Need for a Home Base

[S'mon]

Just musing to myself this morning that all my successful long term campaigns have had the following format:

1. PCs start out in a safe and relatively familiar location, eg "You all meet at the Inn"; though it can be a castle or Pathfinder lodge, etc.
2. PCs hear the "call to adventure" - whether the greybeard in the corner with Quest to Save World, or just rumours of treasure
3. PCs go to adventure site, do stuff, then come back.

So, basically the "Hero's Journey".

Now, sometimes - often - the PCs eventually relocate their Home Base, eg they might move to a new Inn, or gain their own Castle. But the safe & familiar starting point seems to be very important for long term play. If I start the game as GM/am started as player with PCs on the run, looking for safety, or crashed on an unfamiliar & dangerous planet/island, it never works out. All player energy goes into establishing safety - creating that safe home base, or reaching a safe place - at which point the game feels 'done'. The energy dissipates.

Anyone else had this experience? Is it just me?

 

[Arilyn]

I've ran and played in games where the players have no home base, and wander from danger to danger. In these cases, they make temporary safe harbours, so that might not be what you are talking about. As a player or a GM, I rea!ly like there to be an inn or keep that the players can call home. I know what you mean about players thrust into dangerous territory, where establishing a safe zone becomes top priority. I haven't given it much thought, but those games do dissipate faster. The major goal been reached, so story over? Perhaps these types of campaigns feel more like a movie than a tv series. Maybe not having periodic home breaks, like in real life, is just too tiring after a while.

 

[hawkeyefan]

My 5E campaign has a lot of elements picked up from previous campaigns from prior editions. One of the things that the PCs have had is a base of operations. There have been/are several groups of PCs over the years, and the first group recorved a castle as reward for an early adventure (the rarely mentioned “Destiny of Kings” module). That castle became their home base.

As time went on they learned that there was much more to the castle than they thought, and it turned out to be a flying castle. Then, not long after that, they learned that it was capable of planar travel.

So their HQ kind of leveled up with them.

Now, our 5E party is looking for that castle and a few others like it in order to prevent the bad guys from doibg their bad guy stuff. The current group of PCs have also established a base. Or multiple bases is probably the better way of describing it. They’ve created the Phandalin-Crux Trading Company (the “PC” Company hah!) which is based out of the town of Phandalin in Faerun and the town of Crux on the World Tree (featured in the 2E Planescape module “Dead Gods”). These two locations are connected by portal to a third location in Sigil.

Again, all these things have been established as the PCs have leveled, and a lot of the expansion has involved downtime activity and research. I’ve always liked the idea of a PC HQ, and building that can be an engaging game within the game.

 

[S'mon]

I know what you mean about players thrust into dangerous territory, where establishing a safe zone becomes top priority. I haven't given it much thought, but those games do dissipate faster. The major goal been reached, so story over? Perhaps these types of campaigns feel more like a movie than a tv series. Maybe not having periodic home breaks, like in real life, is just too tiring after a while.

I noticed that my son loved "Shadow of Mordor" computer game, with constant fighting in the hellscape of Mordor; whereas I couldn't stand it. Conversely I love the cadence of "Skyrim", with its nearly-always-safe cities & inns, its dangerous wilderness, and deadly delves. I nearly always 'save' my PC back at home
base, so when I reload I am in the tavern or Breezehome, not neck deep in Draugr.

 

[Tonguez]

I tend to have PCs as either members of Mercenary Companies or organisations like the Church or Militant Orders, that provides both a built in Patron and one or more homebases.
One of my favourite (and longest running) games had PCs as members of a travelling Circus troupe, so essentially a moving homebase and an excuse to cover a large area and various adventures.

I've also had establishing and then defending the homebase be the adventure - PCs home village was attacked by an invading army and the populace fled into the forest. The next morning the PCs were tasked to gather the refugees and get them up to 'the old fort' while avoiding capture by the bad guys. They arrived to find the old fort overrun with kobolds, who had to be gotten rid of so the fort could be fortified and defended.

 

[Umbran]

Anyone else had this experience? Is it just me?

Hm. For me...

Back in the day of 1e, we had home bases when we reached name level and built keeps. Not generally before.

Playing Marvel Superheroes - yep, we totally built ourselves a group HQ, as soon as we could. But, an HQ are very specifically in-genre for superhero teams.

Playing Shadowrun... good gods, no. Shadowrunners who tie themselves to a single location are investing in something they can't move, and are apt to lose. Mind you, most of the adventuring was within one city.

D&D 2e, two different campaigns - one I ran, one I played... nope. No home base.

WEG Star Wars - we had a ship, but it moved around a lot. We did have a base late in play, after we had... acquired... several vessels.

Mage: The Ascension - Yep, we had a home base. The rules specifically gave characters a reason to have such.

Deadlands - not so much. The party hung around Dodge for a while, but didn't associate themselves with any particular location in town. Once they got to middling-power, they took to the road.

Ashen Stars - the team has a ship, as part of the general conceit of the game. Th party is most definitely not staying still, however.

D&D 5e at work - definitely not. Playing Storm King's Thunder, and I don't know if the party has stayed in the same place for two nights in a row.

So, mixed bag. Plenty of long-running play without a home base, though.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I think a big aspect of D&D has always been acquiring STUFF. Gold, tapestries, etc. AD&D is written to not even give you full benefit of it unless you DO get it back to a safe, secure place. Q: What do you give the man who has everything? A: A place to store it. Even in other editions there's still the need and desire to at some point have a temple to cast rituals, a tower with a laboratory and research library, wanting a hall where your PC can train at improving sword skills - even if they don't NEED that hall, etc. Having a place where the PC's can simply sleep without needing to set watches for fear of being mauled or robbed is understandably preferable, even if the game doesn't say it's necessary to have one decidedly established. But sometimes being murderhobos is fun.

I don't do too much in media res starts where the PC's have no home base, but are given every reason to WANT and NEED one when they normally wouldn't, so I have no experience with a game fading once they have such established. But while there are exceptions, most games I see players wanting a base whether they need it or not.

 

[TarionzCousin]

In D&D campaigns I have run, when I didn't provide an obvious home base for the PC's, they made one--more than once out of the first small dungeon they cleared out.

 

[Celebrim]

Because of D&D's particular resource allocation structure, the need for a secure 'home base' is absolutely critical if you are to avoid excessive PC deaths. In my parlance, I refer to the home base as 'the Haven'. The haven is where you can go to be relatively sure of not having a further encounter, or that if you do have the encounter it will be in your favor. The haven is essential because when you run out of hit points and spells, you must be able to have a secure long rest to recover. And if you don't have that, then you suffer death by attrition.

I have about a 7 year old campaign with like 150 sessions played, where I think I've put the whole thing at risk by in this latest phase making securing a haven a challenge. The players simply haven't been very good at anything other than kicking the door down, surrounding the baddies, and killing them. When they need to overcome a challenge that can be solved by doing this, they've run into problems and in this case they've essentially tried to resolve the problem of securing a haven by kicking the doors down, killing everyone and taking their stuff. But at best in this case it leaves them "camping in the dungeon", and camping in the dungeon is quite the opposite of a haven. You can't guarantee that if you camp in the dungeon that you'll have no encounters and that if you do those encounters will be in your favor. So a result, they are in a death spiral. It's a big reason other than my own burnout that I put the campaign on hiatus. I knew that with all chance of a haven lost, and with the party already in a death spiral, there was a very good chance that a TPK was just around the corner, and it would be a TPK that would not be easy or even possible to narratively recover from or handwave away.

My suspicion is that D&D with more recent rules sets that lack the mechanical requirement of a secure long rest are apt to not require a Haven, and that players will quite readily succeed without one.

 

[S'mon]

The haven is essential because when you run out of hit points and spells, you must be able to have a secure long rest to recover. And if you don't have that, then you suffer death by attrition.

Particularly true in my 5e games with 1 week LRs! Though I do allow overnight hp recovery (1/level), so a few classes like Fighter Rogue & Warlock can get by without LRs if they absolutely have to.