Follow up - Safe Houses

This is a follow up to Old Weapons and Safe Houses.  With the RPG Blog Carnival this month being about sequel blogs and revisiting old posts, we thought we would join in the fun!

 

We have discussed adventurers having safe houses before, and this seems a must to any party participating in urban adventures.  The other alternative (and we’re not trying to set-up a paper tiger here) would be that the party is constantly walking around in their armor fully armed.

But how?  where?  Here are some of the ideas we have had:

Wilderness - Outside of town can often be the best place to lie low.  You can hide loot there, maybe to avoid taxes, maybe to avoid walking in with it on display.  You can keep extra weapons and food there in case you need to lie low for a week or two.  An old abandoned mine seems like the absolute best place.  You should be able to strongly secure the door, since the main entrance was intentionally dug.  After that, you should have room for whatever and safety.  And few kids or animals would be able to get past the secured door.  The biggest concern would likely be moisture seeping in somehow and possibly ruining what you stored there.  Plus, if it had valuable material, it wouldn’t be abandoned, so it should be really cheap.  You might even risk putting your own lock on someone else’s mine if you think they haven’t bothered to look at it in years.

An old quarry - While these are not as easy to say “there’s nothing valuable left there” they can still be cheap.  The shelter is whatever you want it to be, though honestly, rarely better than an old shack.  We wouldn’t suggest simply putting your stuff in the old shack and hoping for the best, but instead get a little clever.  Even burying it under the shack might be enough, but we like the idea of having your supernaturally strong character(s) pick up a huge boulder and hide whatever you want under that.  An old strip mine would qualify more here than under a “mine”.

In town - Picking an apartment to use as a safe house is tough.  If it is in too bad a neighborhood, then you run the risk of thieves.  If it is in too residential a neighborhood, it runs the risk of standing out and having nosy neighbors gossip about it.  If it is a good neighborhood it could be too expensive.  We think the busy neighborhoods are the best.  A smallish apartment on a busy street that mostly has stores and not homes, especially if the building has several apartments.  That way your safe house might go unnoticed as simply an unrented apartment.

In town there should be some manner of storage business.  Think about those storage spots we have in our modern world, though probably different from that.  You may not be able to stay in one (or maybe you can), but stashing away weapons and healing potions and possibly money could be a great boon to you when needed.  Business hours might turn out to be a problem, but that is a risk.  In Rhum, there are many of these places - most will store a trunk or chest for you relatively cheaply.  Think of it like a safety deposit box only bigger.

In town contacts can be incredibly important too, but someone is going to have to give them enough importance to have established them.  Family members, close friends, people you once rescued, these can all hide a couple of characters for a short time and certainly hide a trunk of stuff for them.  But remember, as great as these means of hiding out are, these same people can turn out to be hostages or victims.  That’s great mission starter stuff!