Developing the Sandbox: Strongholds

This post is part of my series on developing the sandbox. You can read other posts in the series here. The series will, when necessary, go into detail on the development of my sandbox for Dungeon Module B1: In Search of the Unknown, but will also discuss sandbox development more generally. You can read play reports from my B1 campaign here.

In this post, I'll discuss the development of those strongholds in your sandbox which are ruled by NPCs. These are your classic fighters' bastions, wizards' towers, clerics' temple fortresses, and thieves' dens and hideouts, but it doesn't stop there. 

Paladins will rule strongholds somewhere between that of a fighter and a cleric. Rangers may rule fortified compounds in a more wilderness locale. Illusionists will disguise their strongholds to appear mightier than they truly are, or as simple earthen mounds or other natural features. Druids will rule secure woodland groves. Monks build monasteries. Assassins rule imposing wilderness fortresses.

Monster lairs can also be strongholds, and many famous "monster lair" modules play very similarly to strongholds. Bandits, berserkers, brigands, and dervishes may come to inhabit them. Giants and many underwater creatures will build strongholds as well. 

Two things that this post will not cover are (1) strongholds built by the player characters and (2) deserted strongholds, which are likely naught but ruins on the surface and which fall more readily into the dungeon category.

Most scholarship (i.e. blogs) on the subject of strongholds in D&D pertains to those built by player characters and the rules for doing so. I'm instead interested in how to design and key an existing NPC stronghold for the players to interact with. 

Strongholds are kind of like dungeons in the sense that the player characters can move from room to room and interact with objects inside. They will contain "empty" rooms, "monsters", traps, and treasure. They are also kind of like monster lairs in that they are home to a type of "monster" - broadly speaking, most often men and/or demi-humans, but more specifically, powerful NPCs that are very much like the player characters themselves, plus their henchmen, men-at-arms, special followers, pets, and the like.

Strongholds are tricky because they are very much real places, and complex ones at that. You'll want to have some knowledge about different types of real-world strongholds and how they functioned. You have to think about how real-world strongholds were constructed and defended, and anticipate ways in which your players might want to infiltrate or lay siege to them. You have to think about who all lives there and how much room is needed to house them.

Dungeons are similarly complex, but they're not exactly real places. It might be hard to imagine them without something historical to reference, but there are often robust procedures for designing them, and lots of advice on blogs. Because they're not really real, you can also let your imagination run wild. 

Monster lairs are "real" in the sense that bears and wolves and the like are a sort of "monster" that lives in our own world, and you can somewhat easily imagine what such a place would be like if instead an owlbear lived there, or what an otherwise normal cottage would be like if a leprechaun were instead its resident. They're also not usually especially complex, so there isn't a huge cognitive load when designing them.

There are also more fantastic elements to consider. What spells are laid upon the stronghold? Are there any monstrous inhabitants kept as pets - perhaps a subdued dragon or some enslaved monsters? Perhaps it's a stronghold like in OD&D, with heroes riding griffons and rocs, or defended by chimeras, trolls, manticores, and the like:

Just as you might steal some dungeons for your sandbox to lighten your workload, you can steal strongholds too. You can pretty easily steal the Keep on the Borderlands, Castle Ravenloft, the Hall of the Fire Giant King, or whatever. But you can't always steal exactly what you need, and you might want to create something original. It's not much fun to just use the Keep on the Borderlands over and over again. Is there a good adventure out there which features a fortified druid's grove? I don't know. I'll probably have to make one.

Because they are complex locations, inaccessible by design, ruled by powerful NPCs, and inhabited by large numbers of potentially hostile defenders, I generally assume that NPC strongholds will be one of the last places which the player characters explore in depth. Thus, they usually wind up at the very end of my list of sandbox locations to develop in more detail.

As with every location in my sandbox, before I go into more detail, I start with a minimalist sketch. For strongholds, this includes the stronghold type, who rules it, and how the ruler and their followers might react upon first meeting the player characters, as well as how they relate to those locations which surround them.

For the type of stronghold, I use this handy table from the AD&D DMG:

(Spoiler: The section on CONSTRUCTION AND SIEGE ENGINES really doesn't provide any details about castle types aside from how long it takes to build them. There's lot of information about excavation and mining - including notes on the efficiency of slave labor - a sort of glossary of castle features and how much each costs, and some rules for sieges. This section is kind of interesting, and the glossary is worth looking at, but it won't help you too much in actually designing such a location for your game.)

A castle can be totally deserted, deserted and inhabited by a monster, inhabited by humans (that is, bandits, brigands, berserkers, or dervishes), or inhabited by character-type NPCs:

Both types of deserted castles fall into the dungeon bucket, so we'll focus on just the other two types. There's another table for determining the type of humans in the castle:

In the case of character-types, it isn't as simple, because in AD&D, the stronghold ruler's class will also have some effect on what type of castle can be built. For example, a thief can only rule a small stronghold in or near a town or city, a monk can only rule a moat house or friary, and a druid's stronghold must be in the wilderness. This means that depending on which class is rolled as the ruler, we might be limited in which type of castle is possible.

I wrote up a handy summary of which type of character can rule a stronghold at what level and what type of stronghold they can rule, which is worth checking out. If you're not using AD&D, it isn't super important, but I think it's at least illuminating, and you can always use AD&D's tables for worldbuilding, even if you're using a different system.

Because the ruler's class affects what type of stronghold can be built and where, I determine that first using this table:

The level column is not quite accurate, which I elaborate on in the aforementioned post on the subject. 

In AD&D, only certain races can attain a high enough level in their class to build a stronghold. For example, only human clerics can reach a high enough level to build a stronghold, so if I roll cleric, I know my ruler is human. 

Similarly, if my stronghold is in the wilderness, I know it can't be ruled by a thief. If I roll monk, I know it must be a moat house or friary, and so on. It's a lot to wrap your head around, which is why I thought it worthwhile to summarize in that earlier post.

Knowing who my ruler is, I can then determine their alignment. This is also dependent upon class, such that paladins will always be Lawful Good, rangers always Good, druids always Neutral, and so on. This then modifies their reaction rolls pertaining to the player characters and their neighbors in the sandbox. 

Using my B1 sandbox as an example, I know that the brigands ruling Fayette's Hold are unfriendly towards Timbershore. They're not hostile, so they aren't attacking the town or riding around the countryside killing people, but they've occupied Ebongrove, the thorp at the foot of the castle and just outside of town, and are demanding tribute from Lambrecht, the wizard who rules his own stronghold in town. I also know that the brigands were originally recruited by Lambrecht to subvert the castle's rightful ruler, and that they're now holding the ruler for ransom. The people of Ebongrove are hoping someone will free Fayette from her cell. Lambrecht is attempting to court the ogres of Okorg's Den to aid him in retaking the castle.

That's pretty much all I need for a first draft for my sandbox. To get this location ready for play, I have to go deeper, starting with who all lives there.

In the case of bandits, berserkers, brigands, and dervishes, I simply use the numbers in the Monster Manual. For character-type NPCs, it will be more complicated:

1d4+1 henchmen, light and heavy cavalry led by fighters, and any additional special followers appropriate for the class. (If I'm interpreting this correctly, a cleric's stronghold is instead garrisoned by their special followers, while the other classes get both their special followers and the garrison listed above? Unclear.) 

The classes of henchmen are determined on a separate table than that used to determine who rules the stronghold:

This table yields slightly fewer clerics, fighters, magic-users, illusionists, assassins, and monks, and more druids, paladins, rangers, and thieves. I will ensure that henchmen are compatible with their masters, so a Lawful Good ruler will not have Chaotic Evil henchmen and a paladin will not have a henchman assassin. The level of these henchmen is determined by the level of the ruler:

If my hypothetical stronghold ruler is a Neutral Good 9th level human cleric, each of their henchmen will be 6th level, and none will be Evil. I find it fun to turn these henchmen into their own little "factions" of a sort, making opposed reaction rules with the ruler to determine whether they're favored, neglected, or on the outs, if they're fanatically loyal, unhappy, or actively seeking to betray their master. Remember that henchmen are, at the beginning, the pitiable wretches of the AD&D world, so it isn't hard to believe they might turn their cloaks if they think they might receive better treatment elsewhere.

A good example of this can be found in my Hexmas sandbox, the Jinglebell Barrens. The Tower of Noel is ruled by a fighter with several henchmen, each with their own personalities and agendas.

A stronghold's garrison will have a mix of from 38 to 64 men-at-arms (average 51). I don't love that this is unaffected by the size of the stronghold, so I like to roll as normal for a medium stronghold, roll twice for a small stronghold and keep the lower roll, and roll twice for a large stronghold and keep the higher roll. So a tower will have 2d4(keep lowest)+8 heavy cavalry, a large shell keep will have d4+8 as normal, and a fortress complex will have 2d4(keep highest)+8.

On to special followers. Clerics get a mix of cavalry and infantry:

Fighters get a medium level leader type and a company of either heavy infantry, crossbowmen, cavalry, or a mix of light cavalry and infantry:

Rangers are awesome and get 2d12 followers of mixed types:

This will mostly be normal stuff like character-type humans and demi-humans, but the lower you roll on 2d12, the more likely you are to get really cool stuff like giant animals, monsters, fey creatures, dragons, giants, treants, and lycanthropes:

This is the only thing in AD&D that really hints at OD&D's table of weird stronghold defenders, and that's too bad. There's no reason that your fighter's stronghold can't be garrisoned by griffon riders or your cleric's temple haunted by undead, but it would be a lot cooler if it was made explicit in some of these tables. Still it is really sick that if you play a ranger you have a chance of a dragon or giant just showing up to your stronghold to hang out.

Anyway, thieves get 4d6 thieves of 1st to 7th level and assassins (upon usurping the reigning Guildmaster/mistress) get 7d4 assassins of 1st to 8th level, 75% of which desert during the overthrow and are replaced by new 1st level recruits. There are more tables for those but they're not really worth sharing following those cool ranger tables.

After all that, you have to do the actual designing of the place, including layout and keying. Since strongholds are real historical places, you can do some research into each kind to figure out what exactly you're creating. You probably know what a tower is, but you might want to look up what exactly is a moat house or a shell keep or a concentric castle. 

Since medieval strongholds are not one of my special interests, I did some research. YouTube has a lot of videos describing different types of medieval strongholds, some with 3D renderings/walkthroughs detailing what might be found inside. I also watched some videos about how various defenses worked and how attackers usually laid siege to such places. I found it all enlightening and super interesting, and it's gotten my gears turning thinking about how I'd handle these scenarios in a D&D game.

The stronghold's character should be informed by the ruler of the stronghold. A thief's stronghold will be filled with nefarious traps. A magic-user's or cleric's will be warded by magic and protected by certain conjured beings. An illusionist's stronghold will be a very frustrating place indeed.

It's good to look over the list of spells available to the ruler and their henchmen to determine what sorts of magical effects might pervade the place, with a special eye towards those with a permanent duration. The stronghold may be guarded by animated dead. It may be lit entirely by continual light spells. Certain areas may be trapped with a glyph of warding. The stronghold may be surrounded by an overgrown thicket affected by plant growth. Locked doors may be affected by Leomund's trap. Other doors may be secured with wizard lock or affected by fire trap. A wall of iron may enclose the stronghold in place of wood or stone walls. Earthworks may be formed by move earth. An antipathy spell may repel attackers from a certain area. Clone vats may be found in one chamber. The windows of the ruler's chambers may be reinforced by glassteel. Permanency can make permanent the effects of enlarge, fear, gust of wind, invisibility, magic mouth, prismatic sphere, stinking cloud, wall of fire, wall of force, and web. 

There are many possibilities which will make the stronghold even more challenging than it otherwise would be, and this can quickly get out of hand. At the same time, this is the place where the NPC lives, so why shouldn't the wizard secure every door in the place with a wizard lock? Some spells will have costly material components or will be too high level to cast flippantly, so these should be treated with special consideration.

For the layout, you might consider using historical castle floorplans. As some of my contemporaries pointed out when I raised this subject, real-life castles are not super gameable. They are impregnable deathtraps which offer very little choice to player characters who might want to infiltrate or assault them, which is by design. They don't make for good dungeons. 

I think that's basically fine, because the types of strongholds in question aren't dungeons and aren't supposed to be. They're what the player characters' own armies of followers and men-at-arms are for - wargaming and sieges. This post isn't about adjudicating mass combat or siege scenarios, so although the topics go hand in hand, we'll leave them for now.

With a good plan the party might be able to stealthily scale the stronghold's walls and neutralize its defenders, or at higher levels they could teleport into the ruler's inner sanctum and confront them directly, but otherwise they'll need an army of their own.

...Unless there was some other way in. I seem to remember a famous D&D module which takes place in a dungeon built under an old NPC stronghold and a passing assumption in the AD&D DMG that player characters (and, presumably, NPCs) will always build dungeons beneath their strongholds. Such a dungeon could not only expand the functional square footage of such a stronghold, but also serve as a secret escape route for the stronghold's ruler in the event of a siege. And where there's a way out...

The dungeon beneath an NPC's stronghold is as important as the stronghold itself. Every NPC stronghold should have one. Like the stronghold above, these should be informed by the character of the NPC who rules it. You might go the B1 route and make this the mad labyrinth of a true dungeon sicko, or perhaps it is a more sensible extension of the stronghold itself - a series of cellars, cisterns, prison chambers, death traps, and treasure vaults. 

Is the dungeon garrisoned with men-at-arms like the stronghold above, or have they captured a menagerie of monsters and locked them down below to deter any would-be besiegers? This might be where the cleric keeps their undead servitors, or where the magic-user has bound their conjured elemental and fiends into service. This might be where most of the thief's traps are laid. 

Through the dungeon, the player characters might gain access to whatever area of the stronghold the ruler calls home. There will be guards to be dealt with inside, but it's still a lot better than storming the stronghold's walls and being peppered with arrows, bludgeoned with falling rocks, and scalded with boiling oil in the mad scramble over the walls. 

The assumption that characters will always build dungeons beneath their strongholds not only provides a more convenient way in for a small band of adventurers, but also a handy justification for defaulting to D&D's default mode of play, where the game is at its strongest. Whether intentional or not, it's a genius bit of design which simplifies a location which poses unique and difficult challenges for the player characters and DM alike.

In a way, strongholds are settlement, dungeon, and monster lair all in one. Preparing one for your sandbox requires you to combine approaches from all three of the former location types along with an understanding of the real-world places in our own history. It is no easy feat, and the resources provided by the game itself are somewhat lacking in this area. If you manage to design a good one, however, you'll be rewarded with a location that can support a variety of modes of play, from social intrigue to mass combat to your usual dungeon fare.

AD&D's Domain Game: What to Learn, What to Leave, and What to Love

I'm currently in the process of trying to puzzle out how exactly "territory development" (what we would now probably call the "domain game") works in AD&D, as described on page 93 of the DMG, TERRITORY DEVELOPMENT BY PLAYER CHARACTERS:

The process begins when the player decides to establish their character's stronghold. They pick a spot, the DM provides a map of the hex and the six surrounding hexes, and the player character and their henchmen and retainers go to the place to explore it and begin construction:

In the example, the player character wishes to construct a stronghold 100 miles from a border town, although there's no indication at this time that there's any required distance (I'll get back to that). 

The DM must prepare a small scale map of the terrain in the area, 200 yards per hex. An area which is nine such hexes in width then makes up a larger one-mile hex. It and the surrounding six hexes are the area to be explored and mapped. Once they are all mapped, workers can be brought in to begin construction. A garrison has to be present to protect the workers, as each day there's a 1-in-20 chance of a monster wandering in from the area beyond these seven hexes, unless the area beyond is being patrolled:

I tried to visualize what this area would look like in Hexographer and came up with the following:

The smaller hexes are 200 yards across. The larger hexes are one-mile across. They are nine hexes across at their widest (from easternmost to westernmost vertex), so I think this is indeed what's being described in the excerpt above. Each one-mile hex contains 44 (!) 200-yard hexes.

The DM "checks but once for random monsters in each hex". Does this refer to the 200-yard hexes or the one-mile hexes? I don't know. One monster per one-mile hex sounds like plenty to me, and two monster lairs potentially within 200 yards of one another strains credulity, but wandering through 44 200-yard hexes with a chance for a monster to be encountered in just one of them seems rather droll. Indeed, this next section suggests that the DM only check for monsters once per one-mile hex after this "core area" is mapped out:

This sounds to me like, when exploring the "core area" of seven one-mile hexes, the player character explores each 200-yard hex one by one, with the DM checking for monsters (and possibly randomly determining terrain) in each one. It is only after the core area is mapped that the player character begins more quickly exploring the surrounding one-mile hexes (instead of the 200-yard hexes within), at which point monster checks are made "as is normal for outdoor adventuring" (emphasis mine).

Furthermore, once per day, the DM checks to see if a monster wanders into any one hex which borders an unexplored hex. Once per week, the DM checks to see if a monster wanders into "the central part of the cleared territory" (this I take to mean any explored hex which doesn't border an unexplored hex, not necessarily the central hex where the stronghold is being built, but I could be wrong).

Here's my attempt to visualize what this "core area" might look like (using the provided example of wooded hills, though I'm using a variation of the Welsh Piper method instead of AD&D's method for randomly determining terrain), with the hex where I think the player character might locate their stronghold indicated with a star:

According to the AD&D DMG, we're to check for encounters based on population density (this isn't what I usually do, but will for the sake of this example):

Since this area is 100 miles from the nearest border town, it's probably uninhabited/wilderness area. That means 1-in-10 of these 200-yard hexes will have a monster in them. Here's what that looks like:

That's 28 monsters. Am I doing this right? I honestly have no idea. I'm doing as described, checking each hex for a monster, not spacing them out according to any sort of logic or reason. It seems strange that the southernmost hex would have three monsters each within 200 yards of the other two, but this is what I got by following the procedure.

Again, once this is all mapped, construction can begin (the DMG does not explicitly state that the monsters have to be driven off or killed before construction can begin, unless I'm missing something), and the player character will then begin exploring the one-mile hexes surrounding these hexes, with checks for monsters proceeding according to the normal rules for wilderness exploration. 

Meanwhile, there is a chance per day that a new monster will wander into a border hex and a chance per week that a monster will wander into a central (non-border) hex. This can be prevented by signaling to intelligent monsters that the area is dangerous to them, patrolling frequently and aggressively, and by organized settlement of the cleared lands:

Once the stronghold is finished, if proper patrols are organized, only weekly checks for monstrous intruders are needed (one each on the Uninhabited/Wilderness table and on the Inhabited table). If a road is built through the area, checks are instead made on the Inhabited table three times per week:

The Inhabited table is made up of many (presumably) good (i.e., profitable) things, like dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings, leprechauns, merchants, nomads, pilgrims, and mundane animals. It also has some bad things, like ankhegs, bandits, brigands, bulettes, giants, humanoids, lycanthropes, manticores, ogres, and all manner of undead. Thus, a domain with a road through it will more frequently be settled by men and demihumans and fey creatures, but will also more frequently be preyed upon by certain monsters and haunted by ghosts. The distinction between the Uninhabited/Wilderness table and the Inhabited table has always struck me as a neat way of modeling which monsters are attracted to human inhabitation and which ones stay far away.

The DM no longer checks for monsters from Uninhabited/Wilderness areas once a territory of more than 30 miles from the center (here I'm guessing the center hex, not necessarily the exact location of the stronghold itself) is patrolled or inhabited. That's 30 one-mile hexes that must be explored and then patrolled in all directions (961 hexes total).The monsters from the Inhabited table continue to show up and settle in the area, and the area returns to wilderness if not patrolled or inhabited:

Inhabited by whom? Well, I guess the merchants, demihumans, and fey creatures. Presumably the nomads and pilgrims are not settling, as wandering is part of their nature. I suppose homesteads will begin to crop up. These will grow into thorps, then into hamlets, then villages, then towns, and finally cities, but how exactly this transpires is left to the imagination.

The next paragraph answers the question - how far must a player character's stronghold be from civilization? Well, it needn't be far at all. In fact, it is suggested that the stronghold might be "located in the heart of some powerful state":

As is often the case in AD&D, the emphasis is on maintaining the campaign as challenging and interesting. In this scenario, the stronghold ruler is not clearing monsters from their land and then holding it against wilderness incursions, but instead dealing with "intrigue and petty wars...jealous neighbors, assassins, and the like" which threaten the fief.

Next we come right back to the matter of inhabitation of wilderness domains:

Again, once the stronghold is finished and patrols have cleared the area, inhabitants will come to settle. I think this is at the same time as when the DM begins checking weekly on both the Uninhabited/Wilderness and Inhabited tables (i.e., before the 30 surrounding one-mile hexes have been cleared and patrolled, but again it isn't entirely clear).

The inhabitants "will match the area and the alignment of the character", which is interesting. Lawful Good creatures will settle in a paladin's domain, for example. Random monsters will settle in the area, "making proper subservience calls upon the master of the territory". I imagine this means that the Lawful Good dwarves who move into the paladin's realm will become loyal inhabitants. Would the Chaotic Evil ogres who move into the Chaotic Evil cleric's realm likewise become the cleric's vassals?

Hamlets, thorps, and other settlements will begin to crop up, starting near the stronghold and working towards the fringes, but no indication is given as to how quick this settling process is, how long it takes one settlement type to grow into another, or anything like that. (OD&D, for its part, suggests 2-8 villages of 100-400 inhabitants each per territory, but it also leaves to the imagination how exactly these come to be.)

Once the settlements are established, "they can be used as centers for activity - good or evil or whatever." They "attract more of the ilk which inhabit them, draw opponents sworn to exterminate them, trigger raids or reprisals, etc." The domain game becomes less about fending off wilderness incursions and more about managing the region's inhabitants and dealing with complications that arise as a result of - presumably - the ideology of the player character and their people. The paladin will need to thwart attacks from the forces of Evil Chaos, while the Chaotic Evil cleric will be dealing with assaults from the realms of Good and Law.

What's interesting is the onus placed on actions taken by the player character - that is, "forming active groups from the population base and doing something." The DM is intended to "initiate by setting up a series of circumstances which will bear upon the territory" only as a last resort. Is that to suggest that the paladin's realm is only besieged by Evil Chaos after the paladin has instigated the conflict in some way? Do the forces of Law and Good simply not mind their Chaotic Evil cleric neighbor until his ogre vassals start plundering their land? I like the emphasis on player agency, but this doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

One thing that strikes me is that the domain and its inhabitants read like an extension of the player character. The regular inhabitants are all of the same alignment, pay taxes (as indicated in the class descriptions in the PHB), and exist for the player character to form "active groups" and do "something". Are we talking about raising armies? How many peasant levies can be raised from the thorp, hamlet, village, or town? It isn't clear, but clearly these inhabitants are intended as additional resources and game pieces for the player to employ in whatever their ends may be. They need to be protected, not necessarily because the character is a Good hero but because they share the character's ideology and are useful in some way.

Next, we are told that the "real benefit" of player character territories is what they contribute to the DM's milieu:

When the player character constructs their stronghold, the player should provide the DM with floor plans (including dungeons) and a map of the immediate area surrounding the stronghold. This is so the DM can plan sieges and other attacks upon the fortification:

Finally, if a player leaves the campaign or switches to a new character, the DM can take control of the former character's domain and run it as they wish:

I would be remiss not to mention the possibility of uprisings if the player characters forces peasantry, serfdom, or slavery upon their subjects:

Peasantry/serfdom is not the accepted norm for common people in the AD&D world. D&D is not medieval.

This also gives us a window into what it looks like for a player character to raise levies from the normal inhabitants of their domain. 1-in-5 of the inhabitants will be fighters (which I take to mean adults capable of fighting, not individuals with a level in the fighter class). These troops will be 0 level peasants, treated "as up to 1-1 HD" monsters according to the EXPERIENCE POINTS VALUE OF MONSTERS section of the DMG:

This means the average single dwelling (population 6.5) will yield one troop, the average thorp (population 50) will yield ten, the average hamlet (population 250) will yield 50, the average village (population 750) will yield 150, the average town (population 4,000) will yield 800, and the average city (population 35,000) will yield 7,000.

If we standardize the values provided by the DMG's INHABITATION table, that area of 961 one-mile hexes (960, not counting the hex in which the stronghold itself is located) could eventually support 28 to 29 single dwellings, 19 to 20 thorps, 19 to 20 hamlets, 19 to 20 villages, 9 to 10 towns, and 9 to 10 cities. On average, that could yield from 74,000 to 82,000 peasant levies in a new campaign or uprising. 

That seems a bit hard to believe, so I am probably over-interpreting the available information. The whole point of this section is that these people do not tolerate being subject to peasantry, serfdom, or slavery, so it seems unlikely that the ruler could call on their subjects (if they can be called "subjects" at all) in such great numbers. The numbers given also pertain to an enthusiastic uprising in which everyone who can pick up a weapon for the cause does so. Perhaps in an organized war effort the numbers should instead be cut in half. 

Perhaps the intention is for the player character to lead campaigns with only the strength of their follower armies and mercenaries, but it seems a bit hard to believe that these tax-paying settlements contain no loyal warrior subjects who can be called upon in a conflict.

In any case, if the uprising (or perhaps campaign) lasts more than a month, you add 10% to the total force for each month, and upgrade 10% of the total force to regular men-at-arms (1-1 to 1 HD monsters) and give them improved tactics. This suggests that perhaps a more warlike ruler cultivates a more warlike populace over time. (OD&D, of course, famously suggests the insertion of a Conan-type "to bring matters into line" in the event of an uprising.)

There would also eventually be two additional strongholds in the area which, since the player character's stronghold controls the area, are likely vassals or henchmen of the character, and so would contribute their own forces as well (men-at-arms as well as whatever followers are attracted by, say, a fighter or cleric). Normally some of these strongholds would be inhabited instead by bandits, berserkers, brigands, or the like, or become deserted and potentially inhabited by monsters, but since this is a newly developed territory such a takeover or ruination would have to happen as part of an in-game event.

Now, is this system good game design? I don't know, I probably wouldn't use it as is. I think it's pretty unlikely that the player will say "I want to go 100 miles away from this town and build my stronghold on some random hill, where I don't even know what the terrain is like or where monsters may be." I don't really like the idea of switching to a much finer-grained scale of wilderness mid-game and forcing the players to laboriously explore some 300 hexes and slog their way through 30 monster lairs to establish their domain, then explore and inhabit or patrol an additional 950 hexes just to stop monsters from wandering in all the time. 

More likely is that the player characters will set up their domain in some place that they're familiar with - the existing campaign area. I obviously make a lot of sandboxes, and I arrive at the first session of the campaign with a complete map of settlements, strongholds, ruins, and monster lairs. Once the player characters familiarize themselves with the area and grow in power, I think they're more likely to build their stronghold in a region that's already settled, to take a readymade stronghold from someone else, or to rehabilitate a ruined stronghold into something they can use. If there are monsters nearby, they'll have to deal with that, but I wouldn't require them to meticulously explore a huge area before they could even begin building the thing.

I do like the idea of checking regularly to see if monsters wander into the area from the wilderness, but feel that this could be applied more broadly to the campaign map as a whole. Maybe you check each unoccupied border hex of the campaign map on a regular basis to see what new monsters move into the area, and maybe likewise track their movements from one hex to another as time passes and they search for a lair to settle in. Maybe they stumble into the player character's domain and stir up trouble in their search for a home or for prey. You could have some sort of minigame for when the monster wanders into a patrolled area to see if the patrol can handle it or if the monster overwhelms them and continues on its march.

I really like the image of a player character's (or NPC adventurer's) territory being surrounded by monster carcasses and totems to ward off intelligent monsters. When the player characters see that, they know they're entering into some powerful NPC's domain.

I also like that different types of monsters are drawn to strongholds more frequently if they're joined to the rest of civilization by a road. Building a road between the stronghold and the nearest settlement is a matter of great convenience, allowing expedited travel back and forth. It will attracts merchants and elves and dwarves to the domain, but it will also attract all the men and monsters that prey upon civilization. 

I like the distinction between wilderness domains and those within settled regions. Do you want to deal with monstrous incursions, or politics and intrigue? Would you rather defend against the occasional orc warband wandering into your domain, or with the neighboring warlord's organized campaign, a king somewhere demanding your fealty, and assassins poisoning your food?

Lastly, I like that the alignment of the player character seems to influence who is drawn to the domain and for what purpose. The Good character's realm will be inhabited by Good people and threatened by Evil-doers, and vice versa. One realm is populated by dwarves and elves and fey, while the other is inhabited by manticores and orcs and ogres. I imagine that both types of domain are not entirely harmonious internally - I'm sure the dwarves and elves have beef and the fey play tricks on people, and the orcs and ogres contend with one another unless united by bribes and coercion from the local ruler.

This concept could be broadened beyond the realm of alignment only instead to the nature of the character in general. A dwarf's domain will attract more dwarves and an elf's domain will attract more elves. A paladin and a ranger will both rule Good domains, but their inhabitants will look very different, as will a cleric's and a druid's.

While I like the emphasis on player agency in the text, I don't much like the attitude that intervention on the DM's part is a last resort option. It doesn't make much sense to me that (if I'm reading this right), the Lawful Good neighbors of the player character's Chaotic Evil domain will only make some effort to overthrow the neighboring ruler if the player character takes the initiative first. If you're building a barony of ogres and mustering an army within your borders, the powers that be will take notice and intervene to the extent they are able.

The takeaway here is less that you should use specifically AD&D's system for any of this, but that you can take away certain broad ideas when including domains (whether player characters' or NPCs') in your campaign:

• Monsters move around the wilderness looking for places to live.
• Domain rulers have to contend with monsters wandering into their territory.
• Domain rulers can prevent monsters from wandering into their territory by placing warning signs, patrolling the surrounding area, and inducing settlers to inhabit it.
• Roads connect the domain to civilization as a whole, but introduce their own complications.
• Domains in the wilderness and those in inhabited areas have their own distinct complications.
• The character of the domain's ruler will influence who lives there and who opposes them, what their goals are, what problems they deal with, and the like.
• The inhabitants of the domain are somewhat an extension of the character to be used to raise funds and armies and achieve whatever it is the player desires. 
• Likewise, these inhabitants are a resource of the character which can be attacked much like anything else on the character sheet (in this case, they're almost like the domain's "equipment"). They are usually attacked by the domain's ideologically opposed enemies and neighbors.

That's my attempt to reckon with AD&D's domain game. While a lot of AD&D's actual mechanics often seem archaic or inscrutable, its broad ideas and procedures are often quite good. This is one of the few times where I find the procedure itself to be difficult to wrap my head around and borderline unusable, but once again the big ideas and overall feel of the system is solid, and there's a lot of good stuff to take away for whatever D&D-like game you may be playing.

Play Environments, Power, Complexity, and Agency in D&D

Location types exist in close proximity to one another but serve very different gameplay functions.

There are basically four main location types in D&D (and D&D-like games): settlements, strongholds, dungeons, and lairs.

You might disagree with this taxonomy. The Welsh Piper's Hex-Based Campaign Design identifies two other types of "major encounters" (or locations): religious orders and natural phenomena, as well as many more "minor encounters" (or locations): camps, beacons, construction sites, battlefields, crossings, gathering places, and more. Sachagoat's Re-Inventing the Wilderness identifies not just towns, lairs, and dungeons but also "scenes" and "utilities". Hexographer has icons for oases, geysers, windmills, wineries, and graveyards. 

You can't really boil all the locations player characters might encounter in their adventures down to just these four broad categories. But these are, I believe, the "core four" locations around which a D&D-like game tends to be structured. They are the major locations characters will be interacting with again and again. 

There might be one settlement or stronghold which serves as a home base, a single megadungeon that props up the whole campaign, and one big bad monster lair such as a dragon's den or an orc camp which threatens the entire region until it is dealt with, or there may be many settlements to familiarize oneself with, many strongholds whose rulers must be obeyed or subverted, many dungeons to haul treasure out of, and many monster lairs to clear out or otherwise deal with.

Three of the four location types are those on the AD&D DMG's Inhabitation table:

Lairs are not included because it is assumed that these will be discovered when monsters are randomly encountered in their lair based on the % in lair statistic. I prefer to stock my sandboxes with these lairs ahead of time, which makes them set locations. Thus, when I create a sandbox, I'm populating it with these four location types. First I'm checking each hex for human inhabitation (including ruins). Once all areas of inhabitation are determined, I check the remaining hexes for monster lairs.

While I'm not going to argue that Gygax was right about everything or that his approach to designing D&D should color our perception of all such games in the present and into perpetuity, I do find this distillation of location types into a manageable few to be appealing. There are certainly others, but to me these feel very much like the most important, central locations in a campaign. (I replace religious orders, as defined by the Welsh Piper, with strongholds ruled by religious character-types like clerics, druids, paladins, and monks. And how many groves, stables, windmills, and wineries are keystone locations in the average campaign? I think it's not many.)

For further reading, I recommend my post on creating minimalist sketches of these four location types for the initial stages of sandbox prep. I think that's a good primer for better understanding the four location types and what I consider to be the most important information to know about each before diving into more detail-oriented prep.

What interests me about these four location types is what gameplay utility and experience each provides - that is, what is each location type for and how does it feel to interact with each?

Since my primary focus at this time is AD&D, I will be analyzing this topic through that lens. Not every D&D-like game will have settlements filled with unhelpful NPCs and burdensome taxes, strongholds ruled by character-types of a specific level with a specific number of men-at-arms, dungeons which conform to that particular early D&D logic, or lairs containing hundreds of orcs, but AD&D has come to color my perception of D&D and its derivatives as a whole, and many of the ideas here are still broadly applicable to similar games.

Settlements

I've already written a great deal about settlements in AD&D, the purpose they serve, and the vibe they give off. In short, they are incredibly useful places where player characters can accomplish mundane tasks such as reprovisioning, recruiting henchmen, and gathering information, as well as more fantastic efforts such as acquiring spellcasting services from high-level NPCs or even auctioning off captive dragons and selling monster organs.

While being useful, settlements are also often unfriendly, oppressive, and incredibly dangerous places where player characters are strangers and viewed as threats to the powers-that-be, where relentless taxes check their rampant accumulation of wealth, NPCs are sensitive jerks, diseases flourish, powerful factions war with one another in the streets, and almost everyone you encounter is trying to trick you, call the guards on you, rob you, fight you, or even kill you for looking at them funny.

Due to their nature as densely packed social environments with labyrinthine rules, odd taboos, and resourceful individuals and groups with independent interests in the player characters and what they do, settlements are immensely complex environments where the players must carefully consider and prepare for each move they make. 

It is this element of settlements which enables them to provide their other gameplay function (aside from sheer utility): political intrigue and high-level faction play. Above all, settlements are a test of the player's mastery of the complex social fabric.

Settlements are the lifeblood of an adventurer, allowing them to turn treasure into gold, gold into experience points, experience points into levels, NPCs into contacts, contacts into information, and information into further adventure. They also don't exist solely for the player characters' pleasure and utility. While they might serve as a home base to the characters, they are also highly dangerous. A wise player of a low level character will spend as little time as possible within a large settlement like a town or city before turning their attention back to those environs in which the adventurer truly belongs.

Dungeons

Dungeons are the low level adventurer's true home. Considering that low level player characters in a town or city might stumble into a high-level NPC who has a problem with them, a demon that's escaped a cleric's or wizard's control, or a vampire that wants to suck their blood, they really shouldn't be there if they can avoid it - or at the very least, they should avoid going out for a walk at night as much as they can. 

Similarly, they have no armies with which to contend with stronghold rulers or enough renown to be welcomed into the Keep on the Borderlands's inner bailey, and they are not strong enough to venture into the unpredictable wilderness and start clearing out dragon dens and orc camps. Dungeons, on the other hand, are much more suitable environments for early career adventurers.

Dungeons are "balanced". The 1st level of the dungeon is fit for exploration by 1st level characters. The monsters therein are drawn from a handful of tables including creatures that such characters could reasonably fight or otherwise overcome or engage with. It gets more dangerous the further down they go. Unlike the town or city, the dungeon is a simple environment with rules which are fairly easy to grasp. 

Obviously, that doesn't mean the dungeon is safe - there are monsters, tricks, traps, and other nasty things. Higher level monsters can wander up from deeper levels of the dungeon. A trick stairway might turn into a slide that sends the party down more levels than they wished to descend. A falling ceiling trap may instantly kill an adventurer of any level. They might get lost within, never to escape.

The value of a dungeon to an adventure is that it is a relatively simple environment with easily understood rules and structure. It is a place to collect treasure and experience points early in the game when the player characters are most vulnerable. Dungeons do not usually contain groups of monsters which require a small army to uproot, and there is not usually a powerful ruler sticking their nose in the party's business and exerting their will upon them.

That's not to say that dungeons are without intrigue. Just as settlements offer complex political faction play, dungeons have factions too - they're just (usually) smaller. The factions in dungeons aren't guilds of thieves and assassins with high-level cutthroats at their disposal or merchant consortiums that control the levers of power - they're groups of 2d4 hobgoblins, 4d4+2 kobolds, and d6+6 orcs (at least initially).

While factions and social play are important in dungeons, this is not the primary challenge of these locations. Rather, dungeons are a test of the player's mastery of a space. The primary mode of play in these environments is exploration. 

Play in dungeons is concerned with figuring out and dealing with whatever's in the next room. If there are monsters, how do the player characters overcome them, circumvent them, or collaborate with them? If there's a trick, what does it do? If there's a trap, how does the party disarm it or get around it? If there's treasure, how do they identify it and get it out? 

More advanced is not just confronting the dungeon room by room, but understanding the broader picture and how the room fits into the greater space. How does the room connect to others? Can the party use that information to plan an ambush or a tactical retreat? Where is it safe to rest? Where are the secret doors? The stairways? The hidden dungeon entrances and exits? What is the fastest route to the party's goal which allows them to minimize encounters with wandering monsters?

Exploration is key to settlement play as well, but like much of settlement play, the medium through which information is acquired is social. Players learn where to find an inn, where to buy equipment, and where to go to recruit henchmen by asking around. They learn how to buy and sell smuggled goods, where the assassins' guildhall is, and how to infiltrate the palace by leveraging their connections. They don't (usually) do it by mapping all the buildings on graph paper, looking for spatial discrepancies, and knocking on the right 10' section of wall (although they could, I suppose). Navigating the physical space of the settlement is less important than navigating its social dynamics.

Strongholds and Lairs

I feel compelled to address both strongholds and lairs together, since the two are difficult to parse. Is not a stronghold the lair of its ruler? Is not a monster's lair a place where it fortifies itself against intrusion by adventurers? A group of bandits, berserkers, brigands, or dervishes might rule a stronghold as their lair. A group of demihumans or humanoids or even a dragon might lair in a deserted stronghold.

It is worth pointing out that there are different kinds of monster lairs. What exactly a lair looks like is determined by the type of monster that lives there. It could be a cave, a camp, a village, a castle, or something else entirely. The most important distinction is not so much the type of place but the quality of creature therein - namely, is the monster intelligent or not, and does it appear in numbers or with minions?

The lair of an owlbear is a relatively simple - though still dangerous - environment, while a lair of orcs is more complex because of their greater numbers, ability to organize to repel invaders, and respond intelligently to repeated attempts to infiltrate their home. Whether they live in a cave, fortified village, or ruin will make a difference, but not a huge one. A dragon's lair might be comparable to an owlbear's if it's a dimwitted variety of dragon. It will be more complex if the dragon is intelligent or cunning, and even more so if the dragon has enlisted a small humanoid army as worshipers or mercenaries.

The idea for this post initially came to me after reading dungeon modules B1: In Search of the Unknown and B2: The Keep on the Borderlands. I felt that B1 is a good example of a prototypical dungeon (itself a deserted stronghold) and that B2's titular Keep and Caves of Chaos are good examples of a stronghold and a lair (or series of lairs), respectively. 

But reading through the Caves of Chaos, with their large homogenous populations of allied monsters who can all be mobilized to ward off intrusion together, along with their tightly-packed corridors where control of strategic chokepoints would prove essential, I wondered, "Is this really that different from a stronghold?" Whether the players choose to clear out the Caves or ally with their inhabitants to instead lay siege to the Keep, does the actual gameplay experience of doing either of those two things differ all that much?

Gus L. writes about this element of Gygaxian design better than I ever could in his post on All Dead Generations, Gygax's Fortress. In it, he writes about how many of Gygax's iconic adventurers like The Keep on the Borderlands, the Against the Giants series, and the Vault of the Drow (all of which detail what I would classify as "lairs") put siege-style gameplay front and center. Siege, you say...like the thing you do to a stronghold?

This is not to say that there is otherwise no overlap between all of these location types. The ruler of a settlement might dwell in a fortified tower. The Keep on the Borderlands is a place to provision and gather information as much as the Village of Hommlet. A settlement might contain a ruined manor which is essentially a dungeon, and a dungeon might house a large group of squatters or other inhabitants which form a de facto settlement within. Monsters might lair in settlements just as they do in the wilderness, and a wilderness elf enclave is a settlement of a kind. A ruin could have once been a stronghold. Monsters lair in ruins.

But the relationship between strongholds and lairs strikes me as different because they feel so similar when you consider how the players interact with them. If the players wish to roust an evil ruler from their castle, it's going to look very similar to clearing out the Caves of Chaos - a protracted series of forays into a defensible position held by an organized, (mostly) united enemy.

Much of this can be chalked up to aesthetics. A stronghold is a stronghold because it is a tower, keep, or castle. It has a gatehouse, battlements, oil cauldrons, ballistae, catapults, or whatever. A lair is a lair because it's a cave, an informal camp, or a hut in the woods. But it isn't always that - hobgoblins and orcs sometimes lair in above ground villages with ditches, ramparts, palisades, gates, and guard towers. Many giants and aquatic creatures like locathah and tritons live in castles.

You could also attribute the difference to ideology. A stronghold is a stronghold because the creature who rules it is viewed as a person or as part of the established order, regardless of their alignment or relationship to their neighbors. A lair is a lair because it is inhabited by crude monsters who are outsiders, without rights or the privilege of simply living. It's essentially Law versus Chaos.

That's all well and good (or bad, I guess), but it's unsatisfying to me because I'm primarily concerned with the gameplay function of these locations - what use do they present to the players, and how do the players engage with them? From that perspective, how are strongholds and lairs different?

One way to think of it is how the locations project power. Strongholds control a certain area around them and collect revenue from the settlements within their domain. They send out patrols of men-at-arms led by high level fighters. The stronghold's ruler might emerge to challenge the party to a joust, demand a tithe of treasure or magic items, or ensorcel the party to send them on some quest. Monsters in their lairs, on the other hand, just wait around for the party to come kill them and take their stuff.

But this is a disservice to monsters, and not entirely true. Monsters with a lair in the area should be included on wilderness encounter tables. Orcs can go out on patrol too, mounted bandits will surely raid any inhabited areas within their sphere of influence, and flying monsters like dragons can control and have influence over the entirety of a small region, even demanding tithes of treasure from settlements within their domain much the same way a stronghold's ruler might.

You could also make a distinction between the two on the basis of their relative locations. Strongholds are generally found in inhabited areas, whereas monster lairs are found in the wilderness. Strongholds are known locations and readily accessible to the players should they have the means to take them, whereas monster lairs are hidden and remote, requiring scouting to find and wilderness travel to reach.

This too does not hold up to scrutiny. More dangerous monsters are generally found in the wilderness, yes, but monsters lair in inhabited areas as well. Humans, demihumans, humanoids, giants, and even vampires can establish their lairs in close proximity to settlements, strongholds, roads, and cultivated farmland. If one of these creatures lairs in a fortified camp or stronghold, its location is likely known, and it is probably well within reach of player characters launching forays from inhabited lands.

You could attribute the difference to logistics. Taking a stronghold requires a small army and siege weapons - but clearing some monster lairs will require these as well. According to the AD&D DMG's Appendix C, a stronghold will have its ruler, up to five henchmen, and as many as 64 men-at-arms led by four low-to-medium level fighters. On the other hand, a gnoll lair can have up to 200 gnolls, 10 leaders, a chieftain, 20 guards, and either three trolls, 16 hyenas, or 12 hyaenodons. Humans, demihumans, and other humanoids also appear in numbers up to the hundreds with leader-types and (often) other monsters in their service. 

These will need to be faced with armies as well - and in many cases, armies which are larger than those needed to deal with strongholds. Facing a monster lair in the form of the aforementioned hobgoblins' fortified village or giants' castle will likewise require the use of siege weapons, just as strongholds do.

The distinction might also be a matter of politics. Strongholds are part of the established order - they are fortified positions in which armies can be mustered, which control a surrounding area and collect revenue from its inhabitants. Powerful people within the social fabric of the campaign will generally care one way or another about what happens to a stronghold, and they will be sticking their noses in the player characters' business if they get wind of a plot to usurp a local ruler.

But that's not to say that people won't care what happens to a monster lair. Goodly folk will likely be appalled if they hear that the party led an army to massacre a village of elves, and a powerful Evil magic-user who rules the local town will be none too pleased to find that the party has slain a manticore with which the magic-user was secretly aligned. Similarly, people's feelings about the fate of a stronghold can go both ways - fury if the party burns down a monastery inhabited by peaceable monks, or jubilation if they overthrow a tyrannical warlord.

The difference is utility. A stronghold is real estate which the player characters may now control. They are probably not going to take up residence in a cave cleared of goblins (and would not be able to raise an army there or collect revenue from it in any case), and might not be able to make much use of a castle proportioned for inhabitation by giants, but a conquered stronghold is a readymade base of operations for the player characters going forward, which will come with both perks as well as obligations.

All of these locations exist on a gradient which is perhaps best viewed through the lens of power, complexity, and player agency. Dungeons are relatively simple environments where players have a high level of agency despite their characters not having much power. There are factions within, but they are small. A local ruler might have opinions about what goes on in the dungeon and may lay claim to what is hauled out of it, but their ability to exert control over it is limited. Players of low level characters by comparison have much less agency in highly complex settlements, where powerful factions and high level NPCs rule, influence, and exert themselves upon those weaker than them.

Strongholds are somewhere in the middle. They are fortified, ruled by high level NPCs, and involved in regional politics, but they are not so formidable that they cannot be overcome by medium level characters, and their position (often) on the borderlands of civilization means that the more powerful rulers of settlements' influence over them will be somewhere between that of nearby dungeons and that of the settlements themselves. However the players address them will require some consideration and planning because they are of medium complexity.

So what then is the role of monster lairs? Because they can vary so much, they fluctuate along the gradient. They are stepping stones from one level of power, complexity, and agency to the next - the owlbear den is probably more dangerous than the dungeon levels the player characters have explored up to that point, but it is not any more complex (it might even be simpler), and the players have considerable agency in addressing it because it is unlikely that anyone will retaliate against them for clearing it out. These lairs give the players the experience (both in terms of experience points as well as accumulated knowledge) to later tackle more challenging locations like strongholds.

The lair of hundreds of organized men, demihumans, or humanoids may in some cases be an even tougher nut to crack than a stronghold ruled by a character-type, but past experience with such a stronghold (and the accumulation of revenue and mustering of an army in such a place, should the characters be able to hold it) will prepare them for the challenge. It is a more complex environment than the owlbear den because the monsters there will be true factions of their own - meaning powerful individuals will have opinions about them, which in turn will limit the players' agency. Like the owlbear den before it which provided the bridge to engaging with stronghold play, this type of lair will be the launchpad into high level play in towns and cities, with the player characters now powerful enough to assert their agency there.

We can summarize the complexity/agency gradient as a semi-linear progression as follows, from low complexity/high agency environments which require only a low level of player character power to engage with to high complexity/low agency ones which require greater player character power: dungeons > simple monster lairs > strongholds > complex monster lairs > settlements. 

There are of course more complex and challenging dungeons (or simply deeper, more dangerous levels of the same dungeons in which play begins), as well as simpler settlements (a thorp and a city are very different environments). We could complicate the progression like so: dungeons/simple settlements (thorps, hamlets, and villages) > simple monster lairs > moderate complexity settlements (towns)/moderate complexity monster lairs (where monsters are intelligent/faction-like but not huge in number (a clan of ogres, for example)/strongholds > complex monster lairs (a clan of 100 orcs, for example) > complex settlements (cities).

This is reflected nicely in my sandbox for B1: In Search of the Unknown. In that post, I anticipate that the players will begin by tackling Quasqueton, then venture into the wilderness to deal with the less complex monster lairs (the leprechaun, the giant eagles, and the owlbears), then graduate to the brigand stronghold and the slightly more complex/challenging ogre lair and adventurer camp, before finally being able to confront the evil illusionist who rules the local town.

None of this is prescriptive - the illusionists' stronghold is right in the middle of town, and the adventurer camp, brigands' castle, and ogre den are nearby. There's nothing stopping the player characters from checking those places out in the very first session, but they will face considerable challenge should they choose to try confronting them. This challenge might be readily apparent to the players, but if I'm conscious of it as well, I can be sure to signpost the danger in rumor tables and interactions with NPCs.

Regardless of how exactly we define it, understanding this progression is key because it informs how campaign play is structured. Player characters begin with a relatively small amount of power and a limited ability to affect the world. They begin play in less complex environments, which they can affect without entangling themselves in overwhelming complications. As they accumulate power, their ability to affect the world grows, allowing them to tackle more challenging environments while being equipped to deal with the complications which arise.

Each of these locations is essential to a standard D&D-like game not only because they provide different gameplay experiences to the players and utilities to the characters, but because each is a stepping stone to the next type of adventure environment, allowing the campaign to evolve in scale alongside the player characters' growing ability to affect the setting.