The Culture: We Don't Need Another Module. We Don't Need Another Realms, No.

Let's back up to something I said earlier this past week: the issue of modules and commercial settings.

If you wonder why there is significant resistance to the idea that players, via their characters, are responsible for putting in the work to ensure that what they want to do is able to be done you can start there.

As I said then, using a module or setting means that all of this work is obviated. There is no need to establish the financial, physical, political, and cultural infrastructure required to succeed.

It is already in place, and players are trained (reinforced by generations of bad videogame adaptations) to not bother with such concerns because doing so will always upset whatever the commercial product presumes. Every edition after Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition doubled-down on this error, such that now the very idea prompts freakouts.

That's not how a wargamer thinks.

The wargamer thinks "What do I need to have to accomplish my campaign objectives?" followed by "What do I need to do to get what I need to accomplish my objectives?"

At the earliest stage of play--the stage most people, for various reasons, never leave--the answers are "Money" and "Go raid the dungeon." The problem is that most players never get past this point because they suck at the game, don't think ahead, and have no idea that they need to do more with their treasure than earn Experience Points and pay the trainer when it's time to advance in level.

The next stage is to invest in your infrastructure. A refresher on what this means in campaign play:

• The Fighter ought to be settng up an armed camp, expanding the troops under his command (including hiring subordinate officers), hiring on experts to build/maintain the gear that he and his men use, etc. as he levels up- culminating in his becoming lord of a freehold at 9th level.
• The Magic-User ought to be setting up his library, then his laboratory when he hires an Alchemist, secures steady supplies of media to scribe scrolls upon (the smartest move is to establish a sheep ranch), and then secures access to (or hires on) expert crafters such as a jeweler when he raises his tower at 11th level and gets ready to do major item creation.
• The Cleric ought to set up a shrine, create a holy water font as soon as he can, make nice with a Magic-user (for potions) around 7th level (ditto for scrolls), and constant expand that shrine into a temple complex that--by 9th level--he fortifies into a stronghold.
• The Thief ought to be growing his intelligence network, expanding his contacts, secure access to specialized tools for the trade, and set up a deniable front operation to work his guild out of when he hits Master Thief and becomes a local crime boss.

The other classes will have variations on those core career progressions, some of which are so rigid as to be hard-coded into the rules. Ignoring this is a mistake.

Every campaign ought to be shaped by the characters that play in it, from the get-go.

Higher-level characters ought to be concerned with threat detection and diplomacy with one's neighbors, while low-level characters are still working to get their first steps fulfilled. The latter offering to solve the former's problems, focusing on those problems that the former cannot address, is how the low-level character who just hit a big payday in a dungeon can start transitioning from dungeon delves to leading armies and forming institutions.

Why does this work? For the same reason it does in real life: the Big Man can't be everywhere at once, and he will never have enough Henchmen and hirelings to throw at anything he can't handle with his own two hands. This is an opportunity that the ambitious always exploit.

Your man is going to slow down in advancement as he hits the mid-levels; those treasure hauls are going to come in more often than he gets to advance, and if he's doing things right then he'll be able to have additional revenue coming in that doesn't involve sacking monster lairs and delving dungeons- such as by training others in turn, establishing a secure base camp, etc.

Why should this be the province of NPCs? Why should this be something you buy? You have a ruleset; if that isn't enough, the game is incomplete, broken, or both AND UNFIT FOR PURPOSE.