Welcome to THAC0 . . . with Advantage! We’re two friends that have been playing D&D a long time. While we both love lots of other RPGs, D&D told us we’re high enough level to build a podcast and attract followers.

Sometimes the real treasure is the friends we made along the way. Other times, the real treasure is the treasure we found along the way. But some rewards sit in the middle between those two extremes. This episode we’re going to take a look at other ways to reward your players beyond standard treasure. Get ready to hand out those titles, supernatural gifts, followers, and brand new puppies.

In earlier editions of D&D, when your character reached a certain level, they could build a fortress and attract followers. Clerics would attract less powerful priests, wizards would attract apprentices, thieves got to open a branch of the thieves guild to run, and fighters . . . got to collect taxes. They also attracted followers, because if you’re going to extort . . . er . . . collect taxes from the locals, you need armed and armored tax collectors. While AD&D had random event table, this is another instance where BECMI actually had more playable rules that involved tracking a Confidence Level and rolling on the specific events for that confidence level, which specified what happened every new year, whenever there was a natural disaster, when a large unallied military force shows up, and if you cancel an expected holiday or celebration. Which means Alan Rickman has to make a Confidence Level check in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves when he cancels Christmas.