Can you point out recommendations for building, managing, upgrading and running player's base? [closed]

Question

In my campaign, recently two players started laying plans to buy a part of land not too far away from city in hopes of building the base of operations for the team, or buy an already existing building for that. I know I can just go "Behold! The enclosed space, you can sleep here. Done.", but that seems bland and the idea of a building, maybe a small stronghold with some upgrades and all that seems very interesting to me. Alas, I do not know if I am as capable a GM as my players think, as I need to figure out everything from the ground up and be right on spot.

That's why I am asking if there are some sources on building/running/upgraiding/managing property/estate I could get my eyes on to get some ideas how to manage this. I am aware of some information presented in DMG about building a stronghold in downtime, and that's why I am asking about other ones, as I am going to completely disregard the existence of those from DMG, as they do not make any sense whatsoever, both in terms of cost, time and rules presented (if you do not oversee the building process personally, the time needed increases by 3 days for each day you are away, like, are your workers actively destroying it?), as well as not giving almost any useful information, save for some upkeep costs and staff, but no ideas for what is, or more importantly, what could be in there, how it could be used beside a warehouse, some overlay ideas, incorporating business, nothing.

I am planning on reading through the Kingmaker campaign book for Pathfinder to get some ideas, I heard it's quite good, but what about other sources? Are there even official ones for D&D? I would be glad for any ideas on the subject.

Answer 1

I personally use this set of rules, because as you note the DMG has pretty bad rules for it and there aren't good official rules.

It has a full set of rules for building, customizing, and funding buildings and provides in much more detail useful roleplaying content.

If you're willing to spend more money, this is an even more comprehensive guide.

Answer 2

This is covered by the DMG

The DMG covers the costs and staffing requirements of maintaining a property on page 127 under Recurring Expenses (that is not under Downtime Activities, which include the costs for Building a Stronghold).

For example, here are the costs for a keep or small castle from that table, or for a more modest noble estate.

Property	Total Cost per Day	Skilled Hirelings	Untrained Hirelings
Keep or Small Castle	100 gp	50	50
Noble Estate	10 gp	3	15

The explanation for the table states:

The cost includes everything it takes to maintain the property and keep things running smoothly, including the salaries of hirelings. If the property earns money that can offset maintenance costs (by charging fees, collecting tithes or donations, or selling goods), that is taken into account in the table.

The 5e rules are very light on stronghold building and estate managment. It is mostly the "Building a Stronghold" prices for various buildings (DMG, p.128), the "Maintenance Costs" section (DMG, p. 127), and the overall equipment and price list for services (PHB, p. 159) with its cost for labor.

If you are OK to look at other sources, the 1e AD&D DMG has a flexible and rather comprehensive list of what various elements for building and maintaining a keep costs, too, down to individual types of doors, windows, and arrow slits (p. 107, Construction and Siege). If you want to convert the prices into 5e, based on all the equipment in 1e that also appears in 5e, 1 gp in 1e has about 26% more value than one in 5e. I think it is close enough so you can just use the prices as is.

Apart from that, if you think this is interesting, it might be fun for you to read some books about actual historical castle building (here is a very nice investigation from Delta's blog about it).

One thing I would recommend though, is to find out if your players are as excited as you about the administrative mini-game aspects of this. Most players I know really just want a safe place to put their stuff and retired NPCs/PCs, and are not that excited about spending time to manage it (hence the lightweight rules in the DMG).