Strategic Level Game System

[Tav_Behemoth]

Rilvar, there are lots of folks out there posting about using Adventurer Conqueror King. Here's one of mine that's focused on a house rule I use, and here's a report from a player in that session. By far the biggest source of play reports using the system is Louisville D&D which has posted 43 session summaries so far! Reviews are collected here if that's your thing.

The ACKS rules are thorough and reflect a lot of experience playing 3E - Greg and I were in a campaign from 1st to 23rd level together, I ran another he was in from first to 11th, and Alex has run several complete 3E campaigns, some concurrent with designing ACKS. However, while the basic pricing of weapons and mercenaries and strongholds could translate fine to use ACKS with 3E, you'd need to do some careful adaptation to allow the kind of 3E magic item crafting that your group may be attached to. My sense is that allowing PCs to make and sell magic items is going to be problematic for any attempt to do a consistent economy with a 3E base, and I hear from friends who played through Paizo's Kingmaker AP that this was where its strategic-level play broke down - according to them, there was no reason to build any building that wasn't devoted to churning out magic items. However it sounds like they had a lot of fun in that campaign nonetheless, you might do well to check out Kingmaker!

Another system I'd recommend highly is An Echo, Resounding. It doesn't try to do a complete top-to-bottom economy like ACKS, so it's more flexible - similar Primal Order, you can stick it on top of wildly different rules and have it work out OK. Here's one review, and this one makes an explicit comparison to ACKS that'd help you decide which is right for your table.

 

[S'mon]

Per 3e/PF RAW AIR you can't make any money churning out magic items:

Items cost half their base price to make.
PCs can sell items for half their base price, to a maximum of the settlement wealth limit.

Of course the GM could have an occasional NPC commission an item from a PC crafter, and be willing to pay full price for it, but that should be fairly rare I'd think. Maybe a few things like wands of cure light wounds might be in relatively high demand; a Cleric crafter might get several orders a month from adventurers, the military and such.

 

[Rilvar]

So after reviewing these suggestions, I finally got a chance to glance through them all. I am going to offer a rough review based on my intent for a strategic level game.

To start, an outline for what I was looking for: As simple a system as possible to encompass strategic level play that is comprehensive enough to provide for the many aspects my players may be interested in, and expansive enough to encompass large empires. At first glance this suggests a very complex system, but I used Primal Order as a comparison of a system that is both comprehensive and expansive yet very simple in design.

A note on terminology: It seems most people are using “domain style play” to describe a game that encompasses running kingdoms etc. After overviewing the system, I would describe domain style play as everything involved in acquiring a domain, running the domain and taking domain actions. However, I also use the term strategic level play to describe interactions among various power groups at the domain and higher level. The distinction is important because I wanted a system that allows the players to be a part of the “chess game in the sky” and not simply creating a domain in the likeness of a character that goes on “adventures” to find resources and fight other domains. Strategic level play could also mesh into other game aspects, divine, immortal, or what have you.

As I glanced over all the systems, I narrowed it down to five candidates. I ranked these in order of complexity, from least to most, based on a quick overview of the rules. They are:

BECMI Dominions – Rated the least complex, mostly for the length of rules.

ACKS – Mostly follows off BECMI.

AER (An Echo, Resounding) – Although it has far more pages of rules than most other systems, most of these simply discuss the rules. And at its heart is a fairly simple system, but it is far more comprehensive than BECMI Dominions.

Birthright – Wading into the complex side, this system has exact numerated rules on all matters from economics to military, and very detailed discussions on many domain concerns and interactions.

MMSWS (A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe) – Although this isn’t a system allowing for domain play per se, it still has very detailed rules about most of the actions involved, namely stating out manors, strongholds, kingdoms, construction, finances, economy, and there is even a supplement for mass combat. By far the most complex system I could find, it would require some combination with one of the other systems to incorporate domain turns.

Also note in these reviews I am basing this only on a quick read through and not too much testing, so any experiential input would be appreciated.

 

[Rilvar]

BECMI Dominions

Although very few pages, the rules get quickly in depth into the numbers of domain management. It gives fairly detailed systems for determining population and wealth, based on location. I expands on some expenses, and has a fairly detailed and complex system for determining population confidence. It has a fairly easy stronghold construction process, picking pieces a la carte, totaling the cost, and calculating construction time. It only glances at events, and I could not find any treatment of raising armies.

Although it brings back fond memories of my early D&D days, it also reminds me of the incongruence of the system. It often goes into very specific details about some game elements, while leaving others largely untouched. Yes, it allows you to build a stronghold, stat out a domain with population, and set up rough accounting. However, it has very little for the treatment of interacting with other domains, which is key to strategic level play. It has almost no treatment for the PMESII paradigm except in segmented chunks, but would require heavy house ruling and I feel the end result would not be a simple congruent system.

I could see this system working best with a regular D&D game with strongholds as an add on, and domain style play mainly focused on managing the stronghold and simple interactions with surrounding neighbors.

 

[Rilvar]

ACKS

The ACKS is similar enough to BECMI that I’m going to only discuss differences. After reviewing ACKS I revise my complexity rating from low to high – which is not surprising since I found that for BECMI to be comprehensive enough it would need LOTS of rules. ACKS has lots of rules.

ACKS has polished up and expanded on BECMI Dominions quite a bit. It has very detailed rules on domain creation: income, population, expenses, growing populations, confidence, etc. The rules follow in the style of BECMI, namely by expanding standard rules to large scale. Wealth comes from calculating the individual contributions of each peasant, population is generated by calculating numbers of families, etc. The rules for constructing the entire realm consist of a dozen tables and in depth calculations for all levels of society, more similar to MMSWE.

As with BECMI, the system is very specialized in regards to class: fighter stronghold domains are very different from rogue thief guilds (as they should be). It has a whole set of actions and reactions for what the master of a criminal syndicate might do as opposed to the lord of a manor. It has rules for wizards to create dungeons and merchants to engage in mercantile ventures. The rules are very detailed, for example covering how a merchant transports goods or what the repercussions of an assassination attempt might be.

In some ways the system reminds me of some MMORPGs out there, like EVE. It provides a number of “professions” you might engage in, and develops each in a layered system where you could conceivably start out a 1st level adventuring for a high level mage who is engaging in a spell component harvest action. At higher level, the PCs can be the ones commissioning low level adventurers for the advancement of their domain. In theory this is great, but I’ve found in practice it is VERY time intensive for a GM to run this kind of game (unless you have a whole staff support to run all the higher level NPC shaping actions).

However, ACKS lacks in the same way as BECMI in that it has very little to offer for strategic level play. It has virtually no rules for interaction between different powers, so beyond developing your domain the system is left to the GM’s discretion. Other than describing what a kingdom is, it has few rules for what a kingdom actually does.

I would probably recommend this system over BECMI for those who want to have a stronghold/guild/venture add on. It has many comprehensive rules for each, and would be great for a campaign which focuses on the characters who have a domain on the side that can develop over the campaign, but does not play much into the overall political maneuvers of the region.

 

[Rilvar]

AER

An Echo, Resounding provides a completely different approach to domain level play. It is written to work with all systems, so domains have their own stats and rules. With only a few conversions you could easily make this system relate to your game, by say setting the conversion between Wealth and gp.

It begins with game set up – creating the map, creating locations, resources, ruins, and populations. It has a very detailed approach to exactly WHAT to put in your campaign map as the recommended sandbox setup for good play, but in practice the GM could completely ignore this section and set up the map according to taste, or just use a pre-made one. What is important is deciding which locations are really important and assigning AER descriptions to all those locations. For simplicity AER assigns everything into a role: population center, ruins, resources, or lairs. The default setup assumes a wilderness or borderlands setting, so it assigns all locations an obstacle of sorts that an upcoming domain ruler must overcome. This setup can easily be changed by GMs if the campaign is not on the borderlands, where players are overcoming other domains rather than obstacles.

AER then gets into domain management. Domains are simply a collection of locations under the control of one power. Domains are described by three attributes: military, economic, and social, to which all the domains locations and assets contribute. Upkeep costs use the same three attributes, and accounting is simply a matter of not allowing costs exceed domain totals. Domain actions consist of a number of predefined actions that are resolved with a simple roll for success, modified by the domain’s attributes. In practice, it allows players to resolve domain turns very quickly, keeping the game focus on adventuring with only a small portion of the session devoted to domain management.

The domain management system is elegantly simple yet very powerful. Instead of trying to extrapolate game rules to fit the domain, using gp values to measure costs and calculating the construction time of each tower in the keep, AER’s three attribute model allows players to resolve domain actions quickly and allows GMs to manage broad domains without too much burden. Some aspects of AER can seem over simplified for GMs wanting great variety in the world (what if my location isn’t a town, ruin, resource, or lair?), but in practice these simplifications are critical to allow the game to cover the broad scope of strategic level play while keeping the game manageable.

However, the system is somewhat lacking when detail is important. For example, it reduces castles to military units that can in theory be constructed in three domain turns (turns default at a month of game time). The GM may be somewhat pressed under this system to figure out what exactly a 30 wealth domain means in game play, or what effect a lyre of building might contribute to the domain. While obviously simplified penalties and bonuses using the attributes system could account for player actions, players who like to get into the details of things may be frustrated to make the conversion between their game system details and the AER generalizations.

Where the system shines is for strategic level play. Using a simple scaling system, GMs can easily use this system to run anything from a borderland region with a few scattered towns to a sprawling empire that stretches over the continent. It even allows GMs to run a small scale domain game for the players while simultaneously running the entire region to provide a backdrop, and easily integrate the actions of the players’ small domain into the big picture. The players hear about the great war between the Rose and the Lion, so they decide to struggle to bring their hidden valley under control that they may become valued vassals in the great conflict. As their domain grows in power, they may scale up to begin playing on the big map, transitioning from town management to kingdom management.

Overall I would say it’s a great system, simple yet powerful. Those that are left wanting for more details can easily incorporate rules from other systems by ensuring the outcome of these projects translates into the three attribute paradigm. I’d recommend to anyone wanting to incorporate strategic level play into their game, though those who are only looking to incorporate a stronghold and surrounding land would probably be better off with other more detailed systems.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=67519]Rilvar[/MENTION] You also might check out Mongoose's Strongholds & Dynasties in their Classic Play line; it combines domain management, construction, economics, and warfare. The Open Mass Combat System wasn't my cup of tea, but I've gotten good use from the rest of the book.

Here's an ENWorld thread discussing it: http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/70500-mongooses-strongholds-dynasties.html

Here's a PDF product page: The Book of Strongholds & Dynasties - Mongoose | DriveThruRPG.com