Back when overland strategy and logisitcs we more important you needed people just to carry stuff, relay messages, and guard the horses. When GMing campaigns I generally try to encourage hirelings by often assuming that the redshirts were competent in these simple, non-glorious tasks. Therefore hirelings existed in my games primarily as a way of allowing the PCs to not sweat the small stuff. Usually.
(And then there was that one time where Baron Phostarius was petrified deep down in the Dungeon of Doom and it was up to his stalwart henchmen to carry his stony ass back to town. You know your henchies have been treated well when do that and then they pony up the cost of a stone to flesh out of their own pocket.)
Anyway, I started this post not actually meaning to talk about henchmen and such, but rather to show off a couple of pictures. Seeing the Grenadier hireling figures reminded me of how much I liked some of their old box art. So I went over to the same place James probably got his pic, Stuff of Legends, the premier place were grown men can go to wax nostalgic over tiny lumps of lead shaped like troglodytes. Seriously, you should go check that joint out.
Anyway, here are the pics I've been meaning to show you. Feel free to click for a bigger version.
One of the things I love about these pieces is the way the dungeon itself is almost a character. There's danger all around and the party is doing its best to cope with that. They're looking every which way, they got torches handy, but the darkness is all around them.
Also that wizard in red is totally rad.
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I also like the idea of bringing a Roman Legionaire into a dungeon.
ReplyDeleteThe guy in the back rules!
That wizard does indeed rock.
ReplyDeleteAnd, yes, I did get my image from Stuff of Legends -- what a great site.
I think hirelings served two important functions regarding the high lethality of some dungeons.
ReplyDelete1) The DM could redshirt a hireling to demonstrate the killing power of a trap/monster. This cost the party resources without the big hit of losing a character.
2) If a PC was dead or out of commission, players could take over an NPC and still do stuff instead of just watching until a new character could be worked in.
Stan
Wow, those are some awesome pictures and make me want to launch into some dungeon-delving ASAP. I like the fact that the dungeon is bigger than they are and they aren't "the show."
ReplyDeleteBig parties, too!
"Therefore hirelings existed in my games primarily as a way of allowing the PCs to not sweat the small stuff."
ReplyDeleteWhat good is the PCs not sweating the small stuff, when the PLAYERS indeed have to do so?
Sweet! My brothers had the Fighting Men and Thieves sets. The cover of the fighter set made it look like they were battling some smoke in the dungeon room.
ReplyDeleteI inherited the minis and still have some of them; the boxes are long gone, alas.
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ReplyDeleteYeah, love those old lead lumps. I still have several boxes of those Grenadier AD&D ones, and several of the TSR ones from the early 80's too.
ReplyDeleteMy fave mini, which was painted and glossed (and treasured) was the Paladin looking fellow from the "Dungeon Explorers" set 5001...the guy with the Holy Cross shield graphic, front row, middle mini in this pic:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tpope/sol/
grenadier/images/5001.jpg
That *was* my guy, back then ('81 or so)...hehe.
Interesting that the little halfling with the torch seems to have survived whatever calamity claimed the rest of his first group... ;)
ReplyDeleteThat *was* my guy, back then ('81 or so)...hehe.
ReplyDeleteYep, mine too.
Wow, that just brought back some memories. I had those sets too! That paladin with the cross shield was BOSS!!! I painted the shield white, with the cross in red... no painting skills to speak of and I used the oil paints from a paint-by-numbers set, so it looked terrible, but I loved him. The great thing about the box art was that it matched the figs exactly!
ReplyDeleteI think that someone in my area was an old schooler who had to part ways with his collection. My girlfriend and I do a lot of antiquing in our area, and twice now we've come away with either Grenadier minis or old Ral Partha mini's from the 70s. Right now they're sitting in a solution of warm water and alcohol to see if we can scrub some of that 70s era NEON GREEN PAINT off of them.
ReplyDeleteI like the first one I got, the Wizard's Tower, myself :)
Wow, I actually own something you've posted, the hirelings box. Unfortunately I never got a chance to use them. A paladin doesn't really send his treasure carriers into battle.
ReplyDeleteI'm not the best of people, but Sam and Tobit were getting half-shares when they were still 0-level.
ReplyDeleteOf course when they went to full shares, Sam got a tattoo, and Tobit got married...