D&D 5E Settlement mechanics...

[TheIdeaOfGood]

The basic premise for my new campaign is that the characters all start out as normal inhabitants of some little backwater in some kingdom, having never really seen much of the outside world. It's a standard fantasy realm...until one day, the sun flares up, then goes dim...and a scream rumbles across the landscape as the gods, for some reason or other, go mad.

Now, misshapen things stalk the night and the twilight days and it is upon the characters to survive, help defend their settlement...and maybe lead their people to safety, if there is still such a thing...

Setting-wise, I am going for a mixture of Berserk, Darkest Dungeon, Symbaroum, Dark Souls and, in case someone here knows it, Kingdom Death Monster.

Now, in addition to the monsters etc. the new situation will affect the town and I am thinking about how the players can affect both the settlement's safety and morale, with people being dragged off by monsters or things even invading the town if safety is too low and people wandering off, going mad or committing suicide if morale is too low.

I am just not sure how to set this up rules-wise. Any ideas?

 

[delphonso]

First off, stranger, I really like the idea. Berserk and Dragon's Dogma are great places to go for inspiration for this. Of course, in the rulebooks you're unlikely to find anything that will help you directly.

I can think of a couple ways to handle it, and then I'll talk about my own experiences.

First, you could give it some numerical values. Let's say Morale is a 1-100 thing and Security is 1-100. Probably, morale is going to be low at the start, but security might be fine. Whenever there's a dull moment, or when you introduce a plot thread, you can roll a percentile die, one for Morale and one for Security. If Morale triggers, there's some sort of social problem they need to deal with (something small like a madman running through the streets terrifying everyone, or something big like a group of separatists who just want to take off on their own.) If security triggers there's a combat problem they need to deal with (either monsters invading or a wall that needs repairing.) I'd roll both at the same time, and try to throw both problems at my players simultaneously to really stress them out. If they handle it well, Morale and/or Security increases, if they handle it poorly, something decreases. I'd keep these numbers hidden from players and not explain exactly what's going on. Players who are proactive might increase these numbers and hopefully decrease the number of incidents.
More or less, this is based on the Obligation roll from FFG Star Wars.

Another idea is to physically represent their rewards. Have groups of prisoners walk by, if they rescue them successfully, they get an additional service in town - say an alchemist or enchanter. If they have a really bad fight, or fail to keep an area safe, instead of just damaging the party, have a service taken away - they can not buy potions again until they either find someone new to do it, or rescue that last person. All of this depends more on the monster's motivation, of course. It could easily get redundant. I had a homebase for my players and they accrued more and more NPCs which provided services. As they did so, I added buildings, gardens, workshops, and even paths to a persistent map we were using. If you have a whiteboard, this would be a good way to show how the town is doing, especially fortifications and where enemies are attacking from.

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I actually tried something like this before. A group of "undesirables" were lumped in with some other old-timers and peasants as a new "colony" for the government of their land. They were more or less forced onto a boat and sent to an island with nothing more than their clothes and ingenuity. The party was a smooth-talker, a warrior, and a ranger. They three of them pretty quickly took roles of authority among the 100-some other colonists and organized them into task groups. The groups built tools, hunted and gathered, and worked on housing. All of this was run in 3.5 - and didn't really play nicely with the rules. Eventually we basically ignored the character sheets and just had problem-solving sessions. I would introduce a problem: "You have done the math and you're unlikely to have enough food from just foraging alone for long." and the party would react, "we need to start farming. We send a group looking for fresh water, send the rest to gather seeds."
The players enjoyed it. On a day-to-day level there was some mystery in the woods for them to follow, and occasionally they'd run into an Orc (eventually revealed to be from another colony on the opposite side of their island, later - a trade ally), so they didn't only spend time managing a new town. I don't think I handled it particularly well, but the players really enjoyed it and felt like they were constantly making progress on multiple fronts.

Best of luck to you!

 

[TheIdeaOfGood]

The trigger mechanic would mean that things could escalate quickly if the characters left some problem unattended for too long...
I like it.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Firstly, belated welcome to ENWorld!

Secondly, I really like your idea. What I would probably do, is make some rules around 0 level PCs. I did that with Rise of Heroes. That does a couple things: It makes sense mechanically with PCs starting as backwater regular people. It allows players to play without being locked into a class they might not want after they get some game play.

Then I'd look at the madness rules in the DMG, and probably borrow some ideas from Call of Cthulhu and the madness rules in that game, or look at how WFRP handles it. It seems like madness is a big part of what you're looking for. I'm a big fan of taking ideas from other systems and molding them into my games

 

[Chaosmancer]

My first thought is to look at the Sanity, Morale, Honor and Influence rules from the DMG.

Not sure if any of them will directly do what you are wanting, but if you were to swirl them together you might come up with something. Like using an Influence track to see how safe the PCs have made the area while Sanity slowly erodes for the community.

Personally, I tend to handle some of that narratively, because different people will break at different points and someone whose been holding it in may just suddenly descend into madness after a relatively minor event while someone on the edge may just stay on the edge but functional even during a major catastrophe.

I'm also curious, did you talk this game over with your players and get some input on how this game is going to shape up?

Because, different plans of action might mean you need different things.

IF the Players hear that intro and decide to abandon the town to find the source of the problem and save the world... well, your concept is hit pretty hard by that. Alternatively, if their first plan is to flee to somewhere else, setting a baseline defensive value for the town isn't really worth the trouble, because they will be a caravan of people with essentially no defenses, and they will probably seek out some caves which are much easier to defend than a town.

If you can find out their initial plan, it might help you decide what you want to have prepared for the first few sessions.

 

[TheIdeaOfGood]

I am using the Madness rules as well as Lingering Injuries, Fear and Terror and Sanity. Probably also the grittier rest rules. Though the latter might mean I'd maybe have to tweak the regaining of class abilities for some characters...
Level 0 has its appeal but the basic low level classes are doing the job in D&D 5.
Thinking about restricting magic classes, though.
Probably no Warlock as the world has been relatively free of eldritch taint up until the campaign starts.
Also, I'd make Insanity much harder to treat with magic as it simply is not a sickness (as in something harming the body from without) but a result of the mind turning in on itself.

 

[TheIdeaOfGood]

All true Caravan of hope-like scenarios (Organ Trail anyone) would also be fun and I am fully prepared to run that, too. In fact, I do not intend for the players (and surviving inhabitants) to stay at the settlement forever.

 

[Ristamar]

I concur that a "track" system for settlements (akin to Sanity or Exhaustion) is probably the best fit with predetermined conditions at various tiers as well as variant outcomes linked to tables.

Of course, you'll also need to determine what constitutes a shift in the track and how those shifts are facilitated or prevented (number of monster related deaths in a month, appearance/extermination of a Legendary monster, creation/destruction of defensive fortifications, availability of food/supplies, establishment/loss of trade or communication with nearby settlements, etc).

 

[TheIdeaOfGood]

Of course, all these factors will be an issue, although it's supposed to be a background thing and the reason the group ventures out. Hmmm...a random event system or one based on certain thresholds for Security, Supplies and Morale would make sense here....

Hmmm...makes me wonder if there are any systems that already do something like this...

 

[Chaosmancer]

Mentioning the rest variants, before you look at changing long rests to a week or what have you, I'm planning on using the variant where instead of regaining hp on a long rest you spend HD.

This way you don't have to mess with class ability balance, but you can end up wearing down their ability to recover, and then it makes short rests more interesting, because they recover Hp in the exact same manner as your long rest.

I haven't tried it yet, I have a survival campaign I'm going to propose come the fall where I'm going to try it, but I really think I like it since it puts more focus on the HD