There are two things about hirelings that I hate.
I hate seeing them treated as props. As things that can be safely ignored until a player wants them to make an attack, or use an ability. I understand that during play, everyone is focused on the events of the game rather than characterizing the background NPCs. This is good and proper. But while I am not interested in forcing my game into cul de sacs of “rich role playing experiences,” it none the less feels lame when hirelings are only ever brought up for their utility. Players should have to do more maintenance to keep them around.*
I also hate determining a hireling’s loyalty when they are first hired, and having that number remain static throughout their tenure with the party. A person’s loyalty to their employer should be a function of their working experiences, not an innate attribute of their character. Loyalty should be a thing that goes up and down constantly, depending on how valued the retainer feels, and how much of a future they see for themselves in this work.
(Loyalty, for any non-OSR folks in the audience, is a number between 2 and 12. Any time the hirelings are presented with a situation that tests their loyalty, the referee rolls 2d6. If the result is greater than the hireling’s loyalty score, then they are not loyal enough to endure whatever the current situation is. They might flee the scene, betray the party, or simply refuse to follow an order they’ve been given.
In attempting to solve the latter issue, I spent about a year rolling loyalty checks for hirelings after every session. If something traumatic had happened, a failed check caused the hireling’s loyalty to go down by 1. Otherwise, a failed check caused it to go up by 1. The idea was that, over time, the hireling’s loyalty would grow, but that its growth had diminishing returns. It’s easy to go from being an acquaintance to being a friend, it’s more difficult to go from being a friend to being the most important person in someone’s life.
In practice, this wound up just being busywork for me. Loyalty trended upwards over time, until the party had a half dozen hirelings with 11 loyalty. At that point, they basically are a prop, since they’ll almost never go against their employer’s wishes. The only part of the system I think anybody enjoyed were the little notes I wrote into the session reports, explaining why the hireling’s loyalty did whatever it did. “Albert was offended by Don’s joke. His loyalty goes down by 1.” “Sheniqua is proud of having incinerated all those guards. Her loyalty goes up by 1.” Stuff like that.
I quietly stopped bothering to use that system a few months back, and nobody seems to have missed it. I’ve been glumly pondering what I could do to make it work ever since. Then, as I was recording “Romantic Fantasy and OSR D&D” for Blogs on Tape, a good possibility occurred to me:
Periodically, the referee should go down the list of the party’s hirelings. For each one, the the referee decides whether their recent experiences should cause their loyalty to go up by 1, down by 1, or remain the same.
Let me break that down:
“Periodically” could mean at the end of every session, at the end of every adventure, during every haven turn, or even at the end of each in-game year. It depends on how swingy you want the system to be, and how much effort you want to put in. Personally, I think I’ll do it every Haven turn.
When I say “the referee decides,” I mean exactly that. This should be done by fiat, without any dice. Dice are a great way to resolve an infinity of choices, where a referee might unwittingly show their biases. But if a question can be resolved by common sense, dice just muddy the issue. When it comes to hirelings, the referee should already have some sense of who they are as a person, just as they do for all the game’s NPCs. And the referee will certainly know what the hireling’s recent experiences were. It’s not as though NPCs do anything when the referee isn’t around.
It should be easy to infer, given what the referee knows, how each hireling feels about their job right now.
Their loyalty might go down if they suffered serious injury, or if the players made reckless decisions, causing them to lose confidence in the party’s leadership. It might also go down if the hireling is just annoyed, bored, or feels like they’re not a respected member of the crew.
A lowered loyalty isn’t necessarily a punishment. It’s not always about the Hireling hating or fearing their employer. They’re just fractionally less interested in continuing to adventure, and if their loyalty gets low enough, a failed check might mean they strike out on their own.
On the other hand, their Loyalty might go up if they feel valued. It could be as simple as a good conversation with the PCs, being deferred to on some minor decision, or being celebrated for some success. Making sure your employee had a good day at work will help ensure they don’t betray you to the next goblin who looks at them funny.
Loyalty remaining unchanged should be an uncommon choice. Used only if the referee is really torn between the two other options.
I’m really enamored with this idea, because it seems to elegantly resolve both of the things I hate, with a single mechanic. Hireling morale will be anything but static. It’ll be going up and down all the time, and hopefully it’ll be going down a lot more than it did with my previous method. Moreover, those fluctuations provide a direct incentive for the players to interact with their hirelings to keep up morale. It’s rare, in my experience, to find any opportunity to offload some of the referee’s mental burden onto the players.
This method also seems to have the tertiary benefit of creating a natural cap on the number of hirelings a player can take on. The more people you try to bring with you, the more time and energy you’ll have to spend to keep them happy.
I’m excited to spring this on my players after their next haven turn.
*I realize this problem would be solved if I required hirelings to earn a half-share of treasure. It’s a good method, and one I might use again in the future. But it doesn’t _really_ solve either of the two gripes presented in this post.