D&D (2024) Dungeon Master's Guide Bastion System Lets You Build A Stronghold

The Dungeon Master's Guide's brand new Bastion System has been previewed in a new video from Wizards of the Coast.

Characters can acquire a bastion at 5th-level. Each week, the bastion takes a turn, with actions including crafting, recruiting, research, trade, and more.

A bastion also contains a number of special facilties, starting with two at 5th-level up to 6 at 17th-level. These facilities include things like armories, workshops, laboratories, stables, menageries, and more. In total there are nearly thirty such facilities to choose from.

 

[S'mon]

a way for the Player to get a taste of DMing.

GMing involves interacting with players, understanding their wants and needs, and in many ways putting them first. It requires a high degree of objectivity and judgement. Not seeing how this system involves anything like GMing. It seems more of a single player (or group play?) settlement management minigame.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Sure, that's how things are traditionally done. Why can't we try something different? What is wrong with the player's deciding that their kitchen maid is named Eliza and she is being courted by the Stablehand named Boe? Why can't they decide that the old butler they hired has a lame leg from a wound he got defending a noble's manor from a monster assault?

Maybe if D&D was a game that incorproated this kind of collaborative storytelling in every aspect of the game, like Fabula Ultima or Fellowship, it owuldn't be so jarring. But it didn't. So it feels tacked on and awkward.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Or it's a marketing move to make people buy a book to make quick buck while AI dms are long-term goal

It could also be a government psy-op to get tiny nanomachines into our homes. But without actual evidence instead of brutally twisted words and fear-mongering, I don't see a reason to believe that.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

It could also be a government psy-op to get tiny nanomachines into our homes. But without actual evidence instead of brutally twisted words and fear-mongering, I don't see a reason to believe that.

Trying to ridicule my argument with absurd comparisons is a good way for me to stop taking you seriously.

 

[Chaosmancer]

They only started digging ca 2018.

So.... before the massively successful video game, the actually good movie, and the absolute monsoon of DnD content across the social media landscape?

Again, with failures like that, I'll grab the backhoe to help them dig faster. Maybe we'll fail so hard that we get a second highly popular Adult DnD cartoon with an insanely talented cast and animation budget.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

the actually good movie,

That movie WAS a flop, to be fair.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Which is not something supported by the rules and thus non-applicable. Even with sidekicks, while players control their actions in combat I roleplay them, I dictate their personalities, I decide how they react to player actions. by these new rules I am forbidden from doign that with hirelings.

See my comparison to sidekicks above.

Why can't the player determine those things? I know traditionally they have not, but why CAN they not? What harm is done to the game?

 

[Chaosmancer]

GMing involves interacting with players, understanding their wants and needs, and in many ways putting them first. It requires a high degree of objectivity and judgement. Not seeing how this system involves anything like GMing. It seems more of a single player (or group play?) settlement management minigame.

Is interacting with other people really the thing that terrifies people away from DMing? In my experience, as someone who has attempted to get people to GM, it is their lack of faith in their ability to build a world and put people in it. And the Bastion system is being advertised as a way for them to do exactly that.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Maybe if D&D was a game that incorproated this kind of collaborative storytelling in every aspect of the game, like Fabula Ultima or Fellowship, it owuldn't be so jarring. But it didn't. So it feels tacked on and awkward.

Oh no! DnD is trying something new! That's terrible, we should stop that at once. We can't have NEW ideas in DnD.

/heavy sarcasm

 

[Chaosmancer]

Trying to ridicule my argument with absurd comparisons is a good way for me to stop taking you seriously.

You wanted to be taken seriously saying that the 2024 rules are being written to be taken over by AI GMs of which there is zero evidence and they would have absolutely no way to cause to happen?