Ice and snow as two separate prompts!? That’s conceptual double-dipping, Dyson!
Alright, uh…snow falls in winter…winter is a metaphor for old age… Let’s talk about retired adventurers. (The concept, not the blog.) This is actually something I’ve been tinkering with for months now. I’ve still got some further development to do before it’s ready for the table, but maybe sharing this half-finished version will generate some criticisms useful to my thought process.
Low level adventuring is fun. I think this is a common sentiment among my peers in the OSR. Levels 1-3 have more tension. Characters are more fragile so they’re more likely to die, and they’ve got less emotional investment in them so it’s less of a bummer when they do. These levels also include the most relatable form of play. The things characters are able to do are more closely analogous to what real human beings can do. The powerful magic items and spells and potions don’t come in until later.
Domain level play is also fun. At least conceptually. It’s neat to move from being a pawn tossed about by the whims of the game world, to someone with the power to change that world. I’ve had a lot of fun with domain play, but I’ve never felt at home with it. Never reached that comfortable back-and-forth where both players and referee know what they want, and what to expect of one another. Part of the issue is that it takes so long for a campaign to reach the domain stage that I haven’t practiced with it much at all. Another part is the dearth of writing on the subject. Rule books usually make only a token gesture towards supporting domain play, and the blogging scene doesn’t often engage with it. There are some notable exceptions to that, like this post from Joseph Manola, and this one from John B., but I’m surprised how many of the blogs I read return no results when searching for “Domain.”
It would be nice to engage with domain play earlier in a campaign, while keeping the focus on grotty, low-level adventuring. That’s the impetus behind this idea.
Characters gain experience only by spending money to gain resources or connections as part of building their future prospects as a ruler of a domain. In practice this just means taking numbers out of the “money” column, and placing them in the “experience” column. Their investments have no form or function within the game until thy reach level 5, at which point they become a Boss. Bosses are too busy with important affairs to bother with dungeon crawling. They send underlings to handle that sort of thing for them. The player of a new boss should roll up a new 1st level character to serve as their Boss character’s underling. The player is now their own questgiver.
Bosses remain in play, but act only during a meta-game “domain turn” which takes place at the start of each session. After the domain turn ends, players control their underling characters in much the same way they normally would: delving dungeons and exploring wilderness. Now, however, they gain experience points by turning money over to their boss to help grow the boss’ empire. Again, this has no tangible benefit in play until the new character gains enough experience points to achieve level 5, at which point they too become a boss. The player now has 2 bosses, perhaps working as partners, or more likely, the first boss has grown powerful enough to need an under-boss. The player again rolls a fresh character, and may continue this cycle as long as they wish. Over time the domain turn will likely become longer and more intricate. The dungeon delving portion of the game may eventually become displaced completely, at which point it might be appropriate to introduce an “underling management” minigame, but that’s even more speculative than the rest of this, and well beyond the scope of this post.
For each Boss a player has at their disposal, they may make take 1 action during the Domain Turn. Additionally, the number of Boss’s at a player’s disposal should roughly set the scale on which they operate. I figure players with 1 Boss operate on the level of a mercenary captain, or Archon of a small town. 2 Bosses might make you a city Mayor, army General, Archbishop in your church, etc. Sometime around having 5 Bosses players would be operating on the world stage.
The Domain Turn, like its sibling the Exploration Turn, is not a set length of time. It is as long as it takes to achieve the results of a Domain Turn action, which may be an hour or a year. As a matter of maintaining the structure of play, it ought to occur once at the start of each session, regardless of how much time passes during the more traditional mode of play. It’s important that the timescale in the two modes be able to float a little bit relative to one another.
The structure of the domain turn as laid out below is strict, but only because this mode of play is too unfamiliar to be loosy goosy with. When a player is told they can do anything they want, many will experience analysis paralysis. When told they must choose from a set of 5 actions they’ll often opt to invent a 6th. This is desirable behavior. I imagine a group that became comfortable with this system would abandon much of this formalization.
The domain turn occurs in 3 steps, each of which have some chance to influence the steps which come after:
- Domain Encounter is rolled. Only a single encounter is rolled for the whole group, but it has to be rolled first because it has a good chance of altering what the players what the players want to do in the later two phases. This would be adapted from the Haven Encounters I used in ORWA.
- Boss’s projects are updated. Done second because this phase has the greatest potential to be dull. Hopefully not, but if it is, at least the turn starts strong and ends strong. Some project updates will be simple. A progress bar moving one step closer to the end. “You hired a crew to build a tower in the woods. It’ll take 3 domain turns. This is turn 2 of 3.” Other project updates may require the player to roll. “Check a d6 for that spy you put into your enemy’s entourage. On a 4 or 5 they send you information, on a 1 they got caught.” This would also be a good phase to generate adventure prompts which the players could assign to themselves in the other phase of play. “The caravan of supplies you sent for was attacked by bandits along River Road. Half the goods were stolen. Do you want to send someone out to recover the rest?”
- Domain Actions. Performed last, because it’s what players will be most interested in. Bosses only get a single action per session, but those actions are more abstracted than in normal play. “Convince a local aristocrat to fund my scheme.” would be one action. Boss Characters are competent. Their actions succeed or fail with much less need to fiddle with the details than the actions of the low-level schmucks players control during normal play!
Before attempting to use this system at the table I’d like to have a codified list of domain actions, and how to resolve them. The sort of thing where if the player knows exactly what they want to do, I can say “ah, that’s an example of X action; let’s resolve it according to those rules.” And if they don’t know what to do, I can say “Well, here are the types of actions you can take, which one seems most useful to you at the moment?” Ava’s rules on Conspicuous Consumption are a particular guidepost to me here.
And that’s about all I’ve managed to accomplish with this system so far. I kinda wanted to push my development a little further today, but I’ve had to write this post in full twice because of an odd computer crash. I am now a Class-B Grumperton, and also over an hour behind schedule on work today.
Check out the hashtags #DICEMBER or #DICEMBER2021 on your social media of choice to see other participants.
