adventure as there are people who play D&D!
Adventurers are the CIA, 007, SAS as well as the politicians, eccentric cutting edge professors as well as the Marco Polo, Hannibals and Boudicca's of the world. They are exceptional and due to probably game and plot reasons interesting things tend to happen near and around them!
There is a lot of crunch going on here. The quick and dirty of it is that adventuring is a living (especially for the restless) and the world as it is allows for that sort of life style.
Also, so long as the kingdom's tax collectors aren't being waylaid, It's unlikely that many kingdoms care that there are bandits and goblins somewhere in the countryside.
In my campaign I justify adventurers as mercenaries that are doing deeds for a warlock's town as the world is slowly descending in the chaos.
The warlock can not send his army as they are needed to protect refugees washed up from foreign nations under siege by dark entities, and the party is the perfect mix of stealth and combat to see a job done efficiently. They go around collecting food, protecting the town from sieges, and fending off the spreading corruption in an odyssey like adventure.
Some of them are doing it because of a troubled past, some are doing it out of sheer goodness, and some are in it for the money.
But the fact is that he needs people to help him get the job done as their are other things he must attend to. Sometimes moral quandaries are raised and people don't want to bother. And sometimes their is a deeper more important goal that these tools (players) are helping to implement.
They went because they were getting paid, whether it was to sail the ship or to guard the exploration/diplomatic parties.
For that matter, Columbus was able to go because he found someone willing to put up the money he needed, and that person wasn't the one who ruled the city he lived in.
All of these required people to do pretty much standard "adventuring" activity. The only big differences being all the dungeons that show up in adventures, and the much lower number of armies rampaging about.
Just as archaeologists are anachronistic, so are government military explorers as opposed to private but government sponsored explorers.
And, despite the image, even core "anti-bandit/anti-monster" could be licensed out to nobles buying commissions/adventurers. Now I personally dislike the FR-style privateer/adventuring group license, but you can still have local rulers, wealthy people, or even communities going out and hiring adventurers for various tasks without getting egregiously anachronistic. (Though such things appear a bit more prominently pre- and post-Medieval.)
In real life (what's that?), there are hundreds of reasons people move about on adventures. Some take them across the globe, some just a few cities away. They're all seeking better opportunities and discoveries. Sometimes they find things about themselves that they never knew...for better or worse.
• Religious-based outreach • Relocations for better job opportunities • Student Exchange Programs • Couch-surfing • Witness Protection (had to include it!) • Eminent Domain due to Constructions (dams, roads, etc.) • Previously mentioned Archaeologists, Spelunkers • Vacations • Etc.
Any of those and 100s more reasons to get out and about...can be used to start or flesh-out gaming content. Maybe do a google search for adventures and modify the results for inclusion into new games?
If you are going to *limit* your ideas to a specific time period (D&D is NOT a medieval game), perhaps search the InterTubes on information about population movements & drives during that specific time period.
TQQdles™
Apple ][+ MOSTech 6502 1.0 MHz • 64k Ram • Hercules 8k EGA video card • 300baud USR modem • 2 x 340k 5¼" floppy drives • Software Emulated Sound • Apple DOS 3.3 • Sony 13" TV monitor • Integrated Keyboard • No Mouse
Isn't part of the impetus for people to become adventurers usually built into the world? I think it's the 5e DM Guide (it's not in front of me at the moment) it mentions that if you deisn a world, make it mostly wild and previously populated by a 'great-but-fallen' civilization. Those that explore the neglected depths of the past can earn fame and fortune.
Off the top of my head I have some justifications:
1) Bored/young farm worker who is called to greatness becomes adventurer. This is usually justified by the fantasy construct of prophesy (thinking David Eddings or Robert Jordan). It most definitely is an anomaly because only one person born is the Chosen One.
2) Heroes who were in the right place at the right time and willing to do the right thing. Their actions, which could be classified as going on an adventure, are to serve a greater good? Sounds cheesy but is an easy starter adventure for a group or even a political campaign. You could probably write a book of anecdotes about how rare this motivation is in the real world.
3) People get paid or ordered to do something unsavory. Very common in both the fantasy and real world I'd gather. Easier to send out two to five peons to take care of your problem than be obvious with an army. Depends heavily on your definition of adventure!
There's actually quite a few real world examples of explorers in history. Taticus did it to inform the Roman Empire of what was in "their" newly claimed lands. Erik the Red did it because.... he had a temper and something to prove I guess, his son continued on the tradition to find his kin a place to live. Ching Shih did it for wealth (and I'd say a bit of fun), Ibn Battuta did it because he was rich as hell and wanted to explore, ancient writings are full of stories of pilgrims, traveling troubadours were somewhat popular for quite a long time, mercenaries, traders, refugees.... The only real thing that's changed with time is the amount of the world they explore. Like in D&D, the lower level explorers/mercenaries/pilgrims really stayed near their own realms until the conditions were right to go farther.
If you're wanting inspiration, this wiki-list might be a good place to start.
Well, in one game we actually created an Adventurer's Guild so yes, there is a legitimate reason to be an Adventurer: it's a logical career choice for someone interested in exploring, or scouting, or researching, or traveling, or fighting, or...well, anything! It's like any other Guild with a business model, dues, and recruitment. Perfectly legit!
Outside of that, though, our DM (and most of us players) don't think of our characters as Adventuerers. It's just circumstances of fate that bring them together to face challenges. I'm currently playing an Inquisitive Rogue trying to solve the mystery of his past--and a missing destined child--who's joined a group that has similar interests, threats, and goals. We're not the most cohesive but all of us believe the undead rising are a problem and might be related to our current circumstance. In another game all of us were simply on the run, my character from his demonic family, another from his slave masters, yet a third from the rogue's guild she stole from. We built up trust traveling together and fighting injustices (like slavery, demonic possession, etc), all spurred by our personal histories. Yet another game, I was a dwarf who was simply on a trip to see the world. If he as a cleric came across evil, he was inclined to help stop it (along with other passengers/crew members). And yet another my character was an actual mercenary, seeking treasures of the world for himself and others for a profit.
I could go on, but the point is we're not Adventurers. We're characters that end up in circumstances where we have the chance to be heroic and, on occasion, alter the course of history. Metagame? Yeah, we're an adventuring party. But like the real world, our characters don't think of themselves like that. The justification for their activities is in their personal histories and moral decisions. Just like all of us and a myriad of historical figures in the "real world."
On a little different tack from previous answers, I'd say what justifies the existence of adventuring parties is healing magic.
No matter how talented the elite cadre of paramilitary explorers is, they're going to take damage. And a physical body loses some functionality each time you repair it. Unless there's magic in that there healing, restoring the damage to completely undamaged, full-reversal-of-entropy, pristine health, no adventurer is going to get far enough to complete a campaign.
This is why armies are so popular - realistic "adventuring" is an exercise in attrition. It would take a sizable force to complete each quest. And with a military hierarchy, you can keep your intelligence and wisdom (generals) away from the inevitable damage to strength and constitution (infantry and archers).
Chandelierianism: Not just for interns anymore.
Adventure is quite prominent in history. Gold/land rushes of any era, medieval merchants, trappers and cartographers, the crusades, pilgrimages, traveling priests, rail and road layers, raiders, sailors of all stripes, coming of age rituals, hunters, treasure seekers and many more. To adventure, it seems, is to be human.
The traditional Dnd setting simply adds monsters and magic to an already established foundation, and adds a dash of pulp culture spin.
And so it is
I couldn't get through 1/4 of page 1 before I wanted to slam my head in an oven door.
You can't compare this reality or historical events to a fantasy world or the "norms" of such a place for exactly TWO reasons.
1.) Magic is *real* in said fantasy reality.
2.) Gods, divine power & the vessels in which they employ their will (ie clerics, druids etc.) are *real* in said fantasy reality.
Every situation you could possibly concoct in a real world scenario would be null'd in such a realm. The mere presence of said "two reasons" inevitably predicates the necessity for adventurers. Just like the existence of POLITICS in THIS WORLD predicates the necessity for espionage.
And as far as the beholder vs. archers example, which is where I pretty much had to stop reading, a beholder's average Int score is 17. Seven... teen. Let's take a moment for that to actually sink in.
...
Ahem. Anywho, that equates to a 170 IQ. To put that into perspective, in THIS world it is averaged that less than 0.001% of the WORLD'S population has an equivalent or greater IQ. In other words, you're more likely to be struck by lightning than you are of knowing someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone that has an IQ equal to or greater than 170. People with that level of intelligence don't typically work "normal" jobs. Those are the kind of people who graduate summa cum laude from MIT. The kind of people you don't generally hear about because most of them are locked away concocting new and interesting ways of tearing our universe apart.
Tactically gifted people like Judit Polgar (world's greatest female chess player), mechanically gifted people like Kim Ung Yong (started working at NASA at 8 years old) or intuitive geniuses like Steven-freakin'-Hawking (RIP).
Beholder's aren't just floating bags of magical death meat. They're, literally, evil geniuses. So, the odds of said beholder just standing out in the open for your army of archers to take a whack at him/her/it are somewhere between zero and "ain't gonna happen." The only way I see that scenario playing out is if the beholder did so, voluntarily, only to laugh maniacally as the entire army of archers was summarily incinerated as the magical bombs he planted in said battlefield some 50 years prior finally detonated at the exact time he predicted 8 decades earlier.
I'm not sure what rubbed me wrong more: The topic of this thread or the fact that iconic villains are arbitrarily degenerated into their combat stats. If at least one, if not more, of your party goes up against a beholder and doesn't come out of there needing a resurrection... you played that beholder wrong.
Your players should be physically sweating at the mere insinuation that they would have to tackle that kind of situation. If they aren't, that's not their failure, it's yours.
I don't think you can give any one reason why people in the D&D world become adventurers. Think about when you're making a character, you're probably coming up with goals and motivations for why that character is going out into the wider world, and those reasons usually vary between different characters and parties.
It could be that the character wants to gain some coin, explore the unknown, become a renowned wizard, visit a dwarven citadel, see the great city of Waterdeep, hunt down a goblin tribe that raided and destroyed your village, go on a holy quest as dictated by a deity you serve, to do the bidding of an evil force and gain powers in return, to escape "justice" for a crime you committed in Calimport, to catalog everything in existence, to prove yourself to your monk master so that you may one day become the protector of your monastery, to recover an ancient lost artifact that could tip the balance of existence, or to one day establish your own empire. It could even be just flat-out curiosity, which I believe was once the main driving force behind our advancement as a species in the real world.
These are all reasons one may justify becoming an adventurer, and there are many more that could be listed.
Would you rather play Paul the Plumber, or Charles the CPA, because they have a justified existence in society? The whole point of Fantasy RPGs is escapism.
Otherwise, going to work on Monday morning would be D&D.
Fame and fortune! Why collect gold and power if not to amass fame and fortune? You save all the villagers and now they adore you. You search the dungeon and come out with 500 GP and treasures. It isn’t all altruism! Maybe you’re an adventurer to restore your family name, you are looking for your own kingdom, or you just have nowhere else to go. Look at Conan, LadyHawke, or the Lord of the Rings. The hobbits were unwilling adventurers. That is the entire reason for playing! To write your story and be a part of it, instead of just reading or watching. There are as many reasons to adventure as there are people who play D&D!
Adventurers are the CIA, 007, SAS as well as the politicians, eccentric cutting edge professors as well as the Marco Polo, Hannibals and Boudicca's of the world. They are exceptional and due to probably game and plot reasons interesting things tend to happen near and around them!
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