The Gaming Den

So I'm going to be working on the alpha draft of a homebrew game this summer. I've written a bit about it over on TheRPGSite and will link for context if need be. But for the most part it shouldn't be that important here.

Right now, I wanted to run my idea for domain management rules past you guys. I'm borrowing from ACKS, An Echo Resounding, and Kingmaker for ideas. Each does some things I really like, and some things that bug me enough that i wouldn't want to run any of them straight.

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DESIGN GOALS
1) Give players something cool to do with some of the shit they find in the woods.
2) Intermittently start fires for the PCs to put out.
3) Give players some handy newish toys for putting those fires out, or just raising hell the way PCs do.
4) Different strategies should produce kingdoms that feel different at some level, and multiple strategies should be viable.
5) There should be incentives for building both upward and outward*.
6) Maintain some degree of uncertainty**.

*With size making things difficult, there may be an incentive to keep borders constrained and build upwards only. I'm aware of that, and working on countermeasures. I'll get into details in the next post.
**With the rules as-is, if I write the numeric bits wrong, there's a potential for death spirals or win spirals. I'm aware of that, and working on countermeasures. I'll get into details in the next post.

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STATS
Kingdoms have a bunch of details, but most of them are on the map and key. For stats, I've boiled it down to the following.

Wealth: # (#)
Social: # (#)
Military: # (#)

Size: #

Wealth, social, and military values are derived from all the stuff your kingdom has, while size is fairly self-explanatory. The values outside the parentheses are relatively static. The values inside them act as a currency.

DOMAIN TURNS
These resolve every (28 day) month. Presumably (unless you're covering multiple months in a session) the GM will slightly delay these until the end of the session in order to avoid bogging down play.

1) Roll (Stat+3d6) vs Size. Halve the margin you succeeded or failed by. Apply the result to the currency for that stat. Do this for each stat. This represents building resources from a surplus or wasting resources on upkeep and maintenance, depending on whether you succeeded or failed.
2) Roll random events. If the event is bad, you make a stat vs size check and success negates the event. If the event is good, you make a stat vs size check and failure negates the event.
3) If you've got lairs or other permanent nuisances, roll to see what they do.
4) (Optional) Roll 1d28 to determine when this month any given event happens.

DOMAIN ACTIONS
These don't have to be taken during a domain turn. You can use them provided you are in the right place to use them. For example, you can't muster archers from a mine or break a siege from the wrong castle. Many of these actions cost the currency you try to build up, or have a long delay once started.

1) Build or disband structures, roads, etc.
2) Deploy assets (muster soldiers, get some cash, or what have you).
3) Issue edicts.
4) Address problems (in character questing, no special mechanics here).

LOCATION TYPES
Different types of locations do different things.

Resources
Natural resources. These are required if you intend to build or attract certain structures.

Structures
Structures apply bonuses and penalties to your stats. Some can be built and upgraded deliberately. Some appear on the event tables, and represent people moving into your kingdom.

Lairs
Lairs are the locations of permanent problems, like bandits and dragons. Every now and again they'll attack some structures and shut them down (either negating bonuses, preventing them from deploying assets, or both).

OTHER STUFF

Assets
Edicts
Officials[/b]

I also didn't know where to put this, but if currency goes negative, you've got to pay your upkeep by disbanding structures. Between this and the way that affluent kingdoms grow for free through random events (and already suffering kingdoms are hurt by bad events) there's potential for win/loss spirals. Additionally, since size acts to increase difficulty, there's little reason to build upward instead of outward.

I'm dealing with this in a few ways:
1)Built and random growth is slow. Conquest is comparatively fast.
2)Building up hurts the ratio of benefit to upkeep. The event-based growth will start costing more than it helps at the highest levels. So they give you an initial boost and then force expansion later.
3)Low level structures require proximity to scarce resources. So both prospecting within your borders and seizing enemy property are encouraged.
4)Edicts are fast, but have the worst ratio of cost and benefit. Basically, they're there to patch shit if you get thrown drastically out of balance somehow and don't have time to build.

I'm also considering handling free structure levelling the same way as lair attacks (roll for each) so that towns don't level less the more of them you have. I'm not entirely sure if I'll go with that.

Am I talking sense so far? Or is none of this likely to work?

So basically a fiddly fantasy version of Monopoly?

JigokuBosatsu wrote:So basically a fiddly fantasy version of Monopoly?

Given that you can build some things but have to wait for others, I think it's probably closer to Sim City than Monopoly. I know it's not going to be for everybody, but do you think it'll work alright for what I've made it for?

One thing I haven't added yet (because I haven't fleshed it out yet) is that certain military buildings, once constructed, expand your borders by controlling territory in a fixed radius. And you can capture or raid an enemy's stuff. So it also serves as a way of handling the macro-scale of warfare in a simplified and abstracted kind of way.

but do you think it'll work alright for what I've made it for?

Currently you have only some rough ideas. It is not possible to tell whether it works or not. It looks like a conception for a video game.

In the past, I have participated in Birthright domain games. BR is built on the idea that players can be kings or other VIPs in the society. There are rules for domain actions, domain spells etc. However, it did not feel right: either you play domain building game, which can be compared to a boardgame with a referee, or you play D&D and the domain rules get into way.

Kuri Näkk wrote:

but do you think it'll work alright for what I've made it for?

Currently you have only some rough ideas. It is not possible to tell whether it works or not. It looks like a conception for a video game.

It's true that these are just the bones and I'll be putting the meat on later. It's the kind of thing where I don't know where to start determining whether it will lead to the kind of gameplay I want (as opposed to combat mechanics, where I have much more to compare it to) which makes me uncomfortable. But hopefully I'll be able to test these rules over the summer.

In the past, I have participated in Birthright domain games. BR is built on the idea that players can be kings or other VIPs in the society. There are rules for domain actions, domain spells etc. However, it did not feel right: either you play domain building game, which can be compared to a boardgame with a referee, or you play D&D and the domain rules get into way.

I'm trying to keep the high end stuff fairly GM-side and between sessions for this reason. It's also why random events get delays (so they don't all happen on the first of the month) and players act whenever they are in the right place to do so (so they don't do all that on the first of the month). On the player side, it's just a way of tracking the problems and benefits of ruling a kingdom. You get armies and stuff, but you also have to fend off dragons or clear monsters out of valuable mines. Or if you'd rather be a dick about it, it'll be more about crushing peasant revolts, raiding your neighbors, and the like.

I'm hoping to deliberately avoid too much of the kind of gaminess you describe, if I can.

As a side note, is BR worth mining for ideas? Or was the gaminess bothersome in all the details? I can't see wanting (for example) domain spells.

For the actual stuff players can get, I'm looking to have all six possible "trades" (+wealth/-social, +wealth/-military, +social/-wealth, +social/-military, +military/-social, and +military/-wealth) in each of three categories (built sites, rolled sites, and edicts). For now, I don't know the names of the things I'll be putting in each role though. I do know that for rolled sites, I want the stat that determines whether a site is placed not to be the stat that that site boosts. Otherwise there's a little feedback loop where that stat increases more or less indefinitely.

So for example, the edict called "taxes" will increase wealth and hurt social. You can increase or decrease taxes whenever. If they're too low, you risk losing wealth to upkeep. If they're too high, you risk pissing people off. The reverse would be something like "bread and circuses" and this would do the reverse. In either case the trade off would progress as follows:

0: (default taxes, no effect)
1: +1/-1
2: +2/-3
3: +3/-5
4: +4/-7
5: +5/-9

Built structures cost time and money, so they would probably remain efficient across all levels (no one is going to willingly build something that would hurt their stats) but they would also probably lose some efficiency over time (because I want to encourage expansion outward still). So if you build a garrison or fortress, it would hurt your wealth and help your military as follows:

1: +1/-0
2: +2/-1
3: +3/-2
4: +4/-3
5: +5/-4

Finally, people settling in will grow until they start doing more harm than good. Let's say the following are trading posts. Traders are moving into your territory and increasing your wealth, but they need some amount of military protection. In that case, the progression is as follows:

+1/-0
+2/-2
+3/-4
+4/-6
+5/-8

beejazz wrote: As a side note, is BR worth mining for ideas? Or was the gaminess bothersome in all the details? I can't see wanting (for example) domain spells.

I think that it is worth mining for ideas. It is quite developed system and I would say less gamey than some of your ideas. However, I doubt that you can use the mechanics directly because they are rather BR specific.

BR is 2nd ed AD&D but there is also free conversion to 3E, which is very good for fan work. If you are at it you may also want to check ‘Legends of the Hero-Kings’, which is an official collection of adventures designed to support domain building game.

Kuri Näkk wrote:I think that it is worth mining for ideas. It is quite developed system and I would say less gamey than some of your ideas. However, I doubt that you can use the mechanics directly because they are rather BR specific.

BR is 2nd ed AD&D but there is also free conversion to 3E, which is very good for fan work. If you are at it you may also want to check ‘Legends of the Hero-Kings’, which is an official collection of adventures designed to support domain building game.

Thanks for the tip. I'll be sure and check that stuff out.

Out of curiosity, is there something in particular about what I have here that feels gamey in a way that BR did not? Is it just the use of a separate subsystem*? Because if it's just that, I'm okay with it being a little gamey. Or is there some aspect that might break suspension of disbelief?

*As opposed to say... ACKS's approach with the price lists and the detailed population and the very specific incomes.

beejazz wrote: Out of curiosity, is there something in particular about what I have here that feels gamey in a way that BR did not? Is it just the use of a separate subsystem*? Because if it's just that, I'm okay with it being a little gamey. Or is there some aspect that might break suspension of disbelief?

The problem with BR rules is that the domain building game operates on much higher level of abstraction than normal RPG and many of its features do not make much sense in normal RPGs. For instance, coercive force (court system, military units, bandits etc) was abstracted into law holdings. From domain level game perspective, it is not important what the holding actually represents. However, in ordinary D&D RPG you have to be more specific. Giving substance to the abstract domain concepts results in various problems. For instance, law holdings are supposed to be based on real coercive power. I would say that D&D level 15th party has tremendous amount of coercive power in BR, which is a low level setting. Does it mean that if a party wanders to a neighbouring province it will automatically get law holdings? If so, it would wreck the domain game. If not, then law holdings are no longer based on real coercive power, which means that you have to redefine what they represent.

IMHO, your ideas for domain rules are at least as abstract as BR rules. I would expect the same sort of problems if you try to write a comprehensive subs-system for domain game.

Kuri Näkk wrote:The problem with BR rules is that the domain building game operates on much higher level of abstraction than normal RPG and many of its features do not make much sense in normal RPGs. For instance, coercive force (court system, military units, bandits etc) was abstracted into law holdings. From domain level game perspective, it is not important what the holding actually represents. However, in ordinary D&D RPG you have to be more specific. Giving substance to the abstract domain concepts results in various problems. For instance, law holdings are supposed to be based on real coercive power. I would say that D&D level 15th party has tremendous amount of coercive power in BR, which is a low level setting. Does it mean that if a party wanders to a neighbouring province it will automatically get law holdings? If so, it would wreck the domain game. If not, then law holdings are no longer based on real coercive power, which means that you have to redefine what they represent.

IMHO, your ideas for domain rules are at least as abstract as BR rules. I would expect the same sort of problems if you try to write a comprehensive subs-system for domain game.

I do intend to get a little more specific about what each structure represents (so a fortress, a militia muster, or mercenaries might all apply a bonus to military, but what units you can muster from where and/or what random encounters you can bump into near these structures will depend much more on the specifics) and I do intend to keep the *application* of military force (mustering these forces and actually fighting) relatively "on screen" when I am able.

Hopefully the specifics work out adequately in the long run.

Kuri Näkk wrote:For instance, law holdings are supposed to be based on real coercive power. I would say that D&D level 15th party has tremendous amount of coercive power in BR, which is a low level setting. Does it mean that if a party wanders to a neighbouring province it will automatically get law holdings? If so, it would wreck the domain game. If not, then law holdings are no longer based on real coercive power, which means that you have to redefine what they represent.

As far as I recall (and I haven't read the BR rules in a decade or so, so I could be mistaken), law holdings represent the real coercive power of the owners of a domain, not just the existence of anything with power somewhere in the domain. If a 15th-level party is chilling in a province and they don't work for the province's regent, the real coercive power of the province itself hasn't changed; if a 15th-level party is chilling in a province and they do work for the province's regent, that might well be the flavor text for having a powerful law holding in the first place.

Also, the whole point of the bloodlines thing is that only the ruling people are supposed to make it to high levels because of their special divine right to rule and be awesome. The only high-level parties wandering around capable of fighting armies on their own are (or at least are assumed to be) the people who own armies in the first place, and they need said armies because they can't be in enough places at once to protect all their holdings and have other things to be doing even if they could.

Emerald wrote: As far as I recall (and I haven't read the BR rules in a decade or so, so I could be mistaken), law holdings represent the real coercive power of the owners of a domain, not just the existence of anything with power somewhere in the domain.

Yes, theoretically, but it only makes sense at the domain level. Recall, for instance, that the amount of taxes depends on the law holding. Since when does collecting money from people require bloodline and investiture? Bandits and goblin marauders can totally rob people. The conception of law holdings feels very gamey at the RPG level.

Or what about the fortification action, which fortifies the whole province never mind that half of it is complete wilderness? What about regency points- what are these in the 'real' game world? The list goes on and on but I really do not want to get further into the discussion. After several attempts I can't see much point in trying to use the domain rules in normal RPG for anything else than rough guidelines for generating events in distant lands.

One of the real problems with any sort of society minigame in DnD is that fa party goes from zero to twenty in less than two months. So, in two domain turns, you go from absolutely nothing to an apocalyptic undead horde summoned by your Dread Necro neighbor to the north, a chain-binding-based commune to the east, follower-geddon to the south, and a fantastic leap forward to the west.

What does two turns of benefit give you that can even play in the same league?

fectin wrote:One of the real problems with any sort of society minigame in DnD is that fa party goes from zero to twenty in less than two months. So, in two domain turns, you go from absolutely nothing to an apocalyptic undead horde summoned by your Dread Necro neighbor to the north, a chain-binding-based commune to the east, follower-geddon to the south, and a fantastic leap forward to the west.

What does two turns of benefit give you that can even play in the same league?

This isn't for D&D.

It should be noted, that's "less than two months" of four encounters per day, every day. This has never happened ever in my D&D experience. Even the fastest-paced campaign I've ever been in took about a year of game time to go from 1 to 20.

Schleiermacher wrote:It should be noted, that's "less than two months" of four encounters per day, every day. This has never happened ever in my D&D experience. Even the fastest-paced campaign I've ever been in took about a year of game time to go from 1 to 20.

I've never known any GMs that actually used the guidelines for encounters per day, used CR as written, or used XP as written. For what it's worth (not much; I almost always GM or play 1 to 3 session campaigns with minimal/no level advancement).


Getting back on topic though, I'm considering that the "growing" elements may add to size instead of subtracting from one of the stats. I'm not sure about the details of how the progression would work in that case though.

I'm also not sure what a military asset that shows up and grows over time would look like, or what social currencies and assets might be used for. The specific stat types may need going back and reworking before this is all over. I don't want to leave it at military and wealth, though. And social is great for a lot of the potential random events. Maybe things will have to be more asymmetrical than I had originally planned. It'll make things harder to predict and balance, but it's important that I don't stretch the setting for the sake of the mechanics.

A friend of mine and I just coined a new word: "Jeather". It describes the consistency achieved by jello shots that have been left out too long.

beejazz wrote:

fectin wrote:One of the real problems with any sort of society minigame in DnD is that fa party goes from zero to twenty in less than two months. So, in two domain turns, you go from absolutely nothing to an apocalyptic undead horde summoned by your Dread Necro neighbor to the north, a chain-binding-based commune to the east, follower-geddon to the south, and a fantastic leap forward to the west.

What does two turns of benefit give you that can even play in the same league?

This isn't for D&D.

What is this for and what are the PCs expected to be doing when not participating in domain shenanigans?

MGuy wrote:What is this for and what are the PCs expected to be doing when not participating in domain shenanigans?

Sorry for the slow response. Kind of figured this thread had died.

If you remember the D20 game I was working on over on TheRPGSite, this plugs in with that more or less. I haven't posted on that one in a while, since I'm down to the boring math-heavy bits nobody wants to read or comment on, but work continues on both.

What players do in my game can be boiled down to something similar to D&D* really. Players go into dungeons (or the wilderness or the planes or anywhere else perilous), face all sorts of challenges in open-ended survival-horror type scenarios, come back from the adventure with wealth or other rewards (barring poor luck or poor play), rinse, repeat. I've got a quest-based XP system that leaves the details much more open than they normally are, and I'm building systems like this one to give alternatives to the gear treadmill when it comes to quest rewards.

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I may post again soon to revise the math and such significantly. In the current iteration everything just gives a bonus to one stat and size instead of a bonus to one stat and a penalty to another. This means no more hex counting for the size stat as well. Lairs will just flat add to the size stat instead of sometimes raiding and shutting down an asset (which called for extra rolls for every lair, systems for determining what happens when they raid, and constant alterations on a bunch of stats). There will probably also be rules for villages and mines and such (which don't so much alter your stats as allow the big stuff to be built nearby).

I'm currently determining how many villages support a level 1 community, how many of those you need before you can get a level 2 community, and so on. This would be based on some population numbers pulled from medieval demographics made easy. Currently my rough sketch of the numbers has it that for each level of settlement you need about 4 settlements in the bracket beneath it (with the brackets being 1:1k, 2:3k, 3:10k, 4:30k, 5:100k in terms of population).

*Leaning low-level and/or Basic rather than high level 3x. I know just "D&D" leaves a lot of wiggle room.[/url]