{"id":28839,"date":"2020-09-07T23:59:27","date_gmt":"2020-09-07T13:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/?p=28839"},"modified":"2020-09-07T23:51:43","modified_gmt":"2020-09-07T13:51:43","slug":"henchmen-henchmen-henchmen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/henchmen-henchmen-henchmen\/","title":{"rendered":"Carnival Roundup plus Henchmen! Henchmen! Henchmen!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ofdiceanddragons.com\/rpg-blog-carnival\/\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 2px solid #53411D\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-736\" title=\"rpg blog carnival logo\" src=\"http:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/images\/rpgblogcarnivallogo.jpg\" alt=\"rpg blog carnival logo\" width=\"228\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Campaign Mastery&#8217;s turn as host of the Blog Carnival has now passed into the dusty pages of history, and the baton has passed to Gonz at Codex Anathema, whose topic is &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/codexanathema.com\/2020\/08\/31\/whose-relic-is-it-anyway\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Whose Relic Is It Anyway?<\/a>&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That means that it&#8217;s time for a roundup of the submissions in response to our round of hosting &#8211; as usual, I&#8217;ve waited an extra week in case of late entries.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/bc-aug-2020-what-we-need-is-are\/\" title=\"Blog Carnival Aug 2020: What We Need Is\/Are\u2026\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">What We Need in the Zenith-3 Campaign Is: More Pace<\/a> &#8211; Campaign Mastery<\/strong> &#8211; As part of the anchor post, I looked at the most pressing need in my Zenith-3 campaign, which is for the plot to start accelerating. As is usually the case, that acceleration will start small and then grow. We&#8217;ve had one game session since, and it constitutes most of that &#8220;small start&#8221;; if all goes according to plan, starting next session, things should ramp up considerably!<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/simulated-unreality\/\" title=\"Simulated Unreality: Game Physics Tribulations\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Simulated Unreality: Game Physics Tribulations<\/a> &#8211; Campaign Mastery<\/strong> &#8211; I followed that up by looking at what <em>had<\/em> been the most pressing need in the campaign until the game session played just before the Carnival, of adjusting the game physics to more closely attune with (and justify\/support) the game mechanics. There will be a follow-up post to this actually specifying how magic works in the campaign (now) in a week or two &#8211; I&#8217;m trying to decide whether or not I can justify it as a submission to the current Blog Carnival!<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/expandingfrontier.com\/2020\/08\/august-rpg-blog-carnival-what-we-need-is-more-focus\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">What we need is&#8230; more focus<\/a> &#8211; The Expanding Frontier<\/strong> &#8211; Tom hadn&#8217;t intended to write a submission to this carnival, but found the question posed bubbling away in the background of his mental processes until it hit the right spot and the answers came spilling out. His problem is, n a nutshell, overcommitment &#8211; as someone who has experienced that myself a time or two, I can sympathize! But if you ever feel like you&#8217;ve got a lot on your plate, check out his review of all the irons he has in the fire at the moment. And if you ever find yourself in the same situation, check it out (especially the comments) for some direction on solving the problem. Step one is always recognizing that there <em>is<\/em> a problem&#8230; I couldn&#8217;t help but observe the similarities between his situation, and the more confined issue of too much game prep to do and too little time to do it all, so there&#8217;s wisdom there to unpack for all of us who GM.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/codexanathema.com\/2020\/08\/24\/what-a-dm-needs-more\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">What A DM Needs More<\/a> &#8211; Codex Anathema<\/strong> &#8211; For his contribution, Gonz found himself ruminating on the balance of the &#8220;three pillars of D&#038;D in it&#8217;s 5e form&#8221; &#8211; combat, exploration, and [in-game] social interaction &#8211; and finding that they are hugely out of whack. His solution was a greater emphasis on making non-combat challenges extraordinary and more interactive. In response, I reminisced in the comments of the anchor post for the carnival (the first link in this list) about some tweaks to the basic TORG skill resolution system that I was working on back when that was my primary campaign, and which had a similar sound to Gonz&#8217;s propositions, offered for whatever they were worth.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&#8230;And that&#8217;s it. But even if it didn&#8217;t result in a carnival entry, I can at least hope that I caused every potential participant to think about their campaigns in a different way for a while &#8211; which can only improve those campaigns.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_28842\" style=\"width: 410px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-28842\" src=\"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/press-conference-1166343.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"390\" height=\"172\" style=\"border: 2px solid black\" class=\"size-full wp-image-28842\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/press-conference-1166343.jpg 390w, https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/press-conference-1166343-120x53.jpg 120w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 390px) 100vw, 390px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-28842\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fame &#8211; and followers &#8211; always comes at a cost.<br \/>Image by <a href=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/users\/ivanacoi-323327\/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=1166343\" target=\"_blank\">Ivana Divi&#x00161;ov&#x000E1;<\/a> from <a href=\"https:\/\/pixabay.com\/?utm_source=link-attribution&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_campaign=image&amp;utm_content=1166343\" target=\"_blank\">Pixabay<\/a>, crop by Mike<\/p><\/div>\n<h3>Henchmen, Henchmen, Henchmen! &#8211; The Beginning<\/h3>\n<p>The time when a blog carnival roundup could amount to a full Campaign Mastery -scale article are long past &#8211; or, at least, haven&#8217;t prevailed for the last few years. But in his Facebook Group, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/groups\/204054660676022\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The Okay Grognard Show<\/a>, Mark Clover asked &#8220;How much do you subvert expectations when you create Henchmen as followers of PCs or Villains? Do all of the henchmen have to be goons?!?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I intended to write a quick one-line answer, focusing on the villain side of the question, but felt the need to comment on the approach contained in that answer. And that grew a bit, and then a bit more. And immediately that I hit &#8220;post,&#8221; started realizing that I really wanted to expand on the answer &#8211; and to at least look at the other part of the question, PC followers. So that&#8217;s how I&#8217;m going to &#8216;bulk out&#8217; this post.<\/p>\n<h3>Henchmen, Henchmen, Henchmen!<\/h3>\n<p>For me, the question of who a villain&#8217;s henchmen are always comes back to the psychology of the recruiter &#8211; but not the psychology <em>now,<\/em> the psychology <em>then.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Any villain who needs to recruit a henchman has to find a balance between competing interests &#8211; ability, ambition, loyalty, and security. The first and last of these are undoubtedly the most important.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Ability<\/strong> &#8211; First and foremost, the henchman must be capable of doing what the boss wants him to do. To some extent, the capabilities of the henchman will shape the plans of his employer, but to some extent, those plans will impact on the initial selection of a henchman to be recruited.<br \/>\n<\/li>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<li><strong>Ambition<\/strong> &#8211; The more broadly-capable the prospective henchman is, the more justification he has for grand ambitions &#8211; and while that can be a lever for the recruiter to manipulate, it can also cause problems at inconvenient times. The combination of ability and no personal ambition is rare and prized!<br \/>\n<\/li>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<li><strong>Loyalty<\/strong> Bosses inclined towards anarchy and chaos might enjoy the wild and sometimes manic actions of a henchman of like character, but they would have greater <em>trust<\/em> in solid and demonstrable reliability and loyalty. Everybody loves a Lawful subordinate! This quality opposes and inhibits Ambition, and vice-versa.<br \/>\n<\/li>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<li><strong>Security<\/strong> &#8211; Henchmen, by definition, are less capable than the master villain in at least some respects &#8211; even if those are only a willingness and capability of exploiting others. That means that every recruit poses a security risk, opens another vector for the leaking of critical information. That could be as small a risk as being followed, or bragging too much, or name-dropping, or as large a danger as turning state&#8217;s evidence if caught. But it also carries a second implication &#8211; since nothing is ever the employer&#8217;s fault, blame for failures must be attributed to the shortcomings of lesser mortals, and those would be uppermost in the villains&#8217; mind in the recruitment of replacements.<br \/>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It&#8217;s the combination of security, and the need for specialized skills \/ knowledge \/ abilities, that leads to the selection of non-standard henchmen &#8211; i.e., subverting the goon tropes.<\/p>\n<p>So I start by deciding (in relative terms) when the henchman was first recruited, and what the villain was planning at the time. I take into consideration where he can recruit <em>from<\/em> at the time, and who he is likely to find there.<\/p>\n<p>As time moves forward, his plans may change, his priorities may change, his plans may change, he may gain access to a broader population base, and what he can offer will certainly change. So the more recent recruits will be markedly different to the early recruits. Once PCs start meddling, that it likely to introduce a third change &#8211; the villain may even start recruiting a set of operatives specifically to prevent the interference.<\/p>\n<p>I once hit my PCs with a villain who was completely in over his head and struggling to cope. In the course of blocking his most recent scheme, they learned that this was his 34th attempt at achieving anything noteworthy, and the first to ever get this far &#8211; his previous plot collapsing when his critically-emplaced minion died of a heart attack mere days before the moment was due. By the time the villain finished his soliloquy, the PCs were so moved that they seriously thought about letting him get away with things, just for a little while! (The whole thing was inspired by a Road Runner &#8211; Coyote cartoon, and a Bugs Bunny &#8216;toon in which a guilt trip is laid on Bugs which makes him (momentarily) turn into a shoe&#8217;s heel).<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s an element of opportunism to be taken into consideration, too. Sometimes a ripe plum will simply fall into the hands of a villain, so that can&#8217;t be ignored.<\/p>\n<p>So let&#8217;s break it down:<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Vague ambitions, Preliminary plans\n<ul>\n<li>&#x021D2; Generic Flunkies <em>from the pool of available potential recruits<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/li>\n<li>Early attempts\n<ul>\n<li>&#x021D2; early failures\n<ul>\n<li>&#x021D2; recruits who do not suffer the flaws blamed for the failures<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/li>\n<li>Middle-period attempts\n<ul>\n<li>&#x021D2; amended ambitions (perhaps grander, certainly more specific)\n<ul>\n<li>&#x021D2; better planning and a modicum of experience\n<ul>\n<li>&#x021D2; modest or preliminary successes\n<ul>\n<li>&#x021D2; a broader pool of potential recruits resulting in more capable henchmen<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/li>\n<li>Unexpected opportunism\n<ul>\n<li>&#x021D2; henchmen who break the mold\n<ul>\n<li>&#x021D2; revised plans and broader or altered ambitions to take advantage of the unexpected windfall.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><\/li>\n<li>Firm plans now in progress\n<ul>\n<li>&#x021D2; henchmen recruited for specific purposes and abilities<\/li>\n<li>&#x021D2; henchmen who probably don&#8217;t fit the &#8220;goon&#8221; mold<\/li>\n<li>May include specific anti-PC task force once the PCs have meddled or acquired a reputation<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But GM&#8217;s should not neglect the potential for working backwards from henchmen to villain &#8211; a random henchman can fill in a number of blanks in the villain&#8217;s past, simply by looking at the answers to:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Why was this henchman recruited?<\/li>\n<li>Where was this henchman recruited?<\/li>\n<li>What was he doing there?<\/li>\n<li>What does his nature, and that of the villain, imply about the villain&#8217;s plans and ambitions at the time?<\/li>\n<li>And what does that tell you about the villain&#8217;s origins, past, and psychology?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>Tropes are unimportant. If it&#8217;s logical for the villain to recruit goons, given his ambitions and plans at the time, then he will recruit goons. The more grandiose the ambitions, the less likely it is that ordinary goons will suffice &#8211; but they may still be necessary as a stepping stone. The later in a villain&#8217;s career that recruitment occurs, the more likely it is that a henchman will be atypical, either because they were recruited for specific purposes or because they were an opportune pick-up once the villain was in a position to attract broader &#8216;support&#8217;.<\/p>\n<h3>Followers, Followers, Followers!<\/h3>\n<p>The story of followers of PCs turns the above on its head, because these are not necessarily people that the PCs would have chosen. So the answer to this side of the question rests on the issue of exactly <em>why<\/em> the follower <em>is<\/em> a follower of the PC?<\/p>\n<p>I was actually contemplating this issue the other day, without realizing it; I recently bought a boxed set of the singles by the Bay City Rollers (3 CDs and a booklet), and was musing on the fact that they were only moderately supported within my school year, and mostly on a song-by-song basis, but were embraced far more strongly by my sister&#8217;s classmates, a year younger &#8211; and, so far as I recall, were supported even more weakly by those a year ahead of me in schooling, who generally saw them as a &#8220;tartan gimmick&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>I suspect that the answer to the question posed above is going to be different in the case of each different follower, that each will have some itch or need that the PCs do (or might be expected to) scratch or provide.<\/p>\n<p>Some will be cases of the NPCs looking for what the PCs are providing to their followers; some will be cases of the NPC hoping or expecting to use the PCs for their own ends, and some of these expectations will be reasonable and some not.<\/p>\n<p>Some will be followers because they admire or respect something about one or more of the PCs. Others may be followers because someone <em>they<\/em> like or respect is a supporter &#8211; though they may not go so far as to be a follower.<\/p>\n<p>You would have to have been living under a rock for the last 40 years or so not to be aware of the potential price of celebrity. Whether they want to, or not, famous people find themselves in the center of a cult of personality, and the resulting echo chamber of endorsement and approval generally has two effects: either the resulting ego-boost goes to the person&#8217;s head, or they try so hard to live up to the hype that the pressure gets to them and they crash and burn &#8211; or both. The younger the celebrity, the less protection they generally have against these forces and pressures.<\/p>\n<p>That said, the more one has grown up in a modern setting and seen these influences act upon others who came before you, the better armed you are to resist them yourself. Equipping the modern generation to cope with fame is built into the fabric of modern society. The real victims were those who were young and famous when the phenomenon was real.<\/p>\n<p>With that foundation, let&#8217;s look at some specifics.<\/p>\n<p>For every NPC that I create, or use within a plot, I ask a couple of questions:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>What desire \/ need might support for the PC(s) satisfy?<\/li>\n<li>What desire \/ need might antipathy for the PC(s) satisfy?<\/li>\n<li>How extreme is the NPC likely to be in their support \/ antipathy?<\/li>\n<li>Does this attitude impact the plot?<\/li>\n<li>Is that impact beneficial or harmful?<\/li>\n<li>Should I keep this NPC as written or replace them?<\/li>\n<li>If I keep them, how should this attitude on the part of the NPC be expressed? Clothes, iconery, verbally, mannerisms, actions?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>All of this means that every follower is unique, not cut from the same cloth. Some may represent popular tropes, because those tropes represent or codify a truth about relationships or societies; others will subvert or ignore those tropes and be atypical.<\/p>\n<p>Four examples come to mind &#8211; and I am sure that the players will all remember the first vividly even though it was 18 years ago, by my estimation, maybe more:<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The PCs are summoned to the local police station where they encounter a middle-aged woman wearing a dotted shower curtain as a cape <em>and nothing else,<\/em> who is sure that she has what it takes to be a member of their group and that the group <em>needs<\/em> her. This encounter signaled to the players that their characters fame, at least locally, had reached the point where unwanted effects of celebrity would be occurring. The setting was an alternate 1960s, with Joe McCarthy as President.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>The same campaign is now in a different alternate timeline in which it is the 2050s and the British Empire never fell (though it did evolve). They are required to host regular tours through &#8220;public areas&#8217; (including the tourist shop) of their headquarters because if they didn&#8217;t, <em>the fans would get in, anyway<\/em> and they <em>need<\/em> the extra revenue, anyway &#8211; their facility is very expensive to maintain!<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>At one point I created an NPC whose hobby was killing dogs because one had once intruded on the shadow of a PC with whom he was obsessed. During the writing of the adventure, I decided that this sideshow would distract from the main plot too much and redid the character to someone who thought the PCs were all hype and no substance, and hence was mildly antagonistic, but who would do their job (in this case, provide the PC with necessary information). The results were entertaining without derailing the plotline.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>There have, of course, also been various con-men with forged endorsements and people trying to make deals in their name and otherwise insinuate themselves into the PCs lives for their own purposes.<br \/>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>The Wrap-up<\/h3>\n<p>There you have it &#8211; Blog Carnival, Henchmen, and Followers. Since the latter two also revolve around needs, and their satisfaction, they are thematically consistent with the first &#8211; at least, that&#8217;s my story, and I&#8217;m sticking to it like an obsessed follower!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Campaign Mastery&#8217;s turn as host of the Blog Carnival has now passed into the dusty pages of history, and the baton has passed to Gonz at Codex Anathema, whose topic is &#8220;Whose Relic Is It Anyway?&#8221; That means that it&#8217;s time for a roundup of the submissions in response to our round of hosting &#8211; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29,67,74,89,96],"tags":[322,108,163,155,117,172,218,282],"series":[],"class_list":["post-28839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campaign-management","category-dnd","category-mike","category-npcs-etc","category-write","tag-blog-carnival","tag-campaigns","tag-cultures-societies","tag-dd","tag-game-mechanics","tag-npcs","tag-pathfinder","tag-pcs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1toiD-7v9","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28839"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28839"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28839\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28847,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28839\/revisions\/28847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28839"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28839"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28839"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.campaignmastery.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=28839"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}