Treasure Tables looks at the key role that a home base plays in the life of a role-playing campaign. It can be a keep in the wilderness, a feudal manor in a great kingdom, a club in a city, or a starship travelling from planet to planet, but in every case the home base provides player characters with a touchstone, a place where they can sell their loot, craft their magical or technological items, and do a little role playing. It's also a place with NPCs they might actually care about, either allies they want to protect, or antagonists they want to best.

In my own gaming group, the Blackrazor Guild long served this role, providing the campaign with years worth of hooks.

Our newer Dark City campaign takes a more defused approach. It's an urban campaign, the players don't belong to any one group or organization. But what I've tried to do (with varying degrees of success) is to create a home base for each of the PCs. These are locations with friendly NPCs and resources that the players can fall back on if needed, so we have Prug the Thrice Risen half-orc monk working with the Temple of Mercy, the elven mage Corash trains under the disinterested eye of his master, Maurgiir, and the half-elven paladin Gryffudd, who recently took up teaching at the Golden Swordsman Academy.

All in all, I think the article makes an excellent point: players need some place to call home, be it a town, a ship or even an organization. Without it, even campaigns with a great story and strong characters can run aground, as players have no place they feel truly connected to.