The Culture: The Economy Of Adventuring

(Short post because it's Easter Sunday today and I have family over.)

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition has one core mechanism to drive entire campaigns: Training.

Page 86 of the Dungeon Master's Guide makes clear the following:

• Upward progress is not automatic. Meeting the Experience Point requirement to advance only indicates eligibility to advance; training is required (below Name Level).
• Referees are expected to grade player performance on a per-adventure basis, on a 1-4 scale; when that character goes to train, those ratings are added up and then divided by the number of adventures so rated, with the result being the number of weeks in real time spent in training (i.e. locked up in downtime and unavailable to play).
• Training costs 1500 gold pieces per level, PER WEEK. (e.g. 3rd level character pays 4500 gp per week training to advance to 4th).
• Name Level characters must self-train; time determined is the same, but gold spent varies by class.

As noted previously, multi-classed characters level up each class seperately. Bards have specific rules for advancement as Bards; see the Player's Handbook for details.

Adventuring Is A Business

Your man, regardless of who or what he is, has a simple reason to sortie: to get paid. Why does he want to get paid? To pay for training.

This is above and beyond spending gold on new or improved gear, magic items, spell research, hiring/equipping Henchmen or Hirelings, fortifications, transports (mounts, ships, wagons/chariots, etc.) and so on.

Congratulations! You have just learned that logistics matter. Now you're learning something that real-world mercenaries and adventurers figured out millenia ago: you need to balance risk against reward.

For the Referee, this also means that you too have to address this by ensuring that there's reward to be had for the risks undertaken.

This is what is at the core of the game: seeking out opportunities to earn the gold needed to pay for your man's advancement. Which lead is most likely to produce a profitable result? Who is available to do what? For multi-classed characters, there is also the question of going for training in a class now or waiting until you can do both (or all three) in succession.

Referees need to keep this in mind. Noble ideals and perfidious ambitions alike don't pay the trainers; gold does. Even for classes that ordinarily may have little or no use for coin, those costs remain because it is an abstraction. That gold cost can represent literal dropping sacks of cash on the table, or it can represent all the little things that go into fulfilling ritual or social observances; either way, your man pays that fee.

It's Just Business

This has logical consequences. Players will want to get paid. Referees will want to make players put in work to get those paydays, and there is a remedy at-hand: make players compete for them.

Now the strict timekeeping and 1:1 time policies start making themselves felt because it's not just you and the boys against NPC opposition. It's you and the boys against Bob's crew that plays at a different time; are you going for the same places, and if so trying to get to the same treasures? Maybe you two can negotiate an arrangement that suites both of your crews, or maybe you get your boys and wrangle up some muscle and go rob Bob's gang blind as they come out of whatever they're delving.

That's right, Player vs. Player is an option.

Or did you think all those Pirate and Western stories that informed all those Weird Tales that went into Appendix N about one group backstabbing the other was just there for show?

Conclusion

This being the core of the game shows why adventuring requires facing perils in the hopes of treasure. Players would be wise to get familiar with how this went down before the end of the World Wars snuffed out the last remnants of what was a worldwide profession (however disreputable) and drove the development of many cultures across the millenia- all of which, sooner or later, informed the literature which went into this game.

The player that focuses on doing his job (Class) as best he can, and balances risk vs. reward as best he can, is the player that will prove to be #EliteLevel and #WinAtD&D.