DnD Castle Defence Game

[Bugworlds]

While my mind was wandering at work, I came up with a potentially fun way to start off a campaign.

Premise:

Players would start off on the boarder of a forest and a field, as level 0 (race only) characters. Monsters which are too powerful for them to fight chase them further into the field where they discover a hut/house/yard/small fort or something along the lines of that. At this point they meet the resident who explains to them the monsters from the forest (which happens to circle the field) have been coming out more and more regularly. He doesn't think he can hold them off any longer for his help had died in the last wave of monsters, but he would be glad to offer his land and cooperation in exchange for the party to defend the post for a bit.

It is at this point players are given at least 1 experience, giving them a class level. By making them pick a species they'll gravitate towards something they like, and by waiting for a goal to be given a strong class for the job is likely to occur. This could all happen by giving the premise to the players before it starts, but I like the idea of having a first session for building characters and limiting time that optimization can be researched.

Of course he dies in the next wave to appear, but not after making it clear the strength of the monsters which are in the forest; and that it is nearly impossible to try to leave through the forest until they are much stronger.

Depending on the patients of the players, or how much they enjoy defending the land, the challenge of escaping would need to be adjusted. Once this game has gone on long enough the players would be able to leave the area, find a village/town/castle, and then hunt down the source of the threat.

Rules:

Every 1d10 days another wave appears, of appropriate CR to the party. This CR would go up a bit faster than the players for they will be encouraged to build defences. Use a smaller dice and lower CR's for more waves, or just smaller dice for a more threatened feel.

Each day would have eight hours to work, no working sixteen hours or all day and night unless you're undead, a construct, or something else to shed your time-working limitations.

Defences and expansions such as walls, pits, extra buildings, farms (good luck maintaining a garden when monsters run through it, though) and all the other fun stuff players could think of would be crafted with standard crafting rules. I think this would make use of, what seems to be, a lengthy amount of time needed for most crafting projects. I think this game would also give a trap maker lots of opportunity to have some fun.

Resources would be acquired by some sort of delivery every 7 days + (1d6-3.5 days) by an NPC who has a way to and from the defending location; be that magic or just knowledge of the forest. This would mean players need to think ahead, and make their orders carefully.

Monsters would drop resources along with treasure, if treasure is not enough to fuel the purchases. Each monster could have a chance of dropping a 'magic item shard,' calculated by (CR x 10%). When a player, or the party, has enough of these to make an item they could hammer them together for a magic item. Lesser magical items would need 5 (or so, not sure how well this system would work), while stronger magic items would need more.

Building materials, potions, food, and all other needs which don't make sense to appear but would be useful or needed could come through drops. Due to events happening according to dice roll there's chance for a delivery to happen at the same time as an attack, work to be interrupted, and I'm sure random events could be factored in for more fun and flavours.

So...

What do you think? What would work, what would need tweeking, what would be needed to be added on? What about other random events? Would this be too tedious and an accelerated crafting system should be put in place? If one was to stretch this into the main focus of a campaign it could be fun to give everyone the Leadership feat for free and have more help show up. How's that sound?

[Krazzman]

It works. Or at least it can.

I would advice looking up quite a few Tower Defense Games. Especially Orcs Must Die and Orcs Must Die 2.

There you will find quite some good-looking Keeps/Fortresses/Mines with interesting layouts.

Maybe instead of Gold and Magic Shards just make a simple point system. The "keep" they found has a dwell of magic that kept those monsters at bay but now these monsters are under [enter plothook here] and they now have to defend that well. Depending on their points they can "wish" for certain things which will be done in X amount of time. Other stuff needs to be done manually.

Maybe recalculating the crafting times needed for certain things they need to do.
Maybe let them hire more workforce or some of the still inhabitants are not suited for defending but building.

Just some ideas you might implement.

[Umbranar]

This sounds like fun! It looks even suitable for PbP games.
Maybe you should prefab some upgrades for their "Castle" but allow them to be creative.
I can see a huge potential for spells like fabricate, creation, Walls of X and Stone/Wood shape.

[dantiesilva]

This looks really fun, if you ever make it a PBP game I would be interested in joining.

[Bugworlds]

I wouldn't be interested in making my own PbP but if anyone would like I could contact them if I put some more time into this; perhaps even test it as a table top with some friends.

Krazzman, great ideas. I'm still fond of starting with a small shack, maybe a small two level house with a garden (trampled of course), perhaps a small cellar, one-horse barn.. something quaint and nice to live in, assuming there aren't any monsters bothering it. I wouldn't want anything very large to start, to entourage my players to set up what they want. With enough time I can see a few strategies put in place, given lots of room to expand. No (or little) automatic expansion needed. I dislike using the 'it's magic' reason (explanation, or excuse) but the point system sounds great.

Spoiler: Some build strategies:

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Mix and Match to Optimize Efficiency and Fun =D

- Layered walls
- Layered pits/moats
- Traditional tower defence towers, with range
- Traps
- Turtling
- Underground
- Bottle neck
- My friends are creative... ...who knows what they'd do? Oh no... Oh no....

Spoiler

Show

- Raising all the dead and not worrying about building when they have an army...

Perhaps points could be used to buy things from some magic source, likely the one which previously held the monsters at bay (Love that idea), and also as an experience substitute. I know my biggest annoyance with crafting magic is the loss of experience. I'm uncertain how to balance and judge value from this but I imagine I could look at the treasure given out from various challenge ratings and compare that to what items have said value.

As much as I don't want to alter crafting times it likely would need to be done. For most simple structures or pieces of structure (e.g. a wall to a building) built a Craft (woodwork, architecture, ect.) DC of 10 or so may work, with a low value. 5ft wall, DC 10, Value 10gp. Level 1: +1 int, 4 ranks, +2 for receiving help, roll 13 = Check of 20; 10ft of wall built in a day by two players. Four players in a party, 20ft of wall in a day. Five days average between waves, 100ft of wall. Enough to make a 5x5 perimeter.... seems like not enough. All their time might be put towards defence, especially considering a wave might damage structures.

Once help from NPC's is taken into account, which may not happen until a few levels in, I think building wouldn't be too harsh. Get a couple Human Expert (2) in there working for eight hours a day. Perhaps give them items to boost their Int and/or Crafting. If you're going for a moat system, an animal companion with a dig speed would make phenomenal work of the ground.