Bastion building, supporting the Union Crawler, Community building…

With the (re) addition of Bastions in Dungeons & Dragons along with a host of other games sporting fortress or settlement building mechanics, I have to ask what’s going on here? Back in my day, we didn’t have a fancy observatory. We were happy just to get our castle built and keep the peasants from revolting.

Back then the castle and fortress rules weren’t buried in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Players had access to that info directly back then. I will say I don’t think the majority of D&D players really cared about those rules, though. In fact, I don’t remember it being a thing in tabletop games, but it came up while I was playing World of Warcraft.

Disclaimer: Statements expressed in this article are strictly my opinion. If you disagree or have a different opinion, that’s okay. I’m not an expert on everything. I’m not always right. I’m just writing from my experience as I know it. Your mileage may vary.

There are games where it makes sense.

I recently got into Salvage Union RPG a little bit. (Review coming someday.) One of the things that really stands out to me is the Union Crawler, a sort of walking, armored community with common goals. It reminds me a lot of the rolling domed schools in Chrome Shelled Regios (one of my favorite anime.) The players are in charge of upgrading and sometimes repairing the Salvage Union Crawler. They might also have to deal with the day-to-day politics with those who live onboard.
Mutant: Year Zero RPG has a similar mechanic. At the beginning of each session, one of the players draws a card or rolls on the table to determine events within the Ark, the characters’ home. M:YZ has a lot of depth for a post-apocalyptic game. Not only do players have to be concerned about their own survival, but the welfare of their community and faction as well. There are a lot of moving parts that revolve around just getting by. Who has time to go out and explore?

Then there’s the new/not new Bastion System in the latest DMG.

I wrote another article about this here when the silly thing was first introduced. Basically, in the 2024 DMG, players have the option of creating a Bastion at around Level 5. (Why is clearly player facing information being presented in the DMG? Only Wizards of the Coast knows.) This bastion establishment then gets all kinds of addons that help the characters in their various crafting and gold grinding efforts just like certain MMORPGs.
Only D&D is a tabletop game. Why did WotC add something that is so clearly designed for something normally found in an electronic medium. Honestly, I wouldn’t sit down with my tabletop gaming group if I just wanted to play Stardew Valley, Animal Crossing, or Minecraft. They don’t need me for that. For all the more that’s worth, we could pull out any number of boardgames of similar nature.

I got out of World of Warcraft when I realized I could reach level cap on a character by just battling pets and leveling my bastion on there. Resource gathering and base building games just aren’t really my thing. I played Command & Conquer, StarCraft, and Warcraft 2 for years. I love those games, but it’s not why I play an RPG.

With Salvage Union and Mutant: Year Zero I can hand-wave the community turns and activities because the players may not be all that invested in their base building as they are in the rest of the story. I fear that is not the case in D&D as players are encouraged to invest time and gold into this cozier Bastion activity. In the post-apocalyptic games, community is a matter of survival. In D&D, what significance do these bastions really have?

As a lifelong DM/Game Master, I’m tempted to put the kibosh on the whole thing.

If my players come to me and say, “I want to build a Bastion,” my answer is a hard NO. That’s hypothetically based on me ever running 2024 D&D 5E. There are about 100 games in my collection ahead of that happening including old school Rules Cyclopedia Basic D&D.

(Run for cover, kids.) Back in my day, D&D characters could become landowners around 9th Level, and it was a full-on commitment on the part of the player to keep track of the whole thing. Since then there was this campaign setting in 2nd Edition AD&D where characters could start as regents of their own kingdoms. It was called Birthright, and all of the player’s decisions centered around their kingdom. Of course, WotC refuses to acknowledge Birthright ever again, so it’s not a part of their thought process with this Bastion thing.
I hear there’s this Kingmaker game over on the Pathfinder 2E side of things. However, I’m not spending the around $175 to buy into it. I don’t have a lot of love for Paizo knowing they are effectively a WotC puppet company or at least parrot most of what D&D does. I’ve lost faith since PF2E Remastered and Tian Xia. Not to mention the employees that bounce back and forth between Paizo and WotC with seemingly no consequences whatsoever.
The point here is if I want to build a Bastion style system for literally any game including D&D at this point, I have dozens if not a hundred books I could pilfer source material from for my players. I could even write my own base-building resource for non-D&D games.

Oh, but in the hands of a capable Dungeon Master…

Here’s where the latest Baristas & Besties Bastion flappus takes a turn. What if, instead of handing the headache of creating Bastions off to the individual player, the DM simply disallowed the thing altogether and then used the various Bastion resources in building their own campaign towns and kingdoms. That way the DM can optionally shoot down the more ludicrous requests from players such as forging one’s own Vorpal Sword, and still give some of the benefits afforded by the Bastion System. That way the players still get some positives out of the BS and the DM has fewer headaches.
WotC doesn’t want players to know that in all likelihood. I think this whole thing is actually a massive sidestep around the authority of the online DM and sell more digital tchotchkes. That’s the thing. All of this BS works really well online where everything can be tracked automatically. Microtransactions for virtual environments are a big money maker. All of us old analog gaming dinosaurs are extinct as far as WotC is concerned. It’s sad.


Onward and upward. Shadowdark, Dungeon Crawl Classics, and Dragonbane still have my attention. If I or my players want to do a resource gathering, base building game, we’ll find a way to do it. I think it’s superfluous except as a GM tool, but what works at my table may not work at someone else’s.

Thank you for being here today with me. I appreciate you. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy.