Important organizations with Courtesy Rank for standard ranks

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

An organization with only courtesy rank can't really function as an organization.

It's probably possible for them to, although it will become much more difficult to accomplish anything as it gets particularly large. Let's consider an Adventurer's Guild. You could probably have a relatively small one where there are individuals in charge of finances (taking payments from clients and paying the adventurers and other employees), individuals in charge of advancement, individuals in charge of determining the difficulty of each quest (and thus who is eligible and likely how much the client is to be charged and the adventurers are to be paid), individuals in charge of assigning quests and confirming their completion, and of course the adventurers themselves who undertake the quests, without anybody actually being in charge of anybody else, so long as they all want to work toward a common goal (and those that go against said goal get summarily disinvited by the others). At the small size necessary for this to work, you'll probably have several individuals wearing multiple hats, of course. But you could likely have quite a large such organization where most of the members have only Courtesy Ranks, and the others have full-fat Rank with authority over those of lower rank (but, as you later note, only those in their chain of command). And in that case, you'd have another hat - those in charge of disciplinary actions against adventurers who violate the guild charter (Goblin Slayer has a case of a mid-ranking adventurer being demoted back to Porcelain, the lowest rank, due to the fact he'd been stealing all the best loot for himself; they have Goblin Slayer sit in with them for the hearing, but he has no authority, largely being there as protection in case the demotee turns violent) - which without any true ranks would have to essentially be mob justice instead.