My party is newer ish to D&D and we are about 3/4 done with LMoP. I've decided based on a few turn of events to burn down the Tresendar manor in Phandalin (the Redbrands did it after Glasstaff escaped) and would provide the option to the party via the town master that if they bring the Black Spider to justice that they could take over the manor if they fixed it up and would be able to establish themselves in the region with a 'home base'. I would require them to pay locals to rebuild the manor such as woodworkers, blacksmiths, and what not to make it feel more realistic too, but to also have them invested in the process and also establish a eben flow of currency so they aren't just sitting on a ton of loot and not using it.
I'm wondering if this is too much for a newer party to have/maintain or if there are other neat ideas around this? My proposal would be in the realm of they have a large manor where they could store items/rest but also begin building up the town and hiring different people to run their establishment if they were to do so. I have a rogue who could have connections with thieves guilds that ran out of the underground part of that manor and a fight/monk who can run a fighters guild and so on. I would make them pay a monthly tax to the town master to own the land and then I could constantly build quests out of a region they know (and I know) to help drive their progression too.
Just looking to see how you would handle this option and any tips/tricks you've done in the past?
Do you plan to continue with the characters after you finish? If not, it’s not a big deal to just let them have it, and it can be a place they retire to after the end. If you’re planning on continuing or running some side quests or something, you might check out the UA bastion rules.
Sure. Players can often get very invested in owning buildings, land or businesses. If anyone is interested, get the players or party to design the floor plan of the new manor. Do they want secret doors, hidden rooms, escape tunnels, how will they make use of the existing hideout below the manor? How will they decorate their rooms? How will they store their loot securely? Will they have some traps installed? Any magic? Some players can really get into it.
Others will be less interested in the details but will still like having a house to be a base. As you mentioned, it also provides a money sink which is very useful. The characters can hire staff and guards to protect it when they are away for example.
This will only be really useful though if it will be an ongoing campaign and if the campaign will be somewhere local at least to start. On the other hand, if the campaign shifts to a major city or out into the country far from Phandalin then the party could acquire another property.
Do you plan to continue with the characters after you finish? If not, it’s not a big deal to just let them have it, and it can be a place they retire to after the end. If you’re planning on continuing or running some side quests or something, you might check out the UA bastion rules.
Seconding the use of UA Bastion rules. It's not perfect, but is deep enough to be meaningful and fun without going crazy with administration.
If you want serious depth, buy the PDF for the Birthright Campaign Setting the rules in there work just fine and cover the answers to "What if the PC's want to rule the world, a trade network, or series of temples?"
"Time, like hope, is an illusion" - Lumalee "Time is relative" - Albert Einstein "It's a joke. It's all a joke. Mother forgive me" - Edward 'The Comedian' Blake "Do I look like the kind of clown that can start a movement?" - Arthur Fleck
Sure. Players can often get very invested in owning buildings, land or businesses. If anyone is interested, get the players or party to design the floor plan of the new manor. Do they want secret doors, hidden rooms, escape tunnels, how will they make use of the existing hideout below the manor? How will they decorate their rooms? How will they store their loot securely? Will they have some traps installed? Any magic? Some players can really get into it.
Others will be less interested in the details but will still like having a house to be a base. As you mentioned, it also provides a money sink which is very useful. The characters can hire staff and guards to protect it when they are away for example.
This will only be really useful though if it will be an ongoing campaign and if the campaign will be somewhere local at least to start. On the other hand, if the campaign shifts to a major city or out into the country far from Phandalin then the party could acquire another property.
with or without the ongoing campaign, i think there's huge potential in coming back later with a one-shot that tours this location! explore after abandonment (ala Joy of Extradimensional Spaces) or accident (ala A Familiar Quandry), play thieves out to steal back a macguffin (Moonstalkers looking for a deck), or if security was left very light (and nostalgia is running high), just fumbling around disrespecting the previous party's souvenirs and taste in decoration. if the players focused a ton on secret passages and traps, then you might find big fun in playing a one-shot as the characters' level-0 servants escaping, defending from, and driving away monstrous invaders with a series of dm-enhanced puzzle encounters: fantasy Home Alone plus peeking out from behind grand portraits with the eyeholes cut out and whatnot.
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unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: providefeedback!
"...or you can find the secret tunnel that leads to the Vault of Dickish DM which is filled with 10,000,000 copper coins and a 5,000 pound solid gold statue of a middle finger that is too big to fit through the door."
As others have said I think a lot of it comes down to how your players view having a base. My group ended up owning a tavern following Waterdeep Dragon Heist but besides one player saying she was spending 5,000GP of her loot to renovate it none of them really cared about it's existance beyond it being a place they could sleep. What they have got far more of a kick out of is it being used as the default "you meet in a tavern" venue for other campaigns set in the Forgotten Realms, myself and two other people who DM for the group has used it in that fashion and the description has got more elaborate with each retelling. There's a much better reaction to hearing how the Kevin the Goblin manager is getting on in life then there ever was to asking how they pictured their bedrooms
I'm also running Lost Mine so here's my 2 cents on all this.
My party plans to hang around after LMoP is done (so therefore i have to think about a place for this party to establish of course). With knowing they want a longer campaign than just 5 levels, I have created a few different plans to help keep things going.
- Doomsgrinder cookbook: A really cool addition to any game. I plan to use this to help my player who seems to like cooking for everyone into a more culinary setting outside of the traditional work going on in the world they live in. (Maybe he'll start a small food service business - hire employees for when he's out adventuring). Maybe something one day happens like some thugs roll into phandalin while they're away trying to rough up his business.
- The manor is a perfect place to give to them. Nobody is using it. How your going about it might be a bit much for new players sitting on lower levels. How about this.... cause now you got me thinking (we're at the cave still) what will i do when we get there? Sildar takes over Phandalin right? Sildar says, I'll cover build cost BUT it'll take x months to get done cause i'm limited on resources. [send them on a quest and when they get back it's built] The claus? They have to pay taxes every month. You dictate when taxes hit in game of course and (they stack up til the party gets home). They can only rest in the home if taxes are not paid (no services are allowed to run out of this manor).
- The guilds ideas... sounds cool but again, your getting way too ahead. Your in the mindset of seasoned players and i love it dude! Got some well versed 5e players and this stuff is liquid gold for them to keep busy between quests. Hell, you can even drop them off at the end of a session and they (do trade work - downtime) so when you come back the next session they made some stuff, collected some coin, and are off to the next heroic story you have ready for them. If we're talking a bunch of newer players, the worst thing you can do is over-complicate the game. It will discourage people. Start small: Taxes, a wait time on the build, Give them Jobs but don't let them run a thieves guild or fighting guild cause that's too much at lvl 5. I think you should aim more towards they buy additional property if they want to operate a business but crafting stuff to sell in town, or other downtime activities that don't require customers in the manor is more what you should do. Cause also you don't want people lingering around your HQ. Batman never invited strangers to come train in his hidden cave you know what i mean? It should be a sacred place where only NPCs go to beg the team for help in my opinion.
But hey, there's bars and shit. They could buy property later and keep going cause i think there's like 2 - 3 modules you can use to bring lmop out to 20 levels. Or homebrew it. But seriously, you got awesome ideas.... its just this MAY be too much for a newer party to handle mechanically. So start small with the manor and a HQ and teach them about economics in the game around owning property so that you can push them to buy maybe the sleeping giant and add a kitchen? or buy the blacksmith shop in town and pay a few good men to run it while they're away. (now you add mechanics of - income, labor cost, expenses) and from their you can start to introduce a much bigger mechanical system like eventually letting them be a guild not just a party that offers stuff like your talking about. Maybe they teach young NPC mercenaries how to be like them?
Good luck and I hope this helped. It's just my 2 cents and everyone has an opinion. I know some of my newer players would be overwhelmed with all that so im basing it off my party not yours cause i don't know your party of course. But there's one other option too.... Talk to your party when it comes time to give the manor. Instead of deciding yourself, explain your idea and mechanics and ask them (is this too much? How would you alter this? Do you have any suggestions?) the 3 big questions that will keep a party happy cause at the end of the day it's a group effort and asking them if they like how you want to do this and some input keeps the whole party happy before you overwhelm without asking first. I ask my party about a lot of stuff first lol just because i want them to be happy. But there are stuff like the bigger RAW rules where im like... it's the rules. There's no if and or but. I think you gotta just know when to be the Game Master and when to be apart of the party. A weird line im still learning myself.
Typically I will just float side-ventures like this to see how the group responds. If they get into it, let them go nuts with it. If they feel like it's too much to manage, let it run in the background. Really sometimes the players don't even know what they want until they get a taste of it. So I would suggest having enough for an intro and seeing how they take it.
I have had groups, own real estate, make a company in order to sell their loot so they never had to run back to town. One party had a shipping concern which tied into the campaign and still another took over an abandoned brewery. It is about how you tie it into your campaign. it can lead to side adventures, or it can go nowhere its all about what you want to do with it and what you are willing to let your party do with it.
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Howdy,
My party is newer ish to D&D and we are about 3/4 done with LMoP. I've decided based on a few turn of events to burn down the Tresendar manor in Phandalin (the Redbrands did it after Glasstaff escaped) and would provide the option to the party via the town master that if they bring the Black Spider to justice that they could take over the manor if they fixed it up and would be able to establish themselves in the region with a 'home base'. I would require them to pay locals to rebuild the manor such as woodworkers, blacksmiths, and what not to make it feel more realistic too, but to also have them invested in the process and also establish a eben flow of currency so they aren't just sitting on a ton of loot and not using it.
I'm wondering if this is too much for a newer party to have/maintain or if there are other neat ideas around this? My proposal would be in the realm of they have a large manor where they could store items/rest but also begin building up the town and hiring different people to run their establishment if they were to do so. I have a rogue who could have connections with thieves guilds that ran out of the underground part of that manor and a fight/monk who can run a fighters guild and so on. I would make them pay a monthly tax to the town master to own the land and then I could constantly build quests out of a region they know (and I know) to help drive their progression too.
Just looking to see how you would handle this option and any tips/tricks you've done in the past?
Do you plan to continue with the characters after you finish? If not, it’s not a big deal to just let them have it, and it can be a place they retire to after the end.
If you’re planning on continuing or running some side quests or something, you might check out the UA bastion rules.
Make sure that the players want that kind of game, but besides that it seems okay. Ebb and flow.
I know what you're thinking: "In that flurry of blows, did he use all his ki points, or save one?" Well, are ya feeling lucky, punk?
Sure. Players can often get very invested in owning buildings, land or businesses. If anyone is interested, get the players or party to design the floor plan of the new manor. Do they want secret doors, hidden rooms, escape tunnels, how will they make use of the existing hideout below the manor? How will they decorate their rooms? How will they store their loot securely? Will they have some traps installed? Any magic? Some players can really get into it.
Others will be less interested in the details but will still like having a house to be a base. As you mentioned, it also provides a money sink which is very useful. The characters can hire staff and guards to protect it when they are away for example.
This will only be really useful though if it will be an ongoing campaign and if the campaign will be somewhere local at least to start. On the other hand, if the campaign shifts to a major city or out into the country far from Phandalin then the party could acquire another property.
Seconding the use of UA Bastion rules. It's not perfect, but is deep enough to be meaningful and fun without going crazy with administration.
If you want serious depth, buy the PDF for the Birthright Campaign Setting the rules in there work just fine and cover the answers to "What if the PC's want to rule the world, a trade network, or series of temples?"
...in depth.
Acquisitions Incorporated also has some ideas about how to run a business/franchise.
"Time, like hope, is an illusion" - Lumalee
"Time is relative" - Albert Einstein
"It's a joke. It's all a joke. Mother forgive me" - Edward 'The Comedian' Blake
"Do I look like the kind of clown that can start a movement?" - Arthur Fleck
with or without the ongoing campaign, i think there's huge potential in coming back later with a one-shot that tours this location! explore after abandonment (ala Joy of Extradimensional Spaces) or accident (ala A Familiar Quandry), play thieves out to steal back a macguffin (Moonstalkers looking for a deck), or if security was left very light (and nostalgia is running high), just fumbling around disrespecting the previous party's souvenirs and taste in decoration. if the players focused a ton on secret passages and traps, then you might find big fun in playing a one-shot as the characters' level-0 servants escaping, defending from, and driving away monstrous invaders with a series of dm-enhanced puzzle encounters: fantasy Home Alone plus peeking out from behind grand portraits with the eyeholes cut out and whatnot.
unhappy at the way in which we lost individual purchases for one-off subclasses, magic items, and monsters?
tell them you don't like features disappeared quietly in the night: provide feedback!
My party decided to utilize Tresendar Manor as their homebase. I utilized Matt Colville's Strongholds & Followers rules for it: Strongholds & Followers PDF | MCDM Productions
Worked very well for what they wanted to do.
#OpenD&D #ORC
"...or you can find the secret tunnel that leads to the Vault of Dickish DM which is filled with 10,000,000 copper coins and a 5,000 pound solid gold statue of a middle finger that is too big to fit through the door."
As others have said I think a lot of it comes down to how your players view having a base. My group ended up owning a tavern following Waterdeep Dragon Heist but besides one player saying she was spending 5,000GP of her loot to renovate it none of them really cared about it's existance beyond it being a place they could sleep. What they have got far more of a kick out of is it being used as the default "you meet in a tavern" venue for other campaigns set in the Forgotten Realms, myself and two other people who DM for the group has used it in that fashion and the description has got more elaborate with each retelling. There's a much better reaction to hearing how the Kevin the Goblin manager is getting on in life then there ever was to asking how they pictured their bedrooms
I'm also running Lost Mine so here's my 2 cents on all this.
My party plans to hang around after LMoP is done (so therefore i have to think about a place for this party to establish of course). With knowing they want a longer campaign than just 5 levels, I have created a few different plans to help keep things going.
- Doomsgrinder cookbook: A really cool addition to any game. I plan to use this to help my player who seems to like cooking for everyone into a more culinary setting outside of the traditional work going on in the world they live in. (Maybe he'll start a small food service business - hire employees for when he's out adventuring). Maybe something one day happens like some thugs roll into phandalin while they're away trying to rough up his business.
- The manor is a perfect place to give to them. Nobody is using it. How your going about it might be a bit much for new players sitting on lower levels.
How about this.... cause now you got me thinking (we're at the cave still) what will i do when we get there? Sildar takes over Phandalin right? Sildar says, I'll cover build cost BUT it'll take x months to get done cause i'm limited on resources. [send them on a quest and when they get back it's built] The claus? They have to pay taxes every month. You dictate when taxes hit in game of course and (they stack up til the party gets home). They can only rest in the home if taxes are not paid (no services are allowed to run out of this manor).
- The guilds ideas... sounds cool but again, your getting way too ahead. Your in the mindset of seasoned players and i love it dude! Got some well versed 5e players and this stuff is liquid gold for them to keep busy between quests. Hell, you can even drop them off at the end of a session and they (do trade work - downtime) so when you come back the next session they made some stuff, collected some coin, and are off to the next heroic story you have ready for them. If we're talking a bunch of newer players, the worst thing you can do is over-complicate the game. It will discourage people. Start small: Taxes, a wait time on the build, Give them Jobs but don't let them run a thieves guild or fighting guild cause that's too much at lvl 5. I think you should aim more towards they buy additional property if they want to operate a business but crafting stuff to sell in town, or other downtime activities that don't require customers in the manor is more what you should do. Cause also you don't want people lingering around your HQ. Batman never invited strangers to come train in his hidden cave you know what i mean? It should be a sacred place where only NPCs go to beg the team for help in my opinion.
But hey, there's bars and shit. They could buy property later and keep going cause i think there's like 2 - 3 modules you can use to bring lmop out to 20 levels. Or homebrew it. But seriously, you got awesome ideas.... its just this MAY be too much for a newer party to handle mechanically. So start small with the manor and a HQ and teach them about economics in the game around owning property so that you can push them to buy maybe the sleeping giant and add a kitchen? or buy the blacksmith shop in town and pay a few good men to run it while they're away. (now you add mechanics of - income, labor cost, expenses) and from their you can start to introduce a much bigger mechanical system like eventually letting them be a guild not just a party that offers stuff like your talking about. Maybe they teach young NPC mercenaries how to be like them?
Good luck and I hope this helped. It's just my 2 cents and everyone has an opinion. I know some of my newer players would be overwhelmed with all that so im basing it off my party not yours cause i don't know your party of course. But there's one other option too.... Talk to your party when it comes time to give the manor. Instead of deciding yourself, explain your idea and mechanics and ask them (is this too much? How would you alter this? Do you have any suggestions?) the 3 big questions that will keep a party happy cause at the end of the day it's a group effort and asking them if they like how you want to do this and some input keeps the whole party happy before you overwhelm without asking first. I ask my party about a lot of stuff first lol just because i want them to be happy. But there are stuff like the bigger RAW rules where im like... it's the rules. There's no if and or but. I think you gotta just know when to be the Game Master and when to be apart of the party. A weird line im still learning myself.
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Typically I will just float side-ventures like this to see how the group responds. If they get into it, let them go nuts with it. If they feel like it's too much to manage, let it run in the background. Really sometimes the players don't even know what they want until they get a taste of it. So I would suggest having enough for an intro and seeing how they take it.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
I have had groups, own real estate, make a company in order to sell their loot so they never had to run back to town. One party had a shipping concern which tied into the campaign and still another took over an abandoned brewery. It is about how you tie it into your campaign. it can lead to side adventures, or it can go nowhere its all about what you want to do with it and what you are willing to let your party do with it.