D&D 5E Will your campaign be purely adventuring?

Lanefan · Jun 12, 2017

[MENTION=1465]Li Shenron[/MENTION] has it right: there's no hard yes or no answer to this poll as it's all dependent on the particular characters (and, by extension, players) in the game.

As DM, if it ever comes up I'm more than ready to DM it; but I've no way of knowing if or how or when or why it'll arise.

Lan-"that said, as a player character I've just started banging together the design for my own stronghold"-efan

S'mon · Jun 12, 2017

Voted 'no' but in reality it depends of course on which campaign. In my 5e Wilderlands game PCs certainly are likely to take on positions of leadership and several have done so. In my 5e Varisia campaign the PCs are Pathfinders and may remain itinerant all through the campaign even though they have eg Fort Rannick as a base if they desired. The focus of the campaign is likely to stay on traditional adventuring as I'm mostly running Paizo AP adventures, but I can imagine maybe it going more political/warfare late on. My recent Classic D&D Mystara game certainly had PCs becoming rulers at Name Level.

mankyle · Jun 12, 2017

For good Stronghold rules...

Income depends on:

Sources of natural wealth in the area (timber, mines, animals, ivory,....) and quantity of people that exploits those resources. Dragon Mazine 187, 189, 190 and 191 have information about economics and Soldier units costs. Something could be extracted from there. These rules assume a Hexcrawl map, so one would have to follow these assumptions or ignore them completely.....

Other incomes include taxes for commerce, bridge taxes, Door taxes (for getting inside a city)

There should be some way of relating type of terrain (desert, plains, woods, hills, mountains, moors, swamps, coastal and river/lake) to the distribution of those natural resources.

Clima could also be a factor to take into account. It shouldn't be the same living in temperate climate than in a subartical one, for example....

Now... depending on the wealth obtained, the serfs/peasants would have to pay taxes. The DMGR 2 Castle Guide describes a couple taxes for that, but that would be very compliated. it would be possible to unify them but it would be long and difficult.

If you follow BECMI rules, we could also integrate Vassalage and tithes fo the religious orders.

The stronghold rules in the DMG are very light, just a couple building types, their costs and maintenance costs and the neccessary crew for efficiently manning them.

After that, we would need an efficient mass combat rule system for deciding battle outcomes.

Something like the War Machine could be enough, I think....

Rya.Reisender · Jun 12, 2017

The thread title question is the opposite question as the one in the poll, which probably causes many people to vote the opposite of what they think they do.

Anyway, in my games PCs will always stay adventurers that explore dungeons and fight battles. I'm not interesting in political stuff.

MerricB · Jun 12, 2017

Rya.Reisender said:
The thread title question is the opposite question as the one in the poll, which probably causes many people to vote the opposite of what they think they do.

Good point! Swapped the title of the thread.

(With only a handful of votes so far, I doubt it's had much effect!)

Cheers!

Mephista · Jun 12, 2017

Define "purely adventuring." My games include lots of things beyond dungeon delving and fighting.

Rya.Reisender · Jun 12, 2017

Mephista said:
Define "purely adventuring." My games include lots of things beyond dungeon delving and fighting.

Pure Adventuring = Talking with NPCs, getting and resolving quests, going to dungeons, fight.

iserith · Jun 12, 2017

My last campaign saw one of the character become the mayor of the town they used as their adventuring hub, after deposing the previous mayor in a fraught election. Another character joined his administration as an adviser (spymaster and internal police really). But that was the end of the campaign (1st through 7th level). Generally speaking, once the characters are no longer adventuring, that's the end of the campaign in my view. That makes my games "adventurer-focused," I guess.

Croesus · Jun 12, 2017

"Will your campaign be purely adventuring?"

Depends on the players. I have four players.
- One is really excited about building a stronghold similar to the Continental from the John Wick movies. She's also mayor of Phandalin.
- One is motivated mostly to add as many spells as possible to his spellbook.
- Two couldn't care less about anything except adventures, preferably with lots of killing and looting.

Personally, I prefer a campaign with broader goals than simply adventuring, but as others have pointed out, it's up to the players. As the saying goes, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."

guachi · Jun 12, 2017

Assuming my campaign lasts long enough I hope to have a domain adventure or two. There's enough stuff from my BECMI rules that I think I could run some enjoyable adventures.