Retainers was never a given in the games I played even going back to Basic.  Sure there were occasional guides or porters/lanternmen that we hired, maybe a sage for translation purposes, but it was usually only a couple of people, and very situational.  Henchmen were always gained through roleplaying.  We never actively sought out henchmen, they just happened.

Quote from: mhensley;387492The use of retainers decreased as the power of the individual character increased.  Why hire help when you can do everything by yourself?  2e was definitely the tipping point where pc's started becoming superheroes from day 1.

Wizards still had to run in fear from housecats in AD&D2e at level 1.

Rogues were better off than that...but still had a lot to fear from straight up combat with anything bigger than a kobold.

Warriors and Priests were the only ones who could get cocky at level 1.

Quote from: Tommy Brownell;387572Wizards still had to run in fear from housecats in AD&D2e at level 1.

Rogues were better off than that...but still had a lot to fear from straight up combat with anything bigger than a kobold.

Warriors and Priests were the only ones who could get cocky at level 1.

Everyone else in the party is a henchman to the wizard.  At high levels, he is the only real pc.

Quote from: jibbajibba;387488Retainers were removed from play because they simply do not fit with the genres that D&D grew into emulating. We rarely used retainers from the start in 1980 all the way through. When we did use them was when the game presented the opportunity ie when there was a bunch of palace guards we could take with us or whatever.
Now this represents a fundermental shift in D&D when it moved from being it's own thing, a bunch of 'heroes' and their retainers raiding dungeons and stealing stuff to being a way of playing a hero like the Grey Mouser or Aragorn. In fantasy novels the heroes very rarely hire 20 guys to come with them on their raid and use them as canon fodder. Its just not an accessible trope. Thereofre once D&D moved out of the pioneer phase it was bound to mutate to emulate genre.
My group played in isolation. We were self taught 10 or 11 years old and we had this way of expressing our imaginations. We did that by trying to emulate the fantasy we wanted to copy I think that is totally predictable.

This.

My first RPG product was the Moldvay Basic Set.  It has a long list of heroic fiction in the back with the suggestion that those things are the template for D&D.   Those set the tone, and the tone isn't one of the PCs and their 100 hirelings enter the dungeon.

Movies and TV shaped my RPGing too, and I would imagine they did so for everyone else.  Beastmaster, Krull, Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings, Conan the Barbarian and Destroyer, Dragonslayer, and even Indiana Jones painted my early world of roleplaying.  In those the main characters went into the dungeon.  They didn't hire an army to walk point for them.  

Dragon Magazine frequently had articles or comics mentioning or poking fun of the hireling phenomenon.  I always shook my head at such practices.   Even then I knew it all made sense in the context of reality, but not the heroic fiction I was wanted to emulate in my games.

It wasn't that it went out of style recently.  The hireling tricks were dead even when I was new to the hobby in that most recent year of 1982.

I find using Conan as an example in this context quite odd. While he did certainly have numerous solitary adventures, Conan quite regularly took to the field at the head of a body of troops, whether they were mercenaries, soldiers or tribesmen.

I will, however agree about not taking 100 men into the dungeon - and on that note, I believe it was generally mentioned in older D&D rulebooks that regular mercenaries would not ordinarily accompany the party into the dungeon.

Yeah, our hirelings were more of the "make sure no one steals our horses" variety, than the "once more unto the breach!"

Though, come to think of it, we made much more use of Hirelings than Followers. Could be because Hirelings weren't considered entitled to part of the XP & Treasure.

Quote from: RPGPundit;387431But I'm mostly interested in questioning why that paradigm changed, and if people think it was something intentional on the part of TSR, or due to some other social phenomenon and not really the fault of 2e at all, or what.

I think there are three factors:

(1) The rulebooks did de-emphasize this aspect of the game. (And rulebooks have a huge impact on how people play the game.)

(2) An increased emphasis on characterization in roleplaying in addition to roleplaying the character as an adventurous avatar. It's difficult to maintain one character at the gaming table; trying to roleplay both your main character and retainers becomes increasingly difficult.

(3) A question of spotlight balance. If you're effectively playing multiple characters (your "real" character + your character's hirelings and retainers) then you're getting more of the spotlight at the table than other players.

Of course, the other way to handle retainers is to let the DM manage them the same way they handle other NPCs. (This solution was not atypical among people who got tired of their players treating hirelings like self-sacrificial lambs or meaningless tissue paper.) But, personally, I've already got enough balls in the air when I'm DMing and I don't need the extra hassle of retainers.

I think Narf got it right first time, it's the damned stats.

The last fantasy campaign I played was with the GM's own system. It was roughly as complex as AD&D2e. I rolled up a noble with a stipend, he used some of that stipend to pay for a valet and later a stableboy.

I was a bit shocked when the GM told me I was going to have to roll up and roleplay the NPCs. He just didn't want to be bothered with all the stats.

I felt it would be dishonest to play them as slavishly loyal to my character, so I played them sometimes doing things their own way. But doing that while my own character was around felt a bit silly, really. Gamers don't want to see me playing with myself, that's just nasty.

The problem with retainers and even henchmen was that they were boring. If a Lord who set up his stronghold in the hills could hire bear-man ice shamans, mountain giants, frost wyrms, and ice nymphs, people would actually bother with appropriately-sized D&D parties.

Crap.
There IS something I forgot,

How much did the presence or lack of the campaign 'Megadungeon" have to do with this?

I'm thinking about the times I dealt with retainers and stories of other GMs using them, and the 2 contexts were:
85% of the time, the huge megadungeon.  Where the PCs expecting to try to stay in a dungeon enviroment for as long as possible, and where retainers meant "more area explored".
15% of the time, the huge outdoor andventure.  I used them more for this, back in the day.  I enjoyed having valets and squires and cooks, etc, out on large foray into the unknown.

I DM'd for the first time today (OD&D / Swords & Wizardry). The party hired two torch-bearers. It was very useful to be able to 'promote' them when players died. If player death was less common, then both DM and players would have less reason to bother with them.

Quote from: Age of Fable;388255I DM'd for the first time today (OD&D / Swords & Wizardry). The party hired two torch-bearers. It was very useful to be able to 'promote' them when players died. If player death was less common, then both DM and players would have less reason to bother with them.

Yup. I a way, when you select hirelings, henchmen and the like, you might be selecting a pool of potential PCs over the course of the campaign. Not only when "main" PCs die, mind you, but to switch back and forth between levels of experience, adapting to different party makeups for different adventures, etc.

Quote from: Age of Fable;388255It was very useful to be able to 'promote' them when players died.

That is an outstanding use of hirelings; as I recall, this was not even considered in the rules themselves.  Hirelings were mostly just money sinks and occasional meatshields.  Essentially, overhead to keep the players from getting too much raw wealth, although the going rates weren't particularly burdensome.  Even a somewhat meagre haul of a few hundred gold would pay for half a village to accompany the players, and leave plenty to spend on a moderately opulent lifestyle.  A somewhat more reasonable answer for 'the horses just stay where you left them' and mysteriously didn't need care or feeding for the day or two the party was occupied in the Heavily Guarded Subterranean Treasure Vault.

You know, curiously enough I don't think we ever did that, where in the event of a PC death the replacement PC was a retainer who got "promoted". At least, I can't remember it ever happening (and its not like we didn't have retainers, at least in those early years, like I said).

Its like it never occurred to us. Like it would have been offensive, for one of our characters to come up from "the Help".


RPGPundit

Quote from: LordVreeg;388251Crap.
There IS something I forgot,

How much did the presence or lack of the campaign 'Megadungeon" have to do with this?

I'm thinking about the times I dealt with retainers and stories of other GMs using them, and the 2 contexts were:
85% of the time, the huge megadungeon.  Where the PCs expecting to try to stay in a dungeon enviroment for as long as possible, and where retainers meant "more area explored".
15% of the time, the huge outdoor andventure.  I used them more for this, back in the day.  I enjoyed having valets and squires and cooks, etc, out on large foray into the unknown.

My first AD&D character was a cooking swordsman...who needs retainers? =)