Gregorius21778: Good Help is Hard to Find

Attention please! This is not the work of a native speaker. , please have a look at the preview to decide if my English is up to your standards. Thank you!

Most OSR games allow the PC to hire (or have) retainers for tasks they don´t want to bother themselves with, don´t have the skills for or simply need a few more hands for. Depending on the GM and the style of the game group, those are either full fledged NPC in their own right or just some rather faceless figures that provide what the group lacks to tackle the adventure ahead.

Everyone who ever hired people to do a job knows that one may end up with a personality that is not... easy. Everyone who has read their share of literature or watched movies knows the “conflict in the group” theme that especially the horror genre (no matter if survival, slasher, fantasy or scifi) tends to toy with so often.

Good Help is Hard to Find features 50 flaws for fantasy OSR hirelings, henchmen and retainers. A hexcrawl or long term adventure can gain an additional side plot if one of the important NPC is not easy to get along with. Decisions need to be made than, and “what is right” may be different from “what is wise”. Even a short trip to the dungeon may benefit from a little twist when the boy hired to carry the torch has No taste for
Bloodletting or when the old veteran swordsman that served well on three battlefields in the past finds out that he is Afraid of Being Underground. What if the healer is callous beyond believe, the local guide turns out to be inept or the thief hired to take care of locks and traps turns out to be insurgent?

All of this may come into play with this title: either at the GM´s whim or as the result of a failed test during the hiring process. Each of the fifty entries has a description on how the flaw is triggered and what the effects are. Those marked with an [M] the GM may roll for with a Moral check for the retainer whenever the circumstances may provoke the flaw.

This product is an independent production by Gregorius21778 and is not affiliated with Lamentations of the Flame Princess. Lamentations of the Flame Princess is a registered trademark owned by James Edward Raggi IV.