The point of this thread isn't so much about how bastions and their various special rooms function, but rather how a DM might implement the Bastion system in their campaign in a way that feels natural, rewarding, and non-disruptive.
To feel natural, I mean it makes sense to have a Bastion in that world. If you're running Curse of Strahd, the existence of a bastion makes little sense. Not only is Barovia a demiplane famously devoid of any real resources, but your party is actively trying to escape it. Because Bastions are UA material for the Dungeon Master's Guide, I think it's clear they aren't meant for every setting. Though I wonder how this might shape campaign module design in the future.
To feel rewarding, the Bastion must have enough time to reap its rewards. To me, this feels like the biggest challenge Bastions face in the average campaign. D&D and other fantasy TTRPGs like it have always had this pacing problem where adventurers start off as exceptional nobodies and ascend to demi-gods over the course of a summer. Bastions don't come online until level 5 - which is the half-way point of most prewritten adventures - and from there work on a 7-day cycle. The amount of in-game time that passes in these adventures is usually very short which doesn't allow a lot of time for Bastions to function. If you want the Bastions to feel like a functional piece of your game, then the pace of adventure needs to slow down to meet it. The "adventuring day" might need to become the "adventuring week". For playgroups that like more narratively-driven stories, this is likely a boon as it allows more time for character moments outside of the constant threat of dungeons and monsters. Bastions also seem like they'd work well for a "monster-of-the-week", Monster Hunter-esque type of adventure that's based around getting a mission, prepping, adventuring, returning, crafting, and repeating.
To feel non-disruptive, Bastions should not only feel natural and rewarding, but in a meta sense the "Bastion turn" should probably happen at the beginning or end of a game session so as not to disrupt the current narrative flow. We all know how hard it can be to keep everyone's head in the game, but if your party is in the middle of an adventure, finish a long rest that coincides with the end of a week, it would probably be damaging to the flow of a game session to cut back to the bastions for the "Bastion turn" for 15-30 minutes, and then continue adventuring where ever the party is.
Overall, I think the Bastion system is pretty interesting and works well for homebrew campaigns that are paced for it, but for most existing modules DMs would have to jump through hoops to make them fit without feeling like an odd gimmick.
To the DMs out there, how would you approach fitting Bastions into your games?
they gave players a 'bastion' early in Waterdeep Dragon Heist and also Oratory of the Wanderer. and Spelljammer fairly well assumes a mobile bastion or two or three. that sorta highlights the system as being taken into consideration during campaign creation. it might be possible to add a bastion to some of the existing official adventures without derailing that plot, but i don't see a one-size-fits-all solution at this time. mostly i see this as pivoting one sort of campaign into another. could be a lot of fun for fun dms. could be a lot of nuisance for a dm that really wants to stick to the script. i honestly expect a little guidance either in the DMG or to be added to each adventure up-front regarding how to keep playing while not saying 'no' to the bastion.
oneshots seem easier to deal with what do you do when your characters decide they want take (or go back and take) White Plume Mountain for themselves? or Gauntlgrym?? or Candlekeep??? see, now this is where i feel like it gets fun. one-shot dungeons pivoting into additional adventure. the question then is whether to address the commotion when it happens or to plant the seed in Session 0 so the players are always real estate shopping throughout levels 1-5? nature or nurture?
so, yeah, i think this will be a boon to 'custom' player worlds and sandboxes, but not entirely welcomed by the consumers of official campaign adventures.
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I was wondering guys... what's your opinion about using Bastions to resurrect characters?
When a character dies, the character can spend 100 Bastion Points to return to life in their Bastion at the next dawn. After spending BP in this way, a character can’t do so again until gaining at least 1 level.
I was reading the benefits and facilities today in more detail, and I would like to know your opinion about this one in particular.
Do you think it makes sense from the roleplay, rules perspective or even taking into account the consistence inside the campaign/world of D&D? Should be something related to a certain facility like Sacristy, Sanctum or something similar?
I was wondering guys... what's your opinion about using Bastions to resurrect characters?
When a character dies, the character can spend 100 Bastion Points to return to life in their Bastion at the next dawn. After spending BP in this way, a character can’t do so again until gaining at least 1 level.
I was reading the benefits and facilities today in more detail, and I would like to know your opinion about this one in particular.
Do you think it makes sense from the roleplay, rules perspective or even taking into account the consistence inside the campaign/world of D&D? Should be something related to a certain facility like Sacristy, Sanctum or something similar?
I think that'll probably be one of the more contentious features of the Bastion. Definitely won't be for all DMs/Groups who want character death to have more weight to it. Also the fact that it just feels to "gamey" to effectively have a respawn point.
That being said, it still costs 100 Bastion Points and you won't be accumulating them particularly quickly. So even though you only get one "freebie" per level you're likely not to have access to it much, especially when you can use those BP on procuring magic items instead.
Lately, it seems like they aren't releasing as many full, single narrative campaigns, as much as they are releasing anthology type books like radiant citadel, golden vault type things. I realize they just printed the new phandelver, so its not a perfect pattern, but it seems to me anthologies are more of the trend. I think, in part, it's because the most popular campaign world (according to WotC surveys they've released) is homebrew. It's pretty easy to slot in one of the adventures from an anthology book for a couple sessions, and then go back to the main plot.
With homebrew, the bastion system is easy to pull off, you just plan for it while you're developing your campaign. But, a bastion could also work well if you are running an anthology book as a connected series. Give the players a week or two between each adventure in the series to do some bastion stuff, then move on to the next one. Seems like the system could really compliment that style of book. And some books just won't really be conducive to bastions, which is fine. Not every option gets used in every campaign, published or otherwise.
So, for me, the bastion system creates some challenges, but none of them serious, and I am likely to work it in if I can finish the rest of my work on the place by deadline.
I've been working on this world for five years, so I definitely never took into account some sort of system for them, and my policy for this world is an iron clad "change the rules to fit the world".
So just implementing them means they won't appear as they do in the UA. For one, I am unlikely to tie them to class features. Aside from the changes thee already, it simply wouldn't work, lol.
There is a natural way for them to exist, however. The campaign setting is an open world one, where even downtime is more or less played, and the usual completion time *if they bite every hook* is two to three years for a campaign of mine (playing every two weeks). There are areas that could readily be used to establish a new place, and there are even mechanisms for social mobility in the setting, plus opportunities to even provide rewards of such. I mean, this is a game where I had to prepare a whole thing on Trade routes and Trade goods, and where spell casters have to find their spells and weapons break on a nat 1. So I have a "more functional" economy than the base game, while still keeping it fantastical. So for that, it is an extension of the "do what you gonna do" style of play.
As far as rewarding, well, i mention that much of downtime is role played. And example is when someone is going move to 5th, 9th, 13th, or 17th level. THere is an entire ceremony they have to go through at each stage. I have a marginal crafting system in place. The setting has a host of guilds for differing crafts, and that's all part and parcel of an apprentice system that the players are presumed to have interacted with at some point for the most part (some backgrounds preclude it).
Pacing isn't an issue -- I use a blended form of XP/Milestones that essentially says you need this many milestones to advance to this level, and they are earned by moving through the story. They can also be used during play to change a die roll. As far as the point systems (bastion Points) I can either use one of the three "destiny Score" points I have (Milestone, Hero, or Inspiration) in direct place or have them convertible into Bastion points, so it becomes a system of reward for actions that a player still has to decide about how to use, making them a developmental thing that could theoretically slow them down in advancement by itself. Not sure how i will set that up yet, because I'm not there.
Th Bastions themselves will need to be expanded and adjusted for the setting (they will need water supplies, and to fit the existing stuff that is already "expected" of a place where people live, and since they are most likely to build the where the ruling class isn't found, that means they are going to be in "the boonies" and so subject to the vagaries of banditry and goblin raids, and of course the usual machinations by BBEGs. This is a group of players that has, in prior campaigns, decided to lay siege to an entire city. And did it successfully despite my best efforts to overcome it. A chance for payback is at least a little bit tempting.
because we run games where travel is a part of the whole (and I have rules for weather and environmental stuff), time is always something I am tracking. It is a big world -- my grid is essentially 30 miles a square, so a day's travel -- and I have some rules for vehicle combat and chases and I love the notions of flying carpets and brooms and such. Odds are good we'll run Bastion session as part of downtime sessions -- which for us are a big part of how I start to offer the next story hook, and then pray they bite. But it is also a world where there is an Adventurer's Guild, and there are taxes and fees and the annoyances of life, so there are already some aspects in place to support adding it in. THey might be brief session, but this is why we have what we call Montages, where players do several tings in a given "montage turn" which varies according to what they are doing. Crafting stuff and the like is reset to hours, and there is a certain granularity that keeps everything in that "rough period of time". (it is really hard to explain without doing it.)
Resurrection and Reincarnation features will be harder to deal with in my game -- there is a time limit on things like Raise Dead and Resurrection and Reincarnate (with Reincarnate having up to 15 years, Ress having like 4 days, and raise dead having 7 days). And they can only be performed by certain kinds of priest. It is very much different from the standard and ties into the cosmology. So unless there's a way for the bastion to become a Shrine or Temple, wont be happening. I suppose the one kind of priest could do it -- but Temples are literally built by the Gods, and shrines may not have the folks needed to do so.
So for me, yeah, they are very much a useful tool. Given that I pull my adventures from films that my players have seen, I can even see doing a "home invasion" kind of adventure that takes place in their own bastion.flips the script, with them being on their own ground.
I can't really say if it will be harder for those who use published worlds. I haven't used one in too long. I can see it being quite possible along the sword coast, but how that would interface with the political stuff or the rest is kinda outside my knowledge.
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In my opinion this is something that cannot be included in all campaigns. But it will definitely improve the experience in many of them. Still, in my opinion this should be in a supplement and not in the core books. I'm not going to complain, however, since it is IMO the best that WoTC has come up with in this playtest. So at least it's an incentive to buy the DMG.
Having said that, it seems quite easy to introduce it into many campaigns. For example, it could be that lvl 1 characters start with their castle, wizard tower, thieves' den, or whatever. But for some reason (I don't know, renovation works, or they are recruiting, or whatever) it is not operational until lvl5. They could also receive it at lvl 1, but it doesn't have the special rooms yet since they are building them or whatever. The basic ones, really, it doesn't matter if you receive them at lvl 1.
It could also be integrated into the campaign itself, and levels 1-5 are actually quests to get your bastions. Or they could all get an old ruined castle, and have to clean it up so it's operational at lvl 5 (and each PC gets one area of the castle as their stronghold).
Then, during the campaign, it depends on how it is. But really, in most official campaigns there may be room for the PCs to return to their strongholds from time to time. I don't know, in annihilation tomb, the "bastions" could be cabins of an indigenous community in the middle of Chult. Or in Dragon Heist, besides the tavern, they could also have other buildings around the city. The same in Saltmarch (and here I seem to remember that there was even a mansion). Etc...
Yes, it seems more problematic in campaigns like Witchlight, but well, as I say, it is not something that is going to be included in all campaigns.
I actually think that WoTC is going to create opportunities for your bastions in future campaigns. And surely the first ones will be designed with this in mind (especially to enhance this novelty, which seems to be the star of 5e revised).
... I think, in part, it's because the most popular campaign world (according to WotC surveys they've released) is homebrew...
One question, if you don't mind... when you say "campaign world", do you mean campaign settings? Or campaigns made and evolved by DMs without using some official book?
Bastion points accumulate doing the Bastion turn which generally occurs on an in-game weekly basis.
Only special facilities generate Bastion Points according to their description (starting at 1d4 BP)
If a Bastion takes the Maintain action (perhaps you aren't there to manage it) all special facilities generate 1d4 BP regardless of their normal increment.
Bastion Points can't be traded or shared between players.
Bastion Points can be used to procure magic items with the following limitations and costs, but no more than once per level:
Common Magic Item: No level req, 20 BP
Uncommon Magic Item: No level req, 70 BP
Rare Magic Item: Level 9 req, 250 BP
Very Rare Magic Item: Level 13 req, 350 BP
Legendary Magic Item: Level 17 req, 700 BP
A player can also spend 100 Bastion points to automatically ressurect at their bastion if they die, but no more than once per level.
"Once per level" is a wildly arbitrary limitation when you look at how slowly BP accumulates. Bastions start at level 5. You'll have two special facilities generating 1d4 BP every 7 days provided there are no attacks or mishaps that cause the facility to shut down temporarily. That is an average of 5 BP per week, or 14 weeks for 1 uncommon magic item. Basically 4 months (almost 5 months in D&D calendar time). If you hit level 5 and want to save your BP for a Rare item the moment you hit level 9, it'll take 50 weeks on average, which is basically one year.
"Once per level" just makes no sense because no one levels that slowly for that limitation to ever be a concern. Most pre-written campaigns don't span more than a handful of months of in-game time, so a player stockpiling BP and trying to spend it all at once isn't really feasible. Do people's homebrew campaigns regularly span multiple in-game years?
Interestingly, the Bastion system would probably mesh really well with the "Gritty Realism" optional rules that change short rests to 8 hours and long rests to 1 week.
Obviously Bastions won't be a fit for every campaign, but I honestly don't see how they're a fit for any campaign that isn't specifically designed for them. They aren't an 'out of box' solution. It would require significant DM fiat to drop into the average setting. Bastions present a lot of really interesting ideas, but I'm having such a hard time figuring out who they're designing them for.
D&D and other fantasy TTRPGs like it have always had this pacing problem where adventurers start off as exceptional nobodies and ascend to demi-gods over the course of a summer.
This is its own problem, and one I hope will be addressed so that systems like this actually work. Things need to take more time. If there was a satisfying structure to overland travel that provided an interesting two-week trek to a dungeon, more of the game could take place over these longer time periods. But right now a two-week trip means a couple random encounters that the party steamrolls because they have all their resources and maybe a few exploration scenes if the DM decides to sprinkle in some points of interest.
Independent of that, the real direction for Bastion turns is where it tells you to aim for 6-8 turns per level. If you go fast, Bastion turns need to happen fast. If you do six months of downtime between adventures, Bastion turns need to happen slower. They probably should have led with this advice rather than saying one turn per week.
... I think, in part, it's because the most popular campaign world (according to WotC surveys they've released) is homebrew...
One question, if you don't mind... when you say "campaign world", do you mean campaign settings? Or campaigns made and evolved by DMs without using some official book?
Also, do you have that survey at hand?
So, the last real survey that WotC released the actual metrics of was in the early 2000's. But an odd thing is also true -- externally done surveys (such as those done by popular bloggers, e.g. Sly Flourish) or by professional commercial outlets (essentially trade mags for fandoms) have, over the last 20 years, continued to show the same general results, plus or minus a few points, always within the margin of error for such things in general.
Even here, on the DDB forums, the general outcome of such surveys is going to show a similar number (I have done two in the last year), indicating over half of all people do indeed use custom worlds of their own creation.
Users of published worlds, if you combine both those who started with a published world and then customized it (around 15 to 18%) or those who use a published world (the widest variance, between 18 and 25%) only ever seem to come up to within a third of total, no matter who's doing the asking. Older worlds and 3rd party typically show up as les than 6% combined, more often even smaller than that.
Even more narrow, tailored interest efforts tend to get the same overall results, such as OSR (Old School Rules/Revival) or groups who have a vested interest in seeing the decline of D&D itself.
Other data is also interesting -- scanning data from DDB prior to WotC buyout (which treats all data as confidential information), fivethirtyeight had a bit of data about what the most popular class and race combinations were (found here).
Doing the digging through published and peer reviewed research papers (which is free to dig but to read you gotta pay), once you narrow down your keywords (D&D and Survey are not enough, you have to be specific to the type of issue being looked at) you still find out more commonality -- it is almost as if this is such a baseline mark that it becomes a shame that WotC hasn't done more to support the 20% of players who spend the most money.
THe final main source for a lot of data is WotC's videos. They don't release inhouse metrics -- ever. But they do talk about data findings in a LOT of videos. I would say most, but I may not have seen most, so that could merely be an impression. Sometimes it is only one data point, sometimes it is a host of them, and often it isn't mentioned as part of a title or anything -- they aren't simply doing a readout of data. It is always ancillary, so if you want to collect that data you have to watch all the videos, and you have to do it carefully.
The reason most folks don't keep bookmarks on hand is because they *can't* -- you either have been through it and remember those times, or you saw it in a video.
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D&D and other fantasy TTRPGs like it have always had this pacing problem where adventurers start off as exceptional nobodies and ascend to demi-gods over the course of a summer.
This is its own problem, and one I hope will be addressed so that systems like this actually work. Things need to take more time. If there was a satisfying structure to overland travel that provided an interesting two-week trek to a dungeon, more of the game could take place over these longer time periods. But right now a two-week trip means a couple random encounters that the party steamrolls because they have all their resources and maybe a few exploration scenes if the DM decides to sprinkle in some points of interest.
Independent of that, the real direction for Bastion turns is where it tells you to aim for 6-8 turns per level. If you go fast, Bastion turns need to happen fast. If you do six months of downtime between adventures, Bastion turns need to happen slower. They probably should have led with this advice rather than saying one turn per week.
I am sidetracking (or derailing, depending on your point of view) but I am curious what you mean by satisfying, since it is usually a very subjective concept.
More precisely, I am wanting to know what you think of as a satisfying structure to overland travel.
As a note, here is how I do overland travel.
Everything is broken down into "hours of travel". In any given hour there is a chance of a random encounter. These are not necessarily combat encounters (I've used them to setup plot hooks for later stuff or pass on hints and foreshadowing). I narrate things as they go, describe things they see (and track on a map, as there is a fairly standard demarcation point between "settled" and "boonies"). This is a dangerous world, so the odds of a random encounter in settled areas is about 30%, and boonies is about 70%.
Per hour. So speed of travel is always a concern, and I have house rules for vehicles stuff (including vehicle combat and chases). In addition to those encounters, there is also a chance of natural hazards -- the most common being wind and rain, of course. Both of those have an impact on travel. There are resources to track, and as circumstances change there is also some daily stuff that can happen (disease checks, for example).
A "smooth sailing" journey might take all of 15 minutes of actual gameplay, with lots of interpersonal roleplay. A less than ideal thing might involve multiple game sessions, dangerous hazards, and tough decisions as NPC fall to the wayside like settlers in the Oregon Trail, lol.
(I also note that I took a lot of this from the old oregon trail game as ideas).
I use a homebrew variant of what you can find in Tasha's for natural hazards as spell effects -- and I track temperature, time of day, and all that stuff (it is not very time consuming at all, lol so I have conditions like heat exhaustion and frostbite. I turned the NOAA wind speed tables into a way to see what the effects of wind are, and can apply them to land, sea, and air travel.
IF they move faster, they risk not just the book rule of lowered perception, but the additional aspect of fatigue -- not just on the animals, but on themselves. If they travel slower, well, more stuff happens. And that's not counting the chances of ruins (per day) or Lemurian attacks (per day).
travel in my campaign is an adventure in and of itself -- a survival style set of play. While villages and hamlets may be fairly common in some places, the towns and cities are all at least a week apart or ore (except by train, and the train isn't *that* fast, just faster than anything else and, obviously, safer).
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I see alot of people saying this cant be added in all campaigns. But that makes no since.
What I love about these new rules is that they incorporate the idea of player owned businesses as bastions as well, so not just cool castles, but the local pub, and smithy count to, so if your players want to start up their own shops, they can.
But also there's the fact that, at some point, in alot of campaigns, your players will find a dungeon. it's apart of the game for many campaigns. This old, abandoned structure that is full of resources and now is vacant. Your telling me you have never thought, or has a player think about turning the dungeon into a home? Literally my first game I reported we cleared a dungeon to my temple and turned it into their new crypt.
You don't half to reward a giant castle to your players, but if there willing to sink the resources into a project, why not let them.
I see alot of people saying this cant be added in all campaigns. But that makes no since.
What I love about these new rules is that they incorporate the idea of player owned businesses as bastions as well, so not just cool castles, but the local pub, and smithy count to, so if your players want to start up their own shops, they can.
But also there's the fact that, at some point, in alot of campaigns, your players will find a dungeon. it's apart of the game for many campaigns. This old, abandoned structure that is full of resources and now is vacant. Your telling me you have never thought, or has a player think about turning the dungeon into a home? Literally my first game I reported we cleared a dungeon to my temple and turned it into their new crypt.
You don't half to reward a giant castle to your players, but if there willing to sink the resources into a project, why not let them.
it might surprise you, but the answer to this is no, most players haven't decided to turn a dengon into a home base.
They are usually well away from civilization (and so resources), they offer very few practical amenities (jane's in the outhouse -- that room down the hall where the bugbears were? yeah, that one), they often have this strange thing where monster's just up and move in, and if they are using the published adventures, they generally aren't all that useful (if they don't simply collapse) or someone else already owns them.
Or, at least, that's what my player's have said. Also, my dungeons are huge elaborate places full of traps that are often created by Imps who put them together to draw in unwary adventurers and help keep the troublemaking beings from overrunning everything.
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but they normally arnt away from resources. Dungeon in a forest? trees, lumber, herbs, wild life, ect ect. Dungeon in a desert? Sand and stone and pretty useful when quarried. Swamp? Same as forest but better water. Even then towns wernt always where they were, it took explorers to discover locations suitable for building, and a dungeon just so happens to normally hold a key location. think about it, Why would YOU build a dungeon in that location. what benefits did it have in the past? are they still there? What was it's over all purpose? Not all dungeons are made by a tricky lich trying to kill adventurers, and answering the above questions can breath amazing life into your dungeons you never thought could be there.
Few amenities is kind of a weird complaint when literally you just need to build them, or you know, figure out if the dungeon had them in a different form.
Yes, monsters move in, like kobolds or hobgoblins... or other creatures.... making it into a base... Im just saying the minute you start making a dungeons main creature something with any kind of intelligence, that implies the dungeon is a suitable home, and at that point the adventurers could do exactly what the monsters did and move in.
yes, those are modules that are meant to force the movement of a story, im speaking mostly of homebrew campaigns. I get a lot of campaigns get rid of their dungeons after they have used them, but you as a dm put alot of effort into making this place, why just get rid of it, when it can be used for other things.
I dont know man, that laboratory of kawaist had alot of good research a wizard or artificer could use to jump start their stuff. The tomb of annihilation has some neat killer magic bits, bet that sphere of death or what ever makes a great toilet.
also a huge elaborate place means lots of rooms for new things. like thats cool you got imps that design your dungeons and stuff, but at that point your purposely just tossing them away, and thats a waste. At least in my opinion.
I see alot of people saying this cant be added in all campaigns. But that makes no since.
Sure it does. Bastions assume that the PCs have a central base of operations, which is reasonable for a lot of campaigns, but not ones that are centered around a high travel quest with time pressure, such as Tomb of Annihilation.
There should probably be rules for mobile bastions, such as ships (either sailing or Spelljammer) or caravans (for example, something like the Witchlight Carnival would work).
but they normally arnt away from resources. Dungeon in a forest? trees, lumber, herbs, wild life, ect ect. Dungeon in a desert? Sand and stone and pretty useful when quarried. Swamp? Same as forest but better water. Even then towns wernt always where they were, it took explorers to discover locations suitable for building, and a dungeon just so happens to normally hold a key location. think about it, Why would YOU build a dungeon in that location. what benefits did it have in the past? are they still there? What was it's over all purpose? Not all dungeons are made by a tricky lich trying to kill adventurers, and answering the above questions can breath amazing life into your dungeons you never thought could be there.
Few amenities is kind of a weird complaint when literally you just need to build them, or you know, figure out if the dungeon had them in a different form.
Yes, monsters move in, like kobolds or hobgoblins... or other creatures.... making it into a base... Im just saying the minute you start making a dungeons main creature something with any kind of intelligence, that implies the dungeon is a suitable home, and at that point the adventurers could do exactly what the monsters did and move in.
yes, those are modules that are meant to force the movement of a story, im speaking mostly of homebrew campaigns. I get a lot of campaigns get rid of their dungeons after they have used them, but you as a dm put alot of effort into making this place, why just get rid of it, when it can be used for other things.
I dont know man, that laboratory of kawaist had alot of good research a wizard or artificer could use to jump start their stuff. The tomb of annihilation has some neat killer magic bits, bet that sphere of death or what ever makes a great toilet.
also a huge elaborate place means lots of rooms for new things. like thats cool you got imps that design your dungeons and stuff, but at that point your purposely just tossing them away, and thats a waste. At least in my opinion.
Valid, to a point. Those resources require the PCs to have skills and capabilities of turning those resources into the stuff they need.
Like swords, armor, the stuff needled to, you know, adventure.
What I would build is irrelevant in my case -- it is what do my folks who build dungeons want out of them. And, typically, they build their ruins and dungeons in places rather far away from anywhere that the sniveling nobles and commoners would possibly be found, sending out their minions to raid and rob merchant caravans if they needed something -- or sending them out to get the stuff they want.
You see, when I designed the world, I had to think of all those things long ago. And the only time I have ever had a lich dungeon is when I ran Tomb of Horrors in the 80's, lol.
So it isn't a weird complaint, it is a consideration of the fact that such a place wouldn't typically be found in or near a city or town that has the requisite necessary skills and amenities for a group of adventurers. Indeed, the only published dungeon that breaks that general rule is the one under a tavern, lol. Because if they were always near such places of settlement, then they wouldn't be able to keep it there or have it there and keep it to themselves.
If the world is a hostile place, it would be cleared out and used as a refuge during times of crisis (like the old nuclear shelters), like when a horde of goblins comes along, or other raiders invade the town.
Which is not to say that such things are required -- you absolutely could do it that way. My dungeons are literally reset after each time someone goes through them, that's the Imps of Agartha in action. So they take it poorly (I only have five dungeons total, and the PCs may never venture to them) if someone tries to move in and wreck their work. And they do some creative things. They don't see it as tossing things away. They see it as taking care of a problem that they want to minimize (turns out, there are a billion imps, but no one knows it, just like know one knows that imps are everywhere, deep underwound).
Does the tomb of annihilation have a sphere of annihilation as well? I've not run it before. Never will on kwalish. I don't generally use published adventures (of if I do, they typically are from the 1e era).
Most people do very poorly underground, as well, psychologically, but that's kinda boring for a role playing game unless its paranoia.
The ultimate point is that Dungeons make horrible places to live, lol. ANd mine in particular would, lol -- 53 levels deep, and connected to Hell and the Abyss and the Underdark?
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Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities .-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-. An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more. Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I remember, in the amazing era of AD&D, where most of us had the boxed campaign settings that those were the main worlds we had, rather than creating brand new ones.
(important note: this information is based on my own investigation based on me and my friends 😅)
The point of this thread isn't so much about how bastions and their various special rooms function, but rather how a DM might implement the Bastion system in their campaign in a way that feels natural, rewarding, and non-disruptive.
To feel natural, I mean it makes sense to have a Bastion in that world. If you're running Curse of Strahd, the existence of a bastion makes little sense. Not only is Barovia a demiplane famously devoid of any real resources, but your party is actively trying to escape it. Because Bastions are UA material for the Dungeon Master's Guide, I think it's clear they aren't meant for every setting. Though I wonder how this might shape campaign module design in the future.
To feel rewarding, the Bastion must have enough time to reap its rewards. To me, this feels like the biggest challenge Bastions face in the average campaign. D&D and other fantasy TTRPGs like it have always had this pacing problem where adventurers start off as exceptional nobodies and ascend to demi-gods over the course of a summer. Bastions don't come online until level 5 - which is the half-way point of most prewritten adventures - and from there work on a 7-day cycle. The amount of in-game time that passes in these adventures is usually very short which doesn't allow a lot of time for Bastions to function. If you want the Bastions to feel like a functional piece of your game, then the pace of adventure needs to slow down to meet it. The "adventuring day" might need to become the "adventuring week". For playgroups that like more narratively-driven stories, this is likely a boon as it allows more time for character moments outside of the constant threat of dungeons and monsters. Bastions also seem like they'd work well for a "monster-of-the-week", Monster Hunter-esque type of adventure that's based around getting a mission, prepping, adventuring, returning, crafting, and repeating.
To feel non-disruptive, Bastions should not only feel natural and rewarding, but in a meta sense the "Bastion turn" should probably happen at the beginning or end of a game session so as not to disrupt the current narrative flow. We all know how hard it can be to keep everyone's head in the game, but if your party is in the middle of an adventure, finish a long rest that coincides with the end of a week, it would probably be damaging to the flow of a game session to cut back to the bastions for the "Bastion turn" for 15-30 minutes, and then continue adventuring where ever the party is.
Overall, I think the Bastion system is pretty interesting and works well for homebrew campaigns that are paced for it, but for most existing modules DMs would have to jump through hoops to make them fit without feeling like an odd gimmick.
To the DMs out there, how would you approach fitting Bastions into your games?
they gave players a 'bastion' early in Waterdeep Dragon Heist and also Oratory of the Wanderer. and Spelljammer fairly well assumes a mobile bastion or two or three. that sorta highlights the system as being taken into consideration during campaign creation. it might be possible to add a bastion to some of the existing official adventures without derailing that plot, but i don't see a one-size-fits-all solution at this time. mostly i see this as pivoting one sort of campaign into another. could be a lot of fun for fun dms. could be a lot of nuisance for a dm that really wants to stick to the script. i honestly expect a little guidance either in the DMG or to be added to each adventure up-front regarding how to keep playing while not saying 'no' to the bastion.
oneshots seem easier to deal with what do you do when your characters decide they want take (or go back and take) White Plume Mountain for themselves? or Gauntlgrym?? or Candlekeep??? see, now this is where i feel like it gets fun. one-shot dungeons pivoting into additional adventure. the question then is whether to address the commotion when it happens or to plant the seed in Session 0 so the players are always real estate shopping throughout levels 1-5? nature or nurture?
so, yeah, i think this will be a boon to 'custom' player worlds and sandboxes, but not entirely welcomed by the consumers of official campaign adventures.
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!
Bastion provide a good incentive to slow down some games that feel like world ending rush Hero, to a more enjoy the travels of the adventure world.
I was wondering guys... what's your opinion about using Bastions to resurrect characters?
I was reading the benefits and facilities today in more detail, and I would like to know your opinion about this one in particular.
Do you think it makes sense from the roleplay, rules perspective or even taking into account the consistence inside the campaign/world of D&D? Should be something related to a certain facility like Sacristy, Sanctum or something similar?
I think that'll probably be one of the more contentious features of the Bastion. Definitely won't be for all DMs/Groups who want character death to have more weight to it. Also the fact that it just feels to "gamey" to effectively have a respawn point.
That being said, it still costs 100 Bastion Points and you won't be accumulating them particularly quickly. So even though you only get one "freebie" per level you're likely not to have access to it much, especially when you can use those BP on procuring magic items instead.
Make them BP something like Divine Luck accumulation in which they intercede for you.
Lately, it seems like they aren't releasing as many full, single narrative campaigns, as much as they are releasing anthology type books like radiant citadel, golden vault type things. I realize they just printed the new phandelver, so its not a perfect pattern, but it seems to me anthologies are more of the trend. I think, in part, it's because the most popular campaign world (according to WotC surveys they've released) is homebrew. It's pretty easy to slot in one of the adventures from an anthology book for a couple sessions, and then go back to the main plot.
With homebrew, the bastion system is easy to pull off, you just plan for it while you're developing your campaign. But, a bastion could also work well if you are running an anthology book as a connected series. Give the players a week or two between each adventure in the series to do some bastion stuff, then move on to the next one. Seems like the system could really compliment that style of book. And some books just won't really be conducive to bastions, which is fine. Not every option gets used in every campaign, published or otherwise.
So, for me, the bastion system creates some challenges, but none of them serious, and I am likely to work it in if I can finish the rest of my work on the place by deadline.
I've been working on this world for five years, so I definitely never took into account some sort of system for them, and my policy for this world is an iron clad "change the rules to fit the world".
So just implementing them means they won't appear as they do in the UA. For one, I am unlikely to tie them to class features. Aside from the changes thee already, it simply wouldn't work, lol.
There is a natural way for them to exist, however. The campaign setting is an open world one, where even downtime is more or less played, and the usual completion time *if they bite every hook* is two to three years for a campaign of mine (playing every two weeks). There are areas that could readily be used to establish a new place, and there are even mechanisms for social mobility in the setting, plus opportunities to even provide rewards of such. I mean, this is a game where I had to prepare a whole thing on Trade routes and Trade goods, and where spell casters have to find their spells and weapons break on a nat 1. So I have a "more functional" economy than the base game, while still keeping it fantastical. So for that, it is an extension of the "do what you gonna do" style of play.
As far as rewarding, well, i mention that much of downtime is role played. And example is when someone is going move to 5th, 9th, 13th, or 17th level. THere is an entire ceremony they have to go through at each stage. I have a marginal crafting system in place. The setting has a host of guilds for differing crafts, and that's all part and parcel of an apprentice system that the players are presumed to have interacted with at some point for the most part (some backgrounds preclude it).
Pacing isn't an issue -- I use a blended form of XP/Milestones that essentially says you need this many milestones to advance to this level, and they are earned by moving through the story. They can also be used during play to change a die roll. As far as the point systems (bastion Points) I can either use one of the three "destiny Score" points I have (Milestone, Hero, or Inspiration) in direct place or have them convertible into Bastion points, so it becomes a system of reward for actions that a player still has to decide about how to use, making them a developmental thing that could theoretically slow them down in advancement by itself. Not sure how i will set that up yet, because I'm not there.
Th Bastions themselves will need to be expanded and adjusted for the setting (they will need water supplies, and to fit the existing stuff that is already "expected" of a place where people live, and since they are most likely to build the where the ruling class isn't found, that means they are going to be in "the boonies" and so subject to the vagaries of banditry and goblin raids, and of course the usual machinations by BBEGs. This is a group of players that has, in prior campaigns, decided to lay siege to an entire city. And did it successfully despite my best efforts to overcome it. A chance for payback is at least a little bit tempting.
because we run games where travel is a part of the whole (and I have rules for weather and environmental stuff), time is always something I am tracking. It is a big world -- my grid is essentially 30 miles a square, so a day's travel -- and I have some rules for vehicle combat and chases and I love the notions of flying carpets and brooms and such. Odds are good we'll run Bastion session as part of downtime sessions -- which for us are a big part of how I start to offer the next story hook, and then pray they bite. But it is also a world where there is an Adventurer's Guild, and there are taxes and fees and the annoyances of life, so there are already some aspects in place to support adding it in. THey might be brief session, but this is why we have what we call Montages, where players do several tings in a given "montage turn" which varies according to what they are doing. Crafting stuff and the like is reset to hours, and there is a certain granularity that keeps everything in that "rough period of time". (it is really hard to explain without doing it.)
Resurrection and Reincarnation features will be harder to deal with in my game -- there is a time limit on things like Raise Dead and Resurrection and Reincarnate (with Reincarnate having up to 15 years, Ress having like 4 days, and raise dead having 7 days). And they can only be performed by certain kinds of priest. It is very much different from the standard and ties into the cosmology. So unless there's a way for the bastion to become a Shrine or Temple, wont be happening. I suppose the one kind of priest could do it -- but Temples are literally built by the Gods, and shrines may not have the folks needed to do so.
So for me, yeah, they are very much a useful tool. Given that I pull my adventures from films that my players have seen, I can even see doing a "home invasion" kind of adventure that takes place in their own bastion.flips the script, with them being on their own ground.
I can't really say if it will be harder for those who use published worlds. I haven't used one in too long. I can see it being quite possible along the sword coast, but how that would interface with the political stuff or the rest is kinda outside my knowledge.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
In my opinion this is something that cannot be included in all campaigns. But it will definitely improve the experience in many of them. Still, in my opinion this should be in a supplement and not in the core books. I'm not going to complain, however, since it is IMO the best that WoTC has come up with in this playtest. So at least it's an incentive to buy the DMG.
Having said that, it seems quite easy to introduce it into many campaigns. For example, it could be that lvl 1 characters start with their castle, wizard tower, thieves' den, or whatever. But for some reason (I don't know, renovation works, or they are recruiting, or whatever) it is not operational until lvl5. They could also receive it at lvl 1, but it doesn't have the special rooms yet since they are building them or whatever. The basic ones, really, it doesn't matter if you receive them at lvl 1.
It could also be integrated into the campaign itself, and levels 1-5 are actually quests to get your bastions. Or they could all get an old ruined castle, and have to clean it up so it's operational at lvl 5 (and each PC gets one area of the castle as their stronghold).
Then, during the campaign, it depends on how it is. But really, in most official campaigns there may be room for the PCs to return to their strongholds from time to time. I don't know, in annihilation tomb, the "bastions" could be cabins of an indigenous community in the middle of Chult. Or in Dragon Heist, besides the tavern, they could also have other buildings around the city. The same in Saltmarch (and here I seem to remember that there was even a mansion). Etc...
Yes, it seems more problematic in campaigns like Witchlight, but well, as I say, it is not something that is going to be included in all campaigns.
I actually think that WoTC is going to create opportunities for your bastions in future campaigns. And surely the first ones will be designed with this in mind (especially to enhance this novelty, which seems to be the star of 5e revised).
One question, if you don't mind... when you say "campaign world", do you mean campaign settings? Or campaigns made and evolved by DMs without using some official book?
Also, do you have that survey at hand?
Bastion Points present even more pacing issues.
Quick Summary of Bastion Points:
"Once per level" is a wildly arbitrary limitation when you look at how slowly BP accumulates. Bastions start at level 5. You'll have two special facilities generating 1d4 BP every 7 days provided there are no attacks or mishaps that cause the facility to shut down temporarily. That is an average of 5 BP per week, or 14 weeks for 1 uncommon magic item. Basically 4 months (almost 5 months in D&D calendar time). If you hit level 5 and want to save your BP for a Rare item the moment you hit level 9, it'll take 50 weeks on average, which is basically one year.
"Once per level" just makes no sense because no one levels that slowly for that limitation to ever be a concern. Most pre-written campaigns don't span more than a handful of months of in-game time, so a player stockpiling BP and trying to spend it all at once isn't really feasible. Do people's homebrew campaigns regularly span multiple in-game years?
Interestingly, the Bastion system would probably mesh really well with the "Gritty Realism" optional rules that change short rests to 8 hours and long rests to 1 week.
Obviously Bastions won't be a fit for every campaign, but I honestly don't see how they're a fit for any campaign that isn't specifically designed for them. They aren't an 'out of box' solution. It would require significant DM fiat to drop into the average setting. Bastions present a lot of really interesting ideas, but I'm having such a hard time figuring out who they're designing them for.
This is its own problem, and one I hope will be addressed so that systems like this actually work. Things need to take more time. If there was a satisfying structure to overland travel that provided an interesting two-week trek to a dungeon, more of the game could take place over these longer time periods. But right now a two-week trip means a couple random encounters that the party steamrolls because they have all their resources and maybe a few exploration scenes if the DM decides to sprinkle in some points of interest.
Independent of that, the real direction for Bastion turns is where it tells you to aim for 6-8 turns per level. If you go fast, Bastion turns need to happen fast. If you do six months of downtime between adventures, Bastion turns need to happen slower. They probably should have led with this advice rather than saying one turn per week.
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
So, the last real survey that WotC released the actual metrics of was in the early 2000's. But an odd thing is also true -- externally done surveys (such as those done by popular bloggers, e.g. Sly Flourish) or by professional commercial outlets (essentially trade mags for fandoms) have, over the last 20 years, continued to show the same general results, plus or minus a few points, always within the margin of error for such things in general.
Even here, on the DDB forums, the general outcome of such surveys is going to show a similar number (I have done two in the last year), indicating over half of all people do indeed use custom worlds of their own creation.
Users of published worlds, if you combine both those who started with a published world and then customized it (around 15 to 18%) or those who use a published world (the widest variance, between 18 and 25%) only ever seem to come up to within a third of total, no matter who's doing the asking. Older worlds and 3rd party typically show up as les than 6% combined, more often even smaller than that.
Even more narrow, tailored interest efforts tend to get the same overall results, such as OSR (Old School Rules/Revival) or groups who have a vested interest in seeing the decline of D&D itself.
Other data is also interesting -- scanning data from DDB prior to WotC buyout (which treats all data as confidential information), fivethirtyeight had a bit of data about what the most popular class and race combinations were (found here).
Doing the digging through published and peer reviewed research papers (which is free to dig but to read you gotta pay), once you narrow down your keywords (D&D and Survey are not enough, you have to be specific to the type of issue being looked at) you still find out more commonality -- it is almost as if this is such a baseline mark that it becomes a shame that WotC hasn't done more to support the 20% of players who spend the most money.
THe final main source for a lot of data is WotC's videos. They don't release inhouse metrics -- ever. But they do talk about data findings in a LOT of videos. I would say most, but I may not have seen most, so that could merely be an impression. Sometimes it is only one data point, sometimes it is a host of them, and often it isn't mentioned as part of a title or anything -- they aren't simply doing a readout of data. It is always ancillary, so if you want to collect that data you have to watch all the videos, and you have to do it carefully.
The reason most folks don't keep bookmarks on hand is because they *can't* -- you either have been through it and remember those times, or you saw it in a video.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I am sidetracking (or derailing, depending on your point of view) but I am curious what you mean by satisfying, since it is usually a very subjective concept.
More precisely, I am wanting to know what you think of as a satisfying structure to overland travel.
As a note, here is how I do overland travel.
Everything is broken down into "hours of travel". In any given hour there is a chance of a random encounter. These are not necessarily combat encounters (I've used them to setup plot hooks for later stuff or pass on hints and foreshadowing). I narrate things as they go, describe things they see (and track on a map, as there is a fairly standard demarcation point between "settled" and "boonies"). This is a dangerous world, so the odds of a random encounter in settled areas is about 30%, and boonies is about 70%.
Per hour. So speed of travel is always a concern, and I have house rules for vehicles stuff (including vehicle combat and chases). In addition to those encounters, there is also a chance of natural hazards -- the most common being wind and rain, of course. Both of those have an impact on travel. There are resources to track, and as circumstances change there is also some daily stuff that can happen (disease checks, for example).
A "smooth sailing" journey might take all of 15 minutes of actual gameplay, with lots of interpersonal roleplay. A less than ideal thing might involve multiple game sessions, dangerous hazards, and tough decisions as NPC fall to the wayside like settlers in the Oregon Trail, lol.
(I also note that I took a lot of this from the old oregon trail game as ideas).
I use a homebrew variant of what you can find in Tasha's for natural hazards as spell effects -- and I track temperature, time of day, and all that stuff (it is not very time consuming at all, lol so I have conditions like heat exhaustion and frostbite. I turned the NOAA wind speed tables into a way to see what the effects of wind are, and can apply them to land, sea, and air travel.
IF they move faster, they risk not just the book rule of lowered perception, but the additional aspect of fatigue -- not just on the animals, but on themselves. If they travel slower, well, more stuff happens. And that's not counting the chances of ruins (per day) or Lemurian attacks (per day).
travel in my campaign is an adventure in and of itself -- a survival style set of play. While villages and hamlets may be fairly common in some places, the towns and cities are all at least a week apart or ore (except by train, and the train isn't *that* fast, just faster than anything else and, obviously, safer).
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
I see alot of people saying this cant be added in all campaigns. But that makes no since.
What I love about these new rules is that they incorporate the idea of player owned businesses as bastions as well, so not just cool castles, but the local pub, and smithy count to, so if your players want to start up their own shops, they can.
But also there's the fact that, at some point, in alot of campaigns, your players will find a dungeon. it's apart of the game for many campaigns. This old, abandoned structure that is full of resources and now is vacant. Your telling me you have never thought, or has a player think about turning the dungeon into a home? Literally my first game I reported we cleared a dungeon to my temple and turned it into their new crypt.
You don't half to reward a giant castle to your players, but if there willing to sink the resources into a project, why not let them.
it might surprise you, but the answer to this is no, most players haven't decided to turn a dengon into a home base.
They are usually well away from civilization (and so resources), they offer very few practical amenities (jane's in the outhouse -- that room down the hall where the bugbears were? yeah, that one), they often have this strange thing where monster's just up and move in, and if they are using the published adventures, they generally aren't all that useful (if they don't simply collapse) or someone else already owns them.
Or, at least, that's what my player's have said. Also, my dungeons are huge elaborate places full of traps that are often created by Imps who put them together to draw in unwary adventurers and help keep the troublemaking beings from overrunning everything.
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
but they normally arnt away from resources. Dungeon in a forest? trees, lumber, herbs, wild life, ect ect. Dungeon in a desert? Sand and stone and pretty useful when quarried. Swamp? Same as forest but better water. Even then towns wernt always where they were, it took explorers to discover locations suitable for building, and a dungeon just so happens to normally hold a key location. think about it, Why would YOU build a dungeon in that location. what benefits did it have in the past? are they still there? What was it's over all purpose? Not all dungeons are made by a tricky lich trying to kill adventurers, and answering the above questions can breath amazing life into your dungeons you never thought could be there.
Few amenities is kind of a weird complaint when literally you just need to build them, or you know, figure out if the dungeon had them in a different form.
Yes, monsters move in, like kobolds or hobgoblins... or other creatures.... making it into a base... Im just saying the minute you start making a dungeons main creature something with any kind of intelligence, that implies the dungeon is a suitable home, and at that point the adventurers could do exactly what the monsters did and move in.
yes, those are modules that are meant to force the movement of a story, im speaking mostly of homebrew campaigns. I get a lot of campaigns get rid of their dungeons after they have used them, but you as a dm put alot of effort into making this place, why just get rid of it, when it can be used for other things.
I dont know man, that laboratory of kawaist had alot of good research a wizard or artificer could use to jump start their stuff. The tomb of annihilation has some neat killer magic bits, bet that sphere of death or what ever makes a great toilet.
also a huge elaborate place means lots of rooms for new things. like thats cool you got imps that design your dungeons and stuff, but at that point your purposely just tossing them away, and thats a waste. At least in my opinion.
Sure it does. Bastions assume that the PCs have a central base of operations, which is reasonable for a lot of campaigns, but not ones that are centered around a high travel quest with time pressure, such as Tomb of Annihilation.
There should probably be rules for mobile bastions, such as ships (either sailing or Spelljammer) or caravans (for example, something like the Witchlight Carnival would work).
Valid, to a point. Those resources require the PCs to have skills and capabilities of turning those resources into the stuff they need.
Like swords, armor, the stuff needled to, you know, adventure.
What I would build is irrelevant in my case -- it is what do my folks who build dungeons want out of them. And, typically, they build their ruins and dungeons in places rather far away from anywhere that the sniveling nobles and commoners would possibly be found, sending out their minions to raid and rob merchant caravans if they needed something -- or sending them out to get the stuff they want.
You see, when I designed the world, I had to think of all those things long ago. And the only time I have ever had a lich dungeon is when I ran Tomb of Horrors in the 80's, lol.
So it isn't a weird complaint, it is a consideration of the fact that such a place wouldn't typically be found in or near a city or town that has the requisite necessary skills and amenities for a group of adventurers. Indeed, the only published dungeon that breaks that general rule is the one under a tavern, lol. Because if they were always near such places of settlement, then they wouldn't be able to keep it there or have it there and keep it to themselves.
If the world is a hostile place, it would be cleared out and used as a refuge during times of crisis (like the old nuclear shelters), like when a horde of goblins comes along, or other raiders invade the town.
Which is not to say that such things are required -- you absolutely could do it that way. My dungeons are literally reset after each time someone goes through them, that's the Imps of Agartha in action. So they take it poorly (I only have five dungeons total, and the PCs may never venture to them) if someone tries to move in and wreck their work. And they do some creative things. They don't see it as tossing things away. They see it as taking care of a problem that they want to minimize (turns out, there are a billion imps, but no one knows it, just like know one knows that imps are everywhere, deep underwound).
Does the tomb of annihilation have a sphere of annihilation as well? I've not run it before. Never will on kwalish. I don't generally use published adventures (of if I do, they typically are from the 1e era).
Most people do very poorly underground, as well, psychologically, but that's kinda boring for a role playing game unless its paranoia.
The ultimate point is that Dungeons make horrible places to live, lol. ANd mine in particular would, lol -- 53 levels deep, and connected to Hell and the Abyss and the Underdark?
Only a DM since 1980 (3000+ Sessions) / PhD, MS, MA / Mixed, Bi, Trans, Woman / No longer welcome in the US, apparently
Wyrlde: Adventures in the Seven Cities
.-=] Lore Book | Patreon | Wyrlde YT [=-.
An original Setting for 5e, a whole solar system of adventure. Ongoing updates, exclusies, more.
Not Talking About It / Dubbed The Oracle in the Cult of Mythology Nerds
Amazing reply, mate, thank you so much @AEDorsay
I remember, in the amazing era of AD&D, where most of us had the boxed campaign settings that those were the main worlds we had, rather than creating brand new ones.
(important note: this information is based on my own investigation based on me and my friends 😅)