Over on his Livejournal, Sean "Dr. Kromm" Punch revealed the title for our latest collaboration:
GURPS Dungeon Fantasy 15: Henchmen
I won't add anything here about what's in it, but the title is pretty revealing. If you noticed my players having the occasional henchmen and hirelings (Korric, Orrie) and NPC companions (Red Raggi), yeah, I used the stuff we came up for for the book. And the book uses stuff I came up with for my game.
Looking forward to this. If it anything like the one chapter in the Fire Demon Adventure it will be very useful.
ReplyDeleteDo you mean that chapter of completed characters? You'll be a little disappointed, if so. It's not a book of completed characters (not the AD&D Rogue's Gallery for GURPS). It does cover a lot ground you need to cover for henchmen, but not that way.
DeleteI'm hoping for hireling types that will do the things that the players are unwilling or unable to do themselves; porters, valets, healers, bodyguards, torchbearers, various experts, etc. Also I hope to see rules/guidelines on how to deal with them in the game; how much to pay them, where they can be found, how much "adversity" they will accept before they quit, and so forth.
DeleteI don't think it would be consider leaking to say - yeah, that kind of stuff is covered.
DeleteA surprisingly critical topic for old school gaming. As central as it is to B/X strategy, there sure isn't a lot of guidance for how to handle this. Personally, I'm tired of people killing them off so much. Why should Chaotic/Neutral yahoos get the benefits of society if they don't give back?
ReplyDeleteThere is very little in the B/X rules that I remember, other than the rarely-remembered bit in B2 about retainers getting a share of the loot. I always wondered why anyone would sign up with a party that would sacrifice them so readily as many old-schoolers seem willing to do. The types of hirelings so desperate they'd work for less than share of treasure and work for clearly Chaotic or Neutral parties are the kind who'll loot your camp of rations and spare bedrolls and run off and sell them, IMO.
ReplyDeleteFunny... I've done that before to groups who treated their hirelings and/or junior members poorly. I think I've done it so much that in my own brief DF game, the junior members all got a full share -- even the [extremely useful but non-delving] psuedo-mongols in my campaign. They would stay outside and maintain a base camp, but refused to go underground -- and they were well paid for it! Even hirelings were given a 1/2 share right off! And none were sacrificed -- the party went to great lengths to save a thief who I thought they should have simply killed. All because they wanted a good rep in the city where they were delving.
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