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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 8497585" data-attributes="member: 82106">I'm not finding any indication of this in the actual text of Men & Magic... In fact it even states the terms under which Magic-Users and Clerics would be interested in being hired. They want magic! In any case, any hireling would be level 1, the exact statement being 'Only the lowest level of character types can be hired.' (M&M P12). Again, presumably they are rolled up like PCs, so they are mechanically identical.Again, read page 12 and etc. of Men & Magic, this is simply erroneous. While the idea of '0 level humans' or 'non-adventurers' is certainly inherent in OD&D it isn't systematically articulated, and the terms 'hireling' and 'henchman' for example do not have the particular meanings they acquire in AD&D. M&M P12 talks explicitly, and only, about classed NPCs.I'd have to go look at the follower rules in M&M, but IIRC they do include fighters gaining bodies of actual Chainmail-style troops. Presumably these sorts of 'minions' don't really get stats, though perhaps if a player chose to have his character single out a few of them then they would get 'filled in' as more complete characters, and might even become level 1 fighters or something. Its really unclear that you can even HAVE 0-level hirelings in OD&D, a level 1 fighter is mechanically a 'veteran', which is already a grade of troops in Chainmail, so potentially they are not that uncommon. It is only in AD&D where the notion of 'Adventurers are a special group of people who can level up' is introduced. I think we all had SOME degree of personality traits for any PC that lived long, yes. Not always, but there was an alignment and who they were associated with, and maybe some note scrawled on the sheet. IME it was pretty sketchy. Henchmen might have been less developed, but there wasn't much more down you could go, and if you rolled up 2 PCs and dived into a game, I hardly think they each had much personality. It seemed to me that this kind of game was pretty much the same as having one or two henchmen, just without all the advertising and gold trading hands.I think this is more typical in later AD&D play IME. We often had 2 PCs, and usually one would be a 'backup' and virtually a henchman, or maybe even really a true henchman, though I agree we didn't use those rules super often. We did hire hirelings to keep the animals safe or whatever now and then, though dealing with them was often elided from play. Frankly 0-level hirelings become pretty useless after about 3rd level, the monsters just chew through them on round 1 and that's that. More likely they all see the ghouls approaching and scatter, only an idiot wouldn't.Well, in the games I played in, the whole reactions and recruiting monsters part was definitely less emphasized. In the oldest rounds of games it was there, when we used OD&D rules. Later we used Holmes Basic, and AFAIK it doesn't really discuss this kind of thing, though it has some of the reaction rules in it IIRC. Anyway, I don't think we're far apart, a few cases of monsters following PCs existed in our games, but not too many. We were more likely to use RP vs just dicing reactions in those days. And THAT is the RP we had, it was the players using their PC alter-egos to navigate through the game world fiction and accomplish things, nothing much else. I cited my 'psychotic' ranger, he was a super unique case, like the only one around. Sure, my friend had Francis McGillicutty (FM, get it) who had a nasty sense of humor, and Triborb VII who was basically a mad wizard, and a couple others I forget, but that was the extent of their personalities, and these were PCs that he ran for YEARS and were advanced to high levels. All my wizard PC's personality consisted of was he was super intelligent and min-maxed every situation, and his goal was learn all about everything, that's it. Played the character for years, cannot tell you a single thing about his backstory, it didn't even exist. He was a vehicle for expert play, nothing more. Towards the VERY end of the arcs of those characters, after they were semi-retired basically, they got a few elaborations. This was well into the 90's. Questioner tried to start a magic school, etc.Well, at The Bunker most games were just one-offs where people used 'floating characters', and campaigns were more of a specialist thing. The players were a pretty steady roster, but it was DM of the week, basically. Otherwise campaigns were the rule, though it wasn't too unusual for one to be assembled using a roster of existing PCs, some of which might have originated in a totally different game.</blockquote>

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