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Traditionally, many storytellers and bards were university students who failed to secure or to hold a household office or the younger generations following a family tradition of working as minstrels, players, and other entertainers. In recent times, due to a fad sweeping across many kingdoms, many poor or landless young knights are composing poems, songs, or stories and delivering them in halls after dinner.

Most wealthy or great households will provide entertainment in the great hall between the dinner and supper meals. Mayors might commission some entertainers to perform in the village green or church courtyard during major festivals or holidays. Large fairs also often have both paid and unpaid performers working on their grounds.

Literacy separated the bards and storytellers from the common minstrels, and they frequently generated original compositions. If they also possessed good voices or high proficiency with a musical instrument, then they could make a reasonably good living, typically comparable to a lesser artisan. With a wealthy patron, a few lucky storytellers or bards became wealthy and retired in comfort and security. Others died in tavern brawls or alley robberies.

The work did entail the acceptance of certain dangers. Solo travel, suspicious husbands, and religious or lordly disapproval added certain risks to their days.

Many undoubtedly were unfairly jailed as spies, but since many were, in fact, also working as spies, many historians are cautious about the quick, reflexive criticisms of paranoid lords. Jailing a bard for spying is not a paranoid action if the bard was indeed working for one of your enemies.