Troupe-Style D&D Play? What Am I Even On About!

Do you use troupe-style play, or varieties of it, for your OD&D/OSR campaigns?

For definition purposes, I'm thinking of troupe-style play in one-half of the Ars Magica sense -- wizard (or magus) as prime character with supporting cast to handle certain types of adventures -- not as the rotating referee style play that some Ars Magica groups employ.

I find this is kind of how OD&D works already. You have your character and you have your retinue of henchmen and hirelings and so forth. The latter, of course, are beholden to the former. Pretty much the same as in Ars Magica -- unless my memory fails me -- excepting the obvious differences in the contexts of the two gameplay experiences.

Personally, I'm growing increasingly fond of a hybrid troupe-style mode of play in my group's OD&D games where players have a small retinue of characters to choose from for adventures, typically 3 to 4. We only ever have 1 referee for our campaigns.

In this "hybrid" version of troupe-style, all of the characters are on the same "playing field" to start at 1st level (not beholden to or employed by another character), but the frequency of participation in adventures ultimately determines their rise to prominence within the party. Typically all of the characters are linked in some way -- from the same family, friends from a village,  children of former adventuring companions, whatever works for the player and campaign setting. Each character in a player's roster also develops his or her own retinue of henchmen and hirelings and so forth, just as a regular character, at least in as much as the player desires to do so.

My home group is very small (3 people) so we're finding this mode of play helps to cover not only all kinds of tactical situations that come up in adventures, but can lead to some interesting dynamics (competitiveness, alliances, favors owed, butt of humor) within the party, and it keeps everyone's play experience varied and interesting as you never know if you're playing a fighter or wizard or cleric (or maybe all three!) in the next adventure. It also helps us deal with the relatively high mortality rates among characters in older edition D&D games. Not that it's hard to make a new character on the spot, but it's kind of nice to have one or more characters ready to go that already possess ties (even if minimal or sparsely detailed) and are at least known to the adventuring party.

So, do you use this or a different mode of troupe-style play? Do you just play multiple characters and leave it at that? How do you handle small game groups and multiple characters?

Racial Secondary Skills Tables

The Borderlands blog will be going dark for the next couple of weeks while my wife and I take a holiday down in the Caribbean. This past winter was particularly long and cold, so this vacation is long overdue and we will definitely enjoy soaking up the sun. And rum. :-)

Today I'm posting my goofy little racial secondary skills tables for Labyrinth Lord (or any old-school games). Basically, I've taken the secondary skills/professions and rather arbitrarily broken them out and added some additional ones based on the stereotypical notions of the "basic four" fantasy races. It's pretty vanilla stuff and its origin goes way back to my Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay days in the late 80s.

Enjoy, and see you all soon!


SECONDARY SKILLS

Roll on the appropriate racial table below to determine your profession or occupation before you became an adventurer. You know how to do the things associated with your profession and the referee will determine when your knowledge is helpful or beneficial to adventuring situations.

SECONDARY SKILLS TABLE: DWARF

Roll d20	Profession	Roll d20	Profession
1	Archivist	11	Locksmith
2	Armorer	12	Man-at-arms
3	Artisan	13	Mapmaker
4	Blacksmith	14	Merchant
5	Cook	15	Miner
6	Engineer	16	Runescribe
7	Gemcutter	17	Slave
8	Initiate	18	Soldier
9	Jailer	19	Stonemason
10	Jeweler	20	Weaponsmith

SECONDARY SKILLS TABLE: ELF

Roll d20	Profession	Roll d20	Profession
1	Animal trainer	11	Hunter
2	Artisan	12	Initiate
3	Astrologer	13	Jeweler
4	Blacksmith	14	Merchant
5	Bowyer/Fletcher	15	Minstrel
6	Cook	16	Sage
7	Furrier	17	Smuggler
8	Gambler	18	Soldier
9	Guide	19	Vintner
10	Herbalist	20	Weaponsmith

SECONDARY SKILLS TABLE: HALFLING

Roll d20	Profession	Roll d20	Profession
1	Animal trainer	11	Herder
2	Artisan	12	Jeweler
3	Blacksmith	13	Locksmith
4	Brewer	14	Merchant
5	Butcher	15	Militiaman
6	Cook	16	Miller
7	Farmer	17	Scribe
8	Gardiner	18	Smuggler
9	Gypsy	19	Tailor
10	Herbalist	20	Woodsman

SECONDARY SKILLS TABLE: HUMAN

Roll d20	Profession A	Roll d20	Profession B
1	Animal trainer	1	Locksmith
2	Artisan	2	Longshoreman
3	Baker	3	Man-at-arms
4	Blacksmith	4	Mapmaker
5	Bowyer/Fletcher	5	Mercenary
6	Brewer	6	Merchant
7	Butcher	7	Miner
8	Cook	8	Scribe
9	Farmer	9	Slave
10	Gambler	10	Smuggler
11	Gardiner	11	Soldier
12	Guide	12	Squire
13	Herbalist	13	Stonemason
14	Herder	14	Street thug
15	Hunter	15	Tailor
16	Initiate	16	Tax collector
17	Jailer	17	Torch bearer
18	Jester	18	Vintner
19	Jeweler	19	Woodsman
20	Leatherworker	20	Weaponsmith

Note: Roll d6. On a result of 1-3, roll d20 on Profession A column. On a result of 4-6, roll d20 on Profession B column.