The group I DM just got a keep-like house. 3 stories, a basement and two towers after they have successfully defended a coastal city. The catch is the house is a mess; the walls and gates are broken, towers are somewhat collapsed. The story is the house used to be a Hub for a band of mercenaries helping the city but they and their house got attacked about 50 years ago. This helped me to not only give some lore but also show my players that they can indeed lose their house. Plus they were getting super rich so it is a good investment
@@masterthedungeon I figured making them spend money, time and resource on a hub could also strengthen their bond to the place making the house even more important for the group. They have already talked to some contractors and started to forward their mails and orders over there so I think what I was trying to do worked :)
I love the bunk house concept. The military would function on a much more modern concept of mercenaries. Small pods of elite agents would be the accepted norm of combat power in a world where strength would need to be mobile and flexible. Having them in rotation means if they ever want to move towns there is probably an empty bunk house waiting for them. Meaning that's a new fixer upper to drain them a second, third or even fourth time. Unless you sell them a bunch of portable holes. A moving company that rented portable holes would be fun. The hole journey. Portable holes revolutionize transportation, especially of valuable goods. Imagine a group of rangers each carrying a money belt with a few portable holes in pouches under their clothing. Who needs wagons? Portable holes are like cargo containers, but the size and weight of a piece of cloth
My party found a town that was razed by orcs. As they grew stronger, they restored more buildings and defenses, and refugees from other towns started arriving to repopulate and contribute.
I remember back in the day, a party I was DMing cleared an old castle of a group of bandits, and asked the local lord if they could use it to create an adventurer's guild. So we made it so, the castle was a ruin with lots of work to be done, but they went at it and became the masters of the new guild. Which I implemented by having my other groups encounter them as NPCs and being asked if they wanted to join the guild. Eventually there were up to 20 adventurers of varying levels in the castle, which had been mostly repaired and rearranged (with for example a tower made to be both a temple and a library). Some parties sometimes were doing quests that became related to each other (and since a few of those parties had players in common, they saw that) and it even allowed for moments where, during introductory sessions with beginners, I could allow them to ask for help from a higher leveled character if it was too hard
Do love a central hub for a campaign. I like the idea of a ship/airship as a hub as it allows mobility. I also find a great use for a hub is a reason why a character is missing. "Where's Bob the Knight?" "He's on the ship repairing the masts/at the market getting in food/at the farm speaking to the staff." In a Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign (which is all based around the eponymous town) the players kept coming back to town of course and they were rewarded with a farm. They loved the town so much that one of them started a relationship with the magic shop keeper, one ran for the council and another started investing in businesses in town. It was great and only worked because there was a hub to work round.
@@masterthedungeon The beauty of airships is that this means there could be floating islands and the party could have their hub on a floating island. Also they can be as big as need be and with magic; can be a TARDIS. Also, the idea of a player being unable to attend a session is hilarious to me. Hear me out; let's take Bob the knight for example; original commenter. Player is unable to make it so DM says they're on an errand and party is like "That's fine. We can do this without him!" Next session, player comes back and thus Bob is back so Bob returns and sees the party a wreck. "Hey gang, I'm back and by the heavens; what happened to you guys?!" "Long story."
@@theofficerfactory2625 Depending on when player missed the session their character might still tag along just for purpose of combat. Especially if there is no easy way for said character to return to "hub"
As someone who gave my player characters an airship as a hub at level 9... It is actually kindof a detriment. What it ultimately did was remove a lot of danger out of exploring the world, as they prefered to just fly overland rather than face the hardships of the land below. Rather than traveling to the next city on foot in order to obtain its Teleportation Circle coordinates, they just flew there. Personally, I would never give my players an airship hub again.
@@mateobarrett6829 that's something that can be accounted for though, nah? airborne monsters that'd otherwise leave the party alone if they were under the cover of trees, environmental factors that make flying the airship through a particular region dangerous or outright impossible, a coordinated group of aarakocra bandits that target airships because a) they can, and b) anyone who has an airship is likely sitting on a fat pile of cash, the cost of the vessel itself notwithstanding. fuel/magic/upkeep/repair costs that encourage the party to be more thrifty with using the ship. required mooring every so often- maybe keeping the ship floating 24/7isn't viable and the party needs to land the ship every so often, instantly making it more vulnerable to outside threats. traffic/city defense protocols that require craft of that nature to be kept a certain distance outside city limits, whether for safety, congestion management, or whatever else. obviously an airship's a very powerful tool for a party to have, but you don't need to make it the optimal transit option for every scenario.
4:15 not having to come up with a bunch of "new" NPCs every time they go into a store is HUGE. The players will do less utility shopping on the road too, after all they want to get back to their friends and spend money there. This also applies to the neighboring communities. Having a home immediately starts a spiderweb of permanent NPCs. This is also the best stage for any players that want henchmen or to be an actual leader, so they can make decisions and see how they play out for the community. Great video :)
Consistent NPCs also allow players to form deep relationships. One of my DMs created a fast-talking, smarmy halfling shopkeeper whom he thought everyone was going to hate. My laid-back, lanky human fighter immediately bonded with him for sone reason and they ended up being the “odd couple” best friends of the village.
In a campaign I play, one character found a good bowyer/fletcher, and consistently directs every other person looking for bows or arrows to "My favorite bowyer". This has already gotten me some discounts!
My campaign that starts soon has a hub called “Lamyra’s transdimensional tavern for heroes” which will be a tavern full of adventurers from all over the multiverse. The owner, Lamyra will give the players personalized rooms and act as a shopkeeper and the main character driving the players towards the end goal. They’ll also be given a key that can only be used on a vertical surface that will summon the door to the tavern, and is highly cautioned to not use in combat or too close to enemies. The tavern will also be where they fight the BBEG
Another use for the campaign hub that you only hinted around but didn't actually explore is as a tool to give the PCs a reason to hate the BBEG. In my necromancer campaign, I let the PCs advance about half-way through, gaining all the benefits of their home base. Then as soon as they crossed swords with some of the BBEG's henchmen, he sent his minions to completely obliterate the PCs' home town while they were off on another adventure, being certain to turn all their family members unto undead. On one iteration of this campaign, the players had been asking me for the opportunity to play evil characters, so I had them create characters for a one-off that sacked this town (being certain not to give them any specific details that would positively identify it). They made a very thorough job of it. Imagine their surprise when their regular characters returned home a couple of sessions later to see their handiwork.
If I had to destroy my player's future base. I'd follow the AC Brotherhood way. Where peace and quiet is broken up by the walled city being sieged and the main character loses everything. All their weapons, Armor, shops and home and one of their 3 remaining family members. Just a plain old sword and a hidden blade to provide the minimum required protection. Throughout the game you can regain your items lost in the siege. All weapons, Armor, paintings, money and on top of that. Influence over the city of Rome. And take revenge on the dude who took it all away.
You are, in my soul, one of the highest authorities in world building among all the content creators. Your videos are clear and entertaining. Truly masterpieces
As a DM I can't help but love this channel and keep coming back to certain videos. It's got the perfect balance between actual, palpable experience running the game, enjoyable personality and fun visuals, and down to earth mechanical and strategic focus. It's the perfect resource!
As a not quite novice DnD playing high school teacher, wanting to start a TTRPG group at her school (and utterly terrified of DMing for the first time!), your videos are a literal goldmine!! thank you for existing on this plane and gracing me with your treasures!
Hubs are also great for an "open table" campaign, where not every player is required to be present for every session, because each session an expedition sets out from the hub. It does mean that the either PCs need to return by the end of the session, everybody has to be cool with returning home "offscreen" between sessions, or players have stables of PCs who may be in different locations depending on who shows up for a game. I've run a campaign with combinations of all three options, and it was awesome!
I adore the idea of having a hub that the players slowly renovate over the course of the campaign. this is probably just me, but I've never found much use for money other than bribes, paying for a room, or just hoarding like a high score. I think being able to spend money on upgrades for the hub will give real value to the money earned through each arc. plus, I think that renovating a homestead, or even your own small town is something that everybody likes.
My players and I (as a DMPC) have decided to settle on our small and humble starter town. The group just bought a building and started their own guild. One of the players even decided to tame a wolf as a companion. And another fights in a monthly local fighting pit (at the age of around 700, which is just nuts). I am guilty of railroading, whether by fudging rolls or giving my players less options. So I'm glad a campaign hub can help make the world more like a sandbox. Great video as always!
Last campaign party had a keep that was given to them by the city. Served as an excellent hub, and place for party to get to know some NPC's. Worked really well when the keep was destroyed by the end. Cemented that the campaign is wrapping up.
@@masterthedungeon it was a lot of fun. I do miss that keep, but this time they have a ship. The party especially got mad when the keep was destroyed. Making the final fight extremely personal.
I just discovered this channel, and I already love these videos. Very sensible and reasonable advice, and the simple drawings are very well-made and entertaining!
I have two different games I am running. One is a West March style game, another is a Homebrew World. While the West March game obviously has a campaign hub, I spend my time fleshing out the culture of this Coastal Town of Anchorpoint. Players have had NPCs that died on their missions, from their Town, and have gotten to see funeral rights and share in the sorrows of their fellow citizens, as well as matching through Town to help out the older woman with a sickly child, or buy a magic pearl to support their next door nieghbor, or even start up the process of creating a hospital to aid other Adventurers and citizens in town. On the other hand, in my homebrew game, my players are building their settlement from the ground up, thanks to the fact that one of my PCs have the Noble Background and are using the health of the town to gain right to their families last name (last names are something I restrict to nobles only). Their Hamlet, Pron, only has a hand full of people, but my players are having fun planing out parts of the City with the resources they manage to find and secure, as well as traveling to nearby larger cities to try and offer the poor and disenfanchised there a better life. Heck, right now may Pron group are about to head home after the noble finally was allowed to take on their family name, and one of the other players found out that a Gang of bandits were sent to Pron specifically to kill him. All in all. I say all of this to say, yes! Having a home base for players is useful and makes Story telling much easier especially when you can pull at their heart strings just by making a peaceful day a common thing.
Sounds like you're doing an amazing job of incorporating hubs! If you ever need any side quest ideas for expanding your small hub town, I recommend checking out That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime; that show starts out with a small village that they build up over time by helping out groups in the world.
I run a Starfinder campaign, but I have modified the ship rules somewhat. In my setting interstellar craft need 28-hour staff which means multiple shifts of people to cover all the duty stations. So even the smaller style ship that the players would get needs a crew of about 40. This turns their ship into a kind of hub town. They have all the crew that they interact with and the different stations in this ship let them do the kind of work that you've talked about and because it's their ship and ship combat is part of the game it's very easy to make them feel invested in any starship combat. At first this was just a lore thing that I did for my satisfaction and I came up with a crew roster and stuff but didn't really involve the players at all. As opportunities to have them interact with the crew have increased and in fact at one point several of the crew volunteered to help rescue a party member that had been kidnapped in a shady spaceport, they players have become very invested in their starship and crew.
I've watched a good few of your videos now, and I gotta say you are criminally underrated. Nonstop useful information without bogging it down. 100% deserve more credit and viewers.
Another player and I accidentally created a hub for our party in our most recent campaign, and it's been great! We're mostly situated in a desert city that has a lot of factional tensions, and whose people have largely ignored the gods. Our party Cleric came to the city to be a missionary for Helm, but it wasn't going great. So while brainstorming ways to give our party direction, the Rogue and I came up with the idea to buy up a large building and turn it into a new Temple of Helm. It would give the Cleric something to focus on, and the Rogue could use it as a front to drive his ambition to take control of the city (I am but a humble Necromancer who would very much like to not get run out of another city tyvm). The guy who plays the Cleric is fairly new to DnD and having this temple has really let him dig into the roleplaying side of the game more, and we've all gotten really attached to the place. Our DM has taken to the idea as well, and he's used it as a place for new quests to find us, a way for us to increase our influence in the city, and as a way to threaten the party without directly trying to kill us. It's been an absolute game-changer, and I highly recommend trying to introduce to a game whether you're a player or DM!
Depending on your campaign, a hub can also be a good way for players to get rid of money, or for the DM to tax their resources a little bit. Upgrades, extensions, taxes, fees, servants and general upkeep all provide a sink for resources. This can also create tension which is great for drama as deadlines and due dates might not line up nicely with rewards. Just have to be careful not to be too oppressive.
One of the things I've done as a DM is use the old gold = xp (which tends to encourage treasure hunting and less kill everything in our path)...with the twist that the XP didn't actually get tallied until the money was spent. Definitely did not encourage hoarding! Also used a silver standard (cf Harn) with many stronghold/fief building materials/services costing GP. Definitely got them spending more...and adventuring more, developing their town/farms for trade and more income. I love it when "a simple game" can teach middle/high schoolers so many things!
I've never really considered running a campaign _without_ a hub, but I'd never be able to articulate why I felt it important better than this video. Wonderfully crafted! From my own experience Hubs also mesh perfectly with using party Patrons, a guild/company the PCs belong to, a Noble or powerful person sending jobs their way, whatever, having a mailing address makes interactions with your Patron as convenient as the next mail delivery without making your PCs feel like they've got one of those micromanaging bosses.
Great video. My current campaign started off with the players as captains of their adventuring guild, and were given their own guild hall to manage over and train recruits. It's been a very nice change of pace from the rest of our DnD campaigns where players just wander from place to place. Now, THEY'RE the one handing out quests to recruits, and have a home they're building up. They've grown attached to their fellow adventurers and their home town.
IMC I have a place called Darabisoz, a pocket world that, among other beautiful landscapes, hosts the HQ of "The Emerald Knights." My players are members of the order. The entrance to Darabisoz is in the Grand Duchy / Kingdom of Karameikos in the world of Mystara (the D&D campaign setting from the BECMI series). The HQ is a monastery surrounded by gorgeous nature. There, players rest, level up, plan, pray, meditate, practice, identify items, learn from their elders, etc. Thanks for another fantastic, great, awesome video. Content, narration, images, subtitles, everything.
I’ve got my players essentially building a guild from the ground up! It gives them a great feeling of control for direction, gives them a LOT of things to spend good on and save up for, and that sense of a home that you mentioned. They’ve also got a pseudo base in the form of an airship, which is the remnant of their previous base that was lost. They have an NPC crew manning the basics for it, and it’s tied to their faction/guild, so they don’t really get to use it for too many things that would break the balance of the game. They do get to upgrade their ship with limited “ordnance” more or less though, which they can use during major battles and sieges etc. So far they’re very much enthralled with all of the strategic and customizable options, and I love seeing their eyes light up each session when I’ve built a piece of their base of their ship or base in mini-form to add to a diorama of the home they’ve built ❤️
This is one of those things I had been doing unintentionally in my campaigns but now having it illustrated and explained so thoroughly has already given me ideas on how I can better utilize it. Thanks!
I've only recently discovered your channel, but I have a feeling that listening to your videos may help with with the book i'm writing (which is funnily enough, a GameLit/LitRPG story). I was actually listening to "The Effects of Age on Loot in D&D" earlier and the Younger Dungeons video last night and both gave me some food for thought.
My favorite base/hub is a multi-level library-museum. The first quest may start in the tropes we always hear about (tavern, bely of a ship, etc.), but I have a few scenarios that lead them to the place that they will be given the opportunity to make a base. I always have a curator npc that sticks around and assists from time to time and when I feel that the players have bonded enough and become close to this npc, something tragic usually happens to them. I find libraries and museaums are great places to store artifacts, once I had it built over a cave that held a dragon's hoard.
My current campaign takes place on a continent completely conquered by orcs. Their hub is one of the few refuges for every other race in the land, magically protected from being found by anyone who doesn't already know where it is. What they don't know is that the leader of the hub, the guy who kind of keeps everything running, intentionally started the war to bring powerful magical artifacts into the open, which he hopes to use to achieve some sort of divinity. I've put a lot of work into the hub, marking out distinct districts and establishing, at least to myself, the logistics of that many refugees living there.
I play in a module but we took the inn reward from Icewind Dale. Fixing it up has been a main reason for us to take on some quests as we need both the funds and to travel to get some supplies. Just recently our workers (a group of 13 kobolds we took in and hired) requested we go to a larger town to pick up some building materials they needed, such as hinges, screws, and nails as well as better carving and masonry tools for them to work with. It’s been a very good motivation for my party to keep moving about from town to town, beyond what the quests we pick up asks of us. And it comes with its own interesting stories like a ghost we picked up along the way which has our Paladin on edge but is coming to terms with since the ghost seems to mean no actual harm to anyone and is just as protective as we are in looking after our kobolds. Relatively harmless basically. So yeah. It’s been quite nice. We also have picked up and started decorating the place with mementos from our quests so that it’s more of a tourist area as it’s a small town. While we are the only inn we want to give people a reason to travel out to see us so we have made it quite quirky. Think, that one themed restaurant with a ton of interesting stuff on the walls that always make you want to look up more about it. Hopefully we can get it up and running soon because it is a bit of a sink right now but it’s also a big motivator so it’s not the worst thing, especially with a lack of magical items that can be bought freely. At most we are buying the occasional healing potion (or ingredients since we have someone proficient in the herbalism kit) or more arrows and javelins. Information and bribery for silence has also been something we have been purchasing at times, to further our investigation in one of our longer quests. So kinda costly but it’s not like we have reason to spend our money elsewhere.
Update. That campaign wrapped up. By the time we ended, the inn had a bunker for town emergencies, a hot spring bathing facility, three wizard towers (we had rescued some ancient wizards who stuck around the inn and helped out until they could figure out their life plans again), a huge networks of underground tunnels, a couple of giant-kin who would travel between the town known for its alcohol and our inn to deliver things quickly (they had a baby, the couple), over 30 kobolds, and an ancient white dragon for an ally and friend (we even build a special room for her that was bigger inside with the help of the wizards, just so she had a place to stay). Honestly it was wild. My character (the only legacy member left by the end) still has the reputation of a stray cat who brings you back weird things from their hunt because they like you, but they were known as the town hero. Pretty good I think for a character I started with the concept of “seems broody but he actually just severely has social anxiety and wants to change that.” Was a very fun game! Now I’m trying to persuade another of my tables to build an awesome carriage (mobile home basically) for our home base since we travel so much. It’s gonna be decked out so awesome.
Thanks for sharing! As a very new DM, i watched a lot of actual play and videos on the topic, but reading 1st hand experiences of what simple ideas could become during a campaign is pretty cool and inspiring !
@@Joseph-iu5nm Thank you! And yes that is half the fun. It just takes recalling those moments later to make them go full circle. For an example of one I did in a few recent campaigns, it was making friends with the local flora and fauna. Not anything fancy, just gossiping with the birds, cats, mice, flowers, ivy, etc. Both characters ended up with an expansive spy network. One used it to become a rebel leader for an oppressed city run by celestial who lost contact with their god. She, my ranger, has snakes, one of her first being a mere pet flying snake. The other is a druid and lives in a big city. They are a fey and have been using the network to keep an eye on and investigate some of the other fey that took up residence in town. It’s very much a power struggle of different fey courts trying to shadow lead the city, of which my character is one of them. Which is hilarious to me because, on the surface, they are a seamstress/tailor/clothing designer merchant. (This character also makes contracts and some of those contracts of “be my eternal friend” have had some interesting implications in all that scheming, lol). Basically my point is, my advice is to circle back and let the players build and build and build and see if they can making their “jenga tower of decisions” bear fruit or turn into an interesting cascade of consequences.
Our game got to such an extent that the party managed to eventually form their own CITY, because Pathfinder allows for some REALLY funny item interactions with construction spells. And so we all turned it into a great isthmus fortress region for refugees and peoples that don't feel welcomed anywhere else. Pretty sure we all spent the next 6 months of sessions planning, drawing, discussing buildings, placement, guard count, banner designs, government type, laws, even 3D modelling the place itself. It was some great fun creating our Nightwing Vale haha.
During a war in my campaign a few towns were completely raised but my players managed to ward off an attack on the town they were in, but not before the inn in which they were staying burned to the ground. After the war when the Inn was rebuilt the players were rewarded with permanent rooms on the house. It has definitely helped to center the campaign. Outside of town is a Keep that was successfully cleared out as well. Its vault is where their valuables are stored and one of my players has a fletcher's workshop where he can craft arrows and bows.
I like the concept of switching your campaign hub partway through the story. for example, I often start my players in the village of Darkwood, farther out from the capitol city. they spend some time there, mainly in their lower levels, with plenty of adventure and quests to be had. but then, they eventually move on to bigger and better things. in the capitol city of Nightfall, there's an adventurer's guild that doubles as a school teaching all the adventuring classes, called The University. they typically move to Nightfall between eves 3 and 5 in my campaigns, and begin their career as guild adventurers, ranking up from copper, to silver, to gold, to platinum rank and being allowed to take on adventurers and quests of the same rank as them. having access to training, lodging, and supplies all in one spot really makes it a useful place.
This is the exact video I need for the campaign I'm going to be starting in about a month. So glad I found your channel so far in my opinion you have the most useful most helpful content for a dungeon master I've ever found in UA-cam videos and there are some good D&D UA-camrs out there.
I was doing a space pirates campaign where I had home-brewed time lords into the game, one player created a time lord character known as the survivor who had a Tardis which looked like a cargo ship, named the Red Dwarf, it was hilarious at the time as we even had cat as an npc who wondered around the ship. This basically was their travelling hub. I limited them on being unable to time travel with it as it would be op, but also created a plot point of trying to properly repair their Tardis, which would be their final goal. The campaign sadly was never finished but it was interesting and would love to try again.
An example of a good hub city is from the game dragonfable. The city of falconreach becomes the main hub that the player uses. It has a number of NPCs with their own quest lines to build the lore of the world. Those NPCs give you leads to other main quest lines in other cities. It has all of your basics and they invite you in as a citizen of that town. You get a house there, you establish a bank account, your friends are there. You end up defending the city in multiple wars, and at some point when it gets destroyed you help rebuild it. You can choose to set other cities as your hometown, but you don’t really want to. The other towns have their quirks, but the game makes falconreach your home.
we had all that with the keep of the borderlands, the old D&D module. It was almost a second home for us players. And it became the nucleus of our campaign.
I'm making my first campaign with a town as the main hub. This series is so useful for this campaign so I can make more realistic NPCs, stores, and other things. I'm also taking a little bit inspiration from West of Loathing for how they will find more places to go to by walking around or people telling them about it. I'm so excited about this!
I'm DMimg a Game Set in the Elder Scrolls Universe, the Players started in Riverwood in the Sleeping Giants Inn, they loved to visit it once in a while, 12 sessions later, their Mentor (NPC that followed them around and offered useful tips) bought the place and Rebranded it to Eltonbrand Inn. Everyone loved the Idea of having a place to rest, eat, collect small weekly shares of profit and share the stories of their Adventure with other travelling adventurers.
My homebrew setting is a massive ocean of islands, and our main hub is the setting from our first campaign that has since been abandoned. As the campaign has gone on, the players have brought more and more people who don’t like the islands they lived on to the hub, and it’s slowly becoming a proper kingdom.
After watching this video, I had the idea to use some old ruins as a potential hub once they get there & get it open. Wanted to thank you for that! It'll be a fetch quest to actually get it open, so after they learn how useful the place is, they may want to make themselves at home!
I've started binging your stuff, and it's been giving me a lot of ideas on how to actually run a more survival-style campaign. Like playing Skyrim with mods like iNeed and Frostfall installed. I was originally planning something much different, but I like the sound of this more for my next game.
Ran a Eberron game with a home base in sharn after the opening adventure the party was given a dark lantern safe house in the form of a slightly dilapidated mansion and served as a point to report on the results of each quest and since sharn was such a big place they could find just about anything or anyone they wanted friends and foes alike.
I've seen a DM, instead of discard or forget about previous PCs, integrate them into the Hub's population with idle professions that fit with thier class. Nostalgic nice touch.
A fun, if generic, hub I took a liking to is just an adventurers guild hall for a major city. The party meets many people, adventurers, patrons, etc. and has a reason to travel to places, work. Combine that with some BBEG shenanigans, and bam you have a main plot, and the guild just writes the in between stuff by itself, and you just have to insert references to the everchanging world.
I once DM'd for a party who saved the ruling family of a city and were rewarded with a keep. They were INVESTED on their new keep, they conducted interviews for their hirelings, hired merchants to keep the kitchens stocked and built a fancy ballroom. All good and all, so I got a setup were the keep was targeted by a notorious band of thieves. The whole encounter started after the party's cleric noticed a strange noise in the middle of the night. The PC's woke up to this whole operation where most of their treasures were stolen and two hirelings were taken hostage. Obviously they went after the thieves. It was a blast.
A party I was a part of built an estate on the outskirts of the town we started in. Doing so led to the dynamic of the entire world changing, since we often helped the count who governed that town. It was a great campaign, since the DM sandboxed the whole thing, with no overall story. Just stuff to do in the world. Even had other adventuring parties to compete with. Gold standard of open world campaigns: we never felt railroaded, limited, or that our actions were meaningless, good or bad.
I have large towns in my setting and they can take refuge in affiliated temples, groves, towers, and whatever they can think of while they decide if they are going to set up shop together. Hostels are a thing and I have several traveling circuses as well as caravans they can travel with when they are not on a main arc. The campaign is pretty young so to speak, just several main arcs into the story due tow work schedules.
Campaign hubs are essential as far as I'm concerned! Almost all my fondest campaign memories involve quests or events that sprung up as a result of hubs.
Another great use of a campaign hub is giving your players a reason to need treasure. My group wanted to fix up a manor that was ostensibly haunted and run a restaurant there. It naturally would cost a lot of money, since said manor was in ruins.
A good hub for my campaign I used was a coastal town, in which had access to all the lands that required the parties help. The small hut they own originally, will eventually be built over time, either by the players, or NPC's they've hired, will make it into a beautiful coastal city. Though near the end of the campaign, the BBEG sent a multitude of ships that had trebuchets on them, that nearly destroyed the town. They came back and fought them off, but while the NPC's survived, most didn't make it, and they had to walk through the ashes of their own city which they called home. Let's say the BBEG then wished he never did that, cause my players made him immortal, stripped him of his magic, and threw him into hell 0_0
I slapped together a campaign for my brothers and sisters, and I made sure that there was a town in which they knew some residents intimately, and those residents would in turn give them quests, or just tell them of interesting places they could explore. The governor and most of the guards know them right off the bat because they all got arrested their first time playing (saw that one coming... MFR's ALWAYS try to steal when it's their first time playing, and with little to no supporting stats.) What I didn't anticipate was that they would start a fight so large, they took out three vendor stalls, that were under going reconstruction the first few times they came back to town, and the mongers that owned them were pissed long after the stalls were fully reestablished. But I clued them in with a lot of table talk because for most of them it was their first time playing, and told them what they couldn't buy, because of the choices they made. I absolutely love having a hub where things change based on the player's choices. To me, I don't ever have an endgame in sight... That's not true, but what I mean to say is that the world they are in is being reshaped and reformed around them, their is a load of things to do, and there's no one right way to get where they are going.
The players might also have a vehicle that serves as a mobile hub, such as a ship or cart/carriage, or a small fleet of such vehicles. While this does not allow for recurring hub-NPC's (unless they have hired a ship crew or something), it still gives them a place to store their stuff and do their crafting and reflecting. Later on, they may have Demiplane to store their stuff and Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion to rest and reflect.
In the campaign I’m currently planning, the players start by trekking out of settled land and into the uncharted reaches of a mountain range. That will provide them with some opportunities to bond and gain experience as they guard a caravan traveling to a frontier outpost. It’ll be small (only a hundred or so NPC’s, which works out well since I’ll want to give a name and history to everyone ). But it’s a relatively important place, given that it’s situated on a mountain made nearly entirely of a magical obsidian called darkstone. The town is also built around a massive temple also made of the stuff. Skipping past some plot, an evil mage will cut the town off from the rest of the mountain, sending them plummeting into the Underdark. But, given that the more powerful scholars of the town are now in critical condition from the mage (and some other reasons besides) the party will be the main resource and information gatherers, and the town will be built around their decisions. I’m hoping this will get them really attached to the town. Edit: additionally, I’ll be providing them a scroll with a map of the town, which I’ll edit as they have new buildings constructed.
I really like the idea of a campaign hub for PCs. A cleric, monk, or paladin could have a reserved space in a monastery. A ranger and druid could have cabins in the forest. Sorcerers wizards and warlocks could have apartments in a “Wizard tower” or a college of some sort. Crafters and artificers could have a space in trade shops. Fighters and rogues could hang out in bars, taverns, and shipping districts and have homes in town.
I did this for a camping was very easy to add quest and story holks to build up. The hub was a magic tavern in bahamuts realm that would allow the party to establish there bas of operations as they decided to set up a mercenary business and a place I set up some player specific quest
Obligatory not D&D but ive been running a homebrew game and have set my players up with an anomalous motel room which they have to pay for regularly. The room allows them quiet and security as they've yet to encounter anything capable of forcing entry into the room. It provides them with materials to enhance their abilities and advance plot lines. But in my opinion the best and most underrated of the effects it has is that it encourages them to acquire and spend money. Essentially slowing down the story progression long enough for me to glue plot points and events together as to make things line up into "OH" moments rather than the "haphazard what's going on now?" That normally results from the grand scale of the connections in the plot as a whole. A campaign hub is necessary when the entire campaign is 1 massive cthulu sized puzzle.
There's a section in my main city called the Crescent Ward. The city is built within a massive crater, so, being on an island in the southern hemisphere, the northern section of the city is obscured from sunlight 24/7, creating a perpetual large, crescent-shaped shadow over one area of the city. Since this decrepit neighborhood has so much flavor, I think I'll reward them with a small haunted house in the district for a job well done. Having some silly ghosts to interact with will be very fun for them, no doubt.
my hub is a port town-the heroes got there and did a quest for a smuggling operation and in return for clearing out one of their fronts that had been filled with zombies, due to some contaminated food stuffs, they gained ownership of the inn they named it the drunken duck as one of our characters was playing a kinku variant that looks like a duck -and wears a ten gallon style hat. but it has a dock under the building concealed for smuggling work and lots of little plot hooks hidden in the rooms of all the dead patrons who got killed during the zombie attack. some letters from a noble to his mistress, some oddly well hidden papers that our artificer on a really good roll figure out were actually some form of code based in her field -but was still decoding. plus the entire setting up the inn and such. unfortunately i had more plan but that group broke up -students exams then some had to move -or quite their job so they were not in regular contact but it was looking promising -im trying to set up another group and i hope to reuse this again
Me and my group own a tavern, it's pretty cool because we actualy need to manage it, we made an deal with some Dwarfs in the mountains, we would trade our beer for their gold and other valuable metals, and we also have an warlord as an ally, things are looking pretty good
I basically loosely copied the town of Threshold from the 1983 Expert Set. All low-level dungeons / adventure sites are within a days journey through relatively safe territory. My big dwarven mine megadungeon also has tribe of friendly cavemen nearby to act as a kind of safe house. For storying straight up cash I watched a couple video on medieval banking and let them open bank accounts; this is important to them since they all play treasure hunters. Once they are tough enough to travel more, they can go further -- especially if they save up enough to buy a ship.
While any activities there have yet to take place, I’ve got an abandoned castle sitting around in the world that can be refurbished as a home base once its less than friendly denizens are cleared out. Its existence gets brought up on occasion, mainly by an academic NPC interested in its history.
I have some ideas for a future campaign, with a huge, magical castle as a hub. There would be portals to areas important to the main plot and PCs, and sometimes secret parts of the castle would be revealed that give hints to the castle´s backstory. In the end after the players have gathered the crown shards (mcguffins) and repaired them one of them would become the true king or something
In the first campaign I ran I gave my players a skyship as their hub. The players requested that and I thought it would be a cool idea. But it actually got me in trouble several times as they often decided to go to a random location instead of where I expected them to go and then I was forced to improvise or search my old notes to find that location. I still like the idea of an airship, but this is something you should be aware of as a DM and you should be adjusting to it which I wasn't very good at in that campaign.
I’m running a homebrew pirate themed seafaring campaign. My players were recruited to join a ship captain in his search for legendary treasure and his ship became a hub for the players. They’ve upgraded the sails, recruited a medic and engineer… it’s great fun. X3
Was in a campaign where the party was given their own multidimensional rooms (everyone got their own) we could upgrade. My character was a gnome cleric who was used to living poor. (Rock soup level of poor) and all tge upgrades were intended for medium size creatures. I got 2 upgrades which were a second bed( bunk bed style I shared with the party's druid) and a display for my chain mail and starting weapons (incase something to the gear I had)
This is exactly helpful....on another note. The last time I tried to give a party a home base/hub, they vaporized a city. In their defense it was an accident. But, it was hilarious and I like to tease them about it.
The party I run for cleared out a crypt dungeon and declared it "The Man Crypt"... a narratively significant location with a locked door to the McGuffin... is now known as "The Man Crypt" by both the party and the nearby town.
My current group got into a huge bar fight with the assassin's guild that ran a bar in the port town took out every assassin in the guild in this massive fight so the invested their money in the rundown bar that they destroyed built it back up and now this port town and the bar that they bought has become their hub
One campaign i was in my cleric, a human plauge dr was able to take off his mask at the hub behind closed doors, he was disfigured and never showed his face, the party when the found out about the disfigured face of thier cleric immediately took a side quest to kill the perpatrators, my cleric was a army doctor and victim to a warcrime, something the edgelord grew to regret putting "has done multiple warcrimes" in his backstory, because he saw how tragically it affected the cleric also! After the quest the artificer made him a magic ring that made the scars dissapear when worn
My adventure hub will be a detective agency for haunted heroes that solve mysteries in Ravenloft. Each adventurer will be an investigator who travels through the domains of dread solving mysteries.
oh yeah, i have a long time idea for some type of game, where players can and will go bck to Base or Hometown, and would be able to upgrade it somehow. Thank you very much!
I have 2 examples: my current campaign that I am running sees the players as students of a magical university. The university itself acts as the hub. A campaign I was in a few years ago my Character got the Idea to actually make an official guild of adventurers, as the setting did not have such a thing. The character retired to run and do bookkeeping for our new guild.
I'm running a Princes of Apocolypse game where the players have decided that one of the keeps they cleared out. They have recently found out that it is attached to the the main cultist bases. They come here all the time and keep asking if they can just have everything shipped to the keep instead of going into towns. It is about 20 miles from the nearest town so it is getting increasingly difficult to get plot points to them. I kinda feel bad about this but they are going to be forced to leave it soon since being far away from civilization and near the cult bases which will make it really easy to attack them once the players make themselves a big enough threat.
I just started what I hope is to be a long term campaign. My players have just gotten to the area, and there's a perfect building in the NE part of town, but the players have to gain the trust of the town, and then enlist them to rebuild the place, then begin securing the surrounding woods and mountains and return the town to its former glory, and eventually overthrow the shadowy organization that has been trying to establish itself in the area for a generation. Once they do this, the goal is to get them to begin taking on other adventurers, and taking contracts to go out into the wider area, and track down the source of this group, and the reason they are so interested in this town. My hope is that with each adventurer they find in the great wild world, my players can have a couple of different characters they can choose to do different missions with, so that we don't have to start a new campaign, just to let them try a new class or race. Not sure how it's gonna go though. I'm a new DM, and am worried my ideas are bigger than I can handle but we shall see lol
The group I DM just got a keep-like house. 3 stories, a basement and two towers after they have successfully defended a coastal city. The catch is the house is a mess; the walls and gates are broken, towers are somewhat collapsed. The story is the house used to be a Hub for a band of mercenaries helping the city but they and their house got attacked about 50 years ago. This helped me to not only give some lore but also show my players that they can indeed lose their house. Plus they were getting super rich so it is a good investment
Fixer-uppers are a great way to deal with giving your group too much money.
@@masterthedungeon I figured making them spend money, time and resource on a hub could also strengthen their bond to the place making the house even more important for the group. They have already talked to some contractors and started to forward their mails and orders over there so I think what I was trying to do worked :)
I love the bunk house concept. The military would function on a much more modern concept of mercenaries. Small pods of elite agents would be the accepted norm of combat power in a world where strength would need to be mobile and flexible. Having them in rotation means if they ever want to move towns there is probably an empty bunk house waiting for them. Meaning that's a new fixer upper to drain them a second, third or even fourth time. Unless you sell them a bunch of portable holes.
A moving company that rented portable holes would be fun. The hole journey. Portable holes revolutionize transportation, especially of valuable goods. Imagine a group of rangers each carrying a money belt with a few portable holes in pouches under their clothing. Who needs wagons? Portable holes are like cargo containers, but the size and weight of a piece of cloth
My party found a town that was razed by orcs. As they grew stronger, they restored more buildings and defenses, and refugees from other towns started arriving to repopulate and contribute.
I remember back in the day, a party I was DMing cleared an old castle of a group of bandits, and asked the local lord if they could use it to create an adventurer's guild. So we made it so, the castle was a ruin with lots of work to be done, but they went at it and became the masters of the new guild. Which I implemented by having my other groups encounter them as NPCs and being asked if they wanted to join the guild. Eventually there were up to 20 adventurers of varying levels in the castle, which had been mostly repaired and rearranged (with for example a tower made to be both a temple and a library). Some parties sometimes were doing quests that became related to each other (and since a few of those parties had players in common, they saw that) and it even allowed for moments where, during introductory sessions with beginners, I could allow them to ask for help from a higher leveled character if it was too hard
Do love a central hub for a campaign. I like the idea of a ship/airship as a hub as it allows mobility.
I also find a great use for a hub is a reason why a character is missing. "Where's Bob the Knight?" "He's on the ship repairing the masts/at the market getting in food/at the farm speaking to the staff."
In a Ghosts of Saltmarsh campaign (which is all based around the eponymous town) the players kept coming back to town of course and they were rewarded with a farm. They loved the town so much that one of them started a relationship with the magic shop keeper, one ran for the council and another started investing in businesses in town. It was great and only worked because there was a hub to work round.
The airship as a hub concept is super interesting!
@@masterthedungeon The beauty of airships is that this means there could be floating islands and the party could have their hub on a floating island. Also they can be as big as need be and with magic; can be a TARDIS. Also, the idea of a player being unable to attend a session is hilarious to me. Hear me out; let's take Bob the knight for example; original commenter. Player is unable to make it so DM says they're on an errand and party is like "That's fine. We can do this without him!" Next session, player comes back and thus Bob is back so Bob returns and sees the party a wreck.
"Hey gang, I'm back and by the heavens; what happened to you guys?!"
"Long story."
@@theofficerfactory2625 Depending on when player missed the session their character might still tag along just for purpose of combat. Especially if there is no easy way for said character to return to "hub"
As someone who gave my player characters an airship as a hub at level 9... It is actually kindof a detriment. What it ultimately did was remove a lot of danger out of exploring the world, as they prefered to just fly overland rather than face the hardships of the land below. Rather than traveling to the next city on foot in order to obtain its Teleportation Circle coordinates, they just flew there. Personally, I would never give my players an airship hub again.
@@mateobarrett6829 that's something that can be accounted for though, nah? airborne monsters that'd otherwise leave the party alone if they were under the cover of trees, environmental factors that make flying the airship through a particular region dangerous or outright impossible, a coordinated group of aarakocra bandits that target airships because a) they can, and b) anyone who has an airship is likely sitting on a fat pile of cash, the cost of the vessel itself notwithstanding. fuel/magic/upkeep/repair costs that encourage the party to be more thrifty with using the ship. required mooring every so often- maybe keeping the ship floating 24/7isn't viable and the party needs to land the ship every so often, instantly making it more vulnerable to outside threats. traffic/city defense protocols that require craft of that nature to be kept a certain distance outside city limits, whether for safety, congestion management, or whatever else.
obviously an airship's a very powerful tool for a party to have, but you don't need to make it the optimal transit option for every scenario.
4:15 not having to come up with a bunch of "new" NPCs every time they go into a store is HUGE. The players will do less utility shopping on the road too, after all they want to get back to their friends and spend money there. This also applies to the neighboring communities. Having a home immediately starts a spiderweb of permanent NPCs. This is also the best stage for any players that want henchmen or to be an actual leader, so they can make decisions and see how they play out for the community.
Great video :)
Consistent NPCs also allow players to form deep relationships. One of my DMs created a fast-talking, smarmy halfling shopkeeper whom he thought everyone was going to hate. My laid-back, lanky human fighter immediately bonded with him for sone reason and they ended up being the “odd couple” best friends of the village.
In a campaign I play, one character found a good bowyer/fletcher, and consistently directs every other person looking for bows or arrows to "My favorite bowyer".
This has already gotten me some discounts!
My campaign that starts soon has a hub called “Lamyra’s transdimensional tavern for heroes” which will be a tavern full of adventurers from all over the multiverse. The owner, Lamyra will give the players personalized rooms and act as a shopkeeper and the main character driving the players towards the end goal. They’ll also be given a key that can only be used on a vertical surface that will summon the door to the tavern, and is highly cautioned to not use in combat or too close to enemies. The tavern will also be where they fight the BBEG
Ah, so Doctor Who
hehe, the BBEG is the tavern owner who is looking to have all hte insider information about the party. Sneaky
Another use for the campaign hub that you only hinted around but didn't actually explore is as a tool to give the PCs a reason to hate the BBEG. In my necromancer campaign, I let the PCs advance about half-way through, gaining all the benefits of their home base. Then as soon as they crossed swords with some of the BBEG's henchmen, he sent his minions to completely obliterate the PCs' home town while they were off on another adventure, being certain to turn all their family members unto undead. On one iteration of this campaign, the players had been asking me for the opportunity to play evil characters, so I had them create characters for a one-off that sacked this town (being certain not to give them any specific details that would positively identify it). They made a very thorough job of it. Imagine their surprise when their regular characters returned home a couple of sessions later to see their handiwork.
you are evil
good work
If I had to destroy my player's future base. I'd follow the AC Brotherhood way. Where peace and quiet is broken up by the walled city being sieged and the main character loses everything. All their weapons, Armor, shops and home and one of their 3 remaining family members.
Just a plain old sword and a hidden blade to provide the minimum required protection.
Throughout the game you can regain your items lost in the siege. All weapons, Armor, paintings, money and on top of that. Influence over the city of Rome. And take revenge on the dude who took it all away.
Thanks for the example of why bad DMs like you make players all claim their characters are orphans.
That’s so rough. WOW!
You are, in my soul, one of the highest authorities in world building among all the content creators. Your videos are clear and entertaining. Truly masterpieces
Totally 👍 agreed!
As a DM I can't help but love this channel and keep coming back to certain videos. It's got the perfect balance between actual, palpable experience running the game, enjoyable personality and fun visuals, and down to earth mechanical and strategic focus. It's the perfect resource!
As a not quite novice DnD playing high school teacher, wanting to start a TTRPG group at her school (and utterly terrified of DMing for the first time!), your videos are a literal goldmine!! thank you for existing on this plane and gracing me with your treasures!
i wish teachers were that cool when i went to school! good luck with the project, i'm sure they will love it and their awesome MT (Master Teacher) :)
Hubs are also great for an "open table" campaign, where not every player is required to be present for every session, because each session an expedition sets out from the hub. It does mean that the either PCs need to return by the end of the session, everybody has to be cool with returning home "offscreen" between sessions, or players have stables of PCs who may be in different locations depending on who shows up for a game. I've run a campaign with combinations of all three options, and it was awesome!
I adore the idea of having a hub that the players slowly renovate over the course of the campaign. this is probably just me, but I've never found much use for money other than bribes, paying for a room, or just hoarding like a high score. I think being able to spend money on upgrades for the hub will give real value to the money earned through each arc.
plus, I think that renovating a homestead, or even your own small town is something that everybody likes.
My players and I (as a DMPC) have decided to settle on our small and humble starter town. The group just bought a building and started their own guild. One of the players even decided to tame a wolf as a companion. And another fights in a monthly local fighting pit (at the age of around 700, which is just nuts).
I am guilty of railroading, whether by fudging rolls or giving my players less options. So I'm glad a campaign hub can help make the world more like a sandbox. Great video as always!
Last campaign party had a keep that was given to them by the city. Served as an excellent hub, and place for party to get to know some NPC's. Worked really well when the keep was destroyed by the end. Cemented that the campaign is wrapping up.
What a perfect example!
@@masterthedungeon it was a lot of fun. I do miss that keep, but this time they have a ship.
The party especially got mad when the keep was destroyed. Making the final fight extremely personal.
I just discovered this channel, and I already love these videos. Very sensible and reasonable advice, and the simple drawings are very well-made and entertaining!
I have two different games I am running. One is a West March style game, another is a Homebrew World. While the West March game obviously has a campaign hub, I spend my time fleshing out the culture of this Coastal Town of Anchorpoint. Players have had NPCs that died on their missions, from their Town, and have gotten to see funeral rights and share in the sorrows of their fellow citizens, as well as matching through Town to help out the older woman with a sickly child, or buy a magic pearl to support their next door nieghbor, or even start up the process of creating a hospital to aid other Adventurers and citizens in town.
On the other hand, in my homebrew game, my players are building their settlement from the ground up, thanks to the fact that one of my PCs have the Noble Background and are using the health of the town to gain right to their families last name (last names are something I restrict to nobles only). Their Hamlet, Pron, only has a hand full of people, but my players are having fun planing out parts of the City with the resources they manage to find and secure, as well as traveling to nearby larger cities to try and offer the poor and disenfanchised there a better life.
Heck, right now may Pron group are about to head home after the noble finally was allowed to take on their family name, and one of the other players found out that a Gang of bandits were sent to Pron specifically to kill him.
All in all. I say all of this to say, yes! Having a home base for players is useful and makes Story telling much easier especially when you can pull at their heart strings just by making a peaceful day a common thing.
Sounds like you're doing an amazing job of incorporating hubs! If you ever need any side quest ideas for expanding your small hub town, I recommend checking out That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime; that show starts out with a small village that they build up over time by helping out groups in the world.
I run a Starfinder campaign, but I have modified the ship rules somewhat. In my setting interstellar craft need 28-hour staff which means multiple shifts of people to cover all the duty stations. So even the smaller style ship that the players would get needs a crew of about 40. This turns their ship into a kind of hub town. They have all the crew that they interact with and the different stations in this ship let them do the kind of work that you've talked about and because it's their ship and ship combat is part of the game it's very easy to make them feel invested in any starship combat. At first this was just a lore thing that I did for my satisfaction and I came up with a crew roster and stuff but didn't really involve the players at all. As opportunities to have them interact with the crew have increased and in fact at one point several of the crew volunteered to help rescue a party member that had been kidnapped in a shady spaceport, they players have become very invested in their starship and crew.
I've watched a good few of your videos now, and I gotta say you are criminally underrated. Nonstop useful information without bogging it down. 100% deserve more credit and viewers.
Another player and I accidentally created a hub for our party in our most recent campaign, and it's been great! We're mostly situated in a desert city that has a lot of factional tensions, and whose people have largely ignored the gods. Our party Cleric came to the city to be a missionary for Helm, but it wasn't going great. So while brainstorming ways to give our party direction, the Rogue and I came up with the idea to buy up a large building and turn it into a new Temple of Helm. It would give the Cleric something to focus on, and the Rogue could use it as a front to drive his ambition to take control of the city (I am but a humble Necromancer who would very much like to not get run out of another city tyvm).
The guy who plays the Cleric is fairly new to DnD and having this temple has really let him dig into the roleplaying side of the game more, and we've all gotten really attached to the place. Our DM has taken to the idea as well, and he's used it as a place for new quests to find us, a way for us to increase our influence in the city, and as a way to threaten the party without directly trying to kill us. It's been an absolute game-changer, and I highly recommend trying to introduce to a game whether you're a player or DM!
Depending on your campaign, a hub can also be a good way for players to get rid of money, or for the DM to tax their resources a little bit. Upgrades, extensions, taxes, fees, servants and general upkeep all provide a sink for resources. This can also create tension which is great for drama as deadlines and due dates might not line up nicely with rewards. Just have to be careful not to be too oppressive.
One of the things I've done as a DM is use the old gold = xp (which tends to encourage treasure hunting and less kill everything in our path)...with the twist that the XP didn't actually get tallied until the money was spent. Definitely did not encourage hoarding!
Also used a silver standard (cf Harn) with many stronghold/fief building materials/services costing GP. Definitely got them spending more...and adventuring more, developing their town/farms for trade and more income.
I love it when "a simple game" can teach middle/high schoolers so many things!
I've never really considered running a campaign _without_ a hub, but I'd never be able to articulate why I felt it important better than this video. Wonderfully crafted!
From my own experience Hubs also mesh perfectly with using party Patrons, a guild/company the PCs belong to, a Noble or powerful person sending jobs their way, whatever, having a mailing address makes interactions with your Patron as convenient as the next mail delivery without making your PCs feel like they've got one of those micromanaging bosses.
Great video. My current campaign started off with the players as captains of their adventuring guild, and were given their own guild hall to manage over and train recruits. It's been a very nice change of pace from the rest of our DnD campaigns where players just wander from place to place. Now, THEY'RE the one handing out quests to recruits, and have a home they're building up. They've grown attached to their fellow adventurers and their home town.
IMC I have a place called Darabisoz, a pocket world that, among other beautiful landscapes, hosts the HQ of "The Emerald Knights." My players are members of the order.
The entrance to Darabisoz is in the Grand Duchy / Kingdom of Karameikos in the world of Mystara (the D&D campaign setting from the BECMI series).
The HQ is a monastery surrounded by gorgeous nature. There, players rest, level up, plan, pray, meditate, practice, identify items, learn from their elders, etc.
Thanks for another fantastic, great, awesome video. Content, narration, images, subtitles, everything.
I’ve got my players essentially building a guild from the ground up! It gives them a great feeling of control for direction, gives them a LOT of things to spend good on and save up for, and that sense of a home that you mentioned.
They’ve also got a pseudo base in the form of an airship, which is the remnant of their previous base that was lost. They have an NPC crew manning the basics for it, and it’s tied to their faction/guild, so they don’t really get to use it for too many things that would break the balance of the game. They do get to upgrade their ship with limited “ordnance” more or less though, which they can use during major battles and sieges etc.
So far they’re very much enthralled with all of the strategic and customizable options, and I love seeing their eyes light up each session when I’ve built a piece of their base of their ship or base in mini-form to add to a diorama of the home they’ve built ❤️
This is one of those things I had been doing unintentionally in my campaigns but now having it illustrated and explained so thoroughly has already given me ideas on how I can better utilize it. Thanks!
I've only recently discovered your channel, but I have a feeling that listening to your videos may help with with the book i'm writing (which is funnily enough, a GameLit/LitRPG story). I was actually listening to "The Effects of Age on Loot in D&D" earlier and the Younger Dungeons video last night and both gave me some food for thought.
My favorite base/hub is a multi-level library-museum. The first quest may start in the tropes we always hear about (tavern, bely of a ship, etc.), but I have a few scenarios that lead them to the place that they will be given the opportunity to make a base. I always have a curator npc that sticks around and assists from time to time and when I feel that the players have bonded enough and become close to this npc, something tragic usually happens to them. I find libraries and museaums are great places to store artifacts, once I had it built over a cave that held a dragon's hoard.
My current campaign takes place on a continent completely conquered by orcs. Their hub is one of the few refuges for every other race in the land, magically protected from being found by anyone who doesn't already know where it is. What they don't know is that the leader of the hub, the guy who kind of keeps everything running, intentionally started the war to bring powerful magical artifacts into the open, which he hopes to use to achieve some sort of divinity.
I've put a lot of work into the hub, marking out distinct districts and establishing, at least to myself, the logistics of that many refugees living there.
No doubt one of the BEST D&D advice channels on UA-cam
I play in a module but we took the inn reward from Icewind Dale. Fixing it up has been a main reason for us to take on some quests as we need both the funds and to travel to get some supplies. Just recently our workers (a group of 13 kobolds we took in and hired) requested we go to a larger town to pick up some building materials they needed, such as hinges, screws, and nails as well as better carving and masonry tools for them to work with. It’s been a very good motivation for my party to keep moving about from town to town, beyond what the quests we pick up asks of us. And it comes with its own interesting stories like a ghost we picked up along the way which has our Paladin on edge but is coming to terms with since the ghost seems to mean no actual harm to anyone and is just as protective as we are in looking after our kobolds. Relatively harmless basically. So yeah. It’s been quite nice. We also have picked up and started decorating the place with mementos from our quests so that it’s more of a tourist area as it’s a small town. While we are the only inn we want to give people a reason to travel out to see us so we have made it quite quirky. Think, that one themed restaurant with a ton of interesting stuff on the walls that always make you want to look up more about it. Hopefully we can get it up and running soon because it is a bit of a sink right now but it’s also a big motivator so it’s not the worst thing, especially with a lack of magical items that can be bought freely. At most we are buying the occasional healing potion (or ingredients since we have someone proficient in the herbalism kit) or more arrows and javelins. Information and bribery for silence has also been something we have been purchasing at times, to further our investigation in one of our longer quests. So kinda costly but it’s not like we have reason to spend our money elsewhere.
Update. That campaign wrapped up. By the time we ended, the inn had a bunker for town emergencies, a hot spring bathing facility, three wizard towers (we had rescued some ancient wizards who stuck around the inn and helped out until they could figure out their life plans again), a huge networks of underground tunnels, a couple of giant-kin who would travel between the town known for its alcohol and our inn to deliver things quickly (they had a baby, the couple), over 30 kobolds, and an ancient white dragon for an ally and friend (we even build a special room for her that was bigger inside with the help of the wizards, just so she had a place to stay). Honestly it was wild. My character (the only legacy member left by the end) still has the reputation of a stray cat who brings you back weird things from their hunt because they like you, but they were known as the town hero. Pretty good I think for a character I started with the concept of “seems broody but he actually just severely has social anxiety and wants to change that.” Was a very fun game! Now I’m trying to persuade another of my tables to build an awesome carriage (mobile home basically) for our home base since we travel so much. It’s gonna be decked out so awesome.
Thanks for sharing! As a very new DM, i watched a lot of actual play and videos on the topic, but reading 1st hand experiences of what simple ideas could become during a campaign is pretty cool and inspiring !
@@Joseph-iu5nm Thank you! And yes that is half the fun. It just takes recalling those moments later to make them go full circle.
For an example of one I did in a few recent campaigns, it was making friends with the local flora and fauna. Not anything fancy, just gossiping with the birds, cats, mice, flowers, ivy, etc. Both characters ended up with an expansive spy network. One used it to become a rebel leader for an oppressed city run by celestial who lost contact with their god. She, my ranger, has snakes, one of her first being a mere pet flying snake.
The other is a druid and lives in a big city. They are a fey and have been using the network to keep an eye on and investigate some of the other fey that took up residence in town. It’s very much a power struggle of different fey courts trying to shadow lead the city, of which my character is one of them. Which is hilarious to me because, on the surface, they are a seamstress/tailor/clothing designer merchant. (This character also makes contracts and some of those contracts of “be my eternal friend” have had some interesting implications in all that scheming, lol).
Basically my point is, my advice is to circle back and let the players build and build and build and see if they can making their “jenga tower of decisions” bear fruit or turn into an interesting cascade of consequences.
Our game got to such an extent that the party managed to eventually form their own CITY, because Pathfinder allows for some REALLY funny item interactions with construction spells. And so we all turned it into a great isthmus fortress region for refugees and peoples that don't feel welcomed anywhere else. Pretty sure we all spent the next 6 months of sessions planning, drawing, discussing buildings, placement, guard count, banner designs, government type, laws, even 3D modelling the place itself. It was some great fun creating our Nightwing Vale haha.
MCDM has both Strongholds & Followers and Kingdoms & Warfare. These supplements are great for this type of thing!
We highly recommend them as well!
Love the tips! Can't wait to put this in my games
This video is amazing. I've always LOVED hubs as a player but I really wasn't sure how to incorporate them as a DM-- thank you!!
During a war in my campaign a few towns were completely raised but my players managed to ward off an attack on the town they were in, but not before the inn in which they were staying burned to the ground. After the war when the Inn was rebuilt the players were rewarded with permanent rooms on the house. It has definitely helped to center the campaign. Outside of town is a Keep that was successfully cleared out as well. Its vault is where their valuables are stored and one of my players has a fletcher's workshop where he can craft arrows and bows.
I like the concept of switching your campaign hub partway through the story. for example, I often start my players in the village of Darkwood, farther out from the capitol city. they spend some time there, mainly in their lower levels, with plenty of adventure and quests to be had. but then, they eventually move on to bigger and better things. in the capitol city of Nightfall, there's an adventurer's guild that doubles as a school teaching all the adventuring classes, called The University. they typically move to Nightfall between eves 3 and 5 in my campaigns, and begin their career as guild adventurers, ranking up from copper, to silver, to gold, to platinum rank and being allowed to take on adventurers and quests of the same rank as them. having access to training, lodging, and supplies all in one spot really makes it a useful place.
This is the exact video I need for the campaign I'm going to be starting in about a month.
So glad I found your channel so far in my opinion you have the most useful most helpful content for a dungeon master I've ever found in UA-cam videos and there are some good D&D UA-camrs out there.
I was doing a space pirates campaign where I had home-brewed time lords into the game, one player created a time lord character known as the survivor who had a Tardis which looked like a cargo ship, named the Red Dwarf, it was hilarious at the time as we even had cat as an npc who wondered around the ship. This basically was their travelling hub. I limited them on being unable to time travel with it as it would be op, but also created a plot point of trying to properly repair their Tardis, which would be their final goal. The campaign sadly was never finished but it was interesting and would love to try again.
Hey that's really good video, definitely using hubs my next campaign
I love ALL Master the Dungeon content.
OUTSTANDING DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS CHANNEL!!!!
My upcoming campaign will have a port as their HUB. I appreciate this video to help me make a nice home for them
4:08 NOT THE BRIGAND INSURRECTION, I CAN'T DEAL WITH VULF AGAIN, NOT IN MY D&D GAME.
(this is simply for the funny)
Did not have plans for a "safehouse" before in my campaign but now I have plans for one as well as others being up for sale in different cities.
This channel has been the most helpful dm resource I’ve found in a long time, thank you very much
where the hell are all these crazy cool DND creators coming from? May the algorithm be with us
An example of a good hub city is from the game dragonfable. The city of falconreach becomes the main hub that the player uses. It has a number of NPCs with their own quest lines to build the lore of the world. Those NPCs give you leads to other main quest lines in other cities. It has all of your basics and they invite you in as a citizen of that town. You get a house there, you establish a bank account, your friends are there. You end up defending the city in multiple wars, and at some point when it gets destroyed you help rebuild it. You can choose to set other cities as your hometown, but you don’t really want to. The other towns have their quirks, but the game makes falconreach your home.
we had all that with the keep of the borderlands, the old D&D module. It was almost a second home for us players. And it became the nucleus of our campaign.
This might be the most underrated dnd channel!
I'm making my first campaign with a town as the main hub. This series is so useful for this campaign so I can make more realistic NPCs, stores, and other things. I'm also taking a little bit inspiration from West of Loathing for how they will find more places to go to by walking around or people telling them about it. I'm so excited about this!
I'm DMimg a Game Set in the Elder Scrolls Universe, the Players started in Riverwood in the Sleeping Giants Inn, they loved to visit it once in a while, 12 sessions later, their Mentor (NPC that followed them around and offered useful tips) bought the place and Rebranded it to Eltonbrand Inn.
Everyone loved the Idea of having a place to rest, eat, collect small weekly shares of profit and share the stories of their Adventure with other travelling adventurers.
My homebrew setting is a massive ocean of islands, and our main hub is the setting from our first campaign that has since been abandoned. As the campaign has gone on, the players have brought more and more people who don’t like the islands they lived on to the hub, and it’s slowly becoming a proper kingdom.
After watching this video, I had the idea to use some old ruins as a potential hub once they get there & get it open. Wanted to thank you for that! It'll be a fetch quest to actually get it open, so after they learn how useful the place is, they may want to make themselves at home!
I've started binging your stuff, and it's been giving me a lot of ideas on how to actually run a more survival-style campaign. Like playing Skyrim with mods like iNeed and Frostfall installed. I was originally planning something much different, but I like the sound of this more for my next game.
Ran a Eberron game with a home base in sharn after the opening adventure the party was given a dark lantern safe house in the form of a slightly dilapidated mansion and served as a point to report on the results of each quest and since sharn was such a big place they could find just about anything or anyone they wanted friends and foes alike.
I've seen a DM, instead of discard or forget about previous PCs, integrate them into the Hub's population with idle professions that fit with thier class. Nostalgic nice touch.
A fun, if generic, hub I took a liking to is just an adventurers guild hall for a major city. The party meets many people, adventurers, patrons, etc. and has a reason to travel to places, work. Combine that with some BBEG shenanigans, and bam you have a main plot, and the guild just writes the in between stuff by itself, and you just have to insert references to the everchanging world.
Most underrated TTRPG channel by far
I once DM'd for a party who saved the ruling family of a city and were rewarded with a keep. They were INVESTED on their new keep, they conducted interviews for their hirelings, hired merchants to keep the kitchens stocked and built a fancy ballroom. All good and all, so I got a setup were the keep was targeted by a notorious band of thieves. The whole encounter started after the party's cleric noticed a strange noise in the middle of the night. The PC's woke up to this whole operation where most of their treasures were stolen and two hirelings were taken hostage. Obviously they went after the thieves. It was a blast.
beautifull drawings
A party I was a part of built an estate on the outskirts of the town we started in. Doing so led to the dynamic of the entire world changing, since we often helped the count who governed that town. It was a great campaign, since the DM sandboxed the whole thing, with no overall story. Just stuff to do in the world. Even had other adventuring parties to compete with. Gold standard of open world campaigns: we never felt railroaded, limited, or that our actions were meaningless, good or bad.
I have large towns in my setting and they can take refuge in affiliated temples, groves, towers, and whatever they can think of while they decide if they are going to set up shop together. Hostels are a thing and I have several traveling circuses as well as caravans they can travel with when they are not on a main arc. The campaign is pretty young so to speak, just several main arcs into the story due tow work schedules.
Membership in an Adventuring Guild also works really well for this.
~ Adam
Campaign hubs are essential as far as I'm concerned! Almost all my fondest campaign memories involve quests or events that sprung up as a result of hubs.
Great advice!! thanks
Another great use of a campaign hub is giving your players a reason to need treasure. My group wanted to fix up a manor that was ostensibly haunted and run a restaurant there. It naturally would cost a lot of money, since said manor was in ruins.
A good hub for my campaign I used was a coastal town, in which had access to all the lands that required the parties help. The small hut they own originally, will eventually be built over time, either by the players, or NPC's they've hired, will make it into a beautiful coastal city. Though near the end of the campaign, the BBEG sent a multitude of ships that had trebuchets on them, that nearly destroyed the town. They came back and fought them off, but while the NPC's survived, most didn't make it, and they had to walk through the ashes of their own city which they called home. Let's say the BBEG then wished he never did that, cause my players made him immortal, stripped him of his magic, and threw him into hell 0_0
I slapped together a campaign for my brothers and sisters, and I made sure that there was a town in which they knew some residents intimately, and those residents would in turn give them quests, or just tell them of interesting places they could explore. The governor and most of the guards know them right off the bat because they all got arrested their first time playing (saw that one coming... MFR's ALWAYS try to steal when it's their first time playing, and with little to no supporting stats.) What I didn't anticipate was that they would start a fight so large, they took out three vendor stalls, that were under going reconstruction the first few times they came back to town, and the mongers that owned them were pissed long after the stalls were fully reestablished. But I clued them in with a lot of table talk because for most of them it was their first time playing, and told them what they couldn't buy, because of the choices they made. I absolutely love having a hub where things change based on the player's choices. To me, I don't ever have an endgame in sight... That's not true, but what I mean to say is that the world they are in is being reshaped and reformed around them, their is a load of things to do, and there's no one right way to get where they are going.
The players might also have a vehicle that serves as a mobile hub, such as a ship or cart/carriage, or a small fleet of such vehicles. While this does not allow for recurring hub-NPC's (unless they have hired a ship crew or something), it still gives them a place to store their stuff and do their crafting and reflecting. Later on, they may have Demiplane to store their stuff and Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion to rest and reflect.
In the campaign I’m currently planning, the players start by trekking out of settled land and into the uncharted reaches of a mountain range. That will provide them with some opportunities to bond and gain experience as they guard a caravan traveling to a frontier outpost. It’ll be small (only a hundred or so NPC’s, which works out well since I’ll want to give a name and history to everyone ). But it’s a relatively important place, given that it’s situated on a mountain made nearly entirely of a magical obsidian called darkstone.
The town is also built around a massive temple also made of the stuff. Skipping past some plot, an evil mage will cut the town off from the rest of the mountain, sending them plummeting into the Underdark.
But, given that the more powerful scholars of the town are now in critical condition from the mage (and some other reasons besides) the party will be the main resource and information gatherers, and the town will be built around their decisions. I’m hoping this will get them really attached to the town.
Edit: additionally, I’ll be providing them a scroll with a map of the town, which I’ll edit as they have new buildings constructed.
This is so good!
Ur videos are great, this is very relaxing.
I really like the idea of a campaign hub for PCs. A cleric, monk, or paladin could have a reserved space in a monastery. A ranger and druid could have cabins in the forest. Sorcerers wizards and warlocks could have apartments in a “Wizard tower” or a college of some sort. Crafters and artificers could have a space in trade shops. Fighters and rogues could hang out in bars, taverns, and shipping districts and have homes in town.
I did this for a camping was very easy to add quest and story holks to build up. The hub was a magic tavern in bahamuts realm that would allow the party to establish there bas of operations as they decided to set up a mercenary business and a place I set up some player specific quest
Obligatory not D&D but ive been running a homebrew game and have set my players up with an anomalous motel room which they have to pay for regularly. The room allows them quiet and security as they've yet to encounter anything capable of forcing entry into the room. It provides them with materials to enhance their abilities and advance plot lines. But in my opinion the best and most underrated of the effects it has is that it encourages them to acquire and spend money. Essentially slowing down the story progression long enough for me to glue plot points and events together as to make things line up into "OH" moments rather than the "haphazard what's going on now?" That normally results from the grand scale of the connections in the plot as a whole. A campaign hub is necessary when the entire campaign is 1 massive cthulu sized puzzle.
I will be dealing with one of my next campaign. Specifically I am adapting Waterdeep.
There's a section in my main city called the Crescent Ward. The city is built within a massive crater, so, being on an island in the southern hemisphere, the northern section of the city is obscured from sunlight 24/7, creating a perpetual large, crescent-shaped shadow over one area of the city. Since this decrepit neighborhood has so much flavor, I think I'll reward them with a small haunted house in the district for a job well done. Having some silly ghosts to interact with will be very fun for them, no doubt.
my hub is a port town-the heroes got there and did a quest for a smuggling operation and in return for clearing out one of their fronts that had been filled with zombies, due to some contaminated food stuffs, they gained ownership of the inn they named it the drunken duck as one of our characters was playing a kinku variant that looks like a duck -and wears a ten gallon style hat. but it has a dock under the building concealed for smuggling work and lots of little plot hooks hidden in the rooms of all the dead patrons who got killed during the zombie attack. some letters from a noble to his mistress, some oddly well hidden papers that our artificer on a really good roll figure out were actually some form of code based in her field -but was still decoding. plus the entire setting up the inn and such. unfortunately i had more plan but that group broke up -students exams then some had to move -or quite their job so they were not in regular contact but it was looking promising -im trying to set up another group and i hope to reuse this again
Me and my group own a tavern, it's pretty cool because we actualy need to manage it, we made an deal with some Dwarfs in the mountains, we would trade our beer for their gold and other valuable metals, and we also have an warlord as an ally, things are looking pretty good
I basically loosely copied the town of Threshold from the 1983 Expert Set. All low-level dungeons / adventure sites are within a days journey through relatively safe territory. My big dwarven mine megadungeon also has tribe of friendly cavemen nearby to act as a kind of safe house. For storying straight up cash I watched a couple video on medieval banking and let them open bank accounts; this is important to them since they all play treasure hunters. Once they are tough enough to travel more, they can go further -- especially if they save up enough to buy a ship.
0:30 Beach episode!
the first tavern in which they started is actually on the back of a dragon tortoise that is burrowed
While any activities there have yet to take place, I’ve got an abandoned castle sitting around in the world that can be refurbished as a home base once its less than friendly denizens are cleared out. Its existence gets brought up on occasion, mainly by an academic NPC interested in its history.
I have some ideas for a future campaign, with a huge, magical castle as a hub. There would be portals to areas important to the main plot and PCs, and sometimes secret parts of the castle would be revealed that give hints to the castle´s backstory.
In the end after the players have gathered the crown shards (mcguffins) and repaired them one of them would become the true king or something
In the first campaign I ran I gave my players a skyship as their hub. The players requested that and I thought it would be a cool idea. But it actually got me in trouble several times as they often decided to go to a random location instead of where I expected them to go and then I was forced to improvise or search my old notes to find that location.
I still like the idea of an airship, but this is something you should be aware of as a DM and you should be adjusting to it which I wasn't very good at in that campaign.
I’m running a homebrew pirate themed seafaring campaign. My players were recruited to join a ship captain in his search for legendary treasure and his ship became a hub for the players. They’ve upgraded the sails, recruited a medic and engineer… it’s great fun. X3
I'm working on a mafia campaign for a group
and, yes, most of the adventure is probably gonna be in the one city, maybe 1-2 other locations pending.
Was in a campaign where the party was given their own multidimensional rooms (everyone got their own) we could upgrade. My character was a gnome cleric who was used to living poor. (Rock soup level of poor) and all tge upgrades were intended for medium size creatures. I got 2 upgrades which were a second bed( bunk bed style I shared with the party's druid) and a display for my chain mail and starting weapons (incase something to the gear I had)
And tge rest of the party never used the rooms, the mage Basically lived in the mage guild and our monk lived Basically in the inn
Cool video-like the illustrations - do you do any comics?☺️
This is exactly helpful....on another note. The last time I tried to give a party a home base/hub, they vaporized a city. In their defense it was an accident. But, it was hilarious and I like to tease them about it.
Good topic.
The party I run for cleared out a crypt dungeon and declared it "The Man Crypt"... a narratively significant location with a locked door to the McGuffin... is now known as "The Man Crypt" by both the party and the nearby town.
My current group got into a huge bar fight with the assassin's guild that ran a bar in the port town took out every assassin in the guild in this massive fight so the invested their money in the rundown bar that they destroyed built it back up and now this port town and the bar that they bought has become their hub
My players have a trippy house in the city of Sigil. Makes for a good planescape nexus point
I made a tavern owned by a posh Dragonborn named Quint and my players always decide to go there because they love the voice I use for him.
One campaign i was in my cleric, a human plauge dr was able to take off his mask at the hub behind closed doors, he was disfigured and never showed his face, the party when the found out about the disfigured face of thier cleric immediately took a side quest to kill the perpatrators, my cleric was a army doctor and victim to a warcrime, something the edgelord grew to regret putting "has done multiple warcrimes" in his backstory, because he saw how tragically it affected the cleric also! After the quest the artificer made him a magic ring that made the scars dissapear when worn
My adventure hub will be a detective agency for haunted heroes that solve mysteries in Ravenloft.
Each adventurer will be an investigator who travels through the domains of dread solving mysteries.
oh yeah, i have a long time idea for some type of game, where players can and will go bck to Base or Hometown, and would be able to upgrade it somehow. Thank you very much!
I have 2 examples: my current campaign that I am running sees the players as students of a magical university. The university itself acts as the hub. A campaign I was in a few years ago my Character got the Idea to actually make an official guild of adventurers, as the setting did not have such a thing. The character retired to run and do bookkeeping for our new guild.
I'm running a Princes of Apocolypse game where the players have decided that one of the keeps they cleared out. They have recently found out that it is attached to the the main cultist bases. They come here all the time and keep asking if they can just have everything shipped to the keep instead of going into towns. It is about 20 miles from the nearest town so it is getting increasingly difficult to get plot points to them.
I kinda feel bad about this but they are going to be forced to leave it soon since being far away from civilization and near the cult bases which will make it really easy to attack them once the players make themselves a big enough threat.
I just started what I hope is to be a long term campaign. My players have just gotten to the area, and there's a perfect building in the NE part of town, but the players have to gain the trust of the town, and then enlist them to rebuild the place, then begin securing the surrounding woods and mountains and return the town to its former glory, and eventually overthrow the shadowy organization that has been trying to establish itself in the area for a generation.
Once they do this, the goal is to get them to begin taking on other adventurers, and taking contracts to go out into the wider area, and track down the source of this group, and the reason they are so interested in this town. My hope is that with each adventurer they find in the great wild world, my players can have a couple of different characters they can choose to do different missions with, so that we don't have to start a new campaign, just to let them try a new class or race. Not sure how it's gonna go though. I'm a new DM, and am worried my ideas are bigger than I can handle but we shall see lol
I'm about to run a Viking themed campaign, and I intend on giving my players a ship that will act as their hub and their transport