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View Full Version : Establishing a Stronghold: Jewelled Crowns Upon Troubled Brows



Crow
2007-12-08, 02:31 PM
I come to you all in need of some assistance today. I will need some help with the day-to-day administration of a stronghold, and the politics that go hand-in-hand with the administration of a fledgling town on a frontier. In addition, I will need help coming up with dilemmas and troublesome issues that may arise while doing these things. I will start by laying out who the characters are, and with a little background information.

The Players:

Sir Edgar Swordhand, Knight 9 - Edgar started his career as a squire to a knight who fell in battle. His service to his kingdom eventually earned him his knighthood. He has had only two assignments as a full-fledged Knight; A partially-successful diplomatic mission to the Kingdom's allies, and the successful defense of one of the kingdoms smaller towns against an invading army.

Niobe Arenii, Bard 6/Ranger 2 - Niobe has personal reasons why she has chosen to adventure with Edgar, and is not giving them up. She gets along well with Edgar though, and has always been a useful and steady companion.

Halas Groman, Exalted Monk 5 - Halas has come to the aid of Edgar's cause as a result of his life's calling of helping the weak. A holy man who has sworn himself to a life of poverty, Halas can be somewhat condescending when forced to deal with politicians.

Notable NPC's:

Svala Kyrrsvanr, Wizard 9 - Svala rescued Edgar when she found him dying in the snow beside his master's body. Originally travelling with him to his kingdom as a favor, she now considers him a friend. She assists him by dispensing occasional advice when asked, and by providing potions of varying types.

"The Captain", Class and Level Unknown (Scout 3) - The Captain is a mercenary leader, in charge of band of scouts. As a mercenary, he has been paid to provide various special warfare services to the Kingdom, and has worked with Edgar on occasion. His real name is still unknown, as he has never revealed it (though has given a false name), and the group just calls him "The Captain".

Adrastus, son of Acestes, Fighter 6 - Adrastus agreed to lead a unit of Edgar's troops in a recent battle. Originally a mercenary aquisition, Adrastus travels with Edgar in the hope of finding asylum for his people, who come from a broken kingdom. Adrastus has a servant, a Cleric (level 4) of Heironeous.

The Situation:

In our ongoing campaign, the main characters have been playing an increasingly important role in a conflict that has erupted in my camapign world. After being charged with the defense of one of the Kingdom's southern towns, Edgar prepared the town's defenses, and was ultimately successful. After the battle, Edgar dispatched the Captain to notify Edgar's superiors in the north of the battle's outcome. After a couple weeks with no reply, and in fact no word whatsoever from the north, Edgar decides (against Svala's advice) to go on a foray to a tomb (6 days away) to cleanse it of undead.

The foray is ultimately successful, though not in the way the party thought initially. Unfortunately, upon returning to town, they find it has been attacked and pillaged. Things get worse as they investigate. The town has been slaughtered to the last man, and there is melting ice covering much of the town. The moat is still partially frozen. There is no sign of snowfall in the surrounding countryside. Staying in the dead town for a few days, the Captain finally returns. He tells a story of how his men happened upon an enemy camp, and how the enemy were appearantly working with a white dragon. It is unclear who is working for who, but the dragon spotted the Captain and his men and hunted them down as they attempted to escape. Only he escaped, though exceptional luck.

The group then set out to discover the fate of the rest of the Kingdom. As they travel, they find that the enemy is occupying most of the kingdom, and that the enemy's dragon was in most cases the deciding factor in the battles. During the course of their investigations, they find a small pocket of civilians which flad one of the Kingdom's major cities. They are living deep in a forest to the west of one of these cities.

Edgar is able to convince the civilians to follow him to an abandoned keep far to the south and west. On the way, the proccession is shadowed by orcs on worg mounts. the orcs keep their distance, but do not attack. Upon arrival, the group is forced to defeat a massive troll and his bugbear soldiers who had occupied the keep. In the proccess, Halas frees the Troll's goblin slaves.

After the battle, the group finds out that there is a gem mine nearby, which the goblins had been forced to work in. Halas is able to convince the goblins to work the mine in exchange for protection and fair compensation. Halas aslo manages to calm the civilians and convince them that working with the goblins is a good idea. The people reluctantly agree. Meanwhile, the captain has set out to do reconaissance on the orcs tribes that had been shadowing them earlier.

So that is the situation.

I need to know what issues that Edgar may need to deal with as this community gets back on it's feet. There are about 300 people, and 20 soldiers with them. I am assuming he would need some sort of income to help repair the keep, but am unsure how things like taxes would work. There are the orcs in the surrounding countryside, but i would like to avoid the old "kill the orcs and make the area safe" routine. What sort of things happen day-to-day that would require a ruler's attention in a keep or town? Should Edgar appoint an advisor to run day to day business? Does Edgar try to attract more people to live in his town? Does he try to retake his kingdom, or start a new one?

As you can see, I have little to no idea what to do here, so any help would be much appreciated.

XiaoTie
2007-12-08, 02:49 PM
Should Edgar appoint an advisor to run day to day business?

Well, I think he should. I mean, to some players the day-to-day [micro]management of even the smallest city may be a bit boring, and it probably would drag the other players into it too (that may aswell not like, or like to do it).

A good option would be Adrastus and his cohort, as he is looking for a place to take his people. This would [partialy] answer one of the other questions:

Does Edgar try to attract more people to live in his town?



Does he try to retake his kingdom, or start a new one?

About the kingdom, depends on the player, or on the character's loyalty to the Kingdom. At first, however, I think it would be better for him if he gathered some info on this new enemy. Advices from Svala would be a good thing to have now.

Not much, but I hope to have helped you at least a lil bit.

Oh, I am interested in how you devised the formation of the stronghold, I mean, if it was already there or how the characters constructed one (also which books were used, I have a feeling I'll need it in a near future).

shadow_archmagi
2007-12-08, 02:54 PM
Interesting. Well, from what I've learned by playing Stronghold and Dwarf Fortress, major problems will be:

1. Seeing to it that all important resources are provided for all important goods (for example, you could have elves attack the lumberjacks and deprive the townspeople of their beds, barrels, cabinets, firewood, etc.)

2. Keeping a happy medium. Your people will often have to do unpleasant things, not to mention taxes. Peasant uprisings (or the threat of one) can always be fun.

3. Word never arrived that the battle was won. Now, what happens when two sides both think the war is still on?

Crow
2007-12-08, 03:00 PM
Not much, but I hope to have helped you at least a lil bit.

That helps a little. I am looking for "events" that I can quickly run at the beginning of the session, or that can be the basis for a quest every once in a while. I don't want to tie them down to the town too much, but I don't want them to be absentee-rulers either. Just little events that can serve as reminders that their leadership is needed from time to time.


Oh, I am interested in how you devised the formation of the stronghold, I mean, if it was already there or how the characters constructed one (also which books were used, I have a feeling I'll need it in a near future).

The stronghold was already there, and had fallen into disrepair over the decades after it was abandoned.

Basically, I created it using the rules from the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook, and then figured the costs of damaged sections separately. Those figures would be how much it would cost to "Re-build" the section.

XiaoTie
2007-12-08, 03:20 PM
Oh, events. Hummm, if it were a large town I would say organized crime families. Since it is only a 300 people place, and they are to fight an unknown new enemy (?) how about:

A group of people comes to the place asking for a place to live, as their city was destroyed by the (unknown?) Enemy. While most of them are indeed innocents that are just looking for a place to live, others are spies of the Enemy, sent by him to live with the people that escaped (with the enemy knowledge and “permission”) to find places he had not yet razed/conquered. I think that would only work if the Enemy has some info on them (the PCs)




The orcs, after being constantly attacked by the Enemy, contact the PCs proposing an alliance to defend their territories (since they are close). If the PCs accept, the orcs would play along with the alliance, only to later sell them out to the Enemy as an offer for him to let them be. Or, if they are successful in destroying the enemy first attacks, the orcs would wait until the PCs are depleted of resources, thus, weakened. Or maybe the orcs are just good guys and live up to the alliance till the end. And this one would work if the Enemy has no friendly contact with the orcs. Or if the players didn't knew that the Enemy had a friendly contact with the orcs.

And thanks for the help mentioning the book.

Fax Celestis
2007-12-08, 03:28 PM
You should be happy to know that buildings and other materials needed for the basis of a city are already priced (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/wilderness.htm#buyingBuildings). I would suggest looking for the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook and Cityscape as well, since they would tell you how to handle things like taxes, maintenance, etc.

Ne0
2007-12-08, 03:40 PM
For Tradition:
Go Pun-Pun.

Alright, now some helpful advice:
First of all, how are the food reserves? With 300 citizens, you should be able to do some agriculture, but that will take a while.
If you don't have food, you can't just feed 300 people with hunting and foraging. The best way would be either raiding the enemy or nearby tribes/villages, but that's not very ethical. There are plenty of other ways, though, such as the 'food and drink' spell for clerics/priests. But you could have a small event about that.

A fun way of dealing would be the following:
The captain returns from his reconnaissance. He tell Edgar that they seem fierce and strong as other orcs, but while numerous, seem to lack a lot of military power, most of them being women and children, and could be easily chased off.
Edgar, being a knight, would probably not attack them, I expect. After whatever means he contacts them, he finds out that most of their warriors are held captive in the fort of the enemy (as in, the enemy that drove Edgar's people out of their country). The fort seems nigh untakeable, and the orc's are having more trouble every day securing their borders from monsters and animals.
After a more stealthy mission and rescuing the orc warriors, the orcs agree to an alliance between their people. Further events later on may be that they need intelectual or organised help with something.

Yahzi
2007-12-08, 04:35 PM
Unfortunately, upon returning to town, they find it has been... slaughtered to the last man.
I assume Edgar is CN or something. Because any Good person would be devestated by guilt. You're charged with defending a town; you decide to go do your own profit-motivated trip instead; and the entire town is slaughtered. To the last man, woman, and child.

That's paladin-falling, alignment changing stuff.


After the battle, the group finds out that there is a gem mine nearby, which the goblins had been forced to work in.
What good are gems to hungry people? You can't eat them. And there's no civilization left to trade them to for something you can eat.


There are about 300 people, and 20 soldiers with them.
Honestly, at that level, you don't actually have an economy. People are going to do whatever Edgar tells them to do, and if he doesn't tell them to grow food, they're going to starve.

As for taxes, there are few enough people that everyone already knows who's doing their share, who's shirking off, and so on. Communes work fine without economies, and what you have is a commune.

Until you have a much larger society, money is almost meaningless. You should check out Frank & K's riff on the Turnip Economy.

http://bb.bbboy.net/thegamingden-viewthread?forum=1&thread=1035&postnum=0
(search for The Turnip Economy, although frankly, the entire post is a great read)


What sort of things happen day-to-day that would require a ruler's attention in a keep or town?
1. A man says he is too sick to work, but his brother claims he is malingering.
2. Food is being stolen out of the common storehouse at night.
3. One man is lucky enough to have a wood-ax, meaning he has a decent job (cutting wood) instead of digging in the dirt for scraps like everybody else. A woman claims the ax used to belong to her dead husband, and now she wants it for her new man.
4. Two men. One woman. There's just an endless variety of ways to make this complicated, and almost all of them end in violence. Here's one: A woman wants to leave her poor farmer husband to marry one of the (relatively rich) soldiers.
5. A goat. The owner is dead; the owner's sister's husband's brother lays claim to it, but the owner's cousin's father's uncle swears it should belong to him.
6. The water supply is drying up.
7. A baby is sickly, and needs special medicine or it will die.
8. The goblins offer to buy the dying infant, for their annual "Fangsgiving" feast. Since they've offered a really good price, they can't understand why the humans are throwing rocks at them.
9. The person appointed to hand out work assignments is suspected of being bribed. In particular, one young woman is sleeping with him to get her husband easier work because he's still injured from the war but he doesn't know she's sleeping around and the knowledge would break his heart.
10. The goblins are bothered by the smell of the humans (it makes them salivate with hunger). The humans can't stand the goblin habit of going to the bathroom wherever you happen to be standing at the moment. Tension is rising.

And that's just one day...

Ya, Edgar's going to appoint a minister to deal with all that. Then he's going to go out into the woods and kill orcs, because it's a lot less painful than watching people suffer because they don't have anything worth living for. Until he comes home and finds everyone dead again, and realizes that unless you have Class Levels, you aren't human. You're just scenery, like trees or cows. Then he'll stop trying to run a kingdom, and spend his time killing things instead. He'll only associate with named, leveled, NPCs, and he'll view everyone else as animatronic robots designed to fetch and carry. You know, like a standard Chaotic Evil loot-grubbing mass-murdering drifter. I mean, an "adventurer."

Plus, I imagine, he'll spend a lot of time figuring out how to defeat a White Dragon that apparently has the ability and the desire to exterminate every human it knows about. Once he realizes he can't possibly succeed where the entire kingdom failed, he'll run far, far away before the dragon comes to finish off his little town.

And if he can kill the dragon - then his guilt is infinitely greater, because his failure to be at his assigned station didn't just kill the town, it killed the entire kingdom.

:smallsmile:

I think you need Edgar to find an intact city of several thousand, if you want him to worry about taxes and stuff. Then you can upgrade to problems like "The cartwright guild needs more darkwood" or "a new religion is gaining adherents" and stuff like that.

Premier
2007-12-08, 04:57 PM
One tool that you might find useful is the "Master" bookfrom the Frank Mentzer Basic-Expert-Companion-Master-Immortal series for classic (-pre AD&D) D&D. It has a set of relatively simple but robust rules for running domains, calculating income based on population and natural resources, determining how the people's loyalty and morale changes from year to year, random events that can happen and other stuff like that.