D&D 5E Will your campaign be purely adventuring?

[MerricB]

The early days of D&D included this assumption that player characters would end up building strongholds and assuming positions of responsibility - fighters ruling land, rogues becoming the head of thieves' guilds, and the like.

It something that later editions moved away from, though they occasionally nodded towards it. I think there were designers that explicitly said the rules had been written for adventuring through the lifetime of the campaign, rather than going into the nation-building aspects of the game.

I'm curious if you expect your current campaign to delve into these matters, or if it will remain a purely adventurer-focused campaign. If you do go to the positions of responsibility path, what rules will you use - or will you make up the scenarios the players face yourself?

Cheers!

 

[Raith5]

Probably not. Personally I would like it, but I not sure that there is enough mechanical support for it in recent editions. I also think there is a brute practicality of collaborative play, that if we can get people to play we want to be adventuring, not be doing accounting and administration.

 

[MerricB]

Yeah, that aspect of it tending to require a lot of one-on-one play rather than as a group activity does work against it for most campaigns. I'd probably steal mechanical elements from other systems, admittedly, if I were to use it.

Cheers!

 

[hawkeyefan]

Mine does, to an extent.

My PCs have set up shop in Phandalin after we ran the Lost Mines adventure. They are partners with Gundren Rockseeker, and have opened a trading company. Cragmaw Keep is being restored, and they've established a trade route to the Heartlands.

Each of the PCs has an area of expertise where they assist the company, but they're kind of "silent partners", leaving them free to adventure. The actual running of the company is left to trusty NPCs. We do loosely track income and resources and expenses, but I don't worry too much about the mechanics of it all.

 

[Zardnaar]

I asked the PCs about it for higher level play. IDK what we will do at this point.

 

[Stormdale]

I've always been a fan of the 1E system of stronghold building and am using my own rules for developing strongholds/ domains.

In my current Greyhawk campaign my pcs so far have: taken over Feathergale Spire and Rivergard keep (that latter of which was later ruined in retaliation by humanoids from Dreadwood) and also a frontier trade town on the edge of the Wolf Nomad lands called Hope- renamed (A) New Hope after the PCs ran off the bandits terrorising/running it (think TVs Deadwood as to this town's character/inspiration).

They are now currently about to start defending their town from rampaging Frost giants and Wolf nomads- SKT + G2 and are quite keen to keep their little earners. To assist defending Hope from the growing giant threat they are seeking some powerful weapons in a certain famous volcano (which is now in Wolf Nomad land and is a Sacred site to them) so adds another element of challenge.

I made up my own incomes generation rules that are simple and focus on net income rather than the minutiae and which work for us.

Stormdale

 

[Hussar]

I'm in the same boat. I'd like to do it, but, I'm not sure it's going to happen and, frankly, not sure how much fun it would be as a group activity.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

One way of making it easier to stick with group play if the characters are each ruling their own domains, is to have the players make additional characters who are employees/servants of the other PCs. Then a segment of the campaign can focus on one main PC and his henchmen (played by the other players).

Alternately, we could just get some updated Birthright-style rules for domain management and campaign integration.

 

[Li Shenron]

The early days of D&D included this assumption that player characters would end up building strongholds and assuming positions of responsibility - fighters ruling land, rogues becoming the head of thieves' guilds, and the like.

Generally, I don't expect my campaigns to last that long...

...but if they do, it's up to the characters what they want to do.

 

[ad_hoc]

We're using the downtime rules so the PCs will be doing non-adventuring things but not a lot of game time will be devoted to it.

I also plan for the game to finish shortly after hitting 11th level if not sooner so the power level isn't really high enough for it either.