Defend your castle

[shadow_archmagi]

One thing I've kinda always wanted to do was run a Stronghold style game in which the player's homes are an actual part of the environment. Something where stuff like this is not just possible, but easy:


Player 1 fills his land with inventive traps to keep intruders out
Player 2 builds a great library that attracts priests and scholars from across the land
Player 3 holds a royal ball, but some of the guests are vampires, and they're infecting his friends, hirelings, and family.


What system, books, techniques, etc. Would you recommend?

[LibraryOgre]

This will work in most traditional systems... the question is how much do you want to get into where the player's live.

In AD&D, this was considered to be kind of an "end goal"... build your stronghold, retire from adventuring to do management. They even built a game somewhat around it... Birthright.

But, darn it, now I want to play Stronghold.

[mint]

My group has experimented in 3.5 with separating the economy of magic items with the economy of the world.
In this way, money for plot devices, like parties, houses, abortion clinics, can be spent in good fun without any penalty to the xmas-tree effect.
It works out ok.

[shadow_archmagi]

This will work in most traditional systems... the question is how much do you want to get into where the player's live.

I'd like for "Questing" to be a major event. Ideally somewhere between being as frequent as, say, Boss Fights, and being the occasional sidequest. Definitely less than 10% of their time.

I'd like for the players to spend time between sessions thinking about architecture and layout of their own personal areas, and then some sessions ingame discussing how best to use their shared land. There would also be plenty of time spent as characters, doing stuff on their land. (Hosting feasts, etc).

I realize that 3.5 is what I'm most familiar with and it has things like the Stronghold Builder's Guide but I was wondering if there was like, an actual Stronghold-like RPG system.

[Aroka]

Do you want actual rules for this stuff? Because those aren't quite common in RPGs.

What you describe is pretty common in, say, Pendragon (where questing is very much a big deal), and fits right into RuneQuest and Artesia: Adventures in the Known World, but most games will require that you wing this stuff.

Old D&D had rules for this stuff in the Companion set - running realms, taxation, etc. If you've got access to it, check it out - you could probably adapt the rules for 3.5. Also, A Magical Medieval Society could help you immensely - it's got a ton of info plus some rules for running fiefs, and uses D&D gold pieces (since it's primarily for d20) to measure wealth.

[devinkowalczyk]

You can do it easily with 3.5

First way is to give them a castle and allow them to fill it with knick nacks. As long as you don't have a super uber gottabe broken and kill everyone they will have gold to spend on cool things.

Second way is also in 3.5, and kind of adds to one. Get the 3.0 stronghold builders guide. there is a dedicated feat that gives them money to spend on a castle. it can be pooled for more money! and doubles all investments made.