Musing on Alternative Domains

The implied trajectory of D&D-style play has players adventuring, gathering resources, and eventually becoming rulers of their own fiefdoms, usually carved out somewhere in the wilderness. Kings by their own hand and all that. Some settings have leaned into this (parts of Mystara and Birthright), while others left it pretty much by the wayside (almost every post-Forgotten Realms setting). A more modern take on the concept is exemplified by Pathfinder’s Kingmaker module, which got a second wind through the video game adaptation and has a cult following in Burning Wheels circles as a great start-off point for a campaign.

Much as I adore domain-level play, this traditional conception bugs me. First, I dislike the assumption that PCs can only be movers and shakers if they are, in some sense, aristocrats and feudal elites. This is doubly annoying as archetypes like druids, rangers and thieves don’t sit well with this taxonomy of power. Does the thief give up thieving when they establish a domain? Attempts to address this exist in granting thief characters clandestine guilds, clerics temples, wizards towers, and so on, and they generally feel more like afterthoughts. And for a diverse party of characters, I find this diffuses rather than concentrates their power and inevitably leads to the kinds of intra-party conflicts the D&D-esque is supremely awful at tackling. When reaching domain-level play, these system implicitly begin weakening rather than uniting the bonds between player characters.

Second, this view of power makes the proverbial “untamed wilderness” the only possible canvas for decisive player expression on the political dimension. This restriction reflects the standard setting assumptions that D&D was built around, and that’s all well and good. But our world provides ample inspiration for ascendancy that is not structured around quasi-feudal pocket empires in the hinterlands. Plenty of important actors in history mobilized change and impacted the world without being princes and lords, and even a vast, continent-spanning empire can provide dynamic and friction-rich arenas for PCs to become “rulers” in.

In traditional D&D and its modern descendants, a domain is typically composed of some details about its general structure, a set of stats that quantify its political capital, money, or whatever, a catalogue of possible resources and assets, and (sometimes) a set of rules that these elements interface with during “domain turns” or something similar. All well and good. And in fact, a very useful starting point for exploring domains as something else with a bit of DIY rules tinkering.

Domains =/= Territories

Abandoning the idea that a “domain” must be a traditional geopolitical polity opens up new avenues of adventure and agency. Moreover, it allows domains to use other domains as their canvas rather than be reliant on a wilderness to conquer.

A “domain” could be a clandestine smuggling network. Its stats could reflect its monetary reserves, its reputation, and its ability to evade authorities. Instead of sending agents to hexes and dungeons, you’re assigning blockade runners and market scouts to entrepots and trade cities. Your assets are your setting-informed menu of sneaky resources.

Or perhaps the “domain” is a Witcher-style society of monster-hunters. The whole kingdom (or a cluster of kingdoms) becomes your hex map of exploration; your stats reflect your ability to leverage goodwill of locals and your treasury. Your assets are bases of operation and the infrastructure needed to maintain sustained monster-fighting.

A “domain” could be a semi-nomadic clan. Its stats reflects its ability to relocate and feed itself and defend itself against raiders. The map you’re interacting with is based around the shifting nodes of foraging and hunting that allow your survival. Assets are wise elders, beasts of burden, and blood oaths and alliances with other clans.

Same Mechanics, Different Inspiration

It takes remarkably little tinkering to transpose the traditional domain mechanisms to other frameworks of player agency. A map; a handful of stats; assets; a menu of domain actions. That is really all you need to run a vast variety of player-directed factions. Inspiration can be cribbed from the wealth of Forged in the Dark games with excellent sheets for crews and organizations; from asymmetrical strategy wargames; from any history book. There are a myriad of ways to validate your players’ agency and impact without insisting on trappings of settler nobility.

And if a bit of mechanical heft is needed, Kevin Crawford’s works (Stars Without Number, Worlds Without Number, Godbound) are among the finest examples of faction and domain rules out there. Even his take on traditional “king by your own hand” D&D-esque domain play in An Echo Resounding (written for Labyrinth Lord but easily adaptable) is superlative in its class.