Showing posts with label 2020. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2020. Show all posts

3 Ways a Home Base in D&D Will Improve Your Campaign

By RJ on 20 October 2020.


Tuesday night. The characters of the Caught in Galen campaign are all gathered at what they’ve dubbed “home base”, a structure on the western end of their community named the Faded Ember Inn. After almost every adventure, the characters return to this cozy inn to recuperate and discuss the calamity that seemed to be befalling Galen. Concurrently, they confer with many of the colorful characters they’ve met throughout their quests and convinced to come stay at the inn: Rea, an aasimar acolyte of Bahamut and love interest of Ignis; Unread Book, a tabaxi turned mad by the beholder-like expurgat Ixigana; Blast, a brief enemy and current ally forging iron defenders for the party; and those are but a few!

At this point, the inn is nearly at full capacity and has been the site of at least one major combat. After a quick discussion, the characters prepare to depart. Alas! The inn’s owner gasps and points out the window. Barreling through the sky is a great airship, heading directly toward the Faded Ember Inn. The symbol of the Eldritch Knights: a suit of animated armor with a blade in one hand a fireball in the other, illuminates as a flash of lightning arcs in front of the flying vessel. More visitors to home base.

Fantastic.

The player characters are usually adventuring across the land in their pursuit of riches, power, and glory. They hunt green dragons in tepid bogs, delve into the ruins of frost giant warmongers, and save the world from the machinations of maniacal archmages.

In many of these situations, they might not have roots anywhere. The player characters simply squat in whatever town or settlement they are near: the joyous tavern near the river, the wizard’s tower overlooking the endless plains, the underground hideout kept secret by yuan-ti rogues.

They might already be deeply invested in the world and the campaign but there is an easy way to draw them in further. Sometimes, you might need to hint at it, others, they might jump at the opportunity without any nudging.

If you want to help your players and their characters care more about your Dungeons & Dragons game, prompt them to or help them construct a home base.

Art by Anna Stokes.

This act will invest them into your campaign and world, provide a plethora of plot hooks and quest ideas, and give everyone the chance to try out a new type of gameplay.

Improving Investment

When a place is your own, you care more for it. Compare an apartment to a house. With an apartment, you know someone else owns it. You call others to fix issues, are unable to make it your own, and are confined to a few rooms and a patio. With a house, you know its yours. You put time and effort into it, fixing what you can yourself and decorating it as you see fit.

The same goes for home bases in D&D.

If the player characters are hopping from camp to camp, to places they do not own, their care for each will be shallow and simple. Sure, they might enjoy verbally sparring with the sharp-witted kenku innkeep along the Eastern Way, or laugh hysterically at the cult of whispering trees that surround a druidic citadel in the Allgloom Forest, but their connections to those places are brief. You will be lucky if they last more than a session.

Once they own their own place, their care will rapidly ascend.

The player characters will ensure their home base looks interesting and resembles their adventures. They might decorate it with the rewards of their prior quests. They will also want to know who lives there besides them. They could invite a humble cleric or a reputable merchant to make it their own and start to build a following there. After adventures, they will have a place to travel back to. There, they might relax, recover, and recount their fantastic accomplishments and solemn missteps.

For these reasons and a few more to come, the players and there characters will become more invested in your campaign and world once they have a place of their own.
Here are a few ways you could encourage the characters to establish a home base.

  • The characters discover an abandoned keep in the middle of an ancient forest. With a bit of renovation, it could become a formidable citadel.
  • A wealthy patron offers the characters a plot of land and a blank writ of credit in exchange for the completion of a dangerous quest. They will be able to do what they want with the land, but it's set atop a hill and would make an excellent location for a massive tower.
  • Remind the characters that they're accumulating a lot of wealth...too much to carry around on adventures. Unless they want to open a bank account or hide the treasure somewhere "safe", they are going to need to set roots somewhere.

Art credit Wizards of the Coast (Hoard of the Dragon Queen).

Improving Story

A home base in D&D provides plenty of opportunity for Dungeon Masters to wrap the plot further around the player characters. In addition, it gives the player characters ample opportunity to pursue downtime activities unrelated to the main plot.

Let’s take a look at both concepts.

Improving Main Plots

My player characters currently station themselves at an establishment called the Faded Ember Inn. Many of their allies live in or around the building and almost everyone knows they’re staying there — including their enemies. Over the course of the campaign, this has given me a plethora of chances to entangle the inn with the main plot. I’ve achieved this in many ways.

The entire family of a noble house paid the tavern a visit, renting it out for the day and treating it as their own summit spot between them and the party. This meeting flung the Faded Ember Inn into the spotlight and highlighted the party’s relationship with this powerful faction.

A deadly thieves’ guild for hire working alongside the party’s primary foes attacked the inn. The encounter was quick and brutal, involving minotaurs attempting to steal away close friends and vicious halflings posing as jolly patrons.

Four high elves, heads tattooed with bulbous brains, drew the party into the street. Using their mind magics, they thickened the plot and revealed secrets about one of the player characters that might interfere directly with the troubles they were facing day-by-day.

Each of those encounters built on top of the main plot. They all used the party’s home base as a catalyst.

Improving Side Stories

Let’s continue to use the Faded Ember Inn as the example here.

One of the PCs works at the inn. He has forged bonds with the others who work there: the inn’s owner (Immi), her daughter (Nala), and a tabaxi cook (Unread Book). When the PC retreats to the inn to rest, he interacts with each of these characters. The owner, a fire genasi like the PC, has taken on a motherly role; the owner’s daughter has a crush on him; the tabaxi cook is his best friend. Since the campaign’s start, these relationships have grown and changed — all the characters have also had some hand in the primary plot. Immi provides safety and comfort for the entire group after an arduous battle. Nala adds a bit of bubbly positivity to the somber atmosphere of the story. Unread Book pops in to muddy the already mysterious plot.

Alongside improvements to the main story, this home base has provided room for the personal story of this character to grow. Without it, it’s unlikely this type of development would take place. Instead, the vast majority of time would be spent building on the main plot.

Improving Gameplay

Narratively, a home base provides numerous chances to build on a campaign. Concurrently, it allows players and Dungeon Masters to test and master new gameplay systems.

Here are a few gameplay systems you can play around with if your PCs hold a home base.

  • Strongholds and Followers by MCDM. This supplement creates a foundation for you and your players to build the greatest stronghold in the land, whether its a druid grove or a barbarian camp. It’s a super in-depth system with lots of room for customization, roleplay opportunities, and mechanical addition to gameplay.
  • Downtime activities. Many of these rules are outlined in the fifth edition Dungeon Master’s Guide and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. Activities include running a shop, creating magic items, and constructing a following.
Both of these options provide depth to your game and, while being primarily mechanical additions, will definitely provide a framework for more narrative gameplay.

Art credit Wizards of the Coast (Volo's Guide to Monsters).

Skyreach Castle

Wizards of the Coast included an example of an awesome home base in the first hardcover module (Hoard of the Dragon Queen) for fifth edition D&D: Skyreach Castle. Discovered by the PCs near the end of the book, the flying castle could serve as a great first home base in D&D, as long as it survives the adventure.

When trying to hook your players on a home base, take inspiration from Skyreach Castle. It's a truly fantastic location and that's what we want our home bases to be.

  • It's the former stronghold of giants; that's rad.
  • It's the location of the adventure's climax, which should instantly fill it with fond and dark memories.
  • It's a flying castle!
  • It has an interesting navigation system.
  • It has a storied history.
  • It's wanted by other factions.
  • It has plenty of room for construction, storage of treasure, and housing for patrons and allies of the party.
Art credit Wizards of the Coast (Hoard of the Dragon Queen).

Lessons Learned

Encouraging your players to create a home base or iterating on the one they’ve already constructed is a stellar way to improve your D&D campaign. Remember what we discussed.

  • Home bases compound on your players’ investment in the game and world.
  • Plots that surround home bases can be personal and world-shaking.
  • A variety of gameplay systems revolve around home bases and downtime activities. If the player characters own one, this gives everyone the chance to play around relatively untouched or brand new systems in D&D.

Want More RPG Tips & Tales from RJD20?

As always, thanks for reading. Please send all inquiries to rjd20writes@gmail.com or leave a comment below.

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How to Begin a D&D Campaign

By RJ on 17 April 2020


The world is created, the characters are made, and the starting location is set, but how do you begin a Dungeons & Dragons campaign? There are many lines to check off on your list. Is the starting point created? Are all the session zeros finished? Is the initial plot formulated? Is the opening scene ready to go? 

As I prepare for the start of my next D&D campaign, Caught in Galen, I’m going to help you or anyone else out there itching to begin a campaign correctly complete their pre-campaign checklist.

The D&D Campaign’s Starting Point

Where will the campaign begin? This is a key question you should know before your players begin to make their characters that I dedicated an entire article to awhile back. Will the party explore the titanic ruins of a dragon empire on a jungle continent? Will they delve into the depths of the Subterrane in chase of a rogue celestial? Will they begin caught in a giant city of an inherently magical population? 

Know this before anything else. You can decide it yourself, or you can pitch a few campaign ideas to your fellow players. Sometimes giving them the opportunity to help create the adventure they’ll be playing in can be exciting and cause them to become invested far more in the setting and story. For Caught in Galen, I pitched seven campaign ideas in this document. Everyone voted and the winner was clear. 

Now, we will not be just playing the campaign I wanted, but the campaign the majority of the players rooted for.

After the setting is decided, it’s time to get to work. I recommend writing out at least a page on your world, detailing its fundamental ideas and concepts, in addition to two or three pages about the snapshot of that world: the campaign’s starting point. This region guide will help players build their character concepts and connect them to the world, giving them inspiration for interesting individuals. 

In the guide I wrote for Caught in Galen, I included everything I thought was important for starting the campaign and building the characters. The opening three paragraphs detail the snapshot setting, the city of Galen, the most important current event, and what the characters might be thinking right now. 

Afterward, it details what’s happened in the city in the past month with a brief timeline, then outlines twelve iconic individuals the characters might be connected to. They all relate to the background tension in some way. The guide closes with a variant the players can give their characters related to the campaign idea and a brief description of the starting region, a small community in the metropolis. 

With all of this in place, the players are ready to build their characters, and I am ready for their session zeros.

The All-Important Session Zeros

The next line on the list concerns the campaign’s session zeros. Over two years ago, I wrote an article all about holding a successful session zero. I still stand by the ideas I shared in this article, with a small additions and shake-ups. In essence, a session zero prepares you and your group for what you want in the D&D campaign. Before holding this session zero, I do a few things. 

First, I talk to each player privately about their character and help them build him or her. I ask them loaded questions, meant to spur their imagination and connect them to the world and beginning narrative. During this Q&A session, they get a chance to build the world, too. All the basic questions I asked for the Caught in Galen campaign can be found in this document.

Next, I hold individual “actual play” session zeros with each player and their character. This allows them to get a feel for their character, my DM style, and the setting itself. Once these two individual sessions are done, I get everyone together and we talk about the campaign as a whole. 

We discuss the setting again. We build a few parts of it together, an NPC or three, an enemy or two. Then, we talk about what we want and don’t want in the campaign. Is this campaign rated G or Mature? Is slavery a sour topic? Is romance okay? Can combat be described as gory and disgusting or comical and lighthearted? Establishing all of these concepts up front is important for the longevity of the campaign. If the players create parts of the world, ensure their characters are a part of it, and they know aspects of D&D they despise won’t be present, your group is sure to last. 

As you complete everything related to session zero, it’s time to begin thinking about the basic plot that will mark the campaign’s beginning.

The Basic, Initial Plot

Before the campaign begins but after all of the session zeros are over, you should have a good idea of your party’s backgrounds and desires. Use them as a skeleton for the campaign’s initial plot and opening scene. 

Find a common thread that binds all the characters together and discover a way to spur them all to action. Do they all want to protect the town from the goblin invasion for one reason or another? The town guard needs volunteers to patrol the wilds! Are they all eager to invest themselves into a prominent family? The family calls for aid in an important investigation! 

The possibilities are endless, and they’ll be different for every group.

The Integral Opening Scene

Everything is prepared. The starting point is built out, the session zeros are finished, and the initial plot is sketched out. The only part of the list left is kicking off the campaign with an integral opening scene. This is when all the characters will come together, for one reason or another, to form a party. Hopefully, this party will brave the wilds of your world, shift to other planes of existence, and venture the vast multiverse. 

The moment of their inception will likely be sung in the songs of bards whose great grandparents aren’t yet born. How should you begin their adventure? It’s your choice; it’s a heavy burden. Should the campaign begin in medias res, with the party already together, battling a group of kobolds riding giant lizards? With this approach, you can flashback as the battle ends and discover how they ended up in the combat. Or, if you want to be classical, you could start the campaign in a dimly lit tavern or in a jail cell without any gear. 

There are many options, and you need to think about which one you want to pick. Tailor it for your group, and don’t go in without thinking. This is the beginning of your epic tale; you want to make it as great as you possibly can. 

Here are a few ideas.

  1. The characters begin in a wagon, imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit.
  2. The characters begin on a ship in the middle of a storm, en route to the adventure location.
  3. The characters begin in a shady tavern, a hooded figure in the corning eyeing one of them.
  4. The characters begin all guarding the same caravan, looking out for bullywug attackers.
  5. The characters begin in the estate of a powerful family, each seeking the family’s blessings.
  6. The characters begin in the midst of battle, fighting a dire bear in a wooded area.
  7. The characters begin in the Astral Plane, unsure of where they are or why they’re there.
  8. The characters begin on an airship, hours before it crashes onto an island thanks to sabotage.

For Caught in Galen, I’m still fighting myself over which way to begin it.

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