Need for a Home Base

[Riley37]

For some styles, it's useful for the PCs to have a home base, possibly including a place where they share meals. There's opportunities for inter-character RP around a fire pit or a breakfast table.

Whether that's a *secure* base is another question. The crew of the Enterprise live on board, but the Enterprise is not always a safe place; sometimes it's attacked, sometimes it's infiltrated, sometimes its computer goes awry. The Fantastic Four have a shared home, which has been attacked and damaged once or twice.

In "Pillars of Eternity", Caed Nua is mostly a safe base, because you can choose not to go into the catacombs underneath. But if you do...

 

[pemerton]

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

<snip>

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?

I haven't. The issue of "home base" or establishing safety is not a distinctively big deal in my campaigns.

Although you seem to be positing two possibilities as covering the field: safe place or on the run/in danger. If a game starts with the PCs in a market hoping to find something useful, which do you count that as?

 

[S'mon]

Although you seem to be positing two possibilities as covering the field: safe place or on the run/in danger. If a game starts with the PCs in a market hoping to find something useful, which do you count that as?

I'd probably count that as "implied home base" if the market was presented as safe place in safe city, presumably there are inns and such nearby, or the PCs' permanent homes.

If it's presented as dangerous place in dangerous city, and the PCs have no existing background safe base to return to, it's in the "on the run" category.

 

[pemerton]

I'd probably count that as "implied home base" if the market was presented as safe place in safe city, presumably there are inns and such nearby, or the PCs' permanent homes.

Re-reading my actual play report, they were able to find an inn but a failed Resources check indicated that it was particularly low-class, inflicting a penalty to recover spell fatigue due to bed bugs.

And they were banished from the town by a powerful mage.

So I wouldn't think of it as an implied home base.

 

[S'mon]

Re-reading my actual play report, they were able to find an inn but a failed Resources check indicated that it was particularly low-class, inflicting a penalty to recover spell fatigue due to bed bugs.

And they were banished from the town by a powerful mage.

So I wouldn't think of it as an implied home base.

So, an in-between case I guess.

 

[pemerton]

So, an in-between case I guess.

This is why I was wondering which way you thought it might fall. Maybe your sharp distinction in the OP is a False Dichotomy (I've heard capitals are important for this) but I don't think it's obviously so. Eg I wondered if your "danger" category extends to any sort of "in media res" starting point.

 

[Celebrim]

Whether that's a *secure* base is another question. The crew of the Enterprise live on board, but the Enterprise is not always a safe place; sometimes it's attacked, sometimes it's infiltrated, sometimes its computer goes awry.

Star Trek has an episodic structure. All problems are always resolved by the end of the episode and at the beginning of each episode the Enterprise is whole, restored, and the party fully recovered from their trials. If the Enterprise is not a secure haven, then the space between episodes certainly is one. It's also true that there are ton of TOS episodes where almost all the drama depends on Kirk trying to contact the Enterprise on his communicator and getting nothing but static.

(Yes, I'm neglecting extended episodes that occur over two one hour time slots, and DS9's attempt to copy the B5 long running story arc format, but mostly because I think they also conform to the above observation.)

 

[Riley37]

All problems are always resolved by the end of the episode and at the beginning of each episode the Enterprise is whole, restored, and the party fully recovered from their trials. If the Enterprise is not a secure haven, then the space between episodes certainly is one.

True of the episodes. Variably true of the movies and novels, but that's irrelevant to your point. In D&D terms, Kirk and Spock begin each episode with full Hit Points (and spellcasting capacity or other ability uses, as appropriate).

So for TRPG, that raises the distinction of a safe haven between the action played out in a game "episode", whether that's a session or a story arc across a few sessions, versus a safe haven where no threats will arise *during* the story played out in sessions. Safe enough to rest (and recover HP etc.). Some TRPG tables have "downtime" assumed between sessions, others don't.

I'm interested in whether the story has "on stage" scenes in which the PCs can confer, reflect, debate, etc., without the time pressure of "every ten minutes we spend talking means another wandering monster check". Sometimes the Enterprise is safe enough for that, and sometimes it's not. Same for the Babylon 5 station.

I guess any place safe enough for resting, is also a place safe enough for the intra-character RP "pillar", for those tables which enjoy that sort of thing. Not quite vice versa; Legolas and Gimli might casually chat, on a road which also has the ongoing background danger of a goblin ambush interrupting their conversation.

Perhaps what I'm getting at here, is the role of in-game venues (whether castles, super-HQs, or ships) in the transitions between scenes played out round-by-round or otherwise under immediate pressure, versus scenes with slower paces.

 

[GrahamWills]

I am not sure I've ever had players with a solid base that they used a lot. In my CoC / ToC adventures (Eternal Lies, Masks of Nyarlathotep, Beyond the Mountains of Madness) they didn't really -- even the BtMoM base in the Antarctic wasn't more than semi-permanent. In my Rolemaster and MERP campaigns (multiples), they travelled all over the map. My longest-running D&D campaign had them moving from Eltir Vale through Demonweb pits to Sigil. AT Sigil they split up and each had their own bases (indeed, one mission had the Paladins on the team investigating a local crime lord's base to find it it was now of their team members). In 13th Age, they went all around the edges of the Dragon empire (mostly clockwise, in case anyone is interested)

Dracula Dossier pretty much requires no safe sanctuary. My current Numenéra campaign does have a space ship that is pretty much a safe base, but it's often not available. I run a bi-weekly Big Eyes Small Mouth campaign for middle schoolers and I'd love to tie them down to a base, but they learn about dragon hatchlings off to the north and immediately ditch the current locale ...

I have been thinking of running a short campaign solidly set in a small castle on the edge of the fey lands. That would, by definition, have a solid base. Overall though, it seems very rare in my campaigns.

 

[Celebrim]

Perhaps what I'm getting at here, is the role of in-game venues (whether castles, super-HQs, or ships) in the transitions between scenes played out round-by-round or otherwise under immediate pressure, versus scenes with slower paces.

Or, what process of play is used to establish when the "bangs" happen? Who gets to decide when the downtime happens, or The Haven is reached, and why?

Compare the classic AD&D haven/delve format where the players initiate a rest by deciding they've run out of resources and need to exit the mega-dungeon, with Mouse Guard where the rest (in this sense) can only happen on the player's turn in the process of play, and player turns only happen when the GM decides he's introduced enough *bangs* for the scenario. I find it ironic that Mouse Guard actually gives the GM fuller control over the pacing and goals of play than D&D. It's even more ironic when you consider that in order to get actions on the player turn (during the rest phase), the player is encouraged to trade some of his agency to the GM during the GM's turn.