Interior Decorating
Base building is not for everyone. For some players, a base-building session is tantamount to hearing, “We’re not gaming tonight. We decided to do taxes instead.” That doesn’t have anything to do with base building as a concept though. Rather, I think it’s got to do with subsystems in general.
I’m coming from an Exalted 2e perspective here. It’s a famously crunchy system in a famously flavorful setting. And while I was happy to learn the ins and outs of combat and how-to-make-a-check-101, I stopped worrying about mechanics once I got to a “good enough” understanding of the game. I was happy with my little slice of knowledge. I was playing and enjoying, and the gates to The Land of Adventure were thrown wide before me. They slammed shut in my face, however, when I tried to learn the social combat rules. And again with the mass combat system. Or (Sol Invicutus help me) the mad beast that is shaping combat. (I’m pretty sure that system is the reason that the Fey are all nuts.) I enjoy a crunchy system as much as the next guy, but I discovered in myself a stubborn resistance to learning these new subsystems. I couldn’t seem to shake it. And the longer I’ve pondered my own reactions, the more I’m convinced they were due to something I’ve termed the “nested system problem.”
When you’re simulating a world on the tabletop, you generally start with a primary resolution mechanic. That might be the dice pool system in Exalted or the d20 in D&D, but you’ve generally got a straightforward way to determine the success or failure of an action. You branch out from there, finding ways to modify those results. Pretty soon you’ve got a sprawling system of feats, spells, charms, and weird-ass knacks spiderwebbing away from a simple central idea. There are health levels, internal and external penalties, essence-powered super powers and similar. But so long as they’re fueling the central “here’s how combat works” and “here’s how out-of-combat works” systems, you can get along with the complexity. It’s when an entirely new spiderweb starts up that I begin to check out.
And that, I think, is why Fighter is being such a grump there in the bowels of FIGHTKEA. He’s languishing under a load of unwelcome rules. It’s a sensation that I know well. Hearing unfamiliar terms like “build points” and “capital” in Pathfinder 1e was enough to furrow my brow and turn the page on my desire to learn downtime rules. Even though it’s not a terribly complicated system, it’s still divorced from my experience of The Land of Adventure: smacking monsters and exploring dangerous ruins. With social rules, base-building rules, and similar systems, I’ll usually fall back on the default resolution mechanic. Roll some dice, make a few checks, and let the ST make an ad hoc call about what happens. I may be missing out on interesting systems, but I’m also saving myself a lot of time on Pencils & Paychecks. And that’s usually because of simple calculus: I’d rather be adventuring.
What about the rest of you guys? Do you rely on complex systems for base building? Or is your team happy to make do with a few quick checks before getting back to the action? And more generally, do you like “nested systems” in your game, or would you rather keep things lightweight? Sound off with your favorite downtime / mass combat / computer hacking / social combat mini-games in the comments!
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Similar argument man for shadowrun 5E (AND ESPECIALLY 6E) that you presented for exalt.
Newbie gm or player: I think I know a good bit about shadowrun. I know my way around the shadownet, I know how spell combat goes down. I think i got th-
Designer of shadowrun books: “You know nothing new player”
presents rigger, astral combat, or net combat in depth
“You know nothing…NOTHING!!!”
But hey in the end those rules are for a reason, diffrent tastes for diffrent people. Some people love building bases in depth and able to figure out which spot goes where. Some people prefer hack and slashing/adventuring (like you and fighter)
Different tastes for different people.
As for me, i like to keep things somewhat lightweight. Although I have been known to disregard that entirely to make my own little web of rules and items.
Right on. The real challenge is figuring out how to serve those different tastes when they all sit down at the table together.
My players? They much prefer everything to be monster of the week and kick open the door or hit me with a scene style play. Even in our less “Adventure-y” games like WOD and Mutants and Masterminds, they don’t really do downtime that well. I recently had a character who had a boyfriend as a Complication in Mutants and Masterminds. It then became a running gag with the group how the player was the worst boyfriend in the history of boyfriends cause he never went to visit or called his SO. I didn’t help with a few little things I did, but it was still mostly the player never saying anything when I would say “You guys have some downtime, what do your characters do?” The Student with the secret Identity would talk about doing college homework, the guy who was effectively a “Full-Time” hero would talk about stopping smaller, non-super crime. I would describe how the strange alien NPC would fly off to her secret lair to continue studying humanity. This players response was always “I’m in the lab doing science!”
That story being told, I like all of those Nested systems in Exalted, even Shaping Combat (Which is really just Roll these dice and stunt, but it says it in a lot more words). Safer to say they are the core system with other stuff added on around it. I like the minutea and little stuff in a lot of systems, but I’m that kind of player and I realize it’s not for everyone.
“Know your Audience.”
Do you use all the rules in Exalted? I mean, do you try and play things RAW all the way through?
Well, in a short answer no. I mean, only Fae really even do Shaping Combat. And my group is rather shy when it comes to becoming world leaders, so the Mass Combat system gets ignored because they enjoy a more “wandering Martial Artist” feel to their stories. I’ve used Social Combat on numerous occasions.
The greatest failing of the Mass Combat system in play that I have found, is the Dawn Caste Anima banner.
I’ve told the players of my 2nd ed game that I will never introduce Mass Combat and poison/disease – if you want to see that in game, then you better learn the rules yourselves, because I have better things to do. As of yet, no one has picked up those particular gauntlets, even if the Kimbery favored Scourge is interested in poisons and might bring it in…
I enjoy nested systems quite a bit, or more accurately, the idea of nested systems. However, at least in Pathfinder, I find that a lot of the subsystems made have a tendency to become hyper-rigid and hand-wavy.
The downtime system is a great example: Every time you do downtime, roll a die to determine what specific event happens. Based on what happens, a specific modifier is applied or you must roll a specific check with a specific DC to end the event. It’s more like a Board Game then a Tabletop RPG. In an RPG, you are given tools to solve problems, which the GM comes up with and incorporates into a story. There’s very little room for creativity and basically no room for storytelling for the GM.
The downtime system in PF feels to me like it was designed by a person who didn’t want to deal with a Downtime system. Like, they tried to do a good job, so all the numbers are well thought out and they put a lot of effort into it feeling deep, but at the same time it was designed in such a way that when it comes up, it feels like you’re supposed to run through it quickly and not incorporate it into the adventure or story.
Now see, I think that you could get an evocative and RP-heavy version of downtime with those some rules. It’s like learning combat the first time: it can be a major math-fest, or it can help you to tell a story. It’s just a matter of getting comfortable enough with the system to let the numbers mean something in terms of narrative. It jut requires playing with the new systems long enough to get comfortable. And that’s more effort than I want to put into my pretend tavern.
I guess I’m looking at it from the GM’s seat, since that’s where I usually am. It’s very inflexible for the GM, who’s limited to specific things happening based on the roll of the dice.
Most Tabletop RPG mechanics give you the mechanics to overcome adversity, and pieces that you can put together to create adversity. A lot of Paizo’s subsystems just give you the adversity, and even tell you the specific check to use to overcome it. So as a GM, they’re VERY boring to run.
Are you referring to the random happenings by building? Yeah… I used those as inspiration for encounters rather than play the actual by-the-books system.
If you wanna see downtime done interesting, look up Dave the Commoner
No. I’m lazy. Link me Dave the Commoner.
“What about the rest of you guys? Do you rely on complex systems for base building?”
You know, those complex systems are GREAT for shaking up your table-top experience. Have you been slinging dice and fighting through mega dungeons or talking your way through ballroom affairs for years? GREAT! Here’s something a bit different to do, and maybe we can expand on it and play around with it, and when you’re done you can HOST ballroom affairs or protect the townsfolk in your well-laid-out death-trap that you call a lai-… Keep? Home? Home.
You know when it is NOT a good time to spring this on your players? When half of them are brand-new to the system, and the rest are crunch-hounds who want to min-max themselves to punch Cthulu in the face with impunity.
I’ve heard so many awesome stories about Pathfinder 1e, and I had a TON of fun with my alchemist, Chalcey, and her disturbing(ly cute! I swear!) tumor-squirrel, Lumpy.
But our GM decided to do something different with this game, and started us off after completing our first dungeon with: “Congratulations! You are now the pioneers of a religion you get to build yourselves! Also, here are all the town-building rules that we’re going to be using for you to improve this mostly-logging town into whatever you want! Here is the world map! Where do you want to go first?”
…I’m gonna be honest, I was cautiously excited at the idea of a campaign built around building up a religion (really an ancient one, but we got to make the rules of it, so that’s splitting hairs) from the ground up. But the, as you put it, nested rules for building up the town, converting followers, and forging alliances was, to say the least, overwhelming. To top it off, the GM had just come from a railroad-heavy campaign, and had entered their ‘You are free to do whatever you want, make your own adventure!’ phase.
We made the mistake of leaving the town-building decisions to the crunch-heaviest min-maxer at the table since he knew the rules for it. This resulted in a murder-mystery in the elemental plane of earth to get mining rights so he could have adamantine walls of perpetually-spinning blades on what he swore was eventually going to become a mobile flying city.
Why yes, he was a fan of 40k, why do you ask?
The campaign ended up being incredibly fun and memorable, but only after the GM started giving us some plot-hooks and stuff to DO, and other than our Crunchmaster’s flying-city plan, very little of the fun ever came from these added systems. It was just too much for people who had experienced too little.
Laurel’s comment on the Patreon preview version of this comic: “Shut up Fighter, downtime is the best. I am the kind of player who spends hours drawing maps for our PC’s guild hall, so it’s kind of a given that I gravitated to Pathfinder’s downtime system!”
It takes a certain kind of player. And I’ve very seldom seen more than one or two of that type of player congregate in any given group. I like the idea of supporting it for that player, but making it central for everyone has never worked out for me.
.. it’s weird how much both of thse posts resonate with me. It was Pathfinder, we were using the kingdom rules, I was that player.
.. .. I also made maps of all my businesses.. and my arcane university
I really, really enjoyed the downtime stuff in Pathfinder. But it was broken. Really broken. One of the most optimal buildings to build was the .. ‘Dance Hall’ (think horizontal dancing), so the general joke was that we’d sweep into new cities and towns, take them over, and then enlighten them with the power of numerous brothels and taverns. Gotta get that economy and loyalty
At one point we had a 2 year or so downtime, and I optimised the crap out of those 2 years. Our entire kingdom was roaded up, every hill and mountain was prospected and mined when suitable. Foundries, smithies and more sprung up in every single city. Every single forest was logged to the very limit of sustainability.
I like to imagine I brought about the industrial revolution in the space of 2 years
I’m also very partial the Ars Magica system, especially the item creation rules. I would be quite happy to not do any adventuring at all in that system, and just set up a Verditius artifacter merchant, and just spend the entire time just making awesome magical artifacts
Have you heard the tale of your kindred spirit, the industrious rogue?
https://1d4chan.org/wiki/Tale_of_an_Industrious_Rogue,_Part_I
On the subject of stronghold building, I’m really fond of the Lifestyle rules from various editions of Shadowrun. It’s pretty fun to break down your home in terms of Luxuries, Security and Location, buy a bunch of perks, and figure out what that means for your home life.
Hell yeah. The subsytem becomes a set of “tools to imagine.” In my opinion, that’s when rules are at their best.
I can relate, every time I glance at the kingdom builder for pathfinder, I shudder. On the other hand, back in D&D 3.0, I really enjoyed, the ‘Stronghold Builder’s Guide’. Each page had a mapped out room with costs and benefits, in what I thought was a very simple and elegant format. Sure, it did not cover stuff like owning entire cities or kingdoms, but it allowed for players to start small, and slowly build and expand their base of operations.
In the likely event that I write a builder’s guide in the next year, I’ll give that one a look. Thanks for the tip!
We’ve done a few different types of base-building, ranging from some hand-waved “I want to purchase this decoration for my room”, “Yeah, that’s probably covered by your basic cost of living” to what was probably the most extensive system of base-building we’ve done: Making a spaceship in Starfinder.
I love making SF ships. There’s something beautiful about a thing that can seamlessly blend being a command center, a vehicle, a small dungeon, a living space, and even a creature of sorts, with its own stat block!
I’ve drawn out a bunch of Starfinder ship schematics just for fun.
Do you use this thing?
https://www.starjammersrd.com/equipment/starships/starfinder-ship-calculator/
Or do you have another app?
No apps here. We do it all on paper, both the design and mapping of the ship, and also statting it up.
Not shown in the comic: Cleric gorging himself on cheap hot dogs and B££IR. Or trying to get a refund on a chair he used as an improvised weapon. Or both.
As the wizard of the party, learning the crafting rules and figuring out how long any given magic takes to make is where most of my downtime goes. Along with spell research and spell-copying. And scrying. And safe-resting/pricacy spells. And sending. And earning a weekly wage. Wizards have more downtime activities than combat ones!
My other two party members meanwhile went and built themselves a mage tower (I didn’t participate beyond offering spells, because planning a demiplane for myself instead, and their choice of location sucks). Our fourth party member does not participate in downtime at all.
I still suspect you are spying on our game for comic inspiration.
My downtime activities include scrying.
I’m weird. I like both crunch and relaxed.
I play in 2 PF 1e, 1 Starfinder, 1 5e game.
The 5e and 1 PF game are pretty light. while the SF and other PF game are crunchy.
Both are fitting to the gm. And thats where i think it comes to. What works best for your gm. The lighter games arent any less deadly, or flavorful.
1 we have a pc turned to a winged cat, another, quasits activating golems, or a third saving the galaxy from tiamat.
Look to what your gm is good at. And enjoy from there as a player, if its up to your view. You can be complicated or not as a pc, no matter the system.
Maybe I haven’t seen a subsystem incorporated especially well. I’d certainly be down to give it a shot if a Kingmaker game came along. As you say though, it’s all about how it’s incorporated into the game.
For our FFXIV Pathfinder group (the one with the miqo’te red mage frequently compared to Magus), after roleplaying out getting the deed, the GM gave us a basic system for paying per square foot, with cost modifiers for digging out cellars or building second floors, and let everyone decorate as they wished to reasonable limitations.
We now have a nice little place going on a main road with farms, a mill, tavern, and inn, with plentiful living space for the whole party; plus, now the local adventurers’ guild has asked to start operations in our place! All before the real heroes have moved into their own town of adventurers. All we need is to score an exclusivity deal for our smiths’ works with Rowena, and we’ll beat the Scions at their own game. +_+
Speaking of said red mage, she nearly dropped an underground ruin on everyone’s heads yesterday because she thought spamming fireball and shatter was an acceptable way to seal an elevator shaft.
Relevant comic: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/areyousure
The GM was surprisingly lacking about that nagging voice, but then again, the red mage has a Wisdom of 8 so she probably doesn’t have that sort of inhibition to begin with.
I like that simplified version. I feel like opening it up to player creativity “within reason” and then ballparking a price works in most cases. It’s when you’ve got dudes like FluffySquirrel at the table (see above) that you want a more robust system.
So one of my favorite RPGs right now is Fragged Empire (a sci fi game) which has downtime baked into the system, but does so simply. Every session you gain 1 “Spare Time Point” which you can use to try to acquire new gear, upgrade your current gear, do research, or get your self some surgery (either for healing or getting some sweet new cybernetic implants/gene splices or both). It also helps that the game doesn’t track “credits” but has a general “Resource” stat which determines how much gear you can maintain at once (with better gear requiring more Resources).
The fantasy adaptation for this game, (technically science fantasy) called Fragged Kingdom, has rules for building and maintaining a village/homebase for the PCs. It basically follows the same rules as the spaceship rules in the sci fi version with some minor tweak here and there as necessary. It’s also fairly similar to how PCs work just with different stats. The creator is also working on transferring those base building rules into the sci fi version.
Having all of that built into the game from the start and being very similar to each other makes it MUCH easier to learn. Turns out keeping the rules consistent is a good idea.
Neat! Is this a rules-lite system? It sounds like a load of fun.
Nope. It is fairly crunchy, but not excessively so. It IS however, specifically designed such that options you choose are vague enough for you to flavor it in anyway you want, especially since weapon (and armor) customization is a BIG part of the game.
My campaign has too many characters. I have three (sometimes four) players, each with a multiple characters ranging from three to nine. They swap out, go on side campaigns, and sometimes team up to take down big threats in massive combats that take forever and leave me bashing my head against the wall. Surprisingly, it works, and we have a great time!
It does, among other things, make downtime more complex. One of the main PCs owns a dress shop, and another owns an inn. We looked at Pathfinder’s downtime rules, decided to homebrew some of our own, got real excited about it, and then threw the whole thing out and never touched it again. Sometimes I’ll let the players buy building expansions, but they’re mostly flavour.
Instead of all that, downtime comes in the form of mini-missions where I give players a list of local quests and they have to decide which of their many characters or NPC allies they want to send out on those quests. By matching the right character to the right quest, they get a small reward. It takes a while to set up, but it’s a lot more our style than number-crunching and keeps the game moving.
Matching characters to missions…? You aren’t perchance adventuring in Draenor, are you?
Nope! Homebrew land of Avar. Draenor sounds lovely, though.
What is so difficult in Shaping combat? Have you ever hear of a play called Hamlet? There is a part in which the actor see a play some actor make in the castle. It’s a play inside a play, that is what i told some of my group when they got problems with the shaping system. The understood the mechanics but not the flavor and lore. Shaping is roleplaying inside a roleplay game.
As for the rules and that nestle system you said. Rules in tabletop games, not only tabletop roleplaying games, are numerous but you only need the ones you are gonna use. There is a game, i think it’s called hopscotch in English, rayuela in Spanish, that is fairly simple. I could describe the rules in its totality here, but i am not gonna do it. Magic the Gathering on the other hand is a more, very so much, rules heavy game, specially the keyword mechanics, and that is just the mechanics that got a keyword. Still i have notice this: the complete rules of rayuela enter in a small piece of paper you can hold in your hand, Magic’s rules are more of a book but you can still hold it in your hand; but here is the interesting bit, rayuela’s rules are a small piece of paper, yes, but to play Magic you don’t need to complete rules, from that heavy book you could just rip the pages with the rules that you will use in any given game, then you will end with a small fraction of the rules, more that for rayuela yes, but less than before. My advise then will be, before shaping combat read the rules to keep he flow among the players, when shaping combat starts close your eyes and think of Realm 😉
Side note, since surely Laurel doesn’t have any problem with base building whit not let her manage everything. Unlike me she will not put more torture chambers than bathrooms. But on a second though after thinking of Chorus of the Neverborn i am not so sure about that 🙂
I believe you have stumbled upon my secret. The player that likes downtime gets downtime. All others go drink in the tavern.
How nice of you to let the girl to manage all. We got a real hero here 😛
Just kidding… again… i need to rethink what i write o_O¡
But, in any case is a good way to have things done and allow the group to have fun, each on its own way 🙂
“Do you rely on complex systems for base building? Or is your team happy to make do with a few quick checks before getting back to the action? And more generally, do you like “nested systems” in your game, or would you rather keep things lightweight?”
/narrows eyes
Those aren’t binary options mate. I get that you’re coming from the land of D&D and the hellscape[1] that is Exalted, but base building can both use the core conflict resolution mechanics as well as be robust and in depth.
In one of the games I’m playing in most of the game has come to revolve around repairing our new base, adding to it, and investing in its future. And this is ostensibly a ‘megadungeon’ game. Go figure.
But it’s also GURPS, so the core conflict resolution system is used for everything, no “separate and unique nested subsystem” nonsense.
1 How does Exalted compare to Pathfinder’s Kingmaker nonsense for ‘nested shenanigans’?
Pathfinder and Exalted are the games I’ve played most. Both feature these “nested shenanigans.”
That said, my impression of GURPS has always been that it’s chock-full of modular systems that you can tack on to add complexity. Having never played in a GURPS game though, I can’t speak to the similarity with any authority.
It depends. I got Pathfinder: Kingmaker specifically -because- it has adventuring and base building. I’ve liked the notion – sometimes more than the execution – of these subsystems. I’ve liked the ability to adventure, build a base, talk with people, etc. However, there’s also a tolerance for my time. I expect that whatever I learn will be -useful- to making and playing optimally. If I feel like my time would be wasted learning something, I’d rather not, in or out of game.
Did the rest of your table dig the base-building aspects? Or were there a couple of players that ran with it while the others sort of watched?
Oh boy now you’ve done it, I’ve had such a fondness for fort building and have been desperate to build a lovely home for our party.
In the first instance as a dm I’ve planned a reward of a large sum of money being spent to construct a keep. I would work out how much space they want and what features and cross reference with the Stronghold Builder’s guide to get their ideal home.
Now as for me playing, first find a large lake and consult the local druidic order. Request their aid in constructing an island in the lake to build on. Large estate that would be most of the island, entering would involve coming into a dock built within the base. In the main room I was going to get more help to grow a very large tree that would be cross breed with various fruit trees, the top of said tree would extend to the roof where I would have a greenhouse for whatever nature based friends we might have.
Finally I was going to build a panic button dimension door item for everyone in case of attack that would teleport them into a panic room, Sealed room with jars of air along with being hallow to prevent ghosts, in the center of said room would be a permanent leomund’s tiny hut for added safety and a teleportation circle if we need to pop out to another safe location.
For added effect my eidolon was going to be so large that I was going to make his saddle into a base, including a large disk with a teleportation circle built onto it. While adventuring out we could drop the disk down, teleport home enjoy the comfort of our base then come sun up teleport back to the disk and place it back on the saddle to keep travelling.
Suffice to say I put some thought into this.
Oof. Teleportation circles on vehicles is a ball of wax. I know that Jacobs over in Pathfinder didn’t like it…
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2l7ns&page=602?Ask-James-Jacobs-ALL-your-Questions-Here#30086
…and 5e seems to allow it:
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/103173/can-a-permanent-teleportation-circle-be-made-on-a-moving-vehicle
Expect table / system variation on that mess.
Well personally I don’t actually like super crunchy systems. 3.5/Pathfinder is just too many rules for me. Same goes with the extra stuff in Shadowrun or…. uh pretty much everything in a White Wolf game past what you’re going to start with as a new character honestly because they really let it spiral wildly out of control in those ones. And man I cannot even imagine prodding Rifts or GURPS with a ten foot pole.
That said, I do enjoy base building as a thing…. in theory anyway.
I know I’ve said this before, but Blades in the Dark is my favorite system. The relevant part here is that the “adventuring” system is simple with just enough complexity not to be dull…. and so is the “base building” so even having to learn both is no issue since even together it’s still less mechanics learning than most systems out there.
Forgot to mention…. it’s also super great that in that system your “base building” is incredibly relevant to your “adventuring” as opposed to the usual “well we have to do SOMETHING with all this money?” it often tends to be in other games.
I need to poke my Blades GM again. We’ve still only ever played that one session, and that was almost a year ago. #grumpled
I one used the rooms and building rules from ultimate campaign to trick out a magical airship for the party. Only cost about the entire wbl of a 12th level character.
Heh. We threw a month’s worth of work into creating a flying tower out of an indestructible black glass tower in a mythic P1e game. I’m pretty sure “Immigrant Song” played on a loop whenever we flew that thing anywhere.
To me a good social system is very much a key part of the land of adventure.
It’s one of the 3 fundamental activities of adventurers, they meet interesting folk and either talk to them, fight them or solve puzzles/mysteries (the last one can easily overlap with the former two).
Those seem very much separate from downtime subsystems or niche subsystems that only some characters interact with (like crafting or hacking)
Here’s a quick overview of where I’m coming from:
https://exalted3e.obsidianportal.com/wikis/social-combat-cheat-sheet
In my experience, playing that mess as written got in the way of RP rather than facilitating and structuring it. I love the shit out of Exalted, but it’s definitely a tightrope when you’re trying to model “social combat.”
Mostly my objection was just that I feel social systems, in the systems that have them, are core enough that they shouldn’t be seen as a minigame anymore than combat should be.
It’s a core activity to me and therefore deserve the same mechanical debt and detail as the other core activities.
I have played a bunch of exalted (mostly 2nd edition), and I actually really like what I have seen of exalted 3e’s social system.
The trick to grokking it, to my mind at least, is to just ask yourself how you’d want to convince this person and then asking yourself what mechanics would represent that. It usually works, and the rules are mostly just a codification of that.
In my experience it only really get’s in the way when one spends too much time thinking about the mechanics divorced from what’s actually happening, since they are so context dependent.
Helps too that it mostly boils down to “do the target have some reason to go be convinced (something they believe/you give them for it/bad that will happen to them if they don’t)? If yes roll attribute+ability against resolve. If they also have a reason not to, they can spend a willpower point to resist.”
My favourite and least favourite systems within a system are both in Dungeons the Dragoning 40k: 7th edition (yes I know that is a mouthful). The second book (A Few Subtitles More) releases rules for Vehicles and Spelljammers.
The Spelljammer gameplay is amazing, with each player taking control of a station a la Star Trek. There are many dongles and giszmos that the players can add to their ship. It also gives the players an opportunity to use teleporters or orbital bombardment which, as every GM knows, improves and streamlines campaigns immensely (Sarcasm).
Someone on the DtD forums created rules for homebases based on the spelljammer rules. I havn’t tried them yet, but it would be interesting to run a game based off them.
The vehicles system on the other hand (wheel?), seems very finicky. It is a rules-heavy subsystem on an already rules-heavy game. Up to this point I have mostly handwaved vehicles. Admittedly I am looking a trying to introduce them in my next campaign to see if they can work feasibly.
I knew about teleportation. I’ll have to add orbital bombardment to the list: https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/flighty
3,799GP? That’s 3,799 days of profit for a skilled laborer! What piece of furniture could they possibly be buying for that price?
A tavürnn. Duh.
I personally love the minutae of PF’s settlement building rules. Putting together a list of rooms to make appropriate buildings, then slowly ticking off my progress in the time between adventurers scratches the same sort of itch as playing with lego for me. It’s best with a flexible GM who doesn’t mind letting you put together a custom room now and then, and tie your settlement into the adventures somehow, but I can easily see why subsystems like it aren’t for everyone.
In my PF1 campaign, there was one player interested in the stronghold rules. Luckily, it’s a pretty single-player system, so he was able to mess with them at his leisure without bothering the other players. Hurrah!
Yup. I find that’s the best way to let it play out. Let the player run their own farming simulator. They can summarize the outcome for the rest of group, and get to play a sim game on their own time. Everybody’s happy.
Any base is “good enough” but nothing beats an Airship.
Unless you can get your own Floating Island WITH an airship.
Still, I like the personal security of Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion, or alternatively, a well decorated Demiplane. (as per the 7th/8th level spells)
Poor Fighter really ought to see the slingarmor ala mode Zardoz that Fightkea stocks; I think his opinion on the store would increase by leaps and bounds, and I’m sure he’d look dashing. (If I’m remembering my deep handbook of heroes lore correctly. My memory is – not the best, let’s say.)
When it comes to base-building, or any big project that maybe is only interesting to part of the group, I tend to ‘nudge’ the players a bit. If I’m running for a group of five, and two are super interested in designing their techno-lair, but the others aren’t, I’ll run a short session with those two, after getting some must-haves from the players uninterested in the rules and roles aspect of it. If the players who are base-builders can’t figure out what to do, or are not being too thoughtful of their peers, I’ll GM-mandate some things until everyone’s satisfied.
And then we can proceed gaming on normal schedules, and more importantly, knowing that their colleagues have their architectural flanks secured gives good character hooks in-character…
“Desoto, never knew a muscle-head like you knew such great tech-sphere contractors. Not bad, bru, not bad.”
… out of character, the players who are only interested in having a base ’cause their characters deserve it can feel secure that their ‘stewards’ are taking care of making sure that it’ll be ready to withstand whatever the GM throws at it, suit their characters, and look good doing it. (Even if it was actually me that tweaked a few things for them specifically, bahaha!)
As for me – all gaming is good gaming. I came into the hobby through wargaming, complexity is a tradition of mine – but it’s not my bread and better, like most wargamers. I played wargames ’cause that’s what was available to me. I liked ’em, too, and enjoy a good think, but if the rest of the party wants a simple romp and just knowing they’ve got a cottage to fall back to – that’s lovely, too.
My dorm buddies and I got into Mordheim back in undergrad. It was one of the great surprises of career-switching life to find myself living in the same town with one of them. Mordheim is this Saturday. 🙂