D&D 5E [SKT] Players want to 'own' Nightstone

[Herobizkit]

Short story is, my players are rabid for base building adventures. Obvious spoilers follow.

[sblock]When my players were presented with a wrecked town featuring a Keep manned by inept guards and a dead Lady, their eyes lit up with wonder and excitement.

"Clearly, our Tiefling Warlock can replace the Lady; she's already befriended the midwife and her son. We have a Goliath Lathander priest who can run the church as the current priest is too much of a coward. Our Kobold Rogue always wanted to be a bartender and he doesn't mind sharing with the Dwarf. My guild connections make me (a Half-Orc Ranger) a shoe-in to take over the general store."[/sblock]

What do when players would rather hole-up than pursue quests? ^_^

 

[Imaculata]

Make their brand new base the source of future plot hooks, obviously. Just roll with it.

 

[Coroc]

That is awesome of your Players, give them something which is important for them, the more they are motivated to keep what they achieved.

A base can be invaded, set on fire, haunted, explode .... just refluff your adventure hooks a bit. It does not always have to be yer olde inn where Gandalf appears to send you on a Mission - It can be your Players base visited by a local Dragon in distress.

 

[Ovinomancer]

If this was a homebrew, I'd agree with rolling with it. As you've invested a nontrivial amount of money in SKT, I might take a different tack and have a frank season 1.5 where you sit down with your players and figure out what game you're all wanting to play. Because, if they don't buy into doing SKT, this won't be the only or worse point it goes off rails.

 

[dave2008]

SKT right. How about waves of giants? The only way to stop the giants from destroying "their" town is to find the source of the problem and fix it.

 

[Sadras]

Short story is, my players are rabid for base building adventures.
What do when players would rather hole-up than pursue quests? ^_^

Have the quests come to them

I don't own SKT yet, so I'm not familiar with Nightstone and its backstory, but that doesn't stop you from expanding on it, with a secret backstory i.e. what was Nightstone built on or what is it hiding?

Let Nightstone host major SKT agreements/negotiations for x reason.

Have the PCs leave Nightstone to source materials to rebuild it or redecorate it - schedule meetings with furniture/curtain/carpet merchants, a nearby stone quarry, local brewers (for the bar), and various craftsmen or craft guilds.

You could have a members of the church come to re-annoint/bless the temple/church in the area for the PC. A mass of clerical leaders come to visit the latest religious establishment. Maybe you have an opposing faction try sway the PC to 'change' faiths. Or even cause trouble between the characters by asking the other PCs if his faith can enter into an operating lease for the church premises (which would be against the wishes of the cleric PC).

Perhaps there is a large outstanding debt owed by Nightstone and the new owners will be held liable.

I'm sure there is a creative way of tying up the refurbishment of Nightstone to SKT. Have fun.

 

[KahlessNestor]

Given that you can't just "claim" a town or keep, there is likely some other authority above the deceased Lady who might take issue.

The townspeople of Nightstone might take issue, too. I'm sure they don’t want strangers taking over their town and businesses. Especially the local cleric and the dwarven bar owner and whoever owns the general store.

Sent from my SM-G900P using EN World mobile app

 

[Ovinomancer]

Have the quests come to them

I don't own SKT yet, so I'm not familiar with Nightstone and its backstory, but that doesn't stop you from expanding on it, with a secret backstory i.e. what was Nightstone built on or what is it hiding?

Let Nightstone host major SKT agreements/negotiations for x reason.

Have the PCs leave Nightstone to source materials to rebuild it or redecorate it - schedule meetings with furniture/curtain/carpet merchants, a nearby stone quarry, local brewers (for the bar), and various craftsmen or craft guilds.

You could have a members of the church come to re-annoint/bless the temple/church in the area for the PC. A mass of clerical leaders come to visit the latest religious establishment. Maybe you have an opposing faction try sway the PC to 'change' faiths. Or even cause trouble between the characters by asking the other PCs if his faith can enter into an operating lease for the church premises (which would be against the wishes of the cleric PC).

Perhaps there is a large outstanding debt owed by Nightstone and the new owners will be held liable.

I'm sure there is a creative way of tying up the refurbishment of Nightstone to SKT. Have fun.

Generally nice ideas, but SKT is a "travel to all these different places" adventure, so the rewrite necessary to make Nighttime, which is the starting place for the tacked on rush to 5th where the rest of the adventure starts (somewhere else, natch), would be quite extensive. At that point the majority of the expensive adventure book is useless, since it's half Gazetteer already. Heck, the motivation of the antagonists couldn't really be plausibly rewritten to be focused on Nightstone, either.

SKT doesn't work with focusing ther game on a base. And most of it takes place far from Nightstone. Relocating hordes of giants that close to Waterdeep also had some suspension issues if Waterdeep ignores it.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I dont know if you know the j-rpg called Suikoden? In it, while you try to save the world from a BBEG, you can recruit NPC from various location to bolster your homebase with different services. If you say Nightstone was mostly abandonned, instead of having the PC opperate the various stores and services, have them travel the world (using the SKT sandbox) to recruit NPC to populate and operate the town, all while sustaining Giant attacks and discovering why they attack the settlements. Have them travel to a town and recruit a well-known gnome barber to operate the public bath or a young entrepreneur who want to start her own tavern. When they recruit someone, improve the available downtime activities in Nigthstone. A new smith? Better equipment. A traveling cleric settles in Nightstone? Make clerical services available. In short, dont have them operate the town, but let them ''build'' their settlement while adventuring.

 

[aco175]

I would be cruel, but you can blow the town up so they have to move on. Players may feel like you are being heavy handed though and railroading them. Which you would be. It would push them along though.