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.