Leave your D&D Bastion and get a Manse Magnificent

Welcome, Architect! In Manse Magnificent: Not another dumb inn we introduced you to Manse Magnificent, our luxurious new Dungeons & Dragons 5E supplement, Manse Magnificent, and the Cornerstone, a wondrous item that lets you Construct a safe and cozy hearth in the downtime between your adventures. We’ve been building out Manse Magnificent for two years, blueprinting new ways to construct your personal home base — all this (take note, DMs!) without breaking the campaign. As your Hosts, we welcome you to our creation, where you can, literally, make your home your castle.

So what does your Cornerstone offer that other home-base frameworks might not?

1. Carry an entire bastion in your pocket: Even in the remotest hinterland, your Cornerstone fills your belly and fluffs your pillow — and gives you personal staffers, laboratories, menageries, libraries, belfries, and much more.
2. Level 4+ access: Don’t wait until you get the 7th-level spell magnificent mansion to start enjoying yourself. The Cornerstone grants modest room and board starting at level 4, and each time you level up, you’ll enjoy increasing luxury level, size, magical abilities, and roleplaying opportunities.
3. Space to relax: The magnificent mansion spell gives you 50 10×10 cubes to stack like a toddler. Why? Why restrict the volume of your living space when that space doesn’t affect anything in the game? Whether you want a rehearsal hall with three tiers of balconies, a high-roofed gallery, or an underwater cavern with a sand sauna, your Cornerstone builds it on the spot. Trade in cubic bookkeeping for imaginative realm building.
4. Custom decor: Your hearth is what you make it; you can pitch to the DM anything that fits the current luxury level. Set up your own wax museum, magic trinket workshop, heist room, or treehouse. Craft, research, train, meditate, garden, rehearse, and carouse. Each private room and lodge bestows amenities (buffs) keyed to your level. Some rooms give you invites to interplanar social clubs. And your demiplane has beautiful outdoor acreage. Design your landscape, play areas, and even grand arenas: fey groves, tournament tiltyards, or the Cherry Blossom Fire Mountain.
5. Flexible facilities: Rooms aren’t tied to your class or background — only to your level. Does your monk want a spa, or your barbarian sighs for a greenhouse? Set up your private suite as you like.
6. Adjustable resource management: The hearth requires no more tuning than you want to put into it. You can detail your private suite down to the wallpaper pattern if you want, or customize your Host’s quirky personality – or skip all that and use the starter hearth we provide. There are no points to track and spend. Instead, the Cornerstone operates on a one-day cycle keyed to your character level. It’s easy!
7. Campaign protection: Careful design means the hearth’s magic has minimal impact on the campaign world. The 1-1-1 Rule keeps its magic manageable for your DM.
8. Adventure hooks: Mechanical benefits are fine, but the hearth can also introduce story hooks and lure players further into the campaign. How? Rumor networks, interplanar social clubs, research libraries, cosmic teachers, memory tracers (for character development), scrying rooms, businesses that earn money and do social good — Manse Magnificent offers all of these to help you expand the roleplaying possibilities within your campaign. You can even make a hearth’s location permanent, advancing the common interests between your party and nonplayer neighbors.
9. Moral support: A Cornerstone is a relationship. It’s not just a magical thing, but an entity that genuinely cares about you and wants to ensure you’re happy. It’s not a servant, not a stalker, but a supportive friend. That said, you can assign your hearth’s Host a more challenging or unconventional demeanor, but its default is cozy, supportive care.
10. Not needy: The hearth isn’t a tamagotchi that requires constant upkeep; if you have to focus on the outside world for a while, nothing is lost and no one gets hurt. The hearth will be there when you get back. It won’t overshadow your campaign or distract from your adventuring.

What’s your reaction? If you want more or less of something, leave a comment. And stay tuned for our upcoming Kickstarter!