Rolling with a Big Crew - On the Use of Henchmen in D&D

One of the features that marks off old-school fantasy gaming from newer games is the use of henchmen. 1e included henchmen loyalty rules, an extensive list of henchmen, and rules for finding them, hiring them, etc.

The use of henchmen in earlier editions represents a sophisticated take on gaming, henchmen represent resource planning, tactical awareness and engage mechanics often forgotten at the game table.

Here are my top 10 reasons to consider having henchmen in your game.

1. Tactical Advantages

The most immediately useful aspect of henchmen is that henchmen in the party give you tactical advantages.The most obvious advantage is they represent another possible target in the party. When engaged in combat the more people in the party the more targets for your enemies. In a game where attrition is a real concern, if ALL henchmen did was add another body to the group they would be useful.

But beyond that they give the party the advantage of numbers. As anyone who has run a large party will know, the more characters in the party the more attacks per round, and the more likely your group can take on harder targets. Most of the groups I run are 7-8 players, and if you add henchmen to that you can get up to 16 characters in a party. 16 attacks per round is nothing to sneeze at.

Another tactical advantage of henchmen for the party is protection of spell casters. Magic-users in 1e AD&D are very vulnerable, having henchmen to protect them means they are much more likely to get spells cast successfully, which is a huge contributing factor to their survival.

2. Excitement

Many refs are hesitant to let PCs die as players can become attached to their characters. I have no such reservations! But some do, and henchmen are a great way to restore some of the excitement of potential death to the game without losing PCs. Nothing brings you back into the moment as fast as someone dying right in front of you. Losing a henchman reminds the players that adventuring is a dangerous business!

3. Variety of Play

Particularly at low levels, D&D characters can find themselves at loose ends. Spell casters are a great example of this. If you are running a low level magic-user with terrible HP and lousy AC and you are out of spells, you can frequently find yourself stuck. Melee would be deadly, so you should really hang back. But that means that players of magic-users can feel “useless” in the game.

The solution that is used by many refs is to ensure that “everyone has a chance to shine”, so for example, the party needs to be able to read ogre magi to solve the puzzle, and lo and behold the party magic-user speaks ogre magi! That sort of thing can work, but after a while it feels forced.

Henchmen are an outlet for players who are at loose ends. Your magic-user has no spells left? Act for your henchmen this round for “something to do”. To that degree having henchmen gives players more agency as they have more vectors for action in the game. In addition, D&D has a lot of “neutralizing effects” that take PCs out of play, e.g. paralyzation, unconsciousness, charm, etc. When a PC is out of play like this it can be very frustrating for the player, but having henchmen means they can still have something to do while waiting for their PC to be brought back into play.

I have also seen players who run magic-users take henchmen and over time come to realize that they like the martial characters more than they knew.

4. Investment/Immersion

I’ve seen many players become attached to their PC, but I have also seen many players become attached to their henchmen. Perhaps because henchmen are so vulnerable (most henchmen are 0-levels, which means 1-6 hp) players can become protective of them, and go to some pretty impressive lengths to take care of them. I’ve seen players give up magical healing, magic items, loot, and risk significant personal harm to protect a henchman.

In short, henchmen can create investment and immersion in the game.

5. Collaboration

There are no rules governing cooperation between PCs, whether the party chooses to work together or not work together, the rules don’t shape that process. However, there are rules for “working together” with henchmen, the loyalty rules.

The loyalty rules ensure that employers who reward their henchmen, provide them with healing, give them a share of the loot, those employers will have loyal henchmen. Over the years I’ve seen a few players take on henchmen for their PCs and either ignore them or treat them badly. The rules are such that those henchmen eventually fail a loyalty roll and leave their employers in the lurch, or worse yet betray them at an inopportune moment.

Because the loyalty rules support cooperation and punish bad treatment, the rules help teach/reinforce the value of cooperation in the game. I’m a big fan of positive feedback mechanics, rules that reward good play. The loyalty rules do this very well.

They also make charisma important, charisma increases the number of henchmen you can have and adds to loyalty rolls. I love game components that magnify the importance of less used stats.

A final, oft missed side benefit of henchmen is they give individual players someone to collaborate with if the rest of the players aren’t feeling it. I can’t tell you the number of times that a player in one of my regular games was unable to get any of the other players to go along with him when he had an idea. Once we added henchmen to the game he had a built in group of 4 that could be directed towards goals that the rest of the party was reluctant to support.

Any long time ref will tell you that “analysis paralysis” is a real problem in D&D, sometimes the group can’t come to a decision when an individual within that group can. Having henchmen means that you can act with support even if the rest of the party isn’t interested. This means the group can take chances that they would otherwise ignore.

6. Replacement

Many people find it hard to get a game together, real life commitments can drag people away from the game, so it is important to minimize the time spent doing procedural work, like rolling up new PCs! When you have henchmen in the game then the player of a slain PC has an immediate option: play your henchman until you finish the session and roll up a new PC later.

Truth to be told this is my preferred mode of play, multiple characters for single players means that you don’t have to lose table time when a PC dies, and everyone gets to stay in the game.

We have had many fatalities in our game, and in more than half of the cases the player has used their PC’s henchman as the replacement in the session when they died, and then kept playing that henchman as the main PC afterwards. Once a player takes over the henchman as their main PC that henchman starts gaining XP and levelling. As it happens, in 1e the experience tables are set up such that a low level PC running around with higher level PCs levels up very quickly, which makes for very exciting gaming!

Between the fact that henchmen provide alternative targets in combat and the fact that they can be replacement PCs when needed, the ref is empowered to run a much deadlier game. If you know you won’t have to interrupt play when PCs die you are free to run a deadlier game with less hesitation.

7. Creativity and Risk

One feature I have noted about players who take on henchmen is that they are much more likely to take risks. If you have one PC then, all other things being equal, you will be more precious about them as they are your only link to the game world. If you die, then another character has to be rolled up, which is at least an inconvenience, and at most upsetting.

Having henchmen makes players more creative, they take chances and do things they might otherwise be hesitant to try as their main PC isn’t their only role-playing investment.

8. Resource Use

Henchmen require the player to plan their actions and use their resources. Not only do they have to pay for henchman services, but they have to plan their adventuring around their henchmen’s limitations.

As AD&D characters level magic and class abilities make it harder to challenge them. Henchmen in the party however are not that powerful, so the players have to make resource management decisions and risk decisions to address their vulnerabilities. So for example, if your party is mounted then all the henchmen need horses too, otherwise the party is restricted to moving the speeds and distances associated with moving around on foot.

That water breathing spell you want to use to infiltrate the bandit’s sea cave lair? It can’t cover all the henchmen and the party members. That ring of fire resistance that makes you safe as the dragon breathes on you? It won’t help your henchmen.

Henchmen keep the party grounded as the “inconsequential” threats that aren’t a big deal to a mid-level party, or even low to mid level, are still deadly to henchmen. Including them in the party can necessitate a whole different level of resource management to keep them alive.

And henchmen solve one of the problems that many people I know have with D&D - magic item inflation. Mid level D&D characters can end up with a lot of magic items, many of them minor magical weapons or limited magic (e.g. potions). Henchmen are a great drain on these resources, rather than throwing away that +1 spear as none of the PCs have a spear proficiency, you can give it to the henchman, increasing their loyalty significantly, and making them more useful in combat.

9. Lore/Skills

AD&D is light on skills, and has no formal mechanism for a “lore check”, so henchmen represent a possible vector for skills the party can have available to them and for information you want to give them. In a previous campaign the henchman with the bowyer/fletcher skill became the de facto “bow and arrow repair guy” for the party. In another one of the henchmen had a crucial language the party needed in an adventure.

I find that players love to give their henchmen small character traits that add a lot to the flavor of the game. One of my players asked if their henchman could be good at cards, and gambling became a great vector to introduce NPCs and gain information.

And of course you can use henchmen to introduce plot points to your game, e.g. an old enemy of your henchman shows up demanding restitution for a past act, an old employer shows up claiming that the henchmen was never discharged from their service, etc.

10. FUN!

This may go without saying, but rolling up a henchman can be big fun. Because they are relatively simple it takes about 5 min to roll up a henchman, and picking equipment and weapons and naming a henchman is a ton of fun. I’ve seen players equip their henchmen with weapons they would never have used with their main PC, or try out new armor, equipment, etc.

The lower stakes (“it isn’t my PC”!) mean that the player can try out new things rather than falling back into the same patterns with every new PC. I would also recommend that you name henchmen rather than just treating them like nameless meat shields. It makes them easier to tell apart for one thing, but it also encourages the players to be invested in them.

My Wednesday AD&D campaign players recently decided to hire henchmen, 4 of the 7 party members hired them, and this added 14 new characters to the party, bringing the total group size to 21! This changes the nature of adventuring! If you are used to parties of 3-5 PCs a group of 21 can be… disorienting. It certainly ups the power of your group, and requires you to work harder to challenge them. But there are pluses and minuses, for example, your party may be more powerful with 21 members, but any chance of stealth is tossed out the window, travelling becomes more complicated, and in small dungeon spaces creativity is required.

However, with the addition of henchmen they are far more engaged as they have multiple characters to direct, they know they have an on-the-spot backup PC if their main PC is killed, and they enjoy the role-playing variety.

On the Sunless Sea

I run four concurrent AD&D1e campaigns, so significant prep is not on the table. I have to find ways to improvise a lot of the content to keep up with that many different fronts of player activity. I have enumerated different methods I use to keep the sandbox game going, and today I’m going to talk about improvisation with an example.

It is also an example of how to run 1e AD&D in a sword and sorcery mode. Anyone asking if a game can do that, 1e can do that.

So my Thursday group is on a quest to get the Mask of Horus. Their last leg in the journey is to traverse an underground sea. They are a party of 7, three NPCs along for the ride, each riding on a giant lizard that can swim. The Mask of Horus (an artefact/relic) will be across this sea.

One of the things I do in my game is to plant seeds and see where they take me. Sometimes that’s a random encounter roll, sometimes an encounter reaction roll, and in this case, it was an idea from a book. I cribbed an idea from a Jack Vance story, about two groups of people who, due to magic warping their brains, could not see each other, specifically they couldn’t see the other group’s clothing color, or them when in it.

I had no idea how to fit this into the quest for the Mask of Horus, but I decided to put it in and wing it. So in the previous sessions they had seen two villages along an underground river, in one people dressed in green, in the other in blue, but they couldn’t see each other. They heard each other, but spoke different languages, so assumed the noises were ghosts. So they avoided the other’s villages as they felt them haunted, and when they did occasionally bump into one another assumed it was the spirits.

I randomly assigned the languages that each of these villagers spoke, since they were a village of underground dwellers I used the DMG tables and rolled up ogre magi and titan. These seemed appropriately weird to me, and gave the encounter some flavor. As it happens 1e is generous with extra languages for high intelligence, we had two magic users, so we had both of those languages spoken! I made up the language lists for the PCs randomly two years ago, I rolled these languages randomly at the table today.

That kind of stuff makes your head spin.

So the party convinced one member of each village to accompany them, the NPC warlock who was with them had a spell to summon mounts, so they each had a giant lizard (which could swim) and they set out to the underground sea with a priest from the blue village and a warrior from the green village, neither of whom could see each other.

By the end of the last session they met up with a former opponent, Zimmerlin Suel, and his henchman Jonin Sinzo, who proposed a partnership, they would accompany the party on their quest, let them have the Mask, and abscond with whatever else they could find.

So the party (a bard, a thief, a druid and a magic-user), a warlock and his fighter henchman, a blue priest and a green warrior headed out along the underground river to the sea. A random encounter with some ettercaps led to the green warrior being hurt and the party sent him back.

This morning before today’s session I had to decide what they would meet on the sunless sea, their last obstacle before finding the Mask. I came up with four challenges for them to face crossing the sea: its size, the giant sea serpents, the two giants and the two ghosts. I didn’t have any idea what to do when I woke up this morning, all of this was worked up today before my afternoon session.

Now, at this point I had no idea how I was going to use these villagers, the party might have passed them by, but since they hadn’t, I decided that having them around when they were getting the Mask would make it easier. They wouldn’t be the only way to get the Mask, but if they were there it would help.

The idea here is that the story gave me a seed, I had to figure out how to use it. This moring the idea came to me. Here’s how it went down.

First, the party had to cross the sea, it was big enough that it would take 12 hours to cross on their giant lizards. However, the lizards can’t swim forever, they need to rest, and the only spot to do so was some islands that were 6 hours out.

So when they were about to set out on the water one of them asked me how far across it was, I responded that even though it was dark, looking with their spyglasses did not show them the other side, so it was very far across. At that point the penny dropped and they realized that their giant lizards might be more maneuverable and able to fight but they would have to rest. So they asked how far they could go before the lizards would tire. I told them 8 hours swimming.

So they planned to go 4 hours out, and if they didn’t see the other side, they could turn back and try again. They headed into the water, the only light being a dull phospherescence in the air that gave everything a dark, green hue.

The second challenge was the giant sea serpents. They swam around the sea but mostly stayed away from a path right through the middle, so if the party stayed there they would be comparatively safe, if they strayed too far I would roll to see if they were noticed. The idea would be that if they kept on course it would be comparatively safe, but if they deviated it was risky, but not necessarily lethal.

At one point I told them that the bottom dropped out and the water was black and very deep. Then I said,

“You look down and see something huge, a serpent-like creature, it appears to be about 50 feet beneath you, chalk white in color, and approximately 300 feet long. As you look around you to the East you now see that there are MANY of these immense creatures swimming about below the surface, but most appear to be avoiding the direct route throught the middle of the sea”

That FREAKED THEM OUT.

Now they had to make a decision, stay in the middle where it was “safe”, not knowing if they were being corralled into a dangerous place, or risk going over the giant sea serpents.

They chose the middle path.

This led them to the next obstacle, and the one I tied in to the villagers. I decided that these two villages were descendants of two groups that were originally assigned to protect the Mask from being removed by outsiders, but in the intervening years they fought over who was in control, and this led to deaths and betrayal, so Horus cursed the two groups to be invisible to each other to end the rivalry, but if one representative from each village came to the Mask together and cooperated, they could remove it together from it’s resting place. The odds of this happening were fairly slim, given that they couldn’t see each other, so this meant the Mask would be hidden from the world for centuries.

And so it was.

So the first way the villagers would be tied to this adventure was that they would be able to make getting past the next obstacle easier.

They reach a point about an hour out from shore they saw two giants stand up from the water (they are standing on mini-islands below the water’s surface). One giant is green, one giant is blue. If you stare at either one you must save versus spell or become transfixed and unable to pass. If you avoid looking at them and try to pass the giants will attempt to sink you in the water as you go by. The only way to go by them is to go well around them (which takes time and puts the part at risk of attack from the underwater sea serpents). Or, if you have a member from either village with you, the blue giant can’t see the green village member and those who are with them, the green giant can’t see the blue villager, and same for the villagers, e.g the green villager can’t see the blue giant, etc. If you are with a villager of the appropriate color, you can pass between the two giants close to the one that can’t see you, and the other can’t reach you.

So, they had the blue priest with them (the green warrior had been sent back). As they talked about what to do I had them each roll a d12 every five minutes to see if they met the gaze of either giant (the blue priest only checked every 10 minutes as he could only be ensorcelled by the blue giant). After the first 5 minutes the party bard rolled a 1, then failed his save, and became entranced.

But the party didn’t know how it happened.

They reacted fast to this, as they were worried the effect would hit one of them too. So they decided on the spot to try going through the space between the giants to avoid the sea serpents. Since the blue priest could only see the blue giant, they decided to hew closer to the green giant, as they had trouble convincing the blue priest that there was a green giant (as he couldn’t see it), but they could convince him to go further from the giant he could see. They crossed their fingers that the green giant wouldn’t attack them, gambling that it might have trouble seeing the blue priest.

They were right!

That meant they passed close to the giant who couldn’t see the blue priest, and the blue giant couldn’t reach them, and they passed through safely.

Now, I just want to point out two things. One, I had NO IDEA I was going to do this and use the villager’s curse in this fashion, it literally came to me this morning unbidden when I was remembering a scene from another Jack Vance story, when a giant comes to life and rises out of the waters of a lake. That made me think of a giant coming out of the water, then the idea of a blue and green giant just jumped out at me.

They continued on. At the 4 hour point they looked through their spyglass and I told them that they saw something that MIGHT be an island or a shore, but in this low light it was difficult to tell. They decided to press on, even though that might be the death of them.

Brave lads.

So they pressed on, and fortunately they reached the island, actually, there were two islands, about 1000 feet across each, and about 500 feet apart.

However…

I came up with the idea that years ago two thieves, Rinar the Wily and Kalab the Brute, had fled to this underground sea laden with loot, and had made it this far but their boats were damaged by one of the giant white sea serpents and they had to land on one of the islands. They fought over who was responsible for their plight, and inhabited different islands after fighting a few times. They starved to death on these islands, hating each other.

They were now twin ghosts. They were stuck here as ghosts until one was destroyed, then the other would be sent on to the next life. So when the party arrives, the two ghosts will appear, and if they can destroy either one, the other will disappear. Both will cajole them to do so, wanting to have them destroy the other, so they will go on to their afterworld, and the other will go on to nothingness.

It was a delicious twist. Who would they help? How would they slay the ghosts? They had a magical bow and a magical scimitar, dagger, sword and sword between them to fight a 10HD ghost, all other weapons and spells won’t work against them unless the caster is ethereal.

So the party arrives on the island, and the giant lizards get to rest. The blue priest uses create food and water to feed and water the lizards, and the party camps down for the night in the dark green half-light in the middle of a sunless sea, giant ivory sea serpents swimming all around them.

Then, in the middle of their sleep, the two ghosts appear.

1e ghosts are AMAZING. Everyone, when they see the ghosts, has to make a saving throw, and everyone but the NPC warlock and fighter failed. So the bard, the thief, the druid, the magic-user and the priest all age 10-40 years each, and flee in terror.

Now here’s where it got interesting. I run a game with non-standard races, so the age ranges for these characters is not specified. I decided when we created the PCs to peg the age ranges for thri-kreen to halflings, and for the rakasta to half-elves. It was entirely arbitrary, but I wanted them younger than dwarves and elves but older than humans.

So we had rolled up the starting ages for each character at the beginning of the campaign, and two years had gone by since then.

The rakasta bard was 27 years old when the ghost appeared, he rolled 30 years, so he was now 57 years old. This put him in the next age category, so he gained a point of strength and a point of wisdom! Ability scores rarely change in 1e, so this was a big deal.

Next came the other rakasta (the thief), he was 30 when it happened, he was aged 40 years to 70, which had the same effect.

Then the thri-kreen, he was 28 and rolled 40 years, so he was now 68, he gained a point of strength and wisdom as well.

Then the human magic-user, he was actually polymorphed into a bear and is still one, but since he started as human I decided to have him age as a human. He started off at 30, aged 30 years, and was now 60, jumping two age categories, that bought him a strength point that he then lost, gained him two points of wisdom, lost him a point of constitution and gained him a point of intelligence.

The human priest was older but went through a category too, losing STR and CON and gaining INT and WIS.

Rolling for this on the spot, before they had even started to deal with the ghosts, was EXCITING AS HELL, they were squealing as we rolled to age everyone up.

Then their characters bolted in terror, and headed to the water!

They REALLY FREAKED OUT about that.

Now, the party was travelling with three NPCs, two of them were former opponents from my home brew city Bhavisyavani. Zimmerlin Suel and his henchman Jonin Sinzo had tracked the party and exacted revenge for the party bard’s blinding of Suel, blinding the bard.

Impressed by the bard’s moxy (he allowed himself to be blinded to pay the honor debt so Suel wouldn’t kill his friends in retribution with an earth elemental), Suel and Sinzo had joined the party on their quest. By the grace of the dice, they are the only two to make their saves (I rolled a 19 and 20), while everyone else is bolting in terror for the sea serpent infested waters.

My games have a horror edge to them, it’s part of the pulpy feel 1e gets right.

So I tell the party,

“OK, the only two people left standing are two NPCs, so I will put their stats up for you all to see, and you direct them. They have thrown their lot in with you, they think you will find the Mask, and they will find other riches, so they will try and save you. Direct them accordingly.”
Now just to be clear, I rolled up these two NPCs as adversaries a year ago, and they only rejoined the party a few weeks ago, when I didn’t have this encounter in mind.

Suel’s spell list is as follows:

1st – Affect Normal Fires,Enlarge,Identify,Magic Missile,Shield,Spider Climb
2nd – Continual Light,ESP,Rope Trick,Stinking Cloud
3rd – Hold Person, Protection from Normal Missiles
4th – Minor Globe of Invulnerability,Protection from Evil 10’ radius

All rolled randomly.

He also has the following magic items:
Bracers AC:6, Dagger of Throwing +2, Wand of Fear (14)
Scroll: Bigby’s Interposing Hand (10%F/5%RH), Globe of Invulnerability (25%F/15%RH)
Scroll: Monster Summoning III (15%F/5%RH) (1-4 Meazel's, last 4 rounds + 1 per level)
Ring of Spell Storing (Protection from Evil 10’ radius)

Also rolled randomly using the DMG “Human” subtables from the random encounter tables in the DMG (with modifications)

Guess which spell they had him cast?

The warlock turned to the terrified party members and shouted, “a lépés lefagyása”!

As the entire party and the blue priest flee in terror from the island, Suel casts Hold person on four of them; all the PC party members (as he had just met the blue priest I decided he would use it on the party first).

So in a delicious twist of fate, the party members who FAILED the save versus Hold Person would be frozen in place, those who made their saves would flee in terror into the sunless sea.

Bwah ha ha ha ha ha ha.

EEEVVVIIIILLLL.

So they rolled, all the PC party members except one, the bard, failed their saves. They were frozen in place by the Hold Person spell, bard headed to the water along with the blue priest.

Now Jonin Sinzo the fighter henchmen had an action, and check out his weapons listing from his character sheet

Note his THACO of 16 and his listing of a “chain” as one of his weapons, it’s used to wrap around opponent to drag them down, dismount opponents, disarm them, that sort of thing. It’s a 12’ long chain, he was standing with the party when the ghosts appeared and sent everyone fleeing in terror, so I rolled initiative to see if he could react in time to snag the bard or the priest with his chain.

He won initiative, and tried for the bard. The house rule for that chain to wrap around someone is to roll 3 over the required to hit. The bard is AC 2, he needed a 14 to hit, a 17 to snare the fleeing bard. He has a +1 to hit with the chain.To stop the bard from fleeing into a magically induced panic into the water, for 2-12 turns no less, he had to roll 16.

The bard player dropped to the floor when that happened, he was convinced he was charging off to his death.

Sinzo had the bard wrapped up, pulled him back, picked him up (17 str) and dropped him off at the feet of Zimmerlin Suel, as Suel’s direction. They have decided on a spell to cast while the ghosts rage at each other.

The priest is still heading to the water.

The ghosts howl at each other, raging oblivious to the party. I rolled for that, the two ghosts hate each other, so they bickered.

Now, the players asked me, what can they do? The party Druid has dispel magic, but he’s under a hold person. And if he or any of the others are released they go charging into the deep in terror.

They look over the warlock’s sheet and find the globe of invulnerability, it has a failure percentage, and a harm percentage, but it neutralizes 1-4th level spells, would this break the fear effect, as it was magical (e.g. from  a magical monster)?

Warlocks in my setting are all sages with a major and a minor field, and two special categories within their major field. I hadn’t specified Zimmerlin's, so we rolled on the spot, if he had a relevant area of expertise, perhaps he would know if the spell would break the fear effect.

So they rolled major field supernatural and unusual, minor field humankind, with special fields of Metaphysics and Planes (Astral, Ethereal and Elemental).

Was the effect of an abjuration spell on a ghost induced fear a specific question in the special field of Suel? I decided yes, so they rolled and had an 86% chance of knowing. He did, and I decided it would work to break the effect. I ruled that it should pair with a fear spell for level, and it’s 4th, within the scope of the globe.

So the decide he will cast Globe and since the ghosts are still screaming at each other (I rolled for that) Sinzo went after the blue priest. He moves faster than the priest, but the priest has a lead, so I calculate the distance to the water and when Sinzo will catch the priest, he reaches him when they are up to their shins in water! He grapples the priest and takes him down on the beach.

Now, Suel’s spell culminates, and he is surrounded by the globe, 10’ in diameter, and the bard’s fear is dispelled.

The ghosts now stop screaming at each other as they see what is happening below (I rolled that).

The bard steps out, just freed from the terror, and says, “What do you want, how can we set you free!”

I kid you not.

Apparently, that’s what he’s learned about ghosts from "movies and stuff", that they have an unfulfilled need that keeps them around.

I figure I should reward that, so I have the ghosts stop bickering and then the Rinar the Wily says,

“I hate Kalab, destroy him and I will be freed!”

Then Kalab howled in an ancient, dead voice, “End Rinar, and I will show you our treasure!”

I thought that was fair reward for being smart.

The party bard then asks if he can make a legend lore roll to see if he knows any ways to slay ghosts

He rolls (7% chance) and fails.

Then they ask if Suel’s sage ability would tell them any way to slay a ghost.

I tell them it’s not specific enough.

So they talk for a bit, and asked if Suel would know if the Globe of invulnerability would destroy a ghost. That was an interesting question. There is no rule for this so I decided this would be an exacting question in his specialization, as it was asking what happens when a ghost enters an area of abjuration magic, normally spells need to be cast from the ethereal plane to impact a ghost, but he was a specialist in ethereal plane knowledge, so I decided that if he made the lore roll, he would know if the spell could neutralize a ghost.

He had a 70% chance of knowing if this could work. He rolled a 60, so I had to decide!

Here is what I decided on the spot, I would look at the list of up to 4th level MU spells, and if I could find comparable spell effects in those levels to the powers and features of a ghost, things that ghosts can do in lore (make doors open or lock shut) or powers that they have (e.g. immunity to missiles and their immunity to non-magical weapons), I would say the magic of the globe would dispel them.

I found:

Affect normal fires, dancing lights, hold portal , push, unseen servant, ventriloquism, audible glamer, invisibility, knock, levitate, magic mouth, ray of enfeeblement, scare, haste (ages target), protection from normal missiles, confusion, curse, dimension door and fear.

Those are all in the 1-4 range, so I said yes.

So now, in my game world, a globe of invulnerability can destroy a ghost, saving throw applicable.

I did this all with the players so they saw how it worked, how I adjudicated it. We agreed it was fair.

So the bard turns to the ghosts and in response to their demands for the party to kill each other, and he says, “Why not both?”

I roll an encounter reaction, with the bard’s +15%, I roll a 110%, so the ghosts are going to go along with the suggestion, destroying them both and keeping them from their respective afterlives, they were obviously bad men and feared judgment! So they fly into the globe, one fails his save and is blasted away, gone forever! I decide the other ghost doesn’t want to be judged when released, and dives into the globe again, this time being destroyed.

Who knew a D&D encounter would veer into existential territory.

The fear effect then ends on everyone. Suel dispels the hold person.

Everyone screams for a bit. They are alive. They spend the next hour searching the islands for the loot, which they find near a pile of bones. It’s platinum coins in a small chest and 10 gems, no magic items. Rolled on the spot.

Next session they will cross the rest of the sea to the far shore, and at some point between when they wake (they will want to sleep and restore spells) and when they arrive (determined randomly) another green warrior will join them, sent forth when the last one was sent back, in a boat pulled by a pair of kapoacinth (water gargoyles). Then they will find the Mask of Horus, and culminate their campaign.

I have no idea what the last encounter will be like yet, I haven't planned it. But I fancy Horus showing up if they manage to retrieve the mask, that would be a nice touch. I'll have to roll for it though...

Next session is going to be wild.

Chain of Fools - NPCs, Consequences and Improvisational Play

I’ve blogged before about tools for sandbox style gaming, this post will be about giving some specific examples of how that happens at the table.

I’m currently running 4 AD&D 1e campaigns, 6-8 players in each game, I don’t do mountains of prep before every session. I created a setting (that was about 4 months of research+writing), and I let the players loose in the setting, and my job is to make the game world react to what they do. So my “prep” for the session is a copy of last week’s notes (taken during play) so I know where we left off, and any larger scale adventure notes (e.g. if they were exploring a dungeon, the notes for the dungeon).

I let the players drive everything else. At the table what this means is that they make decisions and commit actions, there are reactions to those actions, these produce responses from the players, and so it goes.

Just doing this, prepping a general setting and letting the players interact with it, works well. However, I see people routinely say that if they did this with their players they would sit around looking at each other wondering what to do. In actuality, I have been doing this for 7 years now, with 4 different groups for the last three, and this is not what happened.

I’ve often wondered why my experience is different than others. It could be my groups, but my groups seem pretty typical. It could be me, but that doesn’t ring true. I suspect it may be that people simply can’t envisage what it would be like, so they don’t think they can do it.

There will be occasional times when a group playing in this style might get “stuck”, or come to a point where they aren’t sure what to do. I think people overestimate how much of a problem this will be. It’s like people are terrified of having to stop and think about the game while playing it, or they fear their players being so challenged they won’t enjoy the game anymore.

Sometimes though, examples help, and I was reflecting today how one of the NPCs in my Thursday game is a great example of how PC actions can create a cascade of events that drive the game forward.

Zimmerlin Suel, Warlock of House Himmenghost

Human Magic-User 7th level, HP: 20, AC:6, MV: 12”, Weapon: (6) Daggers
Familiar: Crow AC 7,HP: 4, NA: 1, DA: 1-2, vision

Spells: 1st – Enlarge, Light,Magic Missile, Spider Climb, 2nd – ESP,Rope Trick, Stinking Cloud, 3rd – Hold Person, Mount 2, Protection from Normal Missiles, 4th – Minor Globe of Invulnerability,

Items: Bracers AC:6, Dagger of Throwing +2, Wand of Fear (14), Scroll: Bigby’s Interposing Hand (10%F/5%RH), Contact Other Plane (10%F/5%RH).  Ring of Spell Storing (Guards and Wards)

When my Thursday group was back in my home brew city, the party thieves decided they wanted to join the local guild, and the price of admission was a job. There was a warlock, Olin Hulm, and his 5 apprentices, who were going to be charging a powerful wand in several days at Olin’s tower. While doing this, most of the warlocks would be on the roof, the requirements of the spell state that Hulm must be in contact with the wand at all times, and the other warlocks and Hulm cast spells into the wand as it is charged. This is the perfect opportunity for a break in, as the majority of the warlocks are distracted. Yes, the tower will have defences, but they stand a good chance of being able to break in and take something. They had to show they had the brass. The wand charging process would start at midnight.

They went to the tower before midnight, and the two party thieves decided they wanted to see what was happening on the roof. Two other party members were there, they would wait in the shadows below and keep look out for the city watch. The two thieves climbed up to the top of the tower and listened, hearing voices.

One of them rolls his HIS to try and look over the edge without being seen, he is successful, and spies 4 warlocks assembling the materials for the spell casting. The two party thieves then decide, on the spot, that they should go on to the roof, surprise the magic-users, slay them, and take the wand, even with few charges in it the wand would be a valuable item to steal, and it would get them mad cred.

I reminded them there were 4 warlocks here, and that they didn’t know their levels, so if they were going to do this, it would have to be fast and efficient. Then I even threw them a bone and reminded them of a time a few sessions back when someone raised an alarm. That hadn’t gone well.

So they both climb up both made their hide in shadows rolls and hid in the darkness. Then one of the thieves waited until everyone’s attention was directed away from them, and he moved silently to backstab one of the warlocks, and his companion waited with his crossbow nocked and aimed

The thief failed his move silently roll, everyone turned around, and all hell broke loose. During the course of the fight, Zimmerlin Suel took a crossbow bolt in the eye, blinding him. Two warlocks died. The thieves lost, however, they were stripped of their weapons and items, beaten, given a message to deliver, and dropped at the foot of a well known thieve’s guild tavern to send a message. At the time I rolled an encounter reaction roll for Olin Hulm when the thieves were defeated, and he decided sending them back alive with a message was more important than simply killing them.

So off they went after that to their next adventure. They encountered some owlbears on the way and lost their party druid. They went to the Temple of Horus and had him brought back. However, the price for this was a quest to find the Mask of Horus, an artifact lost to the temple for centuries. So they took off to do that, and that has been the game for the last year, they are completing the quest soon.


Back when they left the tower, I decided that Zimmerlin Suel, who saw two of his allies slain and was blinded, and was then cheated of the satisfaction of seeing the culprits slain because his master wanted to send a message to the guild, was not happy.

This is how the game sustains itself. The PCs do something, and it has consequences. The game hands them up to you like a gift. When the thieves were defeated, I could have slain them, but I roll for that stuff to keep the game from getting predictable. When I rolled a positive reaction, I interpreted that as Olin Hulm thinking the PCs were worth more to him alive than dead. The dice roll result forces me to interpret it, and this inspires me to create a “reaction” of the game world to the player’s actions. As soon as I had Hulm let the players go, it immediately made me think that Suel would be pissed. It just jumped out at me.

But since the PCs already had something on the go, I made Zimmerlin Suel’s revenge a dice result on my random tables. At some random point, Suel would show up for his revenge. The longer it took for the result to come up, the more prepared he would be.

The PCs adventured for 8 months (64 hours at the table) and Suel came up on the tables.

So I added a henchman/partner (Jonin Shinzo, fighter) and a few spells to his arsenal, specifically higher level spells). I didn’t level him up though, as he was higher level than anyone in the party when they met.

So the party was in the middle of the desert, on the way to the Lost City, and I rolled the encounter. At that point I decided Suel had tracked the party since they left the tower (something he could do as he knew two of the party members and he had access to a crystal ball). When they left on their voyage Suel followed them. His master allowed him to pursue his vengeance, and gave him a small sum, the crystal ball, and a few powerful spells. Along the way he picked up a henchman. He also knew of the party’s quest.

They approached the party while they were camped down (they were sleeping in a tent during the heat of the day) The party member on watch saw them coming, they used their spyglass to see two men on giant lizards approaching and dismounting about 500’ away. Suel sat in the sand behind his mount where he couldn’t be seen while Shinzo stayed mounted. Suel took out a scroll and started casting a spell.

The party member on watch decided they were likely nomads, and decided to keep an eye on them but otherwise wait.  He wanted to let the spell casters sleep so they could rememorize spells in the morning, and the men were very distant. I tell him that they stay where they are for a time. The player says he’ll wait until they do something.

There is some discussion at the table, the other players running the sleeping PCs argue about whether or not he should wake them. One even suggests that the guy who got off the giant lizard could be casting a spell! They argued about that too. Finally, they convince him to have his PC wake them up. At that point I had to decide how much time had passed, as the spell has a casting time. So I used the time of the conversation as a guide, and pegged it at around 5 minutes or so.

The two men were 500’ away, waking up everyone and getting them in armor and such (you don’t sleep in armor) takes two rounds (house ruled that when it came up a few times). None of the party spell casters had a spell with the required range, so the party martial PCs charged out to get to at least missile fire range (about 100’ for a med range shot). They ru
n 120’ per round. They hit the 360’ point at round 10, when the spell culminates. A 16 HD earth elemental was summoned and appeared at a range of 100’ from Suel, that put it 40’ in front of the martial party members, the spell casters were back at the tent.

Suel calls out to the party that he is here to restore his honor, and to demand restitution from the offending party, in this case the party thief who shot him in the eye. He tells them they have to decide immediately or he send in the elemental. What the party doesn’t know is that in 1e the longer the elemental is around the more likely he will turn on his caster. So Suel wanted this sorted immediately.

The party thief asked what Suel wanted, Suel wanted to take his eye in compensation. That was another on the spot thing. But it made sense. He was humiliated, defeated in front of his patron, and saw two of his allies slain, and he was denied revenge! In my setting, honor is important, and warlocks are public figures. If he was to ever have power in the city, he had to address this. It was the perfect, overdramatic but entirely setting specific thing.

There was some table talk, one of the players knew that the elemental was harder to control the longer you had it around, and he pointed out that they could try to stall, or disperse, as the elemental wasn’t fast enough. The thief decided that even if they managed to survive the elemental, Suel would have other spells, and they would likely take big losses. And the decision to ambush the warlocks back a the tower, rather than sticking to the plan of sneaking around when they were occupied, was recognized by the party at the time as being a dumb idea. So this was sort of the wheel coming around.

The party member in question, who later went on to become a bard, was one of the marital characters up front. He walked up to Suel and his companion Shinzo, he presented himself, and Suel slashed him across the right eye with his dagger, blinding him.

BADASS.

What a role playing moment. Everyone was blown away, and the player was virtually strutting around the room. No one expected him to take a penalty to hit because of this, to maim his own PC.

So Suel retreated to his mount, and rode away leaving the elemental behind for a round or two more, then ended the spell and kept going.

The party decided not to pursue. The party druid healed the HP, but to heal the eye required a more powerful spell, and that didn’t happen for about 5 more sessions.

But here is where the real RP gold set in. I got to thinking, Suel travelled halfway around the world to restore his honor, and the thief took it like a champ. No fighting, no complaining, no fear. So I rolled an encounter reaction roll, it was positive on the second roll, and I interpreted this as Suel deciding after leaving the party that he was impressed with the thief. Suel’s society is honor based, and what the PC did was honorable. So Suel an his companion decide they want to to join in their quest, the party could have the mask, he would collect other treasures along the way. This would mean that he could bring back items of power to his patron as well.

So I roll to see how long it is until he comes to this conclusion. I get a 1 week. So the party adventures for ttwo weeks in game, and by then they are underground following a river to find the Mask of Horus. I have Suel catch up to the party when they are trying to get around with a makeshift boat.

He tells them he was impressed with the thief’s honor, and wants to join them on their quest. He and Shinzo ask for a share of the treasure, but have no interest in the mask.

There is a buzz of conversation, can we trust  this guy, is this just a trick?

Suel has a home brew spell called Mount 2, I gave it to him to explain why they had giant lizard mounts for their long journey (trying to bring along a giant lizard mount for a long journey across oceans and mountains was a stretch). So while they are discussing this Suel offers to cast his spell for the party so they could also have giant lizard mounts who can swim and take them down the river, and also climb the walls thanks to their talons.

This starts to sway things. Then as they continue to discuss if they should say yes, Suel asks them, “How will you find this mask of yours, do you know where it is?”

That produced a lot of conversation. And eventually he told them he had a spell he could use when they believed they were close, that would allow them to find out where the Mask was. In this case it’s a Contact Other Plane spell on a scroll.

That sealed the deal.

So now Zimmerlin Suel, a background NPC in a fight, has become a NPC party member, with some history between him and the party thief. None of this came from anything I designed intentionally. If you look at Suel’s spells, his role in the Warlock’s tower was to cast Guards and Wards from his ring if anyone broke in. So as you can see he didn’t have a lot of offensive spells.

He wasn’t supposed to matter to the game. He was an opponent to challenge the PCs. But once the PCs engage with the game world, they bring it alive as it responds to them.

So you don’t need to have a plot, or an overall narrative, or goal, when you start. You just have to let the players poke at the game world, and as they do you will see your game world grow in response. NPCs are a big part of this, the party has picked up many as they adventure, and a few have died (a priest of Osiris who was following the party as they were on a quest for the Temple of Horus, a mid level sorcerer who was acting as a patron to a lower level party member magic-user).

NPCs are one vector for this, factions are another (recall that what started this off was the party wanting to get in good graces with the thieve’s guild, that was their idea, not mine), but it is surprisingly easy to run a whole multi-year campaign like this, with the party driving the game in concert with a robust factionalized setting.