cc@ucla-cs.UUCP (01/16/86)
In article <318@frog.UUCP> john@frog.UUCP (John Woods, Software) writes: >On that topic, just to introduce something new: does *ANYONE* out there make >use of hired followers? Long ago, when I was starting to set up my campaign, >I went to some effort to attempt to make it easy for people to hire followers, >establishing Guilds of various professions, making sure that I had that >section of the rules well in mind, et cetera. To date, I think the players >have hired exactly one hireling, if you want to be generous: they rented a >sage when they were badly in need of one. (I had to drop a hint that they >could do so) In various campaigns I have been in as a player, I've never seen >other players hire anyone. Is this feature of [ The Generic Game* ] ever >used, or is it just there in the manuals to round off a page? In our on-going (>6 years old) D&D campaign we do this regularly. Players come and go, some characters die. Quite often the party is in need of a cleric or a competent thief to be able to undertake an adventure. This being The Evil Group( all characters are different shades of Evil, the best we come is a Chaotic Neutral ), there is very little trust between the characters ( my two characters have a difficult time tolerating each other). It seems that we as players trust the hired "experts" more than we trust our comrades -- when you are paying to get healed you know the cleric will do just THAT, and not the opposite ( the hired people in our campaign have professional pride and belong to guilds that would flay them alive for mis-conduct). So, to answer your question, It depends on the players confidence in the hired help, their ability to pay for the services (50% of the fee ahead, 50% later, additional charges for unforseen complications, if the job is to disarm traps and pick locks on a treasure chest then maybe a share of the loot); AND FORMOST it depends on the Game Master's ability to INFORM players of the availability of hired help and GM's ability to preserve the game balance while making life a bit easier for the players.