A Grittier Domain Game

I am a big Kevin Crawford/Sine Nomine fanboy. I wish he’d been given the job of writing D&D5e using his Stars Without Number engine (crudely: Basic D&D with a Traveller-esque skill system), not for the simple, effective system itself, but for the sandbox tools he could build into the game – whether that is giving the GM the machinery to generating adventures, alien ruins, the actions of factions and domain, or the dark plots of those devoted to Elder Things. 

Now, it might seem strange, given that Other Dust is a post-apocalyptic game set in the far future, but the more that I have considered the ‘Groups and Enclaves’ rules in Other Dust, the more I think that they would be ideal – far more so than the higher level ‘domain game’ of An Echo Resounding – for the kind of fantasy gaming that I understand as being an aspect of distinctive RuneQuest play. That said, to my shame, I’ve always run RQ as more or less percentile D&D. The sort of play that I am talking about is that in which the Player Characters are members of a community (or communities, what with cults, tribes, clans, kingdoms, etc.) and their adventuring is often conducted for the benefit of those communities, not only for the personal gain of the PCs. In other words, Other Dust provides the tools to add some mechanical heft to a grittier kind of OSR domain game.

In Other Dust, Kevin Crawford proposes that the engine (and verisimilitude) of the sandbox can be maintained by running a ‘faction game’, determining and resolving the actions of the various Groups and Enclaves of the campaign region between ‘traditional’ adventure sessions. There are different kinds of Groups – Creeds, Raiders, Polities, Families, and Cabals – and it is easy to see how these could be translated into RQ-esque (or other Bronze to Iron Age inspired) fantasy equivalents. Creeds become (what else) ‘Cults’, Raiders could be renamed ‘Warbands’, Polities are ‘Nations’ or ‘Tribes’, Families stay as they are, or are perhaps are renamed ‘Clans’, and, well, Cabals cover just about everything from secret societies to merchant combines. These Groups have Tiers – ranging from 1 to 3 – which represents the level of their influence over the campaign region.

Groups have resources; Food, Tech, Morale, Influence, and Security, and by exceeding certain thresholds – which depend on Group type and Tier – Groups can earn ‘Progress’, which helps them perform actions, but groups also have a certain level of Ruin, which can impede actions (and might lead to the end of the Group entirely, if not checked). Of course, the best – as in, most fun – way to get rid of Ruin is to solve the problems that generate Ruin points by way of adventure.

Most Dark Ages inspired gaming (and most D&D, in fact) is post-apocalyptic – even in heavily fictionalised settings there is a fallen (Roman) empire, barbarian invasions and ethnic conflict, the spread of an millenarian religion (Christianity), and a place for the wandering ‘hero’ and his warband. I have been looking for *my* Dark Ages game for some time now, and I might have to do it myself by reskinning Other Dust. 

I went into the shop to have a look at 5e...

... I turned the box over in my hands, read the blurb, looked at the art and... decided that there was no reason for me to buy *this* version of D&D. I am with Newt on this one; I have more than enough versions of D&D in my cupboards, on my bookshelves and on my harddrives to not really need another version, official or not. Indeed, if I was to buy another D&D, it'd likely be another OSR game, or a hardcopy of one of the games I only own as a .pdf. I am not saying that 5e is no good. Hell, I'm not even saying that it isn't a version that I would like. I've skimmed through the .pdf of the Basic Rules and there isn't anything that screams, "play me, and put away your TSR D&Ds, your clones, and your OSR games". In my first draft of this post that was a huge list of classic and OSR rulesets, but I figured that I'd only leave out some deserving clone or OSR game, such is the genuine renaissance of gaming based on the simplicities of HD, AC, Class and Level. Indeed, there is so wit, wisdom, vim, and vigour among the hobbyists producing D&Dish material that 'official D&D' is largely redundant to someone like me who doesn't, for example, engage in 'organised play'.

Honestly, if Kevin Crawford would just tone down the creativity a bit (next up; a sandbox 'Cthulhu' OSR horror game?!) and embrace vanilla fantasy we'd be sorted. If he'd rebuild the classic D&D classes (in pseudo-Medieval costume) using the SWN/SotD engine, importing all his campaign construction and management options - domains, mass combat, factions, trade, etc. - spread out across Red Tide/An Echo, Resounding and various SWN products, combing them all into one big 'rules cyclopedia', well then I would have my 'permanent D&D'.

So I ended up spending about half the money I'd earmarked for a boxed set of D&D on Dead Names: Lost Races and Forgotten Ruins and Scarlet Heroes instead. Kevin Crawford, a one-man-band of OSR awesomeness, epitomises the best of the OSR (whether he calls himself part of the OSR or not). There isn't a bad product in the entire Sine Nomine line, but they're not just setting books, or collections new classes, spells, monsters, and useful tables. Almost every product is the distillation of a particular gaming philosophy, one that emphasizes player choice and agency in the context of a long-running campaign in a living world (or worlds, for Stars Without Number). If you are at all interested in sandbox play, read something written by Kevin Crawford. Stars Without Number has a free edition. So yes, they're packed with tables for campaign construction and adventure design, yes, the setting ideas are interesting, and put new spins on D&Dish games (Spears of the Dawn has some great African-inspired magic using classes), and yes, they are all cleanly written with non-nonsense procedures that achieve in game what other games seem to require GMs maintain spreadsheets. But they are also motivated by an idea; an idea of what a roleplaying game should be, and why playing a roleplaying game has unique qualities that set it apart from other forms of gaming.

So, even if I do end up buying 5e - and you know that I will submit in the end - you can be sure that I'll still have a whole bunch of Kevin Crawford's books loaded on my tablet as a reminder of what this game is all about. 

And of how productive one man can be! I would struggle to believe that Kevin Crawford wasn't some kind of collective identity for a whole bunch of writers, if there wasn't a singular vision running through all his books.

[God, that's a bit gushing isn't it? Still, click 'Publish'...]