It absolutely is, but it's more detailed than many folks would like (at least that's my experience from when I tried to convince lots of 3E gamers to use it).
As soon as I saw the thumbnail I knew you were champing at the bit to go in with What is BAD about Bastions?! I really like how simple it is. Bastion points being gone is good, people just didn’t get into it. Even my players who have been using the UA rules for 30 sessions haven’t used them yet. What I would love to see is what changes you would make in your next video.
Thanks! Next video explores the issue. I may then look at the system I would design, based on the time I can find. I would love to design my own system.
Teos, I'd really like to hear a true slapdown of the rules. I like your enthusiasm and gentle way, but these kind of rules need a more drastic and explosive re-design. What would be your version of bastions like? Any modules you can point us too? Maybe make a video with your version, or a GM-prep for a session. Thanks for the insights 👋
Thanks for asking! I wanted to start with what folks might like. On the whole, I'm not a fan of them. The next video tries to be constructive, but certainly focuses on the issues with the system. As to what I would do instead... if I can find time I may even work on a system as part of Success in RPGs. Thanks again!
I’m interested to see if officially published adventures are adapted to allow for bastions in the future. Up until now we have mostly been presented with story driven adventures where characters are thrown from one crisis to the next with little to no chance to think about a bastion.
Agreed! I really think Downtime was hurt because the updated rules in Xanathar's were not in many adventures that could have used them. For bastions to shine, it will need at least a couple of adventures to showcase the system.
As I reflect, early versions used stronghold building like a 'solo' game within the campaign. DM might be consulted for upgrades, etc. Or DM could throw a pestilence at your serfs. Good fun.
I am already using the 2nd ed. Castle Guide for calculating cost of land and construction in my 5e game. My players have just amassed the treasure required to build a stronghold... I can't wait until the new DMG drops. Bought it just for the Bastion system. 🎉
Thanks, Teos, for the positive description and explanation of the new bastion mechanics. This still sounds like a complete nightmare to run within the current iteration of D&D; whilst still juggling a big separate story to contain the motivations and action consequences of an adventuring party of superheroes. Twenty pages of low involvement, fun mechanics giving PC little benefits isn't doing much to help referees and players with conceptualising even the basic world interactions required for the building and continued existence of the varieties of bastion the design team have listed. It sounds so fluffy, where it would definitely require a robust geopolitical and economic blueprint for the wider world for it to be worth playing - without the fiction quickly breaking down. Understanding how you'd even supply and feed the people of your bastion requires more than handwaving of rivers and roads to market - which presupposes a market and roads. If there's already a feudal monarchy or imperial political structure, how's your functional military castle not going to be perceived as a serious threat? Unless the PCs are already favoured at court. Where they'd have to spend much story-time to remain so. Maybe the PC has an agent. What stops their political representative enacting a justified legitimacy challenge or coup against a flibbertigibbet PC lordling who spends most of his energy on foolish crusades? And that's just a simple medieval castle. Building up your parish church into a cathedral might upend the whole socio-religious hierarchy. Or are we meant to think of this as a procedurally unrealistic boardgame or cosole/pc game element? Which begs the question, what's this tabletop RPG format about? Does it need much verisimilitude at all? The domain-play concept becomes so much more game changing than a little added arithmetic in a quick DMG add-on. And I think we've come to understand this through many editions. If a group of mine were looking to do this, (as you suggested) I'd be more tempted by the Wild West settler-colonial style dynamics adopted by Forbidden Lands - or go old school WEG Ghostbusters with an Acquisitions Incorporated franchise! Otherwise (if I wanted to do this for it to actually feel like D&D) I'd be heading back to BECMI, using the Mystara setting. For me the current edition of D&D would just need far too much work for this to be a good play mechanic. Although I'll wait and see what you say in the less positive video.
I think for folks who want a high level of detail, an entirely different system is needed. Something more like the 3E Stronghold Builder's Guidebook or the MCDM books. Forbidden Lands is even a bit simpler than 3E, but you could easily expand that into more robust checks, such as shortages of materials or changes in their costs. Personally, I want to focus on the story, and I want to have a simpler system. If we look at the Acq Inc "Running a Franchise" task, there you roll percentile dice to see what has happened. And to this you can add the why of it. "The Bastion suffers severe setbacks, costs increase by 125%" and then you come up with whether that's a change in materials, an uprising in your hirelings, a rival/villain manipulating things, etc.
I kitbashed the Song of Ice and Fire RPG with Strongholds and Followers, and basically inadvertently created a colony sim minigame as something to do during downtime.
Teos appeared in a very long dream of mine a few weeks ago, graciously gifted me with halls upon halls and galleries filled with Marvel and DC comics original art, merch, etc. and I was overwhelmed by his kindness and generosity (which had obviously spilled over from real life Teos). At the same time (for the whole time), I shamefully and selfishly was wondering "where are all the TTRPG gifts?" By the way, thanks for another great video! Please keep up the inspiring work!
If i was going to use this, i think I'd set up a game where the players get "volunteered" to set up a kind of hybrid refugee camp/fort nearish to a war border. They'd get an intial investment/help to set up by the government...but everything else is going to be harder to fund. They can try and get local nobles to donate, try and get some refugees to help, maybe track down a rumored dungeon nearby to help compensate. And every week they start getting more hints that perhaps the war isn't going great. The border is shifting. Maybe they need to start training the people around them to fight. Probably put up obstacles that would make retreating harder. It's just a rough idea, but it is pretty much what i thought of when i first saw people talking about the new 2024 rules.
@@AlphastreamRPG although i do believe they put the decision to put the cusotmizable BACKGORUNDS in the DMg was a deliberate move to get player sot buy the DMG was to get the D&DBeyond [player sot buy the book :P
I love the possibility for a DM to harvest adventure hooks from the NPCs the players create in the bastion, but limiting random encounters to just when the PCs are around would undermine the fun of the bastions being PC focused as opposed to DM focused.
At 2:30 - yeah, it's always the paperwork when it comes to construction, isn't it? Clerics of the God of Bureaucracy get "Create Red Tape" as a cantrip!
There honestly is more of a discussion to be had on why this Bastion system is in the DMG. Yes it's suppose to be a DM "option" but lets face it, Bastions are as much of a DM "option" as feats were in 2014 5e. Compounded by the fact that this system is so player focused, the cost is little (given how few ways there are to spend gold in 5e per the official books and how much gold players are likely to find especially if using 2014 5e random loot tables), ALL BENEFITS, and it has been said by WotC that the DM isn't meant to touch or "threaten" the player Bastions. And on top of all that, I as the DM, would need to invent a reason why my players gain Bastion in every game I run. "Oh you helped our town, why don't we just give you this plot of land that actually costs a lot, but you need it...." Isn't it actually fair to say that 3rd edition Bastions or even those from 0D&D were complicated and could be threatened, because they provided far reaching benefits? So how do you go from that, to 2024 5e "easy" mode?
Designers in marketing pieces may over-stress things, such as when they said Bastions was vastly revised. Objectively, it has minor revisions from the UA version. Similarly, I think they stressed that this is fun for players, but it’s ultimately (like anything else) under DM purview. It is up to you whether it is an option. But it’s I. The DMG for the obvious reason: something new, providing a reason to buy the book.
@@AlphastreamRPG You seem more inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt than I. Personally, I find the reasoning of it is "something new, providing a reason to buy the book" incredibly scummy. A less charitable way of describing that is a scam or the act of conning another. As anti-consumer as it gets. Appreciate that you might want to focus on the positives, but the negatives shouldn't be swept under the rug either.
@@schemage2210 I do know several WotC staff, and they are all really great gamers who want to create the D&D that will excite fans. But, all companies also need to pay salaries and so on. Finding a reason why books will sell makes sense.
@@AlphastreamRPGI don't doubt that there are good people at WotC, just as I don't doubt that ultimately how books are divided to "encourage additional sales" was made by a corporate type who isn't a good person. And yet you continue to dance around the fact this is essentially a scam. They could have very easily decided that bastions are entirely player facing content and ought to belong in the PHB and instead put something in the DMG that DMs will actually find useful and exciting. It's not rocket science. D&D is the only TTRPG that gets away with selling 3 books at $60 a piece just for the core rules of the game. And I would have no problem with that, if the books are solid products but this is not. Instead the situation that arises is that players that want bastion rules are going to have to pay for a full book that they won't use (especially if D&D Beyond's next scummy move is to remove the feature that allows a DM to share their purchased content with certain groups of players, considering that DDB got rid of piecemeal product purchases, only subclasses from a new product or only monsters from an adventure, this move wouldn't surprise me). Well that is good for WotC but it's anti-consumer as it gets. I'll pay for good products and good services, but I don't pay for scams. And frankly, if scams are the only way that WotC can stay afloat and pay all their employees, maybe they shouldn't still be in business.
I would not be shocked if someone felt a bastion would make sense in the VTT, but it also isn’t a terrible idea. I still think fundamentally bastions have trouble appealing in either format by being fixed large non-mobile structures. If WotC wants to sell me a bastion map, but events only happen when I’m not there… and I can’t bring it to adventures… what do I need a bastion map for?
Ginny Di has a great video on bastions, leaning into the player perspective on choosing facilities. Very cool: ua-cam.com/video/065k_Ri0WlY/v-deo.html
The old 3e book Stronghold Builder's Guidebook is an immensely useful tool when it comes to this type of base building.
It absolutely is, but it's more detailed than many folks would like (at least that's my experience from when I tried to convince lots of 3E gamers to use it).
I like your enthousiasm about this topic.
Thank you! I love design in all forms!
As soon as I saw the thumbnail I knew you were champing at the bit to go in with What is BAD about Bastions?!
I really like how simple it is. Bastion points being gone is good, people just didn’t get into it. Even my players who have been using the UA rules for 30 sessions haven’t used them yet.
What I would love to see is what changes you would make in your next video.
Thanks! Next video explores the issue. I may then look at the system I would design, based on the time I can find. I would love to design my own system.
Teos, I'd really like to hear a true slapdown of the rules.
I like your enthusiasm and gentle way, but these kind of rules need a more drastic and explosive re-design.
What would be your version of bastions like?
Any modules you can point us too?
Maybe make a video with your version, or a GM-prep for a session.
Thanks for the insights 👋
Thanks for asking! I wanted to start with what folks might like. On the whole, I'm not a fan of them. The next video tries to be constructive, but certainly focuses on the issues with the system. As to what I would do instead... if I can find time I may even work on a system as part of Success in RPGs. Thanks again!
I’m interested to see if officially published adventures are adapted to allow for bastions in the future. Up until now we have mostly been presented with story driven adventures where characters are thrown from one crisis to the next with little to no chance to think about a bastion.
Agreed! I really think Downtime was hurt because the updated rules in Xanathar's were not in many adventures that could have used them. For bastions to shine, it will need at least a couple of adventures to showcase the system.
As I reflect, early versions used stronghold building like a 'solo' game within the campaign. DM might be consulted for upgrades, etc. Or DM could throw a pestilence at your serfs. Good fun.
Very true! The fighter had a stronghold, the cleric a church, etc. And DMs just encouraged to mess with it somehow.
I am already using the 2nd ed. Castle Guide for calculating cost of land and construction in my 5e game. My players have just amassed the treasure required to build a stronghold... I can't wait until the new DMG drops. Bought it just for the Bastion system. 🎉
Do you like the Castle Guide more than the 3E Stronghold Builder's Guidebook, and why? I haven't looked at the 2E book in years! (And now I want to)
I grew up on 2e and just went with what I knew. I've added Acquisitions Inc and the 3e strongholds book to my reading list.
@@eeach Awesome to hear! Thanks!
Thanks, Teos, for the positive description and explanation of the new bastion mechanics.
This still sounds like a complete nightmare to run within the current iteration of D&D; whilst still juggling a big separate story to contain the motivations and action consequences of an adventuring party of superheroes.
Twenty pages of low involvement, fun mechanics giving PC little benefits isn't doing much to help referees and players with conceptualising even the basic world interactions required for the building and continued existence of the varieties of bastion the design team have listed.
It sounds so fluffy, where it would definitely require a robust geopolitical and economic blueprint for the wider world for it to be worth playing - without the fiction quickly breaking down.
Understanding how you'd even supply and feed the people of your bastion requires more than handwaving of rivers and roads to market - which presupposes a market and roads. If there's already a feudal monarchy or imperial political structure, how's your functional military castle not going to be perceived as a serious threat? Unless the PCs are already favoured at court. Where they'd have to spend much story-time to remain so. Maybe the PC has an agent. What stops their political representative enacting a justified legitimacy challenge or coup against a flibbertigibbet PC lordling who spends most of his energy on foolish crusades?
And that's just a simple medieval castle. Building up your parish church into a cathedral might upend the whole socio-religious hierarchy.
Or are we meant to think of this as a procedurally unrealistic boardgame or cosole/pc game element? Which begs the question, what's this tabletop RPG format about? Does it need much verisimilitude at all?
The domain-play concept becomes so much more game changing than a little added arithmetic in a quick DMG add-on. And I think we've come to understand this through many editions.
If a group of mine were looking to do this, (as you suggested) I'd be more tempted by the Wild West settler-colonial style dynamics adopted by Forbidden Lands - or go old school WEG Ghostbusters with an Acquisitions Incorporated franchise! Otherwise (if I wanted to do this for it to actually feel like D&D) I'd be heading back to BECMI, using the Mystara setting.
For me the current edition of D&D would just need far too much work for this to be a good play mechanic. Although I'll wait and see what you say in the less positive video.
I think for folks who want a high level of detail, an entirely different system is needed. Something more like the 3E Stronghold Builder's Guidebook or the MCDM books. Forbidden Lands is even a bit simpler than 3E, but you could easily expand that into more robust checks, such as shortages of materials or changes in their costs. Personally, I want to focus on the story, and I want to have a simpler system. If we look at the Acq Inc "Running a Franchise" task, there you roll percentile dice to see what has happened. And to this you can add the why of it. "The Bastion suffers severe setbacks, costs increase by 125%" and then you come up with whether that's a change in materials, an uprising in your hirelings, a rival/villain manipulating things, etc.
I kitbashed the Song of Ice and Fire RPG with Strongholds and Followers, and basically inadvertently created a colony sim minigame as something to do during downtime.
I mean... that sounds extremely cool!
Thanks.
Very welcome!
Teos appeared in a very long dream of mine a few weeks ago, graciously gifted me with halls upon halls and galleries filled with Marvel and DC comics original art, merch, etc. and I was overwhelmed by his kindness and generosity (which had obviously spilled over from real life Teos). At the same time (for the whole time), I shamefully and selfishly was wondering "where are all the TTRPG gifts?"
By the way, thanks for another great video! Please keep up the inspiring work!
Oh my good, that is hilarious! Thank you so much for thinking kindly of me.
If i was going to use this, i think I'd set up a game where the players get "volunteered" to set up a kind of hybrid refugee camp/fort nearish to a war border. They'd get an intial investment/help to set up by the government...but everything else is going to be harder to fund. They can try and get local nobles to donate, try and get some refugees to help, maybe track down a rumored dungeon nearby to help compensate. And every week they start getting more hints that perhaps the war isn't going great. The border is shifting. Maybe they need to start training the people around them to fight. Probably put up obstacles that would make retreating harder.
It's just a rough idea, but it is pretty much what i thought of when i first saw people talking about the new 2024 rules.
That's an awesome idea! I dig that, especially the way it weaves a story together!
Its an OPTIONal system so it SHOLD be in the DMG, once you put something in the PHb, players feel entitled to it.
Very reasonable!
@@AlphastreamRPG although i do believe they put the decision to put the cusotmizable BACKGORUNDS in the DMg was a deliberate move to get player sot buy the DMG was to get the D&DBeyond [player sot buy the book :P
I love the possibility for a DM to harvest adventure hooks from the NPCs the players create in the bastion, but limiting random encounters to just when the PCs are around would undermine the fun of the bastions being PC focused as opposed to DM focused.
Yes! Super cool to work off of the NPCs like that.
At 2:30 - yeah, it's always the paperwork when it comes to construction, isn't it? Clerics of the God of Bureaucracy get "Create Red Tape" as a cantrip!
Ha-ha! Now that sounds like Acquisitions Incorporated!
There honestly is more of a discussion to be had on why this Bastion system is in the DMG. Yes it's suppose to be a DM "option" but lets face it, Bastions are as much of a DM "option" as feats were in 2014 5e. Compounded by the fact that this system is so player focused, the cost is little (given how few ways there are to spend gold in 5e per the official books and how much gold players are likely to find especially if using 2014 5e random loot tables), ALL BENEFITS, and it has been said by WotC that the DM isn't meant to touch or "threaten" the player Bastions.
And on top of all that, I as the DM, would need to invent a reason why my players gain Bastion in every game I run. "Oh you helped our town, why don't we just give you this plot of land that actually costs a lot, but you need it...."
Isn't it actually fair to say that 3rd edition Bastions or even those from 0D&D were complicated and could be threatened, because they provided far reaching benefits? So how do you go from that, to 2024 5e "easy" mode?
Designers in marketing pieces may over-stress things, such as when they said Bastions was vastly revised. Objectively, it has minor revisions from the UA version. Similarly, I think they stressed that this is fun for players, but it’s ultimately (like anything else) under DM purview. It is up to you whether it is an option. But it’s I. The DMG for the obvious reason: something new, providing a reason to buy the book.
@@AlphastreamRPG You seem more inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt than I. Personally, I find the reasoning of it is "something new, providing a reason to buy the book" incredibly scummy. A less charitable way of describing that is a scam or the act of conning another. As anti-consumer as it gets. Appreciate that you might want to focus on the positives, but the negatives shouldn't be swept under the rug either.
@@schemage2210 I do know several WotC staff, and they are all really great gamers who want to create the D&D that will excite fans. But, all companies also need to pay salaries and so on. Finding a reason why books will sell makes sense.
@@AlphastreamRPGI don't doubt that there are good people at WotC, just as I don't doubt that ultimately how books are divided to "encourage additional sales" was made by a corporate type who isn't a good person.
And yet you continue to dance around the fact this is essentially a scam. They could have very easily decided that bastions are entirely player facing content and ought to belong in the PHB and instead put something in the DMG that DMs will actually find useful and exciting. It's not rocket science. D&D is the only TTRPG that gets away with selling 3 books at $60 a piece just for the core rules of the game. And I would have no problem with that, if the books are solid products but this is not. Instead the situation that arises is that players that want bastion rules are going to have to pay for a full book that they won't use (especially if D&D Beyond's next scummy move is to remove the feature that allows a DM to share their purchased content with certain groups of players, considering that DDB got rid of piecemeal product purchases, only subclasses from a new product or only monsters from an adventure, this move wouldn't surprise me). Well that is good for WotC but it's anti-consumer as it gets. I'll pay for good products and good services, but I don't pay for scams. And frankly, if scams are the only way that WotC can stay afloat and pay all their employees, maybe they shouldn't still be in business.
This is nothing more other than another avenue for micro transactions in the upcoming D&D VTT.
Conclusion: Not interested.
I would not be shocked if someone felt a bastion would make sense in the VTT, but it also isn’t a terrible idea. I still think fundamentally bastions have trouble appealing in either format by being fixed large non-mobile structures. If WotC wants to sell me a bastion map, but events only happen when I’m not there… and I can’t bring it to adventures… what do I need a bastion map for?