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.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

If it doesn't fit your playstyle, don't use it.

I love having players create and make decisions for parts of the game world. This is absolutely something I would use.

This whole Bastions thing really seems to upset you.

It upsets me because it's a third new mechanic or mechanci change, alongside new social interaction rules and making Warlock's patron a nonentity, that seem designed to remove roleplay from the game in favor of rollplay and "number go brrr". I do not like that the same company that hates the fact majority of their boosk are bought by DMs and wants to shove AI down our throats is clearly minimalizing role of the DM in a way that seems to first and foremost made the game easier to run for AI DM. As I've said, I fear the end goal is to phase DMs out in favor of AI.

And I like when players create things for the world, but I prefer when it is done throguh their actions in-universe. In my campaign when players got a stronghold they decided to organize training facility to introduce Bloodhunters to the setting. I am excited for that. It's an actual change they introduced to the world. This? This Bastion thing? It just feels like it wants to exclude me from the act of creating these things, making it almost an antagonistic relationship when previously it was collaborative.

 

[Imaro]

Play their characters and shape the world by their decisions and actions. I run reactive world that changes and responds to the PCs, it's insulting to assume just because I don't like inserting anti-roleplay mechanics into it, that I run a game where PCs are worthless and players don't amount to anything.

Insulting is what you've been through out this entire conversation when referring to anything you personally don't like... maybe that's why you're assuming I'm being the same when I never commented your PC's were worthless and your players don't amount to anything.

You stated a clear "job" for yourself... I was just curious as to what you saw the players job as.

Edit: Do you allow a ranger beast master to control their pet or a wizard to control their familiar?

 

[Imaro]

And for me, I still think it has too many fiddly bits for what it's going to bring to the table.

Acknowledging bastion points are no longer a thing...What exactly do you find too fiddly?

 

[Imaro]

Take actions and make decisions for their PCs. This can't be a surprise to you.

I wasn't going to assume... so I asked. Does he allow a ranger with a pet to control it? How about a familiar... well if so the players are already controlling things outside their PC's... right?

 

[Demetrios1453]

I'd hardly claim the bastion system is so complicated that it needs a spreadsheet that details labor/material costs and time estimations... For me it strikes a good compromise between DM fiat, player involvement/investment and randomness (some of which is adjustable) without taking over the entire game

Yeah, with some people in this thread complaining that it has too much detail, and others complaining it's not detailed enough, I'm guessing it's going to be in a pretty reasonable and workable middle ground.

 

[Hussar]

The level of irony in this thread has reached truly epic proportions.

I personally am on favour of any mechanism that shifts responsibility for the game onto the players. Let the players build the game world. Stop forcing DMs to endlessly try to create content that ultimately the players couldn’t care about.

Instead use the players to build the world collaboratively. The warlocks patron is that player’s responsibility. You tell me how your patron feels. You tell me what your deity thinks. You tell me how your base works and what it does.

That’s what collaboration means. If everything is sourced from the dm and the players can only react, that’s not collaboration. It’s one player at the table forcing everyone else at the table down specific paths.

I’m 100% behind any mechanic that spreads the load among everyone at the table.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Edit: Do you allow a ranger beast master to control their pet or a wizard to control their familiar?

Yes, with a caveat that they control these NPC's actions, while I control the roleplay aspect - I decide how they react to the player decisions or things they put them through. Especially when a familiar is an imp sent by Warlock's patron, who is loyal to patron, not the Warlock. Or, in my current campaign, where Warlock's patron is a PC-turned nPC from previous campaign and faimilairs are souls of NPCs or PCs from that game, turned into talking animals.

Insulting is what you've been through out this entire conversation when referring to anything you personally don't like... maybe that's why you're assuming I'm being the same when I never commented your PC's were worthless and your players don't amount to anything.

"No, u" is not a proper argument. Asking bluntly a question like that the way you did clearly implied to me you think players have no power and control over anything in my game and are just the audience, a statement that is VERY untrue. You made an assumption, acussed me of it in a backaround way and then got mad when I called you out on it.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Instead use the players to build the world collaboratively. The warlocks patron is that player’s responsibility. You tell me how your patron feels. You tell me what your deity thinks. You tell me how your base works and what it does.

Considering roleplaying patrons was one of my favorite parts of my time as a DM (and I HAVE handed over one patron to another player - player who played that patron as PC in previosu campaign, not the player of the Warlock), this paragraph alone just reads to me like telling me personally to go ef myself and that I DON'T get to have fun. If this kind of garbage becomes the norm, I would rather switch to a GMless system.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

Which makes it a nonsensical gamist system. Still a problem for me.

Games are games. It's only an issue if you demand to murder their granny in the inn or whatever then get fussy when the rules say you shouldnt because its a designated player safe space.

So once again, like all GNS obsession, its a self inflicted wound.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Games are games. It's only an issue if you demand to murder their granny in the inn or whatever then get fussy when the rules say you shouldnt because its a designated player safe space.

So once again, like all GNS obsession, its a self inflicted wound.

God forbid we ever try to look at the games through critical or analitic perspective, right? It's jsut a game, turn your brain off, stop thinking, buy more product!

If I wanted a game that insults me for thinkign I'd be playing Call of Duty multiplayer right now.