Fantasy Wargaming

Running the Thief Domain: So, you have some followers, what are going do with them? The domain I am currently running has 15 thieves ranging in level from 1 to 7.  They are mostly Human, but few are different races. They have to earn, how do you put them to work? RANDOM ENCOUNTERS IN TOWN Any Master Thief's stronghold must be located in or very near a Town or City, so his followers will spend a lot of downtime in these urban settings. Sure, there is the chance they'll randomly encounter a good target for pickpocket or mugging while moving around town.  Though the DMG 191 random City encounter entry indicates a gang with a leader,  minimum 8th level, one could create a gang with the same total levels... So, say you have a 7th level Thief follower and pair him with two 2nd levels...that's more than an average total number of levels for a Random Thief encounter from the City description.  Or a 5th with two 3's. RANDOM ENCOUNTERS IN THE WILDERNESS...

 The Judges Guild published a supplement for OD&D called the Ready Reference Sheets (RRS) in 1977.  This little booklet contained a wealth of random tables for all sorts of uses.  One in particular, on page 3, included who one might encounter in an Urban locale: This is useful for more than just for random encounters.  It provides an insight into who lives and works in the City.  Every bricklayer must have somewhere to live.  Every merchant has to have a shop and/or warehouse.   Backing up one page, RRS provides the City Encounter matrix: Analysis of these figures provides some additional probabilities of each being available in the city.

 TSR Hobbies published a Playing Aid called OUTDOOR GEOMORPHS Set One:  Walled City in 1977.  In this supplement, GG included some guidance concerning how he thought a City/Town should be constructed for use in D&D.   Just like other supplements of the time some common themes are present: Divisions within the City - also referred to as Wards or Quarters Government Military Force Occupations On the last, GG provides a somewhat extensive list of occupations for citizens living in teh Town: All of these people have to live somewhere and work somewhere, so GG gives us some typical locales for these: One could create quite a random matrix just from these entries alone.