Base of Operations

[dragonshaos]

It appears in most games Ive seen/played/hosted, but players always seem to make themselves a Base of Operations.  Id like to get opinions as to how everyone deals with this idea.  Should the players have a place they can store the crap they've collected over the course of the session and use it as a place of planning...stuff.  Or do a lot of GM's just not allow players to do this, due to whatever reason.  And by Base of Operations i mean a house where they killed the owners or a cave they killed some bears in, along those lines, not a Hotel room they rent out or something.

I myself will allow a base of operations as long as I know the players will be in the area for a long enough time.  They seem to always want to make every house the base, after they've killed the owners, or make a phone booth their 'ammo dump' in some games, even going as far to kicking a hobo out of his 'house' so they could store things there.  Not even useful things.  Just things.

[Maze]

That's pretty hilarious actually. In any game, it's always more comforting to have a safe house. And I've never so far run into a situation where my players actually kill someone to take their place. In a city or village, if they kill the owner, the neighbor will alert the guards as soon as they notice his disappearance (that could turn into a cool CSI-type court ordeal where the players have detectives on their tail that keep removing their sunglasses, damn them.... yeeeeeeeeeahh). I don't even think it's legal to kill a hobo. (That's why most GM discourage the neutral alignment, if 2 players are good, they'll be opposed to it.)

The problem with a cave is that any other creature (or adventurers) might walk in there, which again, might make for some ordeal where the players chase after a thief (which is just a legitimate adventurer who found shit laying around).

I've always had a Base of Operations for my players in my game, simply because they usually belong to some group or guild. Even when I run a more survival horror game, they have a place they consider less dangerous although it most likely will get torn down at some point. If I ran a game where the players traveled the world, I'd give them the option to buy a house or establishment in any city they like. Considering the economy in D&D is so fucked up that most of the world's gold is held my monsters, it wouldn't even be so hard to buy. If they want to buy the WHOLE town, now that could be even more interesting and something they'd have to work at but I'd still let them. People are suckers for gold.

[Tadanori Oyama]

My old D&D campaign had the players basically build their own complex. By the time they hit a city they had enough gold to establish a personal base for each of them that could suit their own interests. They liked that alot.

I allow or discourage bases depending on my format of play. Most of my games are sandbox styled with the players actings as freeroaming entities. In these cases they play much like they would a video game along the lines of Morrowind or Oblivion and seldom return to a homebase before continuing onto the next plot point or event. This leads to an impossibly scheduled pace broken only when they are depeleted to the point of needing an extended rest.

In a serial style game, which I've only run one or two of, I like for them to have either a homebase or individual homes to return to at the end of the adventure.

As an aside, the players in my current 4E game have both seized and burned down potential "homebases". They've acquired an increasing number of vehicales to the point where they've gotten a Astral Skiff with a warehouse worth extra-dimentional hold space (in the form of slave pins, they stole it from gith); but they tend to destroy whatever buildings they come across including ancient stone fortresses.

[rayner23]

In the New World campaign we made a small fort for our waterbaron business, but we rarely used it in early sessions, but returned to it later.

I won't spoil anything, but we get a pretty sweet base later on that was very much well-deserved. Then again, it fit within the setting of the story and it was an organic thing. It wasn't as if Ross said, "okay, here's a cool base for you."

As long as the story allows for a bse of operations, then I think there is a lot of potential for good things there.

[codered]

 In my current game me and another character (who was a man changed into a woman) created a brothel in the upper crust of the city that were in. It's fun because i charge my other members room and board to stay there. lol good times

[Maze]

I hate seeing the word "crust" and "brothel" so close to each other for some reason.

[Tadanori Oyama]

Then I suggest you avoid that pie shop in the Touch Light district.