In
the early editions of the ‘World’s Most Famous Role-Playing Game’, henchmen,
hirelings and followers played an important role in the Adventure Party. When I was designing White Box: Eastern Adventures, I wanted to incorporate the idea of low-level Non-Player Characters
(NPCs) serving the characters in their adventures. I liked the roles of henchmen, hirelings and
followers, but wanted to simplify these roles for my ‘rules light’ version of the
game. Thus, I used the term hirelings as
the mechanic defining the low-level NPCs serving the characters.
Warrior Hireling (left) & Non-Combatant Hireling (right)
In ‘White
Box: Eastern Adventures’, there are two main categories of hirelings: warriors and
non-combatants. Warriors are
professional soldiers, who are hired for their martial skills. Warriors are divided into two types: soldiers
and specialists. A soldier is a professional
warrior, while a specialist is a professional warrior with a particular skill set (i.e. a seafaring captain).
Non-combatant hirelings are ordinary folk hired for their services. There are three types of non-combatant
hirelings: unskilled (i.e. labourers), artisans (i.e. skilled tradespeople) and
academics (i.e. scholars and sages).
Since
hirelings play an important role in ‘Eastern Adventures’, I felt it was
important to design a random Hireling Generator, which is available on the White Box: Eastern Adventures site. The
Hireling Generator randomly generates a list of 10 hirelings, based on the choices
(selected via drop down menus) made by the User. The choices are type (i.e. artisan hirelings),
name (i.e. randomly generated names), HP (i.e. max hit points), sex (i.e.
random sex) and personality/traits (i.e. randomly generated).
The addition
of personality/traits is inspired by The Keep on the Borderlands, which has a
Random Table of one-word personality traits used to describe the personalities
of the NPCs. In the Hirelings Generator,
if the personality/traits option is selected, 2 to 5 randomly generated one-word
personality traits will be generated for each hireling.
The
Hireling Generator uses five different hirelings sheets; one for each type of
hireling. Blank PDF versions of the hireling
sheets are available on the Eastern Adventures Character Sheet page.
‘White
Box: Eastern Adventures’ is available as a Free PDF on DriveThru RPG. There is a print-on-demand softcover version
available for $5 USD, for those wanting a physical copy of the book.
Tasaka Games is my humble one-person tabletop role-playing game publishing company.
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