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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Halivar" data-source="post: 5854773" data-attributes="member: 9327">So I started a 1st edition game (using OSRIC for initiative rules and NPC creation), with just a few folks who had a pretty hard time in the dungeon I rolled up using the random generation rules in the 1E DMG. Some folks at Enworld asked if we were using henchmen. We weren't. So I went back, the players scrapped the dungeon they were dying through, and set off for T1: Hommlet.In Verbebonc they stopped to recruit henchmen, spending just about all the money they had heretofore acquired to do so. In preparation, I initially expected a quick how-do-you-do and moving on to Hommlet with new compatriots. When I read the rules, however, on interviewing henchmen, I realized I would need a huge pool of henchmen printed out (for the task, I wrote a web-app [linked in sig] for generating piles of 1st level NPC's). The interview process, I imagined, would take up to half an hour at most, and be drudge-work before the fun started.When we sat down to play, I was armed with over a hundred small slips of paper with 1st level NPC's. The party decided to use all available avenues of recruitment. They rolled the dice. 50 people lined up looking for work. I gasped inside. Unruffled, I counted out 50 slips of paper; this was going to be a long, long night, unless they took the first few respondents.Instead, the party decided to interview each and every single one of them, producing 3 hours of some of our funnest roleplay. Making a unique personality for each and every NPC was quite challenging, but the whole group was kept in stitches pretty much the whole time. Most NPC's refused to work with them (all chaotic party), but a few lucky reaction rolls netted them their favorite (and probably this campaign's more memorable) NPC's:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Braandis, a fighter with 18.75 STR who speaks like a simpleton but is actually quite smart.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Scabs, a 12-year-old thief who, when dismissed for being too young, handed the mage back his stolen spellbook ("Wait! You're hired!")</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Angelica, a zealous teenage paladin, who, though exceedingly beautiful, is also violently chaste. A later interviewee with only one-arm attested to this. (Also, "interested in wine & spirits???" This complete contradiction makes her the party favorite.)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Darrin, a CE fighter/m-u/cleric of Wee Jas. The party managed to ask him all the wrong interview questions.</li> </ul>Due to the amount of time spent hiring henchmen and interviewing people in Hommlet (Elmo was another case where the party decided to extend the roleplay for hilarity's sake), we were unable to get into any actual combat. But I can say the unexpectedly pleasant experience of hiring henchmen makes 1st Edition (so far) one of my favorite RPG's of all. I can safely say I will miss henchmen when I play later editions.</blockquote>

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