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]

Mayhaps, but I'd rather have those restrictions than ruin thousands of players' first games.

I simply disagree that the "problem" is anywhere near as prevalent as you assume. This really reads like a loud minority of pundits complaining about their own bad experience and extrapolating it to a wider audience for validation purposes. Otherwise you are saying enough DMs are jerks that they need to be legislated against in the book that is theoretically designed for them.

 

[Iosue]

I simply disagree that the "problem" is anywhere near as prevalent as you assume. This really reads like a loud minority of pundits complaining about their own bad experience and extrapolating it to a wider audience for validation purposes. Otherwise you are saying enough DMs are jerks that they need to be legislated against in the book that is theoretically designed for them.

Let's turn the heat down a bit. You don't have to be a jerk DM to look at stronghold rules and think about how you can use them as hooks to challenge players or to provide emotional reaction to story developments. Heck, we don't even have to go that far. In D&D, the DM is responsible for and has control of the setting; with Bastion rules in the DMG, it would be natural for DMs to assume that they would likewise be responsible and have control of the Bastion.

Telling DMs that players are responsible for and have control of Bastions is not legislating against them. It's just making sure that everyone understands who controls what. Bastions are extensions of PCs, not part of the setting. That doesn't mean they can't be used as a part of adventure or campaign design. It just means that, like a PC that is likewise used, the DM needs to ensure player buy-in to avoid friction.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Sure, but why are you specifically making a point of saying so?

Why do we specifically make a point of saying that a DM should talk to their players about the story of the game?

 

[James Gasik]

That sounds like the old, "Let's assume the DM is a jerk and stop them before they start" argument. Not a fan personally.

While there's merit to trying to build rules to make it very clear what the intent is, ie, what players are intended to be able to expect, be it Wealth By Level or Xp Per Session or "fair encounters" or "expected downtime" and so on and so forth, the big issue is that a DM who wants to ignore any guidelines and do whatever they please is going to do so regardless of your good intent.

If you really want to cure "Bad DM syndrome", you do that via education. You lay out in the DMG to prospective DM's the things that can lead to bad blood between them and their play group. A good example of this is from the old Spoony Experiment where Spoony explained that he had an amazing campaign where an NPC stole from the party and much of the campaign was predicated on "getting revenge" on the NPC, who the players rightfully despises. But then he closes with "you can only do this once". The first time the players are robbed gets them motivated, the second time runs the very good risk of getting them very very annoyed- not with the NPC, but with the DM personally!

You can give examples of things that might build trust with your players as well, like maybe rolling openly, or having open discussion about adopting house rules and giving them a say in the matter.

You can educate players in the PHB at the same time by saying "these are things to look out for" so that they can identify potentially bad DM's (or at the very least, DM's who are bad for them). This would help groups that have conflicting playstyles to go their separate ways without hostility, and potentially deprive the "actually bad DM's" of victims players to frustrate.

And of course, foster discussions between players and DM's to sort out potential pitfalls and lead to happier games.

But saying "hey, here's this rule, consider it a black box because we don't trust anyone to tamper with it in a way that won't frustrate their players"? Well some of the responses in this very thread showcase why that's not going to help anyone. Even an explanation as to why you should think twice about interfering with a player's Bastion would be a vast improvement.

 

[Yaarel]

I see the temptation of a bastion being normal for a "good" DM.

For example, plenty of DMs would want to use a home life as an adventure hook. Such as, a group of bandits kidnapped a sibling. Or the sibling becomes a criminal. (That is actually kinda violating to a player, and a DM should make sure there is player buy-in for it, but also it has been kinda normal in the past.) Telling the "good" DM that the bastion is part of the character rules, and not part of the setting rules, is helpful for everyone. This helps ensure a mutual understanding.

 

[S'mon]

There's no curing bad players. But we don't have to cater to them.

 

[Distracted DM]

I think it's a weird thing to say to the GM "this is going to be a part of the world, but it is sacrosanct." I'm waiting to see what actually gets printed in the book... The idea suggested is an odd one to me.

I've played with Strongholds & Followers rules for a long time. one of the first things you do when it's founded is defend it from a local threat- you prove it's yours by defending it from things that don't want to see a "bastion of goodness" (to go classically overboard) erected in their vicinity-from vile necromancers and foul monsters to rival nobles.

After that I don't really mess with the stronghold and let the player run wild for the most part, but there could always be something in the cards to make the game interesting for the players
Barring that from the GM... Weird.

 

[Horwath]

I think it's a weird thing to say to the GM "this is going to be a part of the world, but it is sacrosanct." I'm waiting to see what actually gets printed in the book... The idea suggested is an odd one to me.

I've played with Strongholds & Followers rules for a long time. one of the first things you do when it's founded is defend it from a local threat- you prove it's yours by defending it from things that don't want to see a "bastion of goodness" (to go classically overboard) erected in their vicinity-from vile necromancers and foul monsters to rival nobles.

After that I don't really mess with the stronghold and let the player run wild for the most part, but there could always be something in the cards to make the game interesting for the players
Barring that from the GM... Weird.

As I said before, I do not think that intention is to make bastion immune to DM actions, but that the design is immune the same way a PC creation is.

Sure DM can pre-ban some things, but if all players decide to have all facilities be barracks in the bastion so they can muster legion of soldiers, then DM should not interfere with that idea, but play along or around it.

 

[S'mon]

I think it's a weird thing to say to the GM "this is going to be a part of the world, but it is sacrosanct." I'm waiting to see what actually gets printed in the book... The idea suggested is an odd one to me.

I've played with Strongholds & Followers rules for a long time. one of the first things you do when it's founded is defend it from a local threat- you prove it's yours by defending it from things that don't want to see a "bastion of goodness" (to go classically overboard) erected in their vicinity-from vile necromancers and foul monsters to rival nobles.

After that I don't really mess with the stronghold and let the player run wild for the most part, but there could always be something in the cards to make the game interesting for the players
Barring that from the GM... Weird.

Yeah. Whether a PC stronghold gets attacked IMC depends on stuff like local threats, how well defended it is, what allies & vassals the PC or PCs have made... The Temple of Yig in my Stonehell campaign never got attacked because even the Three Eyed King could see that was impractical. The owner had created a strong network of allies & vassals, and turned it into a deathtrap. A manor house on the Damaran borderlands was attacked by an orc horde because the owners had been raiding the orcs, had done nothing to fortify it, and had even pissed off their liege and former allies. They had major Special Snowflake syndrome, were purely focused on intra-party romances ...and ragequit when they got in-game warning of the Orcs - who they could probably still have defeated. That seems to be the kind of players this system is catering to.

 

[Distracted DM]

As I said before, I do not think that intention is to make bastion immune to DM actions, but that the design is immune the same way a PC creation is.

Sure DM can pre-ban some things, but if all players decide to have all facilities be barracks in the bastion so they can muster legion of soldiers, then DM should not interfere with that idea, but play along or around it.

Yeah I thought of it as an extension of a character sheet, but it definitely has a heavier footprint in the world than a single character (talking real estate, not actions). Then again this stuff is all in the dmg so... Well it's a weird place to be pitching a player feature to players but putting it in the GM book.

But yeah, the player character sheet is the players' demesne 99% of the time. Makes sense in a way.