In our grounded reality, the idea of having a career and jobs is one of the most commonly shared pieces of society. Nearly everyone alive today will have, at some point, a job in their lives. Not everyone applies and gets jobs at companies, and not everyone runs their own business. In medieval times, this same principle existed in a different capacity. However, one thing remains clear, most of history shows that people open businesses and other people work in businesses. And then there are those that don’t work. When you’re designing a fantasy world, it’s important to talk about something as essential as work, jobs, and careers, so today’s guide will go over how to create jobs for a fantasy world.
With fantasy being a creative and mystical genre, you can get into some really cool, unique, and creative professions for your characters to have. Also, since rules in your fantasy world can be designed by you, you can really get creative with this. That’s one of the cool things about world building, which is the fact that it’s really totally your design and your ideas that come into play in your stories and projects.
And before we get started, if you’re new to world building and aren’t sure how to start, you can check out my ultimate world building beginner’s guide for more details!
DECIDE ON AN ECONOMIC SYSTEM
If you’re writing a brand-new country, world, or whatever it is that you’re designing as your main area of operations for your story, you need to determine the economic system of your location. I talked in-depth about economies in a recent post, which you can read here.
Basically, you just want to understand how the government, money, and the people interact to create the economy of your world because this is a big basis behind some of the things like how jobs work in this economy.
Sometimes, governments have more of a say over how jobs are run. Other times, the company is more the director of the rules and regulations. Whatever it may be, it’s totally up to you in your own world and story.
IDEA DUMP POTENTIAL JOBS
Before you even start designing a single job, guild, etc… start writing out a bunch of random jobs on a piece of paper. Literally, just write anything that comes to mind. I’ll help you get started, but oftentimes in Medieval fantasy or fantasy in general, we see jobs like this:
- Assassin
- Carpenter
- Blacksmith
- Soldier
- Palace guard
- Healer
- Cook
- Butcher
- Baker
- Orphanage Director
- Maid
- Nanny
- Thief
- Priest
- Monk
You can use this list to get started and keep building on. Do this for a few minutes before moving on to the next part of this blog post, as it will help you moving forward.
DESIGN GUILDS/UNIONS AND ORGANIZATIONS
Once you’ve identified the most likely jobs that will play a big role in your story, we can start working on the organizational structure of the job itself.
I recommend starting with one job, which is what your main character will be doing. If your main character is in something more government-oriented, religious, or related to war, this next step might look a bit different for you. However, for the most part, organizations for jobs are pretty common, so let’s just get into it anyways.
One of the things that we as humans have continued since many years ago is the idea of a “guild.” In Medieval times, a guild was an association of craftsmen, merchants, artisans, etc… who have considerable amounts of power over the practice of their respective trades on a commercial level.
Often, guilds and organizations like these would draft documents to maintain rules and regulations on their professions, dealings with the government, wage stipulations, and more. These have evolved since the times of Medieval Europe and they are still present in some capacity today (i.e., the United States has a Writer’s Guild).
Taking inspiration from this, let’s just say your world has many artisanal jobs like potters, artists, carpenters, builders, etc… you could create guilds for these and focus on the most important ones to really hone in on things like rules, regulations, documents, rankings, and more.
Unless you have government-mandated laws surrounding labor, the guilds would most likely determine things like how many working days there are and what the rights of the employee and employer are as well.
If you have a main character who is thinking of getting a job in a certain field, think about the restrictions the character may have in accordance with guild regulations and rules. Maybe the character needs an education or an apprenticeship before taking up a job. You can look up real-life examples of labor laws and regulations or job regulations to see how people are restricted from entering professions as inspiration.
Because this step can be a bit robust and complicated, I don’t recommend you make super in-depth guild designs for each job present in your world. Hone in on maybe just one that will be important to the story. Unless you really want to world-build that much, then go right on ahead.
CREATE UNIQUE, MAGIC-RELATED JOBS
In fantasy, we often hone in on magic because one of the most important elements of fantasy is the existence of a robust, in-depth magic system in the world. This is where you can show things like practical applications of magic.
Magic can be associated with both good and bad things alike. This is why it’s important to think about the implication of magic in your jobs because magic can impact things like how people interact with others, how efficient people are, and more.
For example, say you have a job like a healer who uses certain forms of magic to do their job. This is where you can show things like how magic is applied in the job, how people train for that specific magic, what are the regulations of being a magical healer and more.
Magic is a great way to show off the uniqueness of the job systems, including more shady jobs or illicit uses of magic in some jobs. Maybe there are rules regarding using magic in carpentry. Think of these sorts of things when working on your job systems.
To do this, you obviously need a good magic system, which I talk about designing in another post of mine.
HIERARCHY, CLASS, AND SOCIAL STATUS
One of the biggest impacts on our job market today (whether we really acknowledge it or not) is the fact that class, hierarchy, and social status are all present in jobs. There just can be implicit restrictions on certain professions for many people, discriminatory or not. It’s just a fact of life.
Of course, in a world more restrictive like Medieval Europe, these sorts of blocks were much more apparent. What I’m getting at is that no matter what time period your story exists in, there will always be a trickle-down effect from the greater society’s social world.
Maybe in your army, being a standard infantryman is something that any guy on the street can do, but women cannot, and only nobles can become knighted by the crown. Maybe nobles are the only ones that can practice magic. Maybe certain minority groups are barred from merchant guilds. Maybe servants cannot join other professions because they are servants for life.
Consider the way you’ve structured your hierarchy and the society of the world you’re writing about: How does it impact the job market? This is very important because it gives the reader a greater glimpse into how your world interacts with itself and how people interact with it.
TRADE AND MERCHANTRY
No matter what era we live in, trade has been a massive part of our daily economic function. Trade really got a massive role in society when we started realizing that other parts of the world had stuff that our respective parts didn’t have. Thus, people got a demand for these other things and so trade was spurred on. Obviously, trade is significant, which is why you need to mention it in some capacity in your world’s job market.
How does trade impact professions? Are there some professions that are in some sort of symbiotic relationship with merchants? Maybe they rely on materials from merchants to get their work done? Does trade have a dramatic impact on the overall welfare of the economy in your world? For instance, if trade slumps, does this mean your economy slumps? Is exporting or importing more important to your country (hint: Exporting more typically means you are a more prosperous economic nation because you’re the one selling).
CULTURAL AND RELIGIOUS INFLUENCES ON JOBS
The world around us is shaped by things like culture and religion. Religion sometimes creates restrictions or opens up other jobs like religious leadership or scholars of religion. Culture can create jobs like art or ministers of culture and such things.
Religion and magic may go hand-in-hand or conflict, so working around and with the religion you’ve designed for your world is an important thing because it gives your world a lot more life and it makes it much more interesting.
If you want to learn how to design a unique religion and culture for your fantasy world, you can check out the blog posts below:
Also, consider things like conflict and internal strife and how these sorts of things may impact certain jobs. Maybe the carpenters have a beef with the blacksmiths? Who knows? Maybe the peasants are revolting against government rule? Conflict impacts jobs, and that’s something that we see in the world around us constantly. War and tribulations create and destroy jobs alike, so think about how the world around us has reacted to these sorts of things as inspiration to apply to your story’s job market too.
Before you go, don’t forget to check out my series, The Fallen Age Saga. I’m currently working on Book 3 and you can read Books 1 and 2 over on Amazon right now.