Regardless of genre or system, it can be a lot of fun to give the PCs a hub — a home base, even if it’s not actually home (although it could be). Hubs are fun on several levels, not the least of which being that they make great gateways to increasing player involvement.
The nature of the hub will vary dramatically depending on what kind of game you’re running, but these five characteristics are common to most hubs — and they all work well.
• Home Base: Whether it’s a place or a vehicle, the hub is the main place that the party spends their downtime — it’s their home base.
• NPC Support: The PCs don’t need to be there 24/7 because there are NPCs that can take care of business while they’re gone. Stewards, ship captains, security guards — whatever the case may be.
• Player Control: The players have a great deal of control over the nature of their hub, what it looks like, who runs it, how secure it is.
• Safe, But Vulnerable: From a GM’s perspective, threatening the hub is a great way to get the PCs involved. At the same time, hubs should be safe most of the time, so that the players don’t have to worry too much about them.
• Home-Like: When the PCs return to their hub, there should be a sense of coming home. The NPCs all know them well, the hub’s quirks are familiar to them, etc.
As long as there’s enough NPC support (or the hub is a vehicle that the PCs are never far from), I’ve met very few players who don’t enjoy having a home base of some sort. And for you as the GM, they offer plenty of opportunities to introduce new elements into the game — from the occasional siege in a fantasy game to the chance to build the ultimate security system in a sci-fi campaign.
Hubs also get players involved with the game in different ways. Some players really enjoy being able to tweak and fine-tune every aspect of their hub, while others just enjoy returning to it and catching up with the NPC stewards.
If you’ve been looking for ways to get your players to drive the game — to be more active than reactive — giving them a nifty home base is an excellent way to get the ball rolling.
Many players aren’t used to having control over much of their environment (especially if their primary experience is with straightforward hack-and-slash), and starting with something concrete — and most importantly, cool — is a lot better than asking, “So, what do you want to do next week?”
How do you use hubs in your campaigns?
My players always have a hub of some sort – one group uses an abbey where the priestess always pamper them when they show up!
It’s useful to us also as a place for characters to be when the players can’t show up for the game! Absent players can say their character has the flu, is tired, has to research, needs to fix the place up . . .the possibilities are endless.
In my current pirate game their hub is a small ship which they have just captured. The caputre of the ship (by escaping from the hold of a much larger ship), broke the masts and left it in bad shape. Their player chosen missions have been less about their own goals, and more about acquiring quality wood (trip deep into orc infested forest escorting lumberjacks), acquiring money for building materials (robbery of a nobles house), raiding other ships (to get some ondeck cannons), etc.
I’m letting them build their own homedock as well, it’s on an inlet. One of the players keeps making designs in google sketch up for the general look of it.
My players definitely have a home base, as the campaign started out as an urban campaign. They all have a sense of pride and “ownership” of their home city that I don’t think I could have captured any other way. They have their homes that they’ve gussied up, they’ve got their favorite bar and barkeep (who’s also a fine chef) – all of these combine to create a great sense of community among the players.
Not to mention a lot of plot hooks.
I like home bases with built in oddities. In a Forgotten Realms game (Hero System, though), I arranged for the party to own a fortified manor house in medium-size town. The place had a few unexplored, unknown traps and passages when they first got it. Some of them were dangerous, and over their heads. So they always had that little bit of frission knowing that the place was mostly safe as long as they didn’t try something new. Every now and then, they’d want to test their new powers against some new passage. 🙂
And of course, that deranged magical cat in the basement, they left completely alone. Too bad the goblin thieves that snuck into their home one night let it out. 🙂
I find, as Martin’s article says, that the players really care about that base. You don’t have to mess with them much to get the whole party spitting nails. Except for the above mentioned things, I let them feel safe in that home for the better part of a year (real time). They *still* talk about that cat, and we played that around ’98 or so.
I find very important to let the players find/conquer/acquire the hub, typically by a quest. The house bequeathed in heritage by a friendly NPC who dies in one of their adventure, for example, or a strange vehicle or gigantic animal (giant turtle, anyone ?) found in a strange temple in the jungle… I find it necessary to establish the link, or else they will only see it as a convenient place to rest, nothing more.
When the group unified and started to worry about the Technocracy (in my successful Mage game), they went up into the foothills and created a fortified little base. They had a lot of fun warding it and trying to blend in…
Heck, that campaign had a lot of individual hubs/ home bases– almost to the point of PTA’s set per character. Hmmm.
Good points! I agree that conquering the hub makes for a good connection, and that inserting little mysteries (like the magical cat) is a great way to keep everyone interested.
If the PCs’ hub were large enough, PTA’s “one set per character” could very easily be drifted over. The wizard gets her laboratory, the fighter gets a training room, etc. And of course they all still share control over the entire hub.
A PC base does have lots of advantages, though I have also struggled with becoming bored with campaigning in the same region all the time. The trick is once the PCs are entrenched in a base, how to get them to care about traipsing off to some distant place for an adventure.
Frank
In my last long-running D&D game, the PCs were supposed to take over a tower full of portals as a base. It had plenty of potential for adventures in the tower itself, and of course they could hop in portals as needed to find adventure elsewhere — which gets at your question, Frank.
Sadly, I spent so long building up to taking over the tower that the game ended before they got a chance to do it. Lesson learned. 😉