Forgive me if this has been hashed out in the past (and if so, links welcome!). But I am curious to hear people's thoughts on the "Domain Game." Do you love it? Hate/avoid it? Never get around to that kind of level? Do you prefer to retire and start again rather than play on in what can arguably be be a completely different game as estate manager/diplomat/warlord/cult leader etc.? Or do you like carrying on, but prefer to become more and more of a superhero? If you have gone "Domain," were your experiences positive or negative? What worked? What didn't?

My own context for this is that I have only played in one long-lived campaign that segued into the domain game, but it was fantastic. Loved it. I mean, I love "sweet-spot" mid-level play, and even scary low-level play where you can be taken out by a nasty slip on the ice or an unusually large mosquito, but for me the domain game provided years of amazingly memorable play.

And yet, it seems to be a style or phase of the game that you don't hear that much about.

 Happy to share more of my own perspective on this, but for now I'll just put the topic out there.

Thanks!

I really wanted to seque into domain management in one of my Dark Sun campaigns, but the group fell apart when two of the players moved out of state, and the rest lost interest due to that.
I had plans to start small, maybe with a single settlement, and go light on the bookkeeping, focusing on the big decisions, like securing water and food, and dealing with major threats to the settlement.
Eventually, if the PCs were sucessful, I would likely have involved them in bigger and bigger politics, as their territory grew in value.
Alas, another idea had to be put on the back burner.

I love the concept; it's hard to find rules that support it but don't get in the way - probably Mentzer's D&D Companion Set approach is the best I've seen. I have GM'd a lot at this level, but I would like to see more Game of Thrones-y politics & war; the tendency is just to default to a standard high level dungeon bash for most play, with the domain stuff merely backdrop.

I'm wondering if it might work best in play-by-post, with the slower pace of play allowing more time for 'realm turns' type stuff - PBP struggles with dungeon bashing but conversely ought to do politics management & war well, I think.

Quote from: Zirunel;1126831Forgive me if this has been hashed out in the past (and if so, links welcome!). But I am curious to hear people's thoughts on the "Domain Game." Do you love it? Hate/avoid it? Never get around to that kind of level? Do you prefer to retire and start again rather than play on in what can arguably be be a completely different game as estate manager/diplomat/warlord/cult leader etc.? Or do you like carrying on, but prefer to become more and more of a superhero? If you have gone "Domain," were your experiences positive or negative? What worked? What didn't?

My own context for this is that I have only played in one long-lived campaign that segued into the domain game, but it was fantastic. Loved it. I mean, I love "sweet-spot" mid-level play, and even scary low-level play where you can be taken out by a nasty slip on the ice or an unusually large mosquito, but for me the domain game provided years of amazingly memorable play.

And yet, it seems to be a style or phase of the game that you don't hear that much about.

 Happy to share more of my own perspective on this, but for now I'll just put the topic out there.

Thanks!

Wait a sec... let me find my ACKS Fanboy Hat... now where did I put that... wait, it's on my head.

The domain game is ACKS main claim to fame.* Even in the Core Rules, though, there's a lot of detail. If you want something more "rules-light", ACKS may not be your bag. If, OTOH, you want to go full-bore Tony Bath scale Domain Game, economics and politics and war, oh my!, ACKS is your huckleberry.

Quote from: S'mon;1126838I love the concept; it's hard to find rules that support it but don't get in the way - probably Mentzer's D&D Companion Set approach is the best I've seen. I have GM'd a lot at this level, but I would like to see more Game of Thrones-y politics & war; the tendency is just to default to a standard high level dungeon bash for most play, with the domain stuff merely backdrop.

I'm wondering if it might work best in play-by-post, with the slower pace of play allowing more time for 'realm turns' type stuff - PBP struggles with dungeon bashing but conversely ought to do politics management & war well, I think.

Running the Domain Game as PBP or PBeM, or even bluebooking**, has a lot of potential. Depending on the level of detail you want for mass combat, that might be better handled on the tabletop in rotation with any conventional RP, whether by the principal PCs or by their henchmen. But the bookkeeping and decisionmaking of domain management and the like definitely sounds like a good fit for asynchronous play.



*Psst. Dirty little secret - ACKS works just fine for "superheroic" high-level personal-scale play.

**Internet points if you get the reference.

The main problem we've always had with Domain level rules is that they rarely, if ever, interact with the player scale rules in a meaningful way. It's practically a separate mini-game you run in the background, particularly since, unless you only want one or two players involved at the Domain level, it largely involves breaking up the party because each will need its own separate Domain to participate at that level.

Birthright kinda did okay with splitting it up into basically Law (Fighters), Commerce (Rogues), Sources (Wizards) and Religion (Clerics) who could all share the same realm, but it was very contingent upon players all agreeing to play certain classes so as not to actually compete with one another. It also starts to fall apart if you try to port it into later editions with different assumptions and additional classes that don't quite fit the Fighter, Thief, Cleric, Magic-User paradigm.

So, over the years I've instead gravitated towards finding systems that can determine some basic resources (ex. what's your population base, tax revenue, number of vassals/troops) and then create sets of interesting EVENTS that I, as the GM, can sprinkle into the world for the player's to deal with.

If they don't engage with the event they can solve issues by spending their resources (throw troops at an invader... some will die, but it'll quell the problem; only replacing said troops becomes a new problem), but that well will eventually run dry. If they instead engage with the problem and do well they can instead gain resources (ex. they gain the arms, armor and gold of the invaders to use to equip new troops and cover other expenses) as determined by the GM.

It also means the players have the freedom to get creative, both in terms of how they deal with events, but also in how they wish to grow their domain. You don't need to fret if there's not a mechanic for recruiting wizards because your PCs have decided to try and open a Wizard's college in their capitol. You roleplay out their efforts to find and recruit the faculty and students, with them possibly using their domain's resources to assist. Maybe they decide that making wizards into the equivalent of vassal knights would be a way to recruit faculty (costing them the rents from those lands because they're now being collected by the wizard knight). Maybe they decide to hire bards to travel the land announcing the formation of the university; costing them coins from their treasury. Maybe they go on a personal recruitment drive which costs them time they could be devoting to other things. The GM decides how well any of these work based on their common sense.

Basically, its GM judgement with a list of resources the players' have access to in addition to their personal abilities and some random tables to serve as GM inspiration and it works better than 99% of any codified Domain level rules I've ever played with.

Quote from: RandyB;1126840Wait a sec... let me find my ACKS Fanboy Hat... now where did I put that... wait, it's on my head.

The domain game is ACKS main claim to fame.* Even in the Core Rules, though, there's a lot of detail. If you want something more "rules-light", ACKS may not be your bag. If, OTOH, you want to go full-bore Tony Bath scale Domain Game, economics and politics and war, oh my!, ACKS is your huckleberry.

I have ACKS (I have pretty much EVERY domain system!) - AIR it's good, a bit complex in places but it's ground-up approach which makes it much easier to integrate with regular play. I've been reading over domain systems tonight while generating a small manor (Ramvira Tower, pop. 100, avg yearly income 1000gp, avg expenses 740gp) - will go to ACKS next.

Quote from: Chris24601;1126843The main problem we've always had with Domain level rules is that they rarely, if ever, interact with the player scale rules in a meaningful way. It's practically a separate mini-game you run in the background, particularly since, unless you only want one or two players involved at the Domain level, it largely involves breaking up the party because each will need its own separate Domain to participate at that level.

Birthright kinda did okay with splitting it up into basically Law (Fighters), Commerce (Rogues), Sources (Wizards) and Religion (Clerics) who could all share the same realm, but it was very contingent upon players all agreeing to play certain classes so as not to actually compete with one another. It also starts to fall apart if you try to port it into later editions with different assumptions and additional classes that don't quite fit the Fighter, Thief, Cleric, Magic-User paradigm.

So, over the years I've instead gravitated towards finding systems that can determine some basic resources (ex. what's your population base, tax revenue, number of vassals/troops) and then create sets of interesting EVENTS that I, as the GM, can sprinkle into the world for the player's to deal with.

If they don't engage with the event they can solve issues by spending their resources (throw troops at an invader... some will die, but it'll quell the problem; only replacing said troops becomes a new problem), but that well will eventually run dry. If they instead engage with the problem and do well they can instead gain resources (ex. they gain the arms, armor and gold of the invaders to use to equip new troops and cover other expenses) as determined by the GM.

It also means the players have the freedom to get creative, both in terms of how they deal with events, but also in how they wish to grow their domain. You don't need to fret if there's not a mechanic for recruiting wizards because your PCs have decided to try and open a Wizard's college in their capitol. You roleplay out their efforts to find and recruit the faculty and students, with them possibly using their domain's resources to assist. Maybe they decide that making wizards into the equivalent of vassal knights would be a way to recruit faculty (costing them the rents from those lands because they're now being collected by the wizard knight). Maybe they decide to hire bards to travel the land announcing the formation of the university; costing them coins from their treasury. Maybe they go on a personal recruitment drive which costs them time they could be devoting to other things. The GM decides how well any of these work based on their common sense.

Basically, its GM judgement with a list of resources the players' have access to in addition to their personal abilities and some random tables to serve as GM inspiration and it works better than 99% of any codified Domain level rules I've ever played with.

Yes, I agree - in an RPG this is vastly more fun than "Spend a Resource Point" type systems. Players want to be playing their PCs, not book-keeping. So the mechanics need to be kept absolutely minimal to not get in the way.

If you liked BECMI Companion or ACKS system, I would recommend using the revised Strongholds & Domain system found in Axioms/Axioms Compendium as a substantial improvement on both systems. You can get it for $1 by signing up for the Autarch Patreon.

I ran a domain level game on RPoL that ran until there was a need for mass combat.
That was really just an excuse to give up as the book keeping had gotten to be more work than fun.
Used "An Echo Resounding" with some tweaks and except for the need to track larger and larger amount of things, I thought the system itself was fine.

For what it's worth, here's the link.

Here's some rules for growing a manor I knocked up, based on 1e/OSRIC Charisma. I had tried generating a manor using A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe, and quickly realised that it just worked out at 10gp/person/year which is what OD&D said back in 1974! So I went with that.
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MANORS & DOMINIONS

OSRIC says high level Fighter Lords can extract 1gp/month per resident in a freehold; for general play I'm going with 10gp/year gross income for a typical borderland manor, which is the OD&D level. Initially attract I reckon freeholders on a manor equal to 'Max Henchmen' score x10 and if there's plenty of land grow quickly to around 100, slower thereafter. Of course diplomacy and conquest can enable rapid growth...



Lord's CHA: Initial Freeholders (Manor)

3-4:  10; Growth -3%

5-6: 20; Growth -2%

7-8: 30; Growth -1%

9-11: 40; Growth +0%

12-13: 50; Growth +0%

14: 60; Growth +0.5%

15: 70; Growth +1.5%

16: 80; Growth +2%

17: 100; Growth +3%

18: 150; Growth +4%

19: 200; Growth +5%

A typical manor in settled farmlands is 640 acres, or 1 square mile. Maximum manor size in borderlands is roughly 2 miles diameter (one 2 mile hex), or just over 3 square miles, of which no more than 1 square mile is likely farmland.



Manor Current Population & Base Growth Rate (annual)

20                 +25%

40                 +20%

60                 +15%

80                 +10%

100                 +5%

125                 +4%

150                 +3%

200                 +2%

300                 +1%

400                 +0%

500                  -1%

600                  -2%

700                  -3%

800                  -4%

900                  -5%

I am all about faction-level meta-games in the campaigns I run, and the domain game is a subset of faction games - a faction might be a domain, or it might be a cult, a guild, a family (noble or otherwise), etc.  Ideally, I try to get the players controlling one (or more) of the factions, regardless of whether they're running it in-character with their main PCs or if it means creating a set of secondary "leader characters" to direct a faction that their normal PCs are members of, but, even if it's something the players aren't interested in, I'll still run the faction game solo to generate larger-scale events in the campaign, which can, in turn, drive adventures for the PCs to partake in, whether as members of a faction advancing its interests (or defending those interests from antagonistic factions), or being asked by NPCs to do things in response to faction-level events, or as free agents identifying and seizing opportunities created by faction interactions.

In the past I've used an ACKS domain game for PCs settling a new colony (and don't believe the "domain level is end-game content" propaganda - these PCs were 3rd and 4th level and it worked fine), but I've more often used the faction mechanics from various Sine Nomine games, which are designed to be used in exactly this way, right down to including suggestions for how PC actions and faction actions interact, and a couple of the games (off the top of my head, Darkness Visible (spy agencies) and Starvation Cheap (mercenary/military units)) having an explicit structure of "first run a faction turn to decide what the players' faction is doing, then assign the PCs to one of the actions affecting their faction and determine that action's outcome by playing it out as an adventure in the next session".

Stephen Chenault just did a GM Tricks of the Trade about Land as Treasure, where he also talked about adjusting the detail level of domain management/upkeep depending upon the state of the game: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/587832409

I haven't gotten to this point in any campaign I've been in so far, but it sounds like a lot of fun and I would love to someday. If I ever get my own game running I will probably assign some land as treasure.

Quote from: nDervish;1126919and don't believe the "domain level is end-game content" propaganda.

To add to this: I'm currently in a ACKS Dwimmermount PbP game and we started setting up a fort of our own outside the megadungeon when we were still mostly first level. It's been paying off serious dividends.

Well, in the Medieval-Authentic OSR Companion, I have rules for running noble houses, which is medieval-authentic domain play, you could say.
Besides that, there's also rules for more advanced-level activities for successful PCs, generally to be done at higher levels. Instead of trying to make it very mechanical, I try to focus on it being more organic to the nature of the setting.

Quote from: Zirunel;1126831Happy to share more of my own perspective on this, but for now I'll just put the topic out there.

So it sounds like perhaps my experience of the domain game may have been a little different from what is normally meant by that. Yes, by the time we were teen-levels, we had domains, they came with both expenses and revenues, and there was scope to increase revenue, but we really didn't get down into the weeds with the economic management of it all. I don't remember special "rules" or elaborate tables. On the DM side I don't think he had anything more elaborate than a price/expense list, probably culled from OD&D and AD&D, and some guidelines on revenues from villages and various enterprises, which he most likely made up (maybe after flipping through Traveller? Possible but who knows). That was it.

For us, the "domain game" was essentially political and military. The politics was rp'd out, no rules that I can remember. Military adventures did need wargaming rules, of course, for those occasions where we actually fought them out on the tabletop.

Economics mattered, of course, we had to finance our ambitious geopolitical projects, but it did not really lead to an estate-management game.

EDITED TO ADD: don't mean to imply economics was unimportant, it was huge. We spent enormously and were often short of cash, and that fact drove much of the game - money became far more important than "levels" or "personal abilities" or the usual D&D rewards - but for reasons we did not anticipate (but arguably should have), management of our "legitimate" enterprises did not offer practical solutions to our financial woes. We were forced to resort to other means than estate management to finance our ambitions. So the estate management side, although it provided some income, remained a minor element in the game. The Domain game was still a fantastic phase of the game, maybe the fantastic phase of the game, but more because of the politics and warfare than the book-keeping.