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]

I refuse to debate hypothetical situations that don’t actually have any basis in reality.

Go to reddit and look up the sub RG Horror Stories and read up some of stories of problem players at the table.

Why do you care what happens at someone else’s table? Why do you care about the health of hypothetical tables that only exist in your head?

Why aren't you selfish? Why do you care about problems of other people? What is this backwards kind of logic? Am I talking with Ronald Reagan or something?

No one has actually reported any actual problems with the mechanics. This only exists in your head.

I see a problem but because you don't respect me I need another person to prove it exists...at which point you will find an excuse to dismiss them, and then another and another. You are running out of arguments so bad you want to nail the issue to a series of individualized anecdotal evidence.

 

[Lanefan]

Why? You don't need it open to you, it didn't exist two months ago, so why do you require it to be open to you? Yes, it is your job as the DM to challenge the PCs. No, it is not your job to turn every single thing into avenue of possible challenge for the PCs. Those two things are different.

We disagree there; to me those two things are part and parcel of one thing.

Why? First of all, there is not a single divination spell in the current game that can do this, except maybe Detect Thoughts, and most people don't get access to Detect Thoughts. So... trust no one unless you have read their mind to know they can be trusted?

Zone of Truth is still a thing, is it not?

Failing that, there's real-world options such as references, getting to know the person, etc.

I did retail management for ages, and part of my job was interviews and hiring. I'm not bad at reading people in person but over the years I still got burned a couple of times: one of my hires started stealing from us pretty much on the first day of work and another got us all in real hot water with legal over some interactions with a customer (a very long story). But that's just two out of probably 50-60 people, so not a bad batting average.

That's the reality. Which means that's what I'm going to put in my games: that there could always be that one bad apple.

Same as traps - not every door in a dungeon is trapped but some of them might be.

And you know, the worst part about this? This is exactly why players become murder-hobos. It is a classic negative reinforcement. You won't play a character who will give out charity if your charity is usually followed by being betrayed and hurt. You won't play a character who will give someone a second-chance because most of the time they do it, they end up being made to regret it. Players can't have property and places to go home to without someone else to maintain the property. And you can't have someone to maintain the property until you can equip them with enchanted shackles, mind read them monthly for thoughts of betrayal, and have them sign magically enforceable contracts... because you know, you can't just blindly trust people.

Or you just see how it goes. The servant my character has at her house in the game I play in has shown me more loyalty than any other person I've ever met...and taking him on was a pure leap of faith on my part; he's a Goblin (they're monsters, in our games) who was servant to some bad guys we knocked off. We didn't know what to do with him so my character took him in and hired him, not quite knowing what to expect; and it turned out to be one of the best moves that character has ever made.

But it took me a while to realize just how loyal and trustworthy he was. Until then I took precautions, not knowing if he was going to slit my throat while I slept, but soon realized I could relax on that.

Even if you don't do it "all the time" in real life it only takes a single major betrayal to wreck someone for life. IF 50% of your NPCs are just poison pills? Then the players stop trying to invest in them. Because it isn't worth it.

50% would be overkill, I agree.

But 5%? That's more like reality, IME.

 

[Demetrios1453]

See that’s the point. There is no unless unless the player specifically okays it. The grandma is off limits. Full stop.

I’ve played like this for years and found that it’s such a better experience because it gets the players actually excited about the setting.

Otherwise it’s just an endless parade of murder hoboes with zero ties to the setting.

Perhaps it would be different if my campaigns were decades long but they aren’t. So having tiny corners off limits to the dm makes a lot of sense.

I mean I’m running Phandelver/shattered obelisk. We started in February and we’ll finish about New Years. Why would players devote a bunch of time developing a bastion for an eleven month campaign?

Or, at most in these situations, have a bit of fun with it, with the player's consent.

When I ran SKT, one of the characters was a noble and we determined she had a mansion in Waterdeep, which the group would periodically go back to for R&R when possible. But, she was a wild magic sorcerer (with a large, custom wild surge table), and eventually they hired a gnome steward who liked to tinker... so, sometimes weird things happened. The mansion got filled with lavender paint. It went temporarily invisible. It was taken apart, piece by piece, and reassembled in an empty lot a few blocks away. The gnome tinkered a bit too much, and the whole mansion became self-mobile, so they had to catch it and stop it from moving on its own. But at no point was it threatened with any real harm.

 

[Lanefan]

See that’s the point. There is no unless unless the player specifically okays it. The grandma is off limits. Full stop.

I’ve played like this for years and found that it’s such a better experience because it gets the players actually excited about the setting.

Otherwise it’s just an endless parade of murder hoboes with zero ties to the setting.

Perhaps it would be different if my campaigns were decades long but they aren’t. So having tiny corners off limits to the dm makes a lot of sense.

I mean I’m running Phandelver/shattered obelisk. We started in February and we’ll finish about New Years. Why would players devote a bunch of time developing a bastion for an eleven month campaign?

They wouldn't. The bastion system seemed geared toward persistent campaigns, which is why I'm all for it even if it seems the actual execution could use a lot o' help.

 

[Hussar]

I trust my players well enough. You are again setting up a strawman to not deal with real arguments.

Then make a real argument and not one based on hypothetical, made up fictions created by you solely to support your own criticism.

 

[Hussar]

Go to reddit and look up the sub RG Horror Stories and read up some of stories of problem players at the table.



Why aren't you selfish? Why do you care about problems of other people? What is this backwards kind of logic? Am I talking with Ronald Reagan or something?


I see a problem but because you don't respect me I need another person to prove it exists...at which point you will find an excuse to dismiss them, and then another and another. You are running out of arguments so bad you want to nail the issue to a series of individualized anecdotal evidence.

No. You have invented a problem based on nothing more than your own preferences. You refuse to entertain the idea that other people are not having this problem all, apparently tied to your insistence that this is all about making AI DMs. Another fiction of your own creation.

 

[Imaro]

By this logic every rpg is beyond criticsm because we can just point at the rule zero and trust GM will adjucate correctly 100% of times. Which I think we can all agree nobody actually seriously beleives.

No but at a certain point (You know like the DMG coming out in a few weeks) your complaints aren't going to change anything. So why not move forward to how you can change it for utilization in your game... for you that seems relatively simple, assert control over the bastion with the possible exception of the PC's choosing what's built.

 

[Hussar]

They wouldn't. The bastion system seemed geared toward persistent campaigns, which is why I'm all for it even if it seems the actual execution could use a lot o' help.

No it isn’t. That’s why it’s so simple and abstracted. In a persistent campaign you have time to fritter away table time in conversations with npcs that aren’t actually all that important. You can down an hour of game time interviewing potential cooks for your pub. Great.

But these rules skip all that. You just say, I have a pub. The player hands you a description of the pub and it’s done. This is for higher pace games. Which explains why the dm isn’t supposed to mess with it. There’s no time in the campaign to do that.

But this is largely where the pushback seems to be. From DMs who want to spend all that table time on something like this. For me? Where my pacing is so much faster than yours, I have zero interest in a more detailed system. It’s just of no use to me.

 

[Imaro]

The players control the sidekicks and familiars for combat and utility, but it is MY JOB AS A DM to make them into convincing characters, people who think and have feelings and react to the world. I have no interest in midnless automatons that just pump numbers up for the PC unless the NPC is one in-universe. And hell, even Skeleton sidekick in my campaign has enough personality to transition, a very wholesome bit I look back on fondly.

So you trust the players to play out the combat portion and utility portion of an NPC, basically all the mechanics as well as actions in life or death situations... but not to give them an actual personality?

Have you let your players play an NPC before? Better yet do they play their PC's as more than mindless automatons? If yes... why do you believe they couldn't do the same for NPC's under their control?

My issue with bastion rules is that it bans me from making the hirelings into more than mindless automatons that crunch numbers for the PC. They aren't acting like people who live in the world, this is unacceptable. This rule literally bans me from doing my job as a GM. If this is the direction WotC wants to take the game, they effectively want to reduce the DM to just arbiter crunching numbers to give player that dopamine hit when big number goes brrr. And you wonder why I think WotC wants to replace us with AI.

How do you know your players will only play them as mindless automatons? Also I think the DM's job entails alot more than running bastion npc's.

I trust my players well enough. You are again setting up a strawman to not deal with real arguments.

It doesn't seem like it from your statements.

 

[James Gasik]

Why do you play with people who insist on abusing the weak and helpless who can't fight back? Seriously, what kinds of games do you play where the question of "but what if they beat their 5 year old daughter into a coma, go and get drunk, then kill the barmaid?" is a legit question?

Alfred has had his life put in danger by Bruce Wayne's crusade dozens of times just in the TV shows. He's been poisoned, shot, stabbed, and exploded on more than one occassion. And there has never been a moment of "well, this is too much, good-bye"

Not to nitpick your example, I get what you're saying, but Alfred does quit in "The Dark Knight Rises".

Goodbye Alfred