Strongholds and Holdings

Version 0.12 · not yet playtested

Jon Mayo. PUBLIC DOMAIN (CC0-1.0)

Strongholds and Holdings

A base of your own: a cleared keep, a wizard’s tower, a welded-together junkyard, a berth on a station, a ship. It turns a borrowed haven into yours, a reliable place to run downtime, a store for what you haul back, and a foothold that grows into a power in the world. This rung is the campaign frame; a one-shot needs none of it.

It sits on Downtime (a stronghold is built and run through downtime turns and clocks) and on the Distant campaign clock (a base is a target, and the world moves against it). No new dice: building is a project clock, and a raid is one roll on the usual bands.

1 Claiming a Base

A base is a place secured and made yours: a ruin cleared, a deed bought, a charter won, a wreck salvaged. Claiming it is an adventure or a downtime project. Once it is yours, it becomes your haven, and every downtime turn taken there runs a little better than one taken in a rented room.

Bases come in scales. Start small and grow:

Hideout — a safehouse, a den, a single hold-out room.

Hold — a keep, a tower, a fortified yard, a station berth.

Seat — a settlement, a fief, a holding: a place with people who answer to you.

2 Facilities

A base is a set of facilities, each a thing it does for you. A facility is built as a downtime project (a clock, gated by coin and materials; see Downtime), and each one improves a downtime action or grants a standing comfort, never a bonus you carry into the field:

Quarters / Infirmary: safe rest guaranteed, and you mend fully and heal lasting hurts here without hiring a chirurgeon.

Workshop / Forge / Fabricator: craft and commission at a die better, and make things you could not make anywhere else.

Library / Archive / Sensor-suite: research at a die better; run down a foe’s one true sentence faster.

Training yard / Range / Sim-deck: train to advance here, where a setting routes advancement through downtime.

Storehouse / Vault: raise your capacity for supplies and coin (see Encumbrance), and cache what a raid would otherwise take.

Walls / Defenses / Garrison quarters: raise the base’s defense (below).

Shrine / Comms / Contacts-hub: a standing line to the wider world, rumors, allies, the setting’s power.

Keep facilities access and options, never raw power. They make your downtime and your safety better; they do not buff your dice out in the world. Hold a base to a handful.

3 Upkeep

A base costs to keep. Each downtime turn (or season), pay upkeep in coin and supplies, scaled to its size: a hideout is cheap, a seat is dear. Skip it and the base degrades, a facility goes cold, the crew drifts, a decline clock starts. Upkeep is what makes a stronghold a commitment rather than a free win: a base you cannot feed is a base you lose.

4 The Crew

A base needs people to hold it while you are away and to man its defenses: a garrison, a crew, staff (hired per the setting). The size and quality of the crew, together with the walls, is the base’s defense, rated as a position: a bare hideout defends at Poor, a walled and manned hold at Fair or Good, a true fortress at Commanding. Preparation (a warning, a readied trap, stores laid in) lifts it a die like any advantage.

5 Raids and Attention

A base is a target, and the bigger and richer it is, the bigger the target. When the Distant campaign clock turns (recall that every downtime turn advances it), a threat may come: bandits, a rival crew, a monster, a corporate reprisal, an army. Set it a tier as you would a foe (Lesser to Dire).

Resolve it by whether the party is home:

Home: run it as a fight, from a fortified position. The walls and readied ground hand the party dice; the garrison fights as allies. This is the best case, and the reason to be there when it matters.

Away: one roll settles it. The garrison captain (or whoever holds the base) rolls the defense position; the raid’s tier drops dice as a foe would (Greater −1, Dire −2). Read the bands:

Success: repelled clean.

Partial: held, at a cost, stores spent, a facility scorched, crew hurt.

Failure: the base is hit, a hard move on the stronghold: a facility wrecked, the vault cracked (a Vault facility halves the loss), crew lost, a foothold gone.

A base never simply dies on one bad roll unless it was undefended; a Failure sets it back, and setbacks are the campaign.

6 Growing into a Holding

Build facilities, survive the raids, and a base climbs the scale: hideout to hold to seat. At the top a stronghold becomes a holding, a settlement, a fief, a station, a house, a power others must reckon with, and that is the campaign’s endgame. What it means to found a city, run a fief, or hold a station is the setting’s own capstone; this rung is only the frame that gets a party there.

7 For Authors

A setting fits this rung by naming the base scales, the facilities it offers (and which downtime action each improves), the upkeep currency, and the raid threats its region throws (as foe tiers). Keep facilities to access and options, put every build on a clock, let a raid be one roll or a fight, and never a ledger. Tie the raids to the Distant campaign clock so that growing a base and stirring the world are the same motion.