It's been ages since anyone posted here in the RPG section, but I know there are still people lurking here...

I started a discussion about how to handle apprentices and goon squads in RPGs over on UK Role Players a while back - and I've finally put together a blog post summarising what we all talked about, and my derived conclusions.

TL:DR version - followers are great, but we need to avoid making the use of followers the Most Powerful Choice, and we need to avoid bogging the GM down with loads of NPCs to run. Give the followers to the players! Make them spend resource to advance their followers!

Sorted?