Yora
2022-10-11, 06:32 AM
After almost nine years running campaigns set in a setting that I had tailored to provide lots of opprtunities for dungeon crawling in ways that feel natural and believable, I now feel really ready to start with something completely new. What I want to run next is a campaign that centers around the PCs establishing, expanding, and defending a small stronghold on the edge of civilization. I feel in love with that idea since I started playing the videogame Kenshi, and now learning how to run Forbidden Lands really makes me want to make such a campaign happening. Pathfinder's Kingmaker also began with something of that kind, but I am really not familiar with that one.
I only did a very little bit of that like 12 years ago in a campaign with rotating GMs because the last adventure just happened to end in a cleared out bandit keep, but we didn't get to do a whole lot with it. So I am looking for any kind of input on the concept and thougts on the early ideas I have.
The first thing that I already decided on as a first thing is that I want the campaign to be about the players controlling the home base of their party, not to be the rulers governing the population of a small domain. I think administration and management isn't fun doing it on paper, and it also really isn"t much of a group activity. One PC being lord and the other players waiting while the lord manages his domain just doesn't seem like a fun game, and having the PCs take care of different duties also still has the players doing their separate things individually, one at a time.
What I see being a much more practical and fun approach to such a campaign is to have the players procure resources to develop upgrades to their stronghold, fend off attackers and neutralize threats in the surrounding wilderness, and make alliances with other factions in the region to support each other against enemies and trade for supplies that can't be produced in their own stronghold. The stronghold rules of Forbidden Lands are already quite a good match for such activities, and I think they could be used with other games like whatever editions of D&D without requiring modifications. (Other than prices for buying materials perhaps.)
I am planning to use experience that is unrelated to either fighting enemies or looting treasures. As I see it, this means that the wilderness that the players explore does not really need a large number of dungeons like typically in sandboxes. The dungeons also don't need to be large and full of challenges to make the players work hard for their accomplishment.
And this also means that the worldbuilding does not need a justification for why there are so many ancient ruins that are full with treasures scattered all over the place, which somehow never have been looted in all the centuries.
From the perspective of the players being interested to neutralize dangerous enemies or to make allies, I think relatively small dungeons of only 5 to 10 rooms would be totally sufficient to do the job. The thing they are really here for is probably found in the last room, and if there's no experience to be made from fighting monsters along the way or checking every crack for gold coins, the path to the final room doesn't need to be overly long. Dramatic buildup is nice, but no need to overly pad out time to get to the main event the players have come for.
Finally I think that, even though the concept is a wilderness campaign, NPC factions are probably super important, even more than the environment. Hiking through the woods is only fun for so long in an RPG. But when it comes to defending your stronghold, managing your alies and enemies, buying time to wait for aid, and playing enemies against each other become extremely valuable. To give the players something to work with, the factions probably should be quite easily to understand, but also have some complexity to them. Evik necromancer cult that always sends an endless stream of zombies until everyone in the region is dead doesn't really allow for much interaction.
Any thoughts on that subject would be really super useful.
I only did a very little bit of that like 12 years ago in a campaign with rotating GMs because the last adventure just happened to end in a cleared out bandit keep, but we didn't get to do a whole lot with it. So I am looking for any kind of input on the concept and thougts on the early ideas I have.
The first thing that I already decided on as a first thing is that I want the campaign to be about the players controlling the home base of their party, not to be the rulers governing the population of a small domain. I think administration and management isn't fun doing it on paper, and it also really isn"t much of a group activity. One PC being lord and the other players waiting while the lord manages his domain just doesn't seem like a fun game, and having the PCs take care of different duties also still has the players doing their separate things individually, one at a time.
What I see being a much more practical and fun approach to such a campaign is to have the players procure resources to develop upgrades to their stronghold, fend off attackers and neutralize threats in the surrounding wilderness, and make alliances with other factions in the region to support each other against enemies and trade for supplies that can't be produced in their own stronghold. The stronghold rules of Forbidden Lands are already quite a good match for such activities, and I think they could be used with other games like whatever editions of D&D without requiring modifications. (Other than prices for buying materials perhaps.)
I am planning to use experience that is unrelated to either fighting enemies or looting treasures. As I see it, this means that the wilderness that the players explore does not really need a large number of dungeons like typically in sandboxes. The dungeons also don't need to be large and full of challenges to make the players work hard for their accomplishment.
And this also means that the worldbuilding does not need a justification for why there are so many ancient ruins that are full with treasures scattered all over the place, which somehow never have been looted in all the centuries.
From the perspective of the players being interested to neutralize dangerous enemies or to make allies, I think relatively small dungeons of only 5 to 10 rooms would be totally sufficient to do the job. The thing they are really here for is probably found in the last room, and if there's no experience to be made from fighting monsters along the way or checking every crack for gold coins, the path to the final room doesn't need to be overly long. Dramatic buildup is nice, but no need to overly pad out time to get to the main event the players have come for.
Finally I think that, even though the concept is a wilderness campaign, NPC factions are probably super important, even more than the environment. Hiking through the woods is only fun for so long in an RPG. But when it comes to defending your stronghold, managing your alies and enemies, buying time to wait for aid, and playing enemies against each other become extremely valuable. To give the players something to work with, the factions probably should be quite easily to understand, but also have some complexity to them. Evik necromancer cult that always sends an endless stream of zombies until everyone in the region is dead doesn't really allow for much interaction.
Any thoughts on that subject would be really super useful.