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.