If you’re walking in on the middle of the Advanced Fantasy Dungeons series, there’s an index here.

Despite clearly being considered important in class balancing and campaign development, rules around strongholds are almost absent from either book in second edition:

• A stronghold has sizeable manor lands
• Can develop this land, gaining a steady income
• A barony
• A whole new set of expenses.
• No longer pays living expenses.

Given the lack of clarity here, we might reach back further into first edition:

• Build times are noted:
  • Moat house, shell keep, small castle 14-20 months
  • Small castle with outer and inner walls 25-30 months
  • Medium castle with outer and inner walls 38-42 months
  • Large concentric castle, walling average town large castle (61-72 months)
• Upgrades!
• Maintenance is 1% of total cost of stronghold per month

This supports the impression that strongholds were removed either for simplicity or out of loss of space, except the only expansion in second edition is the Castle Guide.

• You can acquire land by Royal Charter, Patent of Nobility, Conquest, Purchase, Claim, Theft of Lease (which reminds me, in the treasure section of the DMG it mentions deeds as treasure)
• Obscene amount of detail on construction modifiers and construction speed.
• Upgrades!
• Random stronghold events!
• Taxes normally cover expenses unless you’re doing something unusually expensive, like keeping a dragon turtle in the moat or a griffon stable.

Hmmm. We’re getting somewhere, but I’m still at a bit of a loss. Why don’t we travel laterally (ish) to the Rules Cyclopedia?

• Reputation with local nobles impacts capacity to build a stronghold
• Neighbouring rulers will react poorly to conquest depending on what titles you claim
• Lieutenants provide benefits
• Domain management

Fascinating how different the contemporary D&D and AD&D editions were, and more importantly, how D&D appears…more simulationist in some areas?

There is a lot to process here, and coming up with a simple rules process will be challenging.

Land can be land by stolen, granted, conquered, claimed or purchased. Local royalty will have to legitimise your ownership if it is not granted or claimed by them already, and local reputation will impact your reception considerably.

The land attached to your stronghold generates enough revenue to cover upkeep and a noble lifestyle for you and your lieutenants, unless the GM determines you have holdings or lifestyle requirements that would increase your debt.

Your stronghold has a Castellan and a Marshall or equivalents to manage the day to day running and the guard. These can be promoted from hirelings or long-term followers, but are now considered lieutenants. You can appoint additional lieutenants in addition to these for access to special resources or domains actions, at the GMs discretion, however their wages will be increase your debt.

Your land is effected by random events. For each week of downtime, the GM will roll on a domain events table.

There’s some benefit to talking about specific classes (thieves or wizards, are likely to have keep-sized strongholds at most, for example), and have a list of exemplar upgrades and lieutenants in addition to this rule set, but otherwise this is pretty neat. The costs are a mix of rules cyclopedia and first edition months. We need a Build Stronghold domain action; the only domain action that doesn’t have a prerequisite proficiency.

Build Stronghold. To construct a stronghold you must have claim to the land it is or will be on, gold for construction and access to workers. If you have these things, spend gold and roll fortune. Building a stronghold costs equal to size of the stronghold. If a stronghold already exists, must be refurbished for a third as much as in a third as much time. Your stronghold can fit holdings in keeping with its size. Moat houses and towers can have 3 holdings and can be built in 15 ticks at 12 000 GP per roll, keeps can have 6 holdings in 30 ticks at 12 000 GP per roll, small castles can have 9 holdings in 45 ticks at 12 000 GP per roll and concentric castles can have 12 holdings in 60 ticks at 12 000 GP per roll. Holdings are at the GMs discretion and grant access to special resources.

Honestly, this feels too simple, but I want it to be simple. There’s a bunch of interactions here that need to be developed: Living expenses, domain actions, governance, serving as a lieutenant, and lieutenants. While I haven’t really detailed anything on domain governance, I feel like engaging in domain governance should be optional, and hence be related to optional domain actions.

This has been a part of the Advanced Fantasy Dungeon Series! Let me know your thoughts on strongholds and landowning, if there are questions left unanswered, whether I’ve overlooked anything glaring, or anything of the sort!

Idle Cartulary

7th May 2022