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.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Still doesn't mean the rules are beyond criticism for allowing the problem in the first place.

No rules are perfect. And with D&D being played so many different ways by so many different people, getting something that works sometimes is pretty miraculous.

 

[pemerton]

We had this thing called session 0, on which we set up what we want in the campaign. If a player decided to cross that line I have an authority to put my foot down.

OK. So you don't like players playing PCs who both (i) engage in wanton murder, and (ii) purport to lead an order of righteous followers. So what is stopping you putting your foot down?

rules that can be exploited actively encourage being exploited and encourage bad behavior. A player who abuses bastion rules is not doing anything the rules did not encoruage them to do and may not even think of doing it in the first place in a system, where the rules don't give such opportunnity.

But why would a player declare actions like those you suggested:

The player then proceeds to on a hwim slaughter Village of Women and Children, Edmonton, assaut the king and pee on him before kidnapping his daughter

slaughters Village of Women and Children, Edmonton, pees on the king and kidnapps his daughter

I mean, how is it an exploit to declare these actions?

I have been around RPG communities to know "author" is used as a derogatory term

Not by me. You can do the search as well as I can: Search results for query: author And you can read posts like this one: Why do RPGs have rules?

To author, in this context, means to create a fiction. As Vincent Baker explained over 20 years ago, the essence of RPGing is the creation of a shared fiction via distributed responsibilities and permissions around the creation of elements of that fiction.

You wrote multiple paragraphs to defend your quality as a DM or player, while completely missing my point that it's freaking rude to make negative assumptions about how someone plays based on few posts on a forum.

I am drawing inferences about how you approach RPGing from what you post. You are free to correct my impression if it is wrong. But as far as I can tell it is correct. For instance,

after experiences in my current campaign - where I let player build a fringe community their character was from, only for them then to ignore plot hooks related to that community only because other players were interested in other things and that player doesn't like to impose on them and whenever party votes which quest to take next, they default to "I do what rest of the group does" - I would discourage a player from adding something that I cannot easily integrate into the plot so I can more organically integrate it into the game.

This seems to reiterate that you prefer an approach in which the GM provides "plot hooks" and the players have their PCs take on "quests".

Let's say your Forgotten Temple of god of explosions wasn't in a Greyhawk campaign, but on Krynn, where there is a set in stone number of gods and all other gods are the same few under different names?

Why are we playing a Krynn campaign? What would the player's view be of that setting? How would they want to integrate their PC into the campaign? Do they see their explosive-obsessed Dwarf as something like a Tinker Gnome - in which case presumably the forgotten temples are to Reorx and the Greygem?

I've never had any trouble working with players to establish the backstory, setting, etc elements that will establish a coherent fiction that we can all enjoy.

Or is Matt Mercer a bad DM for the fact that every time a player in Critical Role brings a new diety their character worships, he eventually reveals it's not a true diety, but some different entity or a servant of an actual diety, because his world has a set number of dieties?

I've got no view on the quality of Matt Mercer's GMing. What you describe seems pretty different from how I like to approach RPGing; it seems to rest heavily on an assumption that the GM has unilateral authority to write the fiction regardless of player contributions.

I am running on assumption if a player wants to add something to the setting, they want it to come up and factor into the story we're telling. The way Bastion rules are set, I am prevented from doing that.

My understanding is that the function of the bastion rules is not to add something to the setting so that it can be part of the ongoing action. My understanding is that their function is to give the player a little self-controlled "sandbox" of their own.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Huh? I don't have a strong view on the 2-day change - I don't care that much about time in most of my currently active campaigns - but what is the thing with the King? Why is it dictated in advance when the King dies, and why are the PCs being railroaded into a meeting with him?

The players went to meet the king on their own, then in a completely unrelated to them event he got killed. The event of his assassination should, logically, still occur on the same day because it is not affected by their actions. By retconning them to move out two days later, the event that already has happenned cannot happen anymore. Which breaks the internal coherence of the game.

Obvious solution would be that the assassination is moved to 26th but that basically tells the players "this is not a living, breating world, this is a staged game that you are center of and it will break and bend to your whims." For many people, like me, the immersion would be broken and if I was a player I would find it very hard to get invested again.

And I have to ask, why did you read "meeting a king" and immediatelly thought of railroading? It makes no sense, as far as we know players decided to meet the king on their own free will.

 

[pemerton]

The players went to meet the king on their own, then in a completely unrelated to them event he got killed. The event of his assassination should, logically, still occur on the same day because it is not affected by their actions. By retconning them to move out two days later, the event that already has happenned cannot happen anymore. Which breaks the internal coherence of the game.

None of this makes much sense to me.

Let's suppose that, at the table, play unfolds like this:

The players declare that they leave town, having set up a pub. The GM tells them it is such-and-such a date. Then various things happen, including a meeting between the PCs and a King. Then the GM tells the players that the King is killed the day after his meeting with the PCs.​

Then, someone notices that no pub employees were hired. Now that's pretty bizarre in itself - the retention of staff seems to go hand-in-hand with setting up a pub, and I don't see how any calculation of the time required to establish a pub in a pseudo-mediaeval work could be so accurate that it is an exact calculation of the time required except for the hiring of staff, which must require another 2 days.

But anyway, everyone at the table agrees that another 2 days is added to the calendar. So now the departure happens 2 days later; all the encounters etc that took place occurred 2 days later; all the weather that was rolled up happened 2 days later; etc.

Now it seems that the natural concomitant of this is that the killing of the King also happens 2 days later, that is, still the day after the meeting. But for someone reason this is supposed to create a crisis that none of the other changes to dates did. Why? Our sense of a coherent gameworld can handle adding two days to the PCs' stay in the town with the pub, can handle changing all the dates of those other events and weather etc, but it can't handle this? Because the calculation of the date of the King's death was scientifically accurate to within 2 days, and that accuracy remains even though all these other things have been changed by 2 days?

As I said, none of that makes sense to me.

Obvious solution would be that the assassination is moved to 26th but that basically tells the players "this is not a living, breating world, this is a staged game that you are center of and it will break and bend to your whims." For many people, like me, the immersion would be broken and if I was a player I would find it very hard to get invested again.

Why would it be the King's assassination that has that effect, and not every thing else that is having the date it happened on change? As I've said, that makes no sense.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Still doesn't mean the rules are beyond criticism for allowing the problem in the first place.

There is no way to write a rule that won't cause a problem for someone. If it causes a problem for a significant number of players, then it deserves criticism. If it's only a few players who are affected, then the rules are doing well, although discussion about how to adjust the rules to different playstyles is worthwhile.

I can't see the bastion rules causing me any problems, I'm pretty sure my players wouldn't want one for a start. It would be nice if they created some stuff rather than letting me do it all though.

 

[AnotherGuy]

The butterfly effect would suggest otherwise. I've seen times where trying to retcon what seems like the most trivial of things into the established fiction has had the potential for enough major knock-on effects to the fiction generated since that point to make the retcon impossible.

Example:

Original fiction has a character building a pub with the party's help; the pub is finished on Auril 2 whereupon the party immediately goes off adventuring.

Some time later (6 months in real time, 2 months in game time) the player says "Wait - I meant to hire staff for the pub before we left!" "OK," says I; "that would have added 2 days to the process, meaning you left on the 4th instead."

Trivial change, right?

Well, hang on now. If they left 2 days later that bumps everything they did after that ahead by 2 days, meaning that instead of meeting the King on their return on Auril 23 they now would meet him on the 25th...except he dies on the 24th and this death on that date has already had material effects elsewhere not just for this party but for other characters and parties as well.

And suddenly something that initially seemed trivial has become very messy indeed. And so, having seen this sort of thing before, my-as-DM initial response to the player's attempted retcon would be quite different than what I put in the example.

Like you I dislike retconning, but I take it on a case-by-case basis to see if the retconning is meaningful for the campaign or not.
So, in this instance, we are proposing this is a meaningful change, so I would likely negotiate with the players on the issue.

It would make sense that the PCs would likely hire staff for the pub before they left or at the very least had seen to that this was done. And it is something we all forgot (players and DM), as if I remembered I would have likely suggested it to them myself. Players and DMs forget things and we often have to keep reminding each other.

Nevertheless, for this campaign this 2-day differential is important and throws everything out of sink from established play that had occurred so my proposition would be:

Opportunity for Future Complication (I would likely determine this via a Skill Challenge)
Time would have been spent managing the building of the pub AND interviewing staff and perhaps one or both were NOT done effectively OR someone else would have had to be given the task while they had set off and perhaps failed.
There could be a leak, a foundation was weak, building plans were not properly submitted, shady employee, mismanagement of funds, altercation with contractors or potential staff or entertainment act sees a bad initial reputation...etc
And this could all be worked through a cool Skill Challenge. This is a great opportunity for an interesting story to develop.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I think some of you are overthinking it and drowning in a sea of hypothetical tables doing hypothetical things with rules we haven't seen yet.

To me this just look like an easily ignored glow-up of the "running a shop/stronghold" barebone rules from the 2014 DMG.

 

[Sulicius]

I think some of you are overthinking it and drowning in a sea of hypothetical tables doing hypothetical things with rules we haven't seen yet.

To me this just look like an easily ignored glow-up of the "running a shop/stronghold" barebone rules from the 2014 DMG.

For sure. At some point the only people who remain in a thread are the ones who thrive of disagreement. I see very little talk about their table.

 

[Micah Sweet]

By definition, "plot armour" is not grounded on in-setting reasons. It's grounded in "meta-" reasons. REH's Conan has plot armour - he even survives being crucified in the desert - because he is REH's cash cow. PCs have plot armour because they are players' playing pieces in the game. Some NPCs have plot armour because they play a pacing role in the game. And bastions have plot armour because they are a particular part of a player's game position.

I do my best to avoid plot armor for anyone under any circumstances (to the practical limits gameplay allows). If I don't want the PCs or NPCs to have it, I'm certainly not giving it to a pub.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I think some of you are overthinking it and drowning in a sea of hypothetical tables doing hypothetical things with rules we haven't seen yet.

To me this just look like an easily ignored glow-up of the "running a shop/stronghold" barebone rules from the 2014 DMG.

Totally, especially since we this is about rules we have not yet seen. What it reinforces to me is how conservative the play community is. Even after many years of encouraging Dm to "..yes, and" the first reaction of many people to a proposed new subsystem from WoTC is "Hell, no, not at my table".

No, wonder we only see significant rules innovation attempts from third parties, since they can toss the system out there and see what sticks.