Name that Domain Game Contest

What's in a name?

Timeshadows reminded me the other day that I still have revealed the actual title of the Domain Game. While I have had several likely candidates in mind since the beginning of the year, the real truth is that I am just not convinced I have a winner.

Here's your chance to help the project—and have your name up in lights.

Over the next three days, I will be opening the floor for any nominations for what you think the project should be called. We are looking for something punchy or evocative—something that captures the nature of the project. Preferably without an awkward acronym.

The results will be voted on by a quorum of Domain Game players, people close to the project, and myself. A winner will be announced here on Wednesday.

So what do you get if you win? Besides my undying thanks, formal credit and a free copy of both the final paper and PDF copies of the first sourcebook.

Don't Give Up the Ship

[Editor's Note: If you don't get the subtext here, count yourself among the lucky. And apologies in advance if you came here looking for old school Nappy ship rules.]

The free exchange of ideas is often a contact sport.

There can be heated debates, some even quite vitriolic, in the the pursuit of that exchange. But at the end of the day it presumes--or used to presume in past mediums--some kind of baseline accountability. It used to presume in most cases that something in print had a face and a name attached.

I have no problem with tough, principled discussion, debate, and satire. I guarantee that most people pay lip service to that principle, if not the practice.

The anonymity and virtual distance factors, though, in recent old school blogosphere cases thumb their nose at that accountability. It has dialed back the quality of conversation for everyone--and even reduced the value of satire and taking the piss out of people. And now we are seeing it becoming true out and out bullying, hectoring people until they quit.

Looking at how the temperature went up in the last two weeks, I can understand why people look at the cost and benefit analysis of running a blog on a friggin' leisure activity and say: “it's not worth it. I am out.” But please don't delete your blog. Take a break, stop posting forever if the mojo doesn't come back. Just don't surrender.

As I see we have a few options as a loose community of sorts on this:

1. Grow a thick skin. Prepare for the fact that your ideas, your character will be picked apart.

2. Take legal action. U.S. libel laws lean pretty heavily in favor of those who publish. (I can attest to this having been on the defendant side in a past day job, wrongly of course). A plaintiff must prove actual malice, that the person maligned is not a "public figure", and that it did tangible harm. A tough legal standard, but previous case law around anonymous blogging does mean that identities may have to be disclosed.

3. Close ranks. Being crystal clear (that phrase again, Whisk) that we promote a culture of solidarity, that if you don't sign your name and present your face that you forfeit the right to throw bombs in our blogs and forums. Most importantly, it means that we show our public support for those who are being bullied (not just made fun of, or criticized in a relatively principled way). An injury to one is an injury to all. 

Frankly, I am not a big fan of options one or two.

I certainly plan on trying to practice the first myself. An honest person has to say that telling people to grow a thick skin--or to be wary of their online acquaintances is an insufficient answer. It can also be a surrender.

There may be better answers than three, I leave the best answers for better minds around the “meta”. I am not a big fan of bandwagons or echo chambers and I certainly chafe sometimes at the idea of presumed community standards. I hate even feeling like I need to have written this preachy bit of editorializing.

But sometimes I feel like you have to get out of your comfort zone, you have to stand together against something poisonous. You have to act.  

Cherry-Picking Domain-Level Play

Because the Internet is often tone-deaf, I wanted to be 100 percent clear about how I see the relationship between the Domain Game and Adventurer Conqueror King: f-bomb those guys.

Now that I got the interest of those who have a teaser-line feed, I don't mean that in the slightest. In fact, if it wasn't crystal clear from my last post and from Tavis's comments, I believe something(s) highly interesting and useful to our corner of the hobby is going to arise out of this. I don't know the exact shape of the end result, both parties still have some talking—and I have some writing and editing—to do yet.

There are a couple things that should get addressed in the mean time.

Thread one is the opinion that Austrodavicus (man, what a great handle) voiced here and on his matching post at Dungeons Down Under. Dave's punchline is that “people will pick through both works for their own games.”

My gut says this “yep, this likely is pretty what people in our DIY hobbyist end of things are going to do.” Hell, it's what I would do.

Although it came from a different impetus at the time, I should repeat that acknowledging that fact has been part of the core vision of the Domain Game for sometime. Cherry-picking is hardwired into the project.

I tried to accomplish this in a number of ways:

1. By making it fully, or at worst mostly, compatible to existing older and neo-classical flavors of D&D. You won't have to switch games or shoehorn what you are already playing overly much to use it.
   
   
2. By dividing certain sections into “basic”,“advanced”, and “narrativist” parts. Want to hand-wave the nitty-gritty details on how a domain gets a monthly income, but want a simple chart-based system? Stick to basic. Want to see how the sausage is made? Go with advanced. Want to take a freeform, off-stage approach to ruling? Go with the narrativist.
   
   
3. By making the granular, “advanced” parts modular. So you want to keep most domain-play basic, but you want to keep some detail on say how the annual grain harvest works or exactly how one attracts colonists to a strange land, you can use this piece or that in with the basic framework--or one of your making.
   
   
4. By having three distinct layers oriented to three different places in the power arcs of D&D characters. The “Pendragon D&D” work for the first layer (roughly levels 3-7). Clearing (or adapting) the wilderness--and scratching out a subsistence--for early name level at the second and larger-scale kingdom level action for even higher-level characters. One also has the flexibility to use any of these layers at any level, if that's where your think your game is going.

The second thread, on the nature of the old school second-wave--and where all this fits in--coming at you later today or tomorrow. 

Domain Game, the Last Stretch

First the good news, I rounded the 2/3rds done mark with the manuscript Tuesday—a highly-satisfying personal benchmark. Probably even more so if you've been anywhere around me in the last two months and had to suffer through my litany of whining about the horror of making it so much like real work (witness the recent post about Escapism).

The “Pendragon D&D” portions of the work were the real game-saver for me as it really gave me a jolt of energy to latch on to a way to bring domain-level play down to the mid-level character range. It didn't hurt that all those sections felt “right” and genuinely fun to my hobbyist gut—a notion only confirmed from the generous, thoughtful feedback from you fine folks out there.

Now the “bad news”—well, at least for me—yesterday evening I also got a heads-up from Ken, one of my former players from the Austin campaign, about Adventurer Conqueror King, a full-court press project that is taking on integrating domain-level play into a complete set of what they are calling a “second wave retro-clone” (think DCC RPG and LotFP here).

Much of it sounds a lot like parallel evolution (with some different mutations from what I read) to the granular, bottom-up domain-level goals of the DG. Big sigh.

The “worse” news is that the project is backed by an extremely talented team, Tavis from the excellent Mule Abides blog and the developer and business kingpin Alex of The Escapist website fame—and that the execution sounds damn good to me to date. I further love the fact that it sounded like some of the ideas grew organically out of real campaign play at Tavis' table. Potentially great stuff. 

All I can say is that I am damn glad that I am DIY hobbyist with zero percent interest in making my fortune and fame in the rpg industry (I already piss that opportunity away in my day job). 

Seriously though, my main goal in this whole project is purely of the “I want to see domain-play finally reach it's promised potential, so I can play it myself” kind. If that can happen with ACK bully for them, I'll play it. If not, hopefully the Domain Game will come through—or maybe fulfill different enough aspects of that overall goal to recapture "High Arnesonism".

If neither comes through, then, hell, I guess it's up to one of you to build this beast.

Tolkien's Art

Today's post by Brad of Crushing Skulls on the power (or lack thereof) of cover art reminded me of one of my own johnny-come-lately discoveries: that my favorite Middle Earth art, the most evocative and mood-capturing, was the art drawn by the author himself.

I grew up with the striking 1973 edition Ballantine covers (that seem to be getting the most thumbs up on Brad's post so far). Those tattered paperbacks miraculously have survived each zig and zag of my life in the last three decades.

Before running this blog, truth be told, I paid little attention to the art credits of most of my books, even the treasured ones like those. So when I did pull out the editions a few months ago on a slow day to check the credit I have to admit it was a complete surprise. 

Tracking down a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator I was pleasantly surprised to find that many of his paintings, sketches, maps, fake manuscript fragments, runic calligraphy etc. were quite all quite good and fascinating.

Tolkien in our circles gets a little less of his due--presumably as a healthy corrective to the under-emphasis on the game's pulp fantasy inspirations--but damn if I am not consistently impressed by the breadth and scope of his talent as a well-rounded world-builder, even after all these years.

A nice collection of his illustrations can be found here.

Market Day

Perversely and stubbornly there are things I truly miss about my life in my favorite underdog city, Detroit. The forays into ruin exploration were one, but high on the list was the weekly ritual of Eastern Market.

Every Saturday, without pause for piling snow or summer sun, an open-aired corner of the city known for it's haunting emptiness and utter domination by the automobile, comes alive with pedestrians in the hustle and bustle of market day.

Hawkers shout deals as you pass mountains of cheap fresh vegetables—some grown by local farmers, others trucked in from points exotic. In the cold months, the smells of mulled cider mixes uneasily with the visceral jolt of passing the open-air butchers. Everywhere is life and activity.

Before the early modern era (or late Renaissance if that's how you like to think about the 17^th century), the lion's share of buying and selling of goods—all goods not just produce--in towns and cities didn't take place in permanent fixed location shops with regular hours, but did in once or twice a week sprawling, chaotic open-sided markets. To be able to present a range of goods to a buyer, a town needed that week or half-week to have goods flow in from the surrounding workshops and countryside.

Pick up a well-written history of daily life in just about any pre-industrial urbanized society and you will find some of the most vibrant passages devoted to descriptions of markets. Off my desk, at random from a pile of such books, I flip to the sections devoted to markets.

From Daily Life in Ancient India:

Crowds of shoppers strolled along in front of shelves piled high with green vegetables, fruits of all kinds, candied sugar, cooked rice and prepared foods for eating, whose pungent odors contrasted with the more delicate scents given off by the pyramids of incense sticks and sandalwood arranged on the perfumers' counters...The garland makers patiently build up their ephemeral works of art, threading heavy strings of stemless flowers interspersed with all the tinkling, brightly colored accessories that set the blossoms off. Pedlars and hawkers sold their trumpery and trinkets from door to door. Here and there, the entrance of a tavern or gambling den was surrounded by a knot of men of disreptuable appearance.

Or from When China Ruled the Sea:

Surrounding [Chang'an's] inner city and its elaborate palace was an outer city of 106 separate walled districts, hundreds of temples, and two enormous markets—an eastern market that sold goods from within the borders of the Tang empire and a western market that specialized in exotic goods from India, Persia, southeast Asia, and beyond, to the distant shores of Africa. Near this market, were taverns where wine was served in amber goblets and Western girls with green eyes and golden hair danced and whispered flattery into the ears of wealthy patrons. 

Down the narrow, winding streets of the western market, one could smell sandalwood from India or Java, which was mashed into a paste and used to cure fevers and intestinal disorders. There were aloes to make soothing salves and cloves to freshen the breath...There were Persian dates for the complexion, saffron powder for perfume, and pistachio nuts for sexual vigor...And some days there was rare ambergris, a costly incense, which the Chinese believed was “dragon's spittle”.

(I actually found two more highly colorful passages on medieval European city life, but you get the picture, right?)

The question is why does all the color and life of markets get such short shrift in fantasy settings? Why should day-to-day economic life be so much duller than that of real-world history? Why do we have to make it so boring?

At the worst end, fantasy cities that have these “big-box” general stores were an adventurer can walk in and buy just about anything on the standard equipment list.

Better ones divide stores by craft, service, or profession. Here is a magic component shop, there a blacksmith selling a limited range of goods. Maybe even a description of a square devoted to a market,.

But most everywhere it's the shop that dominates with its predictably steady inventory and fixed, perpetually-unmovable prices.

I understand part of the why. As one of my players, Desert Scribe, mentioned yesterday sometimes both the party and myself conspire to handwave purchases in town away in order to concentrate on the real action out there in the Weird beyond the gates.

I do try, most of my towns are dominated by open-aired stalls—perhaps broken up like early Renaissance towns with a roofed open-walled market, trade halls for certain big-ticket commodities, workshops where an artisan will sell goods directly, and small, up-market shops of the esoteric.

From time to time like real towns and cities of that period a trade fair occurs. The players after a year and a half of hiking it everywhere in the Hill Cantons finally purchased steeds at the biennial Horse Fair.

Still it's one of those areas that I feel like I miss an opportunity to really make my urban locales pop with description. A missing something that inevitably makes my “needs improvement” running list in my GM notebook.

(Inspiration for this post flows directly back to this wonderfully granular series of Equipment posts being done by Alexis on the Tao of D&D blog.)