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Stronghold/Home Base building in RPGs: Good idea or fuck off already?

Stormcrowfleet

Aeon & Star Interactive
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JarlFrank I'll be honest I saw Stronghold but never played it. I started playing games in 96 and tbh I rarely play game prior to it. I can't stand UI and such (except for some superb game that are exceptions such as Ultima Underworld, Gold Box, etc.). I'll take a look at Stronghold.
Dunno how they've held up, but I loved them when I was younger. Stronghold 1 and Crusader are the best.
Pretty sure he meant Stronghold 1993, not the 2000s one.
 

DalekFlay

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I hate all this shit, zero interest in Sim City type crap personally. It's usually pretty optional, or simplistic like in Pillars, but when they go all up in it like Kingmaker it just weighs me down with tediousness.
 

AdolfSatan

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JarlFrank I'll be honest I saw Stronghold but never played it. I started playing games in 96 and tbh I rarely play game prior to it. I can't stand UI and such (except for some superb game that are exceptions such as Ultima Underworld, Gold Box, etc.). I'll take a look at Stronghold.
Dunno how they've held up, but I loved them when I was younger. Stronghold 1 and Crusader are the best.
Pretty sure he meant Stronghold 1993, not the 2000s one.
Oops, and here I thought both that the game was the only with that name and older than 2000. Made a quick google and I think I might have played this one in one of those shareware cds from the late 90s . Looks charming, might have to give it a try.
 
Self-Ejected

RNGsus

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An RPG take of Dungeon Keeper, where players actually build the lair, or space ship, could be pretty great.
 

kris

Arcane
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Oct 27, 2004
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Lulea, Sweden
I certainly like the idea of building a stronghold or home base to adventure from. If anything that was something that was fairly common in PnP too.

But if you put it in a campaign and us it then it need to be central to either the places you go to or to the plot. the closests to that use I guess is NWN2. Of course in open-ended RPGs (bethesda) it always make sense to have it as it gives the players a sense of progression and achievement.
 
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I liked the Morrowind approach. Find a house you like, kill the owner, decorate as you see fit, pay special attention to collect a prestigious library. My choice was always that one cat merchant in Balmora who didn't have a bodyguard.

Way more realistic than someone just gifting a whole fucking castle to a random unwashed dude. I mean, feudalism used to mean something.
 

Monkeyfinger

Cipher
Joined
Aug 5, 2004
Messages
778
Needs lots of shortcuts to do everything. Smooth menus that you can use to take quests, craft, spend money on upgrades, buy and sell form merchants, access your storage, etc. If you have to physically move your party through the stronghold zone to do everything it's shit.

HOMM style town screen to represent the stronghold would be a much better way to do it than what we got in PFKM, PoE, BG2, NWN2, SF3 and most other games with strongholds.

Starcraft 2 did base screen right.
 
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Taka-Haradin puolipeikko

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Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy Bubbles In Memoria
Needs lots of shortcuts to do everything. Smooth menus that you can use to take quests, craft, spend money on upgrades, buy and sell form merchants, access your storage, etc. If you have to physically move your party through the stronghold zone to do everything it's shit.
Not necessarily.
More freeform approach like Cataclysm; Dark Days Ahead can have it's own charm too, but on the other hand player in it doesn't have plot given stronghold as such.
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
That said, I can imagine a roleplaying game where the central gameplay was something more like a strategy game and a king with a higher Acumen stat had better income but a king with a higher Martial stat could recruit better troops and somesuch.

Hello there Crusader Kings 2 & 3.
 

Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
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I liked the Morrowind approach. Find a house you like, kill the owner, decorate as you see fit, pay special attention to collect a prestigious library. My choice was always that one cat merchant in Balmora who didn't have a bodyguard.

Way more realistic than someone just gifting a whole fucking castle to a random unwashed dude. I mean, feudalism used to mean something.
Funny you should make the second comment immediately after a reference to Morrowind, since the game did allow the PC to be granted a modest stronghold, though only after rising several ranks as a member of one of the three Great Houses present in Vvardenfell. Morrowind is actually a good example of how an RPG can successfully include a dash of stronghold-building without more extensive domain management aspects; it's just a pity that the in-game lore-friendly fast travel systems didn't encompass these strongholds, since the extra time required to run back and forth was prohibitive.

800px-MW-place-Indarys_Manor.jpg

800px-MW-place-RethanManor.jpg

800px-Telvannistrong.jpg
 

Nutria

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Strap Yourselves In
This isn't really a stronghold, but if you're gonna make a game where I can kill a bunch of people and they leave a bunch of low-quality weapons and armor behind, I want to be able to give them to my own personal militia so they don't just get left out there in the rain. Weapons don't deserve to end up like that.
 

Sarathiour

Cipher
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Jun 7, 2020
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3,262
The idea itself is not bad, because in most rpg setting, an increase in level should also come with increased fame and political/influence reach, which stronghold illustrate in a really "concrete" way. It also tend to serve as a money sink, in order to do something else with your pile of gold other than larping as duck mcscrooge.
 

IHaveHugeNick

Arcane
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Apr 5, 2015
Messages
1,870,124
State of Decay and Dead State are two examples where base building felt good. Not an accident both are zombie-survival RPGs, it just makes sense that you need some kind of fortified shelter and such.
 

curds

Magister
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Nov 24, 2019
Messages
1,098
I like the apartments in VTMB where you can go to check your emails or watch TV.
 

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