Homebrew What makes for a perfect base hub for adventures?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Let's say you're creating a site where the home base can be the site of adventures, but which is mostly going to be the place that your player characters return to after adventures. What would your ideal home base look like?

Is it the equivalent of a small personal fortress/secret lair/spaceship/pirate ship (depending on genre)?

Is it a tiny hamlet with a blacksmith, a healer, a general goods peddler and a surprisingly well-informed sage to give out lore dumps?

Is it a full-fledged town where the player characters might have grown up and where whole lives can be lived out that have nothing to do with adventures?

Or do you need the equivalent of a big metropolis where almost anything can happen, including traditional dungeon-crawl type adventures?

This is mostly about homebrew, but if there's a published home base that you think is just the chef's kiss, I'd love to hear about that as well.

 

[Reynard]

I think it is almost entirely dependent on the nature of the larger campaign. I have used everything from the sleepy hamlet to a trade caravan to the king's court as the base of operations.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I have used everything from the sleepy hamlet to a trade caravan to the king's court as the base of operations.

And were all of those equally successful?

 

[Deset Gled]

You need a spot that's close enough to civilization that resting PCs still have access to trade for things like spell components and basic materials for anything they want to do off camera.

You also want a spot that's far enough removed from civilization that it's not subject to regular threats from politics, bandit raids, guild drama, or other sorts of threats that are common plot hooks in your game, so the PCs can rest there with impunity.

Geographic isolation can be an easy way to do it. A mountain retreat, a home on a peninsula, or similar feature that lets the base be close to a city but also removed. Or just a halfway point between the Big Castle and the frontier.

In a semi-recent campaign, the DM tried to give us a run down inn/tavern to use as a home base. A couple of us leaned into the "running a tavern" bit thinking it was a plot hook. It wasn't supposed to be. It ended badly.

 

[Necropolitan]

I'm running a campaign in Sigil in the Planescape setting and I just use the fact that it has portals to just about every Plane and numerous worlds as an excuse to have any kind of adventure I want.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

In a semi-recent campaign, the DM tried to give us a run down inn/tavern to use as a home base. A couple of us leaned into the "running a tavern" bit thinking it was a plot hook. It wasn't supposed to be. It ended badly.

Yeah, I think if people want to do a cozy fantasy/Sims thing, that definitely can be fun, and there's a decent amount of support for that sort of campaign. But everyone definitely needs to be into it and the DM has to have some ideas of what to do once everyone has accepted the role, so that everyone's not just staring at each other across the table, saying "well, now what?"

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'm running a campaign in Sigil in the Planescape setting and I just use the fact that it has portals to just about every Plane and numerous worlds as an excuse to have any kind of adventure I want.

@SlyFlourish's City of Arches also works well for this, despite being located (probably) on the Prime Material Plane.

 

[Reynard]

And were all of those equally successful?

No, but because the campaigns were not all equally successful. For example, the caravan home base was when playing the Jade Regent PF1 AP which did not work for us. I don't think the failure was based on the HQ tho.

I will say that of all the styles, I return to "small town where the PCs end up taking on bigger and bigger roles" more often than other setups. I like having NPCs that have long term relationships with the PCs, and I like letting players inclined to build -- whether it is business, reputation, or relationship -- be able to do that. The longest and most successful campaign I ever ran saw home go from village to walled town to regional capitol over the course of two PC generations.

 

[thullgrim]

I think some considerations are system based. If your game assumes the buying and selling it magic items you need to be able to accomplish that. If your system requires training time you have to allow for that.

Some examples I think work and have used:
Civilized Phlan - pools of radiance
RestWell Keep - chaos scar

Sandpoint - Rise of the Runelords. Sandpoint is about perfect. It has everything a group needs day to day and is close enough to a larger city, Magnimar, to make extravagant purchases and exotic supplies possible.

 

[zarionofarabel]

It varies greatly depending on the campaign. Though I will generally rule out the idea that a whole town or city would be considered the home base. The home base would merely be a location within said town/city such as a particular tavern or inn or maybe even a distinct neighborhood. That being said, home bases in my games are never sacrosanct and are included in the things that I will mess with as a GM. The PCs ship might get stolen, the inn may burn down, or the city containing the home base may be cut off during a seige. I do enjoy having PCs with a "base of operations" as it helps tie the PCs to the setting, and allows the use of recurring NPCs, to a greater degree. Unless of course the PC home base is mobile, but that can be made a secondary feature by having the mobile base have a "home port" as it were. I did that alot back in the day when running Star Wars D6. The party almost always had a transport ship as their default home base, but I would often feature a specific port of call as being particularly safe for the ship to reside when the players needed a break from the action. Then, while the ship remains the defacto home base, the port becomes a secondary one where recurring NPCs reside.