Strongholds: Individual or Group Endeavours?

[Lanefan]

For those who have PCs or parties in their games (any edition) who construct strongholds, castles, keeps, laboratories, temples, or whatever; a question:

How often are these things done by individuals, and how often are they a group endeavour or party project?

I ask because while the game seems to think such things are the purview of individual PCs (this is rooted in 1e, I think), my own experience has it that parties tend to go in together on building a base of operations - usually a castle - for themselves.

Lanefan

 

[Gilladian]

At lower levels (ie my current 4th level party in Ptolus) the PCs tend to live together in some type of home base. In this case, a haunted house they took over and have now remodeled; they've opened up the cellars to the dungeon below and taken over a nice little set of secret rooms. At this point, the campaign is still focused on group survival, and there's safety in numbers.

This is what happens in almost every campaign; later, as they attract followers and retainers, and their goals enlarge, they either leave home behind and stay on the move too much to need a home base, or they take over several different locales, and each is "given" to the PCs it makes most sense to use. Ie the wizard and his apprentices and new girlfriend move into a tower they clear, while the priest rebuilds a temple in a nearby community where the last one was taken over by an evil cult.

At this point, the campaign is really about world-building, and having individual bases are needed.

 

[Hereticus]

How often are these things done by individuals, and how often are they a group endeavour or party project?

Generally it takes a very long to build a castle or a city. Most of the time as a player we did as the Necromongers did... we kept what we took. As mid-level characters we did so as a group, not having the power base individually to maintain control.

As higher level characters (teens) we could control a moderate holding individually, or as a group we could rule a large city. As epic characters we could control a city-state, or as a group we could rule an empire.

In our 4.0E game our group of seven took and held Darkhold. We took it at eighth level, and were eventually evicted by fomorians at 13th level. The dungeon level of the fortress co-existed elsewhere in the deep underdark.

 

[Hereticus]

At this point, the campaign is really about world-building, and having individual bases are needed.

As DM I encouraged the characters to set up holdings and do world-building.

Sometimes I would work with players to design something they would want to take and rule over.

 

[howandwhy99]

We do both individual and cooperative team play. Sometimes it is a mix of who is on that team, but it hasn't been that staked out about "who's the boss?", etc.

On the one hand, Joe has his PC married and living in an estate in the center of the Lawful city whose province we started the campaign in. On the outskirts is his pre-marriage estate with apple orchard and half of the 500 manned militia we collectively have on the payroll. Joe pretty much takes care of the running of both areas, but I think he leaves each up to NPC control for the most part. That means he isn't learning how to do it him self, but the NPC rules are fairly reliable so we've learned as his trust in their alignment and loyalty. I think the PC's wife pretty much controls the in town stuff and his brother the outlying estate 2-3 days ride away (I can't recall the distance exactly).

As for other stuff, we kind of inherit it and let it go away as we conquer, move in, and leave. Of course this includes portions of the game world suitable for encampment (as ubiquituous as that means), but it mostly means taking over a part of an underground dungeon and defending it for rest, a safety spot, etc. In the city above "the black tower" has had the 4 archmages flee and some ex-player PCs, followers, and NPCs are running it now. Or not, it may have disappeared since then. I'm not up to date on on all the ongoings of the campaign anymore - especially the intricacies of the archmages. The tower had been a rallying point in the city and a frequent place of fortification. NPC appentrices were taken on even though the upper levels were blocked off to us.

All in all I'd say strongholds are just anywhere the group decides is capable of being defended strongly. It's territory really. The organizational details of people for us haven't been centralized by building structure, so it's hard to make a division.