I realized as I got up this morning at a way too early time that I actually didn't blog yesterday. It'd be a lie to say that I forgot, I just didn't take the time to do it. So I've already lost my challenge. Doesn't mean I won't keep blogging! I can't get this stuff out of my head fast enough.
While I said that I'd post something about my meta-game idea for Furcadia today, I actually think I'm going to skip it. It's not that I think this idea I AM going to post about is better, it's just more developed. The Furc idea needs to simmer a bit in the stew of my creative juices.
That's actually a really gross metaphor.
Anyway!
I've just recently gotten my grubby paws on a copy of the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook by Wizards of the Cost for 3rd edition D&D. It's old enough so it's probably built for 3.0 and not 3.5, but that doesn't really matter so much; the two are nearly the same anyway, so it's not like it's a big thing. I'm sure a lot of players looked at this book and thought 'Oh, look, more specified rules for an already too-specific game, making it even less of a ROLE-playing game and more of a ROLL-playing game. Whoo. I'll pass.' but in my want for completion, I snagged it up to take a look-see. And while it took a while for the idea to come to the surface of my mental soup (ewww) I got some neat ones from it.
First off, the ability to not only build but price practically any practical building with the system put out in this book. If any of my players in 3rd ed really wanted to sit down and say 'Hey, I want to build my own bar,' I can pull out this book and sit down with them and say 'Okay, here's how you do it and how much it'll cost.' Sure, I could just as easily pull something out my butt and call it good, but it really seems like the uber-planning is half of the fun of 3rd ed. You can sit down and plot out everything to the last speck of dirt and hair if you want to, and sometimes that's a whole lot of fun. Sometimes it's not, and that's okay, but when you want to, there's no better system than 3rd ed.
Another reason to do it is the same reason that I printed a copy of the World of Warcraft RPG section about making cities and towns, and why I photocopied the pages from an old Dragon magazine about building countries: because I'm an idea man, and putting them into 'reality' isn't my strongest suit. Sometimes it's nice to have something there to rely on - to fall back on - to help me out with this stuff. To tell me and remind me what a temple needs in it, what a town needs in it, and all of that. The system has also helped me realize what's wrong with some of my oldest ideas - for instance, Pine's Bend - and work toward fixing those problems so my world doesn't have those gaping plot holes as elephants in the room that no one wants to bring up else they'll fall into them. Pine's Bend isn't a trading town, it's a guardpost and stopping point at which people just happen to also trade goods. It's not a town, it's a stronghold, and I can use stuff in this book to create it and draw it up as such.
The best reason I like this book, however, is because it may let me realize one of my favorite things that I've tried to do with a tabletop RPG for as long as I can remember: Play Warlords. Specifically, for the purposes of that link, Warlords I. I can remember long afternoons, mornings and nights, sitting with my brother playing that old DOS game on the computer that Dad built, having him beat me over and over but I didn't care, it's a fun game and we would sit there for hours, before school, after school, on weekends, whenever we could, just playing the game and listening to Weird Al. To this day, I can't hear "Slime Creatures from Outer Space" without thinking about Lord Bane and the Sirians.
But ever since getting into D&D and playing that game (which, if my memory serves, happened in reverse order) I've wanted to combine the two. To be able to control a fantasy race with a leader who can get cool stuff, and go take over keeps and landscapes and explore ruins and dungeons while building up keeps and troops and dealing with plagues and and and and I could go on, but I won't.
So here's what I'm thinking. I get together a decent bunch of people. They all choose a race and make a hero, probably 5th or 6th level is what I'm thinking right now; high enough level to be important, but not high enough to be the ultimate leader of their people... Yet. Choose whatever the heck you want; all 3.5 rules are available, especially including and suggesting the rules from Savage Species (one of my favorite books thus far, btw). Everyone gets the Leadership feat for free as a way to start off the game; you're a LEADER for crying out loud, you have to have some people to follow you. Plus, everyone would start off with some extra cash specifically toward putting together their first settlement. Enough to make a small keep or something along those lines. I'll have to crunch some numbers to figure out how much money that ends up being. Then, using their initial race as a starting point, they enlist their cohorts and followers (sidekicks and minions?) and hire their henchmen (cannon fodder?) and do whatever it is that they're going to do! I think it would end up having to be played like Warlords, so to speak: Slowly. It's not something that you'd sit around a table on Sunday nights playing. It'd be more of a PBM type game. Which I've never done but heard good things about, so hey!
I'm going to go make Pine's Bend as a settlement and see what that takes for cash, and use that as a guideline to figure out how much to give these people. Then I'll bring it all up and see what they think.
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