Sunday, December 6, 2015

Worldbuilding Option: Fortresses, Temples, & Strongholds [Second Draft]



What? What's that you say? I've been avoiding updating my 17-page, huge document of world-building stronghold options because it takes SO LONG and is a huge pain in the butt?

No I haven't. That's not true. You can tell, by the fact that the second draft of it is right here.

Minor tweaks, all around, but important ones all the same. Let's take a look!

WHAT I CHANGED:

  • The Trading Post can now be built as a Large House, for those of us looking to make an effective inn. 
  • Expansion Units and Expansions are no more! They are now replaced with room points and rooms, which specify that they are used to furnish existing, unfurnished rooms. 
  • Rooms no longer upgrade spell slots used. Rather, some rooms increase spell duration, as well as halving the price of reagents used for a spell. 
  • The Chapel and Graveyard have been reworked. The Chapel is now permanently hallowed ground, and the graveyard provides some minor quality-of-unlife improvements to aspiring necromancers. 
  • Added a sidebar for the Magical Enchanter because not every game needs easy access to magical items. 
  • The Tavern now produces alcohol you can sell and is overall probably one of the best rooms you can buy, which I'm pretty alright with. 
  • Updated the skills required for Hidden, and replaced Wisdom (Insight) with Dexterity (Sleight of Hand).
  • The Sphere of Annihilation now costs significantly more and will still fuck you up just as much. 
  • Reduced the time it takes to cast year-long spells in a structure, down to every-day-for-a-month, which seems more reasonable in many campaigns. 
CONCERNS:
  • Room balance is still imperfect, but I don't care about this so much because it isn't as aggressively out-of-line as it was before. Structures are the sort of things that you will build up how you want, regardless of balance, so long as balance issues are minor. 
  • There's a LOT that I have planned for expansions to this content, and I'm dreading making it. It's so cool that I definitely will anyway, though, so don't worry about that too much. 
WHAT I LEARNED:
  • The good thing about introducing large content packs is that I don't have to add every brilliant new idea the people reviewing the content have, because I can just introduce everything in an expansion. It saves me from the formatting nightmare that re-editing 17 pages of content is to add new things, so I'm thankful for that at least. 
EXPANSION CONTENT:
  • Teleportation Circles for easy transit around a large structure.
  • Golem Forge for constructing golem hirelings.
  • Magical Hirelings because who doesn't want to hire a fey cleaning staff?
  • Druid Circle to attract defenders of the wild to also defend your structure, maybe.
  • Tinker's Workshop to make mechanical devices and contraptions!
  • Labyrinth to amaze and confuse (mostly confuse) unwanted visitors.
  • Brightsmith to cut and forge magical gems.
  • Mining to provide resources for your structure.
  • Baths to keep a clean, satisfied population.
  • Sewers to keep a clean, satisfied population in less speakable ways. 
  • Secret Passages to conjoin rooms in sneaky ways. 
  • Planar Binding Circle for when you absolutely have to summon up Asmodeus and not die. 
  • Topiary Enclosure because who doesn't like shaped plants?
  • Hospital because the sick need somewhere to go besides the Graveyard.
  • Catacombs are always cool, and can effectively hold treasure and secrets.
  • Thieves' Enclave for thief guild shenanigans.
  • Soothsayers, Graverobbers, Cultists, and other specialized hirelings.
  • Crossroads to bring the trade to you!
  • Well/Oasis for clean drinking water.
  • Vault to keep your treasure (and you) nice and secure. 
  • Lighthouse for seeing at sea at night.

17 comments:

  1. Loving it all the more. I can't wait until my players get rich enough to start building their own stronghold. Keep it up.

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  2. Love this so much. Any news on when we can see some of the expansion content? I am planning a campaign around maintaining an entire village in some uncharted lands, D&D old west style.

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  3. Bookmarked the instant I saw this. I love every piece of this content - heck, I may even use it to create pre-made structures in the world as well!

    I'd like a little more info on what exactly the merchants are selling. Possibly some more tables for each type of merchant.

    And I'm excited about the lighthouse and crossroads. Maybe they give you advantage when rolling for the quality of the merchants attracted by the docks or caravansary?

    The one thing I'd like to see in an expansion pack is options for how the players can earn money with the rooms they've built. How much can you charge for food and rent? How much can you charge merchants to set up shop in your trading post, and does that decrease the quality of the items they sell?

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  4. looking forward to more expansions. you are my favorite homebrewer

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  5. This is everything I need in my life. thank you so very very much

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  6. Can you make a download link for pdf pls

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  7. Can you make a download link for pdf pls

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    Replies
    1. If you mouse-over the PDF, it has a download link in the upper-right corner.

      If you are on mobile, just poke the upper-right corner of the PDF and it'll figure itself out.

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  8. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  9. Awesome work. A couple of 'rom' isntead of 'room' instances that I noticed whilst skimming for changes, but hardly noticeable in the long run, and far eclipsed by the quality of the work. Just thought you might want to know.

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  10. Hey man I saw this and I absolutely love it. This is exactly what I want for my game you're doing great with here and I can't wait for the expansions especially the one for golems assuming you're still making content.

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    Replies
    1. If you look on the right you'll find a DM's guild link for Strongholds, the most current version is over there, (0.4)

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  11. Thanks for the nice blog. It was very useful for me. I'm happy I found this blog. Thank you for sharing with us,I too always learn something new from your post. tulja bhavani

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  12. ? What about upkeep for the buildings?

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  14. What is a Room Point, how many do I have?

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