Domain Game II, The Particulars

Coming out of a satisfying weekend of socializing and gaming—gratuitous, non-sequitur picture of the ever-proliferating small army of HC players and hirelings marching off into the dear sunlight of yesterday's session below—I am fired up and ready to move on Domain Game II this week.

The nitty-gritty:

Stormbringer Hack. The voting was still in deadlock on the rules and I have decided to use my executive privilege to indulge my current crush on the Stormbringer hack and go with that. I am the decider.

Part I of my hack, which has all rules relevant to the players other than the sorcery system, will be available by this evening. What you will see is elements of Stormbringer mixed in with old school Runequest and D&D--more and more the kind of “frankenquest” that Jeremy Duncan has inspired me with his Hellenistic Successors-era game (along with some other ambitious and creative projects) .

Interested readers and players who haven't emailed directly can email me at kutalik dot the gmail dot the com so I can send you the necessary files.

System is Secondary. That all said above, I need to emphasize to players and those interested in watching the action that the existing rules mechanics (both the hack and existing sections of Borderlands that we'll be using) will be secondary. The underlying philosophy here is similar to what happened in the first phase of the Domain Game, the campaign is a wide-open incubator.

What rules we use are merely guidelines—think menu options rather than immutable laws--and will be running behind the actual play. Practical translation: you tell me what you want to do, I will tell you what to roll, and we will translate it into system mechanics as we go.

Campaign Roster. The campaign currently has two “top-tier” lord characters, Jeremy and Reg, and 12 “casual” players. Given the usual rate of attrition I am going to keep open four more seats for casual players. If you want in email me at kutalik at gmail dot com.

How the monthly game will work is we will always have seats for our lord characters and 2-3 seats that will be allotted to the casuals by their availability--and by random roll if necessary. I will send out a notifications a week and a day before letting people know what's going on.

Tabula Rasa. The players are starting as exiles forcibly cut-off from the old world of Elsewhere. Their home planet is a diverse land vaguely mirroring the lands of the Young Kingdoms and currently unified by a cruel, pre-human race of lithe, play decadents (it starts with an “M”).

However because of their isolation—and the underlying campaign philosophy—much of the particulars of their society is a blank slate. Players are free to make up as much or as little of the culture, religion, political structure, etc. of back home.

Background setting is thus wide open to all who participate—and based on my past attempts at bottom-up co-creation an interesting—strangely coherent even—sense of place will tend to evolve out of play and the constant “yes and...”. Fun stuff.

Kick-off Session. I am going to throw out three dates for the first session: October 18 8:00 pm Central US; October 26 (same time); and October 30 noon Central US. And of course, the “where”, is that charming little pocket universe created by Google+ Hangout. Players should drop me a line here or at my email address about what sessions they can make.