Comments on: The Hub: Home Sweet Base

By: Martin

Martin — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 15:42:20 +0000

In my last long-running D&D game, the PCs were supposed to take over a tower full of portals as a base. It had plenty of potential for adventures in the tower itself, and of course they could hop in portals as needed to find adventure elsewhere — which gets at your question, Frank.

Sadly, I spent so long building up to taking over the tower that the game ended before they got a chance to do it. Lesson learned.

By: Frank

Frank — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 16:58:17 +0000

A PC base does have lots of advantages, though I have also struggled with becoming bored with campaigning in the same region all the time. The trick is once the PCs are entrenched in a base, how to get them to care about traipsing off to some distant place for an adventure.

Frank

By: Martin

Martin — Mon, 04 Sep 2006 16:20:42 +0000

Good points! I agree that conquering the hub makes for a good connection, and that inserting little mysteries (like the magical cat) is a great way to keep everyone interested.

If the PCs’ hub were large enough, PTA’s “one set per character” could very easily be drifted over. The wizard gets her laboratory, the fighter gets a training room, etc. And of course they all still share control over the entire hub.

By: ScottM

ScottM — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 22:33:09 +0000

When the group unified and started to worry about the Technocracy (in my successful Mage game), they went up into the foothills and created a fortified little base. They had a lot of fun warding it and trying to blend in…

Heck, that campaign had a lot of individual hubs/ home bases– almost to the point of PTA’s set per character. Hmmm.

By: Mystic badger

Mystic badger — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 19:40:44 +0000

I find very important to let the players find/conquer/acquire the hub, typically by a quest. The house bequeathed in heritage by a friendly NPC who dies in one of their adventure, for example, or a strange vehicle or gigantic animal (giant turtle, anyone ?) found in a strange temple in the jungle… I find it necessary to establish the link, or else they will only see it as a convenient place to rest, nothing more.

By: Crazy Jerome

Crazy Jerome — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 18:18:53 +0000

I like home bases with built in oddities. In a Forgotten Realms game (Hero System, though), I arranged for the party to own a fortified manor house in medium-size town. The place had a few unexplored, unknown traps and passages when they first got it. Some of them were dangerous, and over their heads. So they always had that little bit of frission knowing that the place was mostly safe as long as they didn’t try something new. Every now and then, they’d want to test their new powers against some new passage.

And of course, that deranged magical cat in the basement, they left completely alone. Too bad the goblin thieves that snuck into their home one night let it out.

I find, as Martin’s article says, that the players really care about that base. You don’t have to mess with them much to get the whole party spitting nails. Except for the above mentioned things, I let them feel safe in that home for the better part of a year (real time). They *still* talk about that cat, and we played that around ‘98 or so.

By: Lilith

Lilith — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 16:49:06 +0000

My players definitely have a home base, as the campaign started out as an urban campaign. They all have a sense of pride and “ownership” of their home city that I don’t think I could have captured any other way. They have their homes that they’ve gussied up, they’ve got their favorite bar and barkeep (who’s also a fine chef) – all of these combine to create a great sense of community among the players.

Not to mention a lot of plot hooks.

By: John Arcadian

John Arcadian — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 16:43:18 +0000

In my current pirate game their hub is a small ship which they have just captured. The caputre of the ship (by escaping from the hold of a much larger ship), broke the masts and left it in bad shape. Their player chosen missions have been less about their own goals, and more about acquiring quality wood (trip deep into orc infested forest escorting lumberjacks), acquiring money for building materials (robbery of a nobles house), raiding other ships (to get some ondeck cannons), etc.

I’m letting them build their own homedock as well, it’s on an inlet. One of the players keeps making designs in google sketch up for the general look of it.

By: Eisel

Eisel — Fri, 01 Sep 2006 16:36:48 +0000

My players always have a hub of some sort – one group uses an abbey where the priestess always pamper them when they show up!

It’s useful to us also as a place for characters to be when the players can’t show up for the game! Absent players can say their character has the flu, is tired, has to research, needs to fix the place up . . .the possibilities are endless.