Since kitting out your character is such a big part of the game, I've always wanted to take that further and be able to buy a headquarters. The headquarters serves several in game purposes such as training, healing, and item/ally storage.

Rules are as follows:

1. A player may obtain a headquarters by entering a market step in a town. The player must then pay 10 Gold and 5 experience. Using a dime or something as a marker, place it in an adjacent square to the town. A player may choose to build farther away for the additional cost of 2 gold per space away from the town. No headquarters may be built on rivers, roads, or jewel spaces. Buildings may be built adjacent to a jewel space unless it is an undefeated red space. The player must travel to the building to take possession of it.

Since commissioning a building is pretty involved the only other market activity allowed is healing.

2. As far as terrain goes, the Headquarters is considered hidden and does not effect movement through that hex. The owner is considered to be in his Headquarters when in that hex and hidden. The owner may move through that hex as if it were a town.

3.Any other players that end their turn on that space may try to locate the Headquarters by making a mind test equal to the owners mind plus 10. If they succeed they must face any monster/trap cards the owner placed their, or face the owner in a standard pvp combat if they are present. If monster/trap cards are present and the owner is also present, the "intruder" must face the monsters/traps first, then immediately face the owner. They gain the xp award for any monsters/traps defeated but not any rewards listed on their cards. If the "intruder" is victorious they can take any items/allies or gold present. They must choose between items/allies or gold, not both. If they are already at their ally limit any excess allies taken are discarded. If the "intruder" starts his turn on the headquarters the next turn unchallenged(no new monsters/traps have been purchased by the owner, or the owner has not returned) they may take the items/allies or gold that they did not choose the first time.

4. When a player ends his movement on his headquarters or starts his turn there he may take a Headquarters step. This takes the players remaining turn and only one of these actions may be performed per turn. The players options are:

A. Heal up all damage and fatigue on his character and allies for free.

B. Leave or retrieve items, gold, or allies on the Headquarters. A special space should be set aside as the "vault". There is no limit to how many cards or gold may be placed or retrieved from the vault in a turn.

C. Purchase defenses for the Headquarters with gold. The costs are equivalent to the xp award of the creature purchased. So a green monster costs 1, yellow 2, etc... Players draw the top card from the corresponding color deck. RED CARDS MAY NOT BE PURCHASED! If players can agree on this ahead of time they may separate some cards just to be used as defenses. This actually makes the trap cards make more sense. Defenses remain until defeated. No more than three defenses may be placed on the headquarters and these cards may be put face down next to the vault until an intruder tries to defeat them.

D. Train! Declare that you are spending your turn at your headquarters training. Pay 1 gold and gain one experience. If no green 1 xp markers are available you can't train! Only one xp can be gained per turn and only one total bonus counter can be obtained this way during the game. So this is good for getting one +2 mind, body, spirit, or stamina per game. A heart bonus may not be obtained this way.

Thats my rough idea for headquarters. I could make this more in depth but as I wrote this I realized it could lengthen the game even more.

Comments? Criticizm? Suggestions? (Be nice please! Its late when I wrote this!)

It's an interesting idea to be sure. I'd have to play a game with these rules to decide if I like them or not, but it certainly is intriguing. (I suspect I would also want to get a few more challenge card expansions first, so that there would still be a sizable amount of cards left to fight on jewel spaces...)

Also, just as an observation, it seems like these rules would do more to mix things up in a group where PvP was commonplace. If your group (like mine) tends to do their own thing and leave one another alone for the most part, these rules probably wouldn't do much other than give the players more ways to spend money. =P

I can see your point. I think some of the players in my group will probably like having more ways to spend money though, so it might work out for them. We'll have to see with a play test this weekend. Hopefully it won't bog the game down. I'll let you know how it goes...

Tony P. said:

Also, if players spend the money to build a fortress, it might encourage other players to come poke around and thus encourage PvP in a group that might otherwise shy away. I'm not saying PvP is a bad thing, mind you. I was just observing that if no one comes poking around your fortress then its not really doing anything. This does give me a few ideas of my own, though...

That makes sense. But I have to admit that more PVP was one motivation to do this. I can see what you mean that its not doing much.

Do you think expanding its uses might make it more gameworthy or would that just be adding more rules for rules sake?
For example: How about reducing rituals costs to simulate having magical resources at your disposal in your headquarters? Maybe also making a market action available but the market cards return to the market deck at the end of the turn to simulate traveling merchants. Or maybe it could grant some kind of temporary combat bonus against specific monsters to simulate studying them in your library?

At what point would more options help and at what point do you think they would just add on unneccesary time to a game?

Thanks Steve-O, I appreciate your input!