The Gaming Den

Why don't we? We have a thread about economics, dungeoneering, etc why don't we have a discussion about making Kingdoms? If the 1E thread is any indicator I am sure I haven't been the only one to think over doing such a thing. I know I made an attempt at it a while ago but postponed the idea because it was taking too much of what little time I have away from making more basic rules for my game.

Stronghold building should be IN the basic rules of your game.

Even before your characters are owning their own strongholds their adventures should frequently if not constantly occur in Strongholds, things that used to be strongholds or that could be occupied and become strongholds.

Economic issues like availability of natural resources, man power, skilled workers, trained warriors/wizards etc... that would be important to be somewhat formalized for stronghold building/management are ALSO potentially very important issues for pre-stronghold management play, even from square one with character creation knowing what sort of swords and what sort of sword techniques are in a region are important for making your character right now, even if it won't be for the purposes of recruiting guards with that same martial arts style for a bit of a while after that.

PhoneLobster wrote:Stronghold building should be IN the basic rules of your game.

Yes.

Discussions of labor and material availability can be pushed into a later supplement, but the rules for what a stronghold is, what it is made out of, and how it is built should be in the basic rules.

-Username17

I'm basing mine on Earth, because I'm a lazy cheater. Places where people are now, are places people are in the game; as well as places people were previously in history. I want some overlap, to make it feel more kitchensinky, even in time frame.

The OP was more aimed at why we haven't had a discussion on the board about making rules for kingdom building. I'm fairly sure everyone is at least somewhat interested in having rules for such a thing but I don't believe I've seen (or at least been able to find) any discussions about what the rules of such a thing should look like.

Seems like a lot of work for something that'll probably be handwaved away by the DM. What level of abstraction do we want?

Also, you keep saying Kingdom Building. Are we talking about creating a Nation or is this a single Castle/Keep/Tree House?

PhoneLobster wrote:Stronghold building should be IN the basic rules of your game.

Even before your characters are owning their own strongholds their adventures should frequently if not constantly occur in Strongholds, things that used to be strongholds or that could be occupied and become strongholds.

I think it goes without saying that basic questions like "how do I smash down a door?" should be addressed in the basic rules of an action game. But I wouldn't classify that as "stronghold building".

I'd be perfectly happy to have questions like "how many bathrooms and fireplaces should a castle have?" addressed in the Build Your Own Adventures Handbook so that folks who only play canned modules don't have to pay for it.

It's going to be a plot device most of the time. The rules should have any mechanical benefits you'd receive (minions, income, a place to stash your loot) but things like "I have a castle" or "I have a thieve's guild" aren't going to be mechanically bound for the most part.

I think it's important to recognize that only a small amount of stronghold building needs to be included in the core rule book, the rest needs to be placed in a supplement, because most of it will be pure fluff.

Ironically, it's a lot of really necessary fluff because many DMs to design their own adventures and campaign worlds. I would wager few players really know the whole structure of a medieval stronghold and how it was generally setup. All of those details (and I'm not talking about the number of garderrobes in a given castle) are potential plot points for an adventure.

tzor wrote: I would wager few players really know the whole structure of a medieval stronghold and how it was generally setup. All of those details (and I'm not talking about the number of garderrobes in a given castle) are potential plot points for an adventure.

I agree, but if I buy a module someone has (presumably) taken care of those details for me.

hogarth wrote:I agree, but if I buy a module someone has (presumably) taken care of those details for me.

Agreed. If you buy a module. On the other hand ... you have the shadowrun thread.

Oh crap, did I just break the fourth wall of great module design? If you are going to have several different people publish adventures you can't have one adventure have one set of rules and another have the exact oppposite. You need everyone to be singing from the same hymnal, even in module design. In other words, if you want good consistent adventure modules, then those writers need a good reference guide. And if it is that good for them, it's good for you too!

When people don't do that, things suck and you have the current status quo.

tzor wrote: In other words, if you want good consistent adventure modules, then those writers need a good reference guide. And if it is that good for them, it's good for you too!

I think we're in agreement -- there should be an "Adventure Building Handbook" available, but it doesn't need to be part of the basic rules.

hogarth wrote:

tzor wrote: In other words, if you want good consistent adventure modules, then those writers need a good reference guide. And if it is that good for them, it's good for you too!

I think we're in agreement -- there should be an "Adventure Building Handbook" available, but it doesn't need to be part of the basic rules.

I disagree. People are going to be building their own adventures long before they use even half of the monsters, spells, and magic items that clog the core books.

Not only that, but if you delay those rules you automatically create a group of people that won't use them because "those rules will change everything" that they're already used to or have done in their games. This is different from the people that may elect to ignore those rules from the outset, but they probably weren't going to buy your Adventure Builder Guide in the first place.

As part of the pipe dream that is such a book, I'd personally want it to include layouts and discussions of real-world architecture and geography for comparison and reference. It's amazing to me how many adventures take place in tombs, temples, or dungeons that you could fit into the promenade of the Temple of Karnak or the courtyard of Salisbury Cathedral. How many "fantastic locations" that are less amazing than images of Dallol Lake, Bryce Canyon, or (leaving earth for a moment) the ice cliffs of Miranda.

hogarth wrote: I think we're in agreement -- there should be an "Adventure Building Handbook" available, but it doesn't need to be part of the basic rules.

The Adventure (and World and Stronghold) Building Handbook should seriously be like 2/3rds of the Dungeon Master's Guide. Most DMs I have played with have preferred to make their own crappy medieval Europe pastiche rather than use a module or pre-existing setting. And like vitm said most people, including yours truly, are actually pretty crappy about it. I spent several hours trying to come up with a desert city for a campaign and it turned out to be less evocative and more shallow than the one in Xenogears. And that's terrible.

Lago PARANOIA wrote: Most DMs I have played with have preferred to make their own crappy medieval Europe pastiche rather than use a module or pre-existing setting.

And most DMs I have played with, didn't.

ROUND ONE

ANECDOTES...FIGHT!

If you're going to have a DMG at all, then a section on "this is how you make a fortress" is fucking mandatory. It might get cut for space if you're making a book complete in one book and it's competing for playable classes or skill use examples. But if you have a DMG, that thing is competing for space with fanciful anecdotes on how different kinds of players respond to boobs.

-Username17

It has to be part, or parts of it have to be part of, the Mister Cavern's Guidebook.

FrankTrollman wrote:If you're going to have a DMG at all, then a section on "this is how you make a fortress" is fucking mandatory. It might get cut for space if you're making a book complete in one book and it's competing for playable classes or skill use examples. But if you have a DMG, that thing is competing for space with fanciful anecdotes on how different kinds of players respond to boobs.

-Username17

Totally disagree. The DMG should be focused on how you build up appropriate challenges which is what almost all of them totally skip out on in favor of boob anecdotes. The DMG should be the owners manual to the games engine and it should tell you why every challenge is built up the way it is, what happens if you shift numbers around and what sorts of changes/allowences/slips will totally break the shit out of the system.
There shoudn't be anything in it a player would "need" to know at any point in their characters career.

FrankTrollman wrote:If you're going to have a DMG at all, then a section on "this is how you make a fortress" is fucking mandatory.

So the rules to Basic D&D, Call of Cthulhu, Top Secret, Champions, Traveller, etc. (none of which have a section on buildings, AFAIK, but which do have sections on what GM does, how to run a campaign, etc.) are...? Useless? Nonexistent? Or what?

The "this is how you make a fortress" isn't just for the players, it's also for the DM who can use them to make his own damn dungeons rather than having to wing everything.

hogarth wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:If you're going to have a DMG at all, then a section on "this is how you make a fortress" is fucking mandatory.

So the rules to Basic D&D, Call of Cthulhu, Top Secret, Champions, Traveller, etc. (none of which have a section on buildings, AFAIK, but which do have sections on what GM does, how to run a campaign, etc.) are...? Useless? Nonexistent? Or what?

Champions and Traveler have sections on building fortresses in the basic book. Call of Cthulhu is set in the modern age and defaults concerns of real estate to "look it up yourself" which actually works because it is set in the 20th century and you actually can. The Fortress rules for OD&D are in the Expert Set. And I've never played Top Secret.

But bottom line: I said that a game that had a DMG should have a fortress building section, and you listed a bunch of games that don't have a DMG. Are you on drugs?

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:But bottom line: I said that a game that had a DMG should have a fortress building section, and you listed a bunch of games that don't have a DMG. Are you on drugs?

-Username17

Wait -- so you're agreeing with my comment that those rules belong in the "Build Your Own Adventures Handbook" and you're just offended that I used that phrase instead of "DMG"? I'm pretty sure you're the one on drugs!

(By the way, I was referring to the Champions and Traveller rules ca. early 80s.)

1st Edition Champions has rules for building your secret base/evil lair.

violence in the media wrote:I disagree. People are going to be building their own adventures long before they use even half of the monsters, spells, and magic items that clog the core books.

Not only that, but if you delay those rules you automatically create a group of people that won't use them because "those rules will change everything" that they're already used to or have done in their games. This is different from the people that may elect to ignore those rules from the outset, but they probably weren't going to buy your Adventure Builder Guide in the first place.

As part of the pipe dream that is such a book, I'd personally want it to include layouts and discussions of real-world architecture and geography for comparison and reference. It's amazing to me how many adventures take place in tombs, temples, or dungeons that you could fit into the promenade of the Temple of Karnak or the courtyard of Salisbury Cathedral. How many "fantastic locations" that are less amazing than images of Dallol Lake, Bryce Canyon, or (leaving earth for a moment) the ice cliffs of Miranda.

I think we may be talking apple and orange here. While I don't think it should be a part of the "core" trillogy collection, it clearly needs to be out on or around day 1. As the keeper of the flame for Gygax's AD&D I have to say that the AD&D DMG is one of the most annoying pieces of verbage I have ever used. I had literally put a dozen bookmarks in it in order to get to the right page I needed because half of the pages went on and on and on and on and on.

All of the three CORE books need to kiss the KISS principle. These are going to be the three most abused books you are going to publish so you better make them damn easy to use. On top of those books are the flavor and explanation books (the Idiot's Guide to the Game counts as the later).

Historical stuff shouldn't appear in CORE but it should appear because it's damn interesting. Dragon had a great nuumber of articles about historical firearms back in the early 80's. I remember a class about heraldry at one of the Gen Con's in the early 90's (this was the Gen Con where I found and purchased my copy of the Encyclopedia of Witchcraft and Demonology, although that was at the airport, IIRC).

In fact, you could make an argument that flavor needs to be published like a periodical and then tomed into annual which would be a slight variation of the original Dragon format. In any case, it shouldn't be a matter of years before the basic layouts are given.

hogarth wrote:I think it goes without saying that basic questions like "how do I smash down a door?" should be addressed in the basic rules of an action game. But I wouldn't classify that as "stronghold building".

Which then leads to questions like "How many doors are there?", "What Types of are there?" and "Where in the stronghold/dungeon/whatever are these doors?".

I'd be perfectly happy to have questions like "how many bathrooms and fireplaces should a castle have?" addressed in the Build Your Own Adventures Handbook so that folks who only play canned modules don't have to pay for it.

Pay? Handbook? We're amateur rules hobbyists. We have document files, print outs and the only costs are time, complexity, and printer inks.

The location and nature of doors in your pre stronghold building adventuring inside of strongholds happens to be of particular interest when adventuring, and later, when fitting your own stronghold with doors. So it is convenient to have that ground work up and running as soon as possible to keep early game consistent with late game, and give useful structure and easy answers to early game as a by product of providing vital rules infrastructure for late game.

And the same goes for bathrooms and fire places. Because while you may only OWN or BUILD fire places and bathrooms "later" you will be infiltrating ruins through abandoned chimneys and fighting stray sewer crocs in abandoned bathrooms in derelict strongholds from the very beginning of most games. And that means you want to have mechanics about interacting with chimneys... and some idea of where they might lead, and mechanics about slippery bath room tiles and large formerly heated bath tubs with crocodiles in them.

It's pretty straight forward really. You have adventures in "Structures" before you own and build them. But SOMEONE built them, and ideally with the same rules you will eventually use to build your own. So for consistency it is good if those rules exist from the start.