A Bigger Pile of Gear

In a recent post I suggested letting a group of starting players pick their gear from a pool of cards.   The miserly way I tailored the gear available made the whole experience pretty hardscrabble.  Since then, I had the idea of flipping that on it's head and making the players wealthy, petty gentry.

They have as much stuff as their porters can carry.  You would need to decide how many porters, beaters, link boys, personal assistants, personal guards and pack animals allowed to the group as a whole.  And I think you would have to shift the whole delve from one of trying to find some valuables to a kind of difficult, big game hunt.  So, for example, the party is trying to kill a cave bear, or leucrotta or something.

In this kind of scenario resource management would still be an issue-- nets might get torn, lots of food consumed by the hirelings, etc-- but it would be less about survival and more about problem solving.  Should you dig some pit traps?  Drive the beast into spikes or nets?

You would probably need to have lots of gear cards on hand, because money is not an issue; if the party wants 200' of rope then they can give that to their porters.  I would also want to make cards for outrageously expensive stuff that you wouldn't consider normal dungeon gear, like fireworks, cages, and jugs of tranquilizer.

And what to do after the hunt?  This could just be a fun one-off, or you can start tallying the hireling costs-- maybe the family has finally tired of the extravagance of this bunch of layabouts-- so players will have to sell off remaining equipment and decide whether to keep any hirelings and how many.

Here is a draft sheet of how you might handle beaters:

I figure they will be average strength and be focused of flushing and driving game, but can still carry a few things.

Here is a sheet for porters:

They're strong, or know how to balance loads well, and they all carry clubs for their own defense.  The check boxes can be used to show hit points.  Yep, this is basically treating them as beasts of burden (see here and here), but you are wealthy and and consider that their lot in life.

Of course you don't need cards to do this, you could have lists of gear printed out, index cards for each hireling, and have players write down what they want to take, but the cards would make the process more visible for everyone sitting at a table and also quicker, being able to shift gear from place to place without having to erase.

Articles of Agreement

Pirates have been a strong interest of mine since childhood.  I was gathering data for a long time to make my own pirate roleplaying game.  To celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day I offer hireling articles of agreement.

The articles of agreement, pirate articles, always fascinated me.  Here was a force of chaos and anarchy that was held together by a sense of justice and a form of democracy (more than the Queen's navy would ever give them).

Now, I am very leery of anything that makes dungeon exploration mundane.  Tales of the great adventurer guilds of the Forgotten Realms really leave me cold.  But I think there is room, in a civilized location (i.e. remnants of empire) for a similar set of expectations agreed upon for hired help.


So if players decide to seek help outside my city of Nidus.  I think from now on potential hirelings might rquire the pcs to sign an agreement.  What would the agreement include?  I think it should be simple, might vary for combatants and non-combatants.  Maybe as few as five points to the agreement would keep it manageable.  Here is a shot at it from the hireling's perspective:

This person upon setting out with the hirer:

1. Will obey all orders that don't put themselves or innocents at risk of life, mind, or limb.  Unless refusal would interfere with the next tenet.
2. Do their best to protect the hirer and the party's concerns.
3. Keep any gear they are outfitted with.
4. Receive a half-share of treasure found.
5. In the event of death, disappearance, or mental destruction, will have a quarter-share of treasure delivered to their closest kin.

What would you add or change?

Telecanter's DM Spurs - Hireling Traits

I don't have a lot of experience with hirelings. In our 1e campaigns of the past we had parties consisting solely of player characters and, if needed, players controlled two characters. But it wasn't often needed because death seemed to be a mythical event that happened off-stage to peasants.

Fast forward to today and Swords & Wizardry and I've got four players taking 13 people into a deserted convent in a brash and incautious way. The ants and stirge are feasting well. But how do I as a DM differentiate these damn hirelings. I'd used Steven Cook's Quick NPC Checklist to give me names physical features and traits all at once. But that list was finite and I apparently need an infinite way to come up with the barest characterization details for these hirelings on the fly. And so, I crafted:

• Telecanter's Hireling Trait Spur

To do this I consulted a lot of sources starting with Grim's Roll All the Dice Npc Generator, Robert Lionheart's Random Hireling Generator from Knockspell #1, Fitz' cool NPC Personality Profile Generator, and the beloved 1e DMG.

To be clear this will not tell you what armor, weapons, or experience your hireling will have. To determine that you should check out Kilgore's Labyrinth Minions, or Bulette's Hireling Generator. (Please post a comment if you have other recommendations)

What this is meant to do is give a spur to your imagination to come up with some broad and brief traits so your hirelings will have some distinguishing features. Some notes:

• Read the d4 with the d20 for a single personality trait.
• The d6 is a rough age range, I tried to allow for young linkboys and old cooks and such.
• Read the d8 with the d12 for a single distinguishing feature.
• The d10 is meant to indicate the distance the hireling has travelled from their birthplace. I left this as the barest suggestion because it seems scale would depend heavily on your particular campaign, but I suggest 1 is a local, and 10 is the farthest away your campaign has room for, perhaps from over the Sea or from deep Under-mountain.

Let's try it:
3, 5, 3, 1, 2, 1

abundance, 50s, marked, 1, ears, pride

Okay, this local boy in his fifties has cauliflower ears and an abundance of pride. Maybe he was a champion wrestler and is haughty because of it, but he's past his prime and reduced to working as a porter or sell-sword.

One more time:
2, 2, 5, 1, 9, 3

lack, 20s, habit, local, feet, bravery

This local in his twenties is not a coward, but he won't be charging into battle any time soon and he has an annoying habit of shuffling his feet.

Some last suggestions: I use different color/style of dice when throwing these to try to speed up reading the results. I'd probably try to throw them in some contained area so you're not having to track down the 12-sider under the table. Most importantly and the coolest idea, though, comes from Jeff Rients' comment on Bulette's hireling generator: think about letting your players roll this.

I've mentioned the fun my players had rolling up their hirelings, I think this would work the same way and fits right in with Delta's post about games within games. I think you should be ready to help, the whole table should, in interpreting the Spur's results, but I think taking an active part in determining these traits will fix in the players mind which hireling is which and why they should care that the stirge is currently pumping out his lifeblood :)

Have fun with this. I hope it is helpful.

Faces for the Faceless

This little devil has been around for yeeeeears. I remember playing around with it at least 5 years ago. But you may not have stumbled across Ultimate Flash Face so I thought I'd share it with you.

I like the consistency it can give a range of sort of realistic faces, as if a single artist better than myself had drawn them all. But I get to make the choices! I like it now for the possibility of NPC and Hireling Faces. It's not unlimited, but has a pretty good range of options. You can't save the face you make directly, but I just take a screenshot and then cut the face out in Gimp.

Here are a few of my greatest hits:
Could be a monk, cleric, or slightly tired fighter.

Linkboy? Ghoul-doomed?
Mild-mannered accountant? Porter?

Ahh, yes, I couldn't leave you without an unsavoury type. This is Breeyark Damp-pants, and you'll be parleying free passage in exchange for that linkboy up there.