It Did Not End with a Mere Slaying of Ogres: Treasure as a Source of Challenge in D&D

It's easy to think of treasure as purely reward - the player characters have overcome the challenges of the dungeon or wilderness and have slain some monster in its lair. The monster's treasure hoard (if any) is some collection of coins, gems, jewelry, and occasionally even magic items, all for the player characters' taking. 

However, just because the dungeon or wilderness and its inhabitants have been defeated, the challenge needn't end there. The recovery of treasure poses its own challenges. From PLACEMENT OF MONETARY TREASURE in the AD&D DMG, beginning on page 91:

The first challenge posed by treasure is one of transportation. However, of the treasure types listed in the appendix of the Monster Manual, all but the coins are readily transportable. But coins pose a problem only in large quantities - although it is worth mentioning that monsters' treasure hoards (in their wilderness lairs) only ever contain most denominations of coin in the thousands:

Even then, the movement of large amounts of coin is one of those low-level setbacks in D&D which is often eventually trivialized by the accumulation of equipment or magical ability - just as past a certain point players will likely have magical means of providing light, creating food and water, traveling overland, and even coming back from the dead, they will likely some day acquire a bag of holding, handy haversack, portable hole, or a personal demiplane in which to stuff vast sums of cumbersome coins. Thus it would be insufficient to say that transportation is the sole or ultimate means of challenge posed by treasure.

While not at all related to this subject, since I'm analyzing this section of the DMG I feel the need to call out this bit:

This suggests that it is not so simple as to say that, for example, all minotaur groups possess treasure type C, which means that, among other treasures, they have a 30% chance of possessing 1,000 to 6,000 silver coins. Rather, minotaurs have a 30% chance of possessing silver coins, and because they appear in groups of 1 to 8, a group of 8 will have the maximum 6,000, while a pair of 2 will have 25% of that, a group of 4 will have 50%, and so on. 

Or perhaps we're meant to roll to determine the amount of silver coins and then adjust that number according to the actual number of minotaurs relative to the theoretical maximum (for example, if I have just one minotaur and roll to determine that it has 3,000 silver pieces, I might then divide that number by 8 because the actual number of minotaurs is one eighth of the maximum, giving it 375 silver). I could be misinterpreting what Gygax is saying, but that's my takeaway. Kind of weird that this bit is buried in a single sentence in the DMG! But I digress.

Continuing on, Gygax next suggests that treasure comes in forms not listed in the Monster Manual appendix:

(At this point I feel I could write an essay on the use of the Gygaxian "of course".)

Rather than blindly rolling on the treasure table to assign a monster heaps of coins, gems, jewelry, magic items, and the like, the DM is meant to "Assign each monster treasure, or lack thereof, with reason". Brigands, giant rats, and centipedes will all have their own treasure types as listed in the Monster Manual, but ("of course") the treasure will manifest itself differently according to the qualities of the monster in question:

(I thought it worth highlighting that, "naturally" - the cousin of the Gygaxian "of course" - monsters without treasure will "hate and envy" those with treasure - an opportunity for the players to engage in some social manipulation between enemies, albeit with bedfellows they'll later have to reckon with if they want the treasure for themselves.)

Again Gygax describes types of treasure not found in the treasure tables:

Here Gygax is once more describing a method other than blindly rolling on tables to generate results. Rather than randomly determining by a roll of the dice that a monster with a huge treasure hoard like, for example, a dragon, is lairing right in the middle of a settled region, he suggests that these creatures and their treasure should reside in "more inaccessible regions". 

This same principle is described earlier under MONSTER POPULATIONS AND PLACEMENT on pages 90 and 91:

Likewise, orc warbands in a settled region should be small relative to those found in true wilderness (monster populations in inhabited areas and wilderness regions can differ on the basis of "individual prowess" or "due to numbers"). While those two groups of orcs, according to the treasure table, might have the same chance at possessing copper, silver, electrum, gems, jewelry, and magic items, this suggests that those in "more inaccessible regions" should somehow have a greater chance of possessing more valuable treasure (or that those in more accessible regions should have a lesser chance of possessing it).

There is something to be said of the fact that Gygax simultaneously provides a bunch of tables for randomly determining placement of settlements, strongholds, ruins, monster lairs, and treasures contained within while also telling the DM that they should do all of this according to reason, but I won't get into it more than I already have. At the very least, it's justification to reroll a result you don't like. Suffice it to say that I enjoy my "Disneyland" campaigns just fine, thank you very much.

Returning to PLACEMENT OF MONETARY TREASURE, the example provided is illuminating:

Rather than simply possessing 2,000 gold pieces, the ogres in the example have a variety of treasure (including mundane items like food and provisions, helmets, and a bardiche) which in sum total amount to the aforementioned 2,000 gold pieces. What I think this means is that if I use the treasure table to determine that the ogres possess 2,000 gold pieces, I'm supposed to then invent a variety of more specific items of treasure that add up to that amount, not just dump a pile of 2,000 gold pieces in their lair and call it a day.

This is complicated by the inclusion in the example of the 350 gold piece silver necklace, which I imagine would fall under jewelry. I assume that if I roll up a number of gems, jewelry, or magic items that these are left as is. It is only the coinage in the treasure hoard that needs breaking down into more flavorful units of treasure. We already have a procedure/tables for doing the same to gems and jewelry:

So the inclusion of the silver necklace in the example of the ogres is either an oversight or I'm again over-interpreting Gygax and he's instead suggesting an entirely different way of determining the specific contents of a treasure hoard which, for whatever reason, he doesn't care to elucidate.

The latter highlighted section in the ogre example again brings up the issue of transportation, but also the challenge of recognizing all of the items of value. Saying simply that the ogres possess 2,000 gold pieces is too easy. By instead providing a weird insurance guy's actuarial accounting of every item of value in the ogres' lair, the players are challenged with spending time actually sorting through all of this junk to find the good stuff - and if they want to reap the full benefits of their 2,000 gold piece reward, they will need to figure out how to take all of that (junk included) with them.

There is time pressure as well. The treasure won't wait for the player characters to return for the rest of it. Gygax ominously portends the challenge ahead with a deftly-employed Boomer ellipsis: "It did not end with a mere slaying of ogres..."

Yet the ogre example is a bit of weak one. I don't really see a party of player characters having much trouble hauling all of this out in one go. The challenge is better illustrated in the next example:

Here we even get a supercharged Boomer ellipsis with a space between each period ("What a problem . . ."). I'm delighted that even the "so useful" and "so devoted" henchmen get a special shoutout here. They may expect a fair share of the treasure, but even they're not stupid enough to stay behind and guard it. There are more monsters coming!

All of this challenge ("of course") is in the name of preventing too much treasure from falling into the player characters' hands (a possibility with which Gygax is particularly preoccupied, and which he goes to great lengths to prevent with his advice throughout the DMG). 

This isn't Gygax making things onerous for its own sake. Treasure is how characters advance in AD&D. The more treasure they accumulate, the more powerful they become, and the more powerful they become, the less challenging the game is. The accumulation and retention of treasure is a specific challenge necessary to maintain the overall challenge of the game. 

This lack of funds is what motivates the players to adventure, as Gygax describes multiple times throughout the DMG:

(STARTING LEVEL OF EXPERIENCE FOR PLAYER CHARACTERS, page 12)

(ACQUISITION OF MAGIC-USER SPELLS, page 39)

At the conclusion of PLACEMENT OF MONETARY TREASURE, Gygax suggests additional ways to counterbalance the accumulation of wealth, and again draws the connection between the challenge of treasure retention, the overall challenge of the campaign, and the call to adventure:

There are no free lunches in AD&D. Like everything else in the game, treasure is a challenge to be overcome, even after it's been "earned".

Appendix N of Forlorn Encystment

This post is part of the Appendicitis N blog bandwagon, originally put forth by Marcia of Traverse Fantasy. The challenge to bloggers was to compile a list of inspirations that impact their game design, akin to Gygax's APPENDIX N: INSPIRATIONAL AND EDUCATIONAL READING, originally found in the AD&D 1e DMG.

An alternative option was to write about the DMG appendix corresponding to the first letter of one's own name. That would have me writing about APPENDIX A: RANDOM DUNGEON GENERATION. While I would love to write about this at some point, I couldn't quite figure out what the angle might be, so that will have to come some other time. 

I considered writing about some other appendix from the DMG, but I've already done a lot of that on this very blog, so inspirations it will have to be. In no particular order, I present the APPENDIX N OF FORLORN ENCYSTMENT:

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring film came out just two days shy of my ninth birthday. I had no idea what the Lord of the Rings was. While I (and Gary Gygax) may maintain that Tolkien was not as influential on D&D as many claim (besides halflings, and rangers, and balrogs - dwarves and elves can just as easily be traced to other inspirations as well, and even orcs as presented, at least originally, in D&D are very different from Tolkien's, also the D&D wizard is very much not a Gandalf-type), I would never kid myself by feigning to believe that this movie did not inspire me.

Everyone has their favorite of these movies, but Fellowship will always be mine. I love that the gang is all here together. It feels the most like a D&D adventure, with a big group of disparate personalities embarking on a dangerous wilderness adventure and dungeon crawl together. The subsequent movies only become more epic in scale, but they never feel the same. I love Gandalf the Grey, and Rivendell, and Moria, and Boromir's heroic redemption and death. I love how sad it is. This movie has always inspired wonder in me, and is probably the single biggest reason I'm a fantasy fan today.

This is more of an honorable mention, since I'm not sure how much this inspired my game design, but thirteen-year-old me loved DM of the Rings. I always loved reading and drawing comics when I was a kid. I wanted so badly to be a webcomic creator. I was playing D&D by this time (and had been for a while - although 3rd edition was out by now, with 4th around the corner, 2nd was our game of choice) and this was more or less my introduction to the idea that playing D&D was a specific type of experience that allowed you to relate to total strangers who also played D&D. 

As a weird aside, I was really into Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake at the time and briefly worked on a DM of the Rings ripoff where Dawn of the Dead was instead used as the framing device. I have no idea how far I made it with that idea. It is (perhaps thankfully) now lost to time.

I loved LEGO as a kid (and, let's be realistic, probably until I was in high school and maybe a bit later). I had a castle. I don't remember which one, but I spent hours devising little adventures to happen in and around that place using whatever I had on hand. LEGO was the ultimate imagination fuel and physical outlet for that same inspiration.

LEGO was always a part of D&D for us. Every D&D character needed a representative minifigure. When my paladin got a new magic suit of armor or sword, you bet the corresponding minifig was getting an upgraded loadout as well. LEGO minifigs and Pokémon figures were the only miniatures we had, until...

...Heroscape came along! This game was very D&D, with dragons and elf archers and Vikings and whatnot, but it also opened my mind to the idea that D&D could be weird. Sure, you can have standard orcs, but what if they road dinosaurs? What if skeletons had plasma rifles? What if there was a killer robot army? Throw in samurai, World War II soldiers, and guys from the Matrix for good measure. There's a Monster Manual-sized trove of inspirational material here to mine for your next bestiary.

Heroscape also caused tactical combat, for better or worse, to worm its way into my brain. We mostly played a theater of the mind-style game in my youth, but laying down different types of terrain with their own variable movement costs and rules associated with them, walls and trees for cover, and elevation differences convinced me that a game which made these factors worth considering was something that appealed to me.

My burgeoning fascination with tactical combat exploded when I played XCOM: Enemy Unknown. This game (and especially the hugely popular, awesome, challenging, and exhausting Long War mod) consumed my life for longer than I'd like to admit. XCOM feels very much like modern D&D. It's squad-based tactical turn-based combat with a class-based roster of randomly-generated playable characters with lots of fun powers to unleash.

XCOM is a game about emergent storytelling. You never know which of your new recruit soldiers will survive to rise to the top, who will unlock their psionic potential, and - spoilers for a thirteen-year-old game - sacrifice themselves to save the planet. You have to make peace with the idea that these characters are expendable, but they become less expendable the more powerful they become, and the more attached you get to them. You have to learn to make peace with the RNG and move on. Sound familiar?

XCOM is also great fodder for your next bestiary. For your consideration:

• Weak little guys with psychic powers that are little danger on their own, but can inflict temporary status effects on your characters and form psychic networks to bolster one another and more powerful enemies
• Fast little jumpy guys with deadly aim, who can quickly flank you or gain a height advantage, with a long range AoE poison debuff attack
• A slow, floating automaton which is highly resistant to damage when its shell is closed, but extremely vulnerable when it opens to fire
• Very fast melee units which are either hard to kill or come in overwhelming numbers, who run right at you and can nearly instantly kill you if they get close enough - one of which becomes more dangerous when injured, the other of which turns those it kills into zombies
• Units with invisibility cloaks that lie in wait until they can emerge from hiding and strangle you
• Mechas with forcefields - if you want to damage them, you have to kill the little guy hiding way in the back of the combat area

Every XCOM fight is a puzzle to solve. You have to think very carefully about how to use each and every one of your characters' abilities in the correct order to the maximum possible effect if you want to survive. I really wish modern D&D's tactical combat was more like this.

Civilization V is another game by Firaxis which feels worth mentioning. While I've only gotten into it fairly recently (and have only played this installment in the series), it has, like XCOM, consumed more of my time than I'd like to admit.

I'm not really sure how much it has informed the way I approach D&D. If anything, it's made me think about why cities are where they are (mostly resources, and access to rivers and the sea - obvious stuff really, but somehow playing the game has enforced it for me), and how the desire for certain land and the clashing personalities of a civilization's leaders can lead to conflict.

There are odd tidbits to be taken from this game. One could easily take the social policies and victory conditions and translate them into ideals or personalities of a given civilization. Is this civilization expansionist? Warlike? Pious? Artistic? Seafaring? Mercantile? Technological? I like to think about how I might run mass combat based on my experiences playing Civ. I also really like the idea of playing a game of Civ up to the Medieval or Renaissance Era and then using the map and political history of that world (or some approximation of it) in a D&D game.

I felt this list wouldn't be complete without some blogs, and Welsh Piper's Hex-Based Campaign Design definitely deserves a mention. I love procedures in my games, and prep procedures are little games the DM can play on their own. Although my methods have changed over the years, it should be clear that I love playing this game. 

This post was my introduction to Hexographer (and creating hex maps in general). I can't count the number of sandboxes I've created without ever intending to use them for a game (for better or worse), and every game I've run since discovering this post has been facilitated by such a map because this procedure (or at least my version of it) is so much fun.

If Welsh Piper deserves a shoutout, so does The Original D&D Setting by Wayne Rossi. I love implied setting stuff! I probably wouldn't be writing so many blog posts about one or two throwaway sentences from the AD&D DMG if this hadn't originally sparked my imagination.

I would be remiss not to mention Web DM. My interest in D&D is somewhat cyclical and periodic. I recently got back into it in 2018, after not playing for several years. Around the time I started playing again, I discovered Web DM. I'm not one for watching a lot of D&D content on YouTube, but something about Web DM has always captured my attention and imagination.

It's a very 5e-heavy channel, which was great for me at the time because I was just getting into 5e, but Jim is also an OSR guy who reads blogs, and he brings many of those sensibilities to his approach to 5e. As someone who came from playing older editions and has always been a bit dissatisfied with 5e, this really resonated with me. When Jim and Pruitt aren't talking pure game mechanics, they really dig into the tired tropes of D&D and try to breathe new life into them, which has been a constant source of inspiration since I got back into the hobby.

Unfortunately Web DM no longer makes YouTube content, but they do have a podcast which you can access via their Patreon. They talk about other games too, like Call of Cthulhu, Pendragon, and Mothership. It's not my favorite show anymore, but I do feel like they deserve some recognition for rekindling my interest in the hobby most recently.

By the way, here's their excellent video on Appendix N literature.

My list would not be complete without at least one item from Gygax's Appendix N, and for me it's got to be The Dying Earth stories by Jack Vance. These are stories about D&D wizards, full stop. Cugel the Clever is the prototypical D&D player character. D&D does not make sense until you read these stories. While Gygax listed plenty of inspirations in Appendix N, I'm fully convinced that he was injecting this stuff directly into his veins.

The Dying Earth is a weird world inhabited by petty and selfish protagonists (not heroes) and megalomaniacal wizards. It is an antisocial world filled with difficult people. It provides this blog's name. Need I say more?

Retired Adventurers Long for the Dungeon

From the AD&D 1e DMG, page 106:

It is an assumption that high-level player characters with strongholds "will desire some dungeon mazes" beneath them. This is not referring to something like a castle dungeon one might find in the real world, but the "dungeon mazes" characteristic of D&D - specifically early D&D. We're talking dungeons like those you might generate using the tables in APPENDIX A - something weird like this:

It seems a bold claim to make that player characters simply will desire this sort of complex beneath their stronghold. Can the fighter not fit their men-at-arms' barracks and armory in the castle proper? Can the cleric not accommodate their shrine and altar in the above ground portion of their place of worship? Can the magic-user not find room for their laboratory in one of the many levels of their tower? Why would a character "desire" this?

APPENDIX I: DUNGEON DRESSING provides some examples of rooms which might be found in a dungeon:

Surely any of these could just as easily be included in the structure above ground, no? Is it somehow more convenient to construct these rooms below ground?

Gygax helpfully provides the cubic volume of rock that can be mined in an 8-hour period by different demihuman/humanoid races and monsters:

And, of course, since this is AD&D there is detailed guidance for determining the productivity of slave labor and number/quality of armed guards needed to ensure maximum productivity and keep the slaves in line:

There isn't much to suggest that underground construction is cheaper or faster than above ground construction, save this bit under CONSTRUCTION TIME:

An excavated subterranean area is, after all, the crudest form of a "room", I suppose. If properly excavated and supported, it may obviate the need for building materials like dressed stone, which in turn eliminates transportation costs. For proper "interior dungeon walls", however, one must extrapolate from the cost of above ground stone buildings:

It is also worth noting that the player character would likely want their above ground construction to be protected by walls. The more such construction one undertakes, the more area the walls will have to cover. Walls are expensive:

Underground construction, on the other hand, comes with its own walls (albeit crude ones, unless the player character wishes to spend additional money to improve them, as previously mentioned).

So maybe subterranean construction ends up being more cost efficient than above ground construction, even if not explicitly stated in the text. I'm not sure there's enough information to easily determine whether this is true, and I don't particularly care to do the accounting anyway. 

As to why player characters might desire dungeon mazes beneath their strongholds, I think there's a more fun explanation.

Retired adventures, settled in their strongholds with armies, tax-paying settlements, and the occasional wandering monster to manage, now part of the established order, long for the dungeon. It's where they came of age, tested their mettle against monsters, tricks, and traps, and accumulated their power and wealth. They miss it. Deep down inside, they've always wanted one of their own. They're bored. They have money. Their mind wanders back to the dungeon.

I'm still not entirely convinced that player characters will desire to build mazelike dungeons beneath their strongholds. Maybe it would be fun to coordinate with the DM on a project like this, slowly building out your dungeon for the next generation of player characters to one day explore. Maybe this is a pastime the gamers of the late '70s enjoyed, but I don't see it happening in the play culture we're familiar with today.

Rather, what I think is more interesting is the more general assumption that high-level NPCs will build mazelike dungeons beneath their strongholds. It then follows that every fighter's castle, cleric's temple, and magic-user's tower encountered in the wilderness has a dungeon underneath it.

I'm not supposing that these NPCs are true dungeon sickos, filling their labyrinths with monsters, tricks, traps, and treasure (although it would be fun if they did - you could take the classic "a wizard did it" dungeon trope and expand to include any characters class). Rather, I imagine these dungeons would simply be subterranean expansions of the stronghold above - more armories, more chapels, more laboratories, and so on. I suppose then that the "monsters" would just be men-at-arms and other guards, and tricks and traps might be in place to guard treasures secured therein against possible invasion and looting.

What I find most interesting about this is it answers a question I grappled with back when I wrote about "totally deserted" castles: are these supposed to be dungeons or not? Now, the answer is clear: Yes, totally deserted castles do contain dungeons underneath, because all high-level characters will build dungeons beneath their strongholds. 

While inhabited "castles" (meaning strongholds in general) will have dungeons which are more or less extensions of the above ground construction in terms of purpose and contents, deserted castles will be weirder, proper dungeons. Their layout and dressing will be consistent with their original purpose and occupants, but the whole will be filtered through time and ruination. The armories contain crumbling weapon racks and tattered coat of arms, and are now home to rust monsters who have eaten all of the weapons and armor once stored there. The chapels contain defiled altars, fetid pools of unholy water, and perverted holy symbols, and are haunted by undead who draw power from the desecration. The laboratories contain wilted herbs and beakers and flasks in disarray, boiling over with alchemical oozes.

This presents adventurers as not just the young upstarts who foray into dungeons, clear them out, and abscond with their treasure, but also as the old retirees with a late-in-life hobby, who in their hubris (or by their own design) perpetuate the ruination which they once exploited - by carving out the labyrinths monsters will one day inhabit, placing the tricks and traps that will deter future looters, and hiding their accumulated wealth behind secret doors and shifting walls for their successors to discover, accumulate, and eventually begin the cycle anew.

That other category of deserted castle - "deserted (monster therein)" - also presents a more interesting scenario in this light. The castle is not just a monster lair with a unique skin - rather, the dragon, orc warband, or will-o-wisp which now inhabits the castle is an additional (and deadly) obstacle which must be overcome before the riches of the dungeon beneath can be plundered. 

While dungeons in AD&D are adventure sites which are "balanced" according to dungeon level such that they are a fitting challenge for low-level characters at the start and get progressively more dangerous as the characters delve deeper within, deserted castles which contain a monster on the surface are stocked using the wilderness encounter tables, which are considerably less "balanced" and more dangerous for low-level characters. The low-level adventurers who wish to plunder the level-appropriate dungeons beneath such a deserted castle are unlikely to be able to face the monsters inhabiting the surface ruins head on. This opens the door to creative solutions such as deception, parley, or the discovery of a secret means of ingress. 

Adventurers Are a Threat to the Established Order

An excerpt from the AD&D DMG, under MONSTER POPULATIONS AND PLACEMENT, page 91:

I found this paragraph interesting for a few reasons. 

First, in AD&D the assumption is that the player characters are "the most aggressive" characters (or character-types) in the area of play. This is not to imply that they are the only adventurers active in the area. After all, character-types appear on both the dungeon and wilderness random encounter tables:

Rather, I think the purpose of this assumption is to afford the player characters the maximum amount of agency. They are not "special" in that they are the only adventurers running around doing stuff, but they are the adventurers most uniquely motivated to enact serious change in the region. It's fun to encounter, compete with, and even fight rival adventuring parties, so their activity in the area is still a must, but the proverbial ball is still very much in the player characters' court.

The second point of interest is that there are, of course, character-types in the area of play who are both higher-level and more capable than the player characters. This is evidenced by the fact that there are strongholds in the wilderness ruled by character-types of, at minimum, 9th-level:

However, "the game assumes that these characters have other things to do with their time, that they do not generally care to take the risks connected with adventuring, and they will happily allow the player characters to stand the hazards". This meshes very nicely with a previous post of mine, in which I argued that high-level NPCs will not or cannot solve the problems of their domain because they are either Evil, incompetent, indifferent, or powerless, thus leaving such problems to the player characters to deal with (this I wrote before ever reading this section of the AD&D DMG).

This is consistent with other advice in the DMG, where Gygax states repeatedly and in no uncertain terms that high-level NPCs should be difficult to deal with and that player characters who make a habit of relying on such NPCs for aid will simply provoke the NPCs' ire over time. 

While 1 to 2% of individuals in a settlement will be leveled character-types (and presumably a portion will be high-level), if the player characters wish to recruit help in their adventuring activities, they'll need to instead call on the 10% of those individuals who are henchmen looking for work - and even those are the pitiable wretches of the adventuring profession who are instead looking to benefit from the food, lodging, equipment, shares of treasure, and protection which their employers are expected to offer them.

On the other hand, this isn't very consistent with the aforementioned dungeon and wilderness encounter tables, which insist that high-level characters are not only present in lower levels of the dungeon:

...but are also the only such characters encountered in uninhabited/wilderness areas:

This suggests that high-level character-type NPCs do in fact "care to take the risks connected with adventuring", albeit not "generally". The assumption still stands that the player characters are "the most aggressive types in the area", however. The high-level NPCs must simply be adventuring as a bit of a lark. Perhaps they're on a vacation of sorts, trying to remember what it's like to feel young, alive, and hopeful? Who can relate?

While there is some overlap in level with those NPCs who would typically rule a stronghold, there's no indication that these high-level NPCs belong to such a place (if they did, surely they would be accompanied by a larger force). My inclination is to treat these NPCs as adventurers who do not yet have holdings of their own. Unlike the current iteration of D&D, strongholds in AD&D do not simply materialize out of thin air once the character has attained a certain level. The AD&D world is also filled with high-level NPC bandit leaders and the like who do not necessarily possess holdings, so we can presume that it is not uncommon for high-level NPCs to be without them.

(As an interesting aside, character-type NPC adventurers are not randomly encountered in inhabited areas, only in wilderness areas. Presumably this is because those in inhabited areas are holed up in settlements or in their strongholds, though it is strange that they may not be encountered on the road between places. I will chalk this up to an oversight rather than intent to imply something about the setting.

Also interesting is that in dungeons, only character-type NPCs of 1st- through 4th-level and 6th- through 13th-level - and perhaps higher - may be encountered, while in the wilderness only such NPCs of 7th- through 10th-level may be encountered. Where are all the 5th-level characters? And why do NPCs higher than 10th-level abandon wilderness adventures to return to dungeon environs? To avoid getting ahead of myself, and because ultimately it is probably not meaningful, I'll forego examining this further, but I invite others to put forth a contrived explanation.)

While there are high-level character-type NPCs out adventuring, the assumption is that most are not interested in doing so. Instead, "they will happily allow the player characters to stand the hazards" of adventuring. The player characters are after all "aggressive" (read more accurately, probably, as "overactive"), so why not let them expend their energy in a mutually productive way? Adventuring is referred to here as "dirty work" and, if the player characters are successful, the NPCs are assumed to benefit. Player character adventurers sound a lot like simple-minded pawns to be exploited by those wise enough to be content with wielding their power in relative safety, but that's not the whole story. 

The third point of interest in this excerpt is that it suggests that NPCs view the presence of adventurers as a threat to the "established order". If the player characters are indeed the most aggressive/overactive adventurers in the region, this makes sense. They have to deal with the aforementioned Gygaxian expensive and irritating NPCs, nobles and powerful officials who will embroil them in social conflict at the slightest insult in the city streets, tax them relentlessly and indenture them to servitude if they fail to pay, and subject them to them to hefty tolls if they wish merely to use the road to travel to the nearest dungeon to make their fortune. Gygax has ensured that the established order kind of sucks - what player character wouldn't chafe against it?

Not only does the NPC reap the benefits of successful adventures by utilizing the player characters as pawns, but the NPC also removes the player characters to some more remote frontier area where they pose less of a threat. Here Gygax makes a direct comparison between adventurers and Wild West "gunfighter-lawmen" like wild Bill Hickok and Wyatt Earp - transient individualist vigilante-types who might bring order (at the end of the barrel of a gun) to frontier places temporarily, only to later be replaced by a more permanent, less dangerous lawman approved by the establishment. The gunfighter-lawman would then move on to the next frontier and do it all over again. Sound about right? D&D is not medieval! It's a Western. 

But adventurers need not always threaten the established order. Eventually, they might build a stronghold, "which will help to maintain the stability of the area" (emphasis mine). The adventurer thus becomes part of the establishment.

That is probably an oversimplification, as just because one has a stronghold, that does not necessarily mean that the player character is beholden to the existing establishment. The land-holding AD&D fighter is not generally vassal to another, higher-ranking lord - the fighter does not necessarily pay taxes and is not necessarily called upon to provide fighting men to anyone else, although this is a possibility. 

The landed player character does, however, have a self-interested motivation to clear the area around their stronghold, patrol it regularly, and provide for the safety of their tax-paying subjects. This does not preclude the possibility of warring with or otherwise menacing their neighbors, but perhaps maintaining "stability" (i.e., the absence of monsters) is valued enough by the establishment such that it more or less looks the other way when it comes to other threats posed by these types.

The takeaways here are thus: while player characters are not the only adventurers active in a given area, they are assumed to be the "most active", perhaps to afford the players the level of agency required for an engaging game. They are not (at least not at the start of play) the most powerful characters, either. More powerful character-types adventure as well, but not generally. Instead, powerful character-types elect to use the player characters as pawns. This serves dual purposes - it spares the NPC the labor and danger of adventuring while allowing them to reap the passive benefits, and also removes threats to their power to more remote and dangerous locations. 

The player characters are viewed as threats by the powers-that-be. While the player characters' adventures may allow them to accumulate more power (and thus more threat potential), the assumption is that they will ultimately settle down in their strongholds and contribute to the greater good of the region my stabilizing the frontier areas where they once made their fortune, thus bringing themselves into the fold of the established order.

Much like the Gygaxian maxim that NPCs should be expensive and irritating to deal with, this notion should color every interaction the player characters have with the local rulers. Adventurers are useful, but also ambitious, unpredictable, and dangerous. They are outsiders to circles of power...until they're not. 

The only way in from the cold for them is not merely to serve as pawns, in which state they will always be viewed as threats, but to prove their ultimate usefulness by allowing the march of civilization to take another step forward by the conquest and holding of dominion over the wilderness. While that may not be every player character's ultimate goal, they will remain outsiders unless it is achieved.

Good Henchmen are Hard to Find

Apparently my special interest now is writing about the annoying mundanities of AD&D city/town life - taxes, tolls, intentionally misleading encounters, and irritating and expensive NPCs. To this end, I've been reading all about henchmen in the DMG. Boy, it is a lot more difficult to recruit these people than I gave it credit for!

Henchmen are not to be confused with standard hirelings like porters, teamsters, and torchbearers, nor with expert hirelings like mercenaries. Henchmen are character-type NPCs - that is, those with at least (and often only, at least when initially recruited - more on that later) one level in a class who directly strengthen the party by (mostly) loyally serving under the direct supervision of a specific player character.

Not only do they serve as another character-type "body" in the party. They can also strengthen the player character's stronghold, serve as a backup character to adventure when the player character is unable to (including when the player character is dead), and, perhaps most interestingly, be used "as a safety measure against the machinations of rival player characters":

It's no surprise that in modern editions of D&D - where player characters are independently strong, strongholds are non-existent or capriciously handwaved, character death is rare and easily recovered from, and player characters are generally assumed to be working together amicably - henchmen are more or less a thing of the past. But in AD&D, henchmen are explicitly "so useful" and "so devoted" that a player character's Charisma score imposes a limit on the number they can have in service at any given time:

This assertion that henchmen are incredibly useful is important to keep in mind, as it provides justification for just how hard it is to recruit them.

I'll provide a bit of perspective as to where it is I'm coming from. Typically in my games, when the player characters are looking for henchmen, they go to a nearby settlement, spend a week of downtime searching for candidates, I tell them who is available, and they pick who they want. I have a list of available henchmen in each settlement. Simple as that. I never considered that finding and recruiting henchman could be a challenge in and of itself, involving the expenditure of time and money and the use of social acumen. 

Whether it should be such a challenge will depend on the individual DM's taste. Since I am recently enamored with Gygax's assertion that dealing with NPCs "should be expensive and irritating", I am currently of the opinion that jumping through hoops to recruit henchmen is similarly a somewhat charming artifact of Gygaxian design sensibilities. That being said, let's get into the nitty gritty.

To begin with, newly recruited henchmen are typically 1st-level:

Player characters above 6th-level might get a 2nd-level recruit, and characters above 11th-level might get a 3rd-level recruit at best. The parenthetical justification suggests that while player characters seek out henchmen for all of the reasons I've already mentioned, henchmen seek out player characters for protection ("the aegis of a PC") - higher-level character-types need no such protection and so do not seek out such work.

What follows are a few paragraphs about the race of potential henchmen:

The race of the player character somehow affects which henchmen will seek them out. This isn't expanded upon here, but I imagine that the DM is meant to reference the racism table RACIAL PREFERENCES TABLE in the PHB:

For example, dwarf player characters probably won't attract elf or half-orc henchmen and vice versa.

Racial distribution of the recruitment area is up to the DM's discretion. I personally use this bit from APPENDIX C:

I assume that my settlements are largely human. Dwarves, elves, gnomes, and halflings don't have their own "settlements" per se, they have "lairs" (small-scale ethnocentric communities) as determined by stocking the campaign area using the wilderness encounter tables (for example, a few demihuman/humanoid lairs pop up in the second part of my series on using the DMG to stock a sandbox). You can assign your own bespoke racial distributions to each of your settlements as you like, but that sounds to me like more trouble than its worth, so I use this blanket distribution.

Yes, you can racially profile when recruiting henchmen. You can put up posters all over the city that say "HENCHMEN WANTED: Half-Orcs Need Not Apply!":

Very cool!

Now that we've covered the fun issue of race, let's find out how many henchmen are in a given settlement:

In my post on settlements, and again in the first part of my series on stocking a sandbox with the AD&D DMG, without ever reading this section, I suggested that probably 1 in 100 people in a settlement would be character-type NPCs. I was pretty close! I just didn't account for the possibility that non-humans (and non-half-orcs) would be twice as likely to be character-types. Why half-elves are twice as likely as half-orcs to be "suitable for level advancement" is beyond me (it's racism again, I guess).

Of those 1 in 100 humans and half-orcs, one-tenth are recruitable as henchmen (the rest are either higher-level or "already in a situation they are satisfied with" - perhaps already in another character-type's employ or otherwise adventuring on their own). I'm going to assume then that one-tenth of non-human non-half-orcs are also recruitable (so 1 in 500 of the non-human non-half-orc population, compared to 1 in 1,000 of the human and half-orc population).

As an example, let's crunch the numbers for the average city. I'll refer to APPENDIX B's INHABITATION table:

Typically we would roll 1d6 and multiply the result by 10,000. The average of 1d6 is 3.5, so let's say our population is 35,000 (even though you can't actually roll 3.5 on the die, this is a hypothetical exercise). Our racial distribution is:

• 28,000 humans (80%)
• 1,750 dwarves (5%)
• 1,750 elves (5%)
• 700 gnomes (2%)
• 1,750 half-elves (5%)
• 700 halflings (2%)
• 350 half-orcs (1%)

Here's how many character-types there will be:

• 280 humans
• 35 dwarves
• 35 elves
• 14 gnomes
• 35 half-elves
• 14 halflings
• 3 or 4 half-orcs (50/50 chance)

Here's how many recruitable henchmen there will be:

• 28 humans
• 3 or 4 dwarves (50/50 chance)
• 3 or 4 elves (50/50 chance)
• 1 or 2 gnomes (60/40 chance)
• 3 or 4 half-elves (50/50 chance)
• 1 or 2 halflings (60/40 chance)
• At most 1 half-orc (30 or 40% chance)

Since the highest-level a newly-recruited henchmen can be is 3, I would roll d3 to assign a level to each or else divide by 3 and roll for the remainder. For example:

• 15 1st-level (9 humans, 1 dwarf, 1 elf, 1 gnome, 2 half-elves, 1 halfling)
• 14 2nd-level (10 humans, 1 dwarf, 1 elf, 1 half-elf, 1 halfling)
• 14 3rd-level (9 humans, 2 dwarves, 2 elves, 1 half-elf)

This is actually kind of useful. Until the player characters attain 7th-level, in the average city you need only prep 15 character-type NPCs to be potential henchmen. At 7th-level they might attract a 2nd-level henchmen, but even then it's only a 10% chance, so you could prep just one for every nine 1st-levels. At 12th-level you could prep one 2nd-level and one 3rd-level for every two 1st-levels (since the distribution is 25/25/50, respectively). 

Furthermore, if only 1 in 500 to 1 in 1,000 people are recruitable as henchmen (and the 1 in 500 applies only to 20% of the population), the smallest settlement which will definitely be home to recruitable henchmen is a town (the average of which will only have 3 to 5). In smaller settlements, you could determine the number of character types and then dice to determine if any henchmen are available. For example, the average village will have 750 people - that's 6 human or half-orc character-types and 1 or 2 others, so a 60% and 10 or 20% chance of a recruitable henchmen, respectively.

You still might want to find out who the other character-types in the settlement are (I recommend fleshing out the most powerful people in the settlement - those of the highest level in a small settlement and any who might rule strongholds in larger settlements), but this has already greatly reduced the amount of character-types we need to prep in our settlements.

So, math-y diatribe aside, how do you actually recruit these people? Surely you just go to a tavern and they're all hanging out there, waiting for you, right? ...Right?

Wrong! You need to do more math:

If you somehow fail to recruit henchmen (or fail to find the henchmen you want), you have to wait a month before trying the same method again. You can combine methods for a better chance at recruiting, but it has diminishing returns. All of this is expensive. In the example provided, the player character spends 860 gold and attracts 65% of available henchmen.

Let's assume that this is done in our example "average city" with 43 recruitable henchmen levels 1 to 3. If the player character is below 7th-level, let's say they attract 65% of the 15 1st-level henchmen (9 or 10 recruits). If the character is 7th- to 11th-level, they can attract 65% of the 15 1st-level and 14 2nd-level henchmen (18 or 19 recruits, with 1 or 2 - 10% - of those being of 2nd-level). If the character is above 11th-level, they can attract 65% of all 43 available henchmen (27 or 28 recruits, with 6 to 7 each - 25% - of those being of 2nd- and 3rd-level).

Let's say 9 1st-level recruits are attracted by a relatively low-level player character. Using our example demographics from above, let's say 7 are human, 1 is a half-elf, and 1 is a halfling.

Of course, you have to wait around for a few days for all the recruits to show up. If you're a no-show, they leave:

I determined it will take six days for all recruits in our example to show up - one on each day plus three on the second day. That's almost a week where the player character can't get much of anything done because they're just waiting around.

Whatever they do, our example player character had better not ensorcell the recruits or ask them about topics which are not polite conversation (alignment and religion):

I hope our example player character isn't expecting anything fancy like a monk, assassin, druid, or illusionist:

The percentages break down like this:

• 16.67% cleric
• 3.33% druid
• 35.2% fighter
• 4.4% ranger
• 4.4% paladin
• 16.67% magic-user
• 3.33% illusionist
• 12.5% thief
• 2.5% assassin
• 1% monk

Which is only slightly different than the Character Subtable used for dungeon encounters in APPENDIX C:

Clerics, fighters, and magic-users are slightly less common, but everyone else is more common. I appreciate that the two tables are pretty consistent, although I don't really see the need for two in the first place.

I feel similarly about the note on multiclassed henchmen:

The section on Race and Multi-Class in APPENDIX C (scroll up a bit for the screenshot, since I used it earlier) provides a totally different method for determining if a character-type NPC has two or even three professions. Why are there two slightly different methods for generating character-type NPCs on the fly - one for those in dungeons and one for henchmen recruits? I do not know.

Here are the nine recruits who shows up while our example player character is waiting around:

• Day 1: LE human assassin
• Day 2: N human druid, CG human fighter, CE human fighter, CN human illusionist
• Day 3: NE human magic-user
• Day 4: CG half-elf cleric/magic-user
• Day 5: LG halfling fighter
• Day 6: CE human fighter

Our example player character got lucky, managing to attract an assassin, a druid, and and illusionist in addition to the more common types.

Let's say that the player character has advertised, the recruits have arrived, and it's time to make an offer:

You have to offer at least 100 gold per level of the henchman (300 gold max for a 3rd-level henchman) for them to even consider the offer, and that only gets you a 25% chance that the henchman will accept! You can get that all the way up to 55% for 300 gold more. That's right - the best you can do is offer a 400 to 600 gold signing bonus, and the henchman basically flips a coin to decide if they accept or not!

You can increase the henchman's interest by offering magic items:

You also have to provide all of their equipment! Why don't they have equipment? Well, they're wretches. That's part of the reason why they're seeking employment:

Pity the wretched henchmen of the AD&D world!

This section seems to suggest that 3rd-level henchmen (not 2nd-level henchmen) will come with equipment:

This also suggests that player characters can have henchmen (or rather, "associates") of a level higher than 3rd (and even of a level higher than the player characters themselves), but only temporarily in most cases. This seems to be describing the acquisition of henchmen/associates by means other than the standard recruitment process, as the NPC will become a regular (non-temporary) henchmen only if they are three or more levels under the level of the player character, which is a requirement unique to this situation.

Interestingly, this means that, for example, an 11th-level player character could potentially acquire an 8th-level henchmen through this route. I imagine this "exceptional henchmen" rule is used if, for example, the player characters topple a bandit stronghold and wish to recruit the captured character-type bandits to their cause.

Be sure to offer your henchmen housing, food, and clothing! Doing so only adds 5% to their interest level, but if you neglect to offer such support (or simply don't know that you're expected to), the recruit's interest level drops by 25%:

With the bare necessities like the signing bonus, equipment, and other support out of the way, the recruit will want to know what exactly their duties will entail and what their share of treasure will be:

Here I wish there was a little more detail. Is it not assumed that the henchman's position will be subordinate to the player character and that their duties will involve going into dungeons and braving traps and monsters? Is the henchman more or less likely to accept if they're given command of other henchmen? What about if they will be garrisoning a stronghold rather than adventuring? What is the expected share of treasure? What if less or more is offered? With such thorough percentage breakdowns elsewhere in this section, why not here as well?

I have similar thoughts about the provision of equipment. "The prospective henchman must be provided with complete equipment according to his or her class or classes." Will a fighter simply accept leather armor? Will they expect at least chain mail? Will plate armor sweeten the deal? It's easy enough for the DM to simply use their own discretion here, but it is odd that the guidance is less concrete in some areas than others.

The DM should also use the section on NPCs to determine henchmen characteristics. Hopefully the player characters don't try too hard to get to know their henchmen before they're hired, as this would be considered a faux pas:

Whatever the henchman's characteristics and alignment, remember that dealing with them should always be expensive and irritating!

Let's say our example player character is a CG human fighter. They meet with the LE assassin on day one and it's clear that the two don't get along. They wait an additional day and meet with the four recruits who arrive on day two. They get along best with the other CG human fighter, but the druid and illusionist fill roles that aren't already represented in the party at large (and they're harder to find), so the fighter wishes to recruit them.

Finally, with all else being known, the DM tallies up the henchman's interest level, adds the player character's Charisma reaction adjustment, and rolls to determine if the henchman accepts employment:

Let's say money isn't an issue, so the fighter offers the druid and illusionist each 400 gold as a signing bonus. They don't have any magic items to offer, but they're wise enough to offer to pay for food, clothing, and lodgings, making the chance of acceptance 60%. Their Charisma score is 13, which adds 5% for a total of 65%. For whatever reason, the druid balks (I rolled an 81 on d100, so perhaps negotiations over a couple of magic items was the point of contention), but the illusionist accepts. The fighter could stick around to see if more recruits come in, but they're satisfied with the hire and want to get on with adventuring.

But that's not all! Once a henchman is successfully recruited, the player character must keep the henchman. This is where loyalty comes into play:

The henchman's loyalty is tested in certain situations. If they fail their loyalty test, the henchman might co-operate with or surrender to an enemy, testify against their liege (suggesting that yes, the DM should put their player characters on trial for their crimes), steal, desert, refuse orders, or run away:

The loyalty score is 50% plus or minus the player character's Charisma adjustment:

For context, here is the CHARISMA TABLE from the PHB:

The reaction adjustment is used when recruiting henchmen, but the loyalty base is used when determining, well, base loyalty of henchmen. With the fighter's 13 Charisma, the newly-recruited illusionist's loyalty base is a flat 50%.

There are tons of modifiers to a henchman/hireling's loyalty base. Henchman are actually the most loyal of all NPC followers, and even they only have +5% loyalty:

However, henchmen are also treated as having the highest level of training (comparable to officers or major officials), granting another +30%:

The illusionist's loyalty to the fighter is now up to 85%!

The longer a player character knows a henchman (and thus keeps them comfortable, fed, equipped, and of course, alive), the greater their loyalty:

This brings the illusionist's loyalty down to 80%, since they've only just now been recruited.

This is also where shares of treasure come into play:

I assume that an equal share of treasure is "average". Would it be fair for shares of treasure to be weighted based on relative level? That is, would it be acceptable for the 1st-level henchman of a 4th-level player character to receive a 20% share of the character's treasure? I'm not sure. Whatever it is, player characters must also pay their henchmen 100 gold pieces per level per month, as described under PLAYER CHARACTER EXPENSES:

Let's say the fighter is 1st-level and offers the illusionist an equal share of treasure. Loyalty is unchanged.

As the two adventure together, discipline, activity, and general treatment will come into play:

Being cruel and domineering towards your henchmen is actually a bonus - so long as you are present, alive, and conscious!

As the fighter is CG, let's say discipline is lax, but treatment is just, kind, and invariable. The illusionist's loyalty is now 90%.

Racism, of course, must be a factor:

I've determined that the fighter is in a party with three other humans, who are all "preferred" by the human illusionist. I'm not sure how to interpret the bit about adjustments being cumulative. Since both the fighter and their allies are all human, do I add 20% or 35%? It seems a bit much to count both hefty bonuses, so let's just count the 20%. The illusionist's loyalty is up to 110%.

Next we consider alignment:

The fighter is CG, which is -5%, but only one place removed from the illusionist (CN), which has no effect. The fighter's allies are CN, N, and N, which likewise has no effect. The illusionist's loyalty is at 105%. That's really good! It means the illusionist will not betray the fighter...unless the fighter breaks oaths, is reputed to have tortured, killed, or left henchmen to die, or actually tortures or kills them:

This is really interesting to me because it provides a means by which adversarial NPCs can spread rumors about the player characters which actually affect their henchmen's loyalty. On the flip side, the fighter can further improve the illusionist's loyalty by giving them gifts, rescuing them, or raising them from the dead. "Yeah, I know there's that insidious rumor going around that I tortured and killed my last henchman. Here, have some healing potions to make up for it."

Of course, there are situational modifiers to be used in combat as well:

Let's say the party encounters eight orcs on the first level of the dungeon. The fighter has been incapacitated due to damage but is still alive (hors de combat, -15%). The party has four 1st-level henchmen besides the illusionist, and two are dead or incapacitated (-10%). Additionally, one of the 1st-level player character is dead (-9%, counting the two dead henchmen). Six of the orcs are alive (-6%) and two are dead (+2%). The two remaining henchmen are alive and still engaged in combat (+10%). While the fighter is still technically alive and in sight, I'm not sure the 15% bonus would apply. That modifies the illusionist's loyalty by -28%, setting it at 77%. On d100, they roll 27, which keeps them in combat for now.

It wasn't easy, but it seems our fighter found a good henchman after all!

Hopefully in this post I have illustrated a few things. First, good henchmen are hard to find. It is both expensive and time consuming to do so, and they are in relatively short supply in all but the largest settlements. There is no telling who will show up and whether they will accept the player character's offer of employment. Because it is considered bad form to try too hard to get to know your henchmen before you hire them, the actual quality and compatibility of the henchmen is difficult to discern.

Second, good henchmen are hard to keep. Not only do they have to be paid well according to their level, but they must also be given their fare share of treasure, disciplined firmly but fairly, and treated justly, kindly, and invariably. You can improve your henchmen's loyalty by keeping them alive (and raising them from the dead) and by gifting them magic items, or damage it severely by breaking oaths or, well, torturing and killing them. Even then, there are factors that are outside of your control, such as personality, alignment, and uh...what race you are. Your enemies can spread rumors about you which will sully your reputation in your henchmen's eyes.

Of course, even if you do everything right, there is still a chance that your henchmen's loyalty will falter in a life-threatening situation. When your allies are dead and you're surrounded by enemies, even the most loyal henchmen might abandon you to your fate.

All that being considered, is it worth it? Is it fair to describe henchmen as "so useful" and "so devoted" as to require all this effortful recruitment and maintenance? That is for you to decide. Henchmen are a force multiplier. They are, in essence, akin to an additional player character in the party, and player characters are powerful. They become more powerful with the accumulation of levels and magic items. They can command a stronghold in your stead, fill in on adventures when your character is unavailable (or even replace the character if they die), and protect you against the "machinations" of other player characters (who are, of course, your rivals).

While I've demonstrated that henchmen can be disloyal based on a variety of factors, it is important to note that of all the followers you might recruit, henchmen's +35% loyalty base is the highest. While they're loyalty will vary in other ways depending on circumstances, they are otherwise "so devoted" in comparison to the other options available.

Perhaps this loyalty is born out of dependence. Henchmen are, after all, the wretches of the adventuring profession. While 90% of character-types found in settlements are of a higher level or "already in a situation they are satisfied with", henchmen are the bottom 10% who are destitute to the extent that they have no equipment and must seek employment, food, lodging, and protection from those more successful than themselves. It would make sense not to trust such individuals fully, but it also makes sense that they would recognize, when paid and treated well, that they have a good thing going and that they should cling to it with all their might.