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From: cc@ucla-cs.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: Re: hirelings question
Message-ID: <8383@ucla-cs.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 15-Jan-86 19:34:35 EST
Article-I.D.: ucla-cs.8383
Posted: Wed Jan 15 19:34:35 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 17-Jan-86 07:03:59 EST
References: <688@ihlts.UUCP> <249@birtch.UUCP> <318@frog.UUCP>
Reply-To: cc@ucla-cs.UUCP (Oleg Kiselev)
Distribution: net
Organization: The Intellectual Wasteland, The Land Of Mental Midgets
Lines: 31
Keywords: role-playing, hirelings, Ronco Monsterverter
Summary: Do it often...

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.