Homebrew What makes for a perfect base hub for adventures?

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I must have missed the DoMT in The Great Glass Elevator.

Dahl would 100% have kids picking random cards that would lead them to nearly certain death if he had thought of it.

 

[Reynard]

Dahl would 100% have kids picking random cards that would lead them to nearly certain death if he had thought of it.

I have DoMT problem: I have it show up in every D&D campaign I run (and sometimes in campaigns that aren't D&D, or even fantasy).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I must have missed the DoMT in The Great Glass Elevator.

Oompa loompa doompety doo
I've got a perfect puzzle for you
Oompa loompa doompety dee
If you are wise, you'll listen to me

What do you get when you pull the wrong switch?
Randomly poking the dangerous bits
What are you at? Getting terribly zapped
What do you think will come of that?
I don't like the look of it.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I have DoMT problem: I have it show up in every D&D campaign I run (and sometimes in campaigns that aren't D&D, or even fantasy).

I'm planning on busting out the low level one in the Book of Many Things for a Heroes of the Borderland game at some point, which I'm confident will make things get weird very quickly.

 

[Reynard]

I'm planning on busting out the low level one in the Book of Many Things for a Heroes of the Borderland game at some point, which I'm confident will make things get weird very quickly.

I have been in love since the one you could cut out of Dragon Magazine. I don't think I have ever used an alternate deck (as opposed to the one in the DMG of the edition I was running).

 

[haakon1]

Sandpoint is about perfect.

I appreciate that it is named after a Seattle neighborhood, with a popular park. My wife lived there long ago.

Lots of other Seattle area references in that era from WotC and Paizo.

 

[haakon1]

About attacking or threatening or destroying the PC’s home base … it’s interesting.

I think campaigns benefit from having a Shire, the good place to fight for. Tolkien has the Shire threatened and overrun offscreen in LotR, but let the good guys clean things up quickly at the end.

And in The Hobbit, Bilbo returned to his relatives selling off his possessions, right?

I like that defending the home base leads to my PC’s recruiting troops, recruiting NPC allies, retiring old PC’s at the base, making (3.5e rules) or giving magic items to their officers/henchmen, etc.

I don’t go in for super duper magical defenses being a thing (and 9th level PC’s are typically as high as it goes), but seeing PC’s leaving their guards silver and magical arrows, and a jar of Keoghtom’s Ointment, when they go out on adventure, just in case, that happies this DM.

Oh, at our Keep on the Borderlands, the sergeant in charge of the gates is a retired PC who is a Paladin level 2 - just the right level to Detect Evil. Retired PC of a former coworker who didn’t play for very long, but it’s fun her character still serves.

And the Ranger scouting from the Keep is the retired high school main PC of a friend I met in college. The Ranger was revived as a PC for about a year in my game, with the goal of being a permanent NPC other players would meet. Characters living forever - or long as I shall DM - makes them and me happy too.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I appreciate that it is named after a Seattle neighborhood, with a popular park. My wife lived there long ago.

Lots of other Seattle area references in that era from WotC and Paizo.

It took me an amazingly long time to realize that Ptolus -- the City by the Spire, where it's always raining -- was at least somewhat a reference to Seattle. I really need to add coffee and grunge to the city.

 

[haakon1]

Somebody decided Elmo in Temple of Elemental Evil has the full name Elmo Renton. Renton, WA is where WotC’s office is.

“The Speaker in Dreams” (in the Sunken Citadel/Forge of Fury 3e launch adventure path) had an NPC named Sequim. Sequim is the town next to the Dungeness Spit in Washington, a ferry ride and a drive from Seattle, in the rain shadow of the Olympic Peninsula.

An adventure path in Dungeon has the Spire of Long Shadows. Long Shadows is a (really top flight) winery in central Washington.

I like to assume there are more!

 

[Rainbow Scissors]

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.

Hamlet on the back of a colossal land snail