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.

 

[Chaosmancer]

That movie WAS a flop, to be fair.

It was not financially successful, sure.

It was well-acted, the set design was great, the music was great, the special effects were amazing, and compared to literally every single DnD movie to come before it, it felt like a serious film created by a serious study with the intent of making a good film.

It was a good movie. A really good movie in my personal opinion, with clever twists, a heartfelt story, and solid writing.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

Oh no! DnD is trying something new! That's terrible, we should stop that at once. We can't have NEW ideas in DnD.

/heavy sarcasm

And with that you proved you have nothing actually meaningfull to say.

 

[Not a Decepticon]

It was not financially successful, sure.

It was well-acted, the set design was great, the music was great, the special effects were amazing, and compared to literally every single DnD movie to come before it, it felt like a serious film created by a serious study with the intent of making a good film.

It was a good movie. A really good movie in my personal opinion, with clever twists, a heartfelt story, and solid writing.

Corporations do not care about any of that, good things die on corproate watch all the time. All corporations care for is money.

 

[Hussar]

I mean, seriously, are we actually that afraid that the players might have a TINY sandbox to play in in our settings? Is that really something to be so afraid of?

Good grief, this has been done in D&D for decades. Wayyyy back when you used to get followers for your class at a certain level, you didn't have to "recruit" them. They were never going to betray you. You, the player, were 100% supposed to detail the followers. The DM had zero control over them.

Same as having a pet, a familiar, a patron, heck, even a deity. All of these are mostly under the control of the player. Do DM's actually step in and have a cleric's Deity betray them? Be unreliable? IME, no. They don't. The player picks whatever deity they happen to worship, and it's up to the player to bring that into play.

This is no different.

 

[S'mon]

Is interacting with other people really the thing that terrifies people away from DMing?

I don't know. But that is the bit that takes some skill.

 

[S'mon]

I actually liked the 2nd D&D movie more, it felt a lot more like an actual D&D game I would GM or play in... It had a somewhat serious plot, almost no smirking. Plus cool Barbarian girl.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.



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.

The game I do like shares a lot in common with NFL football, to continue your analogy. And since many more people play NFL football than play my version, and since we're all football fans, I have to consider what the NFL is doing relevant enough to discuss. So I would appreciate it if you would refrain from commenting on the strangeness that I, a 5e fan, often comment on the most popular version of 5e, even if I don't play it. I've explained my reasoning as best I can.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

It's all relative, @Chaosmancer . One person's mountain is another's valley.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

I minimize the involvement of PCs whose player is absent, because players control PCs, and I control everyone else.

If a player has ideas on the background and characterization of an NPC, and it doesn't interfere with my plans, I'm always happy to listen. That just good cooperation and sharing the creative load. Still my call for stuff like that at the end of the day IMO, and I won't apologize for feeling that way.

And again, if this is going the way the video makes it look, it's the first time there's been a hard rule that makes something off-limits to the DM that isn't a player's PC. And in the DMG no less. Not surprisingly that there's some pushback.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Why can't the player determine those things? I know traditionally they have not, but why CAN they not? What harm is done to the game?

They can, but can you really not see that this is easily seen as a different type of game? A lot of people don't want that in their D&D, and some of those people might still want strongholds.