Quote Originally Posted by Libertad View Post
How does the game handle the possibility of PCs being rulers of nations or merchant princes?
A good question. 1st edition AD&D doesn't really address this beyond some very basic guidelines: once you reach a certain level, you can build a castle / thieves' guild / whatever, and you get a table to determine what followers shop up. But it's raelly bare-bones and lacking.

However, you should really check out the Mentzer series of D&D (Basic, Expert, Companion, Master, Immortal), or the Rules Cyclopedia, which is very similar. These books, especially Companion and Master) are a really lot more detailed about these things. Rules on how how to found a domain, relationships with other nations, population, taxation, natural resources, tournaments, mass combat, etc.. Depending on what it is you're exactly looking for, it might even be a bit too much. Also, 2nd edition AD&D had a Castle Guide, useful for building castles and figuring out the costs, etc..

Another thing you might find interesting in this topic, though not strictly AD&D, are Adventurer, Conqueror, King, a new but old-school system based on D&D AFAIK, which puts a great deal of emphasis on such matters; and An Echo, Resounding, which will come out in the future and promises to have lots of stuff relevant to these sorts of interests.

Are hirelings and henchmen meant to stay at the PCs' "home base" or can they fare well following them on adventures?
Well, you can hire them a long time before you get a serious "home base", so it makes sense to bring them along. Once you have something serious like a castle, it becomes a different situation, of course: you'll want it to be guarded at all times, and of course you don't want to take the sheriff, the castellan and the horseboy down with you into the dungeon. :)

Another practical point - though this really should be a system-independent consideration - is that if you keep hiring people and failing to keep them alive, that's bound to give your company a bad name and soon enough, no one will want to hire up with you.

How dependent are PCs on wealth and equipment to effectively contribute to adventures? Can a high-level fighter make do with substandard armor and weapons?
I'd say it really depends on the DM and the game he's running. For instance, if you get to a certain level and he starts stocking his adventures with monsters that can only be hurt by magic weapons... well, the fighters will be screwed without those. Similarly, if it's the kind of campaign where you go up against the sort of demigods or gods in the endgame that you find in official publications, you'll really need a heavy magical loadout. But then, it's also quite possible to have a completely different campaign, where it's a lot less important.