“Who built the seven towers of
Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed,
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima's houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go?”
Was it kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed,
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima's houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go?”
-Bertolt Brecht
Remember my series exploring the
scattershot (yet more far more comprehensive and interesting than is
normally given) domain-level play and implied world in first edition
AD&D? Longtime readers may remember that I had a few more posts
lined up that I never really finished off, posts that have continued
to nag me despite me having them buried like the tell-tale heart deep
in the drafts box. (You can read the whole series here, here, here, and here.)
Hark! Louder, louder, louder. Argh. I
dissemble no more, tear up the planks and let's finish this long due
series.
Let's come back around with some
Talmudic readings of the section on Hirelings in the DMG (p. 28-31),
a section that yields quite a bit of information on what the AD&D
domain game and implied world is.
Working Stiffs and the Making of
Things
The section on hirelings explicitly
begins—with the first sentence—in the context of domain-play and
the power arc of the AD&D character: “Most hirelings are dealt
with under the section entitled EXPERT HIRELINGS - those which are
typically employed at such time as the character in question has an
established stronghold. Common, standard hirelings are basically the
usual craftsmen or laborers taken on by lower level player
characters.”
That's clear and straightforward: one
entire class of hirelings revolves around life in a stronghold, the
other is more the straightforward useful hacks for adventuring.
A quick look at Standard Hirelings
seems to hold this view you have the porters, teamsters, and pack
handlers that deal with the copious (and mightily heavy with coinage
at 1/10th a pound) amounts of swag being hauled out of
murderholes. You have linkboys to free up your torch arm for that
Fauchard-Fork and perhaps a valet to shine your boots, high, hard.
These stiffs are easy to come by (most if not all can be found in
your average village) and mostly work in short stints of work paid by
the day.
But now this is where things get
(somewhat) interesting. This is where there are hints at a “middle
game,” a sort of higher-level play where a character hasn't gone
through that long, tough process of carving their hold in this
post-apocalyptic AD&D world but has resources enough to start
acting on a larger social scale.
Because, see, the Standard Hirelings
list is not just the adventuring-specific mooks above, but includes a
broader range of semi-skilled and skilled artisans. So you have
carpenters, leather workers, painters (limners), and tailors too.
Significantly you can hire all these hirelings at a monthly scale but
this “assumes that quarters are provided for the hireling, and that
these quarters contain a bed and like necessities.” It assumes
further that you actually possess a base of operations.
More over it sets up a freeform way to
handle production of goods:
“It is not practical to try to
determine the time and expenses necessary to accomplish everything
possible for the scores of standard hirelings possible to employ, so
each DM will have to decide. For example, assume that a player
character hires a tailor to make plain blue cloaks for all of his or
her henchmen. This will take only about 1 day per garment and cost
the stated amount of money plus 5 c.p. (10% of the cost of a cloak)
per cloak for materials. However, if the same cloaks were to be
fashioned of a material of unusual color and have some device also
sewed upon them, time and materials costs would be at least double
standard, and probably more.”
That first sentence strikes me as a
great example of the overall design philosophy of that edition--a
sweet spot for me. It acknowledges the near-infinite imaginative
possibilities of each individual campaign and implies that the
hireling list (and the following production rules) are just guiding
models and that you can and should be specifically tailoring lists of
such working folks to your own quirks. Black lotus powder distillers?
Pleasure barge shipbuilders? Sure here you go, here's a detailed
example/baseline for their wages and what you charge the players.
Spun a different way, this whole
subsection is toolbox support for the level of owning a creaky old
caravel, running a scurrilous hole-in-the-wall tavern, squatting a
cleared-out mini-dungeon, raising the standard of your own free
company, or any other thing that I remember being a big post-lower
level goal of our play groups as a kid.
And despite the ostensibly
more-comprehensive approach to domain-play of the other best attempts
of D&D editions from the Companion set to Birthright, AD&D
alone is the sole attempt in the game to orient such a specific,
granular approach to work and working people.
There is no beancounter automatic table
of population growth. To entice these folks to said base the player
actually has to put some effort into it, “if the offer is for long
term employment, only 1 in 6 will be willing to accept unless a small
bonus is offered--day's wage is too small, but double or treble that
is sufficient to make 3 in 6 willing to take service.” The
implication being that you have to hustle and bribe normal folks (to
get over their fears, I suppose) and leave the walled confines of
beleaguered civilization.
It's not abstractions like “peasant
families” and “domain levels” producing things in the Gygaxian
world, but NPCs with at least some identity and face. Frankly, that's
a game-world vision I find more human scale and interesting.
Onwards and upwards, next we look at
how these sections imply certain things about urban life, guild work,
the life of mercenaries, general handwaving of duller aspects of
domain-play, etc. Stay tuned.
