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]

No, they are not planning AI DM's. Plus, they have an entire article devoted to how the new DMG is going to teach people to GM. Kind of a waste of space if they have made it perfectly clear their intent is to abolish the practice of DMing (somehow) and replace all DMs with robots.

Or it's a marketing move to make people buy a book to make quick buck while AI dms are long-term goal

 

[Yaarel]

Then they are video game minions for PCs to control, which breaks the immersion of being characters in a living-breating world. Your character is a person you roleplay, bastion characters hsould be NPCs and help maintian the illusion of playing in a world populated by people.

The bastion characters are player characters.

A similar situation can happen when a player plays two characters at the same time.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You just quoted that I excluded the PC itself, which includes things like hair color and gender. Did you read what I write, or just respond?

I was responding late at night. I still stand by that, no, this is not the DM being nailed to a cross raised in the effigy of player empowerment. It is far more likely to be "Hey DMs, encourage your players to take ownership of their bastion, filling it with NPCs and deciding the events that happen there. It is a great way to give them a taste of DMing." especially since... that's basically what they've said about Bastions every single time, that it is a way for the Player to get a taste of DMing.

Not an issue personally, as I've mentioned before. Am I only allowed to talk about things that affect me personally?

Do you have to take every single time we point out that you have removed yourself from the concerns of this game and how it will be run as a personal attack against your freedom of speech and right to do whatever you want? You made your choice, and I respect your choice, but it gets really tiresome to have someone who this doesn't effect, who doesn't like the direction of the game, who has no interest in the game to constantly tell us how they would run the game that they don't like.

I could certainly tell the NFL how to write rules for American Football, but considering I don't like Football, I may have opinions that would be very poor for the game to implement.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Or it's a marketing move to make people buy a book to make quick buck while AI dms are long-term goal

Didn't you just reprimand someone for using "stupid buzzwords"?

Your insistence that everything is AI or a cash grab scheme isn't helping the general health of the discussion here.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Personally, I GM'd D&D for 40 years and I might do so again, so while I no longer run D&D as of 2 weeks ago when my Stonehell 5e campaign concluded, I still have a keen interest in whether WoTC is looking to right the ship, or dig the hole deeper. I'm also interested in what sort of play culture they are creating among new players.

Most successful version of Dungeons and Dragons to ever exist. The version of Dungeons and Dragons that has had the deepest impact into popular culture, leading to a massively popular video game, an actually good DnD movie, and record amounts of interest across the spectrum of the populace.

IF this is "digging a hole" then get me a backhoe so we can speed this along.

 

[S'mon]

Most successful version of Dungeons and Dragons to ever exist. The version of Dungeons and Dragons that has had the deepest impact into popular culture, leading to a massively popular video game, an actually good DnD movie, and record amounts of interest across the spectrum of the populace.

IF this is "digging a hole" then get me a backhoe so we can speed this along.

They only started digging ca 2018.

 

[Hussar]

Say your argument without resorting to stupid buzzwords.

You mean like comparing things to video games?

 

[Chaosmancer]

too bad the new rules do not value collaboration but literally forbid it and roleplay to reduce things to cheap mechanical powerups. They literally wrote the fun out of the game.

No they didn't

 

[Not a Decepticon]

The bastion characters are player characters.

A similar situation can happen when a player plays two characters at the same time.

Which is not something supported by the rules and thus non-applicable. Even with sidekicks, while players control their actions in combat I roleplay them, I dictate their personalities, I decide how they react to player actions. by these new rules I am forbidden from doign that with hirelings.

You mean like comparing things to video games?

If you're going to be deliberatelly obtuse and snarky I will just ignore you, since you have nothing of value to say.

No they didn't

See my comparison to sidekicks above.

Didn't you just reprimand someone for using "stupid buzzwords"?

Your insistence that everything is AI or a cash grab scheme isn't helping the general health of the discussion here.

I do not beleive pointing out that the corproations will seell you anythign to make short-term profit, even if their long-term goals lie elsewhere, is anything comparable to trying to dismiss my entire argument with stupid one-liners.

And a discussion can be healthy without being 100% praise and positivity, some of us have reasons to mistrust the corporation that dominated this hobby and has done nothing to appease our worries.

 

[Chaosmancer]

But the player controls everything about those NPCs between when they arrive and when they leave?

That seems a bit much.

I mean, in the game I play in we as a company have a stronghold, and said stronghold currently has a standing NPC staff of about 30 people. None of us players control any of the staff; what they do-think-etc. is up to the DM. (edit to add: except when we give them instructions, which they usually carry out as best they can as they were in part hired for their loyalty)

A PC of mine also has her own house in town, with a standing staff of one and otherwise populated by her family; and both the NPC staffer and the family are DM-controlled NPCs...which makes sense when put against the adage "you can't choose your family".

Sure, that's how things are traditionally done. Why can't we try something different? What is wrong with the player's deciding that their kitchen maid is named Eliza and she is being courted by the Stablehand named Boe? Why can't they decide that the old butler they hired has a lame leg from a wound he got defending a noble's manor from a monster assault?

Sure, could be difficult to actually RP those characters, out loud, at the table. That is a challenge... but is that the purpose of the Bastion system? And are you as a DM incapable of taking RPing direction from someone else? I mean, you are an old-hand at DMing Lanefan, have you EVER had to RP a character whose player missed a session? It wouldn't be much different than that.