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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MerricB" data-source="post: 6265118" data-attributes="member: 3586">One of the big problems that home bases have is that it's very, very hard to write encounters for them when the actions of player groups can be so different. At this point in the history of the game - and Hommlet is one of the very first to actually detail the home base - the method was to lay out what was in the home base and then let the DM decide what to do with it. Thus, you've got a bunch of cultists in the village, and some NPCs in the Welcome Wench who are available for hiring with the party to bulk up their numbers in the moathouse - and some of those NPCs have ulterior motives. And here's where the assumptions of today meet the assumptions of yesterday and come crashing to the ground.The fact is, in today's D&D adventures, a group of 3-6 players create one character each, go on an adventure, and succeed.In yesterday's D&D adventures, a group of 3-6 players created one character each, and then hired companions because having only 3 or 4 PCs was nowhere near enough to succeed!That causes a large problem in the approaches to the adventure. The modern group misses out on hiring the cultists, and the agents of Good, and wanders around Hommlet wondering what the fuss was about. The old group quickly finds itself enmeshed in the adventure as the NPCs use them for their own ends. These assumptions of basic play cause a lot of problems; even more because they weren't universally true even back in the day. When I started playing D&D (c.1982), we created one character each *and didn't hire anyone*. By the time we played through the Village of Hommlet quite a few years later, we missed all the fun of Hommlet, cleared out the Moathouse because we were pointed to it by the DM, and then headed off to the Temple proper.If you are interested in investigating different methods of detailing the home base, I advise having a look at the following D&D adventures:* The Village of Hommlet (1979) (part of T1-4 Temple of Elemental Evil)* Keep on the Borderlands (1979)* Keep on the Shadowfell (2008)* Against the Cult of Chaos (2013) (one of the D&D Encounters seasons)Why those four adventures? The first two are classic Gygax approaches to the home base. Keep on the Borderlands has particular advice for running the home base, while leaving it a lot more sketchy than in Hommlet (which doesn't have the advice). Keep on the Shadowfell, which you can <a href="http://www.dndclassics.com/product/110212/H1-Keep-on-the-Shadowfell--QuickStart-Rules-4e" target="_blank">get for free as a pdf</a>, takes a lot of the basic structure of what should be happening with Hommlet and Keep and spells it out for you. (Although the dungeon design isn't great, the first half, which involves most of the town stuff, does show how you could run the old AD&D adventures). And Against the Cult of Chaos is a mash-up of the Village of Hommlet, Keep on the Borderlands and Against the Cult of the Reptile God, and gives an excellent take on how to design a reactive home base/adventure location - especially given the restrictions it had on it. Alas, I don't think you can buy it at present...Cheers!</blockquote>

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