Hrm.  The only time I've done "living in an inn" in recent years, one of the PCs was the innkeeper; the inn was her family business.  Even there, a couple of the characters didn't live there, and had flats of their own.

More often than otherwise, my players have either chipped in for a townhouse or have had rented flats.  I was tickled recently when a PC looking to buy a townhouse picked the very same townhouse (with a private elevator) that a previous party had used twenty years ago.

I've done ships, manor houses, gypsy caravans (for an all-Roma campaign), the Imperial Palace of a major empire, and none-at-all (for a guerrilla campaign).

Possibly the most offbeat I've done in recent years was with a group comprising youngsters in a Wheel-Of-Time-esque plot arc.  They fled to the nearest large city, where one character enrolled at the university to further her alchemical studies.  All of them being around the right age and lacking coin, they took rooms at a student co-op adjacent to the university, and that stayed their homebase for almost the entirety of the campaign.  The various vicissitudes and romantic entanglements of the other students contributed to many a side plot!

Quote from: Omega;710602Castle made from a huge stone golem.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NheRL85XQSY/UncHzfWLOtI/AAAAAAAAJFg/7ELwZ2vRJws/s1600/inktober24.jpg

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Stone to Flesh spell. Bu, bye Castle.

The heroes have been hired as protectors by a tribe of huge quadrupeds whose lifestyle involves wandering through otherwise uncivilized jungles.The creatures are not very nimble and are tired of being preyed upon by predators. They pay the humans with gemstones from a hidden meteorite crater. The heroes ride on their patrons' backs in little huts.

Then they wander into an alien landscape none of them are prepared to deal with...

A town halfway up a tower-staircase that connects the land below to the cloud regions.

In MSH we took over and "improved" upon a supervillains secret lair.

We figured if WE had a hard time finding it then foes would too. And it had all these nifty traps!

Quote from: Omega;711032In MSH we took over and "improved" upon a supervillains secret lair.

We figured if WE had a hard time finding it then foes would too. And it had all these nifty traps!

I've had PCs do this quite a few times. Not only does it make sense for practical reasons (odds are your party had to really slug it out to kill that wizard and take his tower, so why not rest up there?), for financial reasons (I had a magic-user who saved a fortune in constructing his tower because he had just taken over one that was already built), for ethical reasons (why leave an empty tower for the next group of monsters to use as a hideout?), but most importantly, to add a "right of conquest" feel to the campaign: you have your stronghold and title only to the degree that you can keep them.

We've also done the armed wagon thing: a pair of skorpions in a wagon, tucked away behind hay/canvas/etc are a rude surprise for attackers.

The most fun I've had is using ships as bases. Our party of 1st-2nd level PCs took over the Sea Ghost from U1 and used it until they were high enough level to start building strongholds. A cog or caravel-sized ship is large enough to hold huge amounts of treasure and supplies, as well as a few dozen crewmen and other NPCs, henchmen, etc. A Scandinavian knorr is the perfect
ship for a small party of PCs, since it can hold a few tons of cargo and/or twenty or so men. On top of that it is shallow enough to navigate almost any river, while still being seaworthy (it's the ship the Norse used to colonize Greenland and Iceland, and travel to Canada).

If you like viking, pirate and Sinbad movies as much as I do, a ship is a great home base for all levels.

Quote from: Elfdart;711046The most fun I've had is using ships as bases. Our party of 1st-2nd level PCs took over the Sea Ghost from U1 and used it until they were high enough level to start building strongholds. A cog or caravel-sized ship is large enough to hold huge amounts of treasure and supplies, as well as a few dozen crewmen and other NPCs, henchmen, etc. A Scandinavian knorr is the perfect
ship for a small party of PCs, since it can hold a few tons of cargo and/or twenty or so men. On top of that it is shallow enough to navigate almost any river, while still being seaworthy (it's the ship the Norse used to colonize Greenland and Iceland, and travel to Canada).

If you like viking, pirate and Sinbad movies as much as I do, a ship is a great home base for all levels.

That was part of the big appeal for me in Spelljammer. You had essentially a roving (hopefully) armed base and could putter off about anywhere the DM allowed.

The players take charge of guarding a vital trade bridge through a highly contested area. They can charge a toll if they want, and live in the guardhouse structure built into the bridge. Their external resources come from the steady flow of interesting NPC traders and travelers who use the bridge, some of whom are regulars. There are also a few friendly local creatures that lair nearby.

Up until this last adventure, from the start of the campaign, my DCC players were using as their home base an ancient Elven high-tech half-ruined Pleasure-dome full of elven hipsters as their base.  They finally decided they were sick of the elves and betrayed them all to the Circle of Really Old Wizards, who took over the dome and in exchange transported the PCs to "a more interesting continent".

RPGPundit

A few years ago my group were high level but were so gung-ho about adventuring that they never established castles, towers, etc.  So when they were owed a favor from a powerful but slightly insane god, they asked for a castle a mile from their home city.  They ended up with a castle a mile below the city.  The god was nice enough to take them there so they could teleport back in the future.

Our Earthdawn characters bought a house, in an area that's controlled by a street gang they have dealings with. The basement has access to some of the gang's smuggling tunnels. So far it's been pretty secure but we're expecting assassins any day now.

In the Magic World game I run the kids are students at a university... research assistants who live in the dorms and get sent out to do field research or retrieve overdue library books or hunt down subjects from botched experiments.
There are lots of angry villagers who would like to burn the place down.

One of my early personal AD&D goals was to use a series of teleports to reach the moon and set up a base there. Eventually did the math. That is a-lot of teleports... Never got high enough level to make an attempt viable. Still a goal though. I'll get there... eventually...

Then Spelljammer Came out many a year later... :banghead:

Quote from: Omega;711995One of my early personal AD&D goals was to use a series of teleports to reach the moon and set up a base there. Eventually did the math. That is a-lot of teleports... Never got high enough level to make an attempt viable. Still a goal though. I'll get there... eventually...

Then Spelljammer Came out many a year later... :banghead:

I thought you could teleport anywhere you could see? Or is it dimensional door either you or I are thinking of, I forget.

Quote from: The Traveller;711998I thought you could teleport anywhere you could see? Or is it dimensional door either you or I are thinking of, I forget.

Barring cloud over... :cool:

But teleport has a distance limit I believe. Been a while since tinkered with teleports.