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View Full Version : Domains at War Kickstarter: Tactical Battles, Strategic Campaigns & RPG Mass Combat



Tavis Allison
05-16-2013, 03:23 PM
Hi, I'm one of the developers of a new wargame/RPG mass combat system, Domains at War, that's currently funded on Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/autarch/domains-at-war) and working towards its stretch goals. One of our backers, Simon6825, suggested that folks here might be interested in what we're creating!

The core of Domains at War is two books, Battles and Campaigns. Battles is a tactical wargame designed to play out fantasy, ancients, or medieval engagements ranging from the platoon scale (each unit is 30 infantry or 15 cavalry, army size is 120-600 troops) to company, battalion, or brigade scale (1,920 infantry or 960 cavalry, armies of 12,000 or more soldiers). Our lead designer Alex Macris previously created two miniatures wargames, Modern Spearhead and Blaze Across the Sands, and says in the introduction to Battles:


In addition to Gygax and Perren’s Chainmail, many tabletop wargames have inspired and shaped Domains at War: Battles. We mention them here in homage to the designers who came before us. We drew particular insight from Phil Barker’s De Bellis Antiquitatis, Richard Berg and Mark Herman’s Great Battles, Richard Borg’s Battle Lore, and Arty Conliffe’s Armati. Gamers familiar with these works will doubtless note certain mechanical similarities with Domains at War: Battles. The biggest difference between these games and Battles is in the role of commanders and heroes on the battlefield. While Domains at War: Battles could be enjoyed as a stand-alone wargame, it has been designed specifically for battles where RPG characters are in command. It makes the deeds and decisions of those characters the focus of its gameplay, and works hard to integrate their actions into the flow of battle.

The way the design achieves this focus on individuals is to make each hero a commander, whose initiative roll determines when the units in his division are activated. One of the key tactical decisions is when your commanders are best attached to a unit - giving it a bonus to morale and making it easier to give orders to nearby units - and when to detach them and have them act independently, for example by seeking out and challenging another commander.

This mechanic makes the game very well suited to team play, as you'd see in a RPG session where the players work together to overcome the enemy. In one early playtest, my team routed because we were too focused on keeping our heroes attached to their units, allowing Alex's lightning-bolt throwing mage mounted on an undead dragon to wipe us out one by one. He pointed out later that in a dungeon we never would have sent one character at a time through the door to the dragon's lair! I'm much less versed in wargames than Alex, but this frequent shift between considering the battle as a whole and zooming in to the individual scale is unique in my experience and makes gameplay very immersive and personal.

The Campaigns book handles strategic considerations like maintaining lines of supply, conducting reconnaissance and screening to bring the enemy to battle or evade detection, and occupying or razing conquered territories. The assumption here is that the player characters have reached the point in a RPG campaign where they've built strongholds and become rulers of domains, but it could also be used to conduct a grand strategic wargame spanning months and years of construction, recruitment, diplomacy, manuevers, and sieges between tactical battles. Campaigns also presents an abstract resolution system that can be used to dice out engagements that aren't worth playing with the Battles system, either because the players aren't invested in them or because the forces are unequal enough that the outcome is more or less certain.

The updates to the Kickstarter have some pictures and notes of games that I've run recently, including a Campaigns game in which the opposing sides chose not to engage in battle and went dungeon-crawling instead, and a spur-of-the-moment recreation of the Battle of Arsuf. A more detailed example of play by a fan is here (http://crowbarandbrick.blogspot.com/2013/05/autarchs-domains-at-war-battle.html); he also wrote an enthusiastic chapter-by-chapter walkthrough of Campaigns and Battles here (http://crowbarandbrick.blogspot.com/2013/05/autarchs-domains-at-war-for-adventurer.html).

The system is complete and fully playtested (the platoon scale slightly less so - this was a recent addition requested by the Kickstarter backers), and the rules are available for download immediately with a $5 pledge. The default assumption is that Battles is played with hexes and counters because we figured those are easier to provide to roleplayers, but also because it's more straightforward to convert from hexes to inches than the other way around; notes are provided for scaling to 15mm or 25mm figures.

I'll be glad to answer any questions y'all may have here or via email at [email protected]!