GLoG: Sixteen Tons (The Hireling)
Image: Photographer Unknown, 403 (from a series entitled Coal Mine), 1915 - 1925. Public domain source.
Anyone can be a hireling. Torchbearers, haulers, specialists, and mercenaries - a whole community forms in any large enough town of folks looking for a day's work. They come and go with the coin and the passage of time. Most of them would be happy to quit if the opportunity presented itself.
You're not just a hireling. You're the Hireling. You've tried to quit, to settle down. It didn't work. No, you'll toil til the end of days, then you'll probably toil some more.
Starting Gear: Worn coveralls (as leather), shovel, three torches, and a contract with some institution outside of the party (confer with your GM).
Starting Skill: Roll on Ten Foot Polemic's d200 Failed Medieval Careers.
For each Hireling template, +1 Inventory Slot.
A Born One Morning...
B Owe My Soul to the Company Store, Another Day Older and Deeper in Debt
C One Fist of Iron, One Fist of Steel
D Straw Boss
Born One Morning...
Choose one:
- When the Sun Didn't Shine - Light sources you carry last twice as long.
- In the Drizzling Rain - Items in your inventory can't be damaged by the elements.
- To an Old Mama Lion - You gain the "Survivalist" skill.
Owe My Soul to the Company Store
If you would die, but have a contract to fulfill, you live until you've complete the terms of your contract. (Continue to roll on the Death and Dismemberment table or its equivalent in your system as you take new damage.)
Another Day Older and Deeper in Debt
When it comes time to divide up shares of treasure, you can't get a larger share than any hirelings in the party.
One Fist of Iron, One Fist of Steel
If one don't get you, the other one will. When armed only with tools and your bare hands, you gain an extra attack.
Straw Boss
You are a legend among hirelings. Any recruited by your party have advantage on Morale Tests and follow your orders implicitly, even if it would put them in mortal danger.
Design Notes:
Another class taking the lyrics of a song literally. I was already thinking about making a Hireling class. I feel like I often end up playing specialists as cutthroat jobbers who have more in common with the party's torchbearer than a wizard or knight.
Right now this class feels simultaneously too wordy and under-tuned. I want to get the contract thing into play as quickly as possible because its the meat of the class, but it feels world bending enough to be a D template feature.
My hope is that "Another Day Older and Deeper In Debt" and "Straw Boss" encourages a sort of solidarity with the hirelings. I think there is more tuning to be done to bring that to the fore.
I am keenly aware writing this that the class fetishizes (figuratively and literally, as in making it the source of mystical power) labor. "Isn't it cool that someone has crushing debt?" isn't a particularly attractive question to be asked by someone living a relatively cushy, academic lifestyle. The hope is that by treating every contract, even a mundane one, as a Faustian bargain, the fiction leans towards considering this problem, rather than papering over it.