There’s no place like home, so said Dorothy – and as in Oz, so in DnD. Some of my favorite experiences in Dungeons and Dragons have been adventures where we, as players, collaboratively cooked up a home base for ourselves, to kick back in between quests, and promptly began filling it with comical sidekicks and unnecessary backstory.
So the concept of DnD Bastions – customizable home bases for every player, with in-built rules, upgrades, and story hooks – was always going to appeal to me. It’s the aspect of the upcoming 2024 Dungeon Master’s Guide (DMG) I’m most eager to sample, in fact, since I didn’t get the chance to use the 2023 playtest version before.
If you haven’t read Mollie Russell’s excellent bastions guide (linked above), or seen Wizards of the Coast’s latest preview video (below), the short version is this: from level five onwards, each player in your party can now create their own home base (or combine them into a group home).
You can then expand it with new ‘facilities’, and take certain regular actions that give you in-game benefits. Special facilities (like pubs and greenhouses) come free at certain DnD level ups, and have mechanical effects, while the basic ones (like kitchens and parlors) cost gold, have no rules, and exist purely to give form to your personal palace of the imagination.
There’s reason to be skeptical about the implementation of Bastions. Certain facilities being locked behind certain levels does chafe at the narrative senses a tad – why can’t we open a pub until level 13, Wizards? Are we too inexperienced for the ale?
And, for crunch-hungry gamers, the very idea of spending your in-game gold on imaginary bedrooms and courtyards that don’t confer any bonuses might come across as a ridiculous nothing burger they’d rather not pay for in their rulebooks.
Personally, superficial though it might seem, I find real joy in Wizards embracing the simple, childlike act of imagining yourself a make-believe house, and making it an official part of the DnD experience, with professionally created rules, narrative guidance, and artworks to back it up.
I think – and 24 years’ worth of best-selling The Sims videogames would appear to agree with me – that designing your own imaginary home is fun, even if it doesn’t increase your combat efficiency.
And, in a TTRPG that’s ever more the province of broken builds and power-gaming these days, the thought of saving up hundreds of in-game gold pieces to pay for a bigger dining room just makes me smile uncontrollably. What if the Emissary of Eresh-Kai comes to tea and I’ve nowhere for them to sit? Unthinkable; I must design an extension at once.
For me, the best tabletop roleplaying games are about telling a story that matters to me and my friends, accumulating (over weeks and months) all the color, details, background, and connections that will continue to draw me into our shared fantasy world.
Devoting a portion of our time, attention, and gold to developing a homestead that truly reflects our characters – just as our real life homes reflect our real selves – makes perfect sense to me, as a way to better anchor us into the fantasy and generate those little side stories that make it all feel a bit more real.
And if I have to wait until level 13 to open my gastropub The Lusty Leonin, so be it. Just wait till you try the cocktails.
And while you’re waiting, you should read our guides to DnD classes and DnD races – which you pick will likely affect the bastions you’ll build, after all!
Source: Wargamer
