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.

 

[Micah Sweet]

You know that Pub could serve as the cover for the bastion itself.
I recall a series of books involving Sparhawk a knight making use of a secret Knight base located at a Inn allowing them to enter the actual Fort located across a wall they had the means to cross without anyone knowing about it.
Odd thoughts, but I understand the reference to the DM needing to be hands off as I've met GMs would destroy these bases just for kicks or steal it so they can claim their character owns that.
It sounds dumb, but worth remembering.

Again though, that hands-off rule is seemingly designed under the assumption that the DM is a jerk, in a book that's supposed to help the DM. It's jarring and counter-intuitive to me, and actively inhibits the kind of worldbuilding that I as a DM enjoy most about the hobby.

So yes, of course it's a preference (just like literally everyone else's comments here are about preference), but I hope it's an understandable one, even to those who don't share it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Toxic players are easy to deal with - they get the boot instantly.

I am regularly told around here that it's no more difficult to give a toxic DM the boot.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Again though, that hands-off rule is seemingly designed under the assumption that the DM is a jerk, in a book that's supposed to help the DM

I believe it’s supposed to be a joke.

It's jarring and counter-intuitive

Characteristics of a joke.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I am regularly told around here that it's no more difficult to give a toxic DM the boot.

Given the shortage of DMs, this is not really true. Not that I have any experience of toxic DMs, but I certainly would immediately quit a game if I encountered one. It’s better to not play at all than play with people you don’t like.

My players do everything they can to avoid making life difficult for me, because they are glad I’m doing it for them. If they thought anything in a bastion might affect the setting they would run it by me first. But I can’t see them wanting to take on a bastion in any case - 2/3 of them have small children!

TBH, this looks more like a mini-game for players to amuse them between games than anything that would have a significant affect on anything.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Toxic players are easy to deal with - they get the boot instantly.

Toxic dms are easy to deal with, just leave the group.

 

[Iosue]

I "love" double stadard where we justify the bastion being off-limits for the dm by toxic dm behavior and that is apparently fine, but being wary of this very rule being abused by toxic players is either "made up hypothetical" or fault of individuals that cannot be used to justify general attitude towards something.

The only people talking about "toxic" DMs are you and Micah Sweet. Everyone else is talking about DMs doing regular DM things: if the Bastions are not singled-out as being controlled by players, than many (if not most) DMs will naturally see them as something they (the DMs) control, and with the best of intentions use them to complicate the PCs' lives.

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with that concept! It is how it's worked in D&D since 1974. Like anything in the game, over the years it's been done well, and done badly.

But the idea of Bastions, specifically, is to give players a piece of the world that they control as an extension of their characters. That they can--for the most part and within the confines of the kind of world that the DM has created--design and flesh out however they see fit, and which won't be involved in the game narrative unless they want it to be.

Now, I personally don't see it as an issue. It sounds like a fun little mini-game. But if a DM does have an issue with that concept, there are, like, two super easy approaches.

1) Don't use the rules. They're an option available at the DM's discretion.
2) Talk with the players and say, "Hey, I think you guys will have fun with these rules, but I want to use them in the traditional style, where they are ultimately controlled by the DM and can be used in the game narrative as I see fit."

Toxicity has nothing to do with it. Players should not play with toxic DMs, and DMs should not run games for toxic players, period.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Given the shortage of DMs, this is not really true. Not that I have any experience of toxic DMs, but I certainly would immediately quit a game if I encountered one. It’s better to not play at all than play with people you don’t like.

My players do everything they can to avoid making life difficult for me, because they are glad I’m doing it for them. If they thought anything in a bastion might affect the setting they would run it by me first. But I can’t see them wanting to take on a bastion in any case - 2/3 of them have small children!

TBH, this looks more like a mini-game for players to amuse them between games than anything that would have a significant affect on anything.

I can understand that. It likely wouldn't be a good option from either side of the screen for your group.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The only people talking about "toxic" DMs are you and Micah Sweet. Everyone else is talking about DMs doing regular DM things: if the Bastions are not singled-out as being controlled by players, than many (if not most) DMs will naturally see them as something they (the DMs) control, and with the best of intentions use them to complicate the PCs' lives.

To be clear, there is nothing wrong with that concept! It is how it's worked in D&D since 1974. Like anything in the game, over the years it's been done well, and done badly.

But the idea of Bastions, specifically, is to give players a piece of the world that they control as an extension of their characters. That they can--for the most part and within the confines of the kind of world that the DM has created--design and flesh out however they see fit, and which won't be involved in the game narrative unless they want it to be.

Now, I personally don't see it as an issue. It sounds like a fun little mini-game. But if a DM does have an issue with that concept, there are, like, two super easy approaches.

1) Don't use the rules. They're an option available at the DM's discretion.
2) Talk with the players and say, "Hey, I think you guys will have fun with these rules, but I want to use them in the traditional style, where they are ultimately controlled by the DM and can be used in the game narrative as I see fit."

Toxicity has nothing to do with it. Players should not play with toxic DMs, and DMs should not run games for toxic players, period.

The word "toxic" may not have been bandied about much (I myself only used it in a response to a post that used the term "toxic player"), but the idea that the DM has no control over the bastion has been put forward by many in this thread as a protection against DM abuse.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Given the shortage of DMs, this is not really true. Not that I have any experience of toxic DMs, but I certainly would immediately quit a game if I encountered one. It’s better to not play at all than play with people you don’t like.

My players do everything they can to avoid making life difficult for me, because they are glad I’m doing it for them. If they thought anything in a bastion might affect the setting they would run it by me first. But I can’t see them wanting to take on a bastion in any case - 2/3 of them have small children!

TBH, this looks more like a mini-game for players to amuse them between games than anything that would have a significant affect on anything.

Shortsge of dms eon't be solved with rules that make dm's life worse abd strip the position from what many, like me, consider best parts of it.

And if this is a minigame to play between the sessions, it's even worse, as I have players who believe the game begins and stops at a session and resent being given "a homework assigment". The are great players but this "fun minigame" would probably made them leave the table.

 

[GobHag]

But they didn't. This is already an event that has happenned and int happenned on specific date, intependently from the PCs and unrelated to them. Why should it move just because players want to retcon two days into their journey?

Because players want to retcon two days into their journeys duh. Not sure the issue here?