A History of the Temple of the Frog

[Havard]

Was it not common for the Blackmoor PCs to bring a bunch of hirelings/soldiers with them though?

-Havard

Offhand I can't think of a single anecdote of an adventure (as opposed to a wargame scenerio) by any of the original players or by Arneson where NPC hirelings were mentioned.  Might have been, but I don't think it was common.

The group that seemed to have used hirelings and henchmen was the Greyhawk gang. They also seem to have pressed captured dungeon monsters into service taking them back to their own holdings.

Something to point out, the hireling/henchmen rules in Men & Magic, and the men-at-arm/professionals rules confuse a lot of people. 100 GP/level (though never explaining if that is per dungeon delve, for as long as you are delving the dungeon, per month or something else) vs a few gold per month. One explanation is the former if for dungeon delves which is more dangerous and the latter is for staffing your keep with flunkies. Another thought is, what if the latter is from Blackmoor and the former is from Greyhawk. Just a thought.

This is very interesting!
One anecdote that I think influenced my understanding of how these games were run was Greg's story about his first dungeon adventure where he was the sle survivor of the attack. I could be wrong, but I assumed many of the characters killed were NPCs.

I also sort of guessed that this is how they kept their "Explorer characters" alive before Bob Meyer complained about how they didn't have hit points and one hit meant the characters were killed.

Unit style play would also probably be a legacy from wargaming in general and also implied in Braunstein and definitely in Chainmail.

-Havard