TSR [BECMI] The Domain Game

[Mezuka]

Have you ever used the domain game rules and war-machines mass combat rules from the Companion Set? How was it? Did the players enjoy that or did they want to back to exploration and dungeon crawling?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

A long time ago. Being a kid at the time, I could've done a better job of it as a DM. The party did that for a while, but eventually left their domains behind to go back to the regular adventures they enjoyed more.

These days I feel like D&D could do with a return to the domain game. I find myself tapping out on running campaigns after PCs get to high levels. I'd love to see a system to transition to a Birthright-like campaign, where PCs rule kingdoms or organizations for high-level play.

 

[CleverNickName]

We really enjoyed it. Entire gaming sessions revolved around outfitting their army with new gear, forcing an occupying army out of a region, sending reinforcements to a neighboring dominion, dealing with a peasant revolt following a plague, surviving a coup attempt from a baron upstart, and so forth. Not every gaming session, but I'd say every third or fourth.

 

[Jer]

Yes - though it was junior high and honestly only part of the group was into it. We did springboard a few adventuring sessions off of it though as the domain events led to some diplomatic and military type campaigns that required them to take a hands-on approach. But mostly since we were junior high kids we drifted away from that game into other stuff fairly quickly.

I do think there's some potential in there for a system that mostly works as a downtime system to inspire adventures - lots of story potential for a group that is supposed to be running a domain and has to deal with various threats and challenges. And I think about tinkering something together every once in a while to do that but my free time is severely lacking so I haven't done much with it.

 

[Reynard]

I grew up with those sets and they are still my favorite edition of D&D. I used the Domain and War Machine rules relatively recently -- meaning about 10 years ago -- during a Pathfinder campaign and they still hold up and are pretty edition agnostic. I almost used War Machine to resolve a battle conflict in 5e but the campaign fell apart.

 

[Mezuka]

I grew up with those sets and they are still my favorite edition of D&D. I used the Domain and War Machine rules relatively recently -- meaning about 10 years ago -- during a Pathfinder campaign and they still hold up and are pretty edition agnostic. I almost used War Machine to resolve a battle conflict in 5e but the campaign fell apart.

It must be a curse! I was getting ready to do the same but my 5e campaign and it also fell apart.

 

[Jack Daniel]

I once ran a whole BECMI campaign that took two players from 1st level up to the end of the "Initiate" tier (immortal level 6th in Wrath of the Immortals, roughly equivalent to a Temporal Novice in the much more baroque gold box rules) over the course of about three real years.

When the Companion Set rules kicked in, I started them off by introducing module CM1: Test of the Warlords and having the PCs engage in the Norwold "land grab." As a rule, I don't like published modules, but I recall CM1 being both great fun and a good introduction to the various Companion level mechanics.

The domain management rules have always worked well enough for me that I tend to stick with them as-written (I don't have to stoop to importing anything from ACKS), but the War Machine isn't great. You can get the same results at a similar level of abstraction, and with far less tedium, by just using the core battle mechanic from Risus, treating each salient feature of a given army or navy as a "cliché." And if that doesn't satisfy (which, IME, it won't), you can go with either Delta's Book of War (which is great, especially with ChgoWiz's "Fellowship" rules tacked on) or (my current preference) convert the mass battle rules from Decipher LotR's Helm's Deep supplement.

 

[CleverNickName]

...but the War Machine isn't great. You can get the same results at a similar level of abstraction, and with far less tedium, by just using the core battle mechanic from Risus, treating each salient feature of a given army or navy as a "cliché." And if that doesn't satisfy (which, IME, it won't), you can go with either Delta's Book of War (which is great, especially with ChgoWiz's "Fellowship" rules tacked on) or (my current preference) convert the mass battle rules from Decipher LotR's Helm's Deep supplement.

I've never heard of any of these systems you mention after "War Machine" (and I wager I'm not the only one). Give us the details! What do they do that War Machine dosn't?

 

[Tonguez]

I've never heard of any of these systems you mention after "War Machine" (and I wager I'm not the only one). Give us the details! What do they do that War Machine dosn't?

Risus is a free game system, its a free form game where you describe a character via cliches (traits, what FATE calls aspects) and then assign dice from your pool (10 dice for a heroic game)

The War Machine rules are a bit complicated really and there are many better approaches to mass combat

The Domain rules are cool though, we used them and I really liked Birthright too. Newer rules are less complicated and thats great. I've played entire games at the Domain level with only occasional narrative break outs for character action. The other good way is to use the domain level events to set up adventures spanned over seasons/years of time - its balancing the different rates of Domain v Character time that is the biggest hurdle to get around

 

[Jack Daniel]

I've never heard of any of these systems you mention after "War Machine" (and I wager I'm not the only one). Give us the details! What do they do that War Machine dosn't?

Risus is exactly as @Tonguez described. Flexible enough that it can easily handle a mass combat just like a small-scale combat, but it'll very light on detail.

The Book of War (and the Fellowship Supplement) aim to give old-school D&D a suitable mass-battle system that replaces the likes of Chainmail, Swords & Spells, and Battlesystem in a way that actually scales from man-to-man up to unit scale in a statistically accurate fashion — meaning that one should ideally get the same results out of using the Book of War rules as you would if you'd actually played out the whole mass battle using the ordinary D&D combat rules. (Dan Collins is a math professor and statistics are very much his wheelhouse.) The Fellowship Supplement adds rules for the player characters affecting the outcomes of mass battles.

Helm's Deep was the last hardcover sourcebook released for Decipher's CODA-system LotR RPG (a system that feels a great deal like 3e D&D, except with all of the d20 rolls replaced by 2d6 rolls). Its mass battle system is fairly streamlined and simple to use (at least once all the units in the battle are statted up), suitable for use with or without miniatures (using either a precise hex grid or loosey-goosey "zones"), and it too has optional rules for heroic characters affecting the outcomes of skirmishes.