Holdings

One thing I liked about Ben Laurence’s rules for Building an Institution is how far apart the two ends of the scale are. An Institution could be a fantasy Library of Alexandria (70,000+ gp invested), or it could be a small study full of carefully selected tomes in the back of a PC’s townhouse (250gp.) The range further was merely a suggestion, with some institutions having no potential to reach international significance, and others having even longer and more expensive tracks.

It provided players with a way to make their mark on the world, starting very small and building up over the course of the campaign. It was the perfect money sink and motivator for treasure-hunting. It tied the PCs into the setting and game them things they were invested in (emotionally and financially) and cared about protecting.

In my game we broadened the scope a little and referred to these assets as Holdings. In this article I’m going to look at the different types of Holdings and think about what they provide the PCs with and how to balance those benefits, with an eye to making the process of the DM writing them up more structured and straightforward.

A holding is any institution, facility, or amenity a character controls which is neither a vehicle, a Stronghold (a fortified base capable of controlling territory on the hex map) nor Lodgings (a character’s place of residence.) Holdings may however be physically part of a stronghold or a character’s lodgings, such as a library in a wizard’s tower or the castle training grounds.

Example holdings include:

Types & Benefits of Holdings

The benefits of a holding include all the obvious benefits that would accrue narratively – for example, you could read a child a book from your library, or have a drink with a friend in your tavern – as well as one significant mechanical benefit. I want to make these benefits more rigid and quantified for my rules – I like to have a little more guidance when designing holdings for the players.

In addition to the main mechanical benefit, additional benefits can, if thematically appropriate, be treated as distinct but connected holdings, with their own tiers. Any one of the connected Holdings can be upgraded, and if the one being upgraded is lower than at least one other, the cost to upgrade it is halved.

For example, a tier 3 temple with a tier 2 library and a level 1 holy font can upgrade the library to tier 3 at half price.

Alternatively, a holding could have a different effect at each tier, at the cost of no other effects improving that Tier. For income, this would mean dividing the usual income for the tier by 7.

Cash Returns: Spend money to make money.

While the idea of getting rich running a business is fun, it’s not what the game is about and it’s hard to see PCs – used to finding 500sp lying around in a sack as a regular occurrence – getting excited about making 7.5% per annum on their investment.

Fortunately we aren’t talking about a modern, fully developed economy here. Medieval trading voyages could easily provide 50% profit over the course of a year – and PC investments which routinely involve unwanted attention from NPCs and attacks by monsters could easily provide that kind of profit.

If we treat income from a going concern the same way as upkeep then we can roll a d4 for profits and return 4% of the value of the Holding. Here’s a table with the average value of a holding of each tier (including the chance of losing money when upgrading) with returns for three different frequencies. The returns are rounded to look neater and improve by a small amount at each step as a reward for the PC’s patience.

This can be considered the base income for a revenue-generating Holding. If we throw in some additional costs such as a need for a rare material, holding a mining site in the face of monster attacks, or a chance of troublesome random events, the DM could increase the rewards accordingly. Similarly if the income relies on a unique find (the holding is a pond for the goose that lays the golden eggs) rewards don’t have to be commensurate with investment.

Tier Rounded Value Return on ¼ Return on 1/6 Return on 1/12
1 100 4 7 15
2 500 20 30 75
3 2000 80 120 300
4 5000 200 330 750
5 10000 400 650 1500
6 20000 850 1300 3000
7 50000 2000 3300 7500

Military: Trains and billets troops.

Increases the availability of hirelings by a) attracting more recruits b) improving the quality of recruits and c) keeping them around. Overlaps with strongholds; I want to leave this out for now and consider it as part of the domain game.

Domestic: Provides lodgings for PCs and their allies.

This function is deprecated – it’s simply obtaining new lodgings under the new rules. If you’re building or renovating a place to live, perhaps a holding could have the function of upgrading your lodgings as it tiers up?

Enable DT: Allows a DT to be attempted at all.

Your fabulous salon grants you access to Gather Information or Cultivate Relationships in high society which would otherwise snub you. Your library allows you to perform spell and mundane research from home.

Further other DTs could be increased in scope by a holding – the right holdings might for example allow you to Develop Relationships with high society, spirits of the grove, foreign dignitaries, the criminal underworld, or secret societies.

At the lowest tier they may not provide any bonuses or even apply a penalty to your results for the unlocked action, but as they tier up they will usually also provide:

Aid DT: Provides a benefit to some other downtime.

For instance, a spy network improving Gather Information, or a fancy garden providing a good place to Cultivate Relationships.

This can provide a simple bonus to the roll, but only one holding should provide such a bonus to any action; your library will enhance your rolls to research spells, but your wizard’s salon will have to apply some other effect – though it may still aid in spell research indirectly.

Perks: Produces benefits such as gifts, adventure hooks, clues and so on.

Creates a specific event die offering the PC positive outcomes. For example, a PC might tend a magical tree whose apples function as healing potions, or a roadside tavern might provide a steady stream of rumours. A magical school might periodically produce graduate 1st level Wizards who owe you a favour. A criminal gang might produce a hot but valuable piece of jewelry. These specific benefits can vary widely and should generally be more generous than income on investment, as they’re more interesting.

Roulette: Produces benefits, but also negative events.

The same as Perks, but add bad things to the event table as well, and improve the rewards correspondingly. This type brings to mind a criminal gang at war with their rivals or a magical lab carrying out dangerous experiments, producing a steady stream of uptime problems for the PCs as well as significant progress on taking control of the city’s underworld or breeding the perfect owlbear.

However, any type of holding can have negative events attached – the simplest being an upkeep cost. While many holdings either don’t require expensive upkeep when not in use (the wizard’s library) or pay for themselves (a shrine or shop) it makes sense for certain types of activity to have ongoing costs.

Summary

Which leaves us with three main Holding effects:

There’s also no reason why a holding can’t provide ongoing bonuses in uptime (advantage on high society CHA rolls because you own the Opera House, or a free relationship level.) I’ve focused on random events and DT modifiers here because they affect downtime prep the most, and they took up a lot of time and energy in my campaign – I’m hoping some more structure makes them easier to keep track of.