Liberating a Keep and Keeping it

[Marauder_POV]

OK so my Group has decided that we are going to ditch WOTC's modules and make our own centreing on stories of three of the main PCs. However the general concensous is that our party should have a base, somewhere that we can call our own. So we are going to liberate a keep/town from something. Not sure what yet but we'll get there.

What i'm interested in is whether any one has done this sort of thing before and some feed back on how it worked. Any cool ideas to go with it are a bonus.

We're all level 4-5 ATM and we'll probably to Tomb of Horrors at around Lvl 8ish.

So has any one done this?

 

[Robtheman]

Are you planning on writing the story collaboratively? It sounds that way.

If not, I would download and hack apart the Keep on the Shadowfell module. Get rid of all the encounters you dislike. Change the plot to suit your needs. Use the maps, town, and backgrounds for NPCs. Create a different BBEG if you like.

I suggest this because it's a free download from Wizards, has nice support from the community, includes a number of maps and already involves a keep that can be liberated and requires some serious rebuilding. This is ideal for a base. There's even a wizard tower in the main town that could be a secondary base, or expanded with magic devices.

 

[Marauder_POV]

interesting suggestion. We are actually playing KOTS ATM.

I think that the guys are more interested in creating our own keep(one of the guys used cartographer and made a map allready) Plus in the group there is a general dislike of KOTS. Personally i thinnk its fine but some of the other guys want to not finish it.

We have tonnes of Ideas for the Keep/town surrounding it. Just interested in seeing how other people have done it.

 

[Robtheman]

Okay. I'm currently running my friends through KoTS. One side quest for them, or perhaps a longer one, is to have the sage in the town die or disappear. Upon entering his tower they learn that he was only using 2 floors.

The other three are locked by some wizards magic. A successful skill challenge/puzzle encounter would let them get access to a room with dozens of large tapestries hanging on the wall. They radiate strong magic - portals of some sort. One of them is this image. Its magical aura is different. It has been activated recently.

The party explores the other two floors of the wizards tower, besting various foes and gaining fat loots and mad XP. Eventually they uncover the method of activating the portal and art transported to the scene at hand. Change the surroundings to reflect some significant developments since the creation of the tapestry.

Why did the sage go here? Did he go of his own volition? Where are they? What is the state of the tower in the distance?

 

[aco175]

One of the more recent Dungeon mags #176 has 2 modules/supplements called The Keep and The Crossroads that I find good to develop into a more rounded base of operations. I haven't realy looked into the whole Scar campaign idea, but these can stand alone and I have used them in an offshoot campaign. The Keep is a village inside a keep but can make a cool place for npc's to scheme and companion characters to pop up.

I would also look in the Map a Week section of the Wizards site- I found several maps worth taking and a good castle map of several levels that could be all done for you.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Been there done that. The keep and surrounding area was good for several adventures, to remove curses from the land, recovering taxpayers from slavers and refugees from other dimensions overrun by vampires.

Also, some assasination attempts, tax fraud and excessive state borrowing from the Church.

Then we got trapped on the otherside of hell for a few months (60 years in the world) and we are now trying to get it back.

Oh! if the fairies want to steal your cook, let them.

 

[Stoat]

I'm running pretty much exactly that game right now. One of the PC's inherited a castle, which (of course) turned out to be infested with evil goblins and whatnot.

Pretty much what you need is a Floorplan of the keep, and an idea of what horrible nasties infest it. The players figure out how to remove the nasties without burning down the keep.

In our case, the castle was humongous (I used the map of the original Castle Ravenloft). Three or four different factions were camped out there, and they weren't much on speaking terms. The PC's were able to divide and conquer, and cleared the castle after several months of real time. (It took about a week in the game).

 

[TerraDave]

Castle Ravenloft was the home base for my PCs some years ago.

At one point they wanted to turn it into a a tourist attraction. That didn't work out.

 

[jrowland]

In older editions, this was sort of a given in my gaming circles. In 1E there was the Battlesystem rules and the modules associated with them Where you took over a valley in Forgotten Realms (Bloodstone Pass). There was the Alderweg series modules (UK2 and UK3) wherein you assaulted a great Keep (link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gauntlet_%28module%29)

I highly recommend UK3 and find it would make an EXCELLENT 4E conversion. Its there perfect size for Heroic tier characters needing a base, It's designed to be a highly defendable keep (ie you don't need an army to hold it), and because it is partially built into a mountainside it can be expanded as the characters need grow.

Seriously. Find a copy.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I'm running pretty much exactly that game right now. One of the PC's inherited a castle, which (of course) turned out to be infested with evil goblins and whatnot.

Pretty much what you need is a Floorplan of the keep, and an idea of what horrible nasties infest it. The players figure out how to remove the nasties without burning down the keep.

In our case, the castle was humongous (I used the map of the original Castle Ravenloft). Three or four different factions were camped out there, and they weren't much on speaking terms. The PC's were able to divide and conquer, and cleared the castle after several months of real time. (It took about a week in the game).

The problem with this is; once you clear the castle then what?
A humungeous castle is not holdable by the pcs, it at the very least needs a garrison, who have to; a) come from somewhere, b) need to be fed, clothed and equiped, c) need to be paid.
So now you need support staff, farmers, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers. They need to be persuaded to come, protected when they arrive and some one has to do the estate management. Taxes, rents and so forth.
One minute you are playing D&D, next the Sims fantasy, then Civ.