Where does one find stronghold rules in TSR/WOTC products?

[TheAuldGrump]

for 3rd party stuff I can recommend Mongoose Publishings Classic Play Book of Strongholds & Dynasties and the Classic Play Book of the Sea. For reasons that escape me they put the siege engines in the latter book....

S&D covers mass combat as well as the building and maintaining of strongholds, fun if you are planning massive battles as part of your game. A simplified version, for the Conan game, can be found here if you want to see if you will like it.

Book of the Sea contains rules for trade as well as ship to ship battles.

The Auld Grump
*EDIT* The Conan PDF also contains the stats for the war machines left out of S&H.

 

[Fifth Element]

Stronghold rules? What stronghold rules?

Sorry. That wasn't helpful.

 

[pawsplay]

The problem with the Stronghold Builder's Guide was that it treated a castle like a giant adventure site. No rationale was given for anything, just stats for various kinds of walls, defenses, and retainers. And despite the tremendous detail, it offered little more functionality than the walls/traps/etc. rules already present in the DMG.

 

[Aus_Snow]

Birthright was a more abstract approach to ruling a "domain" which some may prefer. Also interesting because it divides between religious, magical, economic ("guild"), and law holdings. However the domain system could be almost a game in itself, and of course the system resembles nothing in 3e.

Except, perhaps, when you are using the 3e version: http://www.birthright.net - worth a look. You have to register (for free) if you want to download the 3e campaign setting, but that is worth the price, I think.

Out of what is available for D&D, I would hesitantly suggest Strongholds & Dynasties. It's not fantastic, IMO, but it can do the job (well, help you to do it.) Not so bad for providing details on the physical structures, and the building and fortifying of them. OK for some other things.

Given you already have MMS:WE, the combination should prove somewhat helpful.

 

[S'mon]

Truthfully, I've never seen stronghold rules that fully satisfied me. My attitude is that they need to be a concise and cohesive game in their own right, and I've never seen that done properly. (Example: I ran PC strongholds with the Companion rules once, but in practice it's totally unbalanced and creates an overwhelming flood of gold coming at the PCs every month.)

Overall I think the BECMI rules are the best available, but I agree that the economics are way out of whack. In OD&D a ruler got 10 gp per inhabitant *per year*; in 1e a Fighter gets 7 sp/month, Cleric 9 sp (inc tithes), Magic-User 5 sp. Those figures are better, but still awfully high when a heavy infantryman only costs 2 gp/month - the 1e Cleric only needs 5 inhabitants to generate 45 sp, enough for 1 heavy infantryman & 5 sp to spare.

In 3e an infantryman costs 6 gp/month, I think even a rich domain should need at least 20 inhabitants to keep him supplied, which would be 6/20 = 3/10 = 3 sp per citizen per month.

If you want something resembling historical conditions though you need to reduce the amount of money still further - the feudal system is based off land, not goal; and temporary levies, not standing armies. Even the wealthy city states of Renaissance Italy weren't maintaining large standing armies; they employed mercenary companies on temporary contracts, and paid through the nose for troops of often dubious loyalty.

One thing I do IMC is to use the BECMI income figures as annual rather than monthly income per-family (5 people in BECMI). Combine this with 3e costs and it looks fairly reasonable.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

Supplementary to the Dominion rules in the Cyclopedia, Bruce Heard (Product Editor of the Mystara line for TSR) wrote a couple of Dragon Magazine articles on costs and rules for ruling. The articles in question are in Dragon 187, 189, 190, and 191 (IIRC).

He also created for the Mystara community a spreadsheet to calculate the dominion rules, as well as various other articles on ruling, building, etc. Check out the links page to his articles at the Vaults of Pandius, and you might find something that works out for you.

 

[the Jester]

The 2e Castle Guide was, imho, far better than almost any of the other 2e stuff, some of which was quite good. But for stronghold rules, I strongly recommend reading this.

I love the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook, but a friend of mine has had my copy for hmm, a couple of years now... He uses it to work on his dominion in my epic game.

I have heard wonderful things about the dominion system in the old D&D RC from the, what, 90s? Also, I believe that Birthright has a lot of this kind of thing in it as well.

 

[Thanael]

The 2E DMGR2 Castle Guide is available for free on wizards old edition downloads site: http://wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dnd/downloads

 

[Psion]

"Stronghold Builders Guidebook" was one of my least favorite 3.0 books.

As it was mine. I quit buying 3e products for a while after that came out.

It sort of drove home how "single purpose" the 3e economic system is.

 

[Li Shenron]

The last thing I'm wavering on is purchasing either the Strognhold Builder's Guidebook

Stay away from it.

AFAIK it only has rules about how much does a castle costs, depending on the rooms and the materials. This is totally useless information in a game where costs are relevant only for PCs, which will almost never build/buy a castle in 3e anyway, since the ridiculous prices mean they will give up a lot of their equipment (i.e. power). A DM would be insane to spend more than 5 minutes trying to figure out how much the BBEG has to spend to build his castle, and even more insane to question if the BBEG should have his castle at all, based how much a book tells you it costs.