When I first told myself, “I’m going to Dungeon Master a game,” I had no idea what I was doing. I’d listened to one campaign and played in another, short one, but that was all the D&D experience I had. I wanted to be a good DM! I had no idea how. Thus, I found myself scouring the Internet for guidance. Among others, I found Matt Colville’s channel and his “Running the Game” series. And so, I started following his videos and other content.

Strongholds & Followers was funded by a wildly successful Kickstarter campaign that launched in early February 2018. In December, backers received the PDF in its finished form (with acknowledgement that typos would be fixed before the first printing). It is also available for purchase from the MDCM online store.

After getting the chance to read it cover-to-cover, here’s my review!

Overview

Strongholds & Followers is a supplement for 5th Edition Dungeons & Dragons. It presents a system for building “strongholds” and attracting “followers”. A stronghold comes in a few different types determined by what sort of purpose it serves: keeps, temples, towers, and establishments. Followers are characters who can perform certain tasks for the PCs, from artisans who can craft magical items to sidekicks who accompany PCs on adventures. This supplement also has an adventure, “The Seige of Castle Rend,” written by James J. Haeck, as well as a beefy set of Appendices introducing new monsters, new magic items, and rules for running warfare.

First off, the art for this book is incredible. The quality is consistently impressive, and the art does a great job of getting readers excited for the concepts they illustrate. The book has some great aesthetics overall, with a medieval-esque border reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts. This sometimes clashes with the writing style. Readers familiar with Colville’s videos will recognize his voice throughout the supplement. At times, it’s a welcome break from 5e’s typical style, but at others, the smiley faces and humorous footnotes miss the mark.

The strongholds and the powers they give the PCs are exciting, especially because I know my DM is going to read this. As a DM, though, I can see that if I incorporate these systems into a campaign, I’d have to do a bit of work. I’d have to get a good sense of how much more powerful it will make the PCs, how I would change encounters to account for that, and how I can make antagonists that will challenge my party. Strongholds & Followers, helpfully, has some pointers, including a brief section on villain-owned strongholds. Overall, I think that work would have a really fun payoff with the right player group!

Strongholds

The Strongholds section discusses, well, what a stronghold is. It describes the different types of strongholds, how the party might acquire a stronghold, and what sort of power the PCs gain from owning a stronghold. Between the four types of stronghold and their variants, it really does seem like there’s something for every class here. The sticker price (and time) for a stronghold’s construction is nothing to sneeze at, but the logic behind it makes sense. Honestly, my bard would probably pay just about anything to get access to the tower stronghold’s spell research system. (Finnith’s Distracting Dissonant Whispers, anyone?)

I’m really excited for the spell research system for the same reasons I love the Wild Magic Surge table—magic is weird! And, adding an effect to an existing spell is much easier to do than creating an entirely new spell. The benefits that each stronghold grants provide both interesting roleplay opportunities and helpful mechanical advantages for the players. My favorites are the establishment and the tower, but I can see the appeal of the keep and the temple, as well.

Each class receives a specific benefit from owning a stronghold alongside the benefit from the type of stronghold. (For example, the spell research benefit from the tower, but also a benefit specific to bards, regardless of which of the four types you’ve chosen.) Each class gets specific demesne effects, powerful stronghold actions, and a class feature improvement.

Most of these are intriguing and easy to understand. Some aren’t, such as the warlock’s Master Invoker feature, but it seems that those may be tweaked in future printings. DMs using this supplement right off the bat might want to evaluate whether they’d like to tinker with the more puzzling features, should a party member be of one of those classes. Regardless, the strongholds section does a great job of sparking readers’ imaginations, and I can’t wait for the opportunity for my character to get one.

Followers

This section introduces various NPCs your PCs might attract, either from building a stronghold or other methods. These followers can be retainers, artisans, diplomats, or special allies. Retainers can adventure with the PCs, artisans give you various buffs, diplomats help PCs ally with other groups of people. Special allies are more powerful creatures like couatl, deva, or dragons, who cannot be ordered about, but are still there to help the characters in some way.

This part is a little fiddly, especially when trying to grasp the retainer rules. Retainers are built to be like player character classes, but easier to run and less powerful than the PCs. I found myself having to scroll up and down a lot to understand how their stat blocks work. This will be easier to do once the physical book is printed—pages versus PDF reader. However, these retainers do look simpler than fully rolled-up NPC adventurers, especially spellcasters.

Organizing information is no small task, and there seems to be a few odd choices made here. For example, artisan followers often come with a shop that PCs can pay to improve. This information appears in the “Artisans” section, which makes sense; however, players calculating costs of various stronghold improvements will have to flip back and forth between the “Strongholds” chapter and this page. It’s not a glaring issue, but it would be convenient to have a section that included the table for artisan shop improvement alongside the various other stronghold improvement tables.

The potential to receive special allies is the most enticing aspect of the Followers system. But, the other follower types also offer interesting opportunities for the PCs, giving them access to magic item crafting or a number of other benefits. There’s certainly enough here to build player anticipation when they get to roll for followers.

“The Siege of Castle Rend” Adventure

A 46-page adventure written by James Haeck. Those who have followed Matt Colville’s YouTube channel will recognize the basic outline of the adventure. But, there are still surprises in wait for the readers (and players). “The Siege of Castle Rend” is a solid sample adventure that gives DMs and players an idea of how a party might acquire a stronghold. If the adventurers succeed, they obtain the eponymous castle and some options on how to proceed from there.

The NPCs who you’re supposed to like are likable (the wizard, Pinna, is especially endearing), and the less savory types have their own interesting quirks. The timeline gives the DM a good anchor to return to when preparing sessions. The town of Gravesford is developed enough so that a DM can run it effectively. Castle Rend itself has plenty for the PCs to fight, interact with, and otherwise discover. The adventure starts slow, but there’s plenty of opportunity for drama towards the end.

This adventure is firmly set in Matt Colville’s world, so anyone with a similar setting can smoothly incorporate these elements into a larger campaign. DMs that run worlds much different might have some trouble. The adventure does give readers some advice on how to mesh it with other settings, so that’s helpful. Even if readers choose not to run this adventure, it gives DMs some inspiration for putting strongholds in front of your players without outright giving it to them.

The Appendices

There’s a lot going on down here in the Appendices! New monsters, rules for warfare, and new magic items. The monsters are the neutral gemstone dragons and the servitors that pious characters have a chance at summoning. The warfare rules will help DMs run battles that involve units and armies outside of 5e’s regular combat. The magic items include a few installations—items that must be placed in a stronghold to function—along with codices and a smattering of other things.

The monsters are strange and wonderful, and I’m hyped to either use them or see them used against me. The art here is gorgeous, especially when illustrating the beguiling fey and the radiant celestials. The sections on these creatures’ tactics will prove helpful for DMs—especially DMs like me, who has a harder time running combat smoothly.

I was concerned that the warfare rules would be difficult for me to understand, as I’ve never played a serious wargame before. After reading through them, though, I think they’ve hit a good spot between simplicity and complexity. The simplified version of the warfare rules will probably be what I start with.

The installations, codices, and other magic items are a range of different power levels. The codices, in particular, are worth checking out; they make great, world-busting artifacts worthy of your villains’ (and your players’) interest. The installations are helpful additions to player strongholds, though I’m surprised that they’re tucked away towards the back of the book with little mention elsewhere.

These sections have a lot of content all on their own, and at times they seem to strain against the title Strongholds & Followers. Regardless, these sections have a few pleasant surprises that might find their way into your campaign sooner than the tasks of managing strongholds. These pages make for an interesting close to MCDM’s first supplement!

Conclusions

Overall, Strongholds & Followers has a lot for DMs to consider. It sometimes references rules yet to come (in the future book Kingdoms & Warfare)—leaving things feeling a little unfinished. At the same time, those references do give a taste of what’s coming down the line in the future.

This supplement is a great fit for groups who like the idea of owning a “home base,” groups who want to entrench their characters in the world. It’s also a huge plus if a few of you follow Matt Colville’s stuff, or if you’ve played previous editions and are looking for a way to build strongholds in 5e.

I definitely feel like I got my money’s worth with this PDF, and I’m even more excited to see the physical copy. It might be a while before our group can dig into building their own stronghold—but I eagerly anticipate the session where we can!

Thanks for reading! You can purchase the PDF of Strongholds & Followers here.