Dealing with NPCs Should Be Expensive and Irritating

Look at this guy's face:

He's mad!

Why? Probably because, per the AD&D DMG, dealing with NPCs "should be expensive and irritating":

The example that follows is very funny and very Appendix N:

Poor Celowin Silvershield first visits a local tavern to learn of the location of a high-level magic-user. The people there are vague and unhelpful until plied with several rounds of drinks (the bartender, of course, must also be taken care of). In the streets Celowin is "pestered unendingly" by a beggar until he either pays (attracting "a swarm of other beggars") or calls the watch, who may in turn take offense to Celowin's lack of generosity. 

Upon reaching the magic-user's tower, Celowin must pay off a petty henchman or risk having the door slammed in his face. When he finally gets an audience with Llewellyn ap-Owen, the wizard immediately takes umbrage with his presence and demands substantial payment before granting any request. If Celowin does not have what the wizard wants, a geas will be laid upon him to force him to go acquire it.

The section preceding this one, PERSONAE OF NON-PLAYER CHARACTERS contains a variety of "FACTS TABLES" for determining NPCs' alignment, possessions/wealth, appearance, and sanity, as well as "TRAITS TABLES" for determining general tendencies, personality, disposition, intellect, nature, materialism, honesty, bravery, energy, thrift, "morals" (which Gygax clarifies means "sexual tendencies" - cool!), piety, interests, and, if their interests include collecting, what it is they collect. 

These traits somehow affect reaction rolls, as suggested by this almost entirely unhelpful section:

While the usage of the term is an oft-discoursed topic these days, the bit about sanity is amusing, as less-sane NPCs have more variable reaction adjustments which can go in either direction, ensuring that dealing with these individuals is particularly irritating.

While "NPCs will have some alignment", as well as varying levels of sanity and other traits which may affect their reactions, they are nonetheless, apparently, universally greedy and avaricious (and, presumably, annoying). 

Gygax uses the same general tone when discussing the recruitment of NPC spellcasters:

The prices that follow are pretty hefty (and these are just the prices if the player characters are of a similar alignment/religion as the NPC):

(As an aside, there is something very funny about paying an NPC 10,000 gold to cause a magical earthquake.)

Of course, the fees can be much greater:

(This bit about traveling "any distance" makes the fee for an earthquake spell even more amusing. I can imagine a situation where you might want a cleric to travel to a dungeon or enemy stronghold and cause an earthquake there, but 10,000 gold is the fee to cast earthquake without traveling, suggesting that for some reason adventurers are going to the temple in the city or wherever and paying the cleric to cause an earthquake there. Why?)

If the players complain about the cost of spellcasting services, Gygax for some reason recommends quoting scripture at them:

Oh, but that's nice. If the task would further the cleric's own agenda, they'll accept an IOU - it will just be more expensive in the long run.

And don't try getting cute with enchantments, or else the stone to flesh spell intended for your petrified fellow might instead become a flesh to stone spell targeting you:

If the players think they've found an NPC spellcaster to rely on for the foreseeable future, they're out of luck:

There's no such thing as valued repeat customers when those customers are stupid, filthy, meddlesome adventurers. Every request made by such ilk is nothing less than an insulting intrusion!

Between expensive and irritating NPC dealings, taxes, tolls, and encounters disguised "using vagueness and similarity", Gygax paints a portrait of urban life in AD&D which stands in stark contrast to dungeon and wilderness play. Dungeons are deadly labyrinths of monsters, tricks, traps, and treasure, and the wilderness in between is dotted with strongholds (both those ruled by powerful character-type NPCs and those totally deserted for one reason or another), monster lairs, and highly variable random encounters with gangs of teenaged dragons. 

Settlements by comparison will appear tame and safe. For the most part, they are. The player characters might run into the occasional group of assassins, bandits, ruffians, rakes, thieves, a press gang, or even a demon, devil, doppelganger, or undead creature, but they will mostly just wander around interacting with NPCs. They don't have to poke every section of the cobblestone path with a ten-foot pole to check for traps, and they won't run into an orc warband 300 strong.

However, the AD&D city or town is not a friendly and welcoming cosmopolitan metropolis - even those NPCs who do not wish to do harm (that is, the ones that don't plan to deceive, tax, indenture, rob, or kill the player characters) will still be resistant to helping and will demand exorbitant compensation in exchange for their aid. Every interaction is a challenge of wealth and patience. The settlement is not a place where the player characters earn their fortune or assert their power over a domain - it is a place that drains their coffers, where more powerful individuals lord over them. The settlement is an adversary of a different kind.

That is all to say, while dungeons and the wilderness are sites of adventure, the city stands in contrast as a site of misadventure, hijinks, and shenanigans, where the Picaresque adventures of Appendix N are painstakingly played out, very rarely to the player characters' gain.

Non-Descript Danger: Vagueness and Similarity in AD&D City and Town Encounters

Since I wrote about indentured magic-users and clerics being encountered among the city guard/watch, I've been poring over the rest of AD&D's city/town encounters. Yes, yes, that's the part of the book with the infamous harlot table:

It is very funny (and gross) that Gygax felt the need to create a d100 table with 12 different types of harlot, but so much has been said about this already that it feels a bit unnecessary to belabor it any more.

What's that highlighted bit about, though? And at the bottom, too, Gygax reiterates that encounters with these NPCs will resemble encounters with other NPCs. Why does it matter whether the party encounters an expensive doxy or a haughty courtesan and whether they're able to identify them as such? Why does it matter that an expensive doxy will resemble a gentlewoman and a haughty courtesan a noblewoman?

Simply put: an essential element of AD&D city and town encounters is, apparently, "disguising" them "using vagueness and similarity". Gygax devotes a standalone line to this element in the introduction to the section:

Why is this Gygax's advice? After all, when you encounter a monster in the wilderness, you know whether it's a dragon or a goblin. You might not call it a goblin, but even if you don't, once the player characters encounter a goblin once, they can probably recognize it the second time as the same type of creature they encountered before. But characters in a city or town can encounter expensive doxies and haughty courtesans dozens of times and may still not be able to tell which is which and whether one or the other is actually a gentlewoman or noblewoman.

This makes enough sense when one considers the real world experience of exploring an urban environment. Some people, like business professionals, law enforcement officers, and healthcare providers may wear uniforms of a sort and be easily recognizable, but many others will not. Who is a politician? Who is a criminal? Who is a carpenter, a plumber, or an electrician? Who owns a store? Who is a rich person dressing down? Who is a werewolf?

So it feels somewhat lifelike for the players characters in a D&D party to never be entirely sure who they're encountering. But what is the gameplay purpose of making these encounters vague and similar? Prevailing wisdom nowadays maintains that players should be provided with information that allows them to make choices which have a perceivable impact (and which the players may or may not be able to anticipate ahead of choosing their course of action). Is it bad advice to tell the DM to disguise their encounters and make them all look the same?

Maybe, although I'm not entirely convinced. This can certainly be attributed to Gygax's penchant for being adversarial towards players - he wants to trick them because they think they know everything and he's going to show them that they don't. "You thought this was an expensive doxy? Well actually she is a gentlewoman. Now you've offended her, and she's calling for the guards!"

Whether or not that was Gygax's intention, I'm somewhat fond of this "vagueness and similarity" approach to urban encounters because it feels rife with potential shenanigans - the kinds of mix-ups and misfortunes that characterize urban adventures in the inspirational literature of Appendix N, such as Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser series.

I'll give a few examples.

Both assassins and thieves are likely, as befits their profession, to seem like ordinary people. They might not want anything to do with the party, but it's easy to see what you might do with these encounters if you want to make them more interesting - the player characters are their targets.

Anyone on the street could be one of these two types, and even if the party correctly identifies them as thieves by catching them in the act, there's no telling whether they're in fact assassins until one of them leaps out of the shadows and stabs a player character in the back.

Indeed, thieves and their accomplices are all over the place in AD&D cities. And being thieves, they don't exactly advertise it. Remember the harlot table? Well, every "cheap trollop", "typical streetwalker", "wanton wench", etc. has a 20% chance to be or to work with a thief. Indeed, even the beggars may be thieves in disguise:

(While Gygax is quite specific as to the percentage chance that a beggar knows something useful, he does not tell us exactly how likely they are to be thieves.)

In the same vein we have the bandit encounter:

During daylight hours, bandits appear as "a nondescript group" which watches the party to (perhaps) attack them later, presumably after night falls. Contrast that with ruffians, who are perhaps intended to be more easily identifiable due to their "shabby appearance and mean disposition":

Even then, ruffians conceal their weapons. Just because someone looks shabby and mean doesn't mean that they're hiding weapons on their person. The players will never know until weapons are drawn. Then, once again, they might be in for an additional surprise when, 35 to 60% of the time, one of those shabby and mean fellows sneaks up behind them and stabs them in the back for massive damage.

Then again, you might be able to identify the ruffians by the humanoids in their midst:

Considering Gygax's advice about disguising encounters, perhaps the presence of these humanoids isn't meant to be immediately apparent. Maybe the goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, and orcs wear fake beards?

Assassins, bandits, brigands, ruffians, and thieves might similarly hide among groups of tipsy revelers:

This encounter is maybe the most representative of the "vagueness and similarity" approach to AD&D city and town encounters, as not only may the drunks be revelers or bums, but the identity of the revelers can be almost any other person otherwise included in the broader encounter table (there is a real missed opportunity to include dopplegangers, lycanthropes, and other weird creatures among the revelers, in my opinion - imagine picking a fight with some drunks outside a bar and one of them turns out to be a werewolf). 

One omission from the revelers table is the goodwife, who I presume is too upstanding to engage in such debauchery. What do they do instead? Well, they wander around as indistinguishable FEMALES, gossip, and accuse people of crimes:

(Hey, this seems like a great way for the player characters to wind up indentured to the city watch!)

The goodwife isn't the only one who might call the watch down on the players:

The fact that laborers are "rough customers in a brawl" seems to imply that brawls with them are to be expected. Note again of course that both laborers and tradesmen are specifically described as "non-descript"!

On the topic of those individuals with considerable influence, let's look at rich people. First, merchants:

There's something funny about every merchant wandering the streets expecting to be robbed by any rough individuals (i.e., adventurers) they come across.

Now, nobles:

A noble will probably be insulted if they are mistaken for a common merchant or a harlot. If you offend one, you better hope they're not a mid-to-high-level fighter or cleric!

Let's round things out with the rest of our non-descript encounters with people who are easily mistaken for other people. Pilgrims, for example:

And both paladins and rangers:

On the subject, of character-type individuals, I sure hope that cleric you ran into has good intentions:

Of course, there's more than just people wandering AD&D cities. There are also dopplegangers - which by their nature can appear as non-descript as they choose - and lycanthropes - which don't always appear in their monstrous form, and all three of which have some chance of seeking to prey upon the party, wererats being most nefarious of all (here Gygax calls attention to Fritz Leiber's work specifically):

AD&D cities and towns are confusing and dangerous places full of non-descript people and monsters who either intend the party harm or are more than willing to cause it if spoken to wrongly. Because of the "vagueness and similarity" approach to these encounters, characters must not only keep their weapons sharp, but also their social acumen - one might save them from the likes of cutthroats, evil clerics, dopplegangers, ruffians, thieves, and lycanthropes, while the other will help them navigate a faux pas caused by the mistaken identity of a goodwife or noble.

And that's not all! AD&D cities and towns are also full of demons, devils, and the undead. In the AD&D world, it seems, "conservative guy who is afraid of cities" may in fact be right! But perhaps that's a subject for another time.

There's a Road to the Dungeon, and It's Paid for by Adventurers

Here's something that I mentioned very briefly in my post about the AD&D DMG's section on "taxes" (including duties, excises, fees, tariffs, tithes, and - most notably with regards to this post - tolls) and the indentured servitude of those who fail to pay - the local municipality maintains a road to "the dungeon":

We can interpret "the dungeon" in this case as referring to the single dungeon with which campaign play begins, as described in the opening to the section titled "THE CAMPAIGN":

This is not dissimilar to the guidance in the section titled "THE WILDERNESS" in OD&D's Book III: The Underworld and Wilderness:

While a dungeon can be very big (even infinite) and can sustain entire campaigns all on its own, we know from AD&D's Appendix B that if we zoom out to a large enough scale, we will surely find more than just a single dungeon in the area of play. My 100-hex sandbox, for example, has two:

Any given dungeon on the campaign map, however large or small, could be "the dungeon" in a campaign of its own. This is all to say, to use Gygax's phrasing, "of course" whichever municipality is closest to any given dungeon will maintain a road on the route to that dungeon!

Why is this noteworthy? Well, first of all, I find it interesting. My conception of the dungeon has always been that it is a desolate place. Sure, it isn't typically far from the player characters' "home base" because exploring the dungeon is the default mode of play in the early game, when the characters are low-level, and adventuring in the wilderness is dangerous business. Therefore, characters need to be able to travel to and from the dungeon swiftly, lest they get unlucky and run afoul of a dragon or a group of 40 bandits.

Even considering the likely proximity of the dungeon to a settlement, I certainly never considered that there would be a road leading straight to it. A trail, maybe, carved out as a desire path of sorts by the numerous adventures who have traveled there to make their fortune in the past, but a proper road? Like a good enough one that the municipality charges a toll to use it? Why would this be?

Well, it's income. Considering the likely proximity to the settlement, one can imagine that it isn't particularly expensive to maintain such a road. Given that exploring the dungeon is the entry level job of the adventuring career path, and that seemingly anyone who wants to be anyone in a D&D society must obtain and wield power through adventuring and the accumulation of levels (D&D is a levelocracy), there are probably a lot of people - a lot of eventually wealthy people - who will want to use that road. Since common peasants probably aren't going there, the municipality can even charge a much heftier toll on that road in particular. It pays for itself and then some.

Don't forget to charge the player characters not just per head but per wheel ("and possibly even materials transported"):

If the characters are bringing carts and wagons to haul their treasure, and depending on what sorts of materials are tolled, this could add up fast!

This also allows the municipality to maintain some level of control over the dungeon and those who wish to visit it. The local government of the town or city could certainly send some 0th-level men to explore the dungeon and plunder its riches to line the ruler's pockets - a big enough settlement almost certainly has more resources than a handful of 1st-level player characters - but why bother doing so, when they can simply charge adventurers a fee to exploit the dungeon for them, then exploit those same adventurers in turn?

The local ruler can thus monitor who is making forays into the dungeon, which allows them to keep track of those adventurers who might prove to be of greater usefulness - or might one day grow to be greater threats. It also might ensure that player characters are on their best behavior in the settlement itself - if they cause enough trouble or get on the ruler's bad side, they might find themselves turned away at the toll station on their next expedition.

This also allows the Dungeon Master to provide local color to the region depending on the ruler's nature. The dungeon is, after all, within the ruler's domain, and Lawful, Chaotic, Good, and Evil rulers will assert their dominion over it to varying degrees and using different means. A benevolent ruler may charge no toll at all to those known to be do-gooders, while a malicious one may impose even greater tolls, require generous bribes in exchange for documentation granting access, or heavily tax or even unjustly confiscate any goods hauled from within at their whim.

Much like with the other forms of taxation Gygax describes, the fees, surveillance, and politics are sure to annoy players. What will they do when it all becomes too much to bear? Well, they'll go offroad, into the wilderness, to carve their own path to the site of adventure - one that isn't subject to the local powers that be. When doing so, they must not only brave the aforementioned dangers of the wilderness, but the danger of being caught - confiscation of all goods, a fine, and possible imprisonment:

This is, once again, a great way for player characters to become indentured to the city watch! Or worse. The Chaotic Evil warlord who rules the nearby town isn't likely to take kindly to this trespass, after all.

Death, Taxes, and Indentured Servitude in AD&D Cities

Something amusing I found while poring over the AD&D city/town encounters:

Magic-users in AD&D cities and towns are punished by being indentured into a year of servitude with the city guard. This can be for any unpayable debt owed to the city - monetary (loans, the cost of resurrection, taxes) or otherwise (such as a "debt to society" incurred after committing a crime).

This suggests several things about AD&D towns and cities: their governments offer loans (presumably if it was instead a wealthy individual or non-municipal organization providing the loan, the punishment for failing to pay it back would be different) and resurrection (suggesting some sort of state-sponsored clerical organization rather than/in addition to individual clerics at non-affiliated temples providing such services), have their own sets of laws, and require residents to pay taxes (both of the latter two points are relatively obvious, but I'm including them for thoroughness's sake).

Gygax has surprisingly little to say about loans in the DMG, but based on the general tone of advice offered in the rest of the text, one must imagine the interest rates would be quite high, so adventurers should borrow at their own risk.

Resurrection, of course, is expensive:

A cleric must be at least 9th-level to cast raise dead, so the bare minimum cost is 5,500 gp. Player characters will need to seek out higher-level clerics to restore life to dwarves, gnomes, half-elves, halflings, and humans - not elves! - who have been dead for longer than a day, so circumstances will often necessitate even greater expense.

Gygax also has surprisingly little to say about laws and crime, but one can imagine that these will vary from place to place and that theft, assault, murder, and the like (all common activities for adventurers) are generally frowned upon.

This is all in contrast to taxes (and duties, and excises, and tariffs, and tithes, and tolls...), about which Gygax has MUCH to say. Seriously, this is almost an entire page:

You probably don't want to read all of that, and I don't blame you. Here is a summary:

• The DM should uses taxes to take excess money away from the player characters.
• Towns and cities charge a 1% duty (2% to foreigners) on all normal goods brought in for sale - food, cloth and hides, livestock, raw materials, and manufactured goods. This probably applies to the common merchant more so than to the player characters, but is worth keeping in mind for when the players decide to collect all of the orcs' weapons and armor to sell.
• Towns and cities charge the usual duty plus a 5% tariff on luxury and precious goods brought in for sale - wine, spirits, furs, copper, gold, jewelry, and the like. This will definitely apply to the player characters in the latter cases, as well as in the former cases if you're in the habit of giving out actually interesting treasure . Give your players cases of fine wine as treasure!
• Once duties are paid, documents are provided which make the legal sale of such goods possible. Upstanding merchants presumably will not trade in smuggled goods, but black markets will. Unless players have connections and want to risk dealing with unsavory types, they must pay duties!
• Towns and cities charge an entry fee of 1 copper per head or wheel to citizens and 5 copper per to foreigners unless they have passports (which incentivizes having political connections).
• Towns and cities charge residents an annual tax per head of 1 copper to peasants, 1 silver to freeman (adventurers), and 1 gold to nobles (which I guess would include any character with an officially sanctioned stronghold or similar holding).
• When taxes are paid, characters are provided with proof of payment, which they must keep on hand in case they are stopped. If they are stopped and don't have proof of payment, they must pay again. If they're foreigners, they're more likely to be stopped. Tax collectors are, of course, on the random encounter table:

• Foreigners must pay a 10% sales tax.
• Tolls are charged on roads to and from the settlement (including on the route to "the dungeon" - suggesting that roads to dungeons are maintained by the local government, which is really interesting). Gygax does not elaborate as to what a typical toll might be.
• Citizens must pay a 5% tax on their property, if any, annually.
• Characters can become citizens after residing in the settlement for one month and paying a 10 gold piece fee - "plus many bribes"!
• Merchants don't usually accept foreign coin because they will be subject to a fine if caught with it. Thus foreign coin must be changed into the local currency at a 90% exchange rate. This probably applies to most currency hauled out of dungeons, and perhaps even currency obtained in a different settlement. If a character is caught with 100 silver or more in foreign currency, they are fined 50% of its total value unless they can prove they've just entered the settlement and are on their way to the money changers - good luck with that!
• A surtax of 10% is levied against sales or exchanges of gems and similar goods.

Let's say a party of ten 2nd-level characters just got back from an expedition to the 2nd-level of the dungeon. They explored 20 rooms, including three with both a monster and treasure and one with just treasure. In total, they collected 6,600 copper, 1,050 gold, and 220 platinum. They probably paid some sort of toll on the road back from the dungeon - there's no guidance on this, and it probably wasn't a significant amount, so let's just ignore it. 

The characters don't have any goods for sale so they needn't pay duties. There are ten of them, and they have a cart to haul their stuff. They are too low-level to have connections yet, so they don't have passports. They pay a 60 copper entry fee (10 heads + 2 wheels, x 5 copper because they're non-citizens). They're given some documentation in case they're stopped, then directed to the money changers since all of their coins are of an ancient mint.

The money changer exchanges their currency and collects 10% (at this point, 654 copper, 105 gold, and 22 platinum). They might opt to retain up to 99 silver in the foreign currency, but let's say they don't. They are left with 5,886 copper, 945 gold, and 198 platinum. Since they will have to pay a 10% sales tax on anything they buy, their effective spending money is actually 5,298 copper, 851 gold, and 179 platinum (or, altogether, roughly 940 gold versus the 1,160 they entered with).

The example party paid 220 gold in taxes, duties, and fees. It's not a crazy huge amount, but it is significant, and becomes more significant the larger the party's haul.

So why am I spending so much time doing accounting for adventurers? Well, because taxes are annoying. In America, we need them to pay for stuff like roads and schools of course, but the majority goes towards one trillion dollar experimental airplanes that don't work and other ill-advised military spending, and we don't even get free healthcare. Your players will probably appreciate that their characters can travel quickly overland on well-maintained roads, but they probably won't spare a single thought for how those roads are maintained. Taxes in D&D are "realistic", but they also probably feel pretty meaningless and arbitrary. I guarantee your players will hate paying them.

Which means your players will probably try to find a way around paying them. They may seek to obtain passports or citizenship to avoid paying fees to enter the settlement and sales tax on all their goods, sure...or they might seek to smuggle themselves and their goods inside the settlement, deal on the black market, avoid the money changers, and bribe officials. All of which are great ways to be arrested and indentured into servitude.

It's not just magic-users, either:

Clerics can also be indentured into service with the city watch. What's the different between the watch and the guard? I don't know. Doesn't matter.

And frankly, I don't see why other characters wouldn't be pressed into similar service. I'm not concerned with magic-users and clerics specifically, but more so with the fact that it's general policy in AD&D cities to force criminals and debt/tax-dodgers into service like this.

A year is also a long time in most D&D campaigns. If the whole party ends up indentured in this way, you might simply fast forward a year or even decide to play it out as a very specific type of campaign (I probably wouldn't because it doesn't seem very interesting, but you may be more creative than I). If just one character is indentured, the rest of the party might decide to use the opportunity to pursue some lengthy downtime activities while their companion serves their term, or that character might just be effectively retired from the campaign (temporarily or otherwise). Or maybe they ambush the guards and bust their fellow out, and now they're all on the lamb!

Anyway, I guess the point is that AD&D city and town watches are full of indentured debtors, criminals, and tax-dodging character-types - a warning to players who think they can outwit the municipal government!

Although only tangentially related, I would be remiss not point out that at any moment the characters might also be forced into service in the local navy or militia through no fault of their own:

AD&D cities are kind of a terrible place to be!

Impressment is, of course, a massive anachronism. It's almost as if the implied D&D setting is not medieval!