My players in a medieval sandbox campaign will start at low level with the party being granted a lot of land (Home Base) near a lot of uncivilized lands and near the ocean to allow for sea travel. they are tasked to start a guild from the ground up that focuses on studying and capturing creatures and monsters. The idea is for them to recruit members to the guild, acquire wealth and following through the guilds work and eventually have their own civilization/town to manage. Im going to have a Main NPC (knowledge knower/Players can go to for help) who is the bookkeeper and scribe for the guild. and another NPC who works as a groundkeeper and tends to the horses. The Scribe will be running a bookshop that pulls in just enough money to keep up with the upkeep for the Home Base allowing the players to start from 0 and go whichever direction they wanted.
Im looking for ways to price out buildings, ships, modifications, and labor costs for the expansion of buildings and infrastructure. As well as a way to keep the players from being too wealthy or struggle too hard for coin.
Has anyone has ran something similar to this or have any advice for managing a functioning guild/ town. I would greatly appreciate any resources or ideas you have.
There’s a third party supplement called strongholds and followers by Matt colville. I’ve not read it, but from what I hear, it might get at the kinds of things you are looking for.
I would recommend homebrewing the majority of the content, mainly because the guidelines WotC already set aren’t meant for an entire campaign to be played off of. though I have some advice-
1) Decide the perspective, Do you want your campaign to be like Clash of clans (where the players are pretty much formless, they just oversee everything), or more in depth?
2) Let the players choose how they want to expand. Do they want to focus on the sea and monsters/resources from there? Do they have a forest they can harvest from? Are there mountains with abundant monsters? I would give the players 3-6 main options on where they want to start working, then you add more details based on their choices.
3) make sure you keep the action. If you start running the campaign like a tycoon simulator then your players will get bored fast, you want to have some action. Maybe their fort/town gets attacked by the monsters they where capturing. Maybe a rival tries to dismantle their operations from the inside. Maybe there are some mishaps with the capture of a powerful monster. If you keep the action going (though try not to be excessive) then your players won’t grow bored.
4) Don’t give the players options, give them prices. What I mean is don’t give a list of things your players can build, give them prices for what THEY want to build. Maybe they want to build a new set of cages to hold small monsters, If so I’d probably be pretty cheap and simple, but if they want a cage that can hold a dragon, that’s when things get more complicated. And you also want the occasional “special” resources, the type of item they need to go on a special quest for.
this is all the advice I have for now, hope it helps!
In general I wouldn't try to run a city builder in D&D (or any other RPG), it's more in the realm of strategy games. That said, if you do decide to do it, just outright stealing from other games is probably your best bet.
Over the editions there have actually been several products like stronghold builders guide bth third party and TSR/WOTC. You might pickup Acquistions Inc as well as it’s centered around something like this ( you may want to remove some of the comedic stuff - or not).
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Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
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My players in a medieval sandbox campaign will start at low level with the party being granted a lot of land (Home Base) near a lot of uncivilized lands and near the ocean to allow for sea travel. they are tasked to start a guild from the ground up that focuses on studying and capturing creatures and monsters. The idea is for them to recruit members to the guild, acquire wealth and following through the guilds work and eventually have their own civilization/town to manage. Im going to have a Main NPC (knowledge knower/Players can go to for help) who is the bookkeeper and scribe for the guild. and another NPC who works as a groundkeeper and tends to the horses. The Scribe will be running a bookshop that pulls in just enough money to keep up with the upkeep for the Home Base allowing the players to start from 0 and go whichever direction they wanted.
Im looking for ways to price out buildings, ships, modifications, and labor costs for the expansion of buildings and infrastructure. As well as a way to keep the players from being too wealthy or struggle too hard for coin.
Has anyone has ran something similar to this or have any advice for managing a functioning guild/ town. I would greatly appreciate any resources or ideas you have.
There’s a third party supplement called strongholds and followers by Matt colville. I’ve not read it, but from what I hear, it might get at the kinds of things you are looking for.
I would recommend homebrewing the majority of the content, mainly because the guidelines WotC already set aren’t meant for an entire campaign to be played off of.
though I have some advice-
1) Decide the perspective, Do you want your campaign to be like Clash of clans (where the players are pretty much formless, they just oversee everything), or more in depth?
2) Let the players choose how they want to expand. Do they want to focus on the sea and monsters/resources from there? Do they have a forest they can harvest from? Are there mountains with abundant monsters? I would give the players 3-6 main options on where they want to start working, then you add more details based on their choices.
3) make sure you keep the action. If you start running the campaign like a tycoon simulator then your players will get bored fast, you want to have some action. Maybe their fort/town gets attacked by the monsters they where capturing. Maybe a rival tries to dismantle their operations from the inside. Maybe there are some mishaps with the capture of a powerful monster. If you keep the action going (though try not to be excessive) then your players won’t grow bored.
4) Don’t give the players options, give them prices. What I mean is don’t give a list of things your players can build, give them prices for what THEY want to build. Maybe they want to build a new set of cages to hold small monsters, If so I’d probably be pretty cheap and simple, but if they want a cage that can hold a dragon, that’s when things get more complicated. And you also want the occasional “special” resources, the type of item they need to go on a special quest for.
this is all the advice I have for now, hope it helps!
In general I wouldn't try to run a city builder in D&D (or any other RPG), it's more in the realm of strategy games. That said, if you do decide to do it, just outright stealing from other games is probably your best bet.
Over the editions there have actually been several products like stronghold builders guide bth third party and TSR/WOTC. You might pickup Acquistions Inc as well as it’s centered around something like this ( you may want to remove some of the comedic stuff - or not).
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.